EDWARD I. 1272-1307

REVOLT OF SCOTLAND.

Though England as well as other European countries was, in its ancient state, very ill qualified for making, and still worse for maintaining, conquest, Scotland was so much inferior in its internal force, and was so ill situated for receiving foreign succours, that it is no wonder Edward, an ambitious monarch, should have cast his eye on so tempting an acquisition, which brought both security and greatness to his native country. But the instruments whom he employed to maintain his dominion over the northern kingdom were not happily chosen; and acted not with the requisite prudence and moderation in reconciling the Scottish nation to a yoke which they bore with such extreme reluctance. Warrenne, retiring into England on account of his bad state of health, left the administration entirely in the hands of Ormesby, who was appointed justiciary of Scotland, and Cressingham, who bore the office of treasurer; and a small military force remained to secure the precarious authority of those ministers. The latter had no other object than the amassing of money by rapine and injustice: the former distinguished himself by the rigour and severity of his temper: and both of them, treating the Scots as a conquered people, made them sensible too early of the grievous servitude into which they had fallen. As Edward required that all the proprietors of land should swear fealty to him, every one who refused or delayed giving this testimony of submission, was outlawed and imprisoned, and punished without mercy; and the bravest and most generous spirits of the nation were thus exasperated to the highest degree against the English government.

There was one William Wallace, of a small fortune, but descended of an ancient family in the west of Scotland, whose courage prompted him to undertake, and enabled him finally to accomplish the desperate attempt of delivering his native country from the dominion of foreigners. This man, whose valorous exploits are the object of just admiration, but have been much exaggerated by the traditions of his countrymen, had been provoked by the insolence of an English officer to put him to death; and finding himself obnoxious on that account to the severity of the administration, he fled into the woods, and offered himself as a leader to all those whom their crimes, or bad fortune, or avowed hatred of the English, had reduced to a like necessity. He was endowed with gigantic force of body, with heroic courage of mind, with disinterested magnanimity, with incredible patience, and ability to bear hunger, fatigue, and all the seventies of the seasons; and he soon acquired among those desperate fugitives that authority to which his virtues so justly entitled him. Beginning with small attempts, in which he was always successful, he gradually proceeded to more momentous enterprises; and he discovered equal caution in securing his followers, and valour in annoying the enemy. By his knowledge of the country he was enabled, when pursued, to ensure a retreat among the morasses, or forests, or mountains; and again collecting his dispersed associates, he unexpectedly appeared in another quarter, and surprised, and routed, and put to the sword the unwary English. Every day brought accounts of his great actions, which were received with no less favour by his countrymen than terror by the enemy: all those who thirsted after military fame were desirous to partake of his renown: his successful valour seemed to vindicate the nation from the ignominy into which it had fallen, by its tame submission to the English: and though no nobleman of note ventured as yet to join his party, he had gained a general confidence and attachment, which birth and fortune are not alone able to confer.

Wallace having, by many fortunate enterprises, brought the valour of his followers to correspond to his own, resolved to strike a decisive blow against the English government; and he concerted the plan of attacking Ormesby at Scone, arid of taking vengeance on him for all the violence and tyranny of which. he had been guilty. The justiciary, apprized of his intentions, fled hastily into England: all the other officers of that nation imitated his example: their terror added alacrity and courage to the Scots, who took themselves to arms in every quarter: many of the principal barons, and among the rest sir William Douglas, openly countenanced Wallace's party: Robert Bruce secretly favoured and promoted the same cause: and the Scots, shaking off their fetters, prepared themselves to defend, by an united effort, that liberty which they had so unexpectedly recovered from the hands of their oppressors.

But Warrenne, collecting an army of 40,000 men in the north of England, determined to reestablish his authority; and he endeavoured, by the celerity of his armament and of his march, to compensate for his past negligence, which had enabled the Scots to throw off the English government, he suddenly entered Annandale, and came up with the enemy at Irvine, before their forces were fully collected, and before they had put themselves in a posture of defence. Many of the Scottish nobles, alarmed with their dangerous situation, here submitted to the English, renewed their oaths of fealty, promised to deliver hostages for their good behaviour, and received a pardon for past offences. Others who had not yet declared themselves, such as the steward of Scotland and the earl of Lenox, joined, though with reluctance, the English army; and waited a favourable opportunity for embracing the cause of their distressed countrymen. But Wallace, whose authority over his retainers was more fully confirmed by the absence of the great nobles, persevered obstinately in his purpose; and finding himself unable to give battle to the enemy, he marched northwards, with an intention of prolonging the war, and of turning to his advantage the situation of that mountainous and barren country. When Warrenne advanced to Stirling, he found Wallace encamped at Cambuskenneth, on the opposite banks of the Forth; and being continually urged by the impatient Cressingham, who was actuated both by personal and national animosities against the Scots, he prepared to attack them in that position, which Wallace, no less prudent than courageous, had chosen for his army. In spite of the remonstrance's of sir Richard Lundy, a Scotchman of birth and family, who sincerely adhered to the English, he ordered his army to pass a bridge which lay over the Forth; but he was soon convinced, by fatal experience, of the error of his conduct. Wallace, allowing such numbers of the English to pass as he thought proper, attacked them before they were fully formed, put them to rout, pushed part of them into the river, destroyed the rest by the edge of the sword, and gained a complete victory over them. Among the slain was Cressingham himself, whose memory was so extremely odious to the Scots, that they flayed his dead body, and made saddles and girths of his skin. Warrenne, finding the remainder of his army much dismayed by this misfortune, was obliged again to evacuate the kingdom, and retire into England. The castles of Roxborough and Berwick, ill fortified and feebly defended, fell soon after into the hands of the Scots.

