Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/348

334 occasions. Easy and affable to his courtiers and dependents, he was yet severe in restraining licence and punishing offenders. His fine person and skill in military exercises made him popular with the people, when he did not press too heavily on them by his expensive wars; and thus, relying on his sense of justice, they were not backward in expressing their opinions, as we have seen. Though he was extremely cruel to the Jews—a feature of his character springing from the prejudices of his age—and often forgot the magnanimity of a great monarch in his resentment against those who successfully thwarted his plans, as in the case of Sir William Wallace and others, his sense of justice in his calmer moments and in his peaceful pursuits was so great that he not only encouraged an honourable administration of the laws, but he corrected and amended them, and added so many new ones, in accordance with the progress of society, that he has been termed the English Justinian, Sir Edward Coke, in his "Institutes," says that the statutes passed in his reign were so numerous and excellent, that they actually deserved the name of establishments, being more constant, standing, and durable than any made from his reign to the time of that great lawyer; and Sir Matthew Hale pays him the like compliment, declaring that down to his own day they had scarcely received any addition. He was the first to establish justices of the peace. He repressed robberies, and encouraged trade by giving merchants an easy method of recovering their debts. He abolished the office of chief justiciary, which he thought possessed too much power. He divided the court of exchequer into four distinct courts, each attending to its own branch, and independent of any one magistrate, while the several courts became rivals, not checks to each other; a circumstance tending greatly to improve the practice of law in England.



The grand obstacle to the impartial execution of justice in those times was the power of the groat barons. These despots he strove to overawe and restrain; but while aiming at this, he at the same time allowed them to entail their estates, and thus preserved to them that influence in the constitution of the country which the aristocracy have ever since maintained. He has the honour, too, of being the first Christian prince who put a stop to the alarming absorption of the landed property of the country by the clergy, setting bounds to it by passing a statute of mortmain. In this, however, he was avowedly actuated by his wish to prevent the diminution of feudal services and emoluments, which became extinguished when lands passed from the laity to the Church. But, to compensate the clergy, he was the first to allow the levy of first-fruits.

Far greater, however, were the innovations which this monarch introduced into the British constitution—innovations of the mighty influence of which he could form no conception. He was the father and originator of the Parliament of England. Before his time the barons had met the sovereign to determine on peace or war, and to consent to the raising of the necessary funds. But Edward had occasion to make such frequent and extensive demands on his barons, that ho frequently found them daring to reject his calls for money, and refusing even his summons to war, as in the case of Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, who positively declined to follow him to his campaign in Flanders. The obvious means of at once creating a counterbalancing power to this overgrown one of feudal chiefdom, and of replenishing his coffers, was to elevate the people of the towns, who had now advanced to a considerable degree of wealth. His father had sought to supply the diminution of revenue and power which had occurred from the great feudal barons gradually, by one means or other, freeing themselves from their obligations, through summoning to Parliament the lesser barons and knights. Henry III. had made it an occasional practice to allow these lesser noblesse to choose