Dan Jones (7:36)
The phrase quit while you're ahead is one you hear a lot. It seems to have been coined by a 17th century Spanish priest called Balthazar Gracian, and I think the full quote is brilliant. A pretty good historical rule to live by. Old Balthazar said, quit while you're ahead. All the best gamblers do. A fine retreat matters as much as a stylish attack. As soon as they're enough, even when they are many Cash in your deeds. A long run of fortune is always suspicious. Lady Luck grows tired when she has to carry someone on her back for a long time. Now, Balthasar wrote that nearly 300 years after Edward III was arm wrestling John II to be King of France. But the rule could have been written for or even by Edward, because what he does in 1360 is to acknowledge that for half his life he's been on a great golden winning streak. Now is the time to cash in his deeds. Or rather to cash in King John, give him an eagle and a manly pat on the ass, and pivot to a new phase of his extraordinary reign. At the end of Last Episode, it was spring 1360 and we were with Edward in France. He was trying to batter his way to final supremacy, making one last grab for the French crown he'd claimed for nearly quarter of a century. Then we heard how that went down in a hail of, well, hailstones having failed to take Rand or Paris, Edward's army got absolutely battered and half drowned by freak storms. These storms were something else. Almost the whole English baggage train was sunk in mud and men were killed by flash floods. Even Edward, who's always been confident, sometimes dangerously and drunkenly so, takes the hint. God is telling him to put his feet up, read a good book, smoke a cigar, play a round of golf. So on May 1, 1360, Edward opens negotiations for a final peace with the French at Bretigny, just south of Paris. The result is a treaty designed to put the war on ice once and for all. The Treaty of Bretigny is complicated, but in essence it says the French will give Edward a massively enlarged Duchy of Gascony. What has been reduced over the years to a coastal strip of lands around Bordeaux balloons into more or less the Duchy of Aquitaine, as it was in the heyday of Henry ii, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lionheart. Edward also gets to keep Calais and nearby Guisnes. All in all, this adds up to about a third of the land mass of France. More importantly, it's to be held in full sovereignty. That means Edward doesn't have to answer for it to the King of France as his feudal overlord. That tears up the status quo established back in the day between Louis IX and Henry iii. Edward has restored the Plantagenet empire to something like its glory days two centuries ago, or almost its glory days. In return for an independent and massively enlarged Aquitaine, Edward makes some concessions. He agrees to stop claiming to be the King of France. He agrees to stop trying to get back other old Plantagenet lands Normandy, Anjou and Maine. He shaves 25% off John II's ransom, reducing it from 4 million gold crowns to 3 million. It must rankle to give up that claim to supreme power in France. But honestly, ruling France looks like a bit of a hassle. Better that it's someone else's problem. The treaty is sealed in May 1360. Edward comes back for a series of parties with the captive John II that summer, which culminate with the Eagle giving banquet we've just heard about. In October, John and Edward meet again in Calais, finesse some fine print in the Treaty of Bretigny, have a few more parties, and then, at long last, say their farewells. In December 1360, Edward goes home to Windsor, over once more to John Lennon. Happy Christmas. War is over. So now what? The answer, if we can sum it up in a single word, is family. Edward became a father for the first time when he was 17 years old. He's now knocking on the door of 50. And though he has a big brood of surviving children, five sons and three daughters, he's been strangely lax about planning for their futures. Only two of them are married, and Edward only has two grandchildren, both girls. That's a pretty meager return. And it means that the future of the Plantagenet dynasty isn't quite as secure as the present seems to be. So, with Britanny sorted, Edward figures the 1360s are going to be about future proofing everything he's achieved to do it, he comes up with a plan that loosely combines Henry II's vision for the Plantagenet empire with Edward I's. It's going to be a federation of siblings and eventually cousins, answering to one king who has an Arthur like grip over the British Isles and some territories overseas. Once Edward gets this idea into his head, he really swings behind it. First up is Ireland. His second son is married to a noblewoman there and he follows this by also marrying their daughter to a powerful Irish earl, cementing his power block there. Then comes Scotland. Poor Weed Davy, the altar shitter, is allowed to go back to his kingdom on payment of a big ransom. Wee Davy has shit on more altars than he has had kids. So Edward now tries to bully him into adopting his third son, John of Gaunt, as heir to the kingdom of Scotland. Davy isn't buying this straight away, but Edward has planted the seed of least then over the Channel is Brittany, which Edward has taken an interest in ever since his wars began. He arranges to marry his daughter Mary to the Duke. There she dies in 1361. But Edward makes the Duke agree to hold off marrying anyone else till he can come up with another Plantagenet candidate. And in Flanders, a longtime ally, Edward embarks on long negotiations to marry his fourth son, Edmund Langley, to the heiress of the count. Not all of these projects come off, but the plan is clear. Edward is putting down Plantagenet roots in every territory he can think of to keep his people sweet and show that he isn't just in the business of looking after the nobility. He also pulls some populist rabbits out of his hat. He issues a general pardon for crimes. And he decrees that the official spoken language of law courts should be English, not Norman French, as it has been since William the Conqueror's day. These are real crowd pleasers. Taken together with the wealth flowing into England from John II and Weed Davies ransoms, it creates a sense that England