S

Reign of Edward III., 1327-1377.

Battle of Navarrete 1367
Renewal of war with France 1369
Truce with France 1375
The Good Parliament 1376
Death of Edward III. 1377

1. =The First Years of Peace. 1360--1364.=--To hold his new provinces
the better, Edward sent the Black Prince to govern them in =1363= with
the title of Duke of Aquitaine. King John had been liberated soon
after the making of the peace, and had been allowed to return to
France on payment of part of his ransom, and on giving hostages for
the payment of the remainder. In =1363= one of the hostages, his son,
the Duke of Anjou, broke his parole and fled, on which John, shocked
at such perfidy, returned to England to make excuses for him, and died
there in =1364=. If honour, he said, were not to be found elsewhere,
it ought to be found in the breasts of kings.

2. =The Spanish Troubles. 1364--1368.=--John's eldest son and
successor, Charles V., known as the Wise, or the Prudent, was less
chivalrous, but more cautious than his father, and soon found an
opportunity of stirring up trouble for the Black Prince without
exposing his own lands to danger. Pedro the Cruel, king of Castile,
who had for some time been the ally of England, had murdered his
wife, tyrannised over his nobles, and contracted an alliance with the
Mohammedans of Granada. The Pope having excommunicated him, his own
illegitimate brother, Henry of Trastamara, claimed the crown, and
sought aid of the king of France. Charles V. sent Bertrand du
Guesclin, a rising young commander, to his help. Du Guesclin's army
was made up of men of the Free Companies (see p. 252), which still
continued to plunder France on their own account after the Peace of
Bretigni. In this way Charles got rid of a scourge of his own country
at the same time that he attacked an ally of the English. In =1366= Du
Guesclin entered Spain. The tyrannical Pedro took refuge at Bayonne,
where he begged the Black Prince to help him. The Gascon nobles
pleaded with the Prince to reject the monster, but the Prince was not
to be held back. "It is not a right thing or reasonable," he said,
when they urged him to keep aloof from the unjust undertaking to which
he invited them, "that a bastard should hold a kingdom,