The delicate relationship between England and France, based since 1259 upon the treaty of Paris, needed very careful handling. None took more care than did the English who, in the second half of the thirteenth century, began to build the foundations of a diplomatic service and record-keeping system so efficiently that, in the mid-fifteenth century, Jean Juvénal des Ursins, impressed by its workings, drew his sovereign’s attention to it as an example to follow. That service was based upon two essential factors: a suitable personnel, and an archive system. With regard to the first, there was an increasingly conscious effort to enable envoys to develop a specialism (for example, knowledge of the problems of one country) with the result that the same persons were sent time and again to help negotiate treaties or breaches of truce with that country. There were advantages, particularly that of continuity, in such a system: Henry V’s envoys were not impressed in 1418 when they found that their French counterparts were not familiar with the terms of the treaty of Brétigny (which the English wanted to apply) nor with the Frenchmen’s evident lack of exact geographical knowledge. The growing professionalism of English diplomats was further reflected in the legal training, particularly in canon and civil law, which many had received. In a world in which treaties were drawn up and negotiations often carried out in accordance with principles derived from these legal traditions, experts in such matters could have an important part to play. No embassy with powers to treat could be without its legal expert, and, if the gathering were to be a significant one, a number would be in attendance. The increasing popularity of civil law as a subject of study at Oxford and Cambridge in the late Middle Ages, and the founding, by Edward II, of the King’s Hall, Cambridge, as an institution many of whose members were to train in law before entering the royal service, is evidence of the universities being aware of society’s developing needs, and of their wish to supply the state with the suitably qualified personnel it needed.
Along with this expansion of personnel went the development of an archive or departmental file. In 1268, John of St Denis had already been named Keeper of Papal Bulls by Henry III in an attempt to bring order to a situation in which essential documents were subject to dispersal. A generation later a ‘Keeper of the Processes and other royal records concerning the duchy of Aquitaine’ was appointed, his first task being to collect, sort, and store a wide variety of diplomatic documents, and to provide royal envoys with both the necessary records and advice which would help them in their work. The importance of what was being done was underlined when, in 1294, the English lost most of their records concerning Aquitaine when these were dumped on the island of Oléron by a mutinous crew, only to be seized by the French when they later took the island. Such an administrative disaster led to the compilation, between 1320 and 1322, of a calendar of a wide variety of documents touching the duchy of Aquitaine ‘in order to have a fuller memory thereof in the future’,18 the documents having already been divided into a number of classes for the sake of convenience, an index permitting ease of access to what was being sought. A collection of diplomatic documents with an essentially practical value had been created.
The organisation of diplomatic practice was being developed in accordance with the needs of the time. The day of the permanent embassy had not yet dawned; it would do so, under Italian influence, only in the second half of the fifteenth century. In the meanwhile, the most had to be made of the existing ad hoc system, by which embassies were despatched to fulfil a particular mission and then return home once it was completed. None the less, there can be no doubt that the status of the ambassador was rising. Envoys were increasingly chosen not merely for their social status (although that was important) but for their experience and, in some cases, for their oratorical and linguistic skills. A knowledge of the law could have an important contribution to play in an embassy’s work: an ability to speak good Latin (as Thomas Bekynton, one of Henry VI’s leading ambassadors, possessed) was also highly regarded, particularly among the English who mistrusted those, such as the French, who preferred to negotiate in their own language. Latin, it was felt, was a language which was generally understood, and in which ambiguities could be avoided.
The growing importance attributed to diplomacy could be seen in other ways. The sacredness of the diplomat’s work (‘Blessed are the peace-makers’) was underlined by the scene chosen for the solemn sealing of treaties: the Anglo-Portuguese alliance of May 1386 was sealed in the chapel royal at Windsor, while that of Troyes was sealed on and proclaimed from the high altar of the cathedral on 21 May 1420 in the presence of Henry V, the English using the same seal, with change of name, as Edward III had used for the treaty of Brétigny some sixty years earlier. Adherence to the terms of so solemn an agreement could not be easily renounced: Philip, duke of Burgundy, had to seek papal dispensation from the allegiance which he had given to Henry V on the occasion just cited. The immunities and privileges accorded to envoys on their travels (privileges which many abused, claimed Philippe de Commynes, who regarded ambassadors as legalised spies) were also part of the growing recognition of the work of ambassadors, which ought to be carried out, as far as was possible, without fear of harm being done to them on their travels, particularly in the lands of an enemy. Rulers generally recognised this. Far from wishing to harm envoys, they often made a point of making expensive presents to them, perhaps as a sign of friendship, more probably in the hope of thereby obtaining a favourable report of their own country at the court of another.
