the outline rather than built the fabric that was to last. Still his reign is a great era; he is the great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organizer of the mediæval English polity. [Sidenote: Crusade of Prince Edward. ] [Sidenote: Edward’s accession to the English crown. ] Edward was thirty-three years old at the time of his father’s death. He had been for eighteen years a married man; his wife, Eleanor of Castile, was the sister of that Alfonso the Wise who had been the competitor of Richard of Cornwall for the imperial crown, a noble and faithful lady. He himself was a tall, strong man, an adept in all knightly accomplishments, brave to rashness, and now skilled and experienced in war. His crusade had not been a successful one. Late in starting, he had reached the African coast in the autumn of 1270, to find Lewis IX. dead, and the hopes of the pilgrims already waning. After spending the winter in Sicily, he had, in May, 1271, gone on, like Richard Cœur de Lion, to Acre, and had spent more than a year in an attempt to retrieve the fortunes of the Frank kingdom. It was quite in vain. Mutual jealousies and universal mistrust had eaten out the heart of the Crusaders. A few dashing exploits, and a few almost wanton inroads, could do little more than exasperate the hatred of the Moslem. Edward played his part as a knight, but he had neither force nor opportunity to do more. Still he made himself feared; and an attempt at assassination in June, 1272, warned him of the risks he was running. An emissary of the Sultan Bibars struck him in his tent. The weapon was poisoned, it was said, and the story was told and believed, that his faithful queen, who had followed him in his pilgrimage, had sucked the poison from the wound. Two months later he sailed homewards, thoroughly disappointed, and heavily burdened with the cost of his expedition. He was slowly proceeding on his way, when, at Capua, in January, 1273, he received the news of his father’s death and of the death of his eldest son John, a boy of six. Quickening his pace, he went on at once to Rome, visited the Pope at Orvieto, and crossed by the Mont Cenis pass to Lyons; thence to Paris, where he did homage to King Philip III. for his French provinces; and then into Gascony, where he was delayed for another year before he could come to England to be crowned. [Sidenote: Administration of the kingdom during Edward’s absence. ]