Wallace, universally revered as the deliverer of his country, now received from the hands of his followers the dignity of regent or guardian under the captive Baliol; and finding that the disorders of war, as well as the unfavourable seasons, had produced a famine in Scotland, he urged his army to march into England, to subsist at the expense of the enemy, and to revenge all past injuries, by retaliating on that hostile nation. The Scots, who deemed everything possible under such a leader, joyfully attended his call. Wallace, breaking into the northern counties during the winter season, laid every place waste with fire and sword; and after extending on all sides, without opposition, the fury of his ravages as far as the bishopric of Durham, he re turned loaded with spoils, and crowned with glory, into his own country. The disorders which at that time prevailed in England, from the refractory behaviour of the constable and mareschal, made it impossible to collect an army sufficient to resist the enemy and exposed the nation to this loss and dishonour.

But Edward, who received in Flanders intelligence of these events, and had already concluded a truce with France, now hastened over to England in certain hopes, by his activity and valour, not only of wiping off this disgrace, but of recovering the important conquest of Scotland, which he always regarded as the chief glory and advantage of his reign. He appeased the murmurs of his people by concessions and promises he restored to the citizens of London the election of their own magistrates, of which they had been bereaved in the latter part of his father's reign he ordered strict inquiry to be made concerning the corn and other goods which had been violently seized before his departure, as if he intended to pay the value to the owners and making public professions of confirming and observing the charters, he regained the confidence of the discontented nobles. Having, by all these popular arts, rendered himself entirely master of his people, he collected the whole military force of England, Wales, and Ireland, and marched with an army of near one hundred thousand combatants to the northern frontiers.

Nothing could have enabled the Scots to resist but for one season so mighty a power, except an entire union among themselves; but as they were deprived of their king, whose personal qualities, even when he was present, appeared so contemptible, and had left among his subjects no principle of attachment to him or his family, factions, jealousies, and animosities, unavoidably arose among the great, and distracted all their councils. The elevation of Wallace, though purchased by so great merit and such eminent services, was the object of envy to the nobility, who repined to see a private gentleman raised above them by his rank, and still more by his glory and reputation. Wallace himself, sensible of their jealousy, and dreading the ruin of his country from those intestine discords, voluntarily resigned his authority, and retained only the command over that body of his .followers, who, being accustomed to victory under his standard, refused to follow into the field any other leader. The chief power devolved on the steward of Scotland, and Cummin of Badenock; men of eminent birth, under whom the great chieftains were more willing to serve in defence of their country. The two Scottish commanders, collecting their several forces from every quarter, fixed their station at Falkirk, and purposed there to abide the assault of the English. Wallace was at the head of a third body, which acted under his command. The Scottish army placed their pikemen along their front; lined the intervals between the three bodies with archers; and dreading the great superiority of the English in cavalry, endeavoured to secure their front by palisadoes, tied together with ropes. In this disposition they expected the approach of the enemy.

BATTLE OF FALKIRK. July 22.

The king, when he arrived in sight of the Scots, was pleased with the prospect of being able, by one decisive stroke, to determine the fortune of the war; and dividing his army also into three bodies, he led them to the attack. The English archers, who began about this time to surpass those of other nations, first chased the Scottish bowmen off the field, then pouring in their arrows among the pikemen, who were cooped up within their entrenchment's, threw them into disorder, and rendered the assault of the English pikemen and cavalry more easy and successful. The whole Scottish army was broken, and chased off the field with great slaughter; which the historians, attending more to the exaggerated relations of the populace than to the probability of things, make amount to fifty or sixty thousand men. It is only certain that the Scots never suffered a greater loss in any action, nor one which seemed to threaten more inevitable ruin to their country.

