2
The prince’s infancy has not left a surfeit of records, so information concerning his childhood is relatively sketchy. We do know that news of the prince’s birth at Woodstock on 16 June 1330 so delighted Edward III that he rewarded the yeoman who told him of it with a pension of forty marks a year.1 The prince’s first biographer, Chandos Herald, tells us nothing about his early years and merely lists the virtues that he acquired in childhood.2 The Register that provides such a wealth of detail about Edward’s career until 1365 only begins with the preparations for the campaign of 1346. It was concerned with matters such as estate administration, orders to officials, demands for troops, rewards for service and many others, and was divided geographically into sections dealing with Cheshire, Cornwall, and the English estates. There are only very fragmentary remains of the North Wales register and most unfortunately, the Gascon register, if such a volume existed, does so no longer. The records of the daily business of government and administration necessarily increased as estates were bestowed upon the prince: the earldom of Cheshire in 1333, the duchy of Cornwall in 1337 (on its creation), and, on only the second occasion that the title had been granted, the principality of Wales in 1343. The prince also held the office of custos angliae (keeper of the realm) when his father was campaigning abroad in 1338, 1340 and 1342–3. It was a mainly ceremonial office, but not an unimportant one. As keeper he was advised by a number of peers, Ralph Neville, the earls of Arundel, Lancaster, Huntingdon, and principally John Stratford, the archbishop of Canterbury.3
The prince’s childhood was spent, for the most part, in the household of Queen Philippa, with his sisters Isabella (b. 1332) and Joanna (b. 1333). His estates, as they accrued, were also administered through his mother’s household until he, and they, outgrew it. The first of these estates was granted on 18 March 1333 and thereafter the foundations of the prince’s household and administration were laid alongside the government of the earldom of Cheshire. Many of the officials appointed to his service in these early years would become long-standing associates and have distinguished careers, but few of them at this point were high ranking or men of great standing in their own right. A number would later achieve episcopal rank, including William Spridlington (bishop of St Asaph, 1376–82), John Harewell (bishop of Bath and Wells, 1366–86), John Fordham (bishop of Durham, 1382–8, of Ely, 1388–1425) and Robert Stretton (bishop of Lichfield, 1360–85),4 but at this time the only figures of national significance were the masters of the household, Sir Nicholas de la Beche and Sir Bartholomew Burghersh, senior. Among the episcopacy, the prince was also close to Henry Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln (his godfather) and William Edington, bishop of Winchester. Edington would have links to the order of the Garter and shared interests of religious patronage through the houses of Bonhommes at Ashridge and Edington.
Among the officials of the prince’s household in these early years Guillaume St Omer and his wife, Elizabeth, from the queen’s homeland of Hainault, were steward, and mistress and guardian of the young earl respectively. Joan Oxenford was the young prince’s nurse as she would be to Edmund of Langley.5 It may be that the prince had as his tutor the renowned scholar, Walter Burley, but this is conjectural, as the tradition first emerged in the sixteenth century.6 John Brunham was treasurer, and by 1334, William Stratton was employed as tailor. foreshadowing Edward’s later interest in and considerable expenditure on clothing.7 Financial concerns, income, or rather the lack of it, would become an acute problem for the prince and it was an issue for his father and administrators from an early stage. Despite its limited size and range of functions, the prince’s household could rarely ‘live of its own’. The crown made occasional additional payments, but it was not until 1336 that a partial solution presented itself with the reversion to the crown of the earldom of Cornwall following the unfortunate death of John of Eltham, the king’s brother.
Cornish wealth lay mainly in tin and the stannary towns that served the industry. Yet this could not all be used to allay the prince’s financial concerns, since 1,000 marks was already assigned to the king’s companion and the future earl of Salisbury, William Montague, with a further £100 to be paid to one Thomas West, so additional revenues were attached to Cornwall and granted to the prince from Exeter (Devon), Mere (Wilts), and most importantly, Wallingford (Berks). On 9 February 1337, Cornwall and its attendant ‘foreign manors’ (estates held outside the county) passed to the king’s eldest son. With the acquisition of the duchy, as with Cheshire, four years earlier, the prince acquired further servants and officials and a central organisation developed to co-ordinate the activities of local government. Again, a number of those who soon found employment in Cornwall would become of importance elsewhere in the prince’s demesne.8 Of these, the most significant was Peter Gildesburgh who came to the prince’s notice through service to the king and the Burghersh family. In 1340 he became controller of the Cornish stannaries and in the following year keeper of the prince’s wardrobe. He later became receiver of Cheshire and, in 1349, he was the prince’s envoy to the Pope in Avignon.9
Significantly, in view of the increasingly hostile relations with France that were about to develop into open war, Edward III chose at this time to further reward some of those that had supported him in the 1330 coup and in his reign up to that point. He aimed to secure and establish a significant section of the nobility to aid him in the military action that lay ahead. His son, not yet seven years of age, would in time be the mainstay of that effort, and the king wished to distinguish him from others within the peerage; thus the earldom of Cornwall became a duchy. At the same time, six other titles were granted to the upper echelons of the aristocracy. Henry of Grosmont became earl of Derby, William Montague received the earldom of Salisbury, William Clinton that of Huntingdon, Robert Ufford, Suffolk, William Bohun, Northampton, and Hugh Audeley, Gloucester. Such men were to be intimately involved with the war effort and a number were closely acquainted with the prince as well as his father.
