hating to refer to the doubtful decision of battle that which might be
settled by any other means, and stirred always by a great pity, strange
in such an age and in such a man, for lives poured out in war. "He was
more tender to dead soldiers than to the living," says a chronicler
querulously; "and found far more sorrow in the loss of those who were
slain than comfort in the love of those who remained." His pitiful temper
was early shown in his determination to put down the barbarous treatment
of shipwrecked sailors. He abolished the traditions of the civil war
by forbidding plunder, and by a resolute fidelity to his plighted word. In
political craft he was matchless; in great perils none was gentler than
he, but when the danger was past none was harsher; and common talk hinted
that he was a willing breaker of his word, deeming that in the pressure
of difficulty it was easier to repent of word than deed, and to render
vain a saying than a fact. "His mother's teaching, as we have heard, was
this: That he should delay all the business of all men; that whatever
fell into his hands he should retain along while and enjoy the fruit of
it, and keep suspended in hope those who aspired to it; confirming her
sentences with this cruel parable, 'Glut a hawk with his quarry and he
will hunt no more; show it him and then draw it back and you will ever
keep him tractable and obedient.' She taught him also that he should be
frequently in his chamber, rarely in public; that he should give nothing
to any one upon any testimony but what he had seen and known; and many
other evil things of the same kind. We, indeed," adds this good hater of
Matilda, "confidently attributed to her teaching everything in which he
displeased us."

A king of those days, indeed, was not shielded from criticism. He lived
altogether in public, with scarcely a trace of etiquette or ceremony.
When a bishop of Lincoln kept Henry waiting for dinner while he performed
a service, the king's only remedy was to send messenger after messenger