NOTES

PREFACE

1 GHQ, p. 93.

2 St Albans, p. 96.

CHAPTER ONE: JUST RIGHTS AND INHERITANCES

1 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 78-80; St-Denys, v, pp. 526-8.

2 Anna Comnena, The Alexiad, ed. and trans. by E. R. A. Sewter (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 416.

3 For map of Aquitaine (English Gascony), see above p. 3.

4 M. G. A. Vale, English Gascony 1399-1453 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1970), pp. 2-3.

5 John Palmer, “The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace,” in Fowler, p. 51.

6 Maurice Keen, The Pelican History of Medieval Europe (Pelican Books, Harmondsworth, 1969 repr. 1976), pp. 202, 122, 217; Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror (Ballantine Books, New York, 1979), pp. 42-4. The persecution was unique to France, though the Templar order was suppressed throughout Europe and its assets transferred to the Knights Hospitallers.

7 Peter S. Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity (Macmillan, London and St Martin’s Press, New York, 1968), pp. 39-41; Kenneth Fowler, “War and Change in Late Medieval France and England,” in Fowler, p. 1. As late as 1522 Charles, duke of Bourbon, could declare himself to be seriously considering the English title to the French throne; the English did not finally renounce the title until the Treaty of Amiens in 1802.

8 Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (Palgrave, London and New York, 1993), pp. 66-7; Maurice Keen, “Diplomacy,” HVPK, pp. 182-4.

9 Since he was a minor at the time, the act could be repudiated as invalid.

10 Palmer, “The War Aims of the Protagonists and the Negotiations for Peace,” pp. 54-5.

11 Vale, English Gascony, pp. 5, 27-8; ELMA, p. 289; Curry, The Hundred Years War, pp. 83-8.

12 G. L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort: A Study of Lancastrian Ascendancy and Decline (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988), pp. 23-5; Curry, The Hundred Years War, pp. 90-1.

13 McLeod, pp. 30-1, 56.

14 Vale, English Gascony, pp. 48-9, 53; ELMA, p. 320.

15 For a discussion of Charles VI’s madness, which began in 1392, see Bernard Guenée, La Folie de Charles VI Roi Bien-Amé (Perrin, Paris, 2004).

16 Lewis, Later Medieval France, p. 114.

17 Vaughan, pp. 44-7, 67-81; McLeod, pp. 33, 38-40.

18 Vaughan, pp. 81-2; McLeod, pp. 58-66.

19 K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1972), pp. 103-4.

20 ELMA, p. 321; Vaughan, pp. 92-4.

21 Ibid., pp. 94-5; Vale, English Gascony, pp. 58-62.

22 Capgrave, p. 124 n. 2.

23 Monstrelet, i, pp. 451-2.

24 St Albans, pp. 65-7.

25 ELMA, pp. 322-3; Christopher Allmand, Henry V (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, new edn, 1997), pp. 56-8; Vale, English Gascony, p. 67. An audit of the Calais accounts cleared Henry of any misdoing.

26 Cornewaille’s name is usually transcribed as “Cornewall” in modern texts (including ODNB) but I prefer the archaic spelling which is consistently used in medieval sources.

27 Vale, English Gascony, pp. 62-8; ELMA, pp. 321-2; McLeod, pp. 82-6, 275.

CHAPTER TWO: A KING’S APPRENTICESHIP

1 ELMA, pp. 322-3; W&W, iii, p. 427; Vale, English Gascony, p. 67.

2 Thomas Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ed. by Charles R. Blythe (Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1999), pp. 97ff.

3 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre du Corps de Policie, summarised in Edith P. Yenal, Christine de Pizan: A Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, N.J. and London, 1989), pp. 65-6.

4 Kate Langdon Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan (Ashgate, Aldershot, 2002), pp. 13, 30, 74. Christine had placed her son in the household of John Montagu, earl of Salisbury, a Francophile poet, patron of poets and favourite of Richard II; Salisbury was killed in revolt against Henry IV in January 1400 and Henry then took the boy into his own household.

5 Hilary M. Carey, Courting Disaster: Astrology at the English Court and University in the Late Middle Ages (Macmillan, London, 1992), p. 129.

6 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 233-8, 117.

7 First English Life, p. 17; Nicholas Orme, Medieval Children (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2001), p. 190; Nicolas, p. 389; John Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 113-14; Richard Marks and Paul Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547 (V&A Publications, London, 2003), pp. 121 (illus.), 157.

8 Orme, Medieval Children, p. 182.

9 John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988), p. 4.

10 Ibid., p. 53.

11 Juliet Barker, The Tournament in England 1100-1400 (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, repr. 2003), pp. 33-40, 132-3; St-Denys, i, pp. 672-82.

12 Barker, The Tournament in England, ch. 7 passim; Philippe de Commynes, Memoirs: The Reign of Louis XI 1461-83, ed. and trans. by Michael Jones (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 71.

13 Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny: Text, Context, and Translation, ed. by Richard W. Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996), p. 89.

14 James Hamilton Wylie, History of England under Henry IV (London, 1884-98), i, pp. 42-3; Maurice Keen, Chivalry (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984), pp. 7, 65, 78; Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi de Charny, pp. 167-71. By the fifteenth century, knights created at this type of ceremony were known as Knights of the Bath. According to one contemporary French source, Richard II had already knighted Henry on campaign in Ireland earlier in the year (see Desmond Seward, Henry V as Warlord [Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1987], pp. 9, 11) but knighthood could not be conferred twice.

15 Allmand, Henry V, pp. 16-17.

16 Ibid., p. 27; ELMA, pp. 306, 313; for Orléans’ campaign, see above pp. 17, 18-9.

17 Nigel Saul, The Batsford Companion to Medieval England (Barnes and Noble Books, Totowa, NJ, 1982), pp. 264-7; R. A. Griffiths, “Patronage, Politics, and the Principality of Wales, 1413-1461,” in British Government and Administration: Studies Presented to S. B. Chrimes, ed. by H. Hearder and H. R. Loyn (University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1974), pp. 74-5.

18 ELMA, p. 309; Allmand, Henry V, p. 21.

19 John de Trokelowe, “Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti,” Johannis de Trokelowe & Henrici de Blaneford . . . Chronica et Annales, ed. by Henry Thomas Riley (Rolls Series, London, 1866), pp. 367-71; Ken and Denise Guest, British Battles: The Front Lines of History in Colour Photographs (HarperCollins, London, 1997), pp. 47-9.

20 C. H. Talbot and E. A. Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register (Wellcome Historical Medical Library, London, 1965), pp. 123-4; Strickland and Hardy, pp. 284-5. Thomas Morstede, the royal servant at Agincourt (see below, pp. 138-40), must have witnessed the operation or read Bradmore’s account of it. For his version of it see R. Theodore Beck, The Cutting Edge: Early History of the Surgeons of London (Lund Humphries, London and Bradford, 1974), pp. 75-6, 117, 13.

21 See plate 1. I owe this observation to Dr Ingrid Roscoe.

22 Original Letters Illustrative of English History, 2nd series, ed. with notes and illustrations by Henry Ellis (Harding and Lepard, London, 1827), i, pp. 11-13, 39-40.

23 ODNB; McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 68, 108, 125; The Beauchamp Pageant, ed. and introduced by Alexandra Sinclair (Richard III and Yorkist History Trust in association with Paul Watkins, Donington, 2003), pp. 25-30.

24 Griffiths, “Patronage, Politics, and the Principality of Wales 1413-1461,” pp. 76-8; Ralph Griffiths, “‘Ffor the Myght off the Lande . . .’: the English Crown, Provinces and Dominions in the Fifteenth Century,” in Anne Curry and Elizabeth Matthew (eds), Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2000), p. 93 and n. 48.

25 ELMA, pp. 308, 315-16; Margaret Wade Labarge, Henry V: The Cautious Conqueror (Secker and Warburg, London, 1975), pp. 19, 23, 25.

