quality:corruption
Administration and the law

Soon after assuming the throne, Edward set about restoring order and re-establishing royal authority after the troubled reign of his father. To accomplish this, he immediately ordered an extensive change of administrative personnel. The most important of these was the designation of Robert Burnell as chancellor in 1274, a man who would remain in the post until 1292 as one of the King's closest associates. The same year as Burnell's appointment, Edward replaced most local officials, such as the escheators and sheriffs. This last measure was taken in preparation for an extensive inquest covering all of England, that would hear complaints about abuse of power by royal officers. The second purpose of the inquest was to establish what land and rights the Crown had lost during the reign of Henry III.

The inquest produced a set of census documents called the Hundred Rolls. These have been likened to the 11th-century Domesday Book, and they formed the basis for the later legal inquiries called the Quo warranto proceedings. The purpose of these inquiries was to establish by what warrant (Latin: Quo warranto) liberties were held. If the defendant could not produce a royal licence to prove the grant of the liberty, then it was the Crown's opinion – based on the writings of the influential thirteenth-century legal scholar Henry de Bracton – that the liberty should revert to the King. Both the Statute of Westminster 1275 and Statute of Westminster 1285 codified the existing law in England. By enacting the Statute of Gloucester in 1278 the King challenged baronial rights through a revival of the system of general eyres (royal justices to go on tour throughout the land) and through a significant increase in the number of pleas of quo warranto to be heard by such eyres.

This caused great consternation among the aristocracy, who insisted that long use in itself constituted licence. A compromise was eventually reached in 1290, whereby a liberty was considered legitimate as long as it could be shown to have been exercised since the coronation of Richard the Lionheart in 1189. Royal gains from the Quo warranto proceedings were insignificant as few liberties were returned to the King, but he had nevertheless won a significant victory by establishing the principle that all liberties emanated from the Crown.

The 1290 statute of Quo warranto was only one part of a wider legislative reform, which was one of the most important contributions of Edward's reign. This era of legislative action had started already at the time of the baronial reform movement; the Statute of Marlborough (1267) contained elements both of the Provisions of Oxford and the Dictum of Kenilworth. The compilation of the Hundred Rolls was followed shortly after by the issue of Westminster I (1275), which asserted the royal prerogative and outlined restrictions on liberties. The Statutes of Mortmain (1279) addressed the issue of land grants to the Church. The first clause of Westminster II (1285), known as De donis conditionalibus, dealt with family settlement of land, and entails. The Statute of Merchants (1285) established firm rules for the recovery of debts, and the Statute of Winchester (1285) dealt with security and peacekeeping on a local level by bolstering the existing police system. Quia emptores (1290) – issued along with Quo warranto – set out to remedy land ownership disputes resulting from alienation of land by subinfeudation. The age of the great statutes largely ended with the death of Robert Burnell in 1292.