armonise with the constitution of Romano-German states, that
organic institutions should come into full force in mere antagonism to
the highest authority. They must coincide with the interests of that
authority, as was the case in England under Henry's warlike son Edward
I.

Without doubt Edward, who once more revived in the East the reputation
of the Plantagenet Kings for personal valour, would have preferred to
fight there for the interests of Christendom, he even speaks of it in
his will; or else he would have wished to recover from the French
crown the lands which his father had inherited, and which had passed
into French possession; but neither the one nor the other was
possible; another object was assigned to his energy and his ambition,
one more befitting an English king: he undertook to unite the whole
island under his sceptre.

In Wales, the conquest of which had been so often attempted and so
often failed, there lived at this time Prince Llewellyn, whose
personal beauty, cunning, and high spirit fitted him to be a brilliant
representative of the old British nationality. The bards, reviving the
old prophecies, promised him the ancient crown of Brutus; but when he
ventured out of the mountains, he was overpowered and fell in a
hand-to-hand conflict. The English crown was not to fall to his lot,
but Edward transferred the title of Prince of Wales to his own son.
The great cross of the Welsh, the crown of Arthur, fell into his
hands: he no longer tolerated the bards: their age passed away with
the Crusades.

From Wales Edward turned his arms against Scotland. There Columban had
in former days anointed as king a Scottish prince, who was also of
Keltic descent; how the German element nevertheless got the upper hand
not merely in the greatest part of the country, but also in the ruling
family, is the great problem of early Scottish history: a thoroughly
Germanic monarchy had arisen, but one which after it had once given a
home to the Anglo-Saxons who fled before the Normans, thought its
honour concerned in repelling all English influences. A disputed
succession gave Edward I an opportunity of reviving the claims of his
predecessors to the overlordship of Scotland: he gave the Scotch a
king, whom the Scotch rejected simply because he was the English
King's nominee. The war, which sometimes seemed ended--there were
times at which Edward could regard himself as the Lord of all
Albion,--ever blazed out again; above a