I am afraid I must not praise King Edward so much, now we are come to his wars, for he was twice very cruel indeed.

You remember that the old Britons were driven by the Angles and Saxons out of England into different countries, and that most of them went to live among the mountains in Wales, where the conquerors could not easily get to them.

These Britons chose princes of their own: one to reign over them in North Wales, one in South Wales, and one in Powys, which was between the two. Many of these princes were very good rulers of the country, and protected it from all enemies, and improved the people very much, by making good laws.

I am sorry to say, however, that the princes of the different parts of Wales sometimes quarrelled with one another, and very often quarrelled with the English who lived nearest to Wales. They did so while Edward was King of England, and he went to war with them, as he said only to make their prince come to him and do him the homage that the Welsh princes had done in former times. But, finding that he could very easily conquer the first of them with whom he fought, he determined to get all Wales for himself, by degrees, and to join it forever with England.

Llewellyn was the last real Prince of Wales before it was taken by the English kings. He loved a young lady called Elinor de Montfort very much, for she was good and beautiful, and he intended to marry her. She was the daughter of the brave Simon de Montfort who fought against Henry the Third. She had been staying a little while in France, and was coming to Wales in a ship, and was to be married to Llewellyn as soon as she arrived. Unhappily, King Edward heard of this, and sent a stronger ship to sea, and took the young lady prisoner, and shut her up in one of his castles for more than two years, and would not let the prince see her until he should do him homage.

Llewellyn fought a great many battles to defend his native land. At last he had no part of Wales left but Snowdon and the country round it. Then he yielded to Edward, who gave him Elinor de Montfort to wife. But he soon began to fight again, hoping that he might by degrees get the better of the English, but at the last he was killed by a soldier, who cut off his head and took it to King Edward, who was then at Shrewsbury.

Edward was so glad to find that Llewellyn was dead, that he forgot how unbecoming it is for really a brave man to be revengeful, especially after an enemy as brave as himself is dead; and I am sorry and ashamed to say that, instead of sending the head of Llewellyn to his relations, to be buried with his body, he sent it to London, and had it stuck up over one of the gates of the city with a wreath of willow on it, because the Welsh people used to love to crown their princes with willow.

Soon after the death of Llewellyn, his brother David was made prisoner by the English. Edward treated him with still greater cruelty than he had treated Llewellyn, and, after his head was cut off, set it up over the same gate with his brother’s.

It has been said, that because the bards or poets of Wales used to make verses, and sing them to their harps, to encourage the Welshmen to defend their country and their own princes from Edward, he was so cruel as to order them all to be put to death. I hope it is not true.

For two hundred years Wales was in a sad state. The English kings did not rule it wisely; for they did not treat the Welsh so well as they did the English. The Welsh, therefore, feeling this to be very unjust, were often trying to set up princes for themselves. But at last, a king of Welsh descent, named Henry the Eighth, thought it right to make the Welsh and English equal: and from that time they have lived happily together.

We must now speak of King Edward’s wars in Scotland.

I told you that, while Henry the Second was king, William, King of Scotland, had made war in England; and after being taken prisoner and brought to London, Henry had set him free, on his promising that the kings of England should be lords over the kings of Scotland.

Now, it happened that while Edward the First was King of England, Alexander, King of Scotland, died, and left no sons. The Scotch sent to fetch Alexander’s granddaughter from Norway, where she was living with her father, King Eric, that she might be their queen. But the poor young princess died.

Two of her cousins, John Baliol and Robert Bruce, now wanted to be king; but as they could not both be so, they agreed to ask King Edward to judge between them; and King Edward was very glad, because their asking him showed the people that they owned he was Lord of Scotland, and he chose John Baliol to be king of Scotland.

You will read the story of all that John Baliol did in the history of Scotland.

Edward watched Scotland very narrowly, and when any Scotsman thought that King John had treated him unjustly, he would appeal for justice to Edward, who said that, as he was Lord of Scotland, he would take care that Scotland was governed properly; till at last John Baliol went to war with Edward; but he was beaten, and the richest and best part of Scotland was taken by Edward. He was very severe, nay, cruel, to the Scots.

At last a gentleman named Sir William Wallace could not bear to have the Scots so ill treated as they were by the English governors that Edward sent into the country. So he went himself, or sent messengers to all the barons and gentlemen he knew to beg them to join him, and drive the English out of Scotland; and they did so, and might have made their own country free, if Sir William Wallace had not been taken prisoner and carried to London, where King Edward ordered his head to be cut off; which was as wicked and cruel as his cutting off the heads of the two Welsh princes.

This did not end the war in Scotland; for another Robert Bruce, who had come to be king after Baliol, determined to do what Sir William Wallace had begun; I mean, to drive the English out of Scotland; and he made ready for a long and troublesome war, and King Edward did the same; but when Edward had got to the border of Scotland with his great army, to fight King Robert, he died.

If King Edward I. had been content to rule over his own subjects, and to mend their laws, and encourage them to trade and to study, he would have made them happier; and we who live now should have said he deserved better to be loved.

Indeed, he did so much that was right and wise, that I am sorry we cannot praise him in everything.

His greatest fault was ambition,—I mean, a wish to be above everybody else, by any means. Now, ambition is good when it only makes us try to be wiser and better than other people, by taking pains with ourselves, and being good to the very persons we should wish to get the better of.

But when ambition makes us try to get things that belong to others, by all means, bad or good, it is wrong.

Ambition caused wise King Edward to forget himself, after conquering the Prince of Wales, and to take Wales as if it were his own country, that there might never be greater men in Wales than the kings of England.

The ambition to be King of Scotland made Edward go to war with the Scots, and made him so cruel as to cut off the head of Sir William Wallace, because he wanted to save his country from being conquered by Edward.

So you see ambition led Edward to do the two most cruel actions he was ever guilty of.