EDWARD III. 



EDWARD III. 



718 



king of England, have come in before both. Undeterred by these 

 considerations however, or even by the circumstance that he had 

 himself in the first instance acknowledged Philip's title, and even 

 done homage to him for the Duchy of Guienne, Edward, having first 

 entered into alliance with the Earl of Brabant, and taken other 

 measures with the view of supporting his pretensions, made an open 

 declaration of them, and prepared to vindicate them by the sword. 

 The earliest formal announcement of his determination to enforce his 

 claim appears to have been made hi a commission which he gave to 

 the Earl of Brabant and others to demand the crown of France and 

 to take possession of it in his name, dated 7th of October 1337. 



We cannot here pursue in detail the progress of the long war that 

 followed. Edward embarked for the continent on the 16th of July 

 1838, and arrived at Antwerp on the 22nd. Of his allies the chief 

 were the emperor and the free towns of Flanders, under nominal 

 subjection to their earl, but at this time actually governed by the 

 celebrated James Van Arteyeldt. The emperor made him his vicar, 

 and at Arteveldt's suggestion he assumed the title of King of France. 

 The first important action that took place was the sea-fight off Sluys, 

 on the 22nd of June 1340, in which the English were completely 

 victorious. It was followed by long truces, which protracted the 

 contest without any decisive events. Meanwhile in Scotland the war 

 proceeded, also with occasional intermissions, but on the whole to the 

 advantage of the national cause. Balliol left the country about the 

 close "f 1338; and in May 1341 King David and his consort Joanna 

 .)d from France. In 1342 the Scots even made several inroads 

 into the northern counties of England. A suspension of hostilities 

 however took place soon after this, which lasted till the close of 1344. 



In 1345 Edwrrd lost the services of his efficient ally Van Arteveldt, 

 who was murdered in an insurrection of the populace of Ghent, 

 excited by an attempt, which he appears to have made somewhat too 

 precipitately, to induce the free towns to cast off their sovereign, the 

 Earl of Flanders, and to place themselves under the dominion of the 

 on of the king of England, Edward, prince of Wales. Edward, 

 afterwards so distinguished under the name of the Black Prince (given 

 to him from the colour of his armour), was bom at Woodstock, 

 15th of June 1330, and was consequently only yet in his sixteenth 

 year. Hia father nevertheless took him along with him to win his 

 spurs, when in July 1346 he set out on another expedition to France 

 with the greatest army he had yet raised. After reducing Caen and 

 Lower Normandy, he proceeded along the left bank of the Seine till 

 he reached the suburbs of the capital, and burnt the villages of St. 

 Germains and St. Cloud. The memorable battle of Crecy followed 

 on the 26th of August, in which the main division of the English 

 army was commanded by the prince. Between 30,000 and 40,000 of 

 the French are said to have been slain in this terrible defeat. Among 

 those who fell was John of Luxemburg, kiug of Bohemia; he fell by 

 the hand of Prince Edward, who thence assumed his armorial ensign 

 of three ostrich feathers and the motto Ich Dien (' I serve '), and 

 transmitted the badge to all succeeding princes of Wales. 



The defeat of the French at Crecy was followed on the 17th of 

 October, in the same year, by the equally signal defeat of the Scots 

 at the battle of N evil's Cross, near Durham, in which the greater part 

 of the nobility of Scotland were either taken prisoners or slain, and 

 the king himself, after being wounded, fell into the hands of the 

 enemy. Froissart says that Queen Philippa led the English army 

 Into the field on this occasion ; but no native contemporary or very 

 ancient writer mentions this remarkable circumstance. 



Three days after the battle of Crecy, Edward sat down before the 

 town of Calais. It did not however open its gates to him till after a 

 noble defence of nearly eleven months. On its surrender the English 

 king was prevented, by the intercession of Queen Philippa, from making 

 his name infamous by taking the lives of the six burgesses whom ho 

 commanded to be given up to his mercy as the price for which he 

 consented to spare their fellow-citizens. The reduction of Calais was 

 followed by a truce with France, which lasted till 1355. When the 

 war was renewed, Philip VI. had been dead for five years, and the 

 throne was occupied by his son John. On the 19th of September 1356 

 the Black Prince gained the battle of Poictiers, at which the French 

 king was taken prisoner. The kings both of France and Scotland were 

 now in Edward's hands, but neither country was yet subjugated. At 

 lut, after many negociations, David II. was released, in November 

 1857, for a ransom of 100,000*., to be discharged in ten yearly pay- 

 ments. King John was released on his parole in 1360, when a treaty 

 of peace was concluded between the two countries at Bretigny, con- 

 firming to the English the possession of all their recent conquests. 

 But after remaining in France for about four years, John returned to 

 captivity on finding that he could not comply with the conditions on 

 which he had received his liberty, and died in London, 8th of April, 

 1864. He was succeeded by his son, Charles V., who had acted as 

 lieutenant of the kingdom during his absence. 



