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Updated: May 17, 2025
This expedition ruined the prince's health, and exhausted his treasury. A hearth-tax was laid on the inhabitants of Aquitaine, and they appealed against it to the King of France, although, by the Peace of Bretigny, he had given up all right to hear appeals as suzerain. The treaty, however, was still not formally settled, and on this ground Charles received their complaint.
He asked for Sir John Chandos, and was told that high words had passed between him and the Prince respecting a hearth-tax, and that since he had returned to his government, and seldom or never appeared at the council board. It was the Earl of Pembroke who was all-powerful there.
Their great concern was the preservation of their independence, which seemed more threatened by a resident prince than by a distant overlord at Paris. Even before the imposition of the hearth-tax, the Count of Armagnac entered into a secret treaty with Charles V., who promised to increase his territories and respect his franchises, if he would return to the French allegiance.
'Why marry, in this wise. As I was the sufferer I have the best right to tell the tale. Ye must know that after our reception which was cold enough, for we were about as welcome to the Privy Council as the hearth-tax man is to the village housewife we were asked, more as I guess from derision than from courtesy, to the evening levee at Buckingham Palace.
The stout old English counsellor looked somewhat blank at this prompt acceptance of his master's bounty. "If it please you, sire," he said, "the public funds are at their lowest, seeing that I have paid twelve thousand men of the companies, and the new taxes the hearth-tax and the wine-tax not yet come in. If you could wait until the promised help from England comes "
And here the old Gascon wandered into lamentable complaints of the aforesaid hearth-tax, from which Eustace could scarcely recall him to answer whether the English Baron de Clarenham had arrived at Bordeaux. He had come, and with as splendid a train as ever was beheld, and was in high favour at court.
The lord of Albret married a sister of the French queen and followed Armagnac's lead. A little later the Counts of Périgord and Comminges and other lords associated themselves with this policy. Thus the rule of the Black Prince in Aquitaine, acquiesced in by the mass of the people, was threatened by a feudal revolt. Armagnac appealed to the parliament of Paris against the hearth-tax.
Too late, efforts were made to conciliate the Gascons; in 1370 a supreme court was set up at Saintes to save the necessity of appeals to London which had become as onerous as the ancient frequency of resort to the parliament of Paris; and the hearth-tax, the ostensible cause of the rising, was formally renounced. Sir Robert Knowles's expedition of 1370 was as futile as that of Lancaster.
The very peasant who grudges the State two crowns for his hearth-tax, willingly pays two and a half to have Viva Maria scrawled over his door. Another complains of the £3 per month paid to the Government official, without a murmur at the thirty priests supported by the township. There is a gentle disease which consoles them for all their ills, called Faith.
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