The only response made to his efforts was a fantastic proposal that they should fight out their differences in a tournament at Bordeaux with him as umpire, but Edward refused to have anything to do with the pseudo-chivalrous venture.  At last, in 1285, Philip III. lent himself to his uncle’s purpose so far as to lead a papalist crusade over the Pyrenees.  The movement was a failure.  Philip lost his army and his life in Aragon, and his son and successor, Philip IV., at once withdrew from the undertaking.  In the year of the crusade of Aragon, Charles of Anjou, Peter of Aragon, and Martin IV. died.  With them the struggles, which had begun with the attack on Frederick II, reached their culminating point.  Their successors continued the quarrel with diminished forces and less frantic zeal, and so gave Edward his best chance to pose as the arbiter of Europe.  Though Edward’s continental policy lay so near his heart that it can hardly be passed over, it was fuller of vain schemes than of great results.  Yet it was not altogether fruitless, since twelve years of resolute and moderate action raised England, which under Henry III. was of no account in European affairs, to a position only second to that of France, and that under conditions more nearly approaching the modern conception of a political balance and a European state system than feudalism, imperialism, and papalism had hitherto rendered possible.

In domestic policy, seven years of monotonous administration had in a way prepared for vigorous reforms.  Edward’s return to England in 1274 was quickly followed by the dismissal of Walter of Merton, the chancellor of the years of quiescence.  He was succeeded by Robert Burnell, who, though foiled in his quest of Canterbury, obtained an adequate standing by his preferment to the bishopric of Bath and Wells.  For the eighteen years of life which still remained to him, Bishop Burnell held the chancery and possessed the chief place in Edward’s counsels.  The whole of this period was marked by a constant legislative activity which ceased so soon after Burnell’s death that it is tempting to assign at least as large a part of the law-making of the reign to the minister as to the sovereign.  A consummate lawyer and diplomatist, Burnell served Edward faithfully.  Nor was his fidelity impaired either by the laxity which debarred him from higher ecclesiastical preferment or by his ambitious endeavours to raise the house of Shropshire squires from which he sprang into a great territorial family.  Edward gave him his absolute confidence and was blind even to his defects.