4 - Politics, parliament and the people's prince

Summary

‘The last time they [the people] had seen [Edward] in public was as the champion of popular rights against a profligate court, as fearless in the House of Parliament as he had been on the field of battle.’

In June 1852 Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, then canon of Canterbury Cathedral, site of the Black Prince's tomb, gave a lecture on the Black Prince's life and legacy which was later published in his popular Historical memorials of Canterbury. Stanley argued that Edward's last heroic act occurred not on the battlefield but during the Good Parliament. There, in 1376, the prince trumpeted the cause of the English people and defended their rights against a corrupt court. To clarify Edward's importance to the English people, Stanley asked his listeners to recall their fathers’ anguish at the death of Princess Charlotte, the beloved heir to the throne, or their own sadness during the funeral of the hero of Trafalgar, Admiral Horatio Nelson. Stanley argued that readers must combine all these feelings of grief to fully appreciate the extent of the people's loss as Edward was both their beloved heir and their protector.

It may seem peculiar that a medieval hero known for his victories in war at Crécy and Poitiers would be lauded as a champion of the people's rights in the nineteenth century. Yet, at this time, the image of Edward as a hero of the people and their protector in parliament became as important to the prince's heroic identity as his battles. As a hero of popular reform, the Black Prince was celebrated alongside such men as the thirteenth-century magnate Simon de Montfort, parliament's supposed founder. The fourteenth century was reimagined both as the zenith of chivalry and as a turning point when the people, under Edward's guidance, exerted their power in parliament.

By the mid-1850s, the representation of Edward as a hero of the English people was firmly entrenched. This image owed itself to a focus on constitutional history from the early nineteenth century and to a new interest in the history of parliament that reached its peak in the mid-Victorian era.