It is in the anomalies of such a character as this, in its strange mingling of justice and wrong-doing, of grandeur and littleness, that we must look for any fair explanation of much that has since been bitterly blamed in Edward’s conduct and policy.  But what none of these anomalies can hide from us is the height of moral temper which shows itself in the tenor of his rule.  Edward was every inch a king; but his notion of kingship was a lofty and a noble one.  He loved power; he believed in his sovereign rights and clung to them with a stubborn tenacity.  But his main end in clinging to them was the welfare of his people.  Nothing better proves the self-command which he drew from the purpose he set before him than his freedom from the common sin of great rulers—­the lust of military glory.  He was the first of our kings since William the Conqueror who combined military genius with political capacity; but of the warrior’s temper, of the temper that finds delight in war, he had little or none.  His freedom from it was the more remarkable that Edward was a great soldier.  His strategy in the campaign before Evesham marked him as a consummate general.  Earl Simon was forced to admire the skill of his advance on the fatal field, and the operations by which he met the risings that followed it were a model of rapidity and military grasp.  In his Welsh campaigns he was soon to show a tenacity and force of will which wrested victory out of the midst of defeat.  He could head a furious charge of horse as at Lewes, or organize a commissariat which enabled him to move army after army across the harried Lowlands.  In his old age he was quick to discover the value of the English archery and to employ it as a means of victory at Falkirk.  But master as he was of the art of war, and forced from time to time to show his mastery in great campaigns, in no single instance was he the assailant.  He fought only when he was forced to fight; and when fighting was over he turned back quietly to the work of administration and the making of laws.

[Sidenote:  His Political Genius]

War in fact was with Edward simply a means of carrying out the ends of statesmanship, and it was in the character of his statesmanship that his real greatness made itself felt.  His policy was an English policy; he was firm to retain what was left of the French dominion of his race, but he abandoned from the first all dreams of recovering the wider dominions which his grandfather had lost.  His mind was not on that side of the Channel, but on this.  He concentrated his energies on the consolidation and good government of England itself.  We can only fairly judge the annexation of Wales or his attempt to annex Scotland if we look on his efforts in either quarter as parts of the same scheme of national administration to which we owe his final establishment of our judicature, our legislation, our parliament.  The character of his action was no doubt determined in great part