erwick, and saw in William Wallace nothing but a common
robber.

[Sidenote: Influence of Legality]

The French notion of chivalry had hardly more power over Edward's mind than
the French conception of kingship, feudality, and law. The rise of a lawyer
class was everywhere hardening customary into written rights, allegiance
into subjection, loose ties such as commendation into a definite vassalage.
But it was specially through French influence, the influence of St. Lewis
and his successors, that the imperial theories of the Roman Law were
brought to bear upon this natural tendency of the time. When the "sacred
majesty" of the Caesars was transferred by a legal fiction to the royal
head of a feudal baronage every constitutional relation was changed. The
"defiance" by which a vassal renounced service to his lord became treason,
his after resistance "sacrilege." That Edward could appreciate what was
sound and noble in the legal spirit around him was shown in his reforms of
our judicature and our Parliament; but there was something as congenial to
his mind in its definiteness, its rigidity, its narrow technicalities. He
was never wilfully unjust, but he was too often captious in his justice,
fond of legal chicanery, prompt to take advantage of the letter of the law.
The high conception of royalty which he borrowed from St. Lewis united with
this legal turn of mind in the worst acts of his reign. Of rights or
liberties unregistered in charter or roll Edward would know nothing, while
his own good sense was overpowered by the majesty of his crown. It was
incredible to him that Scotland should revolt against a legal bargain which
made her national independence conditional on the terms extorted from a
claimant of her throne; nor could he view in any other light but as treason
the resistance of his own baronage to an arbitrary taxation which their
fathers had borne.

[Sidenote: His Moral Grandeur]

It is in the anomalies of such a character as this, in its strange mingling
of justice and wrong-doing, of grandeur and littleness, that we must look
for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in
Edward's conduct and policy. But what none of these anomalies can hide from
us is the height of moral temper which shows itself in the tenor of his
rule. Edward was every inch a king; but his notion of kingship was a lofty
and a noble one. He loved power; he believed in his sovereign rights and
clung to them wit