According to Nicholas Trevet a chronicler of the time, Edward was very tall with long arms and legs (hence his nickname Longshanks ) His left eyelid drooped a little and he lisped but was considered "effectively eloquent in speech when persuasion was necessary in business"

   King of England (1272-1307); son of Henry III; known as ‘Longshanks’, ‘The Father of the Mother of Parliaments’, ‘The English Justinian’ and ‘The Hammer of the Scots’.  This great and long serving monarch succeeded his father in 1272. The eldest child of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, Edward, was born ad Westminster, London on 17 June 1239 and grew up at a time when England was relatively united.  In October 1254 the 15-year-old prince married Eleanor of Castile.  A decade then passed before Simon de Montfort and his supporters led a rebellion that was to see the emergence of a strong, new defender of the Plantagenet dynasty.  A key figure at the Battle of Evesham in 1265, ‘Lord’ Edward, as he was then known, was the undisputed power behind the throne by the time he set off on crusade in 1270.  He was away from England for four years, during which time he learned of his father’s death (in 1272) and was wounded at Acre.  He did not return to England immediately and it was not until 19 August 1274 that he and his wife Eleanor were crowned in a joint coronation ceremony held at Westminster Abbey. Edwards’s first wife, Eleanor of Castile, was just a child at the time of the royal wedding in October 1254.  She later became the mother of 15 of Edward’s children and died in November 1290.  Nine years later the king wed his second wife, Margaret, at Canterbury Cathedral.  Forty years Edward’s junior, in the last years of the old king’s life the daughter of the French king, Philip III, gave birth to two sons and a daughter.

   It was not long before Edward Proved himself to be a shrewd politician.  Early in his reign he commissioned an in-depth review of his realm, which became the documents known as the Hundred Rolls.  This was the most comprehensive summary of English life produced since the Domesday Book of William I had been completed almost two centuries before.  The Hundred Rolls contained a mass of information, particularly about the distribution and ownership of land at the beginning of the reign.  Also in the first years of his reign Edward introduced a number of statutes in parliament, including two Statutes of Westminster (1275 and 1285) and the Statute of Wales (1284).  Completing the judicial reforms of his father, in his long reign Edward I established the office of conservator of the peace (a forerunner of the modern Justice of the Peace) and created the Chancery Court, where aggrieved citizens could seek legal redress. He was however considered untrustworthy even before he came to the throne due to his changes of direction during his father’s battles with the Barons. One writer of the time called him a Leopard an animal associated with deviousness. However the same man attributed him with the ferocity and pride of the Lion.

   The son of a Frenchwoman and the long-time husband of a Castilian, England’s king was too pre-occupied with asserting control in the British Isles to achieve much success in Europe.  Inheriting Gascony, Edward acquired the French region of Agenais in 1279 and held court at Bordeaux in 1289.  Although he began a costly war with France in 1294, the campaign halted before it had really even begun.

   Edward spent most of his life at war with his neighbours; in fact he even banned tournaments in which he had participated during his youth so that his Knights would not divert their attentions from the campaigns at hand. Edward was, in his outlook and behaviour quite unlike his father Henry III. A strong leader, he was viewed with respect and fear throughout England; yet his devotion to his Queen Eleanor of Castile, whom he married in 1254 was striking. Although Edward was prone to typical bouts of Plantagenet anger ( he once threw his daughters coronet into the fire ) he personified many of the characteristics expected of a king

   He was renowned for dispensing good justice, and the wide range of statutes he made covering a number of grievances is a monument to his reign. His military skills were considerable and frequently exercised as in the conquest of Wales and his subjugation of the Scots (hence his nickname "Hammer of the Scots", and in wars to defend his Duchy of Gascony against King Phillip IV the fair of France. The expense of these operations produced serious financial problems, but Edward weathered the storms. News of his death at Burgh-on-sands in 1307 was greeted with dismay by the English People.

 

Excerpts from

Kings & Queens - An essential A-Z guide

ISBN 1 903817 21 8

 - General Editor - Professor David Loades