HISTORICAL SUMMARY. EDWARD THE FIRST. EDWARD was crowned at Westminster, August 19th, 1274, with his Queen Eleanor. He immediately sent commissioners into different parts of England to redress grievances and reform abuses, which gave the people a good opinion of his reign. Two hundred and eighty Jews were hanged for clipping and coining, and a short time afterwards Edward ordered all the Jews to be seized and to be transported out of the kingdom. He also confiscated their effects. 1276.-Edward went to war with the Welsh. Their Prince Llewellyn was slain in battle, and Wales was annexed to the English kingdom. 1291. John Baliol, Robert Bruce, and the other competitors, having agreed to refer their respective claims to the crown of Scotland, to the decision of Edward, the States of Scotland met on the 12th of May, at Norham. Edward then desired them to acknowledge his sovereignty over Scotland: a proposition which astonished them so much, that they were silent. He chose to construe that silence into an acknowledgment of his right; and all the claimants having allowed his pretensions, every castle in the kingdom was delivered up to him. 1292.-Edward declared Baliol King of Scotland, and delivered him up the fortresses on his doing homage and swearing fealty to him. 1293.-Edward, having forced Baliol by acts of despotism into rebellion, invaded Scotland. 1296. During this year all Scotland was subdued, its strongholds taken, and Baliol defeated near Dunbar, and sent prisoner to the Tower of London. 1298. The Scotch having revolted under the conduct of William Wallace, Edward marched an army to the North. The Earl of Warren also collected an army in England, and marched into Scotland, but was entirely defeated by Wallace at Cambuskenneth. 1305.-Wallace was betrayed into Edward's hands, who sent him in chains to London, where he was executed on Tower-Hill as a rebel. Robert Bruce raised forces to resist the English, and drove them entirely out of Scotland. 1307.-Edward, while on his way to Scotland at the head of a powerful army, died at Carlisle. I T was a bright and balmy summer's night, and the moon was pouring a flood of the purest radiance on a landscape of unrivalled beauty. An ancient Gothic castle, embosomed in majestic woods, stood on the brow of a hill, at whose foot flowed the river Marne, glittering splendidly and tranquilly in the moonbeams. The river wound in many a shining link down the valley, and would have bounded the horizon, but that, on its opposite bank, in one dusky solid mass, towered the battlements of the City of Chalons. Beyond the outward wall of the castle was a gay parterre, adorned with innumerable flowers of every hue and odour, and fenced in with wooden palisades, into which opened four wickets. At one of these wickets stood a person clad in the garb of a minstrel, with a harp slung about his waist: but as the night breeze stirred the green mantle which formed his outward garment, the coat of mail beneath it, which it was intended to conceal, glittered brightly in the moonbeams. Two horses, richly caparisoned, were feeding at a short distance from him. He gazed often and anxiously towards the eastern turret of the castle, and at length began to exhibit signs of great anxiety and impatience. "Perchance," he said, "she doubts that I am true to my engagement. I will sing her favourite ditty to my harp, which will assure her that I am here; and should it be heard by any one else, it will be supposed that some wandering minstrel is greeting the lords of Marne with a lay as he passes by their venerable mansion." This resolution was no sooner formed than executed. The harper struck his instrument, and with a voice of considerable power and sweetness sang the following serenade : "Wake, lady, wake! the midnight moon The glow-worm lends its little light, Wake, lady, wake! the nightingale The leaves, by the soft night-wind stirr'd, Wake, lady, wake! thy lover waits, Wake, lady, wake! I have a wreath I've kept my plighted vow. Beneath thy casement here I stand Wake, lady, wake !-She wakes, she wakes! A prize more precious far than gold, The last stanza was improvised; for, just as the singer was concluding his song, a person in the habit of a page appeared at the wicket. The masculine attire, however, did not conceal the heaving bosom and the flowing ringlets of the seeming page, who sunk, exhausted with fear and anxiety, into the arms of the knight; he in the mean time warbled the concluding stanza of the serenade, and, suiting the action to the word, after tenderly embracing his companion, and assisting her to her saddle, he mounted his own, and both rode away rapidly in an opposite direction to that of the city of Chalons. "Sweetest Adelaide," said the knight, we must instantly proceed to the English camp. King Edward and his knights have, fortunately for us, declined the invitation of the Earl of Chalons to take up their quarters in the city, and preferred abiding in their tents; there thy habit will effectually conceal thee, and the gentle Adelaide shall for a short season wait upon her own true knight as his page, and that short attendance upon him will he afterwards repay with the service of a life devoted to her." "Gallant Eustace," said the lady, "with thee by my side, I ought to feel assured of happiness and safety; dismal forebodings, nevertheless, weigh down my heart. Oh! for the hour when the billows of the sea shall roll between me and my treacherous guardian, and the hated being with whom he would have me wed." "That hour, my sweetest," said the knight, "is near at hand. To-morrow is the third and last day of the tournament; and on the next day, King Edward and his gallant knights, whose superior prowess on the two preceding days has won them no good will in the minds of the Burgundians, will proceed on their way home to merry England; there, sweet Adelaide, the bride of Eustace de Mortimer will be a welcome guest at the court of the gallant Edward and the good Queen Eleanor." While the knight and the lady are pursuing their route to the English tents, we will take the opportunity of putting the reader in possession of some facts with which it is necessary that he should be acquainted. Eustace de Mortimer was a young and gallant Englishman, who was knighted on the field by King Henry the Third, after the battle of Evesham, for his services in contributing to that memorable victory; he afterwards accompanied Prince Edward in his expedition to the Holy Land. The English forces passed through the city of Chalons on their way, where they were joined by a party of Burgundians under the command of the Lord of Marne, to whose daughter Adelaide, Eustace de Mortimer had been betrothed. The lovers took a tender leave of each other, after they had exchanged protestations of constancy and fidelity, and after the Lord of Marne had commended his daughter to the guardianship and protection of his kinsman the Earl of Chalons. Edward and his little band of English performed prodigies of valour in the Holy Land. His fame and prowess, and the reputation of his great uncle, King Richard, struck terror into the hearts of the infidels. The withering influence of the climate, and the overwhelming superiority in the numbers of their enemies, nevertheless compelled the crusaders to conclude a truce with the Sultan and to return to Europe. The Burgundians preceded the English on their return homewards, after having lost their leader, the Lord of Marne, who was slain at the siege of Joppa. Edward, at the head of about five hundred followers, the wreck of the forces which he had led out of England, proceeded through Italy and France towards his native country. In Sicily he received intelligence of the death of his father, King Henry the Third; and that the Barons had all taken the oath of fealty to him, and desired his immediate presence in England, to take possession of the throne of his ancestors. As he passed through Burgundy, the Earl of Chalons requested his presence at a tournament which was to be made in the neighbourhood of that city, and even sent him a sort of challenge. Though a King of England might have honourably |