during the last two reigns, were not likely to let them go in this. When the commissioners applied to the Earl of Warrenne, he answered, drawing his sword from its scabbard: "By this instrument do I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to defend them! Our ancestors, coming into this realm with William the Norman, acquired their possessions by their good swords. William did not make a conquest alone, or for himself solely; our ancestors were helpers and participants with him!"

Notwithstanding these somewhat arbitrary proceedings, Edward did much to reform the abuses abounding in the courts of justice. "In his time," says Sir Matthew Hale, "the law obtained a very great perfection." Corrupt judges were heavily fined and imprisoned. Sir Ralph de Hengham, the chief justiciary, being convicted of bribery, was sentenced to pay a large fine, and the money was expended in the erection of a Clock Tower in the Old Palace of Westminster. "Its intent was," says an old chronicler, "by the clock striking continually, to remind the judges in the neighboring courts to administer true justice, they calling thereby to mind the occasion and means of its building."

Edward I. inherited to the full the ambition and love of conquest which distinguished the sovereigns of Norman and Plantagenet race. With him, however, this disposition took another direction than that of foreign dominion, which had been its prevailing manifestation with all this monarch's ancestors. The aim of Edward's life was to unite the whole of Great Britain and Ireland under one rule. The latter country had been partially conquered in the reign of his great-grandfather, Henry II., but North Wales was still unsubdued, and Scotland was an independent kingdom.

1277.

It was against the Welsh that his arms were first turned. This brave people made a noble stand for freedom. A hundred years before, a Cambrian chief had made the following reply, when questioned by Henry II. as to the conquest of his country: "King, your power may, to a certain extent, weaken and injure this nation, but utterly to

destroy it requires the anger of God. In the day of judgment no other race, no other tongue than that of the Kymrys,* will answer for that corner of the earth to the sovereign judge." Amid the defiles of the mountains of Wales many an English army found a grave. But the ruthless Edward was not to be foiled. From the foot of the Pyrenees he brought the Basques, soldiers wont to penetrate even steeper and wilder fastnesses than those of Snowdon. They drove the Welsh from their strongholds, and the last bulwark of their freedom was invaded. Their king, Llewellyn, was slain in battle, and his head placed upon London Tower, encircled with a willow crown. Under Llewellyn's brother, David, the struggle continued, until that last royal champion of Welsh freedom was betrayed and carried in chains to Rhudhan Castle, where he was put to death by order of King Edward.

1282.

1283.

Tradition says that the ancient British bards fell victims to this king's unsparing cruelty. The poet Gray, in his beautiful ode, "The Bard," makes one who survived the massacre of his race foretell the future misfortunes of the Plantagenet kings:

"Weave the warp, and weave the woof,

The winding-sheet of Edward's race."

Dark indeed was the shadow cast upon the future of that monarch's eldest born, the first Prince of Wales, then an infant in Caernarvon Castle.

1295.

Once again during this reign, under a brave leader, Madoc, the Welsh made an attempt to recover their freedom. Again the English soldiers scaled the heights of Snowdon, and desolated the Welsh valleys with fire and sword. The brave descendants of the Britons, who for centuries had resisted Saxon, Danish, and Norman domination, were forced to yield their independence to the persevering valor of Edward I. Though conquered, they have not been destroyed,

* A name of the ancient Welsh.

nor have they changed their language for that of the conquerors. The "tongue of the Kymrys" still forms the speech of the greater proportion of the inhabitants of the principality of Wales.

1291.

In the year 1291, King Edward was invited to settle a disputed succession to the crown of Scotland. The principal competitors were John Baliol and Robert Bruce. Edward, who aimed to bring Scotland under his own sway, decided in favor of Baliol, whose weak character fitted him to be a useful tool in the hands of the ambitious English monarch. The latter soon began to make such demands as awakened the country to rebellion.

1296

to

Then rose the chief, Sir William Wallace, a name celebrated in Scottish ballad and romance. For many

1305. years he resisted the arms of the English, but at length he was betrayed into the hands of his enemies. In London, on St. Bartholomew's day, this brave champion of Scotland's freedom perished on the gallows.

To Wallace succeeded "the Bruce," a name still more renowned in the annals of Scotland. Crowned king at Scone, by the hand of the Countess of Buchan, he raised a spirit which defied the power of the English king. At first Bruce was defeated, and obliged to flee before the army of England. For months he wandered an outlawed fugitive among the Scottish Isles. Returning to the mainland, and aided by a few bold followers, he repeatedly defeated the English.

When Edward heard of the coronation of the Bruce, he set out for Scotland, vowing to accomplish its final conquest. The day previous to his departure was fixed upon for bestowing the honor of knighthood on the Prince of Wales. At the feast which followed this ceremony, two swans, covered with nets of gold, were placed upon the table by minstrels. The king, rising, swore a solemn vow, "to God and to the swans," that he would punish the rebellion of the Scots. Then turning to his son and the assembled guests, he enjoined upon them, should he die in this expedition before accomplishing

the object of it, to keep his body unburied, until his successor should have fulfilled this vow.

1307.

After this foolish and half-heathen ceremony, the army began its march. The king, being in feeble health, was borne on a litter, and followed the troops by slow stages. He never reached Scotland, dying at a little village near its borders. On his death-bed, Edward implored his son to prosecute the conquest of Scotland, to give up foreign and evil companions, and under pain of his father's curse, never to restore to his confidence Piers Gaveston, who had been one of this prince's most unworthy favorites.

QUESTIONS.-Describe the new monarch's homeward journey.Relate the circumstances which led him to visit Flanders.-Describe his reception in the city of London.-What measures did he adopt for raising money?-Relate the anecdote of the Earl of Warrenne.

What ambitious project did Edward entertain ?-Repeat the speech of a Cambrian (or Welsh) chief to Henry II. regarding the conquest of Wales. By what means did Edward succeed in subduing these mountaineers?-Relate the fate of their last kings.-What is told of their bards?-Repeat quotation from Gray.-Describe their final cffort for independence and its result.

By what circumstances was Edward enabled to interfere in the affairs of Scotland?—To what did his conduct give rise?—Give some account of Sir William Wallace.-Describe the career of Bruce.Describe the ceremony observed by Edward prior to his final march for Scotland.—Repeat his dying commands to his son.

CHAPTER XIX.

CONDITION OF ENGLAND IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

RELIGION-INDUSTRY-MANNERS AND CUSTOMS-LEARNING AND LEARNED MEN.

THE history of the church in England, during this century, is but the history of exactions and tyranny on the part of papal power, which was then at its height.

One historian says, that the reason so few articles appear in Magna Charta, providing for church and clergy, though one of the framers of that instrument was an archbishop, is, that the power and wealth of the kingdom being so largely in their possession, there was nothing left for them to ask. We may well believe this, when we learn that almost one-half of the landed estates in England belonged to the church, and that the taxes which the Pope received yearly from this country, exceeded those paid to the crown.

The churches were given to Italian priests. In many instances, the Pope would appoint to English livings, an infant nephew, or a foreigner, who, residing in Italy, drew large revenues from his distant flock, without performing a single pastoral duty.

During this period there arose the new religious orders, of mendicant or begging friars. There were the Dominicans, or Black Friars; the Franciscans, or Grey Friars; and the Carmelites, or White Friars. These were named respectively from the color of their dress. Shrouded in their cloaks and cowls, with a rope round the waist, and barefooted, they travelled about the country, professing great poverty and sanctity. They mixed with the multitude, preached to them, absolved them, and performed all the rites of the church with so much more zeal than any other order of clergy, that they won the hearts of the people, who flocked to them in every