chapter 10._

"Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of design, it may still be questioned whether the design was altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by circumstances and developed by a series of careful experiments. ... The design, as interpreted by the result, was the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three estates. ... This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy. ... But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which he failed to coerce."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15, section 244 and chapter 14, section 180-182._

_W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 7._

"The 13th century was above all things the age of the lawyer and the legislator. The revived study of Roman law had been one of the greatest results of the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century. The enormous growth of the universities in the early part of the thirteenth century was in no small measure due to the zeal, ardour and success of their legal faculties. From Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great impulse towards the systematic and scientific study of the Civil Law of Rome. ... The northern lawyers were inspired by their emulation of the civilians and canonists to look at the rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical eyes. They sought to give it more system and method, to elicit its leading principles, and to coordinate its clashing rules into a harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil and Canon Law. In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote the first systematic exposition of English law in the reign of Henry III. The judges and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to put the principles of Bracton into practice. Edward himself strove with no small success to carry on the same great work by new legislation. ... His well-known title of the 'English Justinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first sight. He did not merely resemble Justinian in being a great legislator. Like the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at the end of a long period of legal development, and sought to arrange and systematise what had gone before him. Some of his great laws are almost in form attempts at the systematic codification of various branches of feudal custom. ... Edward was greedy for power, and a constant object of his legislation was the exaltation of the royal prerogative. But he nearly always took a broad and comprehensive view of his authority, and thoroughly grasped the truth that the best interests of king and kingdom were identical. He wished to rule the state, but was willing to take his subjects into partnership with him, if they in return recognised his royal rights. ... The same principles which influenced Edward as a lawgiver stand out clearly in his relations to every class of his subjects. ... It was the greatest work of Edward's life to make a permanent and ordinary part of the machinery of English government, what in his father's time had been but the temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer or the last despairing effort of a revolutionary partisan. Edward I. is--so much as one man can be--the creator of the historical English constitution. It is true that the materials were ready to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts of the constitution, though already roughly worked out, were ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his death the national council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained a systematic representation of the three estates. All over Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a system of estates. The various classes of the community, which had a separate social status and a common political interest, became organised communities, and sent their representatives to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the three estates of later history. ... It was with no intention of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his financial condition before the representatives of his people. ... The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and borough representatives together in a single estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their interests as more in common with the traders of lower social status than with the greater landlords with whom in most continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened and deepened the main current of the national life."

_T. F. Tout, Edward the First,