Two very different and, in fact, opposite beliefs have obtained currency in England during the last five centuries. For four hundred years Englishmen formed their own opinions, and spoke of Edward as they knew him, or as their forefathers had known him. Then, for one hundred years, they submitted to have a different view forced upon them; and they received in silence, until they gradually came to believe it—the estimate of Edward which was formed by the admirers of Bruce and of Wallace;—of Bruce the false and of Wallace the ferocious. Thus, strangely enough, the people of England learned to think, in the eighteenth century, quite differently of the greatest of their kings from what their forefathers had done, during at least ten or twelve generations.
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]