EDWARD I. 1272-1307 AND THE LAW

Much of this great change is doubtless attributable to the general temper of the age, whose special task and object seemed to be that of reducing to distinct form the great principles which had sprung into a new and vigorous life during the century that preceded it. As the opening of the thirteenth century had been an age of founders, creators, discoverers, so its close was an age of lawyers; organizers, administrators, framers of laws and institutions. It was to this class that Edward himself belonged.

Edward I was a man of great political ideas; moreover, he had qualities and advantages which many political thinkers have not got. He was no mere dreamer, but a practical statesman. He not only thought, but he planned. He strove to put his ideas into practice in a logical and orderly way; and being a king, and a very powerful king too, he had the chance of trying his schemes. He could do what he liked; he was not, as statesmen often are nowadays, compelled to be content with half-measures, aiming only at the second best, because the best seems too difficult to attain

CIVAL JURISDICTION

One of his first cares was to complete the judicial reforms begun by Henry II. The most important court of civil jurisdiction, the Sheriff's or County Court, remained unchanged, both in the extent of its jurisdiction, and the character of the Sheriff as a royal officer. But the superior courts into which the King's Court had since the Great Charter divided itself, those of the King'. Bench, Exchequer, and Common Plea., now received a distinct staff of judges for each court, Of far greater importance than this change, which was in effect but the completion of a process of severance that had long been going on, was the establishment of an equitable jurisdiction side by side with that of the common law.

In his reform of 1178, Henry the Second had broken up the older King's Court, which had till then served as the final Court of Appeal, by the severance of the purely legal judges who had been gradually added to it from the general body of his councillors. The judges thus severed from the Council retained the name and the ordinary jurisdiction of " the King's Court, " while all cases in which they failed to do justice were reserved for the special cognizance of the royal Council itself. To this final jurisdiction of the King in Council Edward gave a wide developement. His assembly of the ministers, the higher permanent officials, and the law officers of the Crown, for the first time reserved to itself in its judicial capacity the correction of all breaches of the law which the lower courts had failed to repress, whether from weakness, partiality, or corruption, and especially of those lawless outbreaks of the more powerful baronage which defied the common authority of the judges. Though regarded with jealousy by Parliament, the jurisdiction of the Council seems to have been steadily put in force through the two centuries which followed; in the reign of Henry the Seventh it took legal and statutory form in the shape of the Court of Star Chamber, and its powers are still exercised in our own day by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.

But the same duty of the Crown to do justice where its courts fell short of giving due redress for wrong expressed itself in the jurisdiction of the Chancellor. This great officer of State, who had perhaps originally acted only as President of the Council when discharging its judicial functions, acquired at a very early date an independent judicial position of the same nature. It is by remembering the origin of the Court of Chancery that we understand the nature of the powers it gradually acquired. All grievances of the subject, especially those which sprang from the misconduct of government officials or of powerful oppressors, fell within its cognizance, as they fell within that of the Royal Council, and to these were added disputes respecting the wardship of infants, dower, rent-charges, or tithes. Its equitable jurisdiction sprang from the defective nature and the technical and unbending rules of the common law.

As the Council had given redress in cases where law became injustice, so the Court of Chancery interfered without regard to the rules of procedure adopted by the common law courts, on the petition of a party for whose grievance the common law provided no adequate remedy. An analogous extension of his powers enabled the Chancellor to afford relief in cases of fraud, accident, or abuse of trust, and this side of his jurisdiction was largely extended at a later time through the results of legislation on the tenure of land by ecclesiastical bodies. The separate powers of the Chancellor, whatever was the original date at which they were first exercised, seem to have been thoroughly established under Edward the First.

In a sense he was the maker of English law as he was the maker of the English Parliament, since his is the earliest .reign to which our law looks back. Statutes and decisions of his time are still "good law", unless they have since been set aside. And his reign was marked by great legislative and judicial activity. Apart from a mass of rules, dividing the work more definitely among the various justices in the various courts of King's Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, the business of keeping the peace throughout the country was entrusted to a new body of officers known as Conservators of the Peace. In the reign of Edward III these officers, with enlarged powers, had their name changed to the familiar term of Justices of the Peace, and have since then continued to discharge all kinds of local justice.

Two points about these are worth special notice. They have never been paid, and they have no special legal training. This follows on the same idea which appears in the jury system and in Parliament, and in all our county and district councils, namely, that an English citizen has to do his duty to the state without any reward save that of honour; it has helped to keep the law closely in touch with everyday life; and it has saved us from the growth of a huge class of officials who, besides being very costly, are always inclined to magnify their own importance at the expense of the good of the public. The history of the paid jurymen at Athens, and paid deputies and local functionaries in France and Germany, seems to show that, by paying, the state is sometimes worse served, since pay may attract a lower class of men, who may be tempted to take bribes, or use their place to do favours. Certainly, to serve for pay is a lower motive than to serve for duty; yet it must be remembered that men of small means cannot afford to serve the state for nothing, and good service merits a reward.

LEGISLATION - The statute of Mortmain;

In legislation, as in his judicial reforms, Edward renewed and consolidated the principles which had been already brought into practical working by Henry the Second. Significant acts announced his determination to carry out Henry's policy of limiting the independent jurisdiction of the Church. He was resolute to force it to become thoroughly national by bearing its due part of the common national burthens, and to break its growing dependence upon Rome. A feudal owner's power and wealth, whether he were king, tenant-in-chief, or mesne-tenant , depended largely on his sub-tenants. While they lived they paid certain services and dues; when they died their heirs paid fines, such as heriots and relief's , before they succeeded to the estates of the dead. The overlord, then, was interested that during their lives they should be men of substance, able to discharge their duties punctually, and that their deaths should occur with normal frequency. At first sight one might be disposed to think that the last matter might be left to nature, that all tenants would die; but this is not so.

The defiant resistance of the ecclesiastical body was answered in an emphatic way. By falling into the " dead "mortmain" of the Church land ceased to render its feudal services; and the Statute " of Mortmain " now forbade the alienation of land to religious bodies in such way that it should cease to render its due service to the King . There was a class of tenants who never died. If land were granted to a corporation, or to a corporation sole - that is to say, for example, to any monastery, or to " the abbot ", or "the vicar", or "the mayor" of such and such a place - these never died: men came and went, but the institution or office lasted. Thus land granted to churchmen never changed tenant; it passed into the "dead hand", into Mortmain, and the superior lost for ever all dues coming from its change of owner. " The Abbot of Glastonbury ", for example, never died, never was a minor, and never could be assigned in marriage. Land granted to him paid neither heriot, relief, wardship nor marriage dues. Further, as churchmen and monks were anxious to swell the estates of their order, and as a grant of land was the general way of securing those masses for the soul which were intended to help it in its passage through purgatory, deathbed grants of land to religious houses were common. Beyond this, however, there was a fraudulent. practice of handing over land to a religious house and getting it regranted on easy terms.

Edward I's statute of Mortmain forbade the buying, selling, or acquiring of land in any fashion so that it could pass into mortmain; if any such bargain were made, the grant was void, and the land passed to the immediate superior. The restriction was probably no beneficial one to the country at large, for Churchmen were the best landlords, and it was soon evaded by the ingenuity of the clerical lawyers; but it marked the growing jealousy of any attempt to set aside what was national from serving the general need and profit of the nation. Its immediate effect was to stir the clergy to a bitter resentment. But Edward remained firm, and when the bishops proposed to restrict the royal courts from dealing with casts of patronage or causes which touched the chattels of Churchmen he met their proposals by an instant prohibition.

WESTMINSTER - The statute of Quia Emptores.

The nobles were with the king , since they were always jealous of the churchmen, who had been the chief holders of land in mortmain. They also mostly approved the statute Quia Emptores. This was designed to check what was called sub-infeudation, that is to say, the practice of a feudal-tenant granting away to a sub-tenant part of the land granted to him. The reason why it was tempting to sub-infeud was that thereby the granter got more men under him and more power. An ambitious man would make a number of grants - often very petty ones - to his less pushing neighbours, in order that he might have a call on them in case of need; they would accept, since they would expect his protection in return. two reasons the great landowners and the king (who was the greatest landowner of all ) disliked this.

