The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect, that the disagreeable picture has been any-wile overcharged by the prejudice of the antient historians. It is hard to say, whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects was most culpable; or whether his crimes in these respects were not even exceeded by the baseness, which appeared in his transactions with the King of France, the Pope, and the barons. His dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have, ever since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: But he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the antient patrimony of his family: He subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the fee of Rome: He saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction: And he died at last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious; ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect, that the disagreeable picture has been any-wile overcharged by the prejudice of the antient historians. It is hard to say, whether his conduct to his father, his brother, his nephew, or his subjects was most culpable; or whether his crimes in these respects were not even exceeded by the baseness, which appeared in his transactions with the King of France, the Pope, and the barons. His dominions, when they devolved to him by the death of his brother, were more extensive than have, ever since his time, been ruled by any English monarch: But he first lost by his misconduct the flourishing provinces in France, the antient patrimony of his family: He subjected his kingdom to a shameful vassalage under the fee of Rome: He saw the prerogatives of his crown diminished by law, and still more reduced by faction: And he died at last, when in danger of being totally expelled by a foreign power, and of either ending his life miserably in prison, or seeking shelter as a fugitive from the pursuit of his enemies." in the context of "David Hume, The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar to the Revolution in 1688. Vol. I (1762), p. 395" to mean that wisdom is timeless.