villeins of even taking orders in the church, and when the vernacular
language had been ousted from its services. But with the English nation
grew an English church; Grosseteste denounced the dominance of aliens
in the church, while Simon de Montfort denounced it in the state. It
was, however, by secular authority that the English church was
differentiated from the church abroad. It was the barons and not the
bishops who had resisted the assimilation of English to Roman canon
law, and it was Edward I, and not Archbishops Peckham and Winchilsey,
who defied Pope Boniface VIII. Archbishops, indeed, still placed their
allegiance to the pope above that to their king.

The same sense of national and insular solidarity which led Edward to
defy the papacy also inspired his efforts to conquer Wales and
Scotland. Indeed, it was the refusal of the church to pay taxes in the
crisis of the Scottish war that provoked the quarrel with Boniface.
But, while Edward was successful in Wales, he encountered in Scotland a
growing national spirit not altogether unlike that upon which Edward
himself relied in England. Nor was English patriotism sufficiently
developed to counteract the sectional feelings which took advantage of
the king's embarrassments. The king's necessity was his subjects'
opportunity, and the Confirmation of Charters extorted from him in 1297
stands, it is said, to the Great Charter of 1215 in the relation of
substance to shadow, of achievement to promise. Edward, however, gave
away much less than has often been imagined; he certainly did not
abandon his right to tallage the towns, and the lustre of his motto,
"Keep troth," is tarnished by his application to the pope for
absolution from his promises. Still, he was a great king who served
England well by his efforts to eliminate feudalism from the sphere of
government, and by his insistence on the doctrine that what touches all
should be approved by all. If to some catholic medievalists his reign