Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/33

 It was evidently high time that Edward returned, and he landed at Dover on 12 Aug.

On his return he received many bitter complaints of the ill-doings of the judges in his absence, and on 13 Oct. appointed a commission to inquire into their conduct. Weyland one of the chief justices, fled to the Franciscan priory at Bury St. Edmunds, and assumed the monastic dress. Edward ordered that he should be starved into submission, and allowed him to escape trial by going into perpetual banishment. All the judges save two were found guilty of various misdemeanors, were fined, and dismissed from office (Ann. Dunst, p. 355 sq.) Before the end of the year Edward visited his mother, who had during his absence taken the veil at Amesbury, and also made visits of devotion to the shrines of St. Thomas the Martyr, St. Edmund, and many other saints. He was a man of strong religious feelings: in times of difficulty he made vows, and on his return from any long journey or after any deliverance from danger he never failed to offer thanks publicly in one or more of the great churches of the kingdom. He appears to have usually passed Lent in more or less retirement in some of the great monasteries, and he certainly took pleasure in attending religious ceremonies, such as the consecration of bishops. At the same time his love of truth and his manliness of character kept him from giving countenance to superstition or imposture. On one of his visits to his mother at Amesbury, he found her in a state of high excitement over a man who pretended that he had been cured of blindness at the tomb of her late husband. King Henry. Edward knew that the man was lying, and told his mother so, which angered her so much that she bade him leave her room. King as he was, he obeyed her without a word, and as he went out met the provincial of the Dominicans, a man of much theological learning and one of his intimate friends. 'I know enough of my father's justice,' he said to him, 'to be sure that he would rather have torn out the eyes of this rascal when they were sound than have given sight to such a scoundrel'. He spent Christmas at Westminster, held a parliament there early the next year, and on 23 April married his daughter Joan to his old enemy, Gilbert, earl of Gloucester. This marriage suggested to him a means of raising money, of which he was in constant need, though the heavy fines he had laid on the judges had lately swelled his treasury (Ann. 0sen. p. 321). In a parliament held on 29 May, which consisted only of bishops and lay lords, he obtained leave to levy an aid pur fille marier of 40s. on the knight's fee. This tax fell only on the tenants in chief who were held to be represented by the magnates (Select Charters p. 466). A second parliament was held in July, to which the king summoned two knights from each shire. A week before the day on which the knights were to come to Westminster, and while the parliament therefore consisted only of the magnates of the kingdom, Edward, at the request of the lords, published the statute 'Quin emptores,' forbidding subinfeudation; land alienated by a tenant, either in chivalry or socage, was to be held by feoffee not of the alienor but of the capital lord, and by the same services as it had been held by the feoffor. This act, while protecting the rights of the lords, strengthened the position of the crown towards its tenants. Its remoter consequences have been a vast increase in the alienation of lands and in the number of landholders, the termination of the power of creating new manors, and an advance in the gradual obliteration of all distinctions of tenure (ib. ip. 468). In the same month the king and his privy council ordered that all Jews should be banished from the kingdom. In making this decree Edward was influenced by 'economical as well as religious' motives (Const. Hist. ii. 123); it was highly popular, and in return he received grants from the clergy and laity (, ii. 22). Earlier in the month he celebrated the marriage of his daughter Margaret to John of Brabant with great magnificence. While he was holding his autumn parliament at Clipstone in Sherwood Forest, the queen lay sick at Hardeby, or Harby, in Nottinghamshire (English Historical Review 1888, x. 315). He remained in the immediate neighbourhood until 20 Nov., and then went to her, and was present at her death on the 28th (Archæologia xxix, 169). He felt her death very deeply, and is said to have mourned for her all the rest of his life (Opus Chron, p. 50). The funeral procession was stately, and the king accompanied it all the way; the funeral itself took place at Westminster on 17 Dec. [For further particulars see under ] Edward spent Christmas at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire, where his cousin Edmund, earl of Cornwall, had founded a house of Bons Hommes, and remained there five weeks until 26 Jan. 1291, evidently to some extent in retirement. Early in May he proceeded to Norham to settle the dispute between the competitors for the throne of Scotland.

On the death of Alexander III of Scotland, in 1286, his granddaughter Margaret the Maid of Norway, who was also great-niece to Edward, was left heir to the crown, and certain Scottish lords sent messengers to the English king on 29 March, to consult him on the