ses sustained by the Church in Wales, with
a view to giving it compensation.

Nor did Edward neglect appeals to the national sentiment. The supposed
body of Constantine was disinterred at Carnarvon, and received
honorable burial in a church. The crown of Arthur and a piece of the
holy Cross, once the property of the Welsh princes, were added to the
King's regalia. It was probably by design that Queen Eleanor was
confined at Carnarvon, April 25, 1284, of a prince whom the Welsh
might claim as a countryman.[74] At last, having lingered for more
than a year about the principality, Edward celebrated the consummation
of his conquests, August 1, 1284, by a splendid tournament at Nefyn,
to which nobles and knights flocked from every part of England and
even from Gascony. It was even more a demonstration of strength than a
pageant.

The cost of the Welsh campaign must have been enormous, and it is
difficult to understand how Edward met it. But no sort of expedient
was spared. Commissioners were sent through England and Ireland to beg
money of clergy and laity. Next, the cities of Guienne and Gascony
were applied to; then, the money that had been collected for a crusade
was taken out of the consecrated places where it was deposited. The
treasures put in the Welsh churches were freely confiscated.
Nevertheless, the Parliament of Shrewsbury granted the King a
thirtieth, from which, however, the loans previously advanced were
deducted. In return for this the King passed the Statute of Merchants,
which made provisions for the registration of merchants' debts, their
recovery by distraint, and the debtor's imprisonment. The clergy had
at first been less compliant when the King applied to them for a
tenth. The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, April, 1283,
replied that they were impoverished; that they still owed a fifteenth,
and that they expected to be taxed again by the Pope. They also
reminded him bitterly of the Statute of Mortmain. Ultimately the
matter was compromised by the grant of a twentieth, November, 1283.

[Illustration: King Edward I fulfills his promise of giving the Welsh
"a native prince who could not speak one word of English" Painting by
Ph. Morris.]

[Illustration.]

For a few years Wales was still an insecure portion of the English
dominion. In 1287, Rees ap Meredith, whose services to Edward had been
largely rewarded with grants of land and a noble English wife,
commenced levying war against the k