In a word the long struggle of the constitution for actual existence has come to an end.

The contests which follow are not contests that tell, like those that preceded them, on the actual fabric of our institutions; they are simply stages in the rough discipline by which England has learned and is still learning how best to use and how wisely to develope the latent powers of its national life, how to adjust the balance of its social and political forces, how to adapt its constitutional forms to the varying conditions of the time.
[Sidenote: The Earlier Finance] The news of his father's death found Edward at Capua in the opening of 1273; but the quiet of his realm under a regency of which Roger Mortimer was the practical head left him free to move slowly homewards.

Two of his acts while thus journeying through Italy show that his mind was already dwelling on the state of English finance and of English law.

His visit to the Pope at Orvieto was with a view of gaining permission to levy from the clergy a tenth of their income for the three coming years, while he drew from Bologna its most eminent jurist, Francesco Accursi, to aid in the task of legal reform.

At Paris he did homage to Philip the Third for his French possessions, and then turning southward he devoted a year to the ordering of Gascony.