Edward the Black Prince the party of Montfort, and Chandos won the Battle of Auray (29 September 1364) against the French. As the leaders of the free companies which desolated France were for the most part Englishmen or Gascons, they did not ravage Aquitaine, and the prince was suspected, probably not without cause, of encouraging, or at least of taking no pains to discourage, their proceedings. Accordingly on 14 November 1364 Edward III called upon him to restrain their ravages. In 1365 the free companies, under Sir Hugh Calveley and other leaders, took service with Bertrand du Guesclin, who employed them in 1366 in
Edward the Black Prince "Edward the Prince, cognomen: The Black"); in the other, in English to "the Blake Prince". In both instances, Leland is summarising earlier works – respectively, the 14th-century "Eulogium Historiarum" and the late 15th-century chronicle attributed to John Warkworth – but in neither case does the name appear in his source texts. In print, Roger Ascham in his "Toxophilus" (1545) refers to "ye noble black prince Edward beside Poeters"; while Richard Grafton, in his "Chronicle at Large" (1569), uses the name on three occasions, saying that "some writers name him the black prince", and elsewhere that he was "commonly called the