Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales

Today is the 650th anniversary of the death of Edward, Prince of Wales in 1376. He was a week short of his forty sixth birthday, the national hero laid low by almost a decade of illness. His death was the passing also of the mid-century era of English military success in France and of a particular culture of chivalric behaviour. 

The effigy of Edward Prince of Wales on his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral

Image: berkhampstedcastle.org.uk

Popularly known as the Black Prince since the sixteenth century for reasons which are far from clear, he was in his lifetime and in the following years seen as an outstanding exemplar of medieval chivalric culture. Later centuries also subscribed to that view, but in recent decades his reputation been discussed by historians and popular writers. There have been a number of biographies, and debate over his actions in 1370 at the sack of Limoges became something of an academic battleground. That debates perhaps revealed more about misconceptions amongst some people today about the past than it did about the past itself. The current consensus appears more favourable to him.

The effigy of Edward Prince of Wales in Canterbury Cathedral

Image: World History Encyclopaedia 

Despite his public role as military leader and victor in notable battles, notably Crecy, Poitiers and Najera, his decade of rulership in Aquitaine, and the near contemporary accounts by the Chandos Herald and Jean Froissart, less emerges about him as a personality than his younger brothers, John, Edmund and Thomas. The superb effigy at Canterbury commemorates the public Prince but reveals little of the man, and that seems true of so much of his life. He appears to have been devout, with a particular devotion to the Trinity, which may well suggest an interest in theology akin to that of his nephew, the future King Henry IV. Very appropriately he died on Trinity Sunday. Having requested burial in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft at Canterbury it was deemed more appropriate to bury him above that chapel in the vicinity of the shrine of St Thomas in the Trinity Chapel. 

  

The Prince kneels in prayer before the Holy Trinity 

Image: mediastorehouse.com

His private life with at least two illegitimate sons born marriage is probably typical of his age. After talk when he was a small child of marrying him to the daughter of King Philip VI of France marriage to Margaret of Brabant was being actively discussed in the years 1339-45 but nothing came of it. As it was he married late, and initially secretly, to his relative Joan “the Fair Maid” of Kent, acquiring thereby a family of stepchildren. It is, perhaps, more than somewhat reminiscent of the marriage just over a century later of King Edward IV to Elizabeth Woodville. Joan’s sons the Hollands were again not altogether dissimilar to the Woodvilles and Greys.     

Joan, Princess of Wales

Image: A Royal Heraldry 

That Edward and Joan’s marriage was a love match seems clear, but their elder son died as a child and the future hopes of the couple and the dynasty were centred henceforth on the younger son, the future King Richard II.

 

The Prince at prayer from the remains of the painted decoration of St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster 

Image: luminarium.org

The Prince at prayer with his ostrich feather badge on the wall behind.

Image:mediastorehouse.com

The fact that he was eight years older than his next brother to reach adulthood Lionel, ten years older than John and twelve years older than Edmund, let alone twenty five years older than his youngest brother Thomas, born when Edward was himself already a father, must have affected the dynamics of the family and the way it worked as part of King Edward III’s system of governance. 

King Edward III creates his son the Prince of Wales as Prince of Aquitaine in 1362

Image: luminarium.org 

The Prince’s last years were overshadowed by illness, by the gradual loss of the military initiative and territory to the French, and the decline of his father King Edward III. His difficulties in Aquitaine reflected not only the significant financial consequences of his Castilian campaign - where he was given what is now his eponymous ruby - but also the long-standing traditions of local autonomy on the parts of the Gascon lords and which could be easily exploited by the French crown. In that respect he faced the type of problems that had confronted Richard Coeur de Lion almost two centuries earlier.The Gascons might well love a ruler based in London over one closer at hand in Paris, but an energetic Duke or Prince based in Bordeaux was too close for comfort.

The Oribce’s signet ring found at Montpensier in Auvergne in 1866.

Image: Wikipedia 

In his last months the Prince appears to have been seen by those opposing his father’s ministers as their supporter, but his participation is unclear. Family bonds still bound the Plantagenets closely, even if there was always the potential for differing views and policies between the monarch and his team, and those of the heir and his entourage. That had been present in the 1269s and was to be in the early fifteenth century, and, of course, a principal factor in politics from the seventeenth century onwards. It is a seemingly inevitable part of any dynastic system. For Edward his tragedy was that he was dying in the spring of 1376 and was never able to show how he might have ruled as a putative King Edward IV.

 

Later generations, and apparently, some contemporaries imagined a new reign would have brought new or reinvigorated policies, and see a divide between him and his next surviving brother, John, Duke of Lancaster. The evidence of Edward’s rule in Aquitaine suggests he would have been tough rather than merely amenable as king, and his knight and apparently close friend Sir Simon Burley was to be a major influence the young King Richard II and a principal object of the Appellant’s vengeance in 1388. A Whiggish view of the Prince does not work.    

 

His military triumphs and relatively early death loomed to a greater or lesser extent over the reign of his son, with the inevitable speculation as to what might have been. In that he was like his great-nephew King Henry V in the reign of his son. Victories like Poitiers and Agincourt opened up possibilities for both men which they were never able to achieve before death claimed them, and which their sons and their advisors could never fulfill.

The Prince’s great helm and shield from his achievements set over his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral 

Image: World History Encyclopaedia 

 

The arms in full heraldic display 

Image: A Royal Heraldry- Wikipedia 

The replicas of the Prince’s achievements 

Image: trc-leiden.nl

There is an article with additional information about the Prince’s surcoat at Jupon of the Black Prince

There is a video from a BBC series from 2018 about creating a faithful reproduction of the surcoat using the same fabrics as the original which can be seen at https://share.google/2kORvchUKkHyE3Teq

Wikipedia has a quite detailed biography which gives a good narrative of his life, considerable detail and discussion of chivalric culture, as well as a good bibliography but whose interpretation at times unfortunately relies on old-fashioned views from the old DNB entry. The illustrated article can be seen at Edward_the_Black_Prince

   

There is another quite detailed biography from Luminarium which can be accessed at Edward, the Black Prince of Wales (1330-1376)

I have previously shared articles about conservation and research work on the funeral achievements and the tomb at Canterbury. LiveScience has a 2021 article on the work on the effigy which can be seen at Tomb effigy of the 'Black Prince' was likely medieval propaganda to bolster his son's failing rule

I am not sure I fully agree with the argument about the intention of the tomb commission but the article is worth perusing.  

 

The effigy and tomb of the Prince at Canterbury 

Image: A Royal Heraldry - churchmonunentssociety.org

Pray for the repose of the soul of Edward Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine