custom allowed was only levied after grants from the three estates.  Great pains were taken to improve the administration, the judicial system, and the coinage.  Edward saw that his best policy was to rely upon the people of Gascony, and to look with suspicion on the great lords.  But he did not understand how limited was the authority which tradition gave to the dukes of Aquitaine, and he was too stiff, too pedantic, too insular, to get on really cordial terms with his subjects.  He never, like Gaston Phoebus or Richard Coeur de Lion, threw himself into the local life, language, and traditions of the country.

    [1] Le Prince Noir, poeme du heraut d’Armes Chandos, pp.
    107-108, ed.  F. Michel.

The Black Prince’s greatest successes were with the towns, and especially with those which had been continuously subject to English rule.  The citizens of Bordeaux, who had feared lest Edward’s claim to the French crown should involve them in more complete subjection, were appeased by promises that they should in any case remain subject to the English monarchy.  Their liberties were increased and their wine trade was fostered, even to the loss of English merchants.  The other towns were equally contented.  Edward relied upon them as a counterpoise to the feudal lords, and their liberties exempted them from the extraordinary taxes by which he strove to restore the equilibrium of his finances.  The half-independent magnates were soon convinced that their chivalrous lord was no friend of aristocratic privilege.  Edward, even when using their services in war, carefully excluded them from the administration.  They saw with disgust the chief offices monopolised by Englishmen.  An English bishop, John Harewell of Bath, was Edward’s chancellor and confidential adviser.  An English knight, Thomas Felton, was seneschal of Aquitaine and head of the administration.  The constableship was assigned to Chandos.  The seneschalships of the several provinces were mainly in English hands.  With English notions of the rights of the supreme power, the prince paid little attention to the franchises of either lord or prelate.  He mortally offended John of Armagnac by requiring a direct oath of fealty from the Bishop of Rodez, who held all his lands of Armagnac as Count of Rouergue.  Clerks of lesser degree were outraged by the prince’s attempts to hinder students from attending the university of Toulouse.

The Spanish expedition immensely increased the Black Prince’s difficulties.  He exhausted his finances to equip his army, and both on their coming and going his soldiers cruelly pillaged the country.  Edward now dismissed most of his troops and urged them to betake themselves to France.  In January, 1368, he obtained from the estates of Aquitaine a new hearth tax of ten sous a hearth for five years.  The tax was freely voted and collected from the great majority of the payers without trouble.  The towns were mainly exempt from it by reason of their liberties;