t Edward practically in possession of the royal power; and
his influence at once made itself felt. There was no attempt to return to
the misrule of Henry's reign, to his projects of continental aggrandizement
or internal despotism. The constitutional system of government for which
the Barons had fought was finally adopted by the Crown, and the Parliament
of Marlborough which assembled in November 1267 renewed the provisions by
which the baronage had remedied the chief abuses of the time in their
Provisions of Oxford and Westminster. The appointment of all officers of
state indeed was jealously reserved to the crown. But the royal expenditure
was brought within bounds. Taxation was only imposed with the assent of the
Great Council. So utterly was the land at rest that Edward felt himself
free to take the cross in 1268 and to join the Crusade which was being
undertaken by St. Lewis of France. He reached Tunis only to find Lewis dead
and his enterprise a failure, wintered in Sicily, made his way to Acre in
the spring of 1271, and spent more than a year in exploits which want of
force prevented from growing into a serious campaign. He was already on his
way home when the death of Henry the Third in November 1272 called him to
the throne.

CHAPTER IV
EDWARD THE FIRST
1272-1307

[Sidenote: Edward's Temper]

In his own day and among his own subjects Edward the First was the object
of an almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national
king. At the moment when the last trace of foreign conquest passed away,
when the descendants of those who won and those who lost at Senlac blended
for ever into an English people, England saw in her ruler no stranger but
an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair
or the English name which linked him to our earlier kings. Edward's very
temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the
typical representative of the race he ruled, like them wilful and
imperious, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged,
stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but like them, too,
just in the main, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant
of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious. It is
this oneness with the character of his people which parts the temper of
Edward from what had till now been the temper of his house. He inherited
indeed from the Angevins their fie