All the English nobles wept at the sight of these six gentlemen as they knelt before the king and begged for compassion, but Edward eyed them angrily and ordered their heads to be struck off forthwith. Some of the knights entreated the king to be more merciful, but he would not listen to them, and sternly repeated his order.
At that moment Philippa appeared. Falling on her knees at her husband's feet, she looked up into his face with tears in her eyes, and said: "Ah, gentle sir, since I crossed the sea with great peril to see you I have never asked you one favor; now I most humbly ask as a gift, for the sake of the son of the blessed Mary, and as a proof of your love to me, the lives of these six men."
King Edward looked at her for some time in silence, then replied: "Ah, lady, I wish you had been anywhere else than here; you have entreated in such a manner I cannot refuse you. I therefore give them to you—do as you please with them."
Philippa then conducted the poor men to her own apartments, where their halters were removed from their necks and they were served with an excellent dinner. Afterwards she saw that they were conducted out of the camp in safety. The king entered Calais and took possession of the castle, where proper lodgings had been prepared for himself and his queen.
A.D. 1348. After their return to England, in 1348, an awful epidemic, called the "black death," visited the kingdom and carried off the king and queen's second daughter, Johanna, a princess only fifteen years old, but blessed with so many charms that a number of minstrels had chosen her for the subject of their verses. What made the event more than ordinarily sad was, that she was engaged to be married, and her funeral procession occurred at the very time that had been fixed for the wedding ceremony. This was a great sorrow to the royal couple. So dreadful was the pestilence that every household in London was afflicted by it, and in some families all the members died..
Before this horrible visitation Philippa had turned her attention to the working of the coal mines in England, which, like the cloth manufacture, proved an industry of immense profit to the nation, besides enriching many private individuals. Wherever this great queen turned her patronage, prosperity was sure to follow, and her subjects loved and trusted her.
A.D. 1357. In 1357 the English gained a grand victory at Poictiers, and the Black Prince returned with many prisoners. Among them was one Bertrand Du Guesclin. One day when Queen Philippa was entertaining at her court a number of the noble French prisoners, the Prince of Wales proposed that Du Guesclin should name his own ransom, adding that whatever sum he mentioned should set him free. The warrior named a hundred thousand crowns. The Prince of Wales was astonished at such a sum, and asked how he could raise it. "I know a hundred knights," replied Du Guesclin, "in my native Bretagne, who would mortgage their last acre rather than have me languish in captivity or be rated below my value. Yea, and there is not a woman in France now toiling with her distaff who would not devote a year's earnings to liberate me, for well have I deserved of their sex. And if all the fair spinners of France employ their hands to redeem me, think you, prince, that I shall abide much longer with you?"
Queen Philippa, who had listened to this conversation