Edward I. was twice married. By his first wife Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III., king of Castile and Leon, he had four sons : John and Henry, who both died in infancy while their father was in the Holy Land ; Alphonao, born at Maine in Gascony, 23rd November 1273, who died at Windsor, 4th August 1285; and Edward, who succeeded him. He had also by Eleanor nine daughters: Eleanor, born in 1266, married to Henry earl of Bar ; Joanna of Acre, born in that tow:, iu 1272, married first to Gilbert de Clare, earl of Gloucester and Hereford, and secondly to Sir Ralph Monthermer ; Margaret, born in 1275, married to John duke of Brabaut; Berengera, born in 1276; Alice ; Mary, born 22nd April 1279, who at ten years of age took the veil in the monastery of Ambreabury ; Elizabeth, born in 1284, married first to John earl of Holland and Zealand, secondly, to Humphrey Bohun earl of Hertford and Essex ; Beatrice; and Blanch. Queen Eleanor died 28th November 1291, at Grantham, or, according to another account, at Hardeby, in Lincolnshire : her body was brought to West minster Abbey to be interred, and crosses were afterwards erected on the several spots where it rested on the way, namely, at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Goddington, Northampton (near which town one exists), Stoney Stratford, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham (where the cross, a very beautiful one, atilt stands), and Charing, then a village near London, but now the centre of the metropolis, under the name of Charing Cross. Edward's second wife was Margaret, eldest daughter of Philip III., and sister of Philip IV., kings of France. He was married to her on the 10th of September 1299, she being then in her eighteenth year. By Queen Margaret he had two eons : Thomas, born at Brothertou iu Yorkshire, lot June 1300, afterwards created Earl of Norfolk and earl marshal ; and Edmund, born 6th August 1301, afterwards created Earl of Kent; and one daughter, Eleanor, born at Winchester, 6th May 1306, who died in her childhood. Queen Margaret died in 1317.
The rapid narrative that has been given of the acts of his reign sufficiently indicates the main constituents of the character of this king. He had his full share of the ability and tho daring of the vigorous line from which he was sprung ; a lino that (including himself) had now given nine kings to England, and only two of them not men of extraordinary force of character. With all his ambition and stern determination however Edward neither loved bloodshed for itself, nor was he a professed or systematic) despiser of the rules of right and justice. It is probable that In his persevering contest with the Scots be believed that be was only enforcing the just claims of his crown ; and his conduct, therefore, ferocious and vindictive as in many respects it was, may be vindicated from the charge of want of principle, if tried by the current opinions and sentiments of his age. Putting aside consideration, of morality, we perceive in him an ample endowment of many of the qualities that most conduce to eminence— activity, decision, foresight, inflexibility, perseverance, military skill, personal courage and power of endurance ; and, united with boldness in conceiving and executing his designs, great patience and sagacity in preparing and managing hie instruments, and bending circumstances to his wilL Engaged as he was during the greater part of his reign in war, he was not advantageously placed for the full application of his talents to the business of civil government ; but his reign is notwithstanding one of the /most remarkable in our history, for the progress which was made in it towards the settlement of the laws and the constitution. On this account Edward I. has often been styled the English Justinian (though, as is obvious to any one who knows what Juetinian's legislation was, not with any propriety); and Sir Matthew Hale (' Hiat, of the Common Law of England,' chap. 7) has remarked that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom than in all the next four centuries. Blackstone has enumerated under fifteen heads the principal alterations and improvements which the law underwent in the reign of Edward I.: we can only here notice the confirmation and final establishment of the two greet charters ; the definition end limitation of the bound, of ecclesiastical jurisdic tion ; the ascertainment and distribution of the powers and functions both of the supreme and the inferior courts ; the abolition of the practice of issuing royal mandates in private causes; the establish ment of a repository for the public records of the kingdom, "few of which," as Blackstone remarks, "are autienter than the reign of his father, and these were by him collected ; " the improvement of the law and process for the recovery of debts by the Statutes Merchant and Elegit; and the check imposed on the encroachments of the church by the passing of several statutes of mortmain. The object
of the statute De Donis was to render lands which were the subject of this particular form of grant inalienable, and so far to put restraints upon the disposal of landed property, which however were soon evaded. "Upon the whole, we may observe," concludes Blackstone after Hale, "that the very scheme and model of the administration of common justice, between party and party was entirely settled by this king." The forms of writs by which actions are commenced, it is added, were perfected in this reign.
