heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

300 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
daughter. In the following year, 1361, she married the Black Prince.
"
Rymer says : Joan married the Prince a few months after the death of
"her husband." James, quoting from Barnes, tells us that the Prince
went to her to plead the cause of one of his friends, and then first
discovered that he himself was in love with her. He adds that the
marriage was hastened on by the King, to whom it gave the greatest
satisfaction. Agnes Strickland speaks as if the Queen had given a
reluctant consent. Probably she saw that the Black Prince would not
marry anyone else, and as it was very undesirable that the heir apparent
should remain unmarried, they made the best of it. However, Joan at
last secured the prize for which her love and ambition had long been
yearning. Wife of the handsomest and most popular man in England,
and he Prince of Wales, with every possibility of one day being Queen of
England, with boundless wealth and acknowledged beauty, what a pinnacle
of earthly glory and happiness to have attained !
Five years after, 1366, her son Richard was born, and in 1369 Queen
Philippa, who had been permitted to see the child of her best beloved
Edward, died. History is silent as to the character of their union, but with
such a man it
ought to have been a happy one. Froissart says concisely of
him " : The valiant, gentle Prince of Wales, was the flower of all chivalry
" " in the world at that time ; and if suffering of body in his closing days
prompted him to be cruel towards the inhabitants of Limoges, that by no
means seems to have been the character of his life. Kind, gentle, liberal,
just even to his enemies, he must have made his home happy ; and when
we read that his friend the Captal de Buch died of grief on hearing of his
death, we can imagine the distress of his widow. He died at Berkhamstead
Castle, on Trinity Sunday, June 8th, 1376, of a disease which in
those days of surgical knowledge was incurable, and which rendered the
latter years of his life " one sad prolongation of suffering."
Queen Philippa had then been dead six years. Edward III., sinking
into his dotage, was clouding the close of his gallant life with an unworthy
intimacy with one Alice Perrers, "late damsel of the chamber to our
"dearest consort Philippa, deceased."
There was a great feeling of jealousy against John of Gaunt, who
was supposed to be aiming at the Crown ;
so Joan probably did not remain
at Berkhamstead Castle, which for many years was tenanted by Robert
and probably returned
de Vere, Marquis of Dublin and Duke of Ireland,*
to Aquitaine, the duchy of which had been given to
his father, and where she had passed most of her married life.
the Black Prince by
However, the year following, 1377, Edward III. died, and Richard II.,
only eleven years old, came to the throne. I cannot say how far, under
* History of Berkhamstead (Rev. J.
W. Cobb).