“Edward established, confirmed, and settled the great charter and the charter of forests.
“He gave a mortal wound to the encroachments of the pope and his clergy, by limiting and establishing the bounds of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and by obliging the ordinary, to whom the goods of intestates at that time belonged, to discharge the debts of the deceased.
“He defined the limits of the several temporal courts of the highest jurisdiction, the king’s‐bench, common‐pleas, and exchequer, so that they might not interfere with each other’s proper business.
“He settled the boundaries of the inferior courts, in counties, hundred, and manors.
“He secured the property of the subject, by abolishing all arbitrary taxes and talliages levied without consent of parliament.
“He guarded the common justice of the kingdom from abuses, by giving up the royal prerogative of sending mandates to interfere in private causes.
“He settled the forms, solemnities, and effect of fines levied in the court of common‐pleas.
“He first established a repository for the public records of the kingdom.
“He improved upon the laws of king Alfred, by that great and orderly method of watch and ward, established by the statute of Winchester.
“He settled and reformed many abuses incident to tenures, by the statute of _Quia emptores_.
“He instituted a speedier way for the recovery of debts, by granting executions, not only upon goods and chattels, but also upon lands, by writ of elegit; a signal benefit to a trading people.
“He effectually provided for the recovery of advowsons as temporal rights.
“He closed the great gulf in which all the landed property of the kingdom was in danger of being swallowed, by his reiterated statutes of Mortmain.
“I might continue,” adds Sir William, “this catalogue much further; but, upon the whole, we may observe that the very scheme and model of the administration of common justice, between party and party, was entirely settled by this king.”
Legislation, then, and not military aggrandisement, was the work to which Edward gave himself; and to liken him to Justinian does him much less than justice. The Roman emperor lived at the close of a long period, during which Rome had abounded in laws, and in which the laws had grown too complex and voluminous. His merit is, that he collected and arranged them into a code. Edward’s position was wholly different. He was born at a period when England, then rising into the position of a nation, found itself without written laws and without a legislature; and he set himself to work, with clearness of vision and with largeness of heart, to supply both these wants. In the first of these merits he does not stand alone. Other rulers have seen the need of laws, and have set themselves to supply that need. But too often they have wished that the work should be theirs, the power theirs, and the merit theirs also. Now it is Edward’s peculiar glory that, from the very opening of his public life, he seemed to have seen and adopted the great truth which lies at the foundation of all “constitutions,” that “what concerns all should be by all approved,” and that “common perils should be met by remedies prescribed in common.” These words fell from him in 1295, but the sentiment contained in them is discernible in every step of his whole career.