In this general rout of the army, Wallace's military skill and presence of mind enabled him to keep his troops entire; and retiring behind the Carron, he marched leisurely along the banks of that small river, which protected him from the enemy. Young Bruce, who had already given many proofs of his aspiring genius, but who served hitherto in the English army, appeared on the opposite banks; and distinguishing the Scottish chief, as well by his majestic port, as by the intrepid activity of his behaviour, called out to him, and desired a short conference. He here represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged; and endeavoured to bend his inflexible spirit to submission under superior power and superior fortune: he insisted on the unequal contest between a weak state, deprived of its head and agitated by intestine discord, and a mighty nation, conducted by the ablest and most martial monarch of the age, and possessed of every resource either for protracting the war, or for pushing it with vigour and activity: if the love of his country were his motive for perseverance, his obstinacy tended only to prolong her misery: if he carried his views to private grandeur and ambition, he might reflect that, even if Edward should withdraw his armies, it appeared from past experience that so many haughty nobles, proud of the pre-eminence of their families, would never submit to personal merit, whose superiority they were less inclined to regard as an object of admiration, than as a reproach and injury to themselves. To these exhortations Wallace replied, that, if he had hitherto acted alone as the champion of his country, it was solely because no second, or competitor, or, what he rather wished, no leader, had yet appeared to place himself in that honourable station: that the blame lay entirely on the nobility, and chiefly on Bruce himself, who, uniting personal merit to dignity of family, had deserted the post which both nature and fortune, by such powerful calls, invited him to assume: that the Scots possessed of such a head, would, by their unanimity and concord, have surmounted the chief difficulty under which they now laboured, and might hope, notwithstanding their present losses, to oppose successfully all the powers and abilities of Edward: that Heaven itself could not set a more glorious prize before the eyes either of virtue or ambition, than to join in one object, the acquisition of royalty with the defence of national independence: and that as the interests of his country, more than those of a brave man, could never be sincerely cultivated by a sacrifice of liberty, he himself was determined, as far as possible, to prolong, not her misery but her freedom, and was desirous that his own life, as well as the existence of the nation, might termimate, when they could no otherwise be preserved than by receiving the chains of a haughty victor. The gallantry of these sentiments, though delivered by an armed enemy, struck the generous mind of Bruce: the flame was conveyed from the breast of one hero to that of another: he repented of his engagements with Edward; and opening his eyes to the honourable path pointed out to him by Wallace, secretly determined to seize the first opportunity of embracing the cause, however desperate, of his oppressed country.(This story is told by all the Scotch writers; though it must be owned that Trivet and Hemingford, authors of good credit, both agree that Bruce was not at this time in Edward army.)

1299. The subjection of Scotland, notwithstanding this great victory of Edward, was not yet entirely completed. The English army, after reducing the southern provinces, was obliged to retire for want of provisions; and left the northern counties in the hand of the natives. The Scots, no less enraged at their present defeat, than elated by their past victories, still maintained the contest for liberty; but being fully sensible of the great inferiority of their force, they endeavoured, by applications to foreign courts, to procure to themselves some assistance. The supplications of the Scottish ministers were rejected by Philip; but were more successful with the court of Rome. Boniface, pleased with an occasion of exerting his authority, wrote a letter to Edward, [1300,] exhorting him to put a stop to his oppressions in Scotland, and displaying all the proofs, such as they had probably been furnished him by the Scots themselves, for the ancient independence of that kingdom. Among other arguments, hinted at above, he mentioned the treaty conducted and finished by Edward himself, for the marriage of his son with the heiress of Scotland a treaty which would have been absurd, had he been superior lord of the kingdom, and had possessed, by the feudal law, the right of disposing of his ward in marriage. He mentioned several other striking facts, which fell within the compass of Edward's own knowledge; particularly that Alexander, when he did homage to the king, openly and expressly declared in his presence, that he swore fealty not for his crown, but for the lands which he held in England: and the pope's letter might have passed for a reasonable one, had he not subjoined his own claim to be liege lord of Scotland; a claim which had not once been heard of, but which, with a singular confidence, he asserted to be full, entire, and derived from the most remote antiquity. The affirmative style, which had been so successful with him and his predecessors in spiritual contests, was never before abused after a more egregious manner in any civil controversy.

1301. The reply which Edward made to Boniface's letter contains particulars no less singular and remarkable. He there proves the superiority of England by historical facts, deduced from the period of Brutus, the Trojan, who, he said, founded the British monarchy in the age of Eli and Samuel: he supports his position by all the events which passed in the island before the arrival of the Romans; and after laying great stress on the extensive dominions and heroic victories of king Arthur, he vouchsafes at last to descend to the time of Edward the Elder, with which, in his speech to the states of Scotland, he had chosen to begin his claim of superiority, he asserts it to be a fact, "notorious and confirmed by the records of antiquity," that the English monarchs had often conferred the kingdom of Scotland on their own subjects; had dethroned these vassal kings when unfaithful to them; and had substituted others in their stead, he displays with great pomp the full and complete homage which William had done to Henry II., without mentioning the formal abolition of that extorted deed by king Richard, and the renunciation of all future claims of the same nature. Yet this paper he begins with, a solemn appeal to the Almighty, the searcher of hearts, for his own firm persuasion of the justice of his claim; and no less than a hundred and four barons, assembled in parliament at Lincoln, concur in maintaining before the pope, under their seals, the validity of these pretensions. At the same time, however, they take care to inform Boniface that, though they had justified their cause before him, they did not acknowledge him for their judge; they had sworn to maintain all its royal prerogatives, and would never permit the king himself, were he willing, to relinquish its independence.

