The Herald may well have been right as far as the Prince's English followers were concerned; but the Gascons and Poitevins did not share their enthusiasm. For one thing, they were perfectly well aware that all this luxury was maintained at their expense, being made possible only by a savage taxation that increased year by year. For another, they themselves were treated as second-class citizens, and given few if any important or lucrative posts in the administration. The grumbling grew louder still when, early in 1367, the Prince involved himself in the
1. The Herald of Sir John Chandos — whose own name is unknown - wrote a fulsomely admiring biography of the Black Prince in French verse: see Bibliography.
continuing struggle between Pedro the Cruel, King of Castile1 - whose subjects had risen in revolt - and his bastard half-brother Don Enrique of Trastamara. Pedro was strongly supported by Edward of England, two of whose sons were to marry Spanish Infantas before many more years had passed; on the other hand he had incurred the hatred of King John's son and successor Charles V, whose sister-in-law he had married, then abandoned and quite possibly murdered. Seeing his throne now seriously threatened, he had appealed to the Black Prince who, never able to resist the lure of battle, led his army across the Pyrenees, where he was joined by another force under his brother, John of Gaunt. On 3 April 1367, at Najera, the Prince won the third great victory of his career: a victory that ranked with those of Crecy and Poitiers, put Don Enrique to flight and re-established Pedro firmly on the throne of Castile.
But Najera, glorious as it was, failed to impress the Gascons. It was anyway no business of theirs, and when Pedro predictably defaulted on his promise to defray all the expenses of the expedition and the Prince in his turn announced new annual hearth taxes on the people of Guyenne, they decided that they had had enough and lodged a formal appeal to the King of France. Charles V was an intelligent, capable young man who had no delusions about the dangers ahead. Before taking any action he consulted a number of distinguished jurists from as far afield as Bologna; then, after carefully considering their opinions, he wrote to Edward in December 1368, informing him that he was legally entitled to uphold the appeal and was in fact doing so. Edward, furious at what he considered an unwarrantable incursion on his own prerogatives, laid claim once again to the title of King of France; Charles replied by declaring all his French lands confiscate. It was an almost exact repetition of what had occurred with the French King's grandfather, Philip VI, thirty-two years before. In those days, however, Edward had been just twenty-five, in full possession of his youth and vigour; now, at fifty-seven, he was failing fast and no match for his shrewd young adversary.
Thanks to the outstanding military ability of his eldest son, this should not have constituted a serious problem; but the Black Prince's health
1. Castile and Aragon were separate kingdoms until shortly after the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1469.
was also causing concern. Soon after Najera he suffered an attack of dysentery, which soon gave way to dropsy. By the end of 1367 all his once-formidable energy seemed to be draining away. He grew fat and bloated, and two years later was 'weighed down by so great infirmity of body that he could scarcely sit upon his horse'. At the siege of Limoges in 1370 he had commanded from a litter, the brutality of his subsequent order for the massacre of some 3,000 of its citizens, regardless of age or sex, being at least partly attributable to the acute pain from which he was by now never free. He returned to England in January 1371 and retired at the age of only forty to his manor at Berkhamsted, where - apart from a brief expedition with his father in 1372 - he survived for the next five years, dying on Trinity Sunday, 8 June 1376. By now Gascony was as good as lost. John of Gaunt and others did what they could, but the French remained ensconced in their walled towns and castles, refusing to fight and frustrating all efforts to dislodge them. Brittany, left undefended, was quickly recaptured; and by the time a two-year truce was concluded at Bruges in 1375 the English possessions in France had been reduced to the city of Calais and a narrow strip of coast between Bordeaux and Bayonne - a poor enough inheritance for the Prince's son Richard when, just two years later, the crown was laid upon his head.
