Edward, Prince of Wales, 1330-1376; Great Britain -- History -- Edward III, 1327-1377
At Bordeaux he and his wife established their court, and received all
the nobles of Aquitaine who came to pay him their respects. The court at
Bordeaux was very brilliant. The prince had his father's love for
feasting and fine clothes. Splendid merry-making was the fashion of the
age, and life at the Black Prince's court was a succession of revels and
tournaments. He was a right noble host, and knew how to make all around
him happy. "Never," says Chandos the Herald, "since the birth of Christ
was there such good and honourable entertainment. Every day at his table
he had more than eighty knights, and four times as many esquires. There
they made jousts and revels. Though all of them were subjects, yet were
they all free; for he made them quite welcome. All who were about his
person valued and loved him; for liberality was his staff, and nobleness
his director. Rightly might men say, that search the whole world you
could find no such prince." It is no wonder that the Gascon lords
crowded to this court. Even the greatest of them all, the Counts of Foix
and Armagnac, came to visit him, and they found that his court was as
splendid as that of the King of France himself.
But we must not let our eyes be dazzled by all this magnificence. To
meet the expenses of his court the Prince allowed the resources of the
country to be drained. Though we may admire his noble hospitality and
his princely courtesy to all comers, we cannot altogether consider him a
wise governor. His mind seems only to have been occupied with the desire
of making his court gay and pleasant, instead of furthering the true
interests of the people whom he was called upon to govern. Here again he
may be taken as a type of his age. We must not judge him by any standard
of our own, but by the standard of his days. But the time was fast
coming when it would be no longer possible for the rulers to forget the
interests of the people, when the people would at last succeed in making
their voice heard; and we shall see that at the end of his days the
Black Prince did not refuse to hear them.
In 1364 there were great rejoicings at the birth of the Prince's first
son Edward. This little Prince only lived to be seven years old: but in
1366 the Princess of Wales bore another son, called Richard of Bordeaux
from his birthplace, who ruled England as Richard II.
The Prince had not long set up his court at Bordeaux before it seemed
likely that peace would again be disturbed. In his new dominions he had
become the neighbour of Spain, and he was now called upon to interfere
in Spanish affairs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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