The Three Edwards (57 page)

In spite of the dire conditions in France, the people rallied back of the young regent to reject a treaty which had been negotiated in England between the English king and the captive French monarch. The terms included the cession to England of Maine, Touraine, and Poitou in the south and Normandy, Ponthieu, and Calais in the north, which thus established again the Plantagenet empire of the days of Henry II and went a vast step beyond, because the ceded territories would belong to the English king in full sovereignty.

This rejection in 1360 forced Edward to cross the Channel with another army in an effort to bring the French to terms. Knowing that he could not expect his army to live off a country which had been stripped so thoroughly, he took a long provision train with him, including equipment such as ovens, forges, and mills. The train following the army was six miles in length.

He met with no resistance in the open but was unable to capture Rheims, his first objective, and so pushed his forces down the Seine with
the idea of attacking Paris. The mettlesome Parisiennes organized to defend themselves and succeeded so well that it soon became apparent to Edward that his supplies would be exhausted before he could expect to see his leopards floating above the Louvre. Accordingly he moved down into the fatter lands of the Loire and here he met envoys from the Duke of Normandy with proposals for peace. The dauphin had given in sufficiently to seek better terms, and in May a treaty was finally drawn up and concluded at Bretigny, a small town in the neighborhood of Chartres.

Although there was some disappointment in England because Edward agreed to abandon his claims to the throne of France, the Treaty of Bretigny was a triumph for the English king. He was confirmed in his possession in full sovereignty of Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, Saintonge, Limousin, Anjoumois, Périgord, Bigorre, Rouerque, Ponthieu, Guisnes, and Calais. The French king agreed to pay a ransom of three millions of gold crowns in six years, and a first payment of six hundred thousand florins was guaranteed by John Galeas Visconti, Duke of Milan, as the price of his marriage with Isabel of France, John’s daughter.

All this was humiliating to the French people, but they had suffered so much in the wars that they welcomed the peace with much ringing of bells and dancing in the streets.

Edward returned to England, believing the war to be at an end and the victory his.

T
HE Black Prince caught the fancy of the English people almost from the day of his birth. He became a national hero, and nothing he did, not even the extreme savagery he displayed on several occasions nor the financial disorder of his official as well as his private life, disturbed or diminished the admiration the public had conceived for him. When he came home to die at the age of forty-six, with the dreams of conquest shattered and the star of England in the descent, he was still the idol of the commonality.

Little is known about him. It is almost impossible to see and understand the man back of that imposing façade. He was brave to a fault. He had certain fixed ideals which nothing could shake or change. He was courteous to those about him and generous to his friends, but there seems to have been little actual warmth in either his courtesy or generosity. Money meant nothing to him and he was always deep in debt. To gratify his generous impulses (“a war-horse called Bayard Bishop to William Montacute,” “a hobby called Dun Crump to a German knight”), he had to permit his stewards to extract every penny they could from his tenants. The peasants on his lands in Cheshire broke out in revolt in 1353 because of the burdens laid upon them. His managers in the stannaries continued to get out tin in large quantities without any record being kept or any payments being made. It was said that in the face of an almost universal admiration his tenants had nothing but detestation for him.

As a boy he was handsome, strong, and manly. The kind of gossip circulated about the rowdy household of the young Edward II, which got into the chronicles of the day, was never told or believed about this prince, who was so obviously destined for great things. To the people he seemed like a wonderful and flawless painting in oil glimpsed high up in a cathedral gloom. The story of his bravery at Crécy swept over England. The
whole nation went mad with joy when he defeated John of France at Poictiers with a handful of men, even though his opponent knew as little of warfare as, say, that fanatical lover of chivalry, Don Quixote himself.

There are few anecdotes told about him, none which help to a real understanding of the man himself. Had he a sense of humor? He smiled gravely and courteously, but did he ever laugh out loud? Did he enjoy the wine which flowed so freely after the evening meal? Did trivial emotions ever ruffle that stern and handsome countenance? Did his luminous eyes, as blue as the skies of Gascony but as fixed as those of an eagle, ever soften at the sight of a beautiful woman?

Although he did not marry until he was thirty years of age, it was known that he had two illegitimate sons, Sir John Sounder and Sir Roger Clarendon, and that a hint of a third was conveyed in a household record in 1349 about “a horse called Lyard Hobyn to his own little son Edward.”

Less is known of a daughter of the Black Prince. Historians have ignored her existence, But there are records which prove her to have been married to one Waleran de Luxemburg, Count of Ligny and St. Pol. In a written challenge issued by the count to King Henry IV he identifies himself as having had as his bride the sister of the “high and powerful Prince Richard, King of England.” The countess’s Christian name, her personality, whether or not she inherited the blond Plantagenet beauty, the royal grace and temper, are lost to the pages of history.

The possession of illegitimate children was not regarded as a sign of weakness or of dissolute living. It was merely a proof that a small streak of frailty existed after all in that perfect statue of a man.

He was as extravagant and lavish as his father, but his largess was dispensed with a more regal hand. Because he never seemed to step down from his pedestal, he maintained a higher degree of dignity than his splendid father. Even his closest and most devoted friends, including John Chandos, always had to look up. It may have been that he felt the eyes of posterity on him; or it may have been that he lacked the small common weaknesses. Whatever faults he had were great ones; but it is clear that he did not recognize them as faults.

As he was handsome in his person and kingly in air and carriage, and most particularly as he always seemed to be riding high in the clouds like a mythological god, he grew rapidly into a legend, a symbol of everything right and fine. He attached men to him with a fanatical devotion but perhaps not with the warm ties of affection which can exist between close friends.

His father, the king, was said to have a preference for his son John above the other royal princes, even the brilliant first-born. John of Gaunt was a fine knight in his way, tall, handsome, and deeply ambitious, but he was of baser metal. The people of England were more observant and
acute in their judgment of the pair. They worshiped the Black Prince to the day of his death, but at the first opportunity they burned to the ground John’s magnificent palace on the Thames, the Savoy.

Almost from the day of his birth at Woodstock there had been talk of a suitable marriage for the heir to the throne. At first it was felt that only a French princess would serve, and some preliminary steps were taken to arrange for his union with a daughter of Philip of Valois. Then the inevitability of war between the two nations became apparent and that plan was dropped. There was talk later of marrying him to Margaret, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, or to a daughter of the Count of Flanders. After that the possibility of a match with a princess of the Portuguese royal family was explored, even though the advantages were remote. Some obstacle always developed. Perhaps the well-known tendency of the king to be overdemanding and something less than open and aboveboard in his methods had this effect. Certainly the prince himself was never co-operative. This may have been due to his complete absorption in matters military. He loved horses and dogs, and the fine blade of a sword seemed brighter than a lady’s eyes. Or it may have been due to an early preference he had felt for a cousin, Joan of Kent.

Joan, who has been mentioned before, was the youngest daughter of Edmund, the half brother of Edward II, who had stood all those grim hours beside the block waiting for Mortimer to find someone base enough to wield the ax. When Mortimer’s turn came to die and Queen Isabella was bundled off to Castle Rising, the girl had been taken in hand by Queen Philippa and raised at court. The prince had not been much at court before that, having a preference for hunting and military exercises which he could indulge in his household at Berkhampstead. As he grew up, however, he became increasingly aware of this fair second cousin, who was two years older than he was and who fluttered about the court in the most beautiful robes of shimmering silk, with bodices embroidered in ermine and the costliest of furs. She was not only very winsome but very gay, and he found her loquacity and easy laughter quite entrancing; although, being silent as well as strong, he did not often share in her gaiety. He began to see less of the hunting fields at Berkhampstead and more of his large stone house on Fish Street in London, which gave him opportunities of appearing at court. It was clear to him, of course, that he could never marry Joan. Even if his parents could be persuaded to such a course, which was highly unlikely, the leaders in Parliament would have frowned on it.

This is one explanation of the undefined and rather vague relationship which existed between them. There is another, which has found more general acceptance: that Edward had no more than a cousinly affection for the golden-haired hoyden but that Joan’s eye had been on him from the start and that she was very unhappy because she knew she would never be allowed to marry him, even if she could break down his seeming indifference to her. Whichever is the true one, the time came when Joan had to think seriously of marriage. There was still no evidence of a willingness on the part of the king and queen to permit a match with the heir to the throne. Two contestants had come forward for her hand, the young Earl of Salisbury (the son of the king’s fair Katherine) and Sir John Holland, the steward of the royal household. Both were so madly in love with “the little Jeanette,” as Prince Edward called her, that their struggle for her favor had to be carried finally to Avignon. Holland had gained the upper hand by getting a contract of marriage, but he was summoned to France on the outburst of war before the ceremony could be performed. The Earl of Salisbury took advantage of his absence to enter into a marriage contract with her, and when Holland came back there was a pretty problem to solve. It was referred to Pope Clement VI, who finally gave judgment for Holland. With many regretful glances over her shoulder in the direction of the unattainable Edward, the Fair Maid of Kent allowed the masterful Holland to carry her off.

That was in 1349. In 1360 Holland died in Normandy, leaving his widow with three children, a son and two daughters. Joan was beautiful enough to be called still the Fair Maid, although she was no longer as slender as she had been and the gold of her hair might have shown some of the tarnish of time had her maids been less zealous in the care of it. She was, after all, only thirty-two years of age and of much physical vitality.

As a widow she was, of course, a great catch. Her only brother had died and she had become Countess of Kent and Lady Wake of Liddell in her own right. She had wide possessions and a handsome pension from the crown for her lifetime.

And now the story of the romance has arrived at a point where all the chronicles agree. There were many suitors for the hand of this most desirable widow, and some of them came to the Black Prince to beg his kind offices in their behalf. That determined bachelor (he was now thirty years of age and it was generally believed he would never marry) listened to all of them with due attention but had little to say.

He was in England at the time and maintaining a rather lively household in his stone habitation on Fish Street. But he was far from content with what life was doing for him. It was clear to him that he had reached the peak of his military reputation in winning the battle of Poictiers. For
years he had been acclaimed as the perfect exponent of chivalry, the peerless paladin of the civilized world. What more could life offer him now? He was feeling the sense of futility which comes to all men who have achieved in their youth what they had hoped to win in a long full life. And now, as a further reason for discontent, there was this clamorous bidding for the hand of the fair widow, the lively Jeanette he had always admired. He began to show little interest in anything, to sit at the head of his board with an air of preoccupation, failing to share in the laughter of his companions, leaving the wine untouched in his jeweled flagon.

Finally a suitor came asking for his help who could not be put off with a courteous word and an indifferent shrug. It was Sir Bernard de Brocas, a member of a Gascon family which for generations had suffered many hardships in the service of the English. He had been with Edward at Poictiers and was one of the first to cry “St. George for Guienne!” and go charging behind the prince through the vineyards. Frowning unhappily, the prince listened to the fervent protestations of his friend. He could do no less than inform the Lady Joan of this offer.

So the Black Prince carried to the Fair Maid of Kent the word that the young, brave, and handsome Sir Bernard de Brocas was in love with her and would be most unhappy if she could not be persuaded to smile on his suit. History does not tell where the meeting took place between them, but it is safe enough to assume that it was either Westminster or Windsor. Knowing that the question of her future would soon be settled, the Countess of Kent (who was as shrewd as she was fair) would be at court to get her own way.