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Though between 1347 and 1355 there was, so far as forms went, an almost continuous armistice for the space of eight years, its effect was not so much to stop fighting as to limit its scale. In reality the years of nominal truce were a period of harassing warfare in Brittany, the Calais march, Gascony, and the narrow seas, which even the ravages of the Black Death did not stop.

These boys when grown ran away and founded a new dynasty in Songhay, that of the Sonnis, in 1355. Seventeen of these kings reigned, the last and greatest being Sonni Ali, who ascended the throne in 1464. Sonni Ali was a soldier and began his career with the conquest of Timbuktu in 1469. He also succeeded in capturing Jenne and attacked the Mossi and other enemies on all sides.

Far richer, indeed more elaborate than almost any other fourteenth-century tombs, are those of Dom Pedro I. who died in 1367, and of Inez de Castro who was murdered in 1355. When only sixteen years old Dom Pedro, to strengthen his father Affonso the Fourth's alliance with Castile, had been married to Dona Costança, daughter of the duke of Penafiel.

Chu took his small group which identified itself by a red turban and a red banner to Kuo, who received him gladly, entered into alliance with him, and in sign of friendship gave him his daughter in marriage. In 1355 Kuo died, and Chu took over his army, now many thousands strong. In his campaigns against towns in eastern China, Chu succeeded in winning over some capable members of the gentry.

Hostilities recommenced; in August, 1355, the Scots won a small victory at Nesbit in Berwickshire, and captured the town of Berwick. Early in the following year it was retaken by Edward III, who proclaimed himself the successor of Balliol, and mercilessly ravaged the Lowlands.

This descends the West Hill steeply after passing the Priory, or as it is now called the Place House, the first religious house which Dartford could boast that the pilgrims would see. In Chaucer's day this was a new foundation, Edward III., in 1355, having established here a convent of Augustinian nuns dedicated in honour of Our Lady and St Margaret.

The courtship falls to the house of Avennes, Counts of Hainault. Holland, together with Zeland, which it had annexed, is thus joined to the province of Hainault. At the end of another half century the Hainault line expires. William the Fourth died childless in 1355. His death is the signal for the outbreak of an almost interminable series of civil commotions.

In April, 1355, six months after his arrival in Venice as doge, the smouldering fire broke out. Two of the conspirators were seized with compunction on the eve of the catastrophe and betrayed the plot one with a merciful motive to serve a patrician he loved, the other with perhaps less noble intentions and, without a blow struck, the conspiracy collapsed.

It was not till 1355 that the failure of a last effort to turn the truce into a final peace again drove Edward into war. The campaign opened with a brilliant prospect of success.

And a thousand other fictions and absurdities, too ridiculous even for the credulity of children. Of this worse than useless performance, the foregoing analysis is perhaps more than sufficient for the present work. Forst. Voy. and Disc. in the Nerth, p. 148. Pinkert. Mod. Geogr. II. xxxvi. Hakluyt, II. 76. Itinerary of Pegoletti, between Asof and China, in 1355 .