Edward’s abounding energy was even more gladly devoted to war than to the chase.  He was an admirable exponent of those chivalric ideals which are glorified in the courtly pages of Froissart.  Not content with the easy victories which fall in the tiltyard to the crowned king, Edward was anxious to show that his triumphs belonged to the knight and not to the monarch, and more than once jousted victoriously in disguise.  The same spirit led him to challenge Philip of France to decide their quarrel by single combat, and to win a personal triumph when masking as a knight attached to the service of Sir Walter Manny.  He was liberal to the verge of prodigality, good-tempered, easy of access, and, save when moved by deep gusts of fierce anger, kindly and compassionate.  His easy good nature endeared him both to foreigners and to every class of his own subjects.  Not only did he enter fully into the free-masonry which regarded the knights of all Christian nations as equal members of a sworn brotherhood of arms, but he extended his favours to the London vintner’s son who earned his bread in his service, and entertained the wives of the leading London citizens, side by side with the noble ladies in whose honour he gave the most quaint and magnificent of his banquets.  Pious after a somewhat formal fashion, he was unwearied in going on pilgrimage and lavish in his religious foundations.  Though no prince was more careful to protect the state from the encroachments of churchmen, his orthodoxy and devoutness kept him in good repute with the austerest champions of the Church.  He could choose fit agents to carry out his policy, and his campaigns were a marvellous training ground for gallant and capable warriors.

Edward seldom lost sight of the material and economic interests of his subjects.  He was the friend of merchants, the father of English commerce, the patron of the infant woollen manufactures, and a zealous champion of the maritime greatness of his island realm, which boasted that he was “king of the sea”.  Though his financial exigencies often led him to sell excessive privileges to alien traders, this policy did little harm to his subjects, for few of them were ready as yet to embark in foreign commerce.  A true patriot, who declared that his land of England was “nearer to his heart, more delightful, noble, and profitable than all other lands,” he succeeded in making Englishmen conscious of their national life as they had never been before; and he won for his fatherland a foremost place among the kingdoms of the world.  His network of diplomatic alliances was dexterously fashioned, and enabled him to supplement the resources of his own subjects.