stices
of _nisi prius_, appointed to travel through the shires three times a
year to hear civil causes. This was part of the simplification and
concentration of judicial machinery, whereby Edward made tolerable the
circuit system which under Henry III. had been a prolific source of
grievances.

While in the statute of Westminster Edward prepared for the future, the
companion statute of Winchester, the work of the autumn parliament,
revived the jurisdiction of the local courts; reformed the ancient
system of watch and ward, and brought the ancient system of popular
courts into harmony with the jurisdiction emanating from the crown,
which had gone so far towards superseding it. This measure marks the
culmination of Edward's activity as a lawgiver. During the five next
years there were no more important statutes.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE CONQUEST OF NORTH WALES.

The treaty of Shrewsbury of 1267 had not brought enduring peace to
Wales and the march. The pacification was in essentials a simple
recognition of accomplished facts, but, so far as it involved promises
of restitution and future good behaviour, its provisions were barely
carried out, even in the scanty measure in which any medieval treaty
was executed. Moreover, the treaty by no means covered the whole ground
of variance between the English and the Welsh. like the treaty of Paris
of 1259, it was as much the starting-point of new difficulties as the
solution of old ones. Many troublesome questions of detail had been
postponed for later settlement, and no serious effort was made to
grapple with them. Even during the life of the old king, there had been
war in the south between the Earl of Gloucester and Llewelyn. However,
the Welsh prince paid, with fair regularity, the instalments of the
indemnity to which he had been bound, and there was no disposition on
the part of the English authorities to question the basis of the
settlement. Even the marchers maintained an unwonted tranquillity. They
had lost so much during the recent war that they had no great desire to
take up arms again. Llewelyn himself was the chief obstacle to peace.
The brilliant success of his arms and diplomacy seems somewhat to have
turned his brain. Visions of a wider authority constantly floated
before him. His bards prophesied the expulsion of the Saxon, and he had
done such great deeds in the first twenty years of his reign, that a
man of more practical temperament might have been forgi