To begin with, it involved feudal ties in a tangle. It often happened that a man would hold land from three or four different people. He might be a tenant-in-chief from the king for one piece, and sub-infeuded to,say, the Earl of Gloucester for another piece, and to Sir Roger, who was himself a tenant of the Abbot of Tewkesbury, for a third. King, Earl, Knight, and Abbot would all have claims on him. Secondly, the tenant, in his anxiety to extend his feudal power over a large array of vassals, might grant away so much of his holding that he would be unable to perform his own due services is overlord. Hence the statute Quia Emptores provided that if a tenant granted land in this way, the receiver of it would hold, not from the granter, but from the granter's overlord.' statute, like Mortmain, favoured the tenants-in-chief, but still more the king, as feudal superior of all land. By increasing the number of tenants-in-chief and diminishing the average size of their holdings, it decreased their social dignity and helped curb feudal power.

Tenants of the greater barons received under-tenants on condition of their rendering them similar services to those which they themselves rendered to their lords; and the baronage, while duly receiving the services in compensation for which they had originally granted their lands in fee, saw with jealousy the feudal profits of these new under-tenants, the profits of wardship or of reliefs and the like, in a world the whole increase in the value of the estate consequent on its subdivision and higher cultivation, passing into other hands than their own.

The purpose of the statute was to check this process by providing that in any case of alienation the sub-tenant should henceforth hold, not of the tenant, but directly of the superior lord. But its result was to promote instead of hindering the transfer and subdivision of land. The tenant who was before compelled to retain in any case so much of the estate as enabled him to discharge his feudal services to the over-lord of whom he held it, was now enabled by a process analogous to the modern sale of "tenant-right," to transfer both land and services to new holders. However small the estates thus created might be, the bulk were held directly of the Crown ; and this class of lesser gentry and freeholders grew steadily from this time in numbers and importance.

His care for the trading classes was seen in the Statute of Merchants, which provided for the registration of the debts of traders, and for their recovery by distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment of his person. The Statute of Winchester, the greatest of Edward's measures for the enforcement of public order, revived and reorganized the old institutions of national police and national defence. It regulated the action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form in his Assize of Arms. Every man was bound to hold himself in readiness, duly armed, for the King's service in case of invasion or revolt, or to pursue felons when hue and cry were raised after them. Every district was made responsible for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates of each town were required to be closed at nightfall, and all strangers to give an account of themselves to its magistrates. As a security for travellers against sudden attacks from robbers, all brushwood was to be destroyed for a space of two hundred feet on either side the public highway, a provision which illustrates at once the social and physical condition of the country at the time.

To enforce the observance of this act knights were appointed in every shire under the name of Conservators of the Peace, a name which, as the convenience of these local magistrates was more sensibly felt and their powers more largely extended, was changed for that which they still retain of " Justices of the Peace." The great measure which is commonly known as the Statute "Quia Emptores" is one of those legislative efforts which mark the progress of a wide social revolution in the country at large. The number of the greater barons was diminishing every day, while the number of the country gentry and of the more substantial yeomanry was increasing with the increase of the national wealth. This increase showed itself in the growing desire to become proprietors of land.

WESTMINSTER - The statute of De Donis Conditionalibus.

One more measure, also of lasting importance in our history, was that known as De Donis Conditionalibus, which enabled land to be left to a man and his heirs in such a way that he was forbidden to part with it. This set up what is called "entail ". As many estates were thus entailed, much land was secured in the possession of great houses. But it was secured to the heir, the eldest son; save where means of evading the statute were found, the younger sons of the house could get none. Thus, though a small number of landowners were kept great, there was no establishment of a landowning caste, who would regard themselves as noble, being inheritors of land, and despise all land less men as socially inferior; the younger sons of great families had to seek fortune in the world, either in arms, in the Church, or in the law. Thus, as these professions were constantly recruited from the younger sons of landed families, no severance grew up between the landed "noble" and the rest It was not so in France, where all "nobles" remained "nobles", and the immense gap between them and the people was one of the great causes of the Revolution of 1789.

COMMERCIAL POLICY

We may sum Edward's policy as one of "orderly consolidation". Two aspects of it his far reaching legislative measures, and his shaping of the Model Parliament - have explained. Another, which was of immense value to the kingdom, though it scarcely finds a place in political history, is seen in his commercial policy. At first each town had aimed at getting privileges for its own townsmen, those who were " free of the town " had all sorts of rights of buying and selling which the stranger from outside did not possess. In the regulations of the town guilds and merchant guilds, which were associations of townsmen in each town, we find hosts of regulations limiting and preventing the "foreigner" from competing or interfering with the townsman's profits; and it must not be supposed that " foreigner " included only those who were not English. The word was of wider meaning , it meant anyone who was not a townsman. Consequently there was an abundant crop of jealousy between townsmen of different towns, and the whole trade of the country hampered.

