soldier and general, he was yet an earnest striver after peace, hating to refer to the doubtful decision of battle that which might be settled by any other means, and stirred always by a great pity, strange in such an age and in such a man, for lives poured out in war.  “He was more tender to dead soldiers than to the living,” says a chronicler querulously; “and found far more sorrow in the loss of those who were slain than comfort in the love of those who remained.”  His pitiful temper was early shown in his determination to put down the barbarous treatment of shipwrecked sailors.  He abolished the traditions of the civil war by forbidding plunder, and by a resolute fidelity to his plighted word.  In political craft he was matchless; in great perils none was gentler than he, but when the danger was past none was harsher; and common talk hinted that he was a willing breaker of his word, deeming that in the pressure of difficulty it was easier to repent of word than deed, and to render vain a saying than a fact.  “His mother’s teaching, as we have heard, was this:  That he should delay all the business of all men; that whatever fell into his hands he should retain along while and enjoy the fruit of it, and keep suspended in hope those who aspired to it; confirming her sentences with this cruel parable, ’Glut a hawk with his quarry and he will hunt no more; show it him and then draw it back and you will ever keep him tractable and obedient.’  She taught him also that he should be frequently in his chamber, rarely in public; that he should give nothing to any one upon any testimony but what he had seen and known; and many other evil things of the same kind.  We, indeed,” adds this good hater of Matilda, “confidently attributed to her teaching everything in which he displeased us.”

A king of those days, indeed, was not shielded from criticism.  He lived altogether in public, with scarcely a trace of etiquette or ceremony.  When a bishop of Lincoln kept Henry waiting for dinner while he performed a service, the king’s only remedy was to send messenger after messenger to urge him to hurry in pity to the royal hunger.  The first-comer seems to have been able to go straight to his presence at any hour, whether in hall or chapel or sleeping-chamber; and the king was soundly rated by every one who had seen a vision, or desired a favour, or felt himself aggrieved in any way, with a rude plainness of speech which made sorely necessary his proverbial patience under such harangues.  “Our king,” says Walter Map, “whose power all the world fears, ... does not presume to be haughty, nor speak with a proud tongue, nor exalt himself over any man.”  The feudal barons of medieval times had, indeed, few of the qualities that made the courtiers of later days, and Henry, violent as he was, could bear much rough counsel and plain reproof.  No flatterer found favour at his court.  His special friends were men of learning or of saintly life.  Eager and eloquent in talk, his curiosity was boundless.