against the
might of England. Then let him be hung, drawn, and quartered, his
head sent to London, and his limbs distributed between four Scotch
cities."

"I go, sir king," Archie said, as the attendants advanced to seize
him, "and at the end of the week I will meet you before the throne
of God, for you, methinks, will have gone thither before me, and
there will I tax you with all your crimes, with the slaughter of
tens of thousands of Scottish men, women, and children, with cities
destroyed and countries wasted, and with the murder in cold blood
of a score of noble knights whose sole offence was that they fought
for their native country."

With these words Archie turned and walked proudly from the king's
presence. An involuntary murmur of admiration at his fearless bearing
escaped from the knights and nobles assembled round the couch of
the dying monarch.

When, two days later, Archie entered the gates of Berwick Castle
the bells of the city were tolling, for a horseman had just ridden
in with the news that Edward had expired on the evening before,
being the 6th day of July, 1307, just at the moment when he was
on the point of starting with the great army he had assembled to
crush out the insurrection in Scotland.

So deep was his hate for the people who had dared to oppose his will
that when dying he called before him his eldest son, and in the
presence of his barons caused him to swear upon the saints that so
soon as he should be dead his body should be boiled in a cauldron
until the flesh should be separated from the bones, after which the
flesh should be committed to the earth, but the bones preserved,
and that, as often as the people of Scotland rebelled, the military
array of the kingdom should be summoned and the bones carried at
the head of the army into Scotland. His heart he directed should
be conveyed to and deposited in the Holy Land.

So died Edward I, a champion of the Holy Sepulchre, King of England,
Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitaine, conqueror of Wales, and would
be conqueror of Scotland. In many respects his reign was a great
and glorious one, for he was more than a great conqueror, he was,
to England, a wise and noble king; and taken altogether he was
perhaps the greatest of the Plantagenets.

Historians have striven to excuse and palliate his conduct toward
Scotland. They have glossed over his crimes and tried to explain
away the records of his deeds of savage atrocity, and to show that
hi