But, his peculiar excellency, was that of great dispatch, which, however usually decried, and allowed to be only a happy temerity, does often answer all the ends of secrecy and counsel in a great commander, by surprising and daunting an enemy when he least expects it; as may appear by the greatest actions and events upon the records of every nation.
He was a man of sound natural sense, as well as of wit and humour, upon occasion.

There were several tenets in the Romish Church he could not digest; particularly that of the saints' intercession; and living in an age overrun with superstition, he went so far into the other extreme, as to be censured for an atheist.

The day before his death, a monk relating a terrible dream, which seemed to forebode him some misfortune, the King being told the matter, turned it into a jest; said, "The man was a monk, and dreamt like a monk, for lucre sake;" and therefore commanded Fitzhamon to give him an hundred shillings, that he might not complain he had dreamt to no purpose.
His vices appear to have been rather derived from the temper of his body, than any original depravity of his mind; for being of a sanguine complexion, wholly bent upon his pleasures, and prodigal in his nature, he became engaged in great expenses.

To supply these, the people were perpetually oppressed with illegal taxes and exactions; but that sort of avarice which arises from prodigality and vice, as it is always needy, so it is much more ravenous and violent than the other, which put the King and his evil instruments (among whom Ralph, Bishop of Durham, is of special infamy) upon those pernicious methods of gratifying his extravagances by all manner of oppression; whereof some are already mentioned, and others are too foul to relate.
He is generally taxed by writers for discovering a contempt of religion in his common discourse and behaviour; which I take to have risen from the same fountain, being a point of art, and a known expedient, for men who cannot quit their immoralities, at least to banish all reflections that may disturb them in the enjoyment, which must be done either by not thinking of religion at all; or, if it will obtrude, by putting it out of countenance.
Yet there is one instance that might shew him to have some sense of religion as well as justice.

When two monks were outvying each other in canting[16] the price of an abbey, he observed a third at some distance, who said never a word; the King demanded why he would not offer; the monk said, he was poor, and besides, would give nothing if he were ever so rich; the King replied, "Then you are the fittest person to have it," and immediately gave it him.