26 G. L. Harriss, “Financial Policy,” HVPK, pp. 168-9, 169 n. 10.

27 ELMA, pp. 316-18, 338-40; G. L. Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” HVPK, p. 139.

28 ELMA, pp. 124, 130.

29 Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 140-1.

30 ODNB. Chaucer was the son of Catherine Swynford’s sister, Philippa Roet.

31 Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort, pp. 1-2, 4, 7-8, 16, 18, 24-5, 29-31, 33, 45, 47-8, 58, 68-9. A cardinal a latere was appointed temporarily and with a specific brief, at the end of which his title and powers lapsed.

32 Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” p. 143.

CHAPTER THREE: A MOST CHRISTIAN KING

1 Usk, p. 243. For differing interpretations of the omen, see Capgrave, p. 125; St Albans, p. 69.

2 Trokelowe, “Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti,” pp. 297-300. The myth of Becket’s holy oil was created in imitation of the Valois dynasty’s claim that French kings were anointed with the heaven-sent oil of Clovis at their coronations: John W. McKenna, “How God Became an Englishman,” Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton from his American Friends, ed. by Delloyd J. Guth and John W. McKenna (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982), p. 28.

3 Powell, pp. 129-30; Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 139-40.

4 Powell, p. 57; Monstrelet, iii, p. 94; GHQ, pp. 52-3; le Févre, i, pp. 228-9. See also below, pp. 195-7.

5 St-Denys, vi, p. 380.

6 See, for example, A. J. P. Taylor, A Personal History (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1983), p. 180; Vaughan, p. 205 and Seward, Henry V, passim.

7 W&W, i, p. 200 and n. 8.

8 Powell, p. 130.

9 W&W, i, p. 3; ODNB. The four other sons of rebels knighted at the coronation were the earl of March’s brother, Roger Mortimer; Richard, lord le Despenser; John Holland, the future earl of Huntingdon; and his brother.

10 W&W, ii, p. 21; ODNB; ELMA, p. 353.

11 W&W, i, pp. 1, 13-14; The Beauchamp Pageant, pp. 30-1.

12 Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1414-1443, ed. by E. F. Jacob (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1943) i, pp. xvi-clxx; Peter Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461 (Fontana, London, 1988), pp. 291-2, 294-5.

13 W&W, i, pp. 119-20.

14 Ibid., i, pp. 119-20, 324-5.

15 D’A. J. D. Boulton, The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325-1520 (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1987), p. 15. For brotherhood-in-arms, see below, pp. 153-4, 177.

16 W&W, i, pp. 507-8. The manner of Clarence’s death in 1421 mournfully demonstrated that he could not be trusted to act in the best interests of either the king or the kingdom. In his anxiety to outdo his brother’s success at Agincourt, he over-ruled wiser and more experienced soldiers to attack a much larger French army without waiting for his archers to arrive. The resulting battle of Baugé was the greatest military disaster of Henry’s reign: Clarence himself, Lord Roos, Lord Grey of Heton and Gilbert Umfraville were killed and the earls of Huntingdon and Somerset, the latter’s brother, Edmund Beaufort, and Lord Fitzwalter were all captured: ibid., iii, pp. 301-6.

17 Ibid., pp. 134-5 and n. 88; CPR, p. 331.

18 Powell, pp. 197-9.

19 Ibid., pp. 199-200; W&W, i, pp. 109-10.

20 It should be noted that legal actions were often concocted as a means of pressurising an opponent, for instance in a land dispute, to settle quickly. For the following discussion on law and order I have relied entirely on the magisterial study by Edward Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989) and his article which preceded it, “The Restoration of Law and Order,” in HVPK, pp. 53-74.

21 The figures also include Staffordshire, where there were similar problems and the same solution: Powell, “The Restoration of Law and Order,” p. 65.

22 The six who served on the Agincourt campaign were John Burley, Richard Lacon, John Winsbury, Ralph Brereton, Robert and Roger Corbet. John Wele, constable of Oswestry, stayed behind to defend the Shropshire march: ibid., p. 72.

23 Brut, ii, pp. 595-6. On one occasion he summoned two brothers, William and John Mynors of Staffordshire, to appear before him to account for their crimes, then personally ordered his justices to pardon them: William later served on the Agincourt campaign and in the conquest of Normandy: Powell, p. 66.

24 Quoted in Powell, p. 275.

25 ODNB.

26 Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428-31, ed. by Norman P. Tanner (Camden Fourth Series, vol. 20, London, 1977), pp. 10-22, 142.

27 Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988), pp. 110-11, 115.

28 St Albans, p. 71; Saul, Batsford Companion to Medieval England, pp. 273-5; Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, pp. 258-9; Hudson, The Premature Reformation, pp. 114-15, 339-40. Oldcastle may have hoped to initiate a similar scheme in England, introducing a bill in 1410 to confiscate the lands of the richest bishops and abbots in order to provide the king with an extra twenty thousand pounds of annual income for the defence of the realm. It failed because Henry V, who, as prince of Wales, was then head of the royal council, leapt to the Church’s defence and strongly condemned the whole idea.

29 Ibid., pp. 116-17; Powell, pp. 146-8; GHQ, pp. 4-5.

30 For what follows on Oldcastle’s revolt, see W&W, i, pp. 258-80; ELMA, pp. 244-6; Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, pp. 274-9; Powell, pp. 149-66.

31 Ibid., p. 150; W&W, i, p. 264 nn. 10, 11. John de Burgh, a carpenter, and Thomas Kentford were granted annuities of 10 marks each for detecting and revealing certain Lollards and their treasonable plots; Thomas Burton, “a royal spy,” was rewarded for similar information at about the same time.

32 Oldcastle’s pardon was revoked in March 1415 in the build-up to the Agincourt campaign. He was eventually caught near Welshpool, condemned by his peers in Parliament and suffered the dual penalty of hanging as a traitor and burning as a heretic on 14 December 1417: Powell, p. 164.

33 ELMA, pp. 245-6; Powell, pp. 161-2, 165-6.

34 Ibid., p. 166.

35 The Valois kings of France were traditionally styled “très-Chrétien,” most Christian, to distinguish them from other kings, including those of England, whom they deemed less favoured by God: McKenna, “How God Became an Englishman,” p. 26.

CHAPTER FOUR: THE DIPLOMATIC EFFORT

1 Bourgeois, pp. 29-31; W&W, i, pp. 170-1.

2 Bourgeois, pp. 32-3.

3 Vaughan, p. 100.

4 Bourgeois, p. 44; Vaughan, p. 101.

5 McLeod, p. 94; Bourgeois, p. 46.

6 Ibid., pp. 47-50.

7 According to French legend, the oriflamme had miraculously appeared to the emperor of Constantinople in a dream as a flaming lance in the hand of Charlemagne, hence its sacred quality. Having been lost several times on the field of battle, it appears that it also had a miraculous habit of reincarnating itself.

8 Vaughan, pp. 194-6, 197, 247-8; Bourgeois, p. 48; W&W, i, pp. 412-13 and n. 3.

9 Oliver van Dixmude, quoted in Vaughan, pp. 146-7.

10 Bourgeois, p. 53. See below, p. 269.

11 W&W, i, p. 397.

12 Vaughan, pp. 198-204.

13 Catherine’s mother was Constanza of Castile, John of Gaunt’s second wife.

14 W&W, i, pp. 84-5, 90-7, 93 n. 3; Christopher Allmand (ed.), Society at War (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, new edn, 1998), pp. 129-30; Anthony Goodman, “England and Iberia in the Middle Ages,” in England and her Neighbours 1066-1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais, ed. by M. Jones and M. G. A. Vale (Hambledon Press, London, 1989), pp. 86-8.

15 Michael Jones, “The Material Rewards of Service in Late Medieval Brittany: Ducal Servants and Their Residences,” in Curry and Matthew (eds), Concepts and Patterns of Service in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 120-3; A. R. Bridbury, England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages(Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1955), p. 80.