King Edward survived his eldest son for little over a year. On the Sunday before the Feast of John the Baptist, 21 June 1377, he died in his palace at Richmond. He had reigned for just over half a century -rather too long in fact, since although he was still only sixty-four, the last fifteen years of his life had been increasingly clouded by a premature senility. It had attacked both his mind and his body, rendering him powerless to control either the ambitious, self-seeking courtiers by whom he was surrounded or the intrigues of his mistress, Alice Perrers. After the death of Queen Philippa in 1369, his decline had accelerated rapidly. Philippa had tolerated his affair with Alice, even going so far as to install her as a Maid of the Bedchamber; she had also advised him, encouraged him, constantly reminded him of his duties as a King and prevented him from drinking too much. Bereft of her, he had slipped gradually into his long dotage.
For most of his reign he had been a good king, though not a great one. With his father Edward II, the prestige of the English Crown had sunk to its nadir; Edward III, succeeding at the age of fourteen, had restored its reputation and given back to his people their self-respect. Tall and vigorous, with thick, long, golden hair and beard, he looked every inch a King and acted like one, indefatigable on the battlefield, the hunting field and, it was said, the bedchamber. Though never outstandingly intelligent, he possessed plenty of good sound common sense and a degree of self-confidence that frequently made him seem cleverer than he was. At Crecy, Poitiers and countless lesser engagements, his armies earned for themselves - and for him - a reputation for valour and military skill unequalled by any English monarch before or since. Thus, even though his private life was known to be far from blameless, he had earned the respect, admiration and even the love of his subjects, and had maintained them till the end. At his death he was genuinely mourned, and not only by the English: his old enemy Charles V of France ordered a requiem mass at the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, 'with as much pomp and ceremony', writes Jean Froissart, 'as if King Edward had been his own cousin'. It was to be a very long time before England was to look upon his like again.
2
The Young Richard
[1377-1381]
'In what way are those whom we call lords greater masters than ourselves? How have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in bondage? . . . Let us go to the King - he is young - and show him how we are oppressed, and tell him that we want things to be changed, else we will change them ourselves. If we go in good earnest and all together, many of those who are called serfs and are held in subjection will follow us to get their freedom. And when the King sees and hears us, he will remedy the evil, either willingly or otherwise.'
JOHN BALL, QUOTED BY FROISSART
Queen Philippa had borne her husband twelve children, of whom seven had been sons. Of the five of those sons who survived to manhood, the first had been the Black Prince; the second, Lionel Duke of Clarence, had died as early as 1368, at the age of thirty; the third consequently plays a part in this story far more important than any of his brothers. Having been born in 1340 at Ghent in the Low Countries, he was universally known as John of Ghent, or Gaunt. In 1359 he had married his cousin, Blanche of Lancaster, by whom he had had a son, Henry; and soon after the death of his father-in-law he was created Duke of Lancaster in his own right. The duchy brought with it vast estates in the north, and with it John - who also possessed the three earldoms of Leicester, Lincoln and Derby — became, after the King himself, the richest and most powerful man in England. Blanche died young, in 1369 — Geoffrey Chaucer, who was on her husband's payroll, wrote his enchanting Book of the Duchess in her memory - and in 1371 John married Constance, elder daughter and co-heiress of Pedro the Cruel of Castile and Leon, to whose titles — and later to whose crown - he also laid claim, although he never succeeded in
making them his own. Of the two remaining sons, Edmund of Langley was born at the royal manor of King's Langley in 1341, created Earl of Cambridge in 1362 and Duke of York in 1385. For him his father arranged a marriage to the younger of Pedro's two daughters, Constance's sister Isabella. Though he was twice to act as Keeper of the Realm, Edmund was, as we shall see, a man of little intelligence or ability. The youngest son, Thomas of Woodstock - born in 1355 after three more girls - seems to have been something of an intellectual, possessing as he did one of the finest private libraries in the country. He was greatly aided in its acquisition by the considerable wealth of his wife Eleanor, one of the joint heiresses of Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.
