A.D. 1258-1264. BATTLE OF LEWES. 151 Gloucester, the chief leaders among the barons, began to disjoint the whole confederacy. Louis IX., who then governed France, used all his authority with the Earl of Leicester, his native subject, to bend him to compliance with Henry. He made a treaty with England (20th May, 1259) at a time when the distractions of that kingdom were at the greatest height, and when the king's authority was totally annihilated; and the terms which he granted might, even in a more prosperous state of their affairs, be deemed reasonable and advantageous to the English. He yielded up some territories which had been conquered from Poitou and Guienne; he insured the peaceable possession of the latter proviace to Henry; he agreed to pay that prince a large sum of money; and he only required that the king should in return make a final cession of Normandy and the other provinces, which he could never entertain any hopes of recovering by force of arms. This cession was ratified by Henry, by his two sons and two daughters, and by the King of the Romans and his three sons: Leicester alone, either moved by a vain arrogance, or desirous to ingratiate himself with the English populace, protested against the deed, and insisted on the right, however distant, which might accrue to his consort. § 17. The situation of Henry soon after wore a more favorable aspect, and the secret desertion of the Earl of Gloucester to the crown seemed to promise him certain success in any attempt to resume his authority. The Pope absolved him from his oath; the king soon afterward resumed the government; and Leicester was obliged to fly to France. The death of the Earl of Gloucester, and the accession of his son to Leicester's side, soon changed the scene again. The civil war was renewed and carried on with various success, till at length the king and the barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration of the King of France. At a congress at Amiens (1264) Louis annulled the Provisions of Oxford, and determined that Henry might retain whatever foreigners he pleased in his service. But this decision, instead of quenching the flames, only caused them to break forth with redoubled vehemence. Leicester, having summoned his partisans from all quarters, gained a decisive victory over the royal forces at Lewes (May 13), taking Henry and his brother, the King of the Romans, prisoners. Prince Edward, the eldest son of Henry, who commanded the royal army, was obliged to assent to a treaty with the conqueror, called the Mise of Lewes, from an obsolete French term of that meaning. In order to obtain the liberation of the English monarch, Prince Edward and Henry, son of the King of the Romans, were obliged to surrender themselves as prisoners. § 18. Leicester had no sooner obtained this great advantage, and gotten the whole royal family in his power, than he openly violated every article of the treaty, and acted as sole master of the kingdom. In order to strengthen his power he summoned a new Parliament in London (Jan. 20, 1265), which forms a memorable epoch in constitutional history. Besides the barons of his own party, and several ecclesiastics, who were not immediate tenants of the crown, he ordered returns to be made of two knights from each shire, and, what is more remarkable, of two representatives of each borough, an order of men which in former ages had always been regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national councils. This is rightly regarded as the first meeting of the HOUSE OF COMMONS. But Leicester's policy only forwarded by some years an institution for which the general state of things had already prepared the nation. Leicester, having thus assembled a Parliament of his own model, and trusting to the attachment of the populace of London, seized the opportunity of crushing his rivals among the powerful barons. § 19. But he soon found himself embarrassed by the opposition, as well as by the escape, of Prince Edward. The Royalists, secretly prepared for this latter event, immediately flew to arms; and the joy of this gallant prince's deliverance, the oppressions under which the nation labored, the expectation of a new scene of affairs, and the accession of the Earl of Gloucester, procured Edward an army which Leicester was unable to withstand. The contest was brought to a conclusion by the battle of Evesham (Aug. 4, 1265). Leicester himself was slain, with his eldest son Henry, and about 160 knights, and many other gentlemen of his party. The old king had been purposely placed by the rebels in the front of the battle; and, being clad in armor, and thereby not known by his friends, he received a wound, and was in danger of his life; but crying out, I am Henry of Winchester, your king, he was saved, and put in a place of safety by his son, who flew to his rescue. The lifeless body of Leicester was mangled by the victors. The people long regarded him as a martyr to their cause and the champion of their liberties. The victory of Evesham proved decisive, and the king's authority was established in all parts of the kingdom. § 20. Prince Edward, finding the state of the kingdom tolerably composed, was seduced (1270) by his avidity for glory, and by the prejudices of the age, as well as by the earnest solicitations of the King of France, to undertake an expedition against the infidels in the Holy Land. He sailed from England with an army, and arrived in Louis's camp before Tunis in Africa, where he found that monarch already dead, from the intemperance of the climate and A.D. 1264-1272. HENRY'S CHARACTER. 