With the death of Edward I Wales settled down to a long period of comparative tranquillity. The next eighty years were as peaceful a time as the unhappy country had enjoyed for centuries. Edward II was now on the throne of England; and his Welsh birth, his mild disposition, and his obvious desire to deal justly with the Principality caused him to be regarded with trust and even with affection. On two occasions during the reign the new Welsh shires were allowed to send representatives to the English Parliament. All forms of lawlessness were sternly repressed. The consequence was that the Welsh people began, as they had never done before, to turn their attention to trade and the accumulation of wealth. The fourteenth century witnessed a great increase in industry and commerce all over Western Europe, and both England and Wales participated in the {102} increase. Edward III conferred a most precious benefit upon Wales by bringing it within the scope of the Statute of Staple. In 1332 Shrewsbury and Carmarthen were constituted staple towns for the Principality. Then came the Black Death, which swept over England and Wales in the year 1349. The amount of immediate distress which it occasioned was immense; but some of its results were good. The fact that among the labouring classes the rate of mortality had been something like fifty per cent. made labour very scarce; and in spite of the efforts of Parliament to control the situation by means of Statutes of Labourers, the economic and social position of the villeins was immensely improved. But it was not in Wales only that Welshmen were bettering their position; they were covering themselves with glory on all the great battlefields of Europe. The fourteenth century was the age of the long bow; with it the finest victories of the Hundred Years' War were won; and the home of the long bow was Wales. The weapon had been in use for a long time in border wars, and its superiority to the cross bow had been clearly demonstrated. The Black Prince, who became Prince of Wales in 1343, was immensely {103} popular in the Principality, and a large body of archers and spearmen from Wales followed him to the French wars. At Crécy there were five thousand Welsh troops; and it was at the close of that battle that the Prince assumed the crest and the motto which ever since have been worn by all Princes of Wales. No lover of English literature is ever likely to forget the pages in which Shakespeare has drawn an amusing but kindly caricature of the Welshmen who distinguished themselves on the field of Agincourt. But it was not only in the armies of their own sovereign that Welshmen were to be found; they were, throughout the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, among the most famous mercenary troops in Europe. Many of them fought in the French armies against the Black Prince and against Henry V. Owen of Wales, the friend of the great _condottiere_ Bertrand du Guesclin, won much fame