England was still at rest. The royal dignity of Henry III. passed on at once to his son. There was no formal interregnum such as had always occurred before, between the death of the old king and the coronation of the new. Edward was proclaimed without being waited for. The king’s peace was maintained by the royal council, and the three ministers to whom, before he started, he had committed the defence of his private interests, undertook to govern England in his stead. Archbishop Giffard of York, Roger Mortimer, the great lord of the Welsh Marches, who had helped him so well in 1265, and Robert Burnell, his confidential chaplain, the man who was to be his prime minister during half his reign, acted as regents in his place, and were at once recognised by the baronage and nation as his agents. Competitor there was none. Gilbert of Gloucester, the brilliant and somewhat erratic earl who had tried to act as arbiter in the last scenes of the barons’ war, and had lost the confidence of both parties, had sworn to King Henry on his death-bed that he would maintain the rights of Edward. He, as the first baron of the kingdom, took the oath of allegiance to the new king at his father’s funeral. Early in 1273 a great assembly of all estates of the realm, an assembly not only of barons and prelates, but of knightly representatives of the shires and citizens deputed by every city, met at Westminster, and bound themselves by the same oath. One or two faint reports of local tumult served only to mark the profoundness of the general peace. The government worked in quiet; even money was raised without much murmuring. [Sidenote: Coronation of Edward. ] On August 2, 1274, Edward I. landed at Dover, and on the 19th he was crowned. At once the work of his reign began. He was a warrior and a lawgiver by nature, education, and opportunity; the exigencies of the time made him a financier also; and the occasion speedily arose for him to display his powers in each capacity. [Sidenote: Turbulence of the Welsh princes. ]