sentenced him to a traitor's death. The submission of the lesser chieftains
soon followed: and the country was secured by the building of strong
castles at Conway and Caernarvon, and the settlement of English barons on
the confiscated soil. The Statute of Wales which Edward promulgated at
Rhuddlan in 1284 proposed to introduce English law and the English
administration of justice and government into Wales. But little came of the
attempt; and it was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that the country
was actually incorporated with England and represented in the English
Parliament. What Edward had really done was to break the Welsh resistance.
The policy with which he followed up his victory (for the "massacre of the
bards" is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and though two later
rebellions and a ceaseless strife of the natives with the English towns in
their midst showed that the country was still far from being reconciled to
its conquest, it ceased to be any serious danger to England for a hundred
years.

[Sidenote: New Legislation]

From the work of conquest Edward again turned to the work of legislation.
In the midst of his struggle with Wales he had shown his care for the
commercial classes by a Statute of Merchants in 1283, which provided for
the registration of the debts of leaders and for their recovery by
distraint of the debtor's goods and the imprisonment of his person. The
close of the war saw two measures of even greater importance. The second
Statute of Westminster which appeared in 1285 is a code of the same sort as
the first, amending the Statutes of Mortmain, of Merton, and of Gloucester,
as well as the laws of dower and advowson, remodelling the system of
justices of assize, and curbing the abuses of manorial jurisdiction. In the
same year appeared the greatest of Edward's measures for the enforcement of
public order. The Statute of Winchester revived and reorganized the old
institutions of national police and national defence. It regulated the
action of the hundred, the duty of watch and ward, and the gathering of the
fyrd or militia of the realm as Henry the Second had moulded it into form
in his Assize of Arms. Every man was bound to hold himself in readiness,
duly armed, for the king's service in case of invasion or revolt, and to
pursue felons when hue and cry was made after them. Every district was held
responsible for crimes committed within its bounds; the gates of each town
were to be sh