erary
ability, but of later date, and strongly Lancastrian in tone. For the
struggle between Edward and Warwick, the valuable narrative of "The Arrival
of Edward the Fourth" (Camden Society) may be taken as the official account
on the royal side. The Paston Letters are the first instance in English
history of a family correspondence, and throw great light on the social
condition of the time.

CHAPTER I
EDWARD II
1307-1327

[Sidenote: Parliament and the Kings]

In his calling together the estates of the realm Edward the First
determined the course of English history. From the first moment of its
appearance the Parliament became the centre of English affairs. The hundred
years indeed which follow its assembly at Westminster saw its rise into a
power which checked and overawed the Crown.

Of the kings in whose reigns the Parliament gathered this mighty strength
not one was likely to look with indifference on the growth of a rival
authority, and the bulk of them were men who in other times would have
roughly checked it. What held their hand was the need of the Crown. The
century and a half that followed the gathering of the estates at
Westminster was a time of almost continual war, and of the financial
pressure that springs from war. It was indeed war that had gathered them.
In calling his Parliament Edward the First sought mainly an effective means
of procuring supplies for that policy of national consolidation which had
triumphed in Wales and which seemed to be triumphing in Scotland. But the
triumph in Scotland soon proved a delusive one, and the strife brought
wider strifes in its train. When Edward wrung from Balliol an
acknowledgement of his suzerainty he foresaw little of the war with France,
the war with Spain, the quarrel with the Papacy, the upgrowth of social, of
political, of religious revolution within England itself, of which that
acknowledgement was to be the prelude. But the thicker troubles gathered
round England the more the royal treasury was drained, and now that
arbitrary taxation was impossible the one means of filling it lay in a
summons of the Houses. The Crown was chained to the Parliament by a tie of
absolute need. From the first moment of parliamentary existence the life
and power of the estates assembled at Westminster hung on the question of
supplies. So long as war went on no ruler could dispense with the grants
which fed the war and which Parliament alone could afford. But it