1302. That neglect, almost total, of truth and justice, which sovereign states discover in their transactions with each other, is an evil universal and inveterate; is one great source of the misery to which the human race is continually exposed; and it may be doubted whether, in many instances, it be found in the end to contribute to the interest of those princes themselves, who thus sacrifice their integrity to their politics. As few monarchs have lain under stronger temptations to violate the principles of equity than Edward in his transactions with Scotland, so never were they violated with less scruple and reserve; yet his advantages were hitherto precarious and uncertain; and the Scots, once roused to arms and inured to war, began to appear a formidable enemy, even to this military and ambitious monarch. They chose John Cummin for their regent; and not content with maintaining their independence in the northern parts, they made incursions into the southern counties, which Edward imagined he had totally subdued. John de Segrave, whom he had left guardian of Scotland, led an army to oppose them; 24th February, 1303;] and lying at Roslin, near Edinburgh, sent out his forces in three divisions, to provide themselves with forage and subsistence from the neighbourhood. One party was suddenly attacked by the regent and sir Simon Fraser; and being unprepared, was immediately routed amid pursued with great slaughter. The few that escaped, flying to the second division, gave warning of the approach of the enemy: the soldiers ran to their arms, and were immediately led on to take revenge for the deaths of their countrymen. The Scots, elated with the advantage already obtained, made a vigorous impression upon them: the English, animated with a thirst of vengeance, maintained a stout resistance: the victory was long undecided between them; but at last declared itself entirely in favour of the former, who broke the English and chased them to the third division, now advancing with a hasty march to support their distressed companions. Many of the Scots had fallen in the two first actions; most of them were wounded; and all of them extremely fatigued by the long continuance of the combat: yet were they so transported with success and military rage, that, having suddenly recovered their order, and arming the followers of their camp with the spoils of the slaughtered enemy, they drove with fury upon the ranks of the dismayed English. The favourable moment decided the battle; which the Scots, had they met with a steady resistance, were not long able to maintain; the English were chased off the field; three victories were thus gained in one day; and the renown of these great exploits, seconded by the favourable dispositions of the people, soon made the regent master of all the fortresses in the south; and it became necessary for Edward to begin anew the conquest of the kingdom.

The king prepared himself for this enterprise with his usual vigour and abilities, he assembled both a great fleet and a great army; and entering the frontiers of Scotland, appeared with a force which the enemy could not think of resisting in the open field; the English navy, which sailed along the coast, secured the army from any danger of famine: Edward's vigilance preserved it from surprises; and by this prudent disposition, they marched victorious from one extremity of the kingdom to the other, ravaging the open country, reducing all the castles, and receiving the submissions of all the nobility, even those of Cummir, the regent. The most obstinate resistance was made by the castle of Brechin, defended by sir Thomas Maule; and the place opened not its gates till the death of the governor, by discouraging the garrison, obliged them to submit to the fate which had overwhelmed the rest of the kingdom. Wallace, though he attended the English army in their march, found but few opportunities of signalizing that valour which had formerly made him so terrible to his enemies.

1304. Edward having completed his conquest, which employed him during the space of near two years, now undertook the more difficult work of settling the country, of establishing a new form of government, and of making his acquisition durable to the crown of England. He seems to have carried matters to extremity against the natives; He abrogated all the. Scottish, laws and customs; he endeavoured to substitute the English in their place; he entirely raised or destroyed all the monuments of antiquity; such records or histories as had escaped his former search were now burnt or dispersed, and he hastened by too precipitate steps to abolish, entirely the Scottish name, and to sink it finally in the English.

1305. Edward, however, still deemed his favourite conquest exposed to some danger so long as Wallace was alive; and being prompted both by revenge, and policy, he employed every art to discover his retreat, and become master of his prison. At last that hardy warrior, who was determined, amidst the universal slavery of his countrymen, still to maintain his independency, was betrayed into Edward's hands by sir John Monteith, his friend, whom he had made acquainted with the place of his concealment. The king, whose natural bravery and magnanimity should have induced him to respect like qualities in an enemy, enraged at some acts of violence committed by Wallace during the fury of war, resolved to overawe the Scots by an example of severity: he ordered Wallace to be carried in chains to London; (23rd August;) to he tried as a rebel and traitor, though he had never made submissions or sworn fealty to England, and to be executed on the Tower-hill. This was the unworthy fate of a hero, who, through a course of many years, had, with signal conduct, intrepidity, and perseverance, defended against a public and oppressive enemy the liberties of his native country.

But the barbarous policy of Edward failed of the purpose to which it was directed. The Scots, already disgusted at the great innovations introduced by the sword of a conqueror into their laws and government, were further enraged at the injustice and cruelty exercised upon Wallace; and all the envy which, during his life-time, had attended that gallant chief, being now buried in his grave, he was universally regarded as the champion of Scotland, and the patron of her expiring independency. The people, inflamed with resentment, were everywhere disposed to rise against the English government; and it was not long ere a new and more fortunate leader presented himself, who conducted them to liberty, to victory, and to vengeance.

