Edward had won back the crown for his dad by killing people and now he was king. Wicked. However, a new and interfering institution (Parliament) was to share power with him. Twats. Edward was a fierce warrior and by all accounts a rather angry chap. You may know him as ‘Longshanks’ from the film Braveheart where some cunt with a shite Scottish accent shouts ‘FREEEEDOM’ with his guts hanging out. He learned from his father’s mistakes by not attempting to buy Sicily and instead building towns that could be used as trading centres to create wealth. One of those towns was Hull, a place now internationally recognised for its wonderous culture.
Edward had ‘King Arthur Syndrome’ which meant he wanted to rule all of the island; he wasn’t happy with just having England as his lot. Therefore, he picked on (as in completely fucked over) Wales. Conveniently for Edward, the Prince of Wales had refused to pay homage to him so he dutifully went about smashing the fuck out of any Welsh resistance he could find. The Princes of Gwynedd had ruled Wales since the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th Century. He sent a huge force over there and the Welsh were despairingly outnumbered. Eventually, he found the last independent Prince of Wales, Dafydd ap Gruffydd (pronounced….Dafydd ap Gruffydd) holed up in some shit fort like some kind of medieval Bin Laden. He was tried and condemned to death (what a HUGE surprise). They hung him for a little bit and then cut him down (it took ages to hang someone in those days, you basically choked slowly). Next they disembowelled him, pulled out his entrails and burned them right in front of his dying eyes. Lovely stuff. Finally, they quartered his body, chopped his head off and sent it to the Tower of London where it was put on display. Shame, it would have made a lovely scrap book. At that point, Edward I took the Welsh Crown for himself and since then Wales has never even managed to have its own cricket team.
Edward then went about ensuring Wales stayed under Plantagenet rule by building loads of fortified castles all over the place, if you visit (or live in Wales) then some of the ruins are still knocking about or perhaps that is exactly how they were built? We’ll never know. Edward then had his own son, Edward (very original that Ed) crowned as the ‘Prince of Wales’. Since then, the eldest born of the English sovereign has had that title bestowed upon them. This has resulted in good old English as fuck, Charlie being crowned Prince of Wales. If it’s any consolation to the Welsh, us English have had the same problem with the French (more recently, the Dutch and Germans). Welcome to the European melting pot that is Great Britain. After that, Eddie The First set his sights on conquering the brave and deep-fried hearts of bonnie Scotland.
As mentioned previously, Edward I was fascinated by the myth of King Arthur who is said to have ruled over the entire island and successfully defended Britain from Saxon invaders in the 5th and 6th Centuries. Many historians cast doubt over his existence due to a lack of written evidence but I say fuck written evidence because we’ve had enough of experts in this country. Anyhow, if he was real then he can’t have been that successful because we’re supposed to be Anglo-Saxon aren’t we? Those pesky European Saxons coming over here and making us. Edward felt that it was his ‘right’ to rule over Britain just as Arthur supposedly did and he came up with a rather ingenious idea – send an army up to Scotland. What a fucking genius.
His forces overcame Scottish resistance in both Berwick and Dunbar and then he installed English officials in garrisons across Scotland to intimidate and control the local population. With the benefit of hindsight there was no need for any violence, he could have just offered them a referendum on independence.
Edward was under the impression that he’d defeated Scotland. As he handed the royal seal of Scotland over to one of his barons he supposedly said,
“A man does good business when he rids himself of a turd”
However, the turd that is Scotland returned and splattered itself right across the face of Longshanks. There it would remain until his death and somewhere lurking within that stinking turd was William Wallace. This bold and charismatic rebel refused to pay homage to a turd faced English king and presumably so did loads of the resistance army he’d managed to muster. It was a brave move as English forces had totally smashed all previous attempts at restoring Scottish independence. Wallace took his army to Sterling (the place, not Raheem) where he knew the English would be forced to cross the River Forth only two men at a time because medieval bridges were absolutely shit. As half of the army had crossed, Wallace ordered his troops to cut off the bridge and in doing so he outnumbered those that had already crossed the river. The Scottish massacred them. Somewhere in the region of 5,000 English infantryman died at The Battle of Sterling Bridge as their countrymen watched helplessly from the opposing river bank. Edward had underestimated Scottish national pride (the exact opposite of what the SNP do) and as a result William Wallace became a legend. The Plantagenet dynasty that had conquered both England and Wales would never manage to conquer Scotland. The Romans could tell you a very similar story. For now at least, the Scots would rule themselves and fight each other.
Then in 1307, the French speaking, Scottish and Welsh hating Longshanks died with a big blue and white turd resting on his face. One less cunt for the Scots to worry about.