The more important and influential diplomacy became, so the need to organise it with greater efficiency came to be recognised. We have noted that one important factor was for envoys to have easy and reasonably well-organised access to papers, which might include instructions given to, and memoranda drawn up by, former ambassadors. This enabled diplomacy to be carried out with continuity: envoys could see what their predecessors had said and done, what offers had been made – and perhaps rejected – by both sides, knowledge which was intended to strengthen the hand of new negotiators. Another factor of importance was that the instructions of new envoys should bear relation to the actual war situation and to the views of those who formulated policy. Until about the middle years of the fourteenth century, the English chancery issued the major formal documents, such as procurations and letters of credence, which every embassy needed before it could treat; the same department, too, was the main training ground for those sent on diplomatic missions. But the war brought change, a move towards more direct royal participation in diplomacy through the greater use of the Chamber, to store incoming documents, and of the Wardrobe, with its close proximity to the person of the king. This tendency, to some extent paralleled (as we have seen) in financial and military organisation, led to a greater control by the king and his council of the diplomatic process through documents issued under the privy seal and, under Richard II, the king’s own signet. Such a system had two advantages. It enabled documents to be prepared close to the source of authority from which they emanated; while such a development also enabled a measure of flexibility, even, if need be, of speed to be introduced into the system. It became clear that negotiations with foreign states were being organised in a manner which made for the greatest degree of compatability between the complexities of administration and the desire of the king, and those whose advice he sought, to make their influence upon diplomacy properly felt. The practice of an embassy reporting back to the king (and probably to his council, too) either when its mission was completed or when it sought further instructions, and the frequent presence of the clerk from the royal household among members of an embassy, reflect clearly how the newly developing procedures were being built around the office of the king. In this manner of proceeding lay the greatest hope of co-ordinating war and diplomacy at the centre.
1 M. E. Mallett and J. R. Hale, The military organisation of a renaissance state. Venice, c. 1400–1617 (Cambridge, 1984).
2 For the controversy regarding this matter, see the bibliography for ch. 4, sub Lewis, N. B. and Palmer, J.J. N.
3 C. S. L. Davies, ‘Provision for armies, 1509–50: a study in the effectiveness of early Tudor government’, Econ. H.R., second series, 17 (1964–5), 234.
4 Contamine, Guerre, état et société, p. 299. See also his ‘Les industries de guerre dans la France de la renaissance: l’exemple de l’artillerie’, R.H., 550 (1984), 249–80, and D. H. Caldwell, ‘Royal patronage of arms and armour-making in fifteenth and sixteenth-century Scotland’, Scottish weapons and fortifications, 1100–1800, ed. D. H. Caldwell (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 72–93.
5 Paston letters and papers, I, no. 414.
6 J. R. Strayer, ‘Defense of the realm and royal power in France’, Medieval statecraft and the perspectives of history (Princeton, 1971), pp. 293–4.
7 E. A. R. Brown, ‘Cessante causa and the taxes of the last Capetians: the political applications of a philosophical maxim’, Studia Gratiana, 15 (1972), 567–87.
8 On the taxation of international trade, see B. Guenée, States and rulers in later medieval Europe (Oxford, 1985), p. 99.
9 T. F. Tout, Chapters in the administrative history of medieval England, IV (Manchester, 1928), 69–80, 143–50. C. Given–Wilson, The royal household and the king’s affinity. Service, politics and finance in England 1360–1413 (New Haven: London, 1986), pp. 121–30.
10 Turner, Town defences, p. 42.
11 ‘Si aucun prent un prisoner, qil preigne sa foy…’, Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. T. Twiss (R.S., London, 1871), 1, 457.
12 See Keen, Laws of war, ch. 2, and ‘Jurisdiction and origins of the constable’s court ‘, pp. 159–69; R. G. Marsden (ed.), Select pleas in the court of admiralty (Seiden Soc, 6, London, 1894).
13 Black Book, I, 453ff, 471.
14 A similar practice was carried out in fifteenth-century Florence.
15 Black Book, I, 466.
16 Allmand and Armstrong (eds.), English suits, pp. 220–30, 231–68.
17 A. Curry, ‘The first English standing army? Military organisation in Lancastrian Normandy, 1420–1450’, Patronage, pedigree, and power in later medieval England, ed. C. Ross (Gloucester: Totowa, 1979), pp. 205–6.
18 Quoted in A Gascon calendar of 1322, ed. G. P. Cuttino (Camden third series, 70, London, 1949), p. viii.