ROBERT BRUCE.

1306. Robert Bruce, grandson of that Robert who had been one of the competitors for the crown, had succeeded by his grandfather's and father's death, to all their rights; and the demise of John Baliol, together with the captivity of Edward, eldest son of that prince, seemed to open a full career to the genius and ambition of this young nobleman. He saw that the Scots, when the title to their crown had expired in the males of their ancient royal family, had became divided into parties nearly equal between the houses of Bruce and Baliol; and that every incident, which had since happened, had tended to wean them from any attachment to the latter. The slender capacity of John had proved unable to defend them against their enemies: he had meanly resigned his crown into the hands of the conqueror; he had, before his deliverance from captivity, reiterated that resignation in a manner seemingly voluntary; and had in that deed thrown out many reflections extremely dishonourable to his ancient subjects, whom he publicly called traitors, ruffians, and rebels, and with whom he declared he was determined to maintain no further correspondence: he had, during the time of his exile, adhered strictly to that resolution; and his son, being a prisoner, seemed ill qualified to revive the rights, now fully abandoned, of his family. Bruce therefore hoped that the Scots, so long exposed from the want of a leader to the oppressions of their enemies, would unanimously fly to his standard, and would seat him on the vacant throne, to which he brought such plausible pretensions. His aspiring spirit, inflamed by the fervour of youth, and buoyed up by his natural courage, saw the glory alone of the enterprise, or regarded the prodigious difficulties which attended it as the source only of further glory. The miseries and oppressions which he had beheld his countrymen suffer in their unequal contest; the repeated defeats and misfortunes which they had undergone; proved to him so many incentives to bring them relief, and conduct them to vengeance against the haughty victor. The circumstances which attended Bruce's first declaration are variously related; but we shall rather follow the account given by the Scottish historians; not that their authority is in general anywise comparable to that of the English, but because they may be supposed sometimes better informed concerning facts which so nearly interested their own nation.

Bruce, who had long harboured in his breast the design of freeing his enslaved country, ventured at last to open his mind to John Cummin, a powerful nobleman, with whom he lived in strict intimacy. He found his friend, as he imagined, fully possessed with, the same sentiments; and he needed to employ no arts of persuasion, to make him embrace the resolution of throwing off, on the first favourable opportunity, the usurped dominion of the English. But on the departure of Bruce, who attended Edward to London, Cummin, who either had all along dissembled with him, or began to reflect more coolly in his absence on the desperate nature of his undertaking, resolved to atone for his crime in assenting to this rebellion, by the merit of revealing the secret to the king of England. Edward did not immediately commit Bruce to custody, because he intended at the same time to seize his three brothers, who resided in Scotland; and he contented himself with secretly setting spies upon him, and ordering all his motions to be strictly watched A nobleman of Edward's court, Bruce's intimate friend, was apprized of his danger; but not daring, amidst so many jealous eyes, to hold any conversation with him, he fell on an expedient to give him warning, that it was full time he should make his escape. He sent him by his servant a pair of gilt spurs, and a purse of gold, which he pretended to have borrowed from him; and left it to the sagacity of his friend to discover the meaning of the present. Bruce immediately contrived the mean, of his escape; and as the ground was at that time covered with snow, he had the precaution, it is said, to order his horses to be shod with their shoes inverted, that he might deceive those who should track his path over the open fields or cross-roads, through which he interposed to travel. He arrived in a few days at Dumfries in Annandale, the chief seat of his family interest; and he happily found a great number of the Scottish nobility there assembled, and among the rest John Cummin, his former associate.

The noblemen were astonished at the appearance of Bruce among them; (10th February;) and still more when he discovered to them the object of his journey. He told them that he was come to live or die with them in defence of the liberties of his country, and hoped, with, their assistance, to redeem the Scottish name the indignities it had so long suffered from the tyranny of their imperious masters: that the sacrifice of the rights of his family was the first injury which had prepared the way for their ensuing slavery; and by resuming them, which was his firm purpose, he opened to them the joyful prospect of recovering from the fraudulent usurper their ancient amid hereditary independence: that all past misfortunes had proceed from their disunion; and they would soon appear no less formidable than of old to their enemies, if they now deigned to follow into the field their rightful prince, who knew no medium between death and victory: that their mountains and their valour, which had, during so many ages, protected their liberty from all the efforts of the Roman empire, would still be sufficient, were they worthy of their generous ancestors, to defend them against the utmost violence of the English tyrant: that it was unbecoming men, born to the most ancient independence known in Europe, to submit to the will of any masters; but fatal to receive those who, being irritated by such persevering resistance, and inflamed with the highest animosity, would ever deem themselves secure in their usurped dominion, but by exterminating all the ancient nobility, and even all the ancient inhabitants: and that, being reduced to this desperate extremity, it were better for them at once to perish, like brave men, with swords in heir hands, than to dread long, and at last undergo, the fate of the unfortunate Wallace, whose merits, in the brave and obstinate defence of his country, were finally rewarded by the hands of an English executioner.

