had taught the need of further securities against the royal power, and as Edward was about to embark the barons demanded his acceptance of additional articles to the Charter, expressly renouncing his right of taxing the nation without its own consent.  The king sailed without complying, but Winchelsey joined the two earls and the citizens of London in forbidding any levy of supplies till the Great Charter with these clauses was again confirmed, and the trouble in Scotland as well as the still pending strife with France left Edward helpless in the barons’ hands.  The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forests were solemnly confirmed by him at Ghent in November; and formal pardon was issued to the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk.

[Sidenote:  Revolt of Scotland]

The confirmation of the Charter, the renunciation of any right to the exactions by which the people were aggrieved, the pledge that the king would no more take “such aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of the realm,” the promise not to impose on wool any heavy customs or “maltote” without the same assent, was the close of the great struggle which had begun at Runnymede.  The clauses so soon removed from the Great Charter were now restored; and, evade them as they might, the kings were never able to free themselves from the obligation to seek aid solely from the general consent of their subjects.  It was Scotland which had won this victory for English freedom.  At the moment when Edward and the earls stood face to face the king saw his work in the north suddenly undone.  Both the justice and injustice of the new rule proved fatal to it.  The wrath of the Scots, already kindled by the intrusion of English priests into Scotch livings and by the grant of lands across the border to English barons, was fanned to fury by the strict administration of law and the repression of feuds and cattle-lifting.  The disbanding too of troops, which was caused by the penury of the royal exchequer, united with the licence of the soldiery who remained to quicken the national sense of wrong.  The disgraceful submission of their leaders brought the people themselves to the front.  In spite of a hundred years of peace the farmer of Fife or the Lowlands and the artizan of the towns remained stout-hearted Northumbrian Englishmen.  They had never consented to Edward’s supremacy, and their blood rose against the insolent rule of the stranger.  The genius of an outlaw knight, William Wallace, saw in their smouldering discontent a hope of freedom for his country, and his daring raids on outlying parties of the English soldiery roused the country at last into revolt.

[Sidenote:  Wallace]