aids, subsidies, or taxes,” to deliver their petitions to receivers who sat in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster.  The petitions were forwarded to the King’s Council, and it was probably the extension of the jurisdiction of that body and the rise of the Court of Chancery which reduced this ancient right of the subject to the formal election of “Triers of Petitions” at the opening of every new Parliament by the House of Lords, a usage which is still continued.  But it must have been owing to some memory of the older custom that the subject always looked for redress against injuries from the Crown or its ministers to the Parliament of the realm.

[Sidenote:  Conquest of Scotland]

The subsidies granted by the Parliament of 1295 furnished the king with the means of warfare with both Scotland and France while they assured him of the sympathy of his people in the contest.  But from the first the reluctance of Edward to enter on the double war was strongly marked.  The refusal of the Scotch baronage to obey his summons had been followed on Balliol’s part by two secret steps which made a struggle inevitable, by a request to Rome for absolution from his oath of fealty and by a treaty of alliance with Philip the Fair.  As yet however no open breach had taken place, and while Edward in 1296 summoned his knighthood to meet him in the north he called a Parliament at Newcastle in the hope of bringing about an accommodation with the Scot king.  But all thought of accommodation was roughly ended by the refusal of Balliol to attend the Parliament, by the rout of a small body of English troops, and by the Scotch investment of Carlisle.  Taken as he was by surprise, Edward showed at once the vigour and rapidity of his temper.  His army marched upon Berwick.  The town was a rich and well-peopled one, and although a wooden stockade furnished its only rampart the serried ranks of citizens behind it gave little hope of an easy conquest.  Their taunts indeed stung the king to the quick.  As his engineers threw up rough entrenchments for the besieging army the burghers bade him wait till he won the town before he began digging round it.  “Kynge Edward,” they shouted, “waune thou havest Berwick, pike thee; waune thou havest geten, dike thee.”  But the stockade was stormed with the loss of a single knight, nearly eight thousand of the citizens were mown down in a ruthless carnage, and a handful of Flemish traders who held the town-hall stoutly against all assailants were burned alive in it.  The massacre only ceased when a procession of priests bore the host to the king’s presence, praying for mercy.  Edward with a sudden and characteristic burst of tears called off his troops; but the town was ruined for ever, and the greatest merchant city of northern Britain sank from that time into a petty seaport.