e wealth of the trader, the long wain of goods as it passed along
the highway, remained a tempting prey. Once, under cover of a mock
tournament of monks against canons, a band of country gentlemen succeeded
in introducing themselves into the great merchant fair at Boston; at
nightfall every booth was on fire, the merchants robbed and slaughtered,
and the booty carried off to ships which lay ready at the quay. Streams of
gold and silver, ran the tale of popular horror, flowed melted down the
gutters to the sea; "all the money in England could hardly make good the
loss." Even at the close of Edward's reign lawless bands of
"trail-bastons," or club-men, maintained themselves by general outrage,
aided the country nobles in their feuds, and wrested money and goods from
the great tradesmen.

[Sidenote: Edward and the Baronage]

The king was strong enough to face and imprison the warring earls, to hang
the chiefs of the Boston marauders, and to suppress the outlaws by rigorous
commissions. But the repression of baronial outrage was only a part of
Edward's policy in relation to the Baronage. Here, as elsewhere, he had to
carry out the political policy of his house, a policy defined by the great
measures of Henry the Second, his institution of scutage, his general
assize of arms, his extension of the itinerant judicature of the royal
judges. Forced by the first to an exact discharge of their military duties
to the Crown, set by the second in the midst of a people trained equally
with the nobles to arms, their judicial tyranny curbed and subjected to the
king's justice by the third, the barons had been forced from their old
standpoint of an isolated class to the new and nobler position of a
people's leaders. Edward watched jealously over the ground which the Crown
had gained. Immediately after his landing he appointed a commission of
enquiry into the judicial franchises then existing, and on its report (of
which the existing "Hundred-Rolls" are the result) itinerant justices were
sent in 1278 to discover by what right these franchises were held. The
writs of "quo warranto" were roughly met here and there. Earl Warenne bared
a rusty sword and flung it on the justices' table. "This, sirs," he said,
"is my warrant. By the sword our fathers won their lands when they came
over with the Conqueror, and by the sword we will keep them." But the king
was far from limiting himself to the mere carrying out of the plans of
Henry the Second.