though the Saracen was
superficially more civilized than the Christian, it was a sound instinct
which saw him also to be in spirit a destroyer. In the simpler case of
northern heathenry the civilization spread with a simplier progress. But
it was not till the end of the Middle Ages, and close on the
Reformation, that the people of Prussia, the wild land lying beyond
Germany, were baptized at all. A flippant person, if he permitted
himself a profane confusion with vaccination, might almost be inclined
to suggest that for some reason it didn't "take" even then.

The barbarian peril was thus brought under bit by bit, and even in the
case of Islam the alien power which could not be crushed was evidently
curbed. The Crusades became hopeless, but they also became needless. As
these fears faded the princes of Europe, who had come together to face
them, were left facing each other. They had more leisure to find that
their own captaincies clashed; but this would easily have been
overruled, or would have produced a petty riot, had not the true
creative spontaneity, of which we have spoken in the local life, tended
to real variety. Royalties found they were representatives almost
without knowing it; and many a king insisting on a genealogical tree or
a title-deed found he spoke for the forests and the songs of a whole
country-side. In England especially the transition is typified in the
accident which raised to the throne one of the noblest men of the Middle
Ages.

Edward I. came clad in all the splendours of his epoch. He had taken the
Cross and fought the Saracens; he had been the only worthy foe of Simon
de Montfort in those baronial wars which, as we have seen, were the
first sign (however faint) of a serious theory that England should be
ruled by its barons rather than its kings. He proceeded, like Simon de
Montfort, and more solidly, to develop the great mediaeval institution of
a parliament. As has been said, it was superimposed on the existing
parish democracies, and was first merely the summoning of local
representatives to advise on local taxation. Indeed its rise was one
with the rise of what we now call taxation; and there is thus a thread
of theory leading to its latter claims to have the sole right of taxing.
But in the beginning it was an instrument of the most equitable kings,
and notably an instrument of Edward I. He often quarrelled with his
parliaments and may sometimes have displeased his people (which has
n