DE. DORAN'S B00% • OF THE PRINCES OF WALES. *

THE researches of recent years have added considerably to the unused stock of materials available for a biographer of the Eng- lish Princes of Wales, and Dr. Doran has dealt with them all in the light and effective style with which his readers are familiar. In the earlier pages of his pleasant book, he gives us a glimpse of Llewellyn III., the last Cymric ruler of the Principality, who lost it willingly for the love of Eleanor de Montfort, the dowerless or- phan of a ruined father. Captured at sea on her way to her be-

= The Book of the Princes of Inks, Heirs to the Crown of England. By Dr. Doran, F.S.A. Author of " Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Han- over," See. Published by Bentley.

frothed husband, she was retained by Edward I. as a hostage for Llewellyn's obedience ; and, to redeem her, the Welsh prince submitted to become the mere steward and deputy of the King of England in his own hereditary dominions. Brief was the recom- pense of this generous sacrifice. Eleanor died in giving birth to her only child, a daughter, who survived but to live a nun in the Lincolnshire Abbey at Simpringham. Treason at home and op- pression from abroad, drove the bereaved Prince again to the field, and after a long and desperate contest for the recovery of his lost independence, he was killed in a petty engagement, and his head was stuck upon one of the highest turrets of the Tower of London.

His first successor of the royal blood of England, was a Welsh- man born, the politic conqueror having sent Queen Eleanor to Caernarvon that she might gratify the desire of the Welsh to have a native prince for their viceroy. Edward of Caernarvon was born under the shadow of the castle,hut probably not within its walls, and certainly not in the Eagle Tower which local tradition signalizes as his birthplace. Caernarvon Castle, the magnificent badge of his countrymen's subjection, as Pennant calls it, was begun in 1282 ; its completion occupied about forty years, and it could hardly have been fit for the reception of the Queen in 1284, the year

when her son was born, nor was the Eagle Tower then in exist- ence. Another local tradition connected. with this event was picked up by Prince Piickler Muskau, and imports-that the motto of the English Princes of Wales is not German but Welsh, and was borne by the first of them ; for when Edward the First pre- sented his new-born son to the Welshmen, so runs the story, he exclaimed in broken Welsh, " Eich Dyn !" that is, " Your man "—an exceedingly appropriate expression which was subse- quently corrupted into Ich Dien. The story is creditable to Welsh ingenuity, but facts are against it, as we shall presently see.

Until he reached the age of seventeen, young Edward had no distinctive title, but was styled " Lord Edward," or " the King's eldest son," and, until recently, historians have not been able to say when or how he was raised to the dignity of Prince of Wales. Selden states that he was not acquainted with any letter of creation of a Prince of Wales earlier than the document which conferred that title and its privileges on the Black Prince ; but the patent in favour of Edward of Caernarvon has been found among the Welsh Rolls in the Tower, and is printed in the " Reports of the House of Lords, touching the dignity of a Peer of the Realm." It is subscribed as given "by the King's hand at Netteham on the 7th of February" in the year 1301, and it confers no barren title, for it testifies the gift " to our dearly beloved son Edward " of " all our lands of North Wales, Anglesey, and Hope ; and also all our lands of West and South Wales ; and, indeed, all the territory of Wales which is in our hands on the completion of this deed, except the castle and town of Montgomery, with what may belong thereto, which were assigned to our very dear Consort Margaret, as her dower." The county of Chester and some places of less note are added, with the appurtenant rights and profits, including those derived from wrecks at sea ; so that, as Dr. Doran remarks, a wreck like that of the Royal Charter would in the olden time have been a godsend to the Prince of Wales. But, whatever may have been Edward of Caernarvon's revenues, they were inadequate to the indulgence of his sumptuous habits, and his stern father had no surer means of holding the wayward youth in check than that of withholding the allowances from the royal stores towards the expenses of the prince's household. This was even more effectual than the manual discipline which the fiery Longshanks bestowed without stint upon all his children. For instance, at Ipswich in January 1297, he celebrated with much joyousness the marriage of his daughter Isabella with the Earl of Holland, but; vexed by some real or fancied offence not now known, he snatched the coronet from the bride's head, and " the King's Grace," as the Wardrobe Book records, " was pleased to throw it behind the fire." As the price of this indulgence of his royal pleasure, he had to replace a large ruby and an emerald, when his wrath had subsided. On another occasion, the Prince came under his father's rough and heavy hands. The scene began with an embassy, in which the Prince employed the King's special favourite, Walter de Langton, the royal treasurer and Bishop of Chester, to solicit a favour, which he feared, as he invariably did, to ask in person :—

" The Bishop of Chester was an agent who had carried many difficult com- missions to a successful conclusion, but he accepted the one imposed on him by the Prince with ominous reluctance. He went straightway, however, to the King, and briefly and without interlocution, explained what had brought him into such presence. My lord King,' said he, I I come here on the part of my lord, the lord Prince, your son, and unwillingly enough, as the living God is my witness. He requires that I should solicit, in his uame, that the this of Count de Ponthieu should be conferred on the Lord Peter de Gavels- ton, his bachelor, if such might be done by your good permission.' The King burst forth into a fit of uncontrollable wrath. ' And by the living God,' he exclaimed, who art thou who darest ask such a thing ? Had I not the fear of God before me, and the remembrance of what you said, that thou art an unwilling agent in this matter, thou shouldst not escape rough treatment. But now I will see what he has to say who sent thee hither ! And stay thou, meanwhile, where thou art!' Prince Edward was accord- ingly summoned, and speedily obeyed the command. On seeing hint, his father exclaimed,' What business is this that thou heat sent this man upon ?' The Prince at once replied, To ask, with your permission, that Lord Peter de Gaveston might be created Count de Ponthieu.' "At this cool rejoinder, the King became wilder in his wrath than before, and even flung unsavoury names at the deceased Queen Eleanor, whom he had certainly loved and respected. "Oh, ill-begotten son of a wanton mo- ther,' shrieked the foolish and false-spoken King, thou art in the mood to give away lands, thou who hest never won any ! ' Then turning from this