The spirit with which this discourse was delivered, the bold sentiments which it conveyed, the novelty of Bruce's declaration, assisted by the graces of his youth and manly deportment, made deep impression on the minds of his audience, and roused all those principles of indignation and revenge with which they had long been secretly actuated. The Scottish nobles declared their unanimous resolution to use the utmost efforts in delivering their country from bondage, and to second the courage of Bruce, in asserting his and their undoubted rights against their common oppressors. Cummin alone, who had secretly taken his measures with the king, opposed this general determination and by representing the great power of England, governed by a prince of such uncommon vigour and abilities, he endeavoured to set before them the certain destruction which they must expect, if they again violated their oaths of fealty, and shook off their allegiance to the victorious Edward. Bruce, already apprized of his treachery, and foreseeing the certain failure of all his own schemes of ambition and glory from the opposition of so potent a leader, took immediately his resolution; and, moved partly by resentment, partly by policy, followed Cummin on the dissolution of the assembly, attacked him in the cloisters of the Grey Friars, through which he passed, and running him through the body, left him for dead. Sir Thomas Kirkpatric, one of Bruce's friends, asking him soon after if the traitor was slain "I believe so," replied Bruce. "And is that a matter," cried Kirkpatric, "to be left to conjecture !" "I will secure him." Upon which he drew his dagger, ran to Cummin, and stabbed him to the heart. This deed of Bruce and his associates, which contains circumstances condemned by our present manners, was regarded in that age as an effort of manly vigour and just policy. The family of Kirkpatric took for the crest of their arms, which they still wear, a hand with a bloody dagger; and chose for their motto these words, "I will secure him;" the expression employed by their ancestor when he executed that violent action.

THIRD REVOLT OF SCOTLAND.

The murder of Cummin affixed the seal to the conspiracy of the Scottish nobles: they had now no resource left but to shake off the yoke of England, or to perish in the attempt: the genius of the nation roused itself from its present dejection: and Bruce, flying to different quarters, exited his partisans to arms, attacked with success the dispersed bodies of the English, got possession of many of the castles, and having made his authority be acknowledged in most parts of the kingdom, was solemnly crowned and inaugurated in the abbey of Scone, by the bishop of St. Andrews, who had zealously embraced his cause. The English were again chased out of the kingdom, except such as took shelter in the fortresses that still remained in their hands; and Edward found that the Scots, twice conquered in his reign, and often defeated, must yet be anew subdued. Not discouraged with these unexpected difficulties, he sent Aymer de Valence with a considerable force into Scotland, to check the progress of the malcontents; and that malcontents falling unexpectedly upon Bruce at Methven in Perthshire, threw his army into such disorder as ended in a total defeat. Bruce fought with the most heroic courage, was thrice dismounted in the action, and as often recovered himself, but was at last obliged to yield to superior fortune, and take shelter with a few followers in the western isles. The earl of Athole, sir Simon Fraser, and sir Christopher Seton, who had been taken prisoners, were ordered by Edward to be executed as rebels and traitors. [1307.] Many other acts of rigour were exercised by him; and that prince, vowing revenge against the whole Scottish nation, whom he deemed incorrigible in their aversion to his government, assembled a great army, and was preparing to enter the frontiers, secure of success, and determined to make the defenceless Scots the victims of his severity when he unexpectedly sickened and died (7th July) near Carlisle; enjoining with his last breath his son and successor to prosecute the enterprise, and never to desist till he had finally subdued the kingdom of Scotland. He expired in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and the thirty-fifth of his reign, hated by his neighbours, but extremely respected and revered by his own subjects.

CHARACTER OF THE KING.

The enterprises finished by this prince, and the projects which he formed, and brought near to a conclusion, were more prudent, more regularly conducted, and more advantageous to the solid interests of his kingdom, than those which were undertaken in any reign, either of his ancestors or his successors, he restored authority to the government, disordered by the weakness of his father; he maintained the laws against all the efforts of his turbulent barons; he fully annexed to his crown the principality of Wales; he took many wise and vigorous measures for reducing Scotland to a like condition; and through the equity of later enterprise may reasonably be questioned, the circumstances of the two kingdoms promised such certain success, and the advantage was so visible of uniting the whole island under one head, that those so give great indulgence to reasons of state in the measures of princes will not be apt to regard this part. of his conduct with much severity. But Edward, however exceptionable his character may appear on the head of justice, is the model of a politic and warlike king he possessed industry, penetration, courage, vigilance, and enterprise; he was frugal in all his expenses that were not necessary; he knew how to open the public treasures on a proper occasion; he punished criminals with severity; he was gracious and affable to his servants and courtiers; and being of a majestic figure, expert in all military exercises, and in the main well proportioned in his limbs, notwithstanding the great length and the smallness of his legs, he was as well qualified to captivate the populace by his exterior appearance, as to gain the approbation of men of sense by his more solid virtues.

