Edward I (1239-1307), surnamed "Longshanks," king of England. He reigned 1272-1307. He was born at Westminister and died near Carlyle. He was the son of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence. He married Eleanor of Castile. While a young man, Edward assisted his father in curbing the power of the barons, overthrowing their leader, Simon de Montfort, at Evesham in 1265. At the request of the pope Edward took a prominent part in the Seventh Crusade. He captured Nazareth from the Turks, and massacred the inhabitants. In revenge for this cruelty, it is thought, an assassin stabbed him in three places with a poisoned arrow. Owing to a magnificent constitution he came through with his life. A story runs to the effect that Eleanor saved him by sucking out the poison with her lips. On hearing of the death of his father Edward returned home to be crowned. He was an active, arbitrary ruler. He accomplished the conquest of Wales. He took measures to expel the Jews from England. He interfered in the affairs of Scotland, placed Baliol on the throne and again deposed him, carrying the ancient coronation stone of Scotland to Westminster, where it yet remains. He executed Sir William Wallace and died on his way to Scotland to suppress Bruce. Though the name of Edward I is not a source of pleasure to the Welsh and to the Scotch, he was a royal English monarch--a very prince of men to his own people. His soldiers heard him urge clemency for the followers of Montfort. They saw him weep in bitter grief for the death of his father, though it placed him on the throne of England. He lay with his soldiers on the ground and suffered both hunger and thirst in the mountains of Wales and on the Scottish border. Under all circumstances he was an Englishman and a soldier, a hard master, but a loyal, singleminded prince-one who loved his people and was loved by them. Edward was "unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty and religious. For the most part," continues Green, the historian, "his impulses were generous, trustful, averse from cruelty, prone to forgiveness". "No man ever asked mercy of me," said he in his old age, "and was refused." Those who read the fate of Wallace, sent to a felon's death by Edward, need to know that this haughty king is the same English Edward who loved his Eleanor while living, and ceased not to love her when dead; and that this is the same Edward who reared a cross at Charing, and wherever else the bier of Eleanor rested on the way to the grave. Edward deserves well at the hand of the historian. He reorganized the courts of England in the interest of speedy and impartial justice. He equalized the burden of taxation and of military service. He was the first English monarch to summon merchants and burghers to sit in Parliament. In person he was a tall, deep-chested, long-limbed man. The people called him Longshanks. He instituted legal reforms; the jurists call him the "English Justinian." Soldier, lover, and lawgiver, Edward was the greatest of the Plantagenets.