In 1361 tho Prince of Wales had married Joanna, styled the Fair, the daughter of his great uncle the Earl of Kent, who had been put to death in the beginning of the present reign. This lady had been first married to William do Montacute, earl of Salisbury, from whom sho had been divorced; and she had now been about three months the widow of Sir Thomas Holland, who assumed in her right the title of Earl of Kent, and was summoned to parliament as such. Soon after his marriage the Prince of Wales was raised by his father to the now dignity of Prince of Aquitaine and Gascony (the two provinces or districts of Guienne) ; and in 1363 he took up his residence, and established a splendid court in that quality, at Bordeaux. Edward's administration of his continental principality was very able and suc cessful, till he unfortunately became involved in the contest carried on by Pedro, surnamed the Cruel, with his illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastareare, for the crown of Castile. Pedro having been driven from his throne by Henry, applied to the Black Prince for aid to expel the usurper. At this call Edward, forgetting everything except the martial feelings of the age, and what he conceived to be the rights of legitimacy, marched into Spain, and defeated Henry at the battle of Najera, fought on the 3rd of April 1367. He did not however attain even his immediate object by this success. Pedro had reigned little more than a year when he was again driven from his throne by Henry, by whom he was soon after murdered. Henry kept possessiou of the throne which he had thus obtained till his death, ten years after. Prince Edward meanwhile, owing to Pedro's misfortunes, having been disappointed of the money which that king had engaged to supply, found himself obliged to lay additional taxes upon his subjects of Guienne, to obtain the means of paying his troops. These imposts several of the Gascon lords refused to submit to, and appealed to the king of France as the lord paramount. Charles on tine summoned Edward to appear before the parliament of Paris as his vassal ; and on the refusal of the prince, immediately confiscated all the lands held by him and his father in France. A new war forthwith broke out between the two countries. For a time the wonted valour of Prince Edward again shone forth; but among tho other fruits of his Spanish expedition was an illness caught by his exposure in that climate, which gradually undermined his constitution, and at length com pelled him, in January 1371, to return to England. He had just before this lost his eldest son, Edward, a child of six years old. King Edward's consort, Queen Philippa, had died on the 15th of August 1369.
On his departure from Guienne, Prince Edward left the government of tho principality iu the hands of his brother John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. The duke shortly after married a daughter of Pedro the Cruel, in whose right he assumed the title of King of Castile, and before the end of the year followed his brother to England. Affairs on the continent now went rapidly from bad to worse. The great French general, Duguesclin, drove the English everywhere before him. In the summer of.1372 two expeditions were fitted out from Eugland, the first commanded by the Earl of Pembroke, the second by King Edward in person, accompanied by the Black Prince; but both com pletely failed. The forces of the Earl of Pembroke were defeated while attempting to land at Rochelle by the fleet of Henry, king of Castile ; and those conducted by the king and his hie son, which were embarked in 400 ships, after being at sea for six weeks, were prevented from landing by contrary Winds, and obliged to put back to England. At last, in 1374, when ho had lost everything that had been secured to him by the treaty of Bretigny, Edward was glad to conclude a truce fur three years.
Thus ended the French wars of this king, which had coat England so much blood and treasure. Those which he waged against Scotland equally failed of their object. David II. had died in February 1371, and the Stewart of Scotland immediately ascended the throne wathont opposition under the title of Robert IL No serious attempt was ever made by Edward to disturb this settlement, though ho at one time seemed inclined to threaten another Scottish war, and be never would give Robert the title of king; he contented himself with styling him "the most noble and potent prince, our dear cousin of Scotland." The latter years of Edward's long reign presented in all respects a melancholy contrast to its brilliant commencement. The harmony which had hitherto prevailed between the king and his parliament gave way under the public misfortunes, and the opposition to the king's government was headed by Ids eldest son. The Black Prince however died in his forty-sixth year, on the 8th of June 1376. Ile was in the popular estimation the first hero of the age, and to this reputation his military skill, his valour, and other brilliant and noble qualities, may be admitted to have entitled him ; but, with all his merits, he was not superior to his age, nor without his share of some of the worst of its faults. He left by his wife Joanna one son, Richard, a child in his tenth year ; and he appears also to have had a daughter, who became the wife of Waleran de Luxemburg, count do Liguy : his illegitimate sons were Sir John Sounder and Sir Roger de Clarendon. King Edward, in the weakness of old age, had now for sometime given up the entire management of affairs to his second eon, the unpopular Duke of Lancaster, and fears were entertained that he intended the duke to inherit the crown; but these apprehensions were removed by his creating Richard of Bordeaux Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, and Earl of Chester, and declaring him in parliament his heir and successor. Since the death of his queen also he had attached himself with doting fondness to Alice Peres*, one of the ladies of her bed chamber, and had excited great public disgust by the excesses to which this folly carried him. The last fortnight of his life he spent at his manor of Shane, now Richmond, attended only by this lady. But even she deserted him on tho morning of his death ; and no one, it is asserted, save a single priest, was by his bed-side, or even in the house, when lie breathed his last. This event happened on the 21st of June 1377, in the sixty-fifth year of his age and the fifty-first of his reign.
Edward IIL lied by his queen, Philippa of Hainault, seven sons : 1. Edward prince of Wales ; 2, William of Hatfield, born 1336, who died young ; 3, Lionel, duke of Clarence, born at Antwerp 29th of November 1333 ; 4, John, duke of Lancaster, called of Gaunt, or Ghent, where be was born in 1340; 5, 1.klinund, duke of York, born at Lang ley, near St. Alban's, in 1341 ; 6, William, born at Windsor, who died young; 7, Thomas, duke of Gloucester, born at Woodstock 7th of January 1355 ; and five daughters : 1, Isabella, married to lugelram de Courcy, earl of Soissons and Bedford; 2, Joanna, born in August 1334, who was contracted, in 1345, to Pedro the Cruel, afterwards king of Castile, but died of the plague at Bordeaux, in 1349, before being married; 3, Blanche, called De la Tour, from having been born in the Tower of London, who died in infancy ; 4, Mary, married to John de Montfort!, duke of Bretagne; and 5, Margaret, married to John do Hastings, earl of Pembroke.