ousness on unreality, Englishmen
of the fourteenth century were no severe critics of a crowned king. It
was only when in his later years Edward laid aside the soldier's life,
and abandoned himself to the frivolous distractions and degrading
amours[2] which provoked the censure even of his admirers, that the
self-indulgent traits inherited from his unhappy father stood revealed.

[1] The _Speculum regis Edwardi_ (ed. Moisant) was written
before 1333, and the attribution of its composition to
Archbishop Islip and the inferences drawn in Stubbs' _Const.
Hist._, ii., 394, are therefore unwarranted; see Professor
Tait's note in _Engl. Hist. Review_, xvi. (1901), 110-15.

[2] _Chron. Anglia_, 1328-1388, p. 401.

Edward was before all things a soldier. He was not only the consummate
knight, the mirror of chivalry, but a capable tactician with a
general's eye that took in the essential points of the situation at a
glance. His restless energy ensured the rapidity of movement and
alertness of action which won him many a triumph over less mobile and
less highly trained antagonists; while they inspired his followers with
faith in their cause and with the courage which succeeds against
desperate odds. Yet the victor of Crecy cannot be numbered among the
consummate generals of history. His campaigns were ill-planned; and he
lacked the self-restraint and sense of proportion which would have
prevented him from aiming at objects beyond his reach. The same want of
relation between ends and means, the same want of definite policy and
clear ideals, marred his statecraft. Yet contemporaries, conscious of
his faults, magnified Edward as the brilliant and successful king who
had won for himself an assured place among the greatest monarchs of
history, "Never," says Froissart, "had there been such a king since the
days of Arthur King of Great Britain."[1] Even to his own age his
senile degradation pointed the moral of the triumphs of his manhood.
The modern historian, who sees, beneath the superficial splendour of
the days of Edward III., the misery and degradation that underlay the
wreck of the dying Middle Ages, is in no danger of appraising too
highly the merits of this showy and ambitious monarch. Perhaps in our
own days the reaction has gone too far, and we have been taught to
undervalue the splendid energy and robustness of temperament which
commanded the admiration of all Europe, and personified the strenuous
i