By this time, the die in the Anglo-French ‘game’ had been cast and the significant issue lay not in Gascony, but Scotland. The king had begun campaigning there soon after the birth of his first son. On 12 August 1332, he was victorious at Dupplin Moor, thereby establishing Edward Balliol as king, who acknowledged Edward III as his liege. Balliol’s deposition by David Bruce resulted in a second expedition in which the king defeated the Scots at Halidon Hill on 19 July 1333. He went on to take Berwick, and by 1336 he had established control over much of the lowlands including the fortresses of Roxburgh, Edinburgh, Perth and Stirling. As a result of this, in 1334, David Bruce had arrived as an exile in France and thereafter, Philip VI declared that Scotland had to be included in any Gascon settlement. Just as the duchy was a thorn in the flesh of the French monarchy, so was Scotland in England’s, and the questionable feudal relationship that had existed since 1259 was put under greater pressure than it could stand with French interference in the domestic affairs of the king of England.
The confiscation of Gascony had happened on several occasions since the Treaty of Paris, but the conditions were such in 1337 that the outcome was not a relatively brief fracas but a conflict that would continue for at least 116 years. The ‘final straw’ was the banishment of Robert of Artois and his exile in the English court. To shelter an outlaw such as Robert breached Edward’s duty as a vassal of the French king. On 24 May 1337, Gascony and Ponthieu were ordered to be seized, and although military action did not break out until 1339, England and France were at war.
The English approach to the conflict took a familiar pattern, one focussed on Flanders (after the Francophile Louis of Nevers was all but replaced by Jacob van Artevelde in 1337–8) and using large numbers of foreign mercenaries. An alliance, negotiated by the earls of Salisbury and Huntingdon and Henry Burghersh, bishop of Lincoln, was formed with Louis of Bavaria, the king’s brother-in-law, but even the ambassadors were not convinced of the wisdom of such a course, fearing that ‘the king would not be able to bear the expense of the conditions which they demanded’.10 Additional treaties were made with William of Avesnes, count of Hainault and a number of other princes of the Low Countries including the count of Guelders, the marquis of Juliers and the duke of Brabant. Edward III set sail on 16 July 1338, landing at Antwerp six days later. The intention was to recover the castles of the Cambrésis, but the relationship between the allies was uneasy from the outset. The princes were unwilling to commit their forces until they had been paid in full, and with their inactivity the wage bill rose. That bill was additional to the initial fees, which in total exceeded £160,000. To cover such expenses, Edward borrowed £70,000 from the Italian banks, the Bardi and Peruzzi; mortgaged his crown as well as gold and jewellery, and acquired loans from the wool merchant William de la Pole and others, some at rates of 50 per cent interest. The pressure on England in the form of taxation and purveyance grew as the autumn turned into winter, with nothing to show for the expenditure.11
While Edward’s allies were prevaricating, Philip ofValois took the opportunity to launch a number of naval raids on English territories in the Channel Islands, and military pressure increased on Gascony with the loss of Blaye and Bourg in April 1339. In England, parliamentary discontent grew from February and there was further concern as a result of French and Genoese raids, initially on the south-west of England and into the Bristol Channel, and then towards Plymouth and the Isle of Wight. They were repelled when trying to land at Dover and Folkestone, but burned Hastings. Coastal defences were a further expense and the king was completely incapable of honouring his payments to Louis of Bavaria and his other allies. Edward seems not to have been aware of the gravity of the situation, or rather he attributed it to corruption and mismanagement within his own government.
Edward eventually cajoled his allies into an expedition and left Brussels early in September 1339. The attack on Cambrai began sometime after 20 September, but Philip VI made no attempt to try to relieve the city and the assault failed. The domestic political repercussions were considerable and marked, for the first time, a parliamentary grant that was conditional upon certain reforms, including the establishment of a committee to control government expenditure. This was hardly surprising, as the campaign of 1339–40 cost some £386,465.12
It is extremely significant that although hostilities between England and France began formally in 1337, Edward did not claim the throne of France until 1340. The motivation, at this point, seems clear:
Finally, having considered and thought over everything, and weighed the good against the bad, he [Edward III] did take the arms of France, quartered with those of England, and from then on he styled himself King of France and England, and did everything that the Flemings asked of him, and as King of France, quit them of any obligation they had to the King of France; and from this point the Flemings continued to aid him during the rule of Jacques van Artevelde.13
Thus, Edward’s claim to the French throne, at least in the opinion of Jean Le Bel, the chronicler from Hainault and precursor of Froissart, was to secure the support of the Flemish.
The quartering of the French with the English arms and the arrogation of the fleur de lys was one of the most powerful demonstrations of Edward’s claim to the throne of France. Initially, the arms were quartered with the English device foremost, but this was altered in line with Edward’s dynastic pretensions in 1340, placing the fleurs in the paternal position. By 1348, coins were minted using solely the French arms, and despite informally giving up his claim in 1360, Edward retained the arms.14
The first notable English success in the war with France was at sea, in a battle fought at the mouth of the River Zwyn. The Black Prince was only ten years of age on 24 June 1340, so took no part in the battle of Sluys, yet it was significant in the development of his military career and marked one of few early successes for the English in the Hundred Years War. Several of those who would become part of his household and military retinue did fight, and it was in the context of this encounter that Nigel Loryng, who was to become one of the prince’s closest advisors and valued servants, was knighted. Indeed, it was at Sluys that the experiences of the Scottish campaigns, of the victories at Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill, were put to good use in the war with France.15 Despite it being a naval battle, the characteristics of the victory would become familiar; a larger French force was defeated by superior tactics and a more effective use of the conditions. The victories at Crécy and Poitiers would be based on such experience.
The victory at Sluys prevented a potential French invasion of England but it was not supported or followed by effective military action on land. Edward’s inability to pay his allies caused them to abandon him, and he was forced to come to terms with the French, signing a truce at Espléchin, near Tournai, on 25 September 1340.
Edward III, unable to take advantage of the situation in France, took revenge for his failure at home. John Stratford, the archbishop of Canterbury, in particular was held responsible for the lack of funds that had prevented success in the campaign in Flanders. But the king realised that he could not buy allies, at least not with money; future campaigns would rely primarily on Anglo-Welsh and Gascon troops, and political support would be sought from those that had something personal to gain from siding with England in the Hundred Years War.
As Scotland, Flanders and Gascony had encouraged and catalysed the Hundred Years War, so conflicts in other areas would continue to fan the flames. The outbreak of civil war in Brittany between Charles de Blois and Jean de Montfort brought that struggle within the Plantagenet-Valois conflict. The English supported Montfort and close links were to develop between the prince and Jean, particularly after 1362. Montfort accompanied the prince on his tournée d’hommages of the new principality of Aquitaine, and this may have brought Jean into contact with John Chandos who became the leader of Montfort’s forces at the battle of Auray in 1364. The prince had attempted to resolve the succession crisis bringing the parties together on two occasions at Poitiers in 1363–4; when this failed direct military assistance was offered to Montfort. Chandos was not the only member of the prince’s retinue to fight alongside Montfort at Auray and elsewhere. Links with Brittany were further strengthened by the marriage of Joan Holland, the prince’s stepdaughter, to Jean on 26 March 1366.16 The association is vividly apparent in the seemingly unlikely setting of St Margaret’s church, King’s Lynn, where the arms of the Black Prince and those of Montfort flank a stylised image of a face, presumably Edward III on a misericord. Both the prince and later Montfort had associations with the Norfolk port through rights to the tollbooth and the nearby estate at Castle Rising. The county and surrounding area was a surprisingly rich recruitment area for the prince despite his limited tenurial interests there (see figs 12, 13, 18, 21, 22 for examples of other East Anglians among the prince’s entourage). A number of the East Anglian knightly community would become retainers on the occasion of the prince’s military baptism in 1346 and thereafter. Throughout his career, the prince’s retinue was in a constant state of flux and evolution and this began at an early stage. The grant of the principality of Wales in 1343 further galvanised Edward’s administration and the development of his household. A wardrobe account of 1344–5 reveals a number of significant retainers who would rise to high office within the retinue, and in some cases the nation. Amongst these were John Dabernon (from 1347 keeper of the prince’s fees in Devon and Cornwall), Ivo Glinton (keeper of the great seal), Nicholas Pinnock (auditor), Peter Gildesburgh, Robert Stretton, William Shareshull, and Richard Stafford (member of the prince’s council from 1343, knight bachelor of the household).17 Alongside the governing officials, Wales was to provide the bulk of the troops for the prince’s first military campaign and his personal retinue began to take shape in the preparations for the 1346 expedition when the prince took his first role on the international stage.