It seems appropriate today, to wish a Happy Father’s Day to England’s King Edward III, for on June 15, 1330, his first son was delivered by soon-to-be fifteen-year-old Queen Philipp at Woodstock Palace. The ecstatic father was himself only seventeen at the time of his eldest son’s birth.
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But I digress.
You may be wondering why King Edward’s son, Edward, was called the Black Prince. The answer is, no one knows. The moniker first appeared about two hundred years after Edward’s death. It has been suggested Edward wore black armor, but that’s been debunked. Others speculate, it was because of the black Badge of Peace associated with Edward.
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Edward of Woodstock, is the subject of the historical novel trilogy I’ve been writing for the past several years. Edward is recognized by historians as the greatest warrior prince of the Middle Ages; he never lost a battle. At the age of sixteen, he led the vanguard to victory against an outnumbering French force at the Battle of Crécy in 1346.
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Another key battle in which Edward fought occurred in 1350. During the sea battle offshore of Winchelsea, where the English people watched from the clifftops, the English defeated the French once again. Sea battles at the time were fought much like land battles. The ships would collide, grappling hooks thrown, and men-at-arms would jump from one ship to another and fight on deck hand-to-hand. Edward’s ship, and that of the king, were sunk during the battle but both men survived.
Edward’s acclaim grew exponentially after two French campaigns in 1355 and 1356. In the first, Edward marched his army of 4-6,000 from Bordeaux to Narbonne and back, some 300 miles, wreaking havoc on the lands of King Jean II. I drove this route in 2023 through the foothills of the Pyrenees, crossing seven rivers using modern bridges vs. fording them. Think of it, the logistics alone—foot soldiers, men-at-arms, supply wagons, and horses. Each knight campaigned with at least three horses. It boggles my mind!
This chevauchee was followed by a march from Bordeaux to the Loire Valley in the summer of 1356, and again Edward’s troops ravaged everything in their path in an attempt to bring the French to battle. Edward succeeded in that purpose, facing off against the French outside Poitiers in September. Accounts estimate that Edward’s army consisted of about 5,000 and the French arrayed close to 20,000. Whether that’s true or not, Edward emerged victorious, not only winning the battle but capturing King Jean and his youngest son, hauled back to England and held until the ransom was paid some three (?) years later.
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When I originally ‘discovered’ Edward, two issues really grabbed my attention: why didn’t he marry until he was thirty-one years old—unheard of for a prince of the realm—who did he marry, and why her? That was one issue. The second was why didn’t he become king? The second is easier to answer—he died a year before his father but not from battle. He died of a debilitating disease, likely contracted during the Nájera campaign in 1367, that slowly killed him over a ten-year period. Tragic.
His marriage is a fascinating story but I’ll provide the short version here. For many years the Popes, two different ones, denied King Edward the requisite dispensations for any marital unions proposed for his heir. (Only Edward—not the king’s other sons!)
The popes claimed the denials were due to consanguinity—the pair were too closely related. However, the real reason was that the Popes were obligated to the Kings of France. A marital alliance between England and another country would enhance England’s power and weaken that of France. Therefore the Popes played a political game.
In 1361, Edward married not a foreign princess, but his own cousin, Joan of Kent. They were close friends having grown up together in Queen Philippa’s nursery. At the time of their marriage, Joan was a year+ older than Edward and a widow with four children under the age of ten. Many thought her totally unsuitable—she had caused quite a scandal in her youth— bigamously married to two men for six years until the Church finally ruled her first marriage legitimate and annulled her second.
Volume One of my trilogy is called “Valiant Son” and I am currently seeking an agent to represent me and pitch my novel(s) to publishers. Volume Two, “Aged in War” is completed, and I’ve begun writing Volume Three, “Prince of Aquitaine”. Edward died in 1376. His son, Richard, succeeded King Edward III and was crowned Richard II.
The church's interference in royal marriages, I've read, was the motivation for the creation of the 'modern' religious institutional practices concerning marriage. It was apparenty sufficient for a very long time for two people to pledge themselves to one another before witnesses, in order for a binding marriage to be deemed to have been effected.
Maybe Edward's 'Black' appelation is a reference to his fierce miltary reputation. To this day mothers in the Poitou tell naughty children that 'the English will come and get them', and a popular French slang term for menstruation is 'the English'. We're such popular folk...
This blog is quite a work of art, with the photos and the historical back story and your personal reflections. Thanks.