Edward the Black Prince facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Edward the Black Prince
Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine Duke of Cornwall
Edward the Black Prince as a Knight of the Garter, 1453, illustration from the Bruges Garter Book, British Library.
Born	15 June 1330 Woodstock Palace, Oxfordshire, England
Died	8 June 1376 (aged 45) Westminster Palace, London, England
Burial	29 September 1376 Canterbury Cathedral, Kent
Spouse	Joan of Kent ​ (m. 1361)​
Issue more...	Edward of Angoulême Richard II of England
House	Plantagenet
Father	Edward III, King of England
Mother	Philippa of Hainault

Edward of Woodstock, known to history as the Black Prince (15 June 1330 – 8 June 1376), was the eldest son of King Edward III of England, and the heir apparent to the English throne. He died before his father and so his son, Richard II, succeeded to the throne instead. Edward nevertheless earned distinction as one of the most successful English commanders during the Hundred Years' War, being regarded by his English contemporaries as a model of chivalry and one of the greatest knights of his age.

Biography

Edward was the eldest son of Edward III of England, Lord of Ireland and ruler of Gascony, and Queen Philippa. He was born at Woodstock in the County of Oxfordshire, on 15 June 1330.

His father, Edward III of England, became king at the young age of fourteen years in 1327, when his father (and the Black Prince's grandfather) Edward II of England was deposed by his wife Isabella of France, daughter of Philip IV of France. The marriage of Edward III and Phillippa of Hainault produced thirteen children; Edward was the eldest child and eldest son.

His father had begun a war with Scotland. Edward III defeated the Scots at the decisive Battle of Halidon Hill in 1333. He was able to recover the country politically and militarily, and was welcomed as a "great champion of the English nation".

On 18 March 1333, Edward was invested with the earldom and county of Chester, and in the parliament of 9 February 1337, he was created Duke of Cornwall. This is the earliest instance of the creation of a duke in England. He was guardian of the kingdom in his father's absence in 1338, 1340, and 1342. He was created Prince of Wales in 1343 and knighted by his father at La Hougue in 1346.

In 1346, Prince Edward commanded the vanguard at the Battle of Crécy, his father intentionally leaving him to win the battle. He took part in Edward III's 1349 Calais expedition. In 1355, he was appointed the king's lieutenant in Gascony, and ordered to lead an army into Aquitaine on a chevauchée, during which he pillaged Avignonet and Castelnaudary, sacked Carcassonne, and plundered Narbonne. The next year (1356) on another chevauchée, he ravaged Auvergne, Limousin, and Berry but failed to take Bourges. He offered terms of peace to King John II of France, who had outflanked him near Poitiers, but refused to surrender himself as the price of their acceptance. This led to the Battle of Poitiers, where his army routed the French and took King John prisoner.

The year after Poitiers, Edward returned to England. In 1360, he negotiated the Treaty of Brétigny. He was created Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony in 1362, but his suzerainty was not recognised by the lord of Albret or other Gascon nobles. He was directed by his father to forbid the marauding raids of the English and Gascon free companies in 1364. He entered into an agreement with Kings Peter of Castile and Charles II of Navarre, by which Peter covenanted to mortgage Castro de Urdiales and the province of Biscay to him as security for a loan; in 1366 a passage was secured through Navarre. In 1367 he received a letter of defiance from Henry of Trastámara, Peter's half-brother and rival. The same year, after an obstinate conflict, he defeated Henry at the Battle of Nájera. However, after a wait of several months, during which he failed to obtain either the province of Biscay or liquidation of the debt from Don Pedro, he returned to Aquitaine. Prince Edward persuaded the estates of Aquitaine to allow him a hearth tax of ten sous for five years in 1368, thereby alienating the lord of Albret and other nobles.

The death of Prince Edward's eldest son, Edward of Angoulême, in 1371, caused Edward a great deal of grief. His health continued to deteriorate and the prince's personal doctor advised him to return to England. Prince Edward returned to England in 1371, and the next year resigned the principality of Aquitaine and Gascony. He led the Commons in their attack upon the Lancastrian administration in 1376. He died in 1376 of dysentery and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral, where his surcoat, helmet, shield, and gauntlets are still preserved.

Death

Tomb effigy of the Black Prince in Canterbury Cathedral

From the period of the Good Parliament, Edward knew that he was dying. His dysentery had become so violent on occasion, causing him to faint from weakness, that his household believed he had died. He left gifts for his servants in his will and said goodbye to his father, Edward III, whom he asked to confirm his gifts, pay his debts quickly out of his estate, and protect his son Richard.

His death was announced at the Palace of Westminster on 8 June 1376. In his last moments, he was attended by the Bishop of Bangor, who urged him to ask forgiveness of God and of all those he had injured. He "made a very noble end, remembering God his Creator in his heart", and asked people to pray for him.

Edward was buried with great state in Canterbury Cathedral on 29 September. His funeral and the design of his tomb were conducted in accordance to the directions contained in his will. It has a bronze effigy beneath a tester depicting the Holy Trinity with his heraldic achievements – his surcoat, helmet, shield and gauntlets – hung over the tester; they have been replaced with replicas, and the originals now reside in a glass-fronted cabinet within the Cathedral. His epitaph inscribed around his effigy reads:

The original heraldic achievements of Prince Edward, on display in Canterbury Cathedral

Family

Edward married his cousin, Joan, Countess of Kent (1328–1385), on 10 October 1361. She was the daughter and heiress of Edmund, Earl of Kent, the younger son of King Edward I by his second wife Margaret of France.

They had two sons, both born in Aquitaine:

• Edward, born at Angoulême on 27 July 1364, died immediately before his father's return to England in January 1371, and was buried in the church of the Austin Friars, London
• Richard, who succeeded his grandfather as king

From his marriage to Joan, he also became stepfather to her children by Thomas Holland:

• Thomas Holland, 2nd Earl of Kent, whose daughter, Joan Holland, later married Edward's brother, Edmund of Langley.
• John Holland, 1st Duke of Exeter, who married Edward's niece, Elizabeth of Lancaster, daughter of his brother, John of Gaunt.
• Joan Holland, Duchess of Brittany

Edward had several natural sons before his marriage.

With Edith de Willesford (died after 1385):

• Sir Roger Clarendon (c. 1352 – executed 1402); he married Margaret (d. 1382), a daughter of John Fleming, Baron de la Roche.

With unknown mother:

• Sir John Sounders

Ancestry

Appellation "Black Prince"

A 19th-century illustration of the Black Prince

Edward is often referred to as the "Black Prince". The first known source to use the sobriquet "Black Prince" was the antiquary John Leland in the 1530s or early 1540s (about 165 years after Edward's death). Leland mentions the sobriquet in two manuscript notes in the 1530s or early 1540s, with the implication that it was in relatively widespread use by that date. In one instance, Leland refers in Latin to "Edwardi Principis cog: Nigri" (i.e., "Edward the Prince, cognomen: The Black"); in the other, in English to "the Blake Prince". In both instances, Leland is summarising earlier works – respectively, the 14th-century Eulogium Historiarum and the late 15th-century chronicle attributed to John Warkworth – but in neither case does the name appear in his source texts. In print, Roger Ascham in his Toxophilus (1545) refers to "ye noble black prince Edward beside Poeters"; while Richard Grafton, in his Chronicle at Large (1569), uses the name on three occasions, saying that "some writers name him the black prince", and elsewhere that he was "commonly called the black Prince". Raphael Holinshed uses it several times in his Chronicles (1577); and it is also used by William Shakespeare, in his plays Richard II (written c. 1595; Act 2, scene 3) and Henry V (c. 1599; Act 2, scene 4). In 1688 it appears prominently in the title of Joshua Barnes's The History of that Most Victorious Monarch, Edward IIId, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, and First Founder of the Most Noble Order of the Garter: Being a Full and Exact Account Of the Life and Death of the said King: Together with That of his Most Renowned Son, Edward, Prince of Wales and of Aquitain, Sirnamed the Black-Prince.

The origins of the name are uncertain, though many theories have been proposed, falling under two main themes, that it is derived from Edward's:

• Black shield, and/or his black armour.
• Brutal reputation, particularly towards the French in Aquitaine.

The black field of his "shield for peace" is well documented (see Arms and heraldic badge above). However, there is no sound evidence that Edward ever wore black armour, although John Harvey (without citing a source) refers to "some rather shadowy evidence that he was described in French as clad at the battle of Crécy ' en armure noire en fer bruni ' – in black armour of burnished steel". Richard Barber suggests that the name's origins may have lain in pageantry, in that a tradition may have grown up in the 15th century of representing the prince in black armour. He points out that several chronicles refer to him as Edward the IV (the title he would have taken as King had he outlived his father): this name would obviously have become confusing when the actual Edward IV succeeded in 1461, and this may have been the period when an alternative had to be found.

Edward's reputation for brutality in France is also well documented, and it is possible that this is where the title had its origins. The French soldier Philippe de Mézières refers to Edward as the greatest of the "black boars" – those aggressors who had done so much to disrupt relations within Christendom. Other French writers made similar associations, and Peter Hoskins reports that an oral tradition of L'Homme Noir, who had passed by with an army, survived in southern France until recent years. In Shakespeare's Henry V, the King of France alludes to "that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales". John Speed reported in 1611 that the Black Prince was so named "not of his colour, but of his dreaded Acts in battell"; a comment echoed in 1642 by Thomas Fuller, who wrote that he was named "from his dreaded acts and not from his complexion". Joshua Barnes claimed in 1688 that it was from the time of the Battle of Crécy that "the French began to call [him] Le Neoir, or the Black-Prince", appearing to cite a record of 2 Richard II (i.e. 1378–9); but his reference is insufficiently precise to be traceable. However, it is unclear how a French sobriquet might have crossed to England, and Barber finds this derivation of the name "unlikely".

Images for kids

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  Signet ring of the Black Prince found in Montpensier, France in 1866. Louvre, Paris.

See also

In Spanish: Eduardo de Woodstock para niños