le realm that, on a recent journey, I could hardly persuade myself
that it was the France that I had seen in former years."[1]

[1] _Epistolae Familiares_, iii., Ep. 14, p. 162, ed.
Fracassetti.

It was to little purpose that King John laboured to redeem his plighted
word and make France what it had been before the war. Though in
November, 1361, neither he nor Edward sent commissioners to Bruges,
where, according to the treaty of Calais, the charters of renunciation
were to be exchanged, John offered in 1362 to carry out his promise.
Edward, however, for reasons of his own, made no response to his
advances. The result was that the renunciations were never made, and so
the essential condition of the original settlement remained
unfulfilled. The matter passed almost unnoticed at the time as a mere
formality, but in later years Edward's lack of faith brought its own
punishment in giving the French king a plausible excuse for still
claiming suzerainty over the ceded provinces. Perhaps Edward still
cherished the ambition of resuscitating his pretensions to the French
crown. He found it as hard to give up a claim as ever his grandfather
had done.

John's good faith was conspicuously evinced by the efforts he made to
raise the instalments of his ransom. His payments were in arrears: some
of the hostages left in free custody by Edward's generosity broke their
parole and escaped; and among them was his own son, Louis, Duke of
Anjou. The father felt it his duty to step into the place thus left
vacant. In 1363 he returned to his English prison, where he died in
1364, surrounded with every courtesy and attention that Edward could
lavish upon him. During the last months of his life, England received
visits from two other kings, David of Scotland and the Lusignan lord of
Cyprus, who still called himself King of Jerusalem, and was wandering
through the courts of Europe to stir up interest in the projected
crusade.

Charles of Normandy then became Charles V. He was no knight-errant like
his father, and his diplomatic gifts, tact, and patience made him much
better fitted than John for outwitting his English enemies and for
restoring order to France. Slowly but surely he grappled with the
companies, and at last an opening was found for their skill in the
civil war which broke out in Castile. Peter the Cruel, since 1350 King
of Castile, had made himself odious to many of his subjects. At last
his bastard brother, Henry of Tra