English landowners, barons, clergy, knights, and others,
this became the exemplar of future parliaments.
The English army moved into Scotland and laid
siege to the city of Berwick on the River Tweed. A
month later, Balliol denounced Edward openly, calling
attention to the English monarch’s alleged “grievous and
intolerable injuries... for instance by summoning us
outside [of ] our realm... as you own whim dictated
... and so... we recounce [sic] the fealty and hom-
age which we have done to you.” The English met the
Scottish, under the earl of Athol, at Dunbar on 27 April
1296, a battle in which the Scottish lost 10,000 dead
and wounded. Emboldened, Edward’s army raced to-
ward Moray Firth, laying waste to Scottish castles and
seizing important treasures such as the Stone of Scone
(pronounced “scoon”), a rock on which Scottish kings
had been crowned. (Edward placed it in Westminster
Abbey; it was not returned to Scotland until 1996.) On
28 August 1296, Edward held a parliamentary meeting
at Berwick and invited Scottish landowners and barons.
There, more than 2,000 signed a proclamation declaring
their allegiance to Edward and against John of Balliol,
who fled and spent the remainder of his life in exile.
Sir William Wallace took Balliol’s place as the
leader of the Scottish opposition to Edward. In a series
of battles, his forces retook control of much of Scotland
before Edward again marched an army into Scotland
and defeated Wallace’s forces at Falkirk on 22 July 1298.
Scottish losses were estimated at over 5,000 dead and
wounded, compared to 200 English dead. Wallace fled
and stayed on the run until 1305, when he was betrayed,
taken to London, and brutally executed.
In 1304, tired of fighting Scottish armies, Ed-
ward called a parliament, including Scottish members,
at which he set out a proposal for a new government
in Scotland, autonomous from England. robert the
bruce, brother of former Scottish leader Edward Bruce,
was a member of the council, but in 1306 he rebelled and
was crowned king of Scotland. Despite his advanced age,
Edward again summoned an army to march into Scot-
land, but on the journey north, his health failed. As his
army moved toward Burgh-on-Sands, he died on 7 July
1307 at the age of 68. His body was returned to London
and given a royal funeral at Westminster Abbey, where
he was laid to rest. Although Edward had requested that
his bones be disinterred and carried into battle against
the Scottish, his body was sealed into its tomb and never
again disturbed. In the 17th century, graffiti reading
Pactum serva (keep truth) and Scotorum malleus (ham-
mer of the Scots) was written on the tomb.
Edward left a lasting legacy in English history—not
just for his calling of Parliament, which still meets to
this day, but for laws that set the groundwork for the
English law system. These included the First Statute of
Westminster (1275), which listed a series of laws into
one model code; the Statute of Gloucester (1278) and
Statute of Quo Warranto (1290), both of which regu-
lated feudal administration; the Second Statute of West-
minster (1285), which confirmed the right of families to
hold onto estates; and the Third Statute of Westminster,
or Quia Emptores (1290), which held that land given
by the king could not be rented or sold off, a process
called subinfeudation. Historian David Hilliam, in his
compendium of biographies of English monarchs, writes
of Edward: “What a pity it is that we have no effigy,
no picture, no visual record of this great king! Even his
tomb in Westminster Abbey is a vast ugly lump, hidden
in the shadows, with its famous inscription ‘Hammer
of the Scots’ scrawled in a messy way on the side—just
a bit of 17th-century graffiti on a fourteenth-century
stone coffin. The result is that many people hardly know
or remember one of England’s great kings.” However,
historian James Lucas concludes that “Edward I is gen-
erally regarded as the greatest warrior king in medieval
England.”References: Seeley, Robert Benton, The Life and Reign of
Edward I (London: Seeley, Jackson & Halliday, 1872); Sal-
zman, Louis Francis, Edward I (London: Praeger, 1968);
“Hilliam, David, “Edward I,” in Kings, Queens, Bones and
Bastards: Who’s Who in the English Monarchy from Egbert
to Elizabeth II (Thrupp, Stroud, Gloucestershire, United
Kingdom: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 46–47; Hunt, Wil-
liam, “Edward I,” in The Dictionary of National Biogra-
phy, 22 vols., 8 supps., edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and
Sir Sidney Lee, et al. (London: Oxford University Press,
1921–22), VI:432–456; Morris, John E., The Welsh Wars
of Edward I: A Contribution to Mediaeval Military His-
tory, Based upon Original Documents (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1901); Powicke, Sir Frederick, et al., The Battle
of Lewes, 1264 (Lewes, U.K.: Friends of Lewes Society,
1964); Letter from Sir Joseph de Cancy, Knight of the Hospi-
tal of St. John of Jerusalem, to King Edward I. (1281), and
Letter from King Edward I. to Sir Joseph (1282).... (Lon-
don: The Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, 1890), 14–15;
“Edward I,” in Command: From Alexander the Great to eDwARD i