16 Foedera, ix, pp. 80-7; W&W, i, pp. 102-4, 103 n. 6, 104 n. 4.

17 Powell, pp. 203-6; Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, Prejudice and Promise in XVth Century England (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1925), pp. 83-4, 85-7; Felipe Fernández-Armesto, “Naval Warfare After the Viking Age, c.1100-1500,” in Keen, MW, p. 235.

18 In the Leicester Parliament of 1414, Henry introduced another exceptional measure, extending the definition of high treason to include breaking a truce or a safe-conduct, or aiding someone else who did so; the punishment, as for all treasons, was drawing, hanging and quartering. The justification for including this new category of offence was that truces and safe-conducts were granted and guaranteed by the king’s word or promise; breaches of them therefore impugned the king’s honour and injured his majesty in the same way that other treasonable offences did. The Statute of Truces was deeply unpopular and had to be amended in 1416 to make allowances for letters of marque, but it was highly effective in curtailing acts of piracy by English subjects: Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, pp. 22-3; John G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1970), pp. 128-9.

19 Foedera, ix, p. 84. See also below pp. 258-9.

20 Foedera, ix, pp. 35, 56-9; W&W, i, p. 152 and n. 2; Jean Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, ed. by J. A. C. Buchon (Choix de Chroniques et Mémoires sur l’Histoire de France, iv, Paris, 1836), p. 478; St-Denys, v, p. 353.

21 W&W, i, pp. 153-5; Foedera, ix, pp. 58-9.

22 Foedera, ix, pp. 91-101.

23 Ibid., ix, pp. 102-4.

24 St-Denys, v, pp. 158, 228; Juvénal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, pp. 487, 493. Juvénal des Ursins, an eyewitness of events in Paris, commented that “even the English princes were divided by the quarrel between Burgundy and Orléans, for the dukes of Clarence and of Gloucester, the king’s brothers, and with them the duke of York, favoured the Orléanists; while the king and the duke of Bedford, likewise his brother, were inclined to the Burgundians”: ibid., p. 497.

25 Vaughan, p. 206.

26 Foedera, ix, pp. 136-8. Opening negotiations for other marriages did not breach Henry’s undertaking to the French, which only gave his promise not to contract a marriage. A nice distinction but a legal one.

27 Ibid.; Hovyngham had negotiated the truces with Castile and Brittany.

28 Vaughan, p. 207; Foedera, ix, p. 138. The power to receive the duke’s homage was given on 4 June 1414, the same day as the other instructions.

29 POPC, ii, p. 141.

30 Foedera, ix, pp. 131-2, 208-11.

31 Shakespeare, Henry V, Act I, Scene 2, ll. 261-3.

32 St Albans, p. 83; Usk, p. 253. For the tennis balls story, see, for example, Brut, ii, pp. 374-5; Capgrave, pp. 129-30; Thomas Elmham, “Liber Metricus de Henrico Quinto,” Memorials of Henry the Fifth, King of England, ed. by Charles Augustus Cole (Longman and Co., London, 1858), p. 101.

33 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 59-62; Bourgeois, pp. 58-61.

34 Foedera, ix, pp. 212-14.

35 Letter-Books, p. 135; Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries, ed. by Henry Thomas Riley (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1868), pp. 603-5.

36 W&W, i, p. 94-9.

37 See above, pp. 66, 68.

CHAPTER FIVE: SCOTS AND PLOTS

1 ELMA, pp. 305-6; E. W. M. Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots, 1406-37 (Methuen, London, 1936), p. 22.

2 Ibid., pp. 25-6.

3 Ibid., pp. 26, 31-3.

4 Ibid., pp. 34-5; Patricia J. Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” in Documenting the Past: Essays in Medieval History Presented to George Peddy Cuttino, ed. by J. S. Hamilton and Patricia J. Bradley (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1989), pp. 179-80.

5 W&W, i, pp. 34-6; Powell, pp. 136-7.

6 This had not prevented it being breached, spectacularly, on two recent occasions. In 1378 two men, who had refused to hand over to John of Gaunt a prisoner captured eleven years earlier at the battle of Najera, escaped from the Tower and fled to sanctuary at Westminster; they were pursued by the constable of the Tower and fifty armed men, who forced their way in, slew one of the men and the sacristan and abducted the other. Nine years later, in 1387, Sir Robert Tresilian, the chief justice, was accused of treason by the Appellants (of whom the future Henry IV was one) and claimed sanctuary at Westminster; he too was abducted by force, tried and executed: Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, pp. 209-11.

7 Ibid., p. 211.

8 W&W, i, p. 36; Powell, p. 138. Although this phrase is now commonly rendered “hanged, drawn and quartered,” this is not the order in which the process took place. The convicted person was drawn on hurdles to the place of execution, hanged and then quartered; sometimes the traitor was cut down from the gallows while still alive, disembowelled (his entrails being burnt before him), beheaded and then quartered. In either case, the body parts were displayed in prominent public places to deter other traitors.

9 Devon, pp. 325, 326-8, 332; St Albans, p. 77; Brut, ii, p. 373. It was said that Richard had been kind to Henry, when, as a child, he had been a hostage at the royal court (not that this had prevented the future Henry IV from returning at the head of an army to usurp the throne). Lancastrian propagandists even said that Richard had predicted that the young Henry would fulfill Merlin’s prophecy that a prince should be born in Wales, whose praise would one day ring round the world. St Albans, p. 77, suggests that Henry venerated Richard as if he were his own father, but as this is said in the context of the reburial, it may be applicable only to that act. It does not seem to me to warrant the claims of later chroniclers and historians that the two had been like father and son.

10 Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots, 1406-37, p. 55; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 180-1.

11 Ibid., pp. 178, 181.

12 G. L. Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” in HVPK, pp. 31-51. Percy was to be partially reimbursed by Murdoch himself: Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots, 1406-37, p. 65.

13 St Albans, p. 86; W&W, i, pp. 517, 520 (where Talbot is wrongly called Henry); Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots, 1406-37, pp. 62-3; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 182-3; T. B. Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: a Tribute to Charles Ross, ed. by Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherbourne (Alan Sutton, Gloucester and St Martin’s Press, New York, 1986), p. 66; CPR, p. 339.

14 Balfour-Melville, James I, King of Scots, 1406-37, p. 63; CCR, p. 278; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” pp. 183-4.

15 Original Letters Illustrative of English History, pp. 45-6; Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” p. 65; “The Conspiracy of the Earl of Cambridge against Henry V,” 43rd Report of the Deputy Keeper of Public Records (HMSO, London, 1882), App I, §5.

16 Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 83, 64.

17 The Scottish link, for instance, was established beyond doubt, which was not surprising, given the northern English origins of most of the conspirators, Cambridge included (Cambridge lived on his brother’s charity at Conisburgh Castle, near Doncaster, in Yorkshire). Murdoch’s abduction in Yorkshire makes sense if its purpose was to enable the plotters to use him as a bargaining counter with the Scots—and Cambridge was able to tell Grey that Murdoch was safe in their hands a week later. He was also able to produce a letter that he said was from the duke of Albany, offering to send him Percy and the “Mommet” in return for his son. A Welsh supporter of Oldcastle was captured near Windsor Castle, where King James had been held; he was carrying large sums of money and a list of places between Windsor and Edinburgh (the medieval equivalent of a modern map), and confessed that he had been trying to assist the Scottish king’s escape. As we have seen, there was indeed a Scottish invasion only nine days before March revealed the plot to Henry V, even though Umfraville routed it, rather than joined it. The “crown of Spain on a pallet,” which Cambridge had promised to display in Wales, together with a banner of the arms of England, when March was proclaimed king, was actually in his possession: Henry V had given it to him as security for the wages of the men whom he had contracted to take with him on the Agincourt campaign.

