So the governor of Calais came to ask Edward on what terms they could surrender. Edward was very angry at having been kept waiting so long, and refused to spare the people unless the six chief men of Calais would come out bareheaded and bare-footed, with ropes round their necks and the keys of Calais in their hands, ready to die for the rest of the people. The governor returned sad and sick at heart, and calling the people together he gave them the king’s message. There was silence for a moment among the feeble few. Then the hero Eustace de St. Pierre cried:
“Oh! never be it said,
That the loyal hearts of Calais
To die could be afraid!
I will be the first, I will willingly give myself up to the mercy of the King of England.” Then five others followed his brave example, and the willing captives came before the angry king. They knelt and pleaded for mercy. But in vain. In vain the lords around him begged him to restrain his anger,—he only thundered:
“Strike off their heads, each man of them shall die; I will have it so!”
Then gentle Philippa stepped forth and knelt at the feet of her royal husband:
“My loving lord and husband,” she cried, “I have crossed the stormy sea with great peril to come to you—I have been faithful to you all our wedded life—do not deny my request, but, as a proof of your love to me, grant me the lives of these six men!”
The king looked at her in silence, “Lady, I would you had not been here,” he cried at last, “I cannot refuse you, do as you please with them.”
Then Philippa joyously arose, took the men, fed them, clothed them, and sent them back to their wives, friends, and children.
Soon after Philippa and Edward returned to England. The same year a terrible disease called the Black Death broke out in England, and Philippa’s second daughter, a girl of fifteen, died of it. She was just going to marry the Infant Pedro of Spain, and had crossed to France, where he was to meet her, when she was taken very ill with the plague, and died in a few hours. And on the very day appointed for her wedding the little princess was buried.
In 1357, the Black Prince returned to England after his victories of Crecy and Poitiers, and proudly presented his royal prisoner King John to his mother, as well as John’s little son, a boy of fourteen, who had fought to the end by his father’s side, and had been at last captured terribly wounded. The first day, when at dinner with the king and queen and his captive father, the boy started up, and boxed the servant’s ears for serving Edward, King of England, before his father John, King of France.