The Black Prince with his wife, the Princess Joan, and all his followers, arrived at de Rochelle in the beginning of the year 1363. Here they were met by Sir John Chandos, who had come from Niort to receive them. He was followed by a large number of knights and squires, who all greeted the Prince with great joy. They spent four days at Rochelle in feastings and merriment, and then went to Poitiers, where the prince received the homage of all the knights of Poitou and Saintonge. Then he rode on to Bordeaux, and at every city on his way the knights and barons crowded to do him homage.
At Bordeaux he and his wife established their court, and received all the nobles of Aquitaine who came to pay him their respects. The court at Bordeaux was very brilliant. The prince had his father's love for feasting and fine clothes. Splendid merry-making was the fashion of the age, and life at the Black Prince's court was a succession of revels and tournaments. He was a right noble host, and knew how to make all around him happy. "Never," says Chandos the Herald, "since the birth of Christ was there such good and honourable entertainment. Every day at his table he had more than eighty knights, and four times as many esquires. There they made jousts and revels. Though all of them were subjects, yet were they all free; for he made them quite welcome. All who were about his person valued and loved him; for liberality was his staff, and nobleness his director. Rightly might men say, that search the whole world you could find no such prince." It is no wonder that the Gascon lords crowded to this court. Even the greatest of them all, the Counts of Foix and Armagnac, came to visit him, and they found that his court was as splendid as that of the King of France himself.
But we must not let our eyes be dazzled by all this magnificence. To meet the expenses of his court the Prince allowed the resources of the country to be drained. Though we may admire his noble hospitality and his princely courtesy to all comers, we cannot altogether consider him a wise governor. His mind seems only to have been occupied with the desire of making his court gay and pleasant, instead of furthering the true interests of the people whom he was called upon to govern. Here again he may be taken as a type of his age. We must not judge him by any standard of our own, but by the standard of his days. But the time was fast coming when it would be no longer possible for the rulers to forget the interests of the people, when the people would at last succeed in making their voice heard; and we shall see that at the end of his days the Black Prince did not refuse to hear them.