СНАР. itself. It was because the great baron and his vassal knights had learned to act together with the simple freeholder in resisting royal and papal encroachments at home, that they were able to join together in parliament. Earl Simon drew yet another element of life into the political arena. The towns, comparatively small and unimportant as, with the single exception of London, they were, were yet important enough to be consulted, and the admission of their representatives to parliament completed the national assembly. It was to a parliament so constituted in a single house that Earl Simon looked for the mainspring of political action. It is true that the governors who were to act in the name of the king were to be nominated by electors named by the barons alone; but they were to be continually checked by the criticism of a parliament which would represent England as no parliament had represented it before. In so doing the great earl attempted to anticipate the work of centuries. Even if his parliament had been more homogeneous than it was, the control of government by a representative body was no easy task. The constitutional habit of giving way to the majority of votes takes long to form, and the equally necessary habit of paying attention to public affairs when a critical moment of danger is past s not easily acquired. Great as the progress of England in the direction of national unity had been, it was not as yet enough to bear the strain of so great a constitutional change. The barons preferred to be the servants of a king who would spare their interests to being servants of the community at large. Personal jealousy of the great earl did the rest. Feudalism was still too strong for the complete nationalisation of the kingdom. The split between the baronage and the national party grew wider every day, till the hope of England seemed to be struck down with Earl Simon at Evesham, and nothing left to be done but to raise the fruitless lament for the political martyr who had died for the country as Archbishop Thomas had once died for the church. CHAP. IV. § 17. The of Edward early Years Happily, Earl Simon found a successor, and more than a successor, in the king's son. Do what he would, the earl, from his very position, was a divider. He could I do nothing without thrusting the king down into tutelage, and in proportion as he succeeded in doing that, he became the object of jealousy to those who were unwilling to submit to the rule of a subject like themselves. Edward I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. From thence he was able to look at men and things from a point of view very different from that which any subject could command. He could do that easily and without effort which Simon could only do laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition. Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. Yet his position would have availed him little if he had trusted to nothing else. He was able to use it, because he was strong in mind as well as in body, because with the reforming temperament he had an open eye for his subjects' grievances, and was thus able to lead them steadily forward in the path of legislative improvement. Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who, knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom without thought of his Own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes CHAP. § 18. The national and the feudal Kingship. the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone. By this means Edward got what he wanted. He strengthened himself in his power to do good by gathering a fruitful knowledge of the thoughts and aims of his subjects, and by inspiring them with respect for his own thoughts and aims for them; but he accustomed them at the same time to look upon him far more as the centre of the national life than they would have done if they had been in the habit of meeting him face to face in one great national body. It may fairly be said, too, that they got what they needed. They had the best possible training for higher work to come one day, the work of co-operating with one nobler and wiser than themselves, without any temptation to contend over points of small importance. In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of national unity which would one day transfer the function of regulation from the crown to the representatives of the nation. Like all changes, even when they are for the best, this change brought with it its own peculiar risks. The king, in gaining the position of head and leader of the nation, did not entirely throw off the position of feudal head of a certain body of landowners holding by a special military tenure from the crown. Hence there was always a danger that, in' looking at things from a double point of view, the king might be inclined to put one relation or the other into the foreground in proportion as one or the other would serve his interests most, and would thus reap the discredit which accrues to the man who uses technical legality for the purpose of securing solid advantages for himself. From this danger Edward, so far as his domestic policy was concerned, only escaped with difficulty, whilst he did not succeed in escaping from it in his dealings with foreign nations. This difficulty was observable even in Edward's dealings with Wales in the early part of the reign. The real causes of his anxiety to subdue the dwellers on the Welsh mountains, was the harm which was done to peaceable Englishmen by the close proximity of a body of men whose very position made them freebooters. But this motive was not placed in the foreground. Wales was ostensibly subdued not for the fault of Welshmen in general, but for the special breach of the feudal relations between their chief and the English king, relations which only existed at all, because the Welsh had been unwillingly forced into a distasteful connection with the English Crown. If no permanent evil followed, it was because Edward was wise enough to content himself with the establishment of his power, without attempting to mould the national habits of the Welsh after English forms. § 20. Edward I. The case was otherwise with Scotland. In demanding to be accepted as Lord Paramount of Scotland, and ScotEdward had doubtless in his mind the advantages which land. would arise to the populations on both sides of the Tweed by the union of all the inhabitants of the island under one government. But nothing of this appeared on the surface. The claim was not only distinctly a feudal claim that is to say, a claim put forward on the ground of a personal tie between the king of England and the king of Scotland, and not on the ground of any tie connecting the Scottish nation to the king of England-but it was a feudal claim put forward on a very questionable basis of fact, and at all events extended to mean a great deal more than the foundation on which Edward's argument was based could possibly bear. At first indeed he proved successful. The class to which СНАР. § 21. Edward I. and France. he directly appealed, that of the Scottish nobility, was peculiarly susceptible to feudal considerations, as it was to a great extent of southern origin, whilst such of its members as held land on both sides of the border had a special interest in maintaining themselves in the good graces of the English king. In proportion as the effects of Edward's interference made themselves felt by the great body of the nation, a national resistance was aroused amongst those who cared nothing for feudal theories or for their interpretation by interested English lawyers, but who cared very much about putting a stop to a system under which their actions were controlled by foreign courts, and their lives and goods were at the mercy of foreign officials. The national feeling which had been gradually growing up during a long course of years in England, sprang up suddenly in Scotland, after a brief interval of anarchy. If it failed to obtain the mastery in Edward's lifetime, it was altogether owing to the personal activity and skill of the king himself, and it was unlikely that these qualities would be inherited by his successor. It was not only in Scotland that this mixture of feudal with national ties brought confusion into Edward's plans. In France Edward was on the defensive, not, as in Scotland, on the offensive. But it was a feudal tie which bound Gascony to himself, and though whatever possible national feeling was there was still dormant, and the king of France was regarded as more of a stranger than the king of England, there was certainly no feeling to attach the Gascons to the English nation. Thus it came about that the king who had done more than any of his predecessors to raise his people to the consciousness of national unity, was engaged abroad in enterprises in which the national feeling of other peoples was entirely set at defiance. Unfortunate as |