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While in Sicily, Edward received tragic intelligence from England. Three deaths were reported: that of his father, King Henry III; his uncle, Richard of Cornwall; and his first-born son, John, who had been left in England and had succumbed to one of the illnesses which kept infant mortality so high. Charles of Sicily was amazed that Edward’s grief appeared greater for his father than for his promising young son.

“The Lord who gave me these can give me other children,” said Edward, “but a father can never be restored.”

This was the highest encomium ever paid that unreliable, bickering old weathercock of a king, but it did not sound strange to those who understood the relationship between father and son. At home Henry had been a fond and indulgent parent and Edward had loved him deeply.

The new king did not return at once, for the message from England made it clear that he was under no compunction to hurry. Henry had been buried in the abbey-church of Westminster, close to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, and the nobility had sworn fealty to his successor at the foot of the high altar, the first time in English history that the reign of a new king had begun with the death of the incumbent. The people of England were ready to welcome him with open arms. They were proud of his military exploits and they spoke gratefully of his merits. He was even a learned man, they said. Did he not speak three languages, French, Latin, even English, each with “the silver tongue of oratory”? His reign, so ran the common report, would “shine with great luster.”

The new king, accordingly, took his time about returning. He spent some months in Rome seeking papal punishment for the murder of his cousin, Henry of Almaine, by Guy, son of the dead Simon de Montfort.^[1] He engaged in some spirited jousting in France and paid homage to the king of that country for the lands he still held there. He visited Gascony and chastised a disobedient underlord, one Gaston of Béarn. Finally, on August 2, 1274, he landed at Dover and was given a loud and warm welcome.

A large part of the welcome was for Eleanor. The people of England had not taken to her when she first came from Spain as a girl bride. They knew that the old king, Edward’s father, who was an absurd spendthrift, had depleted the royal treasury to give banquets for her and to have quarters fitted up for her in Windsor Castle in the Spanish habit, with costly tapestries, and carpets on the floors and with raised hearths and wardrobes and oriel windows. Moreover, on this first appearance, the infanta had brought a train of Spanish officials with her, little men of “hideous mien” who rode, not on horses like proper men, but on mules like monkeys!

This time they welcomed the mature and beautiful young woman who came ashore with the king. They cheered themselves hoarse when they saw the hungry affection with which both king and queen received the two surviving children of the three they had left behind; Eleanor, the oldest, who was developing into a rare beauty and who would always be the apple of her father’s eye (he would even break off a match with the heir to the Spanish throne because he could not bear to have her go so far away), and the second son, who had been named Henry and who was a very sickly and wan little boy.

It was decided to hurry the coronation because Edward, back at last, had a world of things on his mind. Carpenters were set to work building frame kitchens at Westminster where food could be prepared for everyone, even the poorest apprentice in London. When the king arrived with a long train of barons and knights at the same time that King Alexander of Scotland put in an appearance with an equally long train of Scottish noblemen, it was decided to indulge jointly in an extraordinary act of generosity. The horses in both parties were turned loose while heralds announced that whoever caught one could keep it. The knights, it is said, grew hilarious watching while rich men, poor men, beggarmen, and thieves fought to get possession of the lordly steeds.

There was in Westminster a slab of marble called the King’s Bench. As the first step in the ceremony, Edward was seated atop it on a white chair and proclaimed king. Then, accompanied by his glowing and lovely queen (for he had decided to set a precedent and have her crowned with him), he crossed from the palace to the abbey under a canopy carried by four of the most powerful noblemen in the kingdom. The old king had been an inveterate builder, and a good one (he would have been a much better architect than a king), and had spent his last days in turning the abbey into an edifice of surpassing beauty. The original high altar had been extended and an apsidal chancel added. In the center of this new chancel, on earth which had been brought from the Holy Land for the purpose, a tomb of great magnificence had been raised for Edward the Confessor. Over this again a vast triforium was erected. It was in the dimly lit beauty of this new royal chapel that the returned crusader and his queen took their vows. Eleanor was in the customary white and gold, and her dusky eyes shone with content as she sat beside Edward on the falstool while Kilwardby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, preached to them.

There was a legend in Ireland that when a new king was seated on the Lia Fail, the coronation stone on the sacred hill of Tara, the stone remained silent if he was a true successor but groaned aloud if he was a pretender. The people who had come out from London on this fine morning to see the crowning were so well content with Edward that they might not have felt surprise if the marble of the King’s Bench had suddenly acquired this capacity to discriminate and had cried aloud, “This is indeed a proper king!”

Although he had loitered on his way home, the new king’s head had been filled with a great project which later would justify the motto Pactum Serva carved upon his tomb. The laws of England needed attention and he had brought in his train two men who could assist him in the work of amendment and codification which he saw was necessary. One was Francesco Accursi, the son of a famous Italian jurist, who learnedly occupied the chair of law at Bologna. He was destined for Oxford, where he would lecture on law and be available for advice on the major task which lay ahead. The second was a capable and bland young churchman named Robert Burnell, who had been of great assistance to Edward in the years before the prince went off to the Crusades. Edward was so convinced of the capacity of Burnell that he interrupted his departure in 1270 to ride at top speed to Canterbury when the death of Boniface of Savoy (an uncle of his mother’s who had been foisted on the English people by royal pressure) left the archbishopric vacant. Edward was determined to have Burnell succeed the much-execrated Boniface. When he arrived, however, the monks had already gone into secret conference behind locked doors in the chapter house, so that, as they declared, they could achieve a spiritual communion in making their selection. The impatient prince thumped loudly on the door and, receiving no response, had it broken down. He then demanded of the indignant clerks that they select Burnell as the man best qualified for the exalted post.

There had been another occasion when the monks of Canterbury, filled with a sense of their own importance, had met secretly at midnight and selected their sub-prior Reginald and had then packed him off to Rome to get the papal consecration, thus precipitating the situation which resulted in the final selection of that greatest of archbishops, Stephen Langton. They listened to Edward in aggrieved silence and, as soon as he had withdrawn, they proceeded to elect their prior, Adam of Chillenden. But priors and sub-priors were not deemed of fit caliber for the archiepiscopal honors, and so again a pope, Gregory X, stepped in and selected a member of the Dominican order, Robert Kilwardby.

Long before the decision was reached, Edward was on his way to the Crusades. Burnell could not now be made archbishop, but the newly anointed king did the next best thing. On September 21, Edward appointed him chancellor, a post where he could be used to advantage in the mighty labor the king was planning.

[1] See previous volume, The Magnificent Century.

Click on illustration for larger view of Edwards Family Tree