It should not be forgotten, either, that the muster at Southampton provided the perfect cover for the plotters to raise an army. The leading conspirators were all committed to providing some of the biggest contingents of the forthcoming campaign. Cambridge and March had each undertaken to bring sixty men-at-arms and one hundred and sixty mounted archers, Scrope to bring thirty men-at-arms and ninety mounted archers. All in all, including the forty knights or esquires whom the Lollards had promised would desert from the muster to support an uprising, the conspirators could count on raising a force of almost eight hundred armed and fully equipped men from within their own ranks before they had even left Southampton: “The Conspiracy of the Earl of Cambridge against Henry V,” p. 582; W&W, i, pp. 518-9; Bradley, “Henry V’s Scottish Policy—a Study in Realpolitik,” p. 183; Nicolas, pp. 373-4, 385; James Hamilton Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd series, vol. v (1911), pp. 136-7.

18 ELMA, p. 324.

19 Brut, ii, pp. 375-6; St Albans, pp. 87-8; W&W, i, pp. 507-8. Cambridge, who was probably illegitimate, had inherited nothing from his nominal father and was financially entirely dependent on the goodwill of his brother, Edward, duke of York. Grey, who had already been outlawed twice for failure to pay debts, received a payment in May 1415 of £120 from the exchequer in compensation for giving up his post as constable of Bamburgh Castle, a sale that may have been forced on him by his need to fulfil his contract with the king to raise twenty-four men-at-arms and forty-eight archers for the Agincourt expedition: ODNB; Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 71-3, 79; W&W, i, p. 517 n. 3.

20 Pugh, “The Southampton Plot of 1415,” pp. 62-4, 67-9, 83-4; W&W, i, pp. 523-33; CPR, p. 409; Powell, p. 131.

21 Original Letters Illustrative of English History, p. 48; CPR, p. 349.

22 Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 222.

23 There was an ironic postscript to the story. Less than three months after Cambridge’s execution, Edward, duke of York, was one of the two English magnates who fell at the battle of Agincourt. Had the earl of Cambridge remained loyal to Henry V, he would have inherited his brother’s title, lands and wealth, and achieved the position of power and influence he craved, without resorting to the treason that cost him his life.

CHAPTER SIX: “HE WHO DESIRES PEACE, LET HIM PREPARE FOR WAR”

1 Vegetius, De Re Militari, quoted by Pizan, BDAC, p. 27 n. 23.

2 W&W, i, pp. 38, 39 n. 9.

3 Ibid., pp. 45-6, 39 and nn. 1, 3-7.

4 Ibid., i, p. 41 and nn. 4-6. “Scuratores” was a Calais-specific term for scouts, and not “scourers” as W&W translate the word: see R. E. Latham, Revised Medieval Latin Word-List (published for the British Academy, Oxford University Press, London, repr. 1980), p. 170.

5 John Kenyon, “Coastal Artillery Fortification in England in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 146-7; Michael Hughes, “The Fourteenth-Century French Raids on Hampshire and the Isle of Wight,” ibid., pp. 133-7.

6 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, p. 53; Kenyon, “Coastal Artillery Fortification in England in the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries,” p. 146.

7 W&W, i, pp. 161, 160 n. 1.

8 During a lull in the fighting at Poitiers (1356), English archers ran forward to pull arrows from the ground, and from dead or wounded men and horses; they were then able to use these against the next French attack: Strickland and Hardy, p. 301.

9 Paul Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 44, 46-7. The English were defeated at Ardres (1351) when the archers ran out of arrows too early: Strickland and Hardy, p. 231.

10 Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” pp. 45-6 and illustration, though the “type 16” arrowhead is actually on the third row, not the second, as it is captioned.

11 Strickland and Hardy, p. 313; Robert Hardy, “The Longbow,” in Curry and Hughes, p. 168.

12 Andrew Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” in Keen, MW, p. 205 and illus., p. 72; Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Archer (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1985, repr. 2002), pp. 146-50. Strickland and Hardy, pp. 34-48, effectively demolish the myth of the shortbow, a third category of weapon which was an invention of nineteenth-century military historians.

13 W&W, i, p. 159 n. 7; Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” p. 204; Foedera, ix, p. 224.

14 Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” pp. 42-4; Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” p. 204; Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, p. 107. But see Strickland and Hardy, p. 227.

15 Ibid., pp. 17-18, 199, 30; Hardy, “The Longbow,” p. 179.

16 Maurice Keen, “The Changing Scene: Guns, Gunpowder, and Permanent Armies,” in Keen, MW, pp. 274-5 and illus. p. 156; Clifford J. Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” ibid., pp. 156-8; Richard L. C. Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c.800-1450,” in ibid., pp. 180-2; Pizan, BDAC, pp. 122-3; Robert D. Smith, “Artillery and the Hundred Years War: Myth and Interpretation,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 156-7; Richard L. C. Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c.800-1450,” in Keen, MW, p. 182.

17 Nigel Ramsey, “Introduction,” in John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (eds), English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products (Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1991), p. xxxii; Pizan, BDAC, pp. 117-19; Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe, c.800- 1450,” p. 181.

18 Foedera, ix, pp. 159, 160; CPR, p. 292.

19 W&W, i, pp. 161 n. 2, 265 n. 2; Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1995), p. 162; Jane Geddes, “Iron,” in Blair and Ramsay (eds), English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, p. 187.

20 Ibid., pp. 168, 170-2, 174-5.

21 Ibid., pp. 186 and 187 (fig. 86). See plate 5.

22 C. F. Richmond, “The War at Sea,” in Fowler, pp. 111-12, 108.

23 This meant that although he was a clergyman, he had not progressed to the rank of priest nor taken his final vows as a monk. Most clerks in the royal services were of this rank and never became fully ordained.

24 Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 112-13; W. J. Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the Holy Ghost of the Tower, 1414-1416, and her Subsequent History,” The Mariner’s Mirror, 40 (1954), p. 270; W. J. Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the Gracedieu, Valentine and Falconer at Southampton, 1416-1420,” ibid., p. 56.

25 Ibid., pp. 65-6; Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 112-13, 104-7.

26 Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the Gracedieu, Valentine and Falconer at Southampton, 1416-1420,” pp. 62-3; Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the Holy Ghost of the Tower, 1414-1416, and her Subsequent History,” pp. 271, 273. The sums involved equate to almost $1,352,400 and $2,999,430 in modern currency, but there was almost certainly further expenditure.

27 Richmond, “The War at Sea,” pp. 121 n. 55, 113-14.

28 CPR, pp. 294-5; W&W, i, p. 448 and n. 2.

29 Fernández-Armesto, “Naval Warfare after the Viking Age, c.1100- 1500,” pp. 238-9; Ian Friel, “Winds of Change? Ships and the Hundred Years War,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 183-5.

30 Foedera, ix, pp. 215, 216; W&W, i, pp. 45, 104.

31 Vaughan, pp. 241-4. See above, pp. 62-3, 65-6 for the Anglo-Burgundian negotiations.

32 Registres de la Jurade: Délibérations de 1414 à 1416 et de 1420 à 1422: Archives Municipales de Bordeaux (G. Gounouilhou, Bordeaux, 1883), iv, p. 193.

33 Foedera, ix, p. 218; Antonio Morosini, Chronique d’Antonio Morosini 1414-1428, ed. by Germain Lefèvre-Pontalis and Léon Dorez (Librairie Renouard, Paris, 1899), ii, pp. 20-5, 34-5, 44-5.

34 Foedera, ix, pp. 224, 238-9, 248-9; CPR, pp. 325, 329, 343; CCR, p. 232.

35 Foedera, ix, pp. 250-1, 261; CPR, pp. 327, 346.

36 Foedera, ix, pp. 251-2, 253; CCR, pp. 214, 217, 218.

37 Ibid., p. 278; Foedera, ix, pp. 288-9; H. J. Hewitt, “The Organisation of War,” in Fowler, pp. 81-2.

38 See, for example, Henry’s writ of 26 May 1415 to the sheriff of Kent: Foedera, ix, p. 251.

CHAPTER SEVEN: OF MONEY AND MEN

1 Pizan, BDAC, p. 19.

2 Harriss, “Financial Policy,” in HVPK, pp. 163-74. See also Edmund Wright, “Henry IV, the Commons and the Recovery of Royal Finance in 1407,” in R. E. Archer and S. Walker (eds), Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss (Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1995), pp. 65-81.

