and children and thrown into beastly prisons, until they purchased
their release by paying to the King twelve thousand pounds.
Finally, every kind of property belonging to them was seized by the
King, except so little as would defray the charge of their taking
themselves away into foreign countries. Many years elapsed before
the hope of gain induced any of their race to return to England,
where they had been treated so heartlessly and had suffered so
much.
If King Edward the First had been as bad a king to Christians as he
was to Jews, he would have been bad indeed. But he was, in
general, a wise and great monarch, under whom the country much
improved. He had no love for the Great Charter – few Kings had,
through many, many years – but he had high qualities. The first
bold object which he conceived when he came home, was, to unite
under one Sovereign England, Scotland, and Wales; the two last of
which countries had each a little king of its own, about whom the
people were always quarrelling and fighting, and making a
prodigious disturbance – a great deal more than he was worth. In
the course of King Edward’s reign he was engaged, besides, in a war
with France. To make these quarrels clearer, we will separate
their histories and take them thus. Wales, first. France, second.
Scotland, third.
Page 83
Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England
LLEWELLYN was the Prince of Wales. He had been on the side of the
Barons in the reign of the stupid old King, but had afterwards
sworn allegiance to him. When King Edward came to the throne,
Llewellyn was required to swear allegiance to him also; which he
refused to do. The King, being crowned and in his own dominions,
three times more required Llewellyn to come and do homage; and
three times more Llewellyn said he would rather not. He was going
to be married to ELEANOR DE MONTFORT, a young lady of the family
mentioned in the last reign; and it chanced that this young lady,
coming from France with her youngest brother, EMERIC, was taken by
an English ship, and was ordered by the English King to be
detained. Upon this, the quarrel came to a head. The King went,
with his fleet, to the coast of Wales, where, so encompassing
Llewellyn, that he could only take refuge in the bleak mountain
region of Snowdon in which no provisions could reach him, he was
soon starved into an apology, and into a treaty of peace, and into
paying the expenses of the war. The King, however, forgave him
some of the hardest conditions of the treaty, and consented to his
marriage. And he now thought he had reduced Wales to obedience.
But the Welsh, although they were naturally a gentle, quiet,
pleasant people, who liked to receive strangers in their cottages
among the mountains, and to set before them with free hospitality
whatever they had to eat and drink, and to play to them on their
harps, and sing their native ballads to them, were a people of
great spirit when their blood was up. Englishmen, after this
affair, began to be insolent in Wales, and to assume the air of
masters; and the Welsh pride could not bear it. Moreover, they
believed in that unlucky old Merlin, some of whose unlucky old
prophecies somebody always seemed doomed to remember when there was
a chance of its doing harm; and just at this time some blind old
gentleman with a harp and a long white beard, who was an excellent
person, but had become of an unknown age and tedious, burst out
with a declaration that Merlin had predicted that when English
money had become round, a Prince of Wales would be crowned in
London. Now, King Edward had recently forbidden the English penny
to be cut into halves and quarters for halfpence and farthings, and
had actually introduced a round coin; therefore, the Welsh people
said this was the time Merlin meant, and rose accordingly.
King Edward had bought over PRINCE DAVID, Llewellyn’s brother, by
heaping favours upon him; but he was the first to revolt, being