Introduction

Summary

‘The Black Prince, noble and doughty warrior, mounted on his magnificent charger, life-like and full of action, stood out prominently … he looked the hero of a hundred fights, the noble conqueror who first placed England among the premier nations of the world, the flower of English chivalry, the upholder of the people's rights, the idol of the nation.’

On 16 September 1903 Colonel T. Walter Harding unveiled a statue of the medieval English chivalric hero, Edward the Black Prince, in Leeds City Square before a crowd of thousands (see Figure 1). Harding, a former Lord Mayor and prominent Leeds industrialist, had commissioned the statue in 1894 as a gift in celebration of Leeds gaining city status the previous year. Harding had entertained the possibility of other heroic figures; contenders included the medieval warrior king, Henry v, the political reformer, Simon de Montfort, and the Protestant Tudor queen, Elizabeth i. Instead, he chose the Black Prince because of his unique combination of ‘high chivalry and public service’. Harding's desire to place a statue in Leeds of an historical figure to engender civic pride was hardly original. Indeed, in 1901, the city of Winchester had erected a statue of its own hero, the Anglo-Saxon king, Alfred the Great. On the day of the Leeds ceremony, the Leeds and Yorkshire Mercury reminded readers of Edward's historical significance as a defender of the English people and a successful warrior. Postcards circulated the image of a fully armed Edward on horseback atop a pedestal (see Figure 2). A souvenir pamphlet informed readers about the special place occupied by the late Middle Ages in the history of their nation as the zenith of chivalry and a time of constitutional progress.

Edward of Woodstock, prince of Wales, prince of Aquitaine, earl of Chester and duke of Cornwall as he was known in the fourteenth century was born on 15 June 1330. He was not known by his more colourful sobriquet the Black Prince until the sixteenth century. During his lifetime, the prince was a celebrated warrior whose victories at Crécy, Poitiers and Nájera garnered him fame across Europe. At sixteen, the young prince ‘won his spurs’ at the battle of Crécy in 1346, fighting in the army of his father, Edward iii, against the French.