Part 91 (1/2)

The early English Parliament was not a law-making but a tax-voting body.

The king would call the two houses in session only when he needed their sanction for raising money. Parliament in its turn would refuse to grant supplies until the king had corrected abuses in the administration or had removed unpopular officials. This control of the public purse in time enabled Parliament to grasp other powers. It became an accepted principle that royal officials were responsible to Parliament for their actions, that the king himself might be deposed for good cause, and that bills, when pa.s.sed by Parliament and signed by the king, were the law of the land. England thus worked out in the Middle Ages a system of parliamentary government which nearly all civilized nations have held worthy of imitation.

186. EXPANSION OF ENGLAND UNDER EDWARD I, 1272-1307 A.D.

THE BRITISH ISLES

Our narrative has been confined until now to England, which forms, together with Wales and Scotland, the island known as Great Britain.

Ireland is the only other important division of the United Kingdom. It was almost inevitable that in process of time the British Isles should have come under a single government, but political unity has not yet fused English, Scotch, Welsh, and Irish into a single people.

WALES

The conquest of Britain by the Anglo-Saxons drove many of the Welsh, [14]

as the invaders called the Britons, into the western part of the island.

This district, henceforth known as Wales, was one of the last strongholds of the Celts. Even to-day a variety of the old Celtic language, called Cymric, is still spoken by the Welsh people.

CONQUEST OF WALES

In their wild and mountainous country the Welsh long resisted all attempts to subjugate them. Harold exerted some authority over Wales, William the Conqueror entered part of it, and Henry II induced the local rulers to acknowledge him as overlord, but it was Edward I who first brought all Wales under English sway. Edward fostered the building of towns in his new possession, divided it into counties or s.h.i.+res, after the system that prevailed in England, and introduced the Common law. He called his son, Edward II, who was born in the country, the ”Prince of Wales,” and this t.i.tle has ever since been borne by the heir apparent to the English throne. The work of uniting Wales to England went on slowly, and two centuries elapsed before Wales was granted representation in the House of Commons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY Every English ruler since Edward I has been crowned in this oak chair.

Under the seat is the ”Stone of Scone,” said to have been once used by the patriarch Jacob. Edward I brought it to London in 1291 A.D., as a token of the subjection of Scotland.]

SCOTLAND

Scotland derives its name from the Scots, who came over from Ireland early in the fifth century. [15] The northern Highlands, a nest of rugged mountains washed by cold and stormy seas, have always been occupied in historic times by a Celtic-speaking people, whose language, called Gaelic, is not yet extinct there. This part of Scotland, like Wales, was a home of freedom. The Romans did not attempt to annex the Highlands, and the Anglo- Saxons and Danes never penetrated their fastnesses. On the other hand the southern Lowlands, which include only about one-third of Scotland, were subdued by the Teutonic invaders, and so this district became thoroughly English in language and culture. [16]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map, SCOTLAND in the 13th Century]

THE SCOTTOSH KINGDOM

One might suppose that the Lowlands, geographically only an extension of northern England and inhabited by an English-speaking people, would have early united with the southern kingdom. But matters turned out otherwise.

The Lowlands and the Highlands came together under a line of Celtic kings, who fixed their residence at Edinburgh and long maintained their independence.

SCOTLAND ANNEXED BY EDWARD I

Edward I, having conquered Wales, took advantage of the disturbed conditions which prevailed in Scotland to interfere in the affairs of that country. The Scotch offered a brave but futile resistance under William Wallace. This heroic leader, who held out after most of his countrymen submitted, was finally captured and executed. His head, according to the barbarous practice of the time, was set upon a pole on London Bridge. The English king now annexed Scotland without further opposition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A QUEEN ELEANOR CROSS After the death of his wife Eleanor, Edward I caused a memorial cross to be set up at each place where her funeral procession had stopped on its way to London. There were originally seven crosses. Of the three that still exist, the Geddington cross is the best preserved. It consists of three stories and stands on a platform of eight steps.]

ROBERT BRUCE AND BANNOCKBURN, 1314 A.D.

But William Wallace by his life and still more by his death had lit a fire which might never be quenched. Soon the Scotch found another champion in the person of Robert Bruce. Edward I, now old and broken, marched against him, but died before reaching the border. The weakness of his son, Edward II, permitted the Scotch, ably led by Bruce, to win the signal victory of Bannockburn, near Stirling Castle. Here the Scottish spearmen drove the English knighthood into ignominious flight and freed their country from its foreign overlords.

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE

The battle of Bannockburn made a nation. A few years afterwards the English formally recognized the independence of the northern kingdom. So the great design of Edward I to unite all the peoples of Britain under one government had to be postponed for centuries. [17]