While the English laws were fully extended to Ireland and Wales, it was under Edward I., also, that the foundations of the constitution of the kingdom may be considered to have been laid by the new form and the new powers which were then assumed by the parliament. The earliest writs that have been preserved for summoning knights, I citizens, and burgesses to parliament, are, as is well known, those that were issued by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, the leader of the barons, in 1264, in the name of king Henry III., who wag then a pri aoner in Ilia hands. Whether this representation of the commons was then first introduced or not, it was in the course of the succeeding reign that it Bret Inseam regular and influential. The division of the legislature into two house., in other words the institution of our present House of Commons, appears to be clearly traceable to the time of Edward I. It was in his time also that the practice began i fairly to take root of the king refraining from arbitrary exactions and coming to parliament for supplies, and that the earliest effective examples were afforded of the grant of supplies by that assembly being made dependent upon the redress of grievances. Edward I., with all his military habits and genius, had at length the good sense to perceive that the time was come for abandoning the attempt to govern by the prerogative alone, which had been clung to by all his predecessors from the Conquest : in his disputes with the barons he never allowed matters to come to a contest of force, as his father and grandfather had done ; and in the latter part of his reign, although more thau once compelled to stop abort in his most favourite design, by the refusal of the national representatives to furnish him with the necessary means, he seems to have kept to the system of never resort ing to any other weapon than policy and management to overcome the opposition with which he was thus thwarted. It was in the last year but one of this reign that the royal assent was given to the famous enactment commonly called the 'Statute de Tallagio non Concedendo,' by which the right of taxation was first distinctly affirmed to reside in the parliament: "no tallage or aid," the first chapter runs (in the old English translation), "shall be levied by us or our heirs in our realm, without the good will and assent of Archbishops, Bishops, Earle, Barons, Knights, Burgesses, and other Freemen of the land." The lame principle had been conceded ten years before (by the 25th Edward I., o. 6), bnt not in such explicit terms.
The trade and foreign commerce of England appear to have advanced considerably during the reign of Edward 1.; but rather owing to the natural progress of the chili/nation of this country and of Europe, than from any enlightened attention which the king showed to these interests. He seems to have been principally eolicitone to turn the inereaalng intercourse of the country with foreign parts to his own particular profit by the increase of the customs. A few of his laws however were beneficial to the trading commanIty, and were made with this express object, especially the act for the better recovery of debts, commonly called the Statute of Merchants, passed nt Acton Burnell in 1283; the extension of the same by a subsequent act ; and the Elegit above mentioned. On the other hand he lowered, though slightly, the real value of the coin, thereby setting the first example of a most pernicious process, which was afterwards carried much farther. He also cruelly pillaged and oppressed the Jews ; and finally, in 1290, expelled the entire body of that people from England, and seized all their houses and tenements. Before this (in 1275) a law bad been passed prohibiting the Jews from taking interest for money on pain of death.
The moat distinguished names in literature and science that belong to the reign of Edward I. are Dans Scotus, his disciple William Occam, and the illustrious Roger Bacon. Among the historical writers or chroniclers who flourished at this time may be mentioned Thomas( Wikes, Nicolas Trivet, Walter de llemmingford, and, aceordiog to one the writer known as Matthew of Westminster. The law writers of this reign are the author of the work entitled 'Fleta,' Britton (if that be not a corruption of Bracton), Hengliam, and Gilbert de Thornton, chief justice of the King's Bench, the author of an abridgment of Bracton.