EDWARD I, king of ENGLAND. - Eldest son of Henry III Plantagenet, b. Westminster 18 June 1239, d. at Burgh (Scotland) 7 July 1307. He took part in the years 1270-72 in the last Crusade and was at Tunis with Louis IX of France, then at Saint-Jean-d’Acre.
He succeeded his father in 1272 and began important reforms, reorganizing economic and juridical administration and earning the title of the English Justinian. Edward I also promoted the formation of Parliament in its modern form by summoning (1295) representatives of the Commons to collaborate in legislative work. Although deeply Catholic, his policy of centralization led him into conflict with the Church. A struggle with John Peckham, archbishop of Canterbury, occasioned by the statute of “mortmain” (1279) which forbade the granting of lands to religious bodies without the king’s prior licence, ended with the limitation of ecclesiastical jurisdiction to purely spiritual causes. A new phase opened in 1297 when the successor of Peckham, Archbishop Winchelsey, relying on the recent bull Clericis laicos, refused the contributions demanded from the clergy of Edward I for the Gascon campaign. The king, who had yielded at first, later (1306) succeeded in exiling Winchelsey, who had been left isolated in the struggle. A year afterwards Edward I died during an expedition against rebellious Scotland.