John Richard Green on Edward I of England

“A strange tenderness and sensitiveness to affection lay in fact beneath the stern imperiousness of his outer bearing... He is the first English king since the Conquest who loves his people with a personal love, and craves for their love back again. To his trust in them we owe our Parliament, to his care for them the great statutes which stand in the forefront of our laws.”

“In his own time, and amongst his own subjects, Edward was the object of almost boundless admiration. He was in the truest sense a national king. At the moment when the distinction between conquerors and conquered had passed away, and England felt herself once more a people, she saw in her ruler no stranger, but an Englishman. The national tradition returned in more than the golden hair or the English name which linked him to her earlier kings. Edward's very temper was English to the core. In good as in evil he stands out as the typical representative of his race, wilful and imperious as his people, tenacious of his rights, indomitable in his pride, dogged, stubborn, slow of apprehension, narrow in sympathy, but in the main just, unselfish, laborious, conscientious, haughtily observant of truth and self-respect, temperate, reverent of duty, religious.”