This London mansion of the Prince was not very far from the Tower. Thousands of happy excursionists and anxious men of business daily pass the spot where once stood the London residence of Joan and Edward. If a man stand now with his back to the Monument, looking northward, he will have before him the site of the noble stone mansion in which the flower of chivalry kept house. Stowe describes it as above Crooked-lane end, upon Fish-street Hill. In his time the edifice existed, but its dignity was lowered, it being then an inn, bearing the sign of "The Black Bell." The old Bell-yard, which was a portion of the way which led from the Prince's house to the old London Bridge, was swept away more than thirty years ago, when the erection of the present bridge required the improved street-way, which has since been accomplished.

The expenses of the Prince's course of life probably exceeded his own income, and had to be defrayed out of his father's purse. So much, at least, may be inferred from a passage in Froissart (vol. i. ch. 214), wherein he states that a full Parliament was held in England in the very year of the marriage of Edward and Joan, in which the formation of establishments for the King's sons was seriously considered. The younger sons had some jealousy of the eldest. They considered," says the last-named chronicler," that the Prince of Wales kept a noble and grand state as he well might do; for he was valiant, powerful, and rich, and had besides, a large inheritance in Aquitaine, where provisions and everything else abounded. They therefore remonstrated with him, and told him from the King, his father, that it would be proper for him to reside in his

duchy, which would furnish him withal to keep as grand an establishment as he pleased. The barons and knights of Aquitaine were also desirous of his residing among them, and had before entreated the King to allow him so to do; for, although the Lord John Chandos was very agreeable and kind to them, they still loved better to have their own natural lord and sovereign than any other."

This request was complied with, and the departure of the Prince and Princess for Aquitaine soon took place, amid a prophetic mingling of gloom and splendour. I do not know whether Edward had at this time manifested any symptoms of constitutional weakness, but it is certified by Froissart that men then spoke of the small probability of his succeeding to the throne. It must have been a suspicion of the ambition of John of Gaunt that induced the same prophets to foretel that the sceptre would soon depart from the direct heirs of Edward III. Amid such vaticination, but surrounded by circumstances of great splendour, Edward and Joan departed for their new duchy, sailing across the seas in one of the most completely equipped fleets that had ever left these shores; and finding in the duchy a welcome as hearty as if every man there recognised in the illustrious pair a double source of happiness for his country.

In that country the Prince and his consort resided from the year 1362 to 1371. The details of their government in Guyenne dazzle by their extravagant splendour, and fatigue the mind as excess of splendour is wont to weary the eye. Wherever they held court, or he kept camp, there reigned a glory agreeable to the fashion of the times, but costly alike to Prince and to

people. At Angoulême or at Bordeaux, in their favourite city of Limoges, or in any other locality within the limits of their rule, there were they surrounded by warriors, and nobles, and troubadours, and poets, philosophers and fools. So renowned became this court for its brilliancy, and the head of it for liberal courtesy, that even the travelling kings of the day, who had seen all that was beautiful and marvellous in the world, accounted of themselves as having beheld nothing if their eyes had not witnessed the glories of the court and the charms of the presence of the Prince of Wales in Guyenne.

Probably, the two most joyous events, in the palace, at least, and which gave rise to entertainments that might have afforded suggestive hints to a framer of Eastern romances, were the successive births of the two sons of this marriage-Edward of Angoulême and Richard of Bordeaux. The former, heir to a principality and a kingdom, at whose coming into the world Gascony and England alike shouted for joy, and in congratulating whose happy mother, kinsfolk and subjects manifested a deliriously expensive gladness, died in his childhood, and they who had hailed his coming, deplored him as unfortunate, in being snatched from that glorious inheritance to which he was born! What he lost, the second brother gained, and with it his own destruction; but at the birth of Richard of Bordeaux, too, there were jousts and tournaments, and minstrelsy and dancing, and a world of fatiguing and foolish delights, as though he had been heir to an empire the eternal felicity of which had been irreVocably fixed by Heaven. When Richard was born,

I

there were two Kings sojourning at the court of Edward James, King of Minorca, and Charles, King of Navarre. These two Kings tarried for the christening, at which King James and Richard, Bishop of Agen, were the godfathers of that most unlucky babethe prelate giving to the Prince his own Christian name, but conferring on him no charm against deep misery thereby.

During a few years, the gaiety and splendour of this court increased rather than diminished. There was a season of peace, during which Edward and his men-atarms would have sickened for lack of martial exercise, but for the joyous and brilliant activity of the court. But, whether it was gladdening peace or grievous war, Joan bloomed and flourished in buxom excess of health, heartiness, and beauty, and praise the most disinterested vaunted the grace, the goodness, and gay bearing of the fair and matronly Princess of Wales.

At length came that symphony of war, overture to the last gorgeous drama of action, in which the Prince was to take part. It came from Spain, where French influence had dethroned Pedro the Cruel, and set up in his place his brother Don Henry. The influence so exercised at once inclined the Prince to second the cause of Pedro; and this course he was authorized to take by his father, King Edward. The Spaniard, at the same time, urged the Prince to active measures in his favour, to purchase which studied falsehoods fell from his lips as fast as he could give utterance to words. The Prince believed all, or feigned to believe all. He was eager to be in the field; for the decade of his glory had arrived, and as 1346 had its Cressy, and '56 its

Poictiers, so now in '66 he set out to his crowning fight and his closing triumph.

In this last affair, the statesmanship as well as the soldierly qualities of the Prince become apparent. In aiding Don Pedro, Edward hoped to obtain possession of Biscay. The former had entered into an engagement which had this end in view; had offered to make Edward's son King of Galicia, and on the ample person of Joan had suspended, as pledges, his richest jewels. Further, he was lavish of promises to the English captains and soldiery, for the performance of which the Prince became security, and the disregard of which chafed his proud spirit and stricken body sorely. In short, Pedro of Castile both borrowed money from the Prince of Wales, which he did not mean to repay, and promised large recompence for aid which he hoped to obtain for nothing. Some proofs of this are to be met with in Sir Francis Palgrave's "Ancient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasury of his Majesty's Exchequer." (1837.) In one of these Treasury memoranda, Don Pedro of Castile gives his bond to the Prince of Wales for the repayment of sixteen thousand florins before the feast of St. John the Baptist next ensuing. In another, the same monarch agrees to pay the Prince and his army for their aid against his brother, Don Enrique. In a third, Pedro cedes to the Prince and the Prince's heirs, for ever, certain fortresses on the northern coast of Spain. These bonds are to an enormous amount, and in their very magnitude some have seen a proof that Pedro had no intention of observing them.

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales converted his own