faithful in friendship,
and he had a strong impatience of etiquette. He loved to associate with
his people, to mix in their joys and sorrows, to be as one of them. His
favourite amusement was to row down the Thames on a summer evening, with
music on board, and to chat freely with the lieges who came down in
their barges, occasionally, and much to his own amusement, buying
cabbages and other wares from them. We should consider such actions
indicative of a kindly disposition and of simplicity of taste. But in
the eyes of his contemporaries they were inexpressibly low. And be it
remembered that it was not a question of associating with persons of
more or less education, whose mental standard might be unequal to his
own. There was no mental standard whereby to measure any one in the
thirteenth century. All (with a very few exceptions, and those chiefly
among the clergy) were uneducated alike. The moral standard looked upon
war and politics as the only occupations meet for a prince, and upon
hunting and falconry as the only amusements sufficiently noble. A man
who, like Edward, hated war, and had no fancy for either sport or
politics, was hardly a man in the eyes of a mediaeval noble.

The hardest treatment to which Edward was subjected, whether from his
father in youth or from his people at a later time, arose out of that
touching constancy which was his greatest virtue. Perhaps he did not
always choose his friends well; he was inclined to put rather too much
trust in his fellow creatures; and Hugh Le Despenser the elder may have
been grasping and mean, and Piers Gavestone too extravagant. Yet we
must remember that we read their characters only as depicted by the pens
of men who hated them--of men who were simply unable to conceive that
two persons might be drawn together by mutual taste for some elevated
and innocent pursuit. The most wicked motives imaginable were
recklessly suggested for the attachment which Edward showed for these
chosen friends--who were not of noble origin, and had no handles to
their names till he conferred them.

It is only through a thick mist of ignorance and prejudice that we of
this day can see the character of Edward the Second. We read it only in
the pages of monks who hated their Lollard King--in the angry complaints
of nobles who were jealous that he listened to and bestowed gifts on
other men than themselves. But we do see some faint glimpses of the
Edward that really was, in