ssionate appeal to their loyalty wrested a reluctant assent
to the prosecution, of the war, and in August Edward sailed for Flanders,
leaving his son regent of the realm. But the crisis had taught the need of
further securities against the royal power, and as Edward was about to
embark the barons demanded his acceptance of additional articles to the
Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing the nation without its
own consent. The king sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined the
two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding any levy of supplies
till the Great Charter with these clauses was again confirmed, and the
trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left
Edward helpless in the barons' hands. The Great Charter and the Charter of
the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at Ghent in November; and formal
pardon was issued to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Scotland]

The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any right to the
exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king
would no more take "such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of
the realm," the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or
"maltote" without the same assent, was the close of the great struggle
which had begun at Runnymede. The clauses so soon removed from the Great
Charter were now restored; and, evade them as they might, the kings were
never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely from
the general consent of their subjects. It was Scotland which had won this
victory for English freedom. At the moment when Edward and the earls stood
face to face the king saw his work in the north suddenly undone. Both the
justice and injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it. The wrath of the
Scots, already kindled by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch
livings and by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, was
fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and the repression of
feuds and cattle-lifting. The disbanding too of troops, which was caused by
the penury of the royal exchequer, united with the licence of the soldiery
who remained to quicken the national sense of wrong. The disgraceful
submission of their leaders brought the people themselves to the front. In
spite of a hundred years of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and
the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted No