and one of the first members of the third estate of whose individual action history has preserved any trace.  The commons demanded a fresh confirmation of the charters; the punishment of the royal ministers who had infringed them, or the Articuli super cartas of the previous session, and the completion of the proposed disafforestments.  In addition, the prelates declared that they could not assent to any tax being imposed upon the clergy contrary to the papal prohibition.  Among the ministers specially signalled out for attack was the treasurer, Bishop Walter Langton, and in this Edward discerned the influence of Winchelsea, for he was Langton’s personal enemy.  The king’s disgust at the primate’s action was the more complete since Bishop Bek now arrayed himself on the side of the opposition.  Edward showed his ill-will by consigning Henry of Keighley to prison.  But the coalition was too formidable to be withstood.  The king agreed to all the secular demands of the estates, accepted the hated disafforestments and directed the re-issue of a further confirmation of the charters, but refused his assent to the demand of the prelates.  A grant of a fifteenth was then made, and Edward dismissed the popular representatives on January 30, retaining the prelates and nobles for further business.  On February 14, the last confirmation of the charters concluded the long chapter of history, which had begun at Runnymede.

Edward strove to separate his baronial and his clerical enemies, and found an opportunity, which he was not slow to use, in the uncompromising papalism of Winchelsea.  Boniface VIII. had no sooner settled the relations of England and France than he threw himself with ardour into an attempt to establish peace between England and Scotland.  Scottish emissaries, including perhaps Wallace himself, gave Boniface their version of the ancient relations of the two crowns.  On June 27, 1299, the pope issued the letter Scimus, fili, in which he claimed that Scotland specially belonged to the apostolic see, on the ground that it was converted through the relics of St. Andrew.  He denied all feudal dependence of Scotland on Edward, and explained away the submissions of 1291 as arising from such momentary fear as might fall upon the most steadfast.  If Edward persisted in his claims, he was to submit them to the judgment of the Roman curia within the next six months.  In 1300 Winchelsea, who fully accepted the new papal doctrine, sought out Edward in the midst of the Carlaverock campaign and presented him with Boniface’s letter.  Edward’s hot temper fired up at the archbishop’s ill-timed intervention, and subsequent military failures had not smoothed over the situation.  His wrath reached its climax when Winchelsea once more stirred up opposition in the Lincoln parliament, and his refusal of a demand, which the primate had astutely added to the commons’ requests, showed that he was prepared for war to the knife.  Edward laid the papal letter