chaos. Endless and aimless were their struggles; putting nothing to the structure of advancing civilization—on the contrary, blotting out dark records by worse; disclosing to us, who read in the new and gentle light of a late refinement, a dreary waste, with hardly a glimmer of manhood or justice to relieve its sad expanse. But a time came in which a temporary period was to be put to such anarchy. A great king arose to vindicate a distressed and insulted sovereignty. Under his government a prostrate throne, a tur bulent nobility, and a restless populace were moulded alike to a fusion with each other and subjection to his will. Each element, though to each other hostile, and holding with each other few common bonds of sympathy, added a sinew to the strong arm which was to stretch forth and lay low the independence of a contiguous though stranger race.

EDWARD THE FIRST had in his youth rescued the crown from the presumptuous Leicester, and had replaced it upon the head of his weak but well-meaning father. He ascended the throne as the peculiar champion of the royal house of Plantagenet. He pursued the advantage thus gained by rapid and resistless measures, with a will which defied opposition, with a genius which laughed at obstacles. Before his vigorous exertions, faction sank back and ceased to live; the commonalty resumed the proper functions of quiet industry; the Church retired to its legitimate sphere of holy works; the Crown became the emblem of wise guardianship, order, and paramount authority. This most sagacious of monarchs made it his purpose to achieve two objects, reciprocal to each other, each useless without the other. These were, the erection of a single authority, and the union and diversion of

martial spirit. The former would bring the latter in subjection to one directing mind. The accomplishment of the latter would alone make the former permanent and effective for the general weal. Edward was possessed of a genius comprehensive, yet not disdainful of detail; an acuteness which perceived, and an energy which was determined to attain the highest end; moral not less than military courage; a heart regardless alike of flattery and of sympathetic feeling; and a conscience adopting, indeed, a lower standard of justice than is taught by our present lights, but which held to its own standard with constancy and with all faith.

He would not have been able, neither did he desire, to annihilate the predominating passion of his subjects. He sought, not its suppression, but to give it a new stimulus-to call it forth to a greater, because a united vigor, in the pursuit of conquest. The next phase, therefore, of the martial character of those early centuries, appears in the invasion of contiguous countries in the attempted subjection of Scotland and Wales. The history of those gallant conflicts has come down to us illuminated by the romantic exploits of Wallace and Bruce, and is the favorite theme of poetry, fiction, and provincial song. The significance of those conflicts is the proof they gave, not more of the amazing capacity of Edward, than the ripeness, the intensity, the absorbing zeal to which the fostered love of military glory had been educated. Opposed by the fierce persistency with which a rude people resist the effort to enthrall them, and by the wisdom and coolness of a genius naturally warlike, the English invaders failed of their purpose; at all events, had not attained it when their sovereign

was taken from them. But the wars, at least, opened a broad channel into which might be collected, and by means of which might be carried off to other regions, the wide-spread inundation which threatened to make complete the sad and barren

waste.

EDWARD THE SECOND inherited none of the conspicuous qualities of his father. He possessed neither the wisdom to perceive, the will to sustain, nor the courage to enforce the basis upon which royal power had been established. He not only failed to prosecute with success the invasion of Scotland; he lost, by his weak rule, the supremacy over his barons. In his reign, therefore, we discover the revival of intestine commotion-the resuscitation of faction, fratricide, and treason.

Unusual circumstances combined to make his occupation of the regal dignity the most unfortunate, perhaps, that is recorded in the history of any king; for not only was he encompassed by treacherous friends, secret and powerful enemies, a bankrupt exchequer, and by contemptuous subjects he was cursed by a cruel and ambitious wife, and by a son whose mind, in its earliest tutelage, was taught to scorn him. After in vain resisting a scandalous union of his foes with the nearest of his blood, and after leading a life of unparalleled misery, we cannot but regard the final act, his murder at the instance of the Queen, as much more fortunate for him than would have been the perplexities and agony of a prolonged existence.

The restraint of a single powerful government had been insufficient to retain under royal authority the spirit of rivalry and envious ambition. The suc

cession of an imbecile to a vigorous sovereign gave that spirit once more the motive as well as the opportunity for exercising its

power.

But the death of Edward the Second restored the throne to a competent directing will. His heir came into the possession an ardent, valorous, and ambitious youth. He had been from his earliest years destined as the champion around whom should assemble an insurgent army. He had studiously acquired an experience in and taste for military science. He had learned to love the din, the excitement, the pageantry of the battle-field. He had ascended the throne by the undoubted fiat of the popular will. The inhuman death of the father was forgotten, as men beheld the brilliant genius and chivalric bearing which thus early shone forth in the son.

His record as Prince of Wales was well toned to inspire the nation with admiration; and the promise of his early days was stamped a true prophet by a career splendid and successful beyond the memory of man. Mortimer, the favorite and paramour of the Queen Dowager Isabella, had been the guiding spirit of the rebellion and the regicide; and when the young Prince ascended the throne, and a Council of Regency was appointed by the Parliament, this presumptuous assassin attempted to transfer to his own hands, not indeed the ostensible, but the virtual power. He surrounded Edward by his own minions, gave the Queen Dowager extensive grants of domain, entered into treaties with foreign princes, refused to consult with the officers of State, and, to crown his various crimes with one which outstripped every other, by a cruel stratagem he caused the death of an uncle of the King, the mild and amiable Earl

of Kent. But he displayed in these deplorable misdeeds ignorance of the character of the young King. An opportunity occurred to rid the State of such an enemy, and to give evidence of the high spirit of young Edward. Mortimer and the Queen were holding Edward in a sort of honorable confinement at Nottingham Castle; but he, having formed the design of seizing the usurper, and having attached to himself the good offices of the governor of the castle, succeeded in introducing some of his adherents through a subterraneous passage. The Earl, not suspecting, was resting in an apartment adjoining that of the Queen, and was without difficulty seized. He was tried, convicted of high treason, and hanged like a felon. This assertion, by one so young, of his per sonal authority and the dignity of the realm, was followed up by measures marked by their vigor and justice. To be formidable abroad, he must possess himself of unquestioned authority at home. Stringent executions of justice upon criminals availed to quiet disturbance among the lower orders. The barons, finding the grandson fired by the same powerful will which had given success to the grandsire, became again the orderly vassals of the Crown. The Scottish wars were now renewed, the English hosts advancing and seizing the northern strongholds, anon retiring from victories which had yielded them only a resting-place in the midst of hostile clans; sometimes seeming to have riveted Scotland to the English dominion, then with miraculous celerity hurled back upon their native soil; often exulting in the downfall of Edinburgh, as often swiftly retreating to avert ruin from Durham and York.

But a mightier ambition than had stirred the zeal