fell on the king’s treasury.  Edward had called for but one general grant through the past eight years of his reign; but he was now forced to appeal to his people, and by an expedient hitherto without precedent two provincial Councils were called for this purpose.  That for Southern England met at Northampton, that for Northern at York; and clergy and laity were summoned, though in separate session, to both.  Two knights came from every shire, two burgesses from every borough, while the bishops brought their archdeacons, abbots, and the proctors of their cathedral clergy.  The grant of the laity was quick and liberal.  But both at York and Northampton the clergy showed their grudge at Edward’s measures by long delays in supplying his treasury.  Pinched however as were his resources and terrible as were the sufferings of his army through the winter Edward’s firmness remained unbroken; and rejecting all suggestions of retreat he issued orders for the formation of a new army at Caermarthen to complete the circle of investment round Llewelyn.  But the war came suddenly to an end.  The Prince sallied from his mountain hold for a raid upon Radnorshire and fell in a petty skirmish on the banks of the Wye.  With him died the independence of his race.  After six months of flight his brother David was made prisoner; and a Parliament summoned at Shrewsbury in the autumn of 1283, to which each county again sent its two knights and twenty boroughs their two burgesses, sentenced him to a traitor’s death.  The submission of the lesser chieftains soon followed:  and the country was secured by the building of strong castles at Conway and Caernarvon, and the settlement of English barons on the confiscated soil.  The Statute of Wales which Edward promulgated at Rhuddlan in 1284 proposed to introduce English law and the English administration of justice and government into Wales.  But little came of the attempt; and it was not till the time of Henry the Eighth that the country was actually incorporated with England and represented in the English Parliament.  What Edward had really done was to break the Welsh resistance.  The policy with which he followed up his victory (for the “massacre of the bards” is a mere fable) accomplished its end, and though two later rebellions and a ceaseless strife of the natives with the English towns in their midst showed that the country was still far from being reconciled to its conquest, it ceased to be any serious danger to England for a hundred years.

[Sidenote:  New Legislation]

From the work of conquest Edward again turned to the work of legislation.  In the midst of his struggle with Wales he had shown his care for the commercial classes by a Statute of Merchants in 1283, which provided for the registration of the debts of leaders and for their recovery by distraint of the debtor’s goods and the imprisonment of his person.  The close of the war saw two measures of even greater importance.  The second Statute of Westminster which appeared in