Edward the Black Prince large sum of money from them, and seized many houses and much land into the prince's, their earl's, hands. On his return from Chester the prince is said to have passed by the Abbey of Dieulacres in Staffordshire, to have seen a fine church which his grandfather, Edward I, had built there, and to have granted five hundred marks, a tenth of the sum he had taken from his earldom, towards its completion; the abbey was almost certainly not Dieulacres but Vale Royal. When Edward III determined to renew the war with France in 1355, he ordered the Black Prince
Edward the Black Prince in demolishing a large piece of wall which filled the ditches with its ruins. The town was then stormed, with the inevitable destruction and loss of life. The Victorian historian, William Hunt and author of the Black Prince's biography in the "Dictionary of National Biography" (1889) relying on Froissart as a source wrote that when the bishop (who was the most responsible for the surrender) was brought before the Prince, the Prince told him that his head should be cut off (Lancaster persuaded him not to carry out the deed), but that the city was never the less pillaged and