His impatience of contradiction, his fiery temper, were in fact the great stumbling-blocks in his after career.

His best friends marked honestly this fault, and it shows the greatness of the man that he listened to their remonstrances.

"Better is a patient man," writes honest Friar Adam, "than a strong man, and he who can rule his own temper than he who storms a city." But the one characteristic which overmastered all was what men at that time called his "constancy," the firm immoveable resolve which trampled even death under foot in its loyalty to the right.

The motto which Edward the First chose as his device, "Keep troth," was far truer as the device of Earl Simon.

We see in his correspondence with what a clear discernment of its difficulties both at home and abroad he "thought it unbecoming to decline the danger of so great an exploit" as the reduction of Gascony to peace and order; but once undertaken, he persevered in spite of the opposition he met with, the failure of all support or funds from England, and the king's desertion of his cause, till the work was done.