It would appear that during the Scottish king's long detention in 

 Englai 1 he hid been prevailed upon to come into the views of Edward, 

 at least to the extent of consenting to sacrifice the independence of his 

 country after his own death ; and it is probable that it wag only upon 

 a secret compact to this effect that he obtained his liberty. Joanna, 

 the consort of David, died childless in 1362 ; and in a parliament held 

 at fcjcone the following year the king astounded the estates by proposing 



that they should choose Lionel, duke of Clarence, the third Ron of 

 the king of England, to fill the throne in the event of his death without 

 issue. At this time the next heir to the throne in the regular line of 

 the succession was the Stewart of Scotland, the son of David's elder 

 sister Marjory; and a wish to exclude his nephew, against whom he 

 entertained strong feelings of dislike, is supposed to have had a con- 

 siderable share in influencing the conduct of the kiug. The proposal 

 was rejected by the parliament unanimously and with indignation. A 

 few months after this the death of Edward Balliol without issue 

 removed all chance of any competitor arising to contest David's owu 

 rights, and he became of course a personage of more importance than, 

 ever to the purposes of the ambitious and wily kiug of England. 

 David now repaired to London ; and here it was agreed in a secret 

 conference held between the two kings on the 23rd of November, that 

 in default of the king of Scots and his issue male, the king of England 

 for the time being should succeed to the crown of Scotland. In the 

 meantime the king of Scots was to sound the inclinations of his people, 

 and to inform the English king and his council of the result. (See 

 the articles of the agreement, twenty-eight in number, in the sixth 

 volume of Rymer's 'Foedera.') From this time David acted with little 

 disguise in the interests of the English king, and even spent as much 

 of his time as he could in England. One effect of this policy was, that 

 actual hostilities between the two countries ceased; but no public 

 misery could exceed that of Scotland, distracted as it was by internal 

 convulsions, exhausted by the sufferings and exertions of many pre- 

 ceding years, and vexed by the exactions necessary to defray the ransom 

 of the kiug, his claim to which Edward artfully took advantage of as 

 a pretext for many insults and injuries, and a cover for all sorts of 

 intrigues. In 1365 however it was agreed that the truce (for tho 

 cessation from hostilities was as yet nothing more) should be prolonged 

 till 1371. 



In 1361 the Prince of Wales had married Joanna, styled the Fair, 

 the daughter of his great uncle the Earl of Kent, who had been put to 

 death in the beginning of the present reign. This lady had been first 

 married to William de Montacute, earl of Salisbury, from whom she 

 had been divorced ; and she had now been about three months the 

 widow of Sir Thomas Holland, who assumed in her right the title of 

 Earl of Kent, and was summoned to parliament as such. Soon after 

 his marriage the Prince of Wales was raised by his father to the new 

 dignity of Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony (the two provinces or 

 districts of Guienne); and in 1363 he took up his residence, and 

 established a splendid court in that quality, at Bordeaux. Edward's 

 administration of his continental principality was very able and suc- 

 cessful, till ho unfortunately became involved in the contest carried 

 on by Pedro, surnamed the Cruel, with his illegitimate brother, Henry 

 of Trastamare, for the crown of Castile. Pedro having been driven 

 from his throne by Henry, applied to the Black Prince for aid to 

 expel the usurper. At this call Edward, forgetting everything except 

 the martial feelings of the age, and what he conceived to be tho rights 

 of legitimacy, marched into Spain, and defeated Henry at the battle 

 of Najera, fought on the 3rd of April 1367. He did not however 

 attain even his immediate object by this success. Pedro had reigned 

 little more than a year when he was again driven from his throne by 

 Henry, by whom he was soon after murdered. Henry kept possession 

 of the throne which he had thus obtained till his death, ten years after. 

 Prince Edward meanwhile, owing to Pedro's misfortunes, having been 

 disappointed of the money which that king had engaged to supply, 

 found himself obliged to lay additional taxes upon his subjects of 

 Guienne, to obtain the means of paying his troops. These imposts 

 several of the Gascon lords refused to submit to, and appealed to the 

 king of France as the lord paramount. Charles ou this summoned 

 Edward to appear before the parliament of Paris as his vassal; and 

 on the refusal of the prince, immediately confiscated all the lands held 

 by him and his father in France. A new war forthwith broke out 

 between the two countries. For a time the wonted valour of Prince 

 Edward again shone forth ; but among tho other fruits of his Spanish 

 expedition was an illness caught by his exposure in that climate, 

 which gradually undermined his constitution, and at length com- 

 pelled him, in January 1371, to return to England. He had just 

 before this lost his eldest son, Edward, a child of six years old. 

 King Edward's consort, Queen Philippa, had died on the 15th of 

 August 1369. 



Ou his departure from Guienne, Prince Edward left the government 

 of the principality iu the hands of his brother John of Gaunt, duke 

 of Lancaster. The duke shortly after married a daughter of Pedro the 

 Cruel, in whose right he assumed the title of King of Castile, and 

 before the end of the year followed his brother to England. Affairs 

 on the continent now went rapidly from bad to worse. The great 

 French general, Duguescliu, drove the English everywhere before him. 

 In the summer of 1372 two expeditious were fitted out from England, 

 the first commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, the second by Kiug 

 Edward in person, accompanied by the Black Prince; but both com- 

 pletely failed. The forces of the Earl of Pembroke were defeated while 

 attempting to land at Rocuelle by the fleet of Henry, king of Castile ; 

 and those conducted by tho king and his son, which were embarked 

 in 400 ships, after being at sea for six weeks, wrre prevented from 

 landing by contrary Winds, and obliged to put back to England. At 

 last, in 1374, when he had lost everything that had been secured to 



