Volume 1 — Chapter XI. The Hundred Years' War. Edward III. (1327-1377.) (continued 2)

It was the last public act of King Edward; this body so active and robust, this spirit so bold, this will so firm, had nevertheless undergone the effects of premature old age. The ministers were ranging themselves beside the Duke of Lancaster; the opposition was grouped around the young Prince Richard and the Princess of Wales; the old king was dying alone, with Alice Perrers. It is even said that she deserted him in his agony, after having taken the royal ring from him. The king lay in this isolation; the servants having dispersed in the manor of Shene, to plunder at their leisure. A monk entered, crucifix in hand; he approached the unhappy monarch, praying beside him, and supporting his expiring head until the last sigh. Thus died, on the 21st of June, 1377, the great Edward III., who had at one time appeared destined to unite upon his head the two crowns of France and England. He died alone, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, leaving to his grandson, a child, instead of the whole of Aquitaine, which he had received from his father, a few towns only upon that soil of France of which he claimed possession. The blood of the two nations had flowed during more than thirty years, and the struggle was as yet only at its beginning.