EDWARD I. OF ENGLAND 113 outlawry. At the Salisbury parliament in February, 1297, the great barons also refused to take part in foreign war, while the merchants were exasperated be- cause their wool had been seized. A compromise was soon effected with the clergy, and a temporary illegal grant for the immediate purposes of the war was procured from the nobles and commons who were with him. Edward sailed for Flanders, and at Ghent confirmed the Charter with such supplementary clauses as were demanded by his refractory nobles, thus finally establishing the right of the people themselves to determine taxation. This is only second in importance to Magna Charta itself as a landmark in the history of England. The suspicious fears of his people compelled Edward to repeat the confirmation at London in 1300, and again at Lincoln in 1301 an in- sult to his honesty which the king never forgave, and to which his subsequent banishment of Winchelsea was due. In 1303, and again the year after, Edward, in desperate straits for money, levied, by agreement with the foreign merchants, some new customs the beginning of import duties, without consent of the estates, and collected a tallage from the royal demesne; and again, in 1305, he obtained from Clement V. a formal absolution from the obligations of 1297. It is true that the first two measures were contrary to the spirit rather than the let- ter of his promise, and that he never sought to avail himself of the dangerous power granted him by the papal absolution, yet these three facts, says Bishop Stubbs, " remain on record as illustrations of Edward's chief weakness, the legal captiousness, which was the one drawback on his greatness." It was the dangerous aspect of affairs in Scotland that forced the king to sub- mit so easily to the demands of his barons. Already, in the spring of 1297, Wal- lace, without any countenance from the Scottish nobility, had commenced a guerilla warfare, and his handful of desperate men soon increased into an army, which completely defeated Earl Warenne and Cressingham at Cambuskenneth (Stirling Bridge), in September, 1297, and ravaged England, with the most atrocious cruelties, from Newcastle to Carlisle. Edward's expedition to Flan- ders had been a failure, but he hastened to conclude a truce, so as to find time to chastise the Scqts, cementing it by his betrothal to Philip's sister Margaret. The good Queen Eleanor had been already dead nine years. Meantime, Wallace's success had merely earned him the bitter jealousy of the Scottish nobles, and his power was finally broken in the disastrous defeat by Ed- ward's army at Falkirk in July, 1298. The king had two of his ribs broken by a kick from his horse on the morning of the battle, but rode throughout the day as if unhurt. The struggle lingered on some years under various leaders, as Ed- ward found his energy paralyzed the while by the intrigues of Philip, and the con- stitutional struggle with his barons. Pope Boniface, in 1301, put forth a claim to the over-lordship of Scotland, which was repudiated by the whole body of the estates at Lincoln. It was not till the June of 1303 that the king was able to re- sume his conquest. Accompanied by a fleet carrying his supplies, he penetrated again into the far North, tarried a while in Dunfermline, and settled the kingdom after the reduction of Stirling, the last place of strength that held out. In 1305 8
