Edward I of England

Edward I

Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England from 1272 to 1307. Before his accession to the throne, he was commonly referred to as The Lord Edward.

Quotes

• The laws the Irish use are detestable to God, and so contrary to all law that they ought not to be deemed law.
  • Speech (1277), quoted in Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (2009), p. 220

• When you get rid of a turd, you do a good job.
  • Remark upon appointing John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey as Guardian of Scotland (1296), attributed to Edward in the Scalacronica, quoted in Michael Prestwich, Edward I (Yale University Press, 1997), p. 477

Quotes about Edward I

• Perhaps he will be rightly called a leopard. If we divide the name it becomes lion and pard; lion, because we saw that he was not slow to attack the strongest places, fearing the onslaught of none. ... A lion by pride and fierceness, he is by inconstancy and changeableness a pard, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech.
  • The Song of Lewes (c. 1264), quoted in English Historical Documents, 1189–1327 (1975), p. 936

• Edwardus Primus Scotorum Malleus hic est, 1308. Pactum Serva
  • Here is Edward the First, Hammer of the Scots, 1308. Keep the Vow.
  • Inscribed on his tomb in Westminster Abbey, quoted in Michael Prestwich, Edward I (1997), p. 566

• In Edward the line of English Kings begins once more. After two hundred years of foreign rule, we have again a King bearing an English name and an English heart—the first to give us back our ancient laws under new shapes, the first, and for so long the last, to see that the Empire of his mighty namesake was a worthier prize than shadowy dreams of dominion beyond the sea. All between them were Normans or Angevins, careless of England and her people. Another and a brighter æra opens, as the lawgiver of England, the conqueror of Wales and Scotland, seems like an old Bretwalda or West-Saxon Basileus seated once more upon the throne of Cerdic and of Æthelstan.
  • Edward Augustus Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results. Volume III. The Reign of Harold and the Interregnum (1869), pp. 521-522

• With the single exception of the accession of Elizabeth, no such fortunate event ever occurred in English history as that which placed Edward I. upon his father's throne. By him the bases were settled upon which the English constitution rests. With marvellous sanity he comprehended the purport of every true thought which was floating on the surface of the age in which he lived. Perhaps no man, excepting Cromwell, possessed of equal capacity for government, ever showed less inclination to exercise arbitrary rule. He knew how to mould his subjects to his own wise will, not by crushing them into unwilling obedience, but by inspiring them with noble thoughts. When he first reached man's estate, he found his countrymen ready to rush headlong into civil war. When he died, he left England free as ever, but welded together into a compact and harmonious body. There was work enough left for future generations to do, but their work would consist merely in filling in the details of the outline which had been drawn once for all by a steady hand. All the main points of the constitution were accepted at his death. That the law was to be supreme; that that law was to be obtained from a body which should represent all the various classes and interests of the kingdom, and which was therefore most likely to look with fairness upon all; that power was to be lodged in the hands of the Government sufficient to combat against anarchy, whilst it was powerless to encroach upon the rights of the subjects—were means fully acknowledged by that great King, and brought out by him into practical operation.
  • Samuel Rawson Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Disgrace of Chief-Justice Coke. 1603–1616. Vol. I (1863), pp. 15-16

• The royal hero of this time was Edward I, a tall and relentless king who was said to be so fierce that he once literally scared a man to death. Under Edward's belligerent leadership, the English were finally induced to cease fighting one another and turn their attentions on their neighbours: Scotland and Wales. Edward I's brutal attempts to become the master not only of England but the whole of Britain are the subject of the 'Age of Arthur.' The popularity of Arthurian tales and relic-hunting increased as a new mythology of English kingship was explored. Edward cast himself as the inheritor of Arthur (originally a Welsh king) who sought to reunite the British Isles and usher in a great new age of royal rule. Despite flurries of outrage form his barons, who began to organize political opposition through the nascent political body known as parliament, Edward very nearly succeeded in his goals, and his influence over England's relations with Scotland and Wales has never entirely waned.
  • Dan Jones, The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England (2012), p. xxxv

• He was so handsome and great, so powerful in arms,
  That of him may one speak as long as the world lasts.
  For he had no equal as a knight in armour
  For vigour and valour, neither present nor future.
  • Peter Langtoft, quoted in The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, in French Verse, from the Earliest Period to the Death of King Edward I, Vol. II, ed. Thomas Wright (1868), p. 381

• On the 21st September [1274] Burnell was made Chancellor. From that date, and with the able assistance of that minister, began the series of legal reforms which have gained for Edward the title of the English Justinian; a title which, if it be meant to denote the importance and permanence of his legislation and the dignity of his position in legal history, no Englishman will dispute.
  • William Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, Volume II (1875), p. 105