is having a moment in the sun. A petition addressed to Edward in 1360 calls him our most honored and most redoubted, gracious and most powerful king of the whole world. Edward quit while he was ahead. He's on top and the future is bright. All he has to think, think about now is who's going to take over from him when his time eventually comes. The answer to that lies in his new, vastly expanded Lordship of Aquitaine, where his son, the Black Prince, is heading to take over government and raise the next generation of the Plantagenet family alongside a very glamorous, if rather controversial, new wife. The Chapel of St George at Windsor Castle is packed with a glittering cast of royals, nobles, bishops and knights. It's October 10, 1361, and wedding bells are ringing for the society occasion of the year. At 31 years old, the heir to the throne, the Black Prince, is finally getting married. The future of England's royal dynasty is being made before the wedding party's very eyes. Musicians are playing and when the bride appears, there are gasps of delight. She looks extraordinary. She's always been a lover of fine clothes and expensive jewels, and today she has excelled herself. Onlookers whisper and coup as they see her stylishly cut wedding dress, made from beautiful red fabric, trimmed with cloth of gold and decorated with embroidered images of little birds. Joan of Kent certainly knows how to wow an audience. And today, as she marries, the heir to the throne is no different. She looks sensational. But her outfit isn't the only thing that's making a stir. Because although the Black Prince and Joan make a fine couple, they're also a scandalous one. It's tradition for the heir to the Plantagenet crown to marry a virginal foreign princess to cement an international alliance. But Joan of Kent is an English noblewoman, and despite her ironic nickname of the Fair Maid of Kent, she's far from virginal. In fact, she's been married twice already. For a while, she was hitched to William Montagu, son of Edward III's late, lamented best friend of the same name. Then she went through a spectacularly difficult divorce, or more correctly, annulment, and married Sir Thomas Holland, a war hero and Knight of the Garter. She's already had four children with Thomas Holland, who only died 10 months ago at Christmas in 1360. In fact, the Black Prince is godfather to one of her children. None of that discounts her from actually marrying the Black Prince. However, they've had to get special permission from the Pope to go through with this wedding, because the Prince and Joan, or Jeanette as her family call her, are first cousins once removed. They grew up together in the royal nursery after Joan's father was executed by Roger Mortimer during the dark days at the start of Edward III's reign. The whole thing isn't just unorthodox, it's actively incestuous, but, hey, it's what the kids want. And Edward III is in the mood to indulge his children, so he signed off on it. In fact, he gets on board with it so wholeheartedly that he approves. A celebratory tournament in which the theme is the Seven Deadly Sins. It's hard to say whether the deadliest sin in this marriage is lust or greed. As well as being quite sexy, Joan is also heir to the vast riches of the Earldom of Kent. So he brings in a decent chunk of change to the Black Prince's treasury. But either way, no one's doing shame here. And once the wedding is done, it's done. Edward finds the Black Prince and Joan the most prestigious place in his master plan for the Plantagenet empire. He packs them off down to Aquitaine to rule as Prince and Princess. It's a big place, a big job and a training ground for the next rung on the ladder which will be coming home as King and Queen. In June, the glamour couple arrive by ship into Bordeaux. Accompanied by Joan's four kids and hundreds of troops, courtiers and hangers on, the Black Prince rolls his sleeves up and starts the process of restoring peace and prosperity to a part of France that he himself helped smash the living crap out of on destructive chevrochets in the 1350s. This is a full time job, to say the least. But the Black Prince and Joan find time to get on with one of the most important duties of being King and Queen in waiting, having children of their own. In early 1365, news comes back to England that Joan has given birth to their first, a boy who is given the incredibly imaginative name of Edward. Predictably, there are wild celebrations, street parties, tournaments and banquets at which the King entertains pretty much anyone who fancies a good meal and a knees up. Two years later, Joan gives birth again at the Archbishop's palace in Bordeaux. She has another boy. And this time, the omens are even more promising. The little child is born on January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, when the three kings visited the infant Christ. And as luck would have it, there are three kings present in Bordeaux on the day that this baby is born. The kings of Castile, Navarre and Portugal. In a world where symbolism, religion and royalty really matter, this is an incredible start to a child's life. The boy is named Richard. It's a name that's been out of fashion for a little while in the Plantagenet dynasty, but it harks back to maybe the most naturally brilliant warrior who ever wore the crown, Richard the Lionheart. If anything should happen to his elder brother, this little lad will be next in line to one day lead the house of Plantagenet. But with a birth echoing Christ's, a name like Richard, and the legacy of Edward III to build on, all the signs are that he's going to be all right, Whatever happens now, I know what you're thinking. Weddings, princesses feasting. This is the season finale. No one's fallen off a horse. No one's died of dysentery. There've been no family betrayals. And there's not a hot poker in sight. Could this be the first happy ending for our Plantagenets? Well, I'm afraid not. This is actually the beginning of the end. Richard of Bordeaux is a name that will come to live in Plantagenet infamy. By the time he grows up, Edward's legacy will be in the shredder, and England will be on the brink of a disaster like it's never seen before. But that's the story I'll be telling you next season on this is History.
