5. =Edward's Legislation. 1279--1290.=--It was in accordance with the national feeling that Edward, in =1290=, banished from England the Jews, whose presence was most profitable to himself, but who were regarded as cruel tyrants by their debtors. On the other hand, Edward took care to assert his rights as a feudal lord. In =1279=, by the statute _De religiosis_, commonly known as the Statute of Mortmain, he forbade the gift of land to the clergy, because in their hands land was no longer liable to the feudal dues. In =1290=, by another statute, _Quia emptores_, he forbade all new sub-infeudation. If from henceforth a vassal wished to part with his land, the new tenant was to hold it, not under the vassal who gave it up, but under that vassal's lord, whether the lord was the king or anyone else. The object of this law was to increase the number of tenants-in-chief, and thus to bring a larger number of landowners into direct relations with the king. [Illustration: Nave of Lichfield Cathedral, looking east. Built about 1280.] 6. =Edward as a National and as a Feudal Ruler.=--In his government of England Edward had sought chiefly to strengthen his position as the national king of the whole people, and to depress legally and without violence the power of the feudal nobility. He was, however, ambitious, with the ambition of a man conscious of great and beneficent aims, and he was quite ready to enforce even unduly his personal claims to feudal obedience whenever it served his purpose to do so. His favourite motto, 'Keep troth' (_Pactum serva_), revealed his sense of the inviolability of a personal engagement given or received, but his legal mind often led him into construing in his own favour engagements in which only the letter of the law was on his side, whilst its spirit was against him. It was chiefly in his relations with foreign peoples that he fell into this error, as it was here that he was most strongly tempted to lay stress upon the feudal tie which made for him, and to ignore the importance of a national resistance which made against him. In dealing with Wales, for instance, he sent David to a cruel death, because he had broken the feudal tie which bound him to the king of England, feeling no sympathy with him as standing up for the independence of his own people.