3 Harriss, “Financial Policy,” p. 163.

4 Ibid., p. 177.

5 Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 137-8, 156; Saul, The Batsford Companion to Medieval England, pp. 200-2.

6 See, for example, Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, pp. 3, 15, 34; Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” pp. 143, 145.

7 Ibid., pp. 145-6, 158.

8 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, p. 34.

9 Ibid., iv, p. 35; W&W, i, p. 434.

10 Memorials of London and London Life, pp. 603-5; Letter-Books, pp. 135, 143; Nicolas, p. 14; Marks and Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, p. 206 and fig. 71a.

11 Foedera, ix, p. 241. The signet was a relatively new seal, introduced by Richard II as a means of bypassing the more ponderous administrations of the great seal (that is, the chancery) and privy seal offices: Saul, Batsford Companion to Medieval England, pp. 112-13.

12 CPR, p. 329; Nicolas, pp. 13, 14; Foedera, ix, pp. 285-6.

13 W&W, i, pp. 472-4; Foedera, ix, pp. 268-9; Allmand (ed), Society at War, pp. 136-40.

14 W&W, i, pp. 477-9; Letter-Books, p. 144.

15 Webster’s Biographical Dictionary, p. 1570; Foedera, ix, p. 310; Sylvia L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (1300-1500) (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1948), pp. 55, 374; W&W, i, pp. 147 and n. 5, 360-1, 365. For Hende, see Thrupp, op. cit., p. 127.

16 Morosini, Chronique, pp. 20-3; Jeremy Catto, “The King’s Servants,” in HVPK, p. 82; W&W, i, p. 474.

17 Ibid., i, p. 474 n. 4; Foedera, ix, pp. 271, 284, 312.

18 W&W, i, pp. 472 nn. 1-6, 473 n. 6.

19 Monstrelet, iii, p. 71.

20 CPR, p. 344.

21 Maurice Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman (Tempus, Stroud and Charleston, SC, 2002), p. 95; Foedera, ix, p. 216; CCR, pp. 270, 271-2. For examples of indentures for life service, including some issued by Henry as prince of Wales, see Michael Jones and Simon Walker, “Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War 1278-1476,” Camden Miscellany xxxii (Royal Historical Society, London, 1994), pp. 1-190, esp. pp. 139-43.

22 POPC, ii, pp. 150-1; Curry, p. 414.

23 MS E101/69/5, TNA; MS E101/47/29, TNA. For published examples of indentures signed on 29 April 1415, see Foedera, ix, pp. 227-38; Nicolas, Appx ii, pp. 8-10. MS E101/45/5, TNA, summarises the terms of 210 indentures for the Agincourt campaign.

24 At the battle of Agincourt the ratio rose to five to one because so many men-at-arms were invalided home from Harfleur. See below, pp. 208, 219, 260-1, 283.

25 MS E101/69/5, TNA; Foedera, ix, pp. 223, 230. Welsh foot archers received only 3d a day in 1355 (Strickland and Hardy, p. 204). For the regard, see Ayton, “English Armies in the Fourteenth Century,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 24-5.

26 Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” in Keen, MW, p. 188; Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, pp. 276-7, 224; Christopher Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (Hambledon Press, London and Rio Grande, 1994), pp. 148, 167, 188; D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Medieval Mason (3rd edn, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1967), pp. 72, 86-7.

27 Strickland and Hardy, pp. 204-5. The social status of archers had risen steadily throughout the fourteenth century as the demands of war (in particular, the chevauchée) required them to be mounted. Richard II’s ordinances of war (1385) placed them on a par with men-at-arms, and distinguished them from foot archers, when setting out punishment. Ibid., p. 204.

28 MS E101/47/29, TNA. The payment for the first quarter was higher than for the second quarter because it was calculated at Gascon rates.

29 Nicolas, pp. 373-4.

30 MS E101/47/29, TNA; Nicolas, p. 15.

31 Ibid., pp. 16-18.

32 MS E101/69/5, TNA; Foedera, ix, pp. 227-8. For similar indentures, see ibid., pp. 228-30, 233-5, 244, 250.

33 Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” in Keen, MW, p. 191.

34 Ibid., pp. 191-2, 188, 195.

35 Ibid., p. 197. For a reference in the king’s ordinances at Rouen in 1419 to “all maner of men, Ryding or taryeng wyth us in oure hoste or vnder our baner, thoughe they Receue no wages of vs or our Realme,” see Allmand (ed), Society at War, p. 82.

36 MS E101/69/5, TNA. In January 1416, Sir John Grey received a thousand marks (£666 13s 4d) from the king in part payment for the Count of Eu, whom he had captured at Agincourt: Devon, pp. 344-5. See below, pp. 133, 327-8, for examples of ransoms of French prisoners after Agincourt.

37 Anne Curry, “Sir Thomas Erpingham: A Life in Arms,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 74-5 and pls. 23 and 24. For Chaucer’s accounts see MS E101/47/29, TNA.

38 Ibid., p. 66; MS E101/45/5, TNA. See also Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” pp. 107-8, 140, 111; Nicolas, p. 383.

39 Foedera, ix, p. 258; Nicolas, pp. 10-11; Maurice Keen, “Richard II’s Ordinances of War of 1385,” in Archer and Walker (eds), Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England, pp. 35-6.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE ARMY GATHERS

1 W&W, i, pp. 484-6; Letter-Books, p. 138.

2 St-Denys, v, pp. 512-27; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 73-4.

3 W&W, i, pp. 505-8; Morosini, Chronique, ii, pp. 34-7.

4 W&W, i, pp. 500-1.

5 Carey, Courting Disaster, pp. 93-6, 106-9; Christine de Pizan, The Writings of Christine de Pizan, selected and edited by Charity Cannon Willard (Persea Books, New York, 1994), pp. 17-21; Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity, pp. 24-5.

6 W&W, i, pp. 500, 502, 503-5.

7 Ibid., i, pp. 506-7, 505 n. 6.

8 Foedera, ix, pp. 223, 239-40, 243, 262; CPR, p. 353; POPC, ii, pp. 157, 168; Public Record Office, London: Lists and Indexes Supplementary Series, no. ix, vol. ii (Klaus Reprint Corporation, New York, 1964), Appx, p. 382.

9 Foedera, ix, p. 223; CCR, pp. 268, 280; Nicolas, p. 385; POPC, ii, pp. 145-7, 165.

10 Foedera, ix, pp. 255-6; Hitchin, “The Bowman and the Bow,” p. 40.

11 Pizan, BDAC, p. 214; Foedera, ix, pp. 253-4; CCR, pp. 213-14, 218.

12 Ibid.; Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, p. 284. Arrays of clergy were more frequent in the see of York: they were also called out twice in 1417, again (with the see of Canterbury) in 1418, and several times in 1419. The only bishopric omitted from Henry’s writ was that of Sodor and Man, which until c.1387 had been a Scottish see. Local clergymen who had mustered at Beverley fought against the Scots at the battle of Neville’s Cross (1346), “taking off their shoes and their hoods, [they] showed themselves with swords and arrows at their waists and bows under their arms” (Strickland and Hardy, p. 190). See also ibid., p. 259.

13 Mowbray MS; ODNB; Harris, “The King and his Magnates,” in HVPK, p. 41.

14 Mowbray MS, fo. 21. The earl had contracted to serve in person with four knights, forty-five esquires and 150 archers. Like many of those raising retinues, the number of men he actually engaged to fight in his service differed from the figure for which he had contracted, hence the importance of the muster. The earl had received his first payment at the higher Gascon rate; the second payment was made at the French rate. The fact that the earl paid his men at the French rate may indicate that a decision had been taken by 1 July to go to France, rather than Aquitaine. On the other hand, it may simply reflect his shortage of cash: an adjustment could have been made later.

