h 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 by the general mood of his age, an age wh