The five royal princesses were a good deal less fortunate than their brothers. Two died in childhood and two more - Mary and Margaret, respectively wives of John IV, Duke of Brittany and of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke - found married life too much for them and did not long survive their weddings. The eldest, Isabella, became the wife of Enguerrand de Coucy,1 one of the richest and most distinguished of the forty French knights who were being kept as hostages in England as security for the as yet unpaid ransom of the King of France.2 In the hopes that he might settle permanently in England, Edward had made him Earl of Bedford and admitted him to the recently formed Order of the Garter;3 but de Coucy was to return to France as soon as he decently could after the death of his father-in-law, subsequently sending his unwanted wife back again to England with their younger daughter Philippa.
The laws of the royal succession were less clear in the fourteenth century than they are today, and after the death of the Black Prince there were no less than three potential aspirants to the throne. John of
He is also the central figure in Barbara Tuchman's brilliant portrait of the fourteenth century, A Distant Mirror.
See p. 38.
Recent research has done much to confirm the old story, told by both Selden and Polydore Vergil, of the young Countess of Salisbury - with whom the King was at that time in love — dropping her garter at a ball held in Calais in 1347 to celebrate the fall of the town, and of Edward picking it up and binding it round his own leg, rebuking his tittering courtiers with the words Honi soit qui mal y pense, 'Evil be to him who evil thinks'. If the story is indeed true, was the Countess his own future daughter-in-law? (see below, p. 55).
Gaunt could well have claimed it for himself, as the oldest surviving son of the dead King. So too - though with rather less justification -could Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, son-in-law of John's elder brother Lionel, Duke of Clarence, who had walked with Edward's three sons immediately behind the coffin at his funeral. But Edward, doddering as he may have been, had taken all possible precautions to ensure a smooth transfer of power. 'On Christmas Day 1376,' writes Froissart,
he held a great and solemn feast in his palace of Westminster, which all the prelates, earls, barons and knights of England were commanded to attend. And there Richard, the Prince's son, was raised up and carried before the King, who invested him in the presence of the lords just mentioned with the succession to the throne of England, to hold it after his death; and he seated him at his own side. He then required an oath from all prelates, barons, knights, officers of the cities and towns, of the ports and frontier-posts of England, that they would recognize him as their King.
There must have been many people present at that feast who questioned the wisdom of entrusting the throne to a boy of ten. Royal minorities were dangerous things; John of Gaunt, who for some time already had been regent in all but name, might certainly have seemed a more sensible choice. But he was dangerously unpopular, particularly in the city of London, and Edward - who had himself succeeded at the age of only fourteen - doubtless thought it better that John should govern through his nephew rather than in his own name. And so it was that on Thursday 16 July 1377 young Richard, son of Edward the Black Prince and his wife Joan — 'the Fair Maid of Kent' - and himself 'fair among men as another Absalom',1 was crowned at Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury. The coronation service was appallingly long, and was followed by a state banquet which continued even longer; it was hardly surprising that by the end of the day its principal participant was so exhausted that he had to be carried back to his palace by his tutor Sir Simon Burley, losing one of his slippers on the way.
1. Adam of Usk, Chronicle.
Joan of Kent had been delivered of her second son at the stroke often on the morning of the Feast of the Epiphany, Wednesday 6 January 1367, in the Abbey of St Andrew at Bordeaux. For the first four years of his life Richard had an elder brother, called Edward after his father and grandfather and born at Angouleme two years before him; but Edward of Angouleme had died in 13 71 at the age of six and Richard, small and sickly as he was, was thenceforth their only child. Many years later his cousin Henry Bolingbroke was to claim that he was not the son of the Black Prince at all, but of a Bordeaux priest; such an accusation, however, was only to be expected in the circumstances, and was almost certainly baseless. All that we know of Joan suggests that she was faithful to her husband, and he for his part loved her much.
