wanton will. He seemed to have been born to throw discredit on possible virtues, even more than to point the moral of positive vices. His character was full of suggestions of something better, and occasionally of something great; but it contained no realisation of anything. If the kindliness of Henry the Third's character saved him from the dislike which many of his actions merited, this dislike was called forth and deepened continually in the mind of the nation towards Edward the Second by the very buoyancy of his temperament. It must have seemed to them that a Prince who could treat life and sovereignty with such gay levity, was not entitled to the allow-. ance which might be made for those who acted erroneously or even unjustly under a more solemn sense of the weight of their responsibility. A mere trifler who violates national rights, outrages national sentiments, and executes national champions, must not expect to inspire even the ordinary respect of hatred. A feeling of contemptuous aversion and disgust became predominant throughout England, which seemed to clamour for a punishment ignominious in its cruelty. The King who degraded the royal dignity by low companionships and undue familiarities' perished himself, at length, from the

It has been suggested to me since I wrote the above, that the peculiar detestation with which the memory of Edward the Second was regarded in his own times, sprang in a great measure from the popular belief in the criminal character of his relations with his favourites. I

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destruction in the people of all respect for the Royal person. And so it was that, without being by any means the worst of our English Kings, so far as respects actual moral delinquency, Edward the Second went to his grave less regretted and less respected probably than any King before or after him. It is enough condemnation of him to say that he was his father's son, and yet that he died hated and despised by the English nation.

fail however to discover, in the tone in which this offence is referred to in the writers of that age, any sufficient support to this explanation.

131

EDWARD THE THIRD.

FEW English kings have left behind them so great a reputation in the chroniclers, and yet few kings are so slightly delineated in their personal characteristics as Edward the Third. Everybody thinks of him as a sort of impersonation of the spirit of chivalry, but beyond this, few, I believe, have any definite ideas concerning him, and beyond this the chroniclers themselves preserve to us but few traits. Their antithetical summaries of his character are but faintly discriminating panegyrics, which approach too much to the nature of tombstone memorials to be very useful in an analysis of the man, though they may give us some general idea of his stamp as a king. And it is, in fact, only through a consideration of his kingly qualities that we can at all deduce any idea of the personal character of Edward. He began to reign with the cares at least, if not the responsibilities of a ruler, from his very boyhood, and his personal life was so interwoven with that of the nation, that to separate the two is impossible, until the shadows of his last melancholy years obscure the kingly presence, and leave only the wretched

and common-place picture of a doting and disreputable old man. His reputation, which was for so many centuries looked upon as an integral part of the national treasury of glory, has of late years suffered a considerable diminution in the estimates of historians,' and I am inclined to think to a somewhat unjust extent; for, though I am not disposed to dispute the truth of the verdict which displaces him from the pinnacle he so long occupied as the greatest of our kings, I still think that a character may be safely assigned to him which places him decidedly above the average of English Royalty. The modern reaction against mere military glory, and the idea that Edward engaged in his French and Scotch wars through ambition or mere love of fighting, and was himself nothing more than a brave knight, have, I believe, carried away some able writers from a wider and fairer consideration of his qualities, and have reduced their estimate to something like a sermon against selfish ambition and bloodshed.

Edward the Third's character stands in a very remarkable relation as well as contrast to that of his father. Edward the Second, as we have already seen, was a bad copy and imperfect realisation of

This was written before I had read Mr. Freeman's unfavourable estimate of Edward lately republished in his collected essays. This able paper, which represents a view of the character which I had once myself adopted, does not alter my later judgment, which was formed on a more careful and minute consideration of the facts.

a fine character. In Edward the Third the copy was successfully achieved, and the conception was realised, but the substratum of character was much the same in both. In both the æsthetic and sensuous elements were predominant,—the love of pomp and luxury, the pleasure of outward display, and the appreciation of what are considered the refinements and mere ornaments of life. In the character of each there was latent a feeling that the King should be the social leader of the nation he governed, even more than her commander in war and her administrator in peace. In neither of them was there the originality or the incisive force of Edward the First. The character of both was moulded to a considerable extent by external circumstances, from which, however, one alone drew lessons of wise experience. All three were capable of committing great acts of cruelty, but the cruelty which in the First Edward resulted from an outburst of ungovernable fury in a forgiving nature, was in his two successors the dictate of a settled resentment, which in the Second Edward was furtive yet implacable, in the Third Edward was open and hard to be appeased. But in the Third Edward the pageant and pomp of life rose into a stately magnificence, contrasting with, but not unworthy of comparison with, the simpler stateliness of his grandfather, and far above the tinsel of his wretched father. His luxurious tendencies were for the greater part of his life relieved from reproach and ennobled by