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The Black Prince and His Age
The name of the Black Prince has always been one which has moved the hearts of Englishmen. He symbolizes the finest qualities of the Middle Ages: chivalry, desperate courage, true love, and a debonair liberality so admired in his own age as largesse; and, along with Marlborough, Wellington and Nelson, he was one of England's great military commanders.
Just as the Prince himself was pre-eminent, so was the age associated with his name one of supreme achievement, above all in the arts. At this time there flourished, as contemporaries, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry Yeveley, William Herland and Gilbert Prince. It was then that The Canterbury Tales were written, that the Wilton Diptych was painted, that masterpieces such as Westminster Hall roof, the Ely octagon, York chapter house and Wykeham's colleges at Oxford and Winchester were constructed. This was in John Harvey's view the supreme epoch not only of the English Middle Ages, but, arguably, of the whole of English history.
The merit of this book is that, in relating the Black Prince's life to the age in which he lived, its author casts a revealing light on both. Even as late as 1900 French children continued to sing a song that began:
Le Prince noir ne connait pas la haine
John Harvey goes far to explaining how so admirable a character lived on in folk memory for half a millennium.
Just as the Prince himself was pre-eminent, so was the age associated with his name one of supreme achievement, above all in the arts. At this time there flourished, as contemporaries, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henry Yeveley, William Herland and Gilbert Prince. It was then that The Canterbury Tales were written, that the Wilton Diptych was painted, that masterpieces such as Westminster Hall roof, the Ely octagon, York chapter house and Wykeham's colleges at Oxford and Winchester were constructed. This was in John Harvey's view the supreme epoch not only of the English Middle Ages, but, arguably, of the whole of English history.
The merit of this book is that, in relating the Black Prince's life to the age in which he lived, its author casts a revealing light on both. Even as late as 1900 French children continued to sing a song that began:
Le Prince noir ne connait pas la haine
John Harvey goes far to explaining how so admirable a character lived on in folk memory for half a millennium.
- GenresHistory
184 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1976
12 people want to read
About the author
John Hooper Harvey
39 books1 followerEnglish architectural and garden and architectural historian. A prolific writer and distinguished scholar, he made a major contribution over many years to several aspects of garden and architectural history, but his greatest achievement by far was his magisterial English Mediaeval Architects: A Biographical Dictionary down to 1550, first published in 1954, and subsequently revised. Based on documentary sources, it illumines the English medieval architectural world with gracefully presented facts.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 12, 2024
This volume was published to mark the sexcentenary of the death of Edward, the Black Prince, also known as Edward of Woodstock, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall, Prince of Wales and of Aquitaine, on June 8, 1376. He was the oldest son of Edward III of England and would have gained the crown if only dysentery - or the bloody flux - hadn't killed him the year before his father's death.
This biography is written in a very patriotic way, from the English point of view, and shows the author's Conservative political views especially when discussing the effects of the Black Death on wage demands around 1350 and Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt during the reign of Richard II, the Black Prince's son. At the battles of Crecy and Poitiers the French are depicted as arrogant and foolishly over-confident and they are theoretically traits that echo down the centuries, explaining French defeats (supposedly) up to the Franco-Prussian War. As for the Black Death, the wage demands are strangely noted as being "a forerunner of trades unionism in a hostile form", while during the Peasants' Revolt the "renegade priest" John Bell is described thus:
"His most famous political speech or 'sermon', to 20,000 assembled on Blackheath, began with text
When Adam dalve and Eve span
Who was then a gentle man?
and went on with the predictable rigmarole to the effect that all men were created equal."
Nevertheless the bulk of the book is about Edward's courage in battle and his staunch belief in upholding a knightly code on the battlefield and chivalric honour in life in general. While at times the text drifts towards hagiography as it seems Edward can do no wrong and never tell a lie, all the facts are there though squeezed into only 121 pages. The remainder of the book gives a very brief life of Richard II in which the villain is not Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, but Richard's uncle, the scheming Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Richard's end in captivity was sad and demeaning but at least not as violently unpleasant as that of his overthrown great grandfather Edward II.
An interesting and informative book, if a little over-prejudiced at times in favour of England against the wily Scots and the blustering French, but enjoyable enough.
When I first wrote this review I should have included something about why Edward became known as the Black Prince. Harvey goes along with the idea that Edward wore a suit of armour at the battle of Crecy burnished a blue-black colour and recalls a French chronicler who mentioned it. I wonder whether it may have had something to do with Edward's Spanish ancestry. The royal court and the Norman nobility of that time were familiar with knights returning from the crusades burned by the sun. While Edward was not a crusader if he, with his Spanish forebear, took a good tan, as the saying used to be, then given his outdoor life of warfare and hunting it may have been noticed that he had a crusader's appearance. While I have no idea if the term Black was used at all widely in medieval England as a joking reference to those coming back from the Holy Land, it may be the root of Edward being the Black Prince. Intermarriage or intercourse between Christians and Moors in Spain was probably unlikely for religious rather than racial reasons.
This biography is written in a very patriotic way, from the English point of view, and shows the author's Conservative political views especially when discussing the effects of the Black Death on wage demands around 1350 and Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt during the reign of Richard II, the Black Prince's son. At the battles of Crecy and Poitiers the French are depicted as arrogant and foolishly over-confident and they are theoretically traits that echo down the centuries, explaining French defeats (supposedly) up to the Franco-Prussian War. As for the Black Death, the wage demands are strangely noted as being "a forerunner of trades unionism in a hostile form", while during the Peasants' Revolt the "renegade priest" John Bell is described thus:
"His most famous political speech or 'sermon', to 20,000 assembled on Blackheath, began with text
When Adam dalve and Eve span
Who was then a gentle man?
and went on with the predictable rigmarole to the effect that all men were created equal."
Nevertheless the bulk of the book is about Edward's courage in battle and his staunch belief in upholding a knightly code on the battlefield and chivalric honour in life in general. While at times the text drifts towards hagiography as it seems Edward can do no wrong and never tell a lie, all the facts are there though squeezed into only 121 pages. The remainder of the book gives a very brief life of Richard II in which the villain is not Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV, but Richard's uncle, the scheming Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Richard's end in captivity was sad and demeaning but at least not as violently unpleasant as that of his overthrown great grandfather Edward II.
An interesting and informative book, if a little over-prejudiced at times in favour of England against the wily Scots and the blustering French, but enjoyable enough.
When I first wrote this review I should have included something about why Edward became known as the Black Prince. Harvey goes along with the idea that Edward wore a suit of armour at the battle of Crecy burnished a blue-black colour and recalls a French chronicler who mentioned it. I wonder whether it may have had something to do with Edward's Spanish ancestry. The royal court and the Norman nobility of that time were familiar with knights returning from the crusades burned by the sun. While Edward was not a crusader if he, with his Spanish forebear, took a good tan, as the saying used to be, then given his outdoor life of warfare and hunting it may have been noticed that he had a crusader's appearance. While I have no idea if the term Black was used at all widely in medieval England as a joking reference to those coming back from the Holy Land, it may be the root of Edward being the Black Prince. Intermarriage or intercourse between Christians and Moors in Spain was probably unlikely for religious rather than racial reasons.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews