The sorrow felt for queen Eleanor’s death was, apparently, general and sincere. Her name is connected with no political contention or intrigue; and she seems to have made no enemies. Rishanger, writing at the time of her death, styles her “this most saintly woman and queen;” and adds, somewhat hyperbolically, that she was like “a pillar that supported the whole state.” Walsingham, who wrote in the next age, described her more intelligibly, as “a woman pious, modest, pitiful, benevolent to all.” He adds, that “the sorrowful, everywhere, so far as her dignity allowed, she consoled, and those who were at variance she delighted to reconcile.” But her best eulogium is found in her consort’s grief. His penetration and sagacity, his native nobleness of soul would have rendered it impossible for him to love a mean and unworthy object. But his affection for her was not a mere youthful passion. It was after a companionship of five‐and‐thirty years that he gave his testimony to her worth; and that testimony was one which few women indeed in the whole world’s history have ever received or have ever merited.
[24] “Seldom,” says Mr. Pearson, “has a shameful and violent death been better merited than by a double‐dyed traitor like David, false by turns to his country and his king; nor could justice be better honoured than by making the last penalty of rebellion fall upon the guilty prince, rather than on his followers.”—“History of England,” vol. ii., p. 330.
[25] Tytler’s History of Scotland, vol. i., p. 431.
[26] Pearson’s Hist, of England, vol. ii., p. 336.
[27] Hoare’s edit. of Giraldus Cambrensis.
[28] Parry’s History of Parliaments, p. 54.
[29] This custom still exists, after the lapse of more than five hundred years, in some of the midland counties of England.
The autumn of the year 1290 was a solemn epoch in this great king’s life. In this autumn died his beloved Eleanor; in this autumn died, also, “the maiden of Norway,” the young queen of Scotland, whose death ushered in so many troubles.
Halcyon skies had for a whole quarter of a century gilded Edward’s course and prospects; but a few weeks sufficed to end the sunshine of his prosperous career. From the battle of Evesham, in 1265, to the death of his queen, and the opening of the Scottish controversy in 1290, his life had been one of great enjoyment, great harmony, and great usefulness. “Held in universal esteem at home,” and “famous throughout the world” for wisdom and valour, his lot might be regarded as one of no common prosperity. But this sad year, 1290, ended all this happiness. Clouds and storms arose, and though brief intervals of calm occurred, we find a king who was “slow to all manner of strife,” compelled in his fifty‐seventh year to don his armour and mount his horse, and set forth to meet a Scottish inroad, and from that time forth until his death in 1307, almost in every year we find him, in whom the infirmities of age must have begun to make themselves felt, in harness and in the saddle, sleeping at night by his horse’s side on the bare heath, working with his men in the laborious siege of a fortress, and encountering, all the time, what to such a man was by far more painful—treachery from professed friends, and from his foes, perpetual simulations of submission, followed by constant treasons and breaches of covenant, the moment the sword was lifted from their throat. We open, in this sad year, the second volume of Edward’s reign, but before we close the first, let us glance for a few moments at the past, and try once more to rectify the widespread error, or rather the constant misrepresentation, which shows to us this great king as, by choice, a man of war; when he was, more than most other sovereigns, a man of peace.