Now, it had cost the Prince a good deal of money to pay soldiers to
support this murderous King; and finding himself, when he came back
disgusted to Bordeaux, not only in bad health, but deeply in debt, he
began to tax his French subjects to pay his creditors. They appealed to
the French King, Charles; war again broke out; and the French town of
Limoges, which the Prince had greatly benefited, went over to the
French King. Upon this he ravaged the province of which it was the
capital; burnt, and plundered, and killed in the old sickening way; and
refused mercy to the prisoners, men, women, and children taken in the
offending town, though he was so ill and so much in need of pity
himself from Heaven, that he was carried in a litter. He lived to come
home and make himself popular with the people and Parliament, and he
died on Trinity Sunday, the eighth of June, one thousand three hundred
and seventy-six, at forty-six years old.
The whole nation mourned for him as one of the most renowned and
beloved princes it had ever had; and he was buried with great
lamentations in Canterbury Cathedral. Near to the tomb of Edward the
Confessor, his monument, with his figure, carved in stone, and
represented in the old black armour, lying on its back, may be seen at
this day, with an ancient coat of mail, a helmet, and a pair of
gauntlets hanging from a beam above it, which most people like to
believe were once worn by the Black Prince.
King Edward did not outlive his renowned son, long. He was old, and one
Alice Perrers, a beautiful lady, had contrived to make him so fond of
her in his old age, that he could refuse her nothing, and made himself
ridiculous. She little deserved his love, or—what I dare say she valued
a great deal more—the jewels of the late Queen, which he gave her among
other rich presents. She took the very ring from his finger on the
morning of the day when he died, and left him to be pillaged by his
faithless servants. Only one good priest was true to him, and attended
him to the last.
Besides being famous for the great victories I have related, the reign
of King Edward the Third was rendered memorable in better ways, by the
growth of architecture and the erection of Windsor Castle. In better
ways still, by the rising up of Wickliffe, originally a poor parish
priest: who devoted himself to exposing, with wonderful power and
success, the ambition and corruption of the Pope, and of the whole
church of which he was the head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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