sarcasm on the non-military disposition of Edward, he cried out, God alive ! were it not that the kingdom might fall into anarchy, I would take care that thou shouldet never come to thy inheritance.' And from these violent words he passed to violent deeds. Seizing the Prince by the head, with both hands, he tore aware his hair by handfuls, or as much as he could in quantum potuit,' to use the phrase of the chronicler ; and forthwith he ordered the Prince to be kept under arrest. Then summoning such of his Council as had accompanied him on the expedition to Scotland, and con- ferring together, they came to a resolution which is explained by what fol- lowed. Peter de Gaveston was called before the board and made to swear that, be the King living or dead, he (Peter) would never accept a gift of lands from the Prince. He was then made to listen to a decree of perpetual exile—a certain day being named, by which time had he not voided the kingdom, his life would be forfeit. The Prince of Wales also obliged to make oath that he would never confer on Gaveston titles and estates, which the latter had sworn he would never receive, even if proffered.

Ill matched were such a son and such a father. The iron will and violent temper of the one could only render incurable the weakness of character which ruined the other. There exist in the Rolls House copies or abstracts of between seven and eight hundred letters written by Edward of Caernarvon, in or before his twentieth year, and Dr. Doran has inserted in his volume many of these hitherto unpublished documents. They are of great value as illustrating the customs and morals of the times, and the cha- racter of the writer. A large proportion of the whole are begging letters on behalf of the Prince's followers, or his disabled servants, whom he loses no opportunity of quartering on the Church, be- lieving, no doubt, that they might be fit for it when they were fit for nothing else. On the whole, they show him to have been of an amiable disposition, constant in his affections, and not defi- cient in capacity and general knowledge of affairs ; and they war- rant the conjecture that, had the faults of his youth been corrected by a milder wisdom than his father's, he might have made a pas- sably good king, and gone quietly to his grave. But- " The end of all was that dreadful scene at Berkley Castle, the horrors of which contrast so strongly with the joyous shouts that welcomed Edward's birth at Caernarvon. Around his cradle, gay and gallant groups of ladies, priests and nobles ; around his death-bed, a couple of murderers and their assistants. Cries of joy hailed his birth, his own shrieks heralded his death ; but they were heard far over the village near the castle, and the startled in- habitants there listened in terror, and prayed for the poor soul that was passing away in such unutterable torture.

"Thus the first English Prince of Wales was the first King of England who was deposed and murdered."

The second was the innocent usurper of his father's throne ; the third and most celebrated of all was Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, who first adopted on the well won field of Cressy the crest which has ever since been borne by his successors.

"I have said that the origin of the ostrich feathers as a badge of the Princes of Wales, has been a matter of perplexity to the antiquaries. Old Randall Holmes solved the difficulty in his summary way, by asserting that they were the blazon on the war-banner of the ancient Britons. The only thing that in any way resembles the triple feathers in ancient British heraldry, with which I am acquainted, is to be found on the azure shield of arms of King Roderick Mawr, on which the tails of that monarch's three lions are seen coming between their legs, and turning over their backs, with the gentle fall of the tips, like the graceful bend of the feathers in the Prince's badge. The feathers themselves, however, do not appear in connexion with our Princes of Wales, until after the battle in which the blind King of Bo- hemia—too blind to read a manuscript, yet not so blind but he could see a foe within the swing of a battle-axe—lost his life. The crest of the Bo- hemian monarch was an eagle's wing ; as for the motto of Ich dien, it was assumed by the Prince to characterize his humility, in accordance with a fashion followed, to a late period, even by princesses—Elizabeth of York, for instance, took that of humble and reverent.' Edward of Woodstock, therefore, did not adopt either the badge or the legend of the dead King of

Bohemia ; such is the conclusion at which nearly all persons who have ex- amined into this difficult question, have arrived. Nevertheless, I am inclined

to have faith in the old tradition, as far as the badge is concerned. John Count of Luxemburg, was the original style and title of him who was elected King of Bohemia, and fell so bravely and unnecessarily at Creasy. Now, the ostrich feather was a distinction of Luxemburg, and it is from such origin that the Princes of Wales derive the graceful plumes, which are their distinguishing badge, but not their crest. This much is stated by Sir H. Nicolas, in the Archaologia (xxxi. 252), and Mr. D'Eyncourt (Oent. Meg. (xxxvi. 621), suggests that the King of Bohemia's crest looks more

like ostrich feathers than a vulture's wing. The question may be con- sidered as having been set at rest by John de Ardern. He was a physician

contemporary with the Black Prince ; and, in a manuscript of his, in the Sloane Collection (76 fo. 61), Ardern distinctly states that the Prince de- rived the feathers from the blind King."

The list of these Princes begins with the most unfortunate of them, and ends, in Dr. Doran's book, with the most despicable, George Augustus Frederick, who reigned as George IV. ; but we cannot dwell upon it longer, having given enough by way of fore- taste of a book which will soon be in everbody's hands.