MISCELLANEOUS TRANSACTIONS OF THIS REIGN.

But the chief advantage which the people of England reaped, and still continue to reap, from the reign of this great prince, was the correction, extension, amendment, and establishment of the laws, which Edward maintained in great vigour, and left much improved to posterity: for the acts of a wise legislator commonly remain, while the acquisitions of a conqueror often perish with him. This merit has justly gained to Edward the appellation of the English Justinian. Not only the numerous statutes passed in his reign touch the chief points of jurisprudence, and, according to sir Edward Coke, truly deserve the name of establishments, because they were more constant, standing, and durable laws than any made since; but the regular order maintained in his administration gave an opportunity to the common law to refine itself, amid brought the judges to a certainty in their determinations, and the lawyers to a precision in their pleadings. Sir Matthew Hale has remarked the sudden improvement of English law during the reign; and ventures to assert that, till his own time it had never received any considerable increase. Edward settled the jurisdiction of the several courts; first established the office of justice of peace; abstained from the practice, too common before him, of interrupting justice by mandates from the privy council, (Articuli super Cart. rap. 6. Edward enacted a law to this purpose but it is doubtful whether he ever observed it. We are sure that scarcely any of his successors did. The multitude of these letters of protection were the ground of a complaint by the commons in 3 Edward II. See Ryley, p. 525. This practice was declared illegal by the statute of Northampton passed in the second of Edward III., but is still continued like most other abuses. There are instances of it so late as the reign of queen Elizabeth) repressed robberies and disorders; encouraged trade by giving merchants an easy method of recovering their debts; and, in short, introduced a new face of things by the vigour and wisdom of his administration. As law began now to be well established, the abuse of that blessing began also to be remarked. Instead of their former associations for robbery and violence, men entered into formal combinations to support each other in lawsuits; and it was found requisite to check this iniquity by act of parliament.

There happened in this reign a considerable alteration in the execution of the laws the king abolished the office of chief-justiciary, which he thought possessed too much power, and was dangerous to the crown: he completed the division of the court of exchequer into four distinct courts, which managed each its several branch, without dependence on any one magistrate; and as the lawyers afterwards invented a method, by means of their fictions, of carrying business from one court to another, the several courts became rivals and checks to each other; a circumstance which tended much to improve the practice of the law in England.

But though Edward appeared thus, throughout his whole reign, a friend to law and justice, it cannot be said that he was an enemy to arbitrary power; and in a government more regular and legal than was that of England in his age, such practices as those which may be remarked in his administration, would have given sufficient ground of complaint, and sometimes were, even in his age, the object of general displeasure. The violent plunder and banishment of the Jews, the putting of the clergy at once, and by an arbitrary edict, out of the protection of the law; the seizing of all the wool and leather of the kingdom, the heightening of the impositions on the former valuable commodity; the new and illegal commission of Trailbaston; the taking of all the money and plate of monasteries and churches, even before he had any quarrel with the clergy; the subjecting of every man possessed of twenty pounds a year to military service, though not bound to it by his tenure; his visible reluctance to confirm the Great Charter, as if that concession had no validity from the deeds of his predecessors; the captious clause which he at last annexed to his confirmation; his procuring of the pope's dispensation from the oaths which he had taken to observe the Charter; and his levying of talliages at discretion even after the statute, or rather charter, by which he had renounced that prerogative; these are so many demonstrations of his arbitrary disposition, and prove with what exception and reserve we ought to celebrate his love of justice. He took care that his subjects should do justice to each other; but he desired always to have his own hands free in all his transactions, both with them and with his neighbours.

The chief obstacle to the execution of justice in those times was the power of the great barons; and Edward was perfectly qualified, by his character and abilities, for keeping these tyrants in awe, and restraining their illegal practices. This salutary purpose was accordingly the great object of his attention; yet was he imprudently led into a measure which tended to increase and confirm their dangerous authority. He passed a statute which, by allowing them to entail their estates, made it impracticable to diminish the property of the great families, and left them every means of increase and acquisition.

Edward observed a contrary policy with regard to the church he seems to have been the first Christian prince that passed a statute of mortmain; and prevented by law the clergy from making new acquisitions of lands, which by the ecclesiastical canons they were for ever prohibited from alienating. The opposition between his maxims with regard to the nobility and to the ecclesiastics, leads us to conjecture that it was only by chance he passed the beneficial statute of mortmain, and that his sole object was to maintain the number of knights' fees, and to prevent the superiors from being defrauded of the profits of wardship, marriage, livery, and other emoluments arising from the feudal tenures. This is indeed the reason assigned in the statute itself, and appears to have been his real object in enacting it. The author of the Annals of Waverly ascribes this act chiefly to the king's anxiety for maintaining the military force of the kingdom but adds, that he was mistaken in his purpose; for that the Amalekites were overcome more by the prayers of Moses than by the sword of the Israelites. The statute of mortmain was often evaded afterwards by the invention of uses.

