as succeeded by Robert
Burnell, who, though foiled in his quest of Canterbury, obtained an
adequate standing by his preferment to the bishopric of Bath and Wells.
For the eighteen years of life which still remained to him, Bishop
Burnell held the chancery and possessed the chief place in Edward's
counsels. The whole of this period was marked by a constant legislative
activity which ceased so soon after Burnell's death that it is tempting
to assign at least as large a part of the law-making of the reign to
the minister as to the sovereign. A consummate lawyer and diplomatist,
Burnell served Edward faithfully. Nor was his fidelity impaired either
by the laxity which debarred him from higher ecclesiastical preferment
or by his ambitious endeavours to raise the house of Shropshire squires
from which he sprang into a great territorial family. Edward gave him
his absolute confidence and was blind even to his defects.

The first general parliament of the reign to which the king summoned
the commons was held at Westminster in the spring of 1275. Its work was
the statute of Westminster the First, a comprehensive measure of many
articles which covered almost the whole field of legislation, and is
especially noteworthy for the care which its compilers took to uphold
sound administration and put down abuses. Not less important was the
provision of an adequate revenue for the debt-burdened king. The same
parliament made Edward a permanent grant of a custom on wool,
wool-fells, and leather, which remained henceforth a chief source of
the regular income of the crown. The later imposition of further duties
soon caused men to describe the customs of 1275 as the "Great and
Ancient Custom". It was significant of the economic condition of
England that the great custom was a tax on exports, not imports, and
that, with the exception of leather, it was a tax on raw materials.
Granted the more willingly since the main incidence of it was upon the
foreign merchants, who bought up English wool for the looms of Flanders
and Brabant, the custom proved a source of revenue which could easily
be manipulated, increased, and assigned in advance to the Italian
financiers, willing to lend money to a necessitous king. A new step in
our financial history was attained when this tax on trade steps into
the place so long held by the taxes on land, from which the Normans and
Angevins had derived their enormous revenue.

The statute of Westminster the First ha