15 Mowbray MS, fo. 21. A further fourteen men, whose status is unclear, were given payments ranging from 21s to 38s under a heading that appears to mean “Regard for Welshmen for the expedition”: at least two of the names are obviously Welsh.

16 Mowbray MS fo. 21; Forty-Fourth Annual Report, pp. 561-3, 565-70; CPR, p. 370.

17 Forty-Fourth Annual Report, pp. 566, 561. The archer was John Riggele alias Power, in the retinue of Sir John Fastolf.

18 Mowbray MS, fo. 13.

19 Le Févre, i, p. 253. The French similarly cut down their lances to fight on foot at Poitiers (1356): Strickland and Hardy, pp. 234, 249.

20 Barker, The Tournament in England, pp. 23, 157-8. For a sixteenth-century example, see Marks and Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, p. 198.

21 Mowbray MS, fos 13, 15, 14.

22 Mowbray MS, fos 12, 11. The shields could have been for Mowbray’s archers, though forty-eight would not have provided enough for even a third of his contingent.

23 ELMA, p. 181; Strickland and Hardy, p. 201; Mowbray MS, fo. 9. The earl bought thirty-eight “crosses” from Nicholas Armourer: ibid., fo. 13. For the wearing of St George’s cross, see below, p. 162.

24 Mowbray MS, fos 14-16.

25 Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” in HVPK, p. 41; Nicolas, Appx. xvii.

26 Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 135; Powell, p. 235: MS E404/31/315, TNA. Only a handful of the Welsh archers were mounted.

27 MS E404/31/386, TNA; MS E101/45/5, TNA. Curry, p. 414, describes them as being from the Forest of Dean, but Greyndor was an Anglo/ Welsh knight from south Wales.

28 MS E101/45/5, TNA; Nicolas, p. 386; Public Record Office: Lists and Indexes, no. ix, vol. ii, pp. 390-1. Examples are Gerard Van Willighen, Hans Joye, Frederick Van Heritt, Claus Van Roosty and Martin van Osket.

29 Benedeyt Spina, the envoy who was ordered to bring the brides, was in London on 8 June 1415, but apparently without his charges: as late as 30 October they were still in Aquitaine and the authorities in Bordeaux decided that it was too late in the season to send them: Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (1399-1422), ed. by J. L. Kirby (HMSO, London, 1978), p. 197 no. 962; Registres de la Jurade, pp. 194, 232, 254, 279.

30 Nicolas, pp. 386, 388-9; Jim Bradbury, The Medieval Siege (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 197, 241-2, 270; MS E404/31/409, TNA lists only twenty-five cordwainers, led by George Benet, master cordwainer, not twenty-six as in Nicolas, p. 388.

31 MS E101/45/5, MS E404/31/437 and MS E404/31/416, TNA; Nicolas, pp. 387-9; W&W, ii, p. 186 n. 2.

32 Nicolas, pp. 387-9; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 139. For Bordiu, see Henrici Quinti, Angliae Regis, Gesta, ed. by Bernard Williams (English Historical Society, London, 1850), p. vii. The various identities suggested for the chaplain are discussed, but in the absence of positive evidence, no conclusion is reached in GHQ, pp. xviii-xxiii.

33 See, for example, the dancing nakerer in the fourteenth-century Luttrell Psalter: BL MS Add 42130 fo. 176.

34 Foedera, ix, pp. 255, 260; Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel, pp. 113-14, 115, 174 n. 47.

35 Ibid., pp. 47 and n. 21, 117, 15.

36 Foedera, ix, pp. 255, 260; Southworth, The English Medieval Minstrel, pp. 113-14, 119, 143-6, 174 n. 47, 187. In 1433 Clyff’s widow was still claiming £33 6s for his retinue’s unpaid wages for the Agincourt campaign: see below p. 347.

37 Maurice Keen, Chivalry (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1984), pp. 126-7, 134-7, 138.

38 Ibid., p. 134.

39 Garter king of arms was nevertheless “taken prisoner . . . and his goods taken from him [by] the King’s enemies” when travelling through France on a royal errand to the earl of Warwick in 1438: Devon, p. 436.

40 Nicolas, p. 387.

41 Nicolas, p. 387; Foedera, ix, pp. 235-6, 237-8, 252-3; Barbara Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: The Monastic Experience (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993), pp. 83, 85-6, 232-4; Talbot and Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register, p. 100.

42 Ibid., pp. 220-2; MS E404/31/359, TNA; Foedera, ix, pp. 235-6.

43 Beck, The Cutting Edge, pp. 85, 92, 79; Foedera, ix, pp. 237-8, 252-3.

44 Beck, The Cutting Edge, pp. 76-8; Talbot and Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register, pp. 387-8.

45 Beck, The Cutting Edge, pp. 63, 67-8.

46 Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (1300-1500), pp. 260, 267 n. 75; Beck, The Cutting Edge, pp. 81-2.

47 Marie-Christine Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages (Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), pp. 68-9.

48 Transcribed from the extracts of Thomas Morstede’s Fair Book of Surgery, given in Beck, The Cutting Edge, pp. 105ff, esp. p. 108.

49 Ibid.; Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle Ages, pp. 165-6.

50 Will of Hamon le Straunge: MS LEST AE 1, Norfolk Record Office; Foedera, ix, pp. 289-92.

51 Ibid.; Morgan, “The Household Retinue of Henry V and the Ethos of English Public Life,” p. 65. The famous Gascon knight Jean de Grailly, Captal de Buch (d.1369), directed in his will that fifty thousand masses were to be sung for him in the year after his death: Keen, Chivalry, p. 155.

52 St-Denys, v, pp. 526-8.

53 Seward, Henry V as Warlord, p. 63.

54 St-Denys, v, pp. 526-8. See also Monstrelet, iii, pp. 78-81; le Févre, i, pp. 219-21; and Waurin, i, pp. 174-6.

55 GHQ, pp. 17-19.

56 Deuteronomy, ch. xx, v. 10. See also below, p. 174.

57 Foedera, ix, p. 298; CCR, p. 278; W&W, ii, p. 1; GHQ, pp. 20-1.

CHAPTER NINE: “FAIR STOOD THE WIND FOR FRANCE”

1 The opening line of Michael Drayton’s seventeenth-century “Ballad of Agincourt.”

2 GHQ, p. 21; St Albans, p. 89; Robert F. Marx, The Battle of the Spanish Armada 1588 (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1965), p. 53.

3 Vale, English Gascony 1399-1453, pp. 13-14; Blair and Ramsay (eds), English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, p. 341; Bridbury, England and the Salt Trade in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 80, 110-11, 114; Knoop and Jones, The Medieval Mason, pp. 46, 48. The river Don in Yorkshire supplied a boat for Henry V’s second invasion of France in 1417, so it is reasonable to suppose that similar vessels were also used in 1415: Friel, “Winds of Change? Ships and the Hundred Years War,” p. 189.

4 Ibid., pp. 183-5; Ayton, “Arms, Armour, and Horses,” p. 198. Sir Robert Knollys’s expeditionary force of 1370, which had a contracted strength of two thousand men-at-arms and two thousand mounted archers, took 8464 horses to France, according to exchequer records.

5 Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (1399-1422), p. 161; Richmond, “The War at Sea,” p. 114; GHQ, pp. 20-1; le Févre, i, p. 224; W&W, i, p. 525. The king later decided that those who mustered, but had to be left behind, were not to receive their wages: Foedera, ix, p. 52.

6 Carpenter-Turner, “The Building of the Holy Ghost of the Tower, 1414-1416, and her Subsequent History,” p. 271.

7 W&W, ii, p. 2; Armstrong, “The Heraldry of Agincourt,” p. 130.

8 Elizabeth Danbury, “English and French Artistic Propaganda during the Period of the Hundred Years War,” in Christopher Allmand (ed), Power, Culture and Religion in France c.1350-c.1550 (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1989), p. 82. When Charles V of France reduced the number of lilies on the French royal coat of arms to three, Edward III followed suit: ibid., p. 87.

9 Richard Barber, The Knight and Chivalry (Sphere Books, London, 1974), p. 40.

10 Ibid., pp. 304-6; Keen, Chivalry, pp. 191, 184. For Werchin’s challenge to the Garter knights and, separately, to Sir John Cornewaille, see MS Additional 21370 fos 1-14, esp. fo. 7v, British Library; Barker, The Tournament in England, pp. 41-2, 157.

11 W&W, ii, pp. 3-4; Armstrong, “The Heraldry of Agincourt,” p. 130; GHQ, pp. 120-1.

12 Bacquet, p. 109, quoting the accounts of the city of Boulogne which had sent a messenger to Honfleur, “where monseigneur the constable is now.”

13 Ibid., pp. 22-3.

14 Trokelowe, “Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti,” p. 333; A. C. Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen (University Press of America, Washington, DC, 1981), pp. 143-4; MS Additional 21370 fos 4v-14, esp. fo. 10, British Library. Cornewaille’s side of the correspondence relating to the seneschal’s challenge was carried by William Bruges, who was then Chester herald of the prince of Wales.

15 Catto, “The King’s Servants,” pp. 89-90; Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen, p. 168; W&W, ii, p. 17 n. 2; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” pp. 136, 128-9.

16 GHQ, p. 23 n. 3; W&W, i, pp. 98, 344 and nn. 8 and 9, 345 and n. 2, 435, 536; W&W, ii, pp. 16-17; CPR, p. 359; Nicolas, p. 340.

17 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ed. by A. Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt (Bantam Books, New York, 1971), p. 54, l. 276; Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, pp. 208-9. A transcript of the agreement is given in Allmand (ed), Society at War, pp. 32-4.

18 Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen, pp. 153, 151, 148; McLeod, pp. 85, 177, 186. Though Cornewaille evaded capture personally, he had to raise enormous sums for the ransom of his stepson, Sir John Holland (who had then become earl of Huntingdon), when he was captured at Baugé in 1421. He was only able to do it by means of assistance from the king, by exchanging one of his own most valuable prisoners and by remitting some of the ransom due to him. And at his death in December 1443, it was discovered that he held £2666 13s 4d in uncashed exchequer tallies, money that was therefore owed to him by the crown, together with debts of more than £723 owed to him for loans by others. As many of the other Agincourt veterans were to discover, receiving payment for their services was neither straightforward nor easy: Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen, pp. 147, 169-70, 182; McLeod, pp. 252, 275; Michael Stansfield, “John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon (d.1447) and the Costs of the Hundred Years War,” in Profit, Piety and the Professions in Later Medieval England, ed. by Michael Hicks (Alan Sutton, Gloucester and Wolfeboro Falls, 1990), pp. 108-9.

19 Morgan, “The Household Retinue of Henry V and the Ethos of English Public Life,” p. 74; W&W, ii, pp. 17 n. 2, 88, 119; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 109 n. 1.

20 Rudolf Simek, Heaven and Earth in the Middle Ages: the Physical World Before Columbus, trans. by Angela Hill (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1996), pp. 41-4, 51-5, 20-1, 29-31, 37-8. See plate 15.

21 Ibid., pp. 42-3. For facsimile examples of medieval navigational maps, see Gabriel Marcel, Choix de Cartes et de Mappemondes des XIV et XV Siècles (Ernest Leroux, Paris, 1896), esp. the Cartes de Dulcert (1330), de Mecia de Viladestes (1413) and de Saleri (1385).

22 St-Denys, v, pp. 532-3; GHQ, pp. 24-5.

23 Ibid., p. 25.

24 http://membres.lycos.fr/valsoleil/hellandes/histoire_du_fief_de_hellande. htm; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 70-1, 117; W&W, i, p. 447 n. 1.

25 Bacquet, pp. 109, 110; Bouvier, p. 64.

26 Bacquet, p. 109.

27 W&W, i, p. 447 n. 1; St-Denys, v, pp. 532-4.

28 W&W, ii, pp. 17, 19 and n. 9; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 82-3; GHQ, pp. 22-5, 22 n. 1.

29 Ibid., p. 27.

30 Keen, “Richard II’s Ordinances of War of 1385,” pp. 33-43; Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, III.i.273. For Henry V’s Mantes ordinances, see F. Grose, Military Antiquities Respecting the History of the English Army (London, 1801), ii, pp. 65-79.

31 Keen, “Richard II’s Ordinances of War of 1385,” pp. 44-5. See below, p. 291.

32 GHQ, pp. 68-9; St-Denys, v, pp. 556-7; Pizan, BDAC, p. 41. The story of the soldier stealing the pyx (see below, p. 239) was used by Shakespeare, who, applying poetic licence, made the thief Bardolph, one of the king’s former associates: Shakespeare, Henry V, III.vi.

33 W&W, ii, pp. 25-9 and n. 28; i, pp. 508-10.

34 GHQ, pp. 26-7.

CHAPTER TEN: HARFLEUR

1 Despite several visits in the summer of 2004, I was unable to gain access to the interior of the church: the best efforts of the very helpful ladies at the tourist information office and the mairie were unable to locate a keyholder or key.

2 St-Denys, v, p. 532; Monstrelet, iii, p. 225.

3 Allmand (ed), Society at War, p. 130; W&W, ii, p. 10; Allmand, Henry V, pp. xii, 67.

4 Most of my ensuing description of medieval Harfleur, including the clos-aux-galées, is drawn from the very useful information boards supplied by Parcours du Patrimonie on site, and an article by Bernard Perrot in Le Havre Livre, Sunday, 4 January 2004, p. 6.

5 GHQ, pp. 32-4. The paving stones lifted from the Montivilliers road were taken to Harfleur to be used as ammunition in the event of attack: Monstrelet, iii, p. 83; Waurin, i, pp. 181-2.

6 GHQ, pp. 26-31; W&W, ii, pp. 13-16; Jones, “Fortifications and Sieges in Western Europe c.800-1450,” p. 175.

7 Bouvier, pp. 64, 35 and n. 3, 38-9, 46, 52; Denis Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421): Étude d’une Biographie Héroïque (Librairie Droz, Geneva, 1988), p. 94; McLeod, pp. 84-5, 121. See also Aubert de la Chenaye-Desbois et Badier, Dictionnaire de la Noblesse (Paris, 1866, repr. Kraus-Thomson Organisation, Liechtenstein, 1969), ix, pp. 33-5 and Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, ed. by M. Prevost, Roman d’Arnot and H. Tribout de Morembert (Libraire Letouzey et Ané, Paris, 1982), xv, p. 689. Both Dictionnaires contain glaringly obvious errors of fact and it is difficult to disentangle references to Raoul VI de Gaucourt and his father, Raoul V, in the chronicles. Some of the earlier references may relate to Raoul V, who also led an active military career until he was assassinated by Burgundian sympathisers at Rouen in 1417.

8 Allmand (ed), Society at War, pp. 25-7.

9 Bouvier, p. 64; GHQ, pp. 32-3. Monstrelet, iii, p. 83 and le Févre, i, p. 225 both place de Gaucourt in the garrison, which they number at four hundred men-at-arms (that is, including his contingent), though they do not mention how he, and they, got there.

10 GHQ, pp. 32-5.

11 Jean de Bordiu, writing on 3 September 1415, notes that the king’s great army “increases every day”: Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257.

12 Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan, p. 136; GHQ, p. 35. For Henry’s letter to Charles VI, quoting Deuteronomy, see above, p. 143.