Richard returned to England with his family in the year of his brother's death, and for the six years up to his coronation - years which were spent, presumably, with his parents at Berkhamsted — we hear little of him. There can be no doubt that the principal influence on him during that most formative period of his life was his mother; and since she was to maintain that influence until her death in 1385, it may be worthwhile saying a little more about her before this story continues. Born in 1328, she was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, Earl of Kent, sixth son of King Edward I. Only two years after her birth, her father was beheaded for his opposition to Edward II's widow, Isabella of France, and her lover Roger Mortimer;1 and Joan was brought up by Queen Philippa at the court of her cousin, Edward III. Her nickname, 'the Fair Maid of Kent', was richly deserved: she was, according to Froissart, en son temps la plus belle de tout la roiaulme d'Engleterre et la plus amoureuse. Not surprisingly she had many suitors, including William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; but at an early stage she fell in love with his steward, Sir Thomas Holland, and entered into a pre-contract of matrimony with him. Unfortunately, however, before their marriage could be solemnized Holland was called away to the wars; and Salisbury took advantage of his absence to marry Joan himself. Whether she gave her willing consent to this second commitment seems unlikely; at all events, when Holland on his return in 1349 successfully petitioned the Pope for the restitution of his conjugal rights she went back to him at
1. See p. 16.
once, and the two lived - so far as we know - happily together for the next eleven years, until his death in 1360.
Joan - since the death of her brother eight years before Countess of Kent in her own right - was, at thirty-two, still relatively young and devastatingly attractive; and it was not long before she caught the eye of the Black Prince. There were initial obstacles to their marriage. Not only was the Prince her cousin at a single remove, he was also godfather to her elder son Thomas Holland, a spiritual relationship which in the eyes of the Church created every bit as much of a problem as the physical one. Eventually, however, the King - himself not altogether immune to the Countess's charms - was persuaded to intercede with the Pope, and the two were married at Lambeth in October 1361. For the rest of her life, in England and in Aquitaine, as wife and as widow, Joan seems to have been universally loved and respected, and by no one more than by Richard her son.
Inevitably, the influence of Richard's father was less strong than that of his mother. For most of the first four years of the boy's life the Black Prince was away on campaign; after the family's return to England in 13 71 he was ill and largely incapacitated, as well as being deeply distressed by the death of his elder son, whom he had always preferred to the younger. Though not ill-disposed towards Richard, he seems never to have altogether forgiven him for his slight stature and unimpressive ph
ysique. He certainly made no allowances for such defects: he was determined that the boy should be brought up as a knight and a warrior just as he himself had been, and Richard's tutors were given instructions to build up his strength and endurance and to give him a thorough training in the arts of war. The result was a feeling of inadequacy which he never managed entirely to overcome, and which was made the more intolerable by his exaggerated conception of kingship, his acute consciousness of his own royal blood and his determination to be not only a good king but a great one. An additional irritation may well have been the brilliance of his two half-brothers Thomas and John Holland, both of whom, though much older than he was — Thomas by seventeen years and John by probably fourteen or fifteen - excelled at all military and chivalric pursuits; Thomas had actually been knighted by the Black Prince on a Castilian Battlefield in the year of Richard's birth.
Although the young King was still only ten and a half at the time of his coronation, there was no official regency. His mother continued to act as his guardian, while day-to-day government was entrusted to a council of twelve members, from which Richard's royal uncles were perhaps rather surprisingly excluded. There was no doubt, on the other hand, as to where the real power lay. John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, occupied a unique position in the kingdom. His lands were said to extend over one-third of the entire country, while for many years he maintained at his own expense a personal retinue of no fewer than 125 knights and 132 esquires, effectively a sizeable private army. His palace of the Savoy1 on the Thames was more magnificent than anything his nephew could boast. Such a man, it need hardly be said, might well have constituted a serious danger to the peace of the realm. He was, after all, Edward Ill's eldest surviving son, already thirty-seven years old at the time of Richard's coronation and possessed of all the wisdom, maturity and experience that his young nephew so obviously lacked. At a time when, after England's recent reverses in the French wars, such qualities were desperately needed, it would have been easy for him to have claimed the crown for himself. Even after the coronation had taken place he could have attacked Richard's legitimacy by challenging either the papal decision of 1349 that upheld his mother's contract with Sir Thomas Holland or the dispensation of 1361 permitting her to marry the Black Prince; similar attempts had been made before, and with Gaunt's money and influence he might well have succeeded. It is to his credit that he did none of these things, but remained a loyal subject throughout his life.
Shakespeare's Kings Page 7