A ring of great castles across the north of a conquered principality, most of them designed by a master mason from Savoy (1277–1295)
Caernarfon, Conwy, Harlech and Beaumaris, by James of St George; now a World Heritage Site.
Monarchs · Plantagenet
Edward I
1239–1307
House of Plantagenet — Longshanks, the Hammer of the Scots
In office: 1272–1307
Edward I conquered Wales, ringing it with castles and annexing it by the Statute of Rhuddlan in 1284, and spent his last decade trying and failing to do the same to Scotland. At home he was a great legislator, issuing statutes that reshaped land law, and he summoned the Model Parliament of 1295. He expelled England's Jewish population in 1290, the same year his queen Eleanor of Castile died and was commemorated with a line of memorial crosses. He died at Burgh by Sands in 1307, marching north once more.
How to spot them
- ▸Longshanks, for his height; the tomb inscription Scottorum Malleus — Hammer of the Scots
- ▸The Welsh castles of James of St George; the Statute of Rhuddlan; the first English Prince of Wales
- ▸The Edict of Expulsion, 1290; the Eleanor crosses; the Model Parliament, 1295
- ▸The Great Cause, John Balliol, the Stone of Scone, Wallace and Bruce
In the reign
A statute issued at a Flintshire castle annexing a conquered principality to the English crown and dividing it into shires (1284)
The Statute of Rhuddlan (Statute of Wales), following the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in 1282.
An edict expelling an entire religious minority from England, not reversed for 366 years (1290)
The Edict of Expulsion; readmission came under Cromwell in 1656.
Twelve stone crosses raised at the overnight resting places of a queen's funeral cortège from Lincolnshire to Westminster (1291–1294)
The Eleanor crosses for Eleanor of Castile; three survive, and Charing Cross takes its name from the last.
A parliament of 1295 that brought together clergy, magnates, knights of the shire and burgesses, later treated as the template (1295)
The Model Parliament; its writ quoted the maxim that what touches all should be approved by all.
The removal of a Scottish coronation stone from its abbey to Westminster, where it sat under the coronation chair for 700 years (1296)
The Stone of Scone, returned to Scotland in 1996.
Arbitration among thirteen competitors for the Scottish crown, choosing John Balliol and then treating him as a vassal (1291–1292)
The Great Cause; Balliol was stripped of his regalia in 1296, earning the name Toom Tabard.
Death on the Solway marshes at Burgh by Sands while marching north yet again, and a plain marble tomb at Westminster (1307)
7 July 1307; the tomb bears the painted inscription 'Edwardus Primus Scottorum Malleus hic est. Pactum Serva'.
Quick-fire facts
- •Called Longshanks for his height, reportedly about 6 feet 2 inches
- •He was on crusade when his father died in 1272 and was not crowned until August 1274
- •Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri in December 1282
- •His son, the future Edward II, born at Caernarfon in 1284, was created Prince of Wales in 1301
- •Major statutes of his reign include Mortmain (1279), Quo Warranto, Quia Emptores (1290) and Winchester (1285)
- •William Wallace beat an English army at Stirling Bridge in 1297; Edward beat him at Falkirk in 1298 and had him executed in 1305
- •His first wife was Eleanor of Castile (d. 1290), his second Margaret of France, sister of Philip IV
- •He asked that his bones be carried at the head of the army into Scotland; instead he was buried at Westminster Abbey
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Sources
- The Royal Household — Edward I 'Longshanks' (r. 1272–1307)
- Michael Prestwich — Edward I