15 June: Edward the Black Prince

Born on this date in 1330: Edward the Black Prince, eldest son of Edward III, who died before becoming king. 10 things you might not know about him:

1. He was the eldest son of Edward III and his wife Philippa Hainault. He was born in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.
2. He was appointed as First Duke of Cornwall in 1337 and made Prince of Wales in 1343.
3. He was a year old when his father proposed to marry him to a daughter of Philip VI of France, but the king went back on that and later tried to marry Edward off to Margaret, daughter of John, Duke of Brabant, in order to gain his support. In the end, Edward married the cousin he'd been raised with. Joan, in 1362 when he was 31. She was by then 33 years old and the widowed Countess of Kent and already had three children, one of whom was Edward's godson. Because of that and the fact they were cousins, Edward had to get permission from the Pope to marry her. The close relationship and the fact she'd already been married meant that the marriage wasn't a popular one at court, and it was thought a marriage to a foreign princess would have been a much better political move.
4. Perhaps if he'd married the French princess like his father wanted, it would have saved countless lives, since many of Edward's victorious campaigns were against France—Battle of Crecy when he was just 16 and Poitiers in 1356 when he took the French king prisoner.
5. Edward lived in the domains his father had granted him in France where he entertained the exiled monarchs of Spain and Majorca, James IV of Majorca and Peter of Castile.
6. In 1367, Edward led an expedition to Spain against Peter's brother and Henry of Trastamara and restored Peter to the throne. This made him unpopular the with the nobility in France, though, because they got stung with the taxes to pay for it. They rose in revolt against him and in 1370 Edward besieged the city of Limoges. When it fell, 3,000 of its inhabitants were massacred. A year later, Edward returned to England.
7. While the Black Prince was hailed by many as the epitome of chivalry. When he defeated John the Good, king of France, for example, he treated him well and let him and his son go, but he also used to plunder and burn towns and villages as he went, which isn't a very chivalrous thing to do. Hero or villain? Probably depends which side you were on.
8. He was never known as the Black Prince during his lifetime. He was usually referred to as Edward of Woodstock. Historians are divided as to how, after his death, he came to be known as the Black Prince. Some say it's because he wore black armour, but others say it was because he was ruthless and cruel to the people of France.
9. The Apocalypse Tapestries Louis of Anjou commissioned in 1373 are said to depict Edward III as a demon followed by his five sons, with the Black Prince representing the first horseman of the apocalypse.
10. Although the Black Prince won the campaign in Castille, it nevertheless proved to be the death of him. In true War of the Worlds fashion, he was floored by a disease, dysentery, to be exact, which he contracted while there. His health was never the same again and he died in 1375 when he was only 45. He was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. This left his son Richard as heir to the throne, and he became Richard II on the death of Edward III.

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