153 the fatigues of his enterprise. Prince Edward, not discouraged by this event, continued his voyage to the Holy Land, where he signalized himself (1271) by acts of valor, revived the glory of the English name in those parts, and struck such terror into the Saracens that they employed an assassin to murder him, who wounded him in the arm, but perished in the attempt. During his absence the old king, overcome by the cares of government and the infirmities of age, expired at Bury St. Edmonds (November 16, 1272), in the 66th year of his age, and 57th of his reign. His brother, the King of the Romans (for he never attained the title of emperor), died about seven months before him. The most obvious feature of Henry's character is his incapacity for government, which rendered him as much a prisoner in the hands of his own ministers and favorites, and as little at his own disposal, as when detained a captive in the hands of his enemies. From this source, rather than from insincerity or treachery, arose his negligence in observing his promises; and he was too easily induced, for the sake of present convenience, to sacrifice the lasting advantages arising from the trust and confidence of his people. A. ON THE AMALGAMATION OF THE cific statement of a contemporary writer that the distinction between the two races was almost obliterated in the reign of Henry II. ("sic permixtæ sunt nationes, ut vix discerni possit hodie, de liberis loquor, quis Anglicus, quis Normannus sit genere," quoted by Hallam, Middle Ages, ii., p. 321); and this amal. gamation must have been completed after the separation of Normandy from England in the reign of John. This view is in accordance with two other facts: 1. That the commencement of English literature dates from the 13th century, for the Ormulum, which is the oldest specimen of the English language extant, can not be placed later than this date. 2. That before the 13th century had passed away, the difference of dress, which in that state of society would survive many other differences, was no longer ob- 1 served, and the distinctive peculiarities of Norman and Saxon attire had disappeared. See Buckle, History of Civilization in England, i., p. 566. B. CONFIRMATIONS OF THE GREAT CHARTER. The Great Charter was always regarded as a fundamental law; but as the English monarchs were constantly disposed to evade it, the barons and the people repeatedly claimed its confirmation from their sovereigns. No fewer than thirty-eight solemn ratifications of it are recorded; of which six were made by Henry III., three by Edward I., fifteen by Edward III., six by Richard II., six by Henry IV., one by Henry V., and one by Henry VI. The Charter received a few alterations upon its successive confirmations in the first, second, and ninth years of Henry III.'s reign, the last of which is in our statute book and has never received any alteration. The most important change in the Charter, as confirmed by Henry III., was the omission of the clause which prohibited the levying of aids or escuages without the consent of Parliament. But though this clause was omitted, it continued to be observed during the reign of Henry, for we find the barons constantly refusing him the aids or subsidies which his prodigality was demanding. But he still retained the right of levying money upon towns under the name of tallage, and also claimed the right of levying other contributions, such as upon the export of wool. But a final stop was put to all these exactions by the celebrated statute passed in the 25th year of the reign of Edward I., entitled Confirmatio Chartarum. This statute not only confimed the Great Charter, but gave, to use the words of Hallam, "the same security to private property which Magna Charta had given to personal liberty." In it the king solemnly declared that "for no business from thenceforth we shall take such manner of aids, tacks, nor prises, but by the common consent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prises due and accustomed." Thus was the great principle of parliamentary taxation explicitly acknowledged eighty years after the first enactment of the Great Charter. On the Magna Charta, see Blackstone's Introduction to the Charter; Thompson's Essay on Magna Charta; Creasy, On the English