Although the average townsman was unable to see beyond their own town walls, Edward I was not likely to take so limited a view. He did much to prevent the towns shutting themselves up in a cage of restrictions. He encouraged them where he thought the guild rules to be sensible, as, for instance, in insisting upon good quality of wares, and in trying to prevent people from creating artificial scarcity by buying up quantities of goods with the hope of being able to sell again at higher prices. But he looked at the good of the whole country - at the nation and not at the town. And he did something to check the exclusive spirit which he saw around him. He could not believe that it was wholesome that a Londoner should be regarded as a "foreigner" in Southampton, or a Newcastle man as a "foreigner" in York; and though he did not break down the town privileges altogether, he took them under his royal regulation. Thus, by being the first English king who followed a national commercial policy, he set an example which his successors followed.

A united nation, national commerce, a national Parliament in which all classes were represented, all bear witness to Edward's idea of a "united English nation ". But Edward was not content with this. He aimed at something much wider - a united British race. He strove to join under the English crown both Wales and Scotland. In his first object he succeeded: in the latter, he failed.

The Conqueror had hedged in the Welsh by setting on their borders the most warlike of his barons, trusting thereby to employ their turbulent energy to his own gain. His son Rufus blundered into South Wales with an invading army, only to find his slow-moving mail-clad array helpless against the nimble Welshmen. He speedily saw his mistake, and returned to his father's policy, making in it however, an improvement. He left the task of coping with the. Welsh to the barons on the marches - the "lords marcher " - but he stimulated them by granting to them all the land that they could conquer. Piece by piece the lords marcher drove the Welsh back. Each forward step was secured by castles, whose remains still crown so many hilltops in South Wales. The Welsh were pinned in among the hills in the rugged north. All remained to them was "the Principality", the Snowdon country (Merioneth and Carnarvon, and the Island of Anglesea)

Had things gone on thus, an effective but no doubt very brutal conquest might have been completed. But in the reign of Henry III came a sudden revival in the Welsh power, such as often occurs in a downtrodden race. barons, too, were fighting among themselves, and the Welsh prince, Llewelyn ap Gruffydd, took Simon de Montfort's side, and induced Edward to buy him off in 1269 by surrendering much of the country that had been conquered. Llewelyn, not content with the success of his first effort at fishing in troubled waters, tried again. In 1277 he planned a marriage between himself and Eleanor, the dead Simon's daughter. This being clearly a prelude to rebellion, Edward led an army into Wales. Llewelyn retired with his forces into the Snowdon range, feeling sure that the mountains would fight his battles should Edward follow him. Edward was much too wise to try. Instead of wasting his men among steep rocks he blocked all the passes, brought up a fleet to guard the coast, and starved Llewelyn out Yet, when the Welshman surrendered, Edward did not treat him harshly; he made him pay homage, but left him some of his power, and let him marry Eleanor.

But in the attempt to settle the conquered country, by dividing it into shires after the English fashion, and bringing in English laws to replace the Welsh ones, Edward stirred up much bad feeling. Three years later David, Llewelyn's brother, rebelled Llewelyn at once joined him. Their plans failed completely. Llewelyn was killed in a single combat by one of Edward's followers; David was captured and put to death as a traitor. The whole of the north thus came into Edward's hands, and he showed that he meant to keep it by bestowing on his son the title of the Prince of Wales, a tide 'which has since become familiar in our history. The strong castles of Harlech and Conway still bear witness to his firm of the Principality.

In his dealings with the Welsh, Edward showed no desire to be harsh. He was determined to be master of the country, and to, make his power a reality; but it was not till Llewelyn and David proved themselves traitors to their words that Edward became relentless in destroying all elements of Welsh rule. It was not till statesmanship and treaty proved useless that he used the blunter method of conquest. In his dealings with Scotland we see Edward pursue the same plan. When his schemes failed he resorted to force. But while little Wales could be crushed, Scotland proved more stubborn.