“The Black Prince had received the best education available. He was taught by the scholar and astrologer Dr Walter Burghley, and was expected to excel as the future King of England. This served him well for he gleaned a sense of his own majesty from an early age: at seven he was even accoutred with his own suit of armour. Whilst his parents were in Flanders, the year before John of Gaunt's birth, the Prince opened Parliament on behalf of the King.'
Before he was ten, the Prince led an elite entourage, greeting the envoys of the Pope at the gates of the City of London (in the fourteenth century London was still encased inside a large defensive wall, with around seven gates that allowed access from north to south of the City).
Aged ten, the Prince represented his father as the head of state, and even served as head of the realm whilst Edward Ill was in Antwerp around the time of John of Gaunts birth. Thrust onto centre stage, the Black Prince's ability to work the crowd came from ample experience at a young age in the public eye. Alongside his glittering public image, the Black Prince managed extensive land and property in Cheshire and Cornwall, overseeing local administration, and cultivating loyalty from his tenants.
When John of Gaunt lived with his brother he was expected to learn the skills required for leadership military and domestic. This period of fraternal bonding forged an enduring closeness between the two boys, despite the ten-year age difference between them.
The military victories of Prince Edward were legendary. He went on to be the hero of Poitiers, and his reputation was that of a chivalrous prince, albeit an arrogant one. During the Battle of Poitiers, the Black Prince captured the French King, John II. That night, he served his royal captive on bended knee as a page.
Isabella Plantagenet, born two years after the Black Prince and named after the dowager Queen, was equally as indulged by Edward Ill as her older brother. She ran up vast debts due to her extravagant lifestyle. (…) She eventually fell in love with, and married, one of the King’s hostages from Poitiers, Enguerrand de Coucy, a French aristocrat. During the war, Councy (…) refused to fight for either England or France.
Princess Joan was five years older than John of Gaunt, followed by William of Hatfield who died in infancy, and was subsequently buried in York. His death was followed by the birth of another prince, Lionel, who would grow to be the giant of the Plantagenet family, an improbable seven feet tall according to chronicler John Hardyng. After John, came four younger surviving siblings: Edmund, Mary, Margaret and Thomas, filling the royal nursery.
Aged fourteen, Edward's ‘dearest daughter' Joan left England to marry Pedro of Castile, cementing an Anglo-Castilian alliance crucial to Edward's military agenda. As her ship drew into the harbour at Bordeaux, her retinue were unaware of the horror they were about to face: the relentless and devastating Black Death now spreading quickly throughout Europe. The royal party fled to Loremo, a small village in ordeaux, but the Princess could not outrun the disease. Joan died unwed on I July 1348, with no family around her. His sister's death had a lasting impact on John of Gaunt; in 1389 he endowed an obit - an intimate religious service - for her at the Cathedral of St André at Bordeaux, where she was buried.”
Carr, Helen. The Red Prince.
