Edward the Black Prince black Prince". Raphael Holinshed uses it several times in his "Chronicles" (1577); and it is also used by William Shakespeare, in his plays "Richard II" (written "c".1595; Act 2, scene 3) and "Henry V" ("c".1599; Act 2, scene 4). In 1688 it appears prominently in the title of Joshua Barnes's "The History of that Most Victorious Monarch, Edward IIId, King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, and First Founder of the Most Noble Order of the Garter: Being a Full and Exact Account Of the Life and Death of the said King: Together with That of his Most
Edward the Black Prince possible that this is where the title had its origins. The French soldier Philippe de Mézières refers to Edward as the greatest of the "black boars" – those aggressors who had done so much to disrupt relations within Christendom. Other French writers made similar associations, and Peter Hoskins reports that an oral tradition of "L'Homme Noir", who had passed by with an army, survived in southern France until recent years. In Shakespeare's "Henry V", the King of France alludes to "that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales". John Speed reported in 1611 that the Black Prince was so named