isoner. His brother, in
resentment of his cruelties, murdered him with his own hand: and was
placed on the throne of Castile, which he transmitted to his posterity.
The duke of Lancaster, who espoused in second marriage the eldest
daughter of Peter, inherited only the empty title of that sovereignty,
and, by claiming the succession, increased the animosity of the new king
of Castile against England.

{1368.} But the prejudice which the affairs of Prince Edward received
from this splendid though imprudent expedition, ended not with it. He
had involved himself in so much debt by his preparations and the pay of
his troops, that he found it necessary, on his return, to impose on his
principality a new tax, to which some of the nobility consented
with extreme reluctance, and to which others absolutely refused to
submit.[**]

* Froissard, liv. i. chap. 242, 243. Walsing. p. 182.

** This tax was a livre upon a hearth; and it was imagined
that the imposition would have yielded one million two
hundred thousand livres a year, which supposes so many
hearths in the provinces possessed by the English. But such
loose conjectures have commonly no manner of authority, much
less in such ignorant times. There is a strong instance of
it in the present reign. The house of commons granted the
king a tax of twenty-two shillings on each parish, supposing
that the amount of the whole would be fifty thousand pounds.
But they were found to be in a mistake of near five to one.
Cotton, p. 3. And the council assumed the power of
augmenting the tax upon each parish.

This incident revived the animosity which the inhabitants bore to the
English, and which all the amiable qualities of the prince of Wales
were not able to mitigate or assuage. They complained that they
were considered as a conquered people, that their privileges were
disregarded, that all trust was given to the English alone, that every
office of honor and profit was conferred on these foreigners, and that
the extreme reluctance, which most of them had expressed, to receive
the new yoke, was likely to be long remembered against them. They cast,
therefore, their eyes towards their ancient sovereign, whose prudence
they found had now brought the affairs of his kingdom into excellent
order; and the counts of Armagnac, Comminge, and Perigord, the lord
d'Albret, with other nobles, went to Paris, and were encouraged to car