Edward was active in restraining the usurpation's of the church; and, excepting his ardour for crusades, which adhered to him during his whole life, seems in other respects to have been little infected with superstition, the vice chiefly of weak minds. But the passion for crusades was really in that age the passion for glory. As the pope now felt himself somewhat more restrained in his former practice of pillaging the several churches in Europe, by laying impositions upon them, he permitted the generals of particular orders, who resided at Rome, to levy taxes on the convents subjected to their jurisdiction; and Edward was obliged to enact a law against this new abuse. It was also become a practice of the court of Rome to provide successors to benefices before they became vacant: Edward found it likewise necessary to prevent by law this species of injustices.

The tribute of 1000 marks a year, to which king John, in doing homage to the pope, had subjected the kingdom, had been pretty regularly paid since his time, thought time vassalage was constantly denied, and, indeed, for fear of giving offence, had been but little insisted on. The payment was called by a new name of census, not by that of tribute. King Edward seems to have always paid this money with great reluctance, and he suffered the arrears at one time to run on for six years, at another for eleven: but as princes in that age stood continually in need of the pope's good offices, for dispensations of marriage and for other concessions, the court of Rome always found means, sooner or later, to catch the money. The levying of first. fruits was also a new device begun in this reign, by which his holiness thrust his fingers very frequently into the purses of the faithful; and time king seems to have unwarily given way to it.

In the former reign the taxes had been partly scutages, partly such a proportionable part of the moveables as was granted by parliament: in this scutages were entirely dropped; and the assessment on moveables was the chief method of taxation. Edward in his fourth year had a fifteenth granted him; in his fifth year a twelfth; in his eleventh year a thirteenth from the laity, a twentieth from the clergy; in his eighteenth year a fifteenth; in his twenty-second year a tenth from the laity, a sixth from London and other corporated towns, half of their benefices from the clergy in his twenty-third year an eleventh from the barons and others, a tenth from the clergy, a seventh from the burgesses; in his twenty-fourth year a twelfth from the barons and others, an eighth from the burgesses, from the clergy nothing, because of the pope's inhibition in his twenty-fifth year an eighth from the laity, a tenth from the clergy of Canterbury, a fifth from those of York; in his twenty-ninth year a fifteenth from the laity, on account of his confirming the perambulations of the forests, the clergy granted nothing; in his thirty-third year, first, a thirteenth from the barons and others, and a twentieth from the burgesses, then a fifteenth from all his subjects; in his thirty-fourth year a thirtieth from all his subjects for knighting his eldest son.

These taxes were moderate; but the king had also duties upon exportation and importation granted him from time to time: the heaviest were commonly upon wool. Poundage, or a shilling a pound, was not regularly granted the kings for life till the reign of Henry V.

In 1296 the famous mercantile society, called the Merchant Adventurers, had its first origin: it was instituted for the improvement of the woollen manufacture, and the vending of the cloth abroad, particularly at Antwerp; for the English at this time scarcely thought of any more distant commerce.

This king granted a charter or declaration of protection and privileges to foreign merchants, and also ascertained the customs or duties which those merchants were in return to pay on merchandise imported and exported. He promised them security; allowed them a jury on trials, consisting half of natives, half of foreigners; and appointed them a justiciary in London for their protection. But notwithstanding this seeming attention to foreign merchants, Edward did not free them from the cruel hardship of making one answerable for the debts, and even for the crimes, of another that came from the same country. We read of such practices among the present barbarous nations. The king also imposed on them a duty of two shillings on each ton of wine imported, over and above the old duty; and forty pence on each sack of wool exported, besides half a mark, the former duty. (Rymer, vol. iv. p. 361. It in the charter of Edward I. which it there confirmed by Edward III.)

In the year 1303 the Exchequer was robbed, and of no less a sum than 100,000 pounds, as is pretended. The abbot and monks of Westminster were indicted for this robbery, but acquitted. It does not appear that the king ever discovered the criminals with certainty though his indignation fell on the society of Lombard merchants, particularly the Frescobaldi, very opulent Florentines.

The pope having in 1307 collected much money in England, the king enjoined the nuncio not to export it in specie, but in bills of exchange. A proof that commerce was but ill understood at that time.

Edward had by his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, four Sons; but Edward, his heir and successor, was the only one that survived him. She also bore him eleven daughters, most of whom died in their infancy: of the surviving, Joan was married first to the earl of Gloucester, and after his death to Ralph de Monthermer; Margaret espoused John, duke of Brabant; Elizabeth espoused first John, earl of Holland, and afterwards the Earl of Hereford; Mary was a nun at Ambresbury. He had by his second wife, Margaret of France, two sons and a daughter; Thomas, created earl of Norfolk and mareschal of England; and Edmond, who was created earl of Kent by his brother when king. The princess died in infancy.