The Three Edwards Read Free

reform and codification of the laws of the land. This monumental labor was to continue throughout most of his reign, but the steps he initiated at the beginning were so carefully conceived and so ably conducted that on April 22 of the following year he felt free to summon a great Parliament at Westminster to convert his suggestions into the permanency of national law.
    The laws of England had been in a sorry tangle since the coming of the Normans. William the Conqueror had retained much of the Anglo-Saxon machinery of justice, including the Hundred-moot and the Shire-moot, but the conflict between the grasping newcomers and the resentful English had led to feudal impositions. The despotism of the lords of the manor, with their tall grim castles, had reached its height in the reign of Stephen when each baron had his own dungeons, his own torture chamber, and his own gibbet. The diabolical practice of deciding guilt by a man’s ability to carry a heated iron bar or to walk over red-hot plowshares had been hard to eradicate, as had another superstitious survival, the ordeal by water. The Normans had a preference for settling lawsuits by hiring champions to fight it out in the lists. The hatred between thenewcomers and the downtrodden Saxons had imposed
presentment of Englishry
on the land, which meant proving the victim of murder to be English in order to escape the furious penalties exacted from whole townships in which a Norman had been assassinated.
    The reforms of Henry II had tended to break the hold of feudalism by bringing justice under the supervision of the crown. His system of periodical assizes, presided over by itinerant judges, was not only revolutionary but so sound in practice that it has been continued to this day. The Great Charter had recognized the right of the individual, even against sovereign authority, but through the long years of his reign Henry III, Edward’s father, had never ceased his stubborn efforts to disregard the limitations the Charter had placed on kingly power.
    In setting about the arduous task of bringing order out of this tangle, the young king had the best advice. Henry de Bracton, a clear-thinking and able legal commentator, was not present in person (he had died six years before) but he was there in spirit. His books on English law, written during the previous reign, while a weak monarch sought to increase its perplexities still further, had been concise and convincing and had pointed the way to what Edward was striving to accomplish. With the king, of course, were Francesco Accursi and Robert Burnell. The latter might be termed the work horse of the combination. He it was who labored over the detail, who contrived and indexed and found ways to overcome difficulties, and who saw where compromise could be applied to vexed problems.
    When Parliament met at Westminster, therefore, Edward had something tangible to lay before that body. It was a measure of fifty-one clauses and so broad in its applications that it has been described as practically a code in itself. It dealt not only with the clarification of common law but went into matters of governmental control. Most important of its many exactments was its affirmation of the Great Charter. The rights and privileges of the individual were to apply not only to men of noble birth but to all free men. The exact words of the Charter were employed, in fact, in denying the right to imprison or “amerce” the individual except by due process of law. The right of kings and their ministers to make irregular financial demands on the nation was denied. A redefining of wardships limited the power of guardians to profit from the estates of minors, not excepting the kings, who had battened on the heritage of widows and orphans. The highly practical measures of Henry II were confirmed and, where necessary, amended to suit new conditions.
    Out of the reports laid before this first Parliament of his reign came the Statute of Westminster I, which