Wars of the Roses a "sudden narrowing in the direct line of descent" near the end of his reign. His eldest son, Edward, the Black Prince, had died the year before. Edward III was succeeded on the throne by the Black Prince's only surviving son Richard II, who was only 10 years old. Richard's claim to the throne was based on the principle that the son of an elder brother had priority in the succession over his uncles. Since Richard was a minor, had no siblings, and had three living uncles at the time of Edward III's death, there was considerable uncertainty about who
Edward the Black Prince burnt, and that 3,000 persons of all ranks and ages were massacred. However modern scholarship, including the historian Richard Barber writing in 2008 in the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", and drawing on a wider range of evidence, places casualties much lower than Froissart did—around 300 garrison soldiers and civilians in total. The prince returned to Cognac; his sickness increased, and he was forced to give up all hope of being able to direct any further operations and to proceed first to Angoulème and then to Bordeaux. The death of his eldest son Edward, which happened at this time, grieved