Constitution, p. 128, sqq. Nor do we find any trace of trial by jury, properly so called, in the century which succeeded the Norman conquest. The first approach to trial by jury is the assize of novel disseisin introduced in the reign of Henry II. By this custom, in a suit for the recovery of land, a tenant who was unwilling to risk a judicial combat might put himself on the assize—that is, refer the case to four knights chosen by the sheriff, who, in their turn, selected 12 more. The 16 knights thus impanneled were then sworn, and decided the case by their verdict. Whether this was a Norman or an Anglo-Norman institution is lost in obscurity, and need not be here discussed. Whether the words in the charter of John that "a man is to be tried by the lawful judgment of his peers" really means trial by jury may admit of dispute; but at any rate it clearly recognizes the great principle upon which trial by jury rests. In criminal cases at all events we find an approach to a jury under Henry III. Trial by ordeal had now grown out of fashion; and though the trial by combat still remained, it could not, of course, be practiced unless some prosecutor appeared. But as a person vehemently suspected of a crime might be committed to safe custody on the presentment of a jury, he had the option of appealing to a second jury, which was sometimes composed of 12 persons. Such a jury, however, still differed from a modern one in the essential principle that it did not come to a decision upon the evidence of others. The jurors in fact continued to be witnesses, and founded their verdict on their own knowledge of the prisoner and of the facts of the case. Hence they are often called recognitors, because they decided from previous knowledge or recognition, including what they had heard and believed to be true. They seem to have admitted documentary evidence, but parole evidence seldom or never. The great distinction between a modern and an ancient jury lies in the circumstance that the former are not witnesses themselves, but merely judges of the testimony of others. A previous knowledge of the facts of the case, which would now be an objection to a jury. man, constituted in former days his merit and eligibility. At what precise period witnesses distinct from the jury themselves, and who had no voice in the verdict, first began to be regularly summoned, can not be ascer tained. The first trace of such a practice occurs in the 23d year of Edward III, and had probably been creeping in previously. That it was perfectly established by the middle of the 15th century we have clear evidence from Fortescue's treatise De Laudibus Legum Angliæ (c. 26), written about that period. Personal knowledge of a case continued to be allowed in a juror, who was even required to act upon it; and it was not till a comparatively recent period that the complete separation of the functions of juryman and witness was established. C. TRIAL BY JURY. We have already adverted (p. 75) to the mistaken and now obsolete opinion that trial by jury existed in England in the AngloSaxon times. The 12 thanes who sat in the Sheriff's Court have no analogy to a modern jury except in their number. Their function of presenting offenders gave them more the resemblance of the present grand jury; and they seem, like the scabini or échevins of the Continent, to have formed a permanent For farther information on this subject see magistracy. So also the Anglo-Saxon com- Hallam's Middle Ages, vol. ii., ch. viii., pt. purgators resembled the witnesses in a mod-i., and note viii.; and Forsyth's History of ern trial rather than the jurymen. Trial by Jury. THE REIGNS OF EDWARD I. AND EDWARD II. A.D. 1272-1327. § 1. Accession of EDWARD I. Civil Administration. § 2. Conquest of Wales. § 3. Persecution of the Jews. § 4. Disputed Succession to the Scottish Crown. Award of Edward. § 5. War with France. § 6. Conquest of Scotland. § 7. War with France. Dissensions of the Barons and Confirmation of the Charters. § 8. Peace with France. Revolt of Scotland. § 9. Battle of Falkirk. Death of Wallace. § 10. Insurrection of Robert Bruce. § 11. Edward's last Expedition against Scotland. His Death and Character. § 12. Accession of EDWARD II. Weakness of the King and Discontent of the Barons. § 13. Banishment and Murder of Gaveston. § 14. War with Scotland. § 15. Hugh le Despenser. Civil Commotions. Lancaster executed. § 16. Truce with Scotland. Conspiracy against the King. He is dethroned and murdered. § 1. EDWARD I., 1272-1307.-PRINCE EDWARD had reached Sicily in his return from the Holy Land, when he received intelligence of the death of his father; but as he soon learned the quiet settlement of the kingdom, under Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, the Earl of Cornwall, son of Richard, King of the Romans, and the Earl of Gloucester, as guardians of the realm, he was in no hurry to take possession of the throne, but spent more than a |