The men of his own day admired and venerated Edward. Hemingford speaks of him as “the most excellent, wise, and sagacious king.” Rishanger tells us of “his infinite labours and manifold troubles,” and of “his numberless good deeds.” Wykes dwells on “his wonderful mercy towards transgressors,” “a mercy which not only relinquished revenge, but freely granted pardon.”
This estimate, this character of him, had gone abroad. Uberti, an Italian poet of Edward’s own time, condemns his father, Henry, but adds—
“Yet there’s some good to say of him, I grant,
Because of him was the good Edward born,
Whose valour still is famous in the world.”[172]
A little later another foreigner, Froissart, uses the same language, describing him as he who was “called the good king Edward, who was brave, wise, and fortunate in war.”
During four centuries our own chroniclers and historians continue to use the same language. Fabyan, in 1494, describes him as “slow to all manner of strife; discreet, and wise, and true of his word; in arms a giant.” Holinshed speaks of him as “wise and virtuous, gentle and courteous.” John Foxe, the puritan, terms him “valiant and courageous, pious and gentle.” Prynne, another puritan, speaks of him as “the most illustrious,—our glorious king Edward.” Camden, in Elizabeth’s days, describes him as “a monarch most renowned, in whose valiant soul the spirit of God seemed evidently to dwell; so that he justly merited the character of one of the greatest glories of Britain.” And when we turn to Rapin, who wrote towards the end of the seventeenth century, and who was, like Froissart, a foreigner, and wholly impartial—we find him giving this deliberate judgment:—“Edward joined to his bodily perfections a solid judgment:, a great penetration, and a prudence which rarely suffered him to make a false step. Besides this, he had principles of justice, honour, and honesty, which restrained him from countenancing vice. He was also of an exemplary chastity, a virtue seldom found in sovereigns. All these noble qualities bred in the hearts of his subjects a love and esteem which greatly contributed to the peace of his kingdom.”[173]
Thus, through a period of several succeeding centuries, Englishmen, with one consent, regarded this great sovereign with veneration—not so much for his valour or his prowess, in which the Conqueror, or him of the “lion heart,” might, perhaps, equal him, as for his wisdom, his statesmanlike qualities, his “legislative mind,” and, still more, for his uprightness, his truthfulness, his merciful disposition, and his various moral excellences. In their eyes he was indeed “great,” but, still more remarkably, he was “good.”
But in the eighteenth century, new histories, brought up to more recent times, were needed, and English attempts to supply the want generally failed. Brady, in 1685, Tyrrell, in 1700, and Carte, in 1747, were laborious and dull. To supply the want, which could not but be felt, two Scotchmen, of unquestionable talent, offered themselves, and the histories written by Hume and by Henry soon became the favourite authorities. An Anglo‐Irishman, Goldsmith, was content to follow in their track. Other Scotchmen of high merit—Mackintosh, Scott, Macfarlane, Tytler, and Chambers—have succeeded Hume and Henry; and of three generations it may be said with truth, that Englishmen have been content to learn the history of their own land from the lips and pens of the natives of Caledonia.
Now, for the greater part of the story, this might occur without any injurious consequences; but how would it affect that part of the narrative which described the wars between England and Scotland? Above all, how were the enthusiastic admirers of Bruce and Wallace to discuss impartially the deeds of him who had twice conquered Scotland, and who had sent Wallace and three of the family of Bruce to the scaffold? That they should do so was evidently impossible. Yet they gained almost entire possession of the public ear, and then they utterly changed the public feeling as to this, the greatest of all the English kings.