The first military operations of Edward's reign were directed against the Welsh, whoae prince Llewellyn, on being summoned to do homage, had contemptuously refused. Llewellyn was forced to sue for peace in November 1277, after a single campaign; but in 1281 he again rose in arms, and the insurrection was not put down till Llewellyn himself was slain at Llanfair, 11th December 1282, and his surviving brother Prince David was taken prisoner soon after. The following year the last-mentioned prince was barbarously put to death by drawing, hanging, and quartering, and Wales was finally united to England.
The conquest of Wales was followed by the attempt to conquer Scotland. By tho death of Alexander III. in 1285, the crown of that country had fallen to his grand-daughter Margaret, called the Maiden of Norway, a child only three years old. By tho treaty of Brigham, concluded in July 1290, it was agreed that Margaret should be married to Edward, the eldest surviving son of the English king; but the young queen died in one of the Orkney Islands on her voyage from Norway, in September of the same year. Edward made the first open declaration of hie designs against the independence of Scotland at a conference held at Norham on the Tweed with the clergy and nobility of that kingdom on the 10th of May1291. Tan different competitors for the crown had advanced their claims ; but they were all induced to acknowledge Edward for their lord paramount, and to consent to receive judgment from him on the matter in dispute. His decision was finally pronounced in favour of John Balliol, at Berwick, on the 17th of November 1292; on the next day Balliol swore fealty to him in the castle of Norham. [Bstasots] He was crowned at Scone under a commission from his liege lord on the 30th of the same month ; and on the 26th of December he did homage to Edward for his crown at Newcastle. The subject king however was soon made to feel all the humiliation of his position ; and the discontent of his countrymen equalling his own, by the summer of 1294 all Scotland was in open insurrection against the authority of Edward. Meanwhile Edward had become involved in a war with the French king Philip IV. The first act of the assembled estates of Scotland was to enter into a treaty of alliance with that sovereign. But although he was farther embarrassed at this inconvenient moment by a revolt of the Welsh, Edward's wonderful energy in a few months recovered for him all that he had lost. In the spring of 1298 he laid a great part of Scotland waste with fire and sword, compelled Balliol to resign tho kingdom into his hands, and then made a triumphant progress through the country as far as Elgin in Moray, exacting oaths of fealty from all classes wherever he appeared. It was on his return from this progress that Edward, as he passed the cathedral of Scone in the beginning of August, carried away with him the famous atone, now in Westminster Abbey, on which the Scottish kings had been accustomed to be crowned. He now placed the government of Scotland in the bands of officers appointed by himself, and bearing the titles of his ministers. But by the month of May in the following year Scotland was again in flames. The leader of the insurrection now was the celebrated William Wallace. He and his countrymen had been excited to make this attempt to effect their deliverance from a foreign domination, partly by the severities of their English governors, partly by the circumstances in which Edward was at this time involved. The expenses of his Scottish and French wars had pressed heavily upon the resources of the kingdom ; and when he asked for more money, both clergy and laity refused to make him any farther grant without a redress of grievances and a confirmation of tho several great national charters. After standing out for some time, he was obliged to comply with these terms : Magna Cherie and the Charter of Forests were both confirmed, with some additional articles, in a parliament held at Westminster in October of this year.
Meanwhile, although he had got diaeocumbered for the present of the war on the Continent, by the conclusion of a truce with Kiog Philip, the rebellion in Scotland had already gained such a height as to have almost wholly cleared that country of the English authorities.
The forces of the government had been completely put to the rout by Wallace at the battle of Stirling, fought on the 11th September, and in a few weeks more not a Scottish fortress remained in Edward's hands. Wallace was now appointed Governor of Scotland in the name of King John (Balliol). In this state of things Edward, about the middle of March 1298, returned to England from Flanders, where he had spent the winter. He immediately prepared to march for Scot land. The great battle of Falkirk followed on the 22nd of July, in which Wallace sustained a complete defeat. But although one conse quence of this event was the resignation by Wallace of his office of governor, it was not followed by the general submission of the country. The next five years were .pent in a succession of indecisive attempts on the part of the English king to regain possession of Scot land; the military operations being frequently suspended by long truces. At length, having satisfied his barons by repeated renewals of the charters, and having finally relieved himself from all interference on the part of the king of France by a definitive treaty of peace con cluded with him at Amiens, on the 20th May 1303, Edward once more set out for Scotland at the head of a force too numerous and too well appointed to be resisted by any strength that exhausted country could now command. The result was again its temporary conquest, and merciless devastation from the Tweed to the Moray Firth. The Castle of Stirling was the last fortress that held out ; it did not sur render till the 20th of July in the following year. Edward mean while had wintered in Dunfermline ; he only returned to England in time to keep his Christmas in Lincoln. Wallace fell into his hands iu a few months afterwards, and was hanged, drawn, and quartered as a traitor, at Smithfield in London, on the 23rd of August 1305. But another champion of the Scottish independence was not long in appear ing. Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, whose grandfather .had been the chief competitor for the crown with Balliol, had resided for some years at the Eeglish court ; but he now, in the beginning of February 1306, suddenly made his escape to Scotland ; and in a few weeks the banner of revolt against the English dominion was again unfurled in that country, and the insurgent people gathered around this new leader. Bruce was solemnly crowned at Scone, on the 27th of March. On receiving this news, Edward immediately prepared for a new expedi tion to Scotland; and sent the Earl of Pembroke forward to encounter Bruce, intending to follow himself as soon as he had completed the necessary arrangements. The army of Bruce was dispersed at Perth, on the 19th of June, by Pembroke, who had thrown himself into that town; and the king of the Scots became for a time a houseless fugi tive. But the English monarch had now reached the last stage of his destructive career. Edward got no farther than a few miles beyoud Carlisle in his last journey to the north. After apendiog the winter months at Lanercost, where he was detained by a severe illness, he appears to have arrived at Carlisle in the beginning of March 1307 ; here he was again taken ill, but his eagerness to advance continued unabated : having somewhat recovered, he again set out, although he was still so weak, and suffered so much from pain, that he could accomplish no more than six miles in four days. On the 6th of July ho reached the -village of Burgh-upon-Sands, "and next day expired," to copy the words of Lord Hailes, "in eight of that country which he had devoted to destruction." On his death-bed he is said to have enjoined hie eon and successor to prosecute the design which it was not given to himself to finish. According to Froissart, he made him swear that after the breath had departed from the royal body he would cause it to be boiled in a cauldron till the flesh fell off, and that he would preserve the bones to carry with him against the Scots as often as they should rebel. This oath however, if it was taken, was not kept. The corpse of 'King Edward was interred in Westminster Abbey on the 2Sth of October.