Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/331

Rh THE SCOTTISH CONTROVERSY.] ENGLAND 313 Alliam Wallace. alo- sbe- en Scot- i and nch putes. rof icrt tee. thof -yard to blame. On the other hand, that the mass of the Scottish people defined as above should resist his claims was as little to be wondered at, as little to be blamed. Each side acted according to the ordinary workings of human nature in their several positions. The real greatness of William Wallace is shown in the fact that he was essentially a popular leader, one who kept up the heart of a nation whose natural chiefs had forsaken it. On the other hand, even setting aside the charges of special cruelties, William Wallace could not fail to seem, in the eyes of Edward and of every Englishman, a rebel who had despised the offers of mercy which were accepted by every one else. That an English court condemned him as a traitor was in no way wonderful, in no way blameworthy ; that Scottish patriotism revered him as a martyr .was as little wonderful, as little blameworthy. This first war of Edward with Scotland thus began with the taking of Berwick in 1296, and ended with the taking of Stirling in 1304. Meanwhile Edward was engaged in disputes and warfare with France, which began at nearly the same time as the Scottish war. The points in controversy between France and England supply a striking and instructive parallel to the points in controversy between England and Scotlaud. As the king of Scots was the man of the king of England, so was the duke of Aquitaine the man of the king of the French. In both cases the vassalage was older than the new feudal jurisprudence. But the doctrines of that juris prudence now began to be pressed against Edward himself. A quarrel arose between Gascons, subjects of Edward, and Normans, now subjects of Philip of France. The quarrel grew into a war which was waged by the subjects of the two kings without any commission from their respective sove reigns. Edward, summoned to appear in the court of his lord to answer for the doings of his subjects, did not deny his obligation, though he appeared only by deputy. Pre sently his duchy was declared forfeited, by a process which in England at least was deemed unjust; and it was in the end recovered only by a negotiation and arbitration and a double marriage. In this war, as in earlier French wars, England had the alliance of Germany and of Flanders. And, as the same years saw the beginnings of the long alliance between Scotland and France, we may say that we have come to the beginning of European arrangements which lasted till very modern times. The second Scottish war, the war of Bruce, was quite distinct from the first, the war of Wallace. The interval which divides them is short ; but the change of circum stances was enough altogether to change the conduct of Edward. As long as the war took the form of resistance to the establishment of his authority, his general clemency was remarkable. Severity began only when the war took the form of revolt against established authority. The con quest of Scotland had been completed in 130-i. Robert Bruce, the grandson of the original competitor, having lost all hope of Edward s favour by the murder of his rival John Comyn, revolted and assumed the Scottish crown in 1306. In the next year, 1307, the cause of Bruce seemed again altogether hopeless, when things were changed by the death of Edward on his march to Scotland. With the single ex ception of the execution of Wallace, the whole of Edward s acts of severity in Scotland come within a single twelve month, from July 1306 to July 1307. After the death of the great king and the accession of Edward II., the war naturally lingered ; it was interrupted by truces ; and a series of successes on the part of Robert Bruce were crowned in 1314 by the overwhelming defeat of the English at Bannockburn. Then comes, from 1315 to 1318, the attempt to establish Edward Bruce as king of Ireland. For ten years follows a time of truces and of occasional invasions on both sides, till, after Edward had been deposed in 1327, a peace between Scotland and England was concluded in the next year, by which the independence of Scotlaud was fully acknowledged. The old claims, of whatever kind or over whatever territory, must be looked on as being from this time definitely given up. Scotland, in the sense which the word then bore, a sense which, with the exception of the fluctuating possession of Berwick, is the same which it bears still, 1 must be looked on from henceforth as a Indepen- kingdom absolutely independent of England. To carry dence of on the analogy already drawn between the relations of Scotland to England and those of Aquitaine to France, the treaty of Northampton in 1328 answers to the treaty of Bretigny thirty-two years later. The change in the fortune and character of the war with Reign of Scotland which followed when Edward II. succeeded E dVi ar(i Edward I. was only part of the general change which naturally followed on such a change of sovereign. The ruler, lawgiver, and conqueror had passed away, to make room for a son who inherited none of these characters. Legis lation and conquest come to an end ; constitutional progress becomes indirect. Edward II. was ruled by favourites ; that his earliest favourite, Piers Gaveston, was a foreigner from Gascony doubtless tended to increase the usual dislike to favourites ; but the fact was no longer of the same poli tical importance as the predominance of foreign favourites had been in earlier times. There was no longer any fear of England again becoming the prey of the stranger. Still the reign of Edward II. is, in some respects, a repetition of the reign of Henry III. The national dislike to the favou rite led to an opposition to the king, which in 1310-1311 brought about the practical transfer of the royal power in imitation, it would seem, of the Provisions of Oxford to a body of prelates and barons, called the Ordainers. The almost immediate recall of Gaveston, in defiance of the new ordinances, led to a new Barons War, in which the king s cousin, Earl Thomas of Lancaster, appears rather as a parody than as a follower of the great Simon. We now reach the beginning of a series of political executions which have no parallel in earlier days, but which from this time disfigure our history for many centuries. The first blood shed was that of Gaveston himself, in 1312. It was avenged ten years after by the execution of Thomas of Lancaster. Meanwhile the strife between the king and his barons had gone on. A second time, in 1318, the royal power was transferred to a council. Then came the choice of new favourites, the Despensers, father and sou. They were at least Englishmen, bearing a name which had been glo rious in former civil strife. But they were no less hated than the stranger Gaveston. In a moment of recovered power on the king s part follows the execution of Earl Thomas, a martyr in the belief of his party no less than Simon himself. Presently Edward has to meet with foes, not only in his own house but in his own household. Dark and mysterious causes drew on him the deadly hatred of his own wife, and gave him a rival in his own sou. In the revolution of 1326, the queen is the leader ; the favourites die in their turn the death of traitors. The year 1327 opens with the practical assertion of the highest right which the national council in its new form had inherited from the earliest times. By a solemn vote of the parliament of England, Deposi- the king was deposed, and his own son Edward was placed r f d. on the throne. In earlier times the deposition of a king in noway implied his murder, any more than the fall from power of a great earl or prelate implied either his murder or his legal execution. But the days of blood had now set his mur- in ; before the end of the year the deposed king died by 1 That is, as regards the English frontier. The relations between Scotland and the Scandinavian islands do not concern English history. VIII. 40