not administer equal justice.  Accordingly in the Lenten parliament of 1305 was drawn up the ordinance of Trailbaston, by which the king was empowered to issue writs of inquiry, addressed to special justices in the various shires, and authorising them to take vigorous action against these trailbastons, or men with clubs, whose outrages had become so grievous.  It was not so much a new law as an administrative act; but it formed a precedent for later times, and the energy of the justices of trailbaston effected a real, if temporary, improvement in the condition of the country.  So important was the measure that a chronicler calls the year in which this was enacted the “year of trailbaston".[1]

    [1] Liber de antiquis legibus, p. 250.

Never did Edward’s prospects seem brighter than in the early days of 1306.  Scotland was obedient; the French alliance was firmly cemented; the pope was complacent; the Archbishop of Canterbury was in exile and the Bishop of Durham in disgrace; the commons were grateful for the better order secured by the commissions of trailbaston, and the king had in the papal absolution a weapon in reserve, which he could always use against a renewal of baronial opposition, though, for the moment, neither nobles nor commons seemed likely to give trouble.  Once more there was some talk of Edward leading a crusade, and the French lawyer, Peter Dubois, at this time dedicated to him the first draft of his remarkable treatise on the recovery of the Holy Land.[1] Nor did the project seem altogether impracticable.  Though Edward was sixty-seven years of age, he remained slim, vigorous and straight as a palm tree.  He could mount his horse and ride to the hunt or the field with the activity of youth.  His eyes were not dimmed with age and his teeth were still firm in his jaws.[2] The worst trouble which immediately beset him, was the undutiful conduct of the young Prince of Wales, who foolishly quarrelled with Bishop Langton, and preferred to amuse himself with unworthy favourites rather than submit himself to the severe training in arms and affairs to which Edward had long striven to inure him.  When all thus seemed favourable, a sudden storm burst in Scotland which plunged the old king into renewed troubles.

    [1] De recuperatione terre sancte, ed.  C.V.  Langlois (1891).

    [2] John of London, Commendatio lamentabilis, pp. 5-6.

In 1304 Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, became by his father’s death the head of his house.  Though he had long adhered to the regency which had governed Scotland in Balliol’s name, he had now made terms with Edward, and had taken a conspicuous part in bringing about the pacification of Scotland under its new constitution.  But the double policy, which had involved him in the shifts and tergiversations of his earlier career, still dominated the mind of the ambitious earl.  At the moment of his submission to Edward, he entered