A history of England

by Charles Oman

FRANCE 1380.
SHOWING THE ENGLISH BOUNDARIES
AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY.

It appeared for a moment as if a permanent peace between England and France had been established. King Edward, in return for giving up a claim on the whole of France, which no one had taken very seriously, had won the long-lost lands which his ancestors had never hoped to retake. He had also made an advantageous peace with Scotland, releasing King David for a ransom of 90,000 marks, and the fortresses of Berwick and Roxburgh.

Development of trade.—The Flemish weavers.

Edward's fortune was now at its highest, and his reign promised to have a prosperous and peaceful end. He had reached the age of fifty, and was surrounded by a band of sons who should have been the strength of his old age. Edward the Black Prince he made Duke of Aquitaine; Lionel of Clarence, his second son, was married to the heiress of the great Irish family of de Burgh; John of Gaunt, the third son, was wedded to the heiress of Lancaster; Thomas of Woodstock, his fifth son, to one of the co-heiresses of the earldom of Hereford. Thus he trusted to identify by intermarriage the interests of the royal house and the greater baronage, not seeing that there was as much probability of his younger sons becoming leaders of baronial factions as of the barons forgetting their old jealousy of the royal house. Meanwhile, however, things went fairly well for some years after the peace of Bretigny. In spite of the vast expenditure of money on the war, and in spite of the ravages of the Black Death, the country was in many ways prosperous. England had enjoyed internal quiet for thirty years; her commerce with Flanders and Gascony was developing; her fleet, in spite of much piracy, was dominant in all the Western seas. The increase of wealth is shown by the fact that Edward III. first of all English monarchs issued a large currency of gold money (1349), and that his "nobles," as the broad thin pieces were called, became the favourite medium of exchange in all North-Western Europe, and formed the model for the gold coins of the Netherlands, part of Germany, and Scotland. Manufactures as well as foreign trade were beginning to grow important; the reign of Edward is always remembered for the development of the weaving industry in Eastern England. He induced many Flemish weavers to settle in Norwich and elsewhere, moved, it is said, by the advice of his Netherlandish queen, Philippa of Hainault. But the main exports of England were still raw material—especially wool and metals—and not manufactured goods. The English trader did not usually sail beyond Norway on the one hand, and North Spain on the other; intercourse with more distant countries was carried on mainly by companies of foreign merchants, of whom the men of the Hanse Towns were the most important. These Germans had a factory in London called the Steelyard, where they dwelt in a body, under strict rules and regulations. It was by them that English goods were taken to the more distant markets on the Baltic or the Mediterranean.

Desultory fighting in Brittany.— Spanish war.

The reasons why the treaty of Bretigny failed to give a permanent settlement of the quarrel between England and France were many. The English pleaded that the French never fulfilled their obligations, for King John found his people very unwilling to raise his huge ransom, and never paid half of it. He returned to England in 1364 to surrender himself in default of payment—for he had a keen sense of honour in such things—and then died. His son, Charles V., at once refused—as was natural—to pay the arrears. But a more fruitful source of quarrelling was the civil war in Brittany, which still lingered on after twenty years of fighting; English and French succours came to help the two rival dukes, and fought each other on Breton soil, though peace reigned elsewhere. The same thing was soon after seen in Spain: Pedro the Cruel, the wicked King of Castile, was attacked by his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara, who enlisted a great host of French mercenaries, under Bertrand du Guesclin, the best professional soldier in France. Driven out of Castile by the usurper and his allies, Pedro fled to Bordeaux, where the Black Prince was reigning as Duke of Aquitaine. He enlisted the help of the English, who were jealous of French influence in Spain, and bought the aid of Edward's younger brothers, John of Gaunt, who was now a widower, and Edmund of Cambridge, by marrying his two daughters to them. Edward raised a great army of English and Gascons, and crossed the Pyrenees to restore King Pedro. At Najara [23] he routed the French and Castilians, took Bertrand du Guesclin prisoner, and drove Henry of Trastamara out of the land (1367). But the ungrateful Pedro then refused to repay the large sums which Edward had spent in raising his army, and the prince withdrew in wrath to Aquitaine. He took back with him an intermittent fever which he had caught in Spain, and never recovered his health. Left to his own resources, Pedro was soon beset for a second time by his brother and the French; he was captured by treachery, and slain by Henry of Trastamara's own hand.

Rebellion in Aquitaine.—Massacre at Limoges.