The Black Prince - Edward Plantagenet

The afternoon of 26 August 1346 found Edward Plantagenet, Prince of Wales, later to be called the Black Prince, in France retreating with a weary English army commanded by his father King Edward III. Having exhausted its offensive power the small but highly disciplined English invading force was withdrawing to the coast when a vast French army under King Philip VI caught up with it near Crécy en Ponthieu.The English King, skilfully selecting his ground, deployed his battle corps on a ridge according to a tried and tested plan with the Black Prince, though sixteen years-old, commanding the right flank, the Earl of Northampton the left, and himself the centre. Against this line of English knights, men-at-arms and Welsh archers, the flower of European knighthood repeatedly charged, and nowhere was the pressure greater than in the corner of the field commanded by the youthful heir to the English crown.

At the supreme point of danger the Prince's experienced 'lieutenant', the Earl of Warwick, sent word to the King asking for help. The Prince, shattered by the physical effort of combat, was on his knees facing death, yet his father sent only a small body of men to his aid, saying 'Let the boy win his spurs'. The French heavy horse charged again and again but were repeatedly brought down by Welsh arrows and felled by the Prince and his immediate supporters. When the fighting was over the field was strewn with 18,000 French, Bohemian, Savoyard, Lorenese dead, whilst English losses amounted to only forty knights and an unknown number of common soldiery, thought to be no more than two or three hundred.

It is said that from the battlefield the Prince took the ostrich feather emblem borne by the slain King of Bohemia to use thereafter as his personal 'badge', as has every Prince of Wales since. Whilst in times of war he continued to display the Royal Arms, he adopted as his 'shield for peace' three white ostrich feathers on a black ground - from which, it is thought, derives the name 'The Black Prince'. Crécy was but one of the Black Prince's great victories. Four years later he fought alongside his father in a celebrated sea battle against the Castilians who had been raiding English shipping in the Channel. His ship was severely damaged in this fight off Winchelsea so he grappled and took one of the enemy's and with his followers slew everyone on board in hand-to-hand combat.

At the age of thirty, and unusually for his kind, he married for love rather than dynastic advantage, the beautiful, intelligent and widowed Joan, Countess of Salisbury, and did so without first obtaining his father's approval. Nevertheless, a year later the King made him Duke of Aquitaine and endowed him with his French possessions. The Black Prince's Court at Bordeaux was one of exceptional splendour and exceeded even his father's in brilliance, yet he was noted for his humility and courtesy to all under his protection. In 1356 he led an army across the Loire, taking a series of towns and strongholds, and in September came up against a large French army, which he decisively defeated at Poitiers. His most remarkable victory, however, was gained in Spain, over the Castilians at Najera in 1367 after crossing the Pyrenees in appalling weather. In 1371 he returned to England and retired to the manor of Berkhamstead.

His effigy lies atop his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral.