s out of the land, that his people probably saw
him most plainly at once as a knight errant and a tender father of his
people.

Whatever the merits of this question, such a portrait of Edward was far
from false. He was the most just and conscientious type of mediaeval
monarch; and it is exactly this fact that brings into relief the new
force which was to cross his path and in strife with which he died.
While he was just, he was also eminently legal. And it must be
remembered, if we would not merely read back ourselves into the past,
that much of the dispute of the time was legal; the adjustment of
dynastic and feudal differences not yet felt to be anything else. In
this spirit Edward was asked to arbitrate by the rival claimants to the
Scottish crown; and in this sense he seems to have arbitrated quite
honestly. But his legal, or, as some would say, pedantic mind made the
proviso that the Scottish king as such was already under his suzerainty,
and he probably never understood the spirit he called up against him;
for that spirit had as yet no name. We call it to-day Nationalism.
Scotland resisted; and the adventures of an outlawed knight named
Wallace soon furnished it with one of those legends which are more
important than history. In a way that was then at least equally
practical, the Catholic priests of Scotland became especially the
patriotic and Anti-English party; as indeed they remained even
throughout the Reformation. Wallace was defeated and executed; but the
heather was already on fire; and the espousal of the new national cause
by one of Edward's own knights named Bruce, seemed to the old king a
mere betrayal of feudal equity. He died in a final fury at the head of a
new invasion upon the very border of Scotland. With his last words the
great king commanded that his bones should be borne in front of the
battle; and the bones, which were of gigantic size, were eventually
buried with the epitaph, "Here lies Edward the Tall, who was the hammer
of the Scots." It was a true epitaph, but in a sense exactly opposite to
its intention. He was their hammer, but he did not break but make them;
for he smote them on an anvil and he forged them into a sword.

That coincidence or course of events, which must often be remarked in
this story, by which (for whatever reason) our most powerful kings did
not somehow leave their power secure, showed itself in the next reign,
when the baronial quarrels were resumed and the northern