"By a piece of cold-blooded cruelty which shows Edward in a singularly unattractive light, he had refused to accept the garrison's surrender, even after it surrendered unconditionally, until the castle had been bombarded for a day by one of his new engines, the 'Warwolf'...the king's meanness of spirit and implacable, almost paranoiac hostility were not shared by his subjects."
"It would be wrong to think of him [Edward] acting in Scotland as a mere tyrant, if by tyrant we mean a ruler whose arbitrary whims are law, who pays no regard to local feeling and opinion, or for whom cruelty towards his subjects had become settled policy. If we look at the situation in 1304 as it appeared to Edward, we must in fairness admit that his attempted settlement was fair and statesmanlike. How many kings or governments emerging as the victors of long and bloody wars in the seventeeth, eighteenth or nineteenth centuries treated their vanquished foes as prudently and leniently as Edward treated the Scots in 1304 and 1305?"
What seems odd about the above is that both judgements come from the pages of the same book, and from the same author, GWS Barrow. One minute Edward is a mean, paranoid loony tune, the next he's a mild and statesmanlike ruler who could have taught Bismarck a thing or two. Now that's what you call dividing opinion.
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