Series 1 > History of Greater Britain, as well England as Scotland

288
JOHN MAJOR’S HISTORY
[book V.
were attached to his own side that the third Edward annulled
that theoretical1 claim of superiority over the Scots. Nor will
that other argument of this same Caxton much avail, where
he asserts that these counsellors of the king were in this
matter ruled by the mother of the king and by Roger
Mortimer; for that twelve men, the first in authority in the
whole kingdom—four bishops, four earls, of whom some were
uncles to the king, and four venerable barons—that all of these
should be swayed by a single woman and a man of no standing,
this is indeed a thing as little likely as it would have been dis¬
graceful. Again, to assert that the English had superiority
over the Scots is but to foster amongst Christians causes of
strife and war which are not likely ever to have an end. It
was in behalf of this claim of superiority that the first Edward
unjustly troubled the Scots and brought • destruction upon
many. And did not William Wallace, Robert Bruce, and
other Scots of those days slay just as many of the English, nor
give themselves any rest till they had brought their boundaries
again to the same point where the last Alexander had left
them ? And did not many lose their lives too under this same
Edward, when he was false to his word ? and did he not sin
against his own brother and sister when he espoused the cause
of Edward Baliol ? Now both these Edwards were driven by
the Scottish nobles, with no king to lead them, from the
country, and the English were extirpated; nor did any king
of the English at any time enjoy that superiority they talk
about. It should be the part of wise and upright historians to
make, where they can, for peace, and not to sow broadcast the
seeds of strife; wherefore I say that these twelve men acted ,
with a wise and proper judgment when they were chosen to be
the tutors of their king, and when at the Northampton parlia¬
ment they showed their abhorrence of the shedding of Christian
blood, and put away from their kings as best they could that
great nursery of war, by the annulling of that pretended claim
of superiority (which in very truth was founded only on theory2),
seeing that, in behalf of that superiority, in their own day two
hundred thousand of the English and the Scots had lost their
mathematicam.
2 quae in rei veritate mathematica est.