Clement expected to be paid for yielding so much to the king.  A papal agent, William de Testa, was sent to England, and to him Edward gave the administration of the temporalities of Canterbury.  William’s energy in collecting first-fruits aroused a storm of opposition from the clergy.  The laity, disgusted to find that the king was negotiating for the transference of a crusading tenth to himself, associated themselves with their protest.  Clement thereupon despatched the Cardinal Peter of Spain to England, that he might attempt to arrange a general pacification, and complete the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Isabella of France, which had been agreed upon in 1303.  Before the cardinal’s arrival, Edward’s last parliament met in January, 1307, at Carlisle.  The renewed disturbances in Scotland necessitated a meeting on the border, but the main transactions of the estates bore upon matters ecclesiastical.  The lords and commons joined in demanding from the king a remedy against the oppressions of the apostolic see.  A spirited and strongly worded protest was addressed to the pope.  Nor were the estates contented with mere remonstrances.  The statute of Carlisle renewed the abortive measure of 1305 De asportis religiosorum, by prohibiting tallages of religious houses being sent out of the realm.  Had the petition of the estates been drafted into a statute, the parliament of Carlisle would have anticipated the statute of Praemunire and many other anti-papal enactments.  But Peter of Spain arrived, and Edward thought it injudicious to provoke a contest with the papacy.  Even the petition actually approved was left in suspense to await further negotiations between the king and the cardinal.  Before any decision was come to, Edward died, and this anti-Roman movement, like so many which had preceded it, resulted in little more than brave words.  When, two generations later, a more resolute temper seized upon king and estates, they fell back upon the petitions and proceedings of the parliament of Carlisle for precedents for resisting the papal authority.  With all its pitiful conclusion, Edward’s ecclesiastical policy at least marks a step in advance upon the dependent attitude of Henry III.

In the period of peace after the conquest of Scotland, Edward busied himself with strengthening the administration of his own kingdom and with enforcing the laws against violence and outrage.  Under the strongest of medieval kings, the state of society was very disorderly, and even a ruler like Edward had often to be contented with holding up in his legislation an ideal of conduct which he was powerless to enforce in detail.  Complaints had long been made that the greater nobles encroached upon poor men’s inheritances, that gangs of marauders ranged over the country, wreaking every sort of violence and outrage, and that the law courts would give no redress to the sufferers from such outrageous deeds, since judges and juries were alike terrorised by overmighty offenders and dared