The earl of Pembroke was intercepted at sea, and taken prisoner with his whole army, near Rochelle, by a fleet which the king of Castile had fitted out for that purpose:[*] Edward himself embarked for Bordeaux with another army; but was so long detained by contrary winds, that he was obliged to lay aside the enterprise.[**] Sir Robert Knolles, at the head of thirty thousand men, marched out of Calais, and continued his ravages to the gates of Paris, without being able to provoke the enemy to an engagement: he proceeded in his march to the provinces of Maine and Anjou, which he laid waste; but part of his army being there defeated by the conduct of Du Guesclin, who was now created constable of France, and who seems to have been the first consummate general that had yet appeared in Europe, the rest were scattered and dispersed, and the small remains of the English forces, instead of reaching Guienne, took shelter in Brittany, whose sovereign had embraced the alliance of England.[***] The duke of Lancaster, some time after, made a like attempt with an army of twenty-five thousand men; and marched the whole length of France from Calais to Bordeaux: but was so much harassed by the flying parties which attended him, that he brought not the half of his army to the place of their destination. Edward, from the necessity of his affairs was at last obliged to conclude a truce with the enemy;[****] after almost all his ancient possessions in France had been ravished from him, except Bordeaux and Bayonne, and all his conquests, except Calais.
The decline of the king’s life was exposed to many mortifications, and corresponded not to the splendid and noisy scenes which had filled the beginning and the middle of it. Besides seeing the loss of his foreign dominions, and being baffled in every attempt to defend them, he felt the decay of his authority at home; and experienced, from the sharpness of some parliamentary remonstrances, the great inconstancy of the people, and the influence of present fortune over all their judgments.[*****]
* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 302, 303, 304. Walsing. p. 186.
** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 311. Walsing. p. 187.
*** Froissard, liv. i. chap. 291. Walsing. p. 185.
**** Froissard, liv, i. chap. 311. Walsing. p. 187.
This prince, who, during the vigor of his age, had been chiefly occupied in the pursuits of war and ambition, began, at an unseasonable period, to indulge himself in pleasure; and being now a widower, he attached himself to a lady of sense and spirit, one Alice Pierce, who acquired a great ascendant over him, and by her influence gave such general disgust that, in order to satisfy the parliament, he was obliged to remove her from court.[*]
* Walsing, p. 189.
The indolence also, naturally attending old age and infirmities, had made him in a great measure resign the administration into the hands of his son, the duke of Lancaster, who, as he was far from being popular, weakened extremely the affection which the English bore to the person and government of the king. Men carried their jealousies very far against the duke; and as they saw, with much regret, the death of the prince of Wales every day approaching, they apprehended lest the succession of his son Richard, now a minor, should be defeated by the intrigues of Lancaster, and by the weak indulgence of the old king. But Edward, in order to satisfy both the people and the prince on this head, declared in parliament his grandson heir and successor to the crown; and thereby cut off all the hopes of the duke of Lancaster, if he ever had the temerity to entertain any.
1376.
The prince of Wales, after a lingering illness, died in the forty-sixth year of his age; and left a character illustrious for every eminent virtue, and, from his earliest youth till the hour he expired, unstained by any blemish. His valor and military talents formed the smallest part of his merit: his generosity, humanity, affability, moderation, gained him the affections of all men; and he was qualified to throw a lustre, not only on that rude age in which he lived, and which nowise infected him with its vices, but on the most shining period of ancient or modern history.
1377.
The king survived about a year this melancholy incident: England was deprived at once of both these princes, its chief ornament and support: he expired in the sixty-fifth year of his age and the fifty-first of his reign; and the people were then sensible, though too late, of the irreparable loss which they had sustained.