13 Deuteronomy, ch. 20, vv. 13-14; GHQ, pp. 34-7.

14 St-Denys, v, pp. 536-7; GHQ, pp. 36-7; Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257.

15 GHQ, pp. 38-9; St-Denys, v, p. 536.

16 Original Letters Illustrative of English History, i, p. 95. Hostell is usually described as an archer, but Curry, p. 435, identifies him as a man-at-arms in the company of Sir John Lumley; he went on to fight at the battle of Agincourt.

17 GHQ, p. 39.

18 Ibid.

19 Pizan, BDAC, pp. 116, 136.

20 First English Life, p. 38; Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, p. 209; Seward, Henry V as Warlord, pp. 149-51.

21 GHQ, pp. 40-1. When Henry V invaded Normandy a second time, he hired miners from Liège, suggesting that lack of military experience had been a problem for the Welsh.

22 Ibid., pp. 42-3.

23 Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257.

24 First English Life, p. 38; Waurin, i, p. 182.

25 Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257.

26 Curry, p. 444; Registres de la Jurade, p. 256.

27 All the clinical information on dysentery which follows has been extracted from Healthlink Worldwide’s online newsletter on the control of diarrhoeal diseases, Dialogue on Diarrhoea, which can be found at www.rehydrate.org/dd/su55.htm. Handwashing with soap is the only proven method of preventing transmission, but dysentery can be cured with anti-microbial drugs.

28 Henry lost thirty-three of his own horses to murrain during the campaign: W&W, ii, p. 186 n. 2.

29 Talbot and Hammond (eds), The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register, p. 222; First English Life, p. 36.

30 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 84-5; le Févre, i, p. 226; Waurin, i, p. 183.

31 Foedera, ix, pp. 288, 310, 312, 314; MS Mowbray, fos 22-4; William Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington (Chetham Society, 1872), i, p. 239. Harington’s account was debited for this amount, plus two extra pitchers of wine.

32 Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (1399-1422), p. 196 no. 964; Curry, pp. 444-5; Registres de la Jurade, pp. 256-7; Foedera, ix, pp. 310-11.

33 ODNB; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, xx, 1-5 Henry V (1413- 1418), ed. by J. L. Kirby (HMSO, London, 1995), nos 460-1; GHQ, p. 45.

34 ODNB; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, nos 441-51, 452-9; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 130. The earl himself had brought a retinue of 40 men-at-arms and 120 archers: MS E101/45/5, TNA. For further victims of dysentery, see below, pp. 204-7.

35 GHQ, pp. 44-5, 47 n. 1.

36 Ibid., pp. 48-9.

37 St-Denys, v, p. 538; GHQ, pp. 48-9.

38 W&W, ii, pp. 52, 49 n. 1; Perceval de Cagny, Chroniques, ed. by H. Moranvillé (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1902), p. 95 n. 4. Jehan La Guette, otherwise known as Lescot (was he also a Scot?), was given the boat, which is described as a “galiotte” (a term usually used for a pirate vessel), and paid a salary, but ran the enterprise “at his own peril and fortune.”

39 Monstrelet, iii, p. 84; le Févre, i, pp. 230-1. Both de Lille Adam and Brimeu would become founder members of the Burgundian order of the Toison d’Or in 1430; le Févre, who is the only chronicler to report this story, was the order’s herald, so he must have heard this story from them. They evidently took some small comfort from the fact that their captor, Sir Lewis Robsart, a long-standing member of Henry V’s household, was from Hainault.

40 W&W, ii, p. 53 n. 1; Monstrelet, iii, p. 93.

41 W&W, ii, pp. 52-3; St-Denys, v, pp. 538-41; Bourgeois, p. 77.

42 St-Denys, v, p. 540. There are some extant musters of the troops gathering at Rouen in September and October 1415; most are for very small companies of fewer than fifteen and do not give any indication of the size of the whole army. A number are summarised in René de Belleval, Azincourt (Paris, 1865), pp. 300-36.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: “OUR TOWN OF HARFLEUR”

1 GHQ, p. 49.

2 Brut, ii, p. 376; St Albans, pp. 90-1; W&W, ii, p. 49.

3 GHQ, pp. 48-51; St Albans, p. 90; St-Denys, v, p. 540.

4 Bacquet, p. 91. The rumours also reached Venice: see Morosini, Chronique, p. 62 and n. 6.

5 St-Denys, v, pp. 540-3. The monk places this three-hour assault on the morning of the actual handover of the town, 22 September, which is clearly impossible, as Henry would have executed the hostages if Harfleur had offered any resistance once the agreed time had elapsed.

6 Memorials of London and London Life, p. 619. The abbreviated version of this letter in Letter-Books, i, p. 131 and Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (1399-1422), p. 197 no. 965 is misleading; the latter also wrongly dates the surrender to 15 September.

7 GHQ, pp. 54-5; Nicolas, Appx vi, p. 24.

8 See above, pp. 59-60.

9 St Albans, pp. 90-1; W&W, ii, p. 50; GHQ, pp. 50-1; St-Denys, v, pp. 540-3. The names of the hostages are given in Chronicles of London, ed. by Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (Alan Sutton, Gloucester, 1977), pp. 116-17.

10 Monstrelet, iii, p. 85; First English Life, p. 39.

11 St-Denys, v, p. 538.

12 GHQ, pp. 52-3; Usk, p. 255.

13 First English Life, p. 40; GHQ, pp. 52-3; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 112. The First English Life attributes the words of surrender to Sir Lionell Braquemont, “the governor of the town,” but the chaplain, who was an eyewitness, says that de Gaucourt handed over the keys.

14 Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257; GHQ, pp. 54-5; Monstrelet, iii, p. 94; First English Life, p. 40.

15 GHQ, p. 55; Brut, ii, pp. 377, 554; St-Denys, v, p. 544; le Févre, i, p. 229; W&W, ii, pp. 58-60. The unreliable Chronique de Ruisseauville claims that many of the refugees were robbed and raped by their fellow countrymen once their English escort had left them: Bacquet, p. 91.

16 Nicolas, Appx vi, p. 24; GHQ, pp. 54-7.

17 Ibid., pp. 56-9; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 113; Foedera, ix, p. 313. Foedera wrongly dates the letter to 16 September (it was actually written on 26 September, the day before de Gaucourt’s release) and mistranscribes “Guienne” as “Vienne.”

18 Barker, The Tournament in England 1100-1400, pp. 158-61; Francis Henry Cripps-Day, The History of the Tournament in England and in France (Bernard Quaritch, London, 1918), p. 67 n. 4.

19 The chaplain, writing the “official” version of the campaign, had clearly been provided with a copy of the challenge, which he closely paraphrases in his text: GHQ, pp. 56-9.

20 The chaplain says that Henry released the French men-at-arms “with the intention and in the hope that by their instigation and good offices the peace which he so much desired might be the sooner restored”: ibid., pp. 54-5. For de Gaucourt’s later mission, see below, pp. 353-4.

21 GHQ, pp. 58-9.

22 Ibid.; Capgrave, p. 131; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 113.

23 Memorials of London and London Life, p. 619; Letter-Books, i, p. 159; Forty-Fourth Annual Report, p. 576.

24 Devon, pp. 341-2; Foedera, ix, p. 314; CPR, p. 364; CCR, p. 236.

25 W&W, ii, pp. 64, 65 n. 3. For Curteys, see above, p. 97. For wages paid to masters of ships from Hull, King’s Lynn, Winchelsea and London, for service from 1 August see Foedera, ix, pp. 315-17.

26 GHQ, pp. 58-9. Curry, Agincourt: A New History, p. 131, rightly observes that one cannot simply count names to ascertain the reduction in fighting strength of the army as some of those sent home were non-combatants, but the incomplete nature of the records of the sick and the identifiable losses to some companies do not support her conclusion that Henry V still had “at least” 8680 soldiers (“a minimum” 8732, p. 187) with him on his march to Calais.

27 W&W, ii, p. 66 n. 5, 67-8; ODNB; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, nos 654-71; MS Mowbray fo. 23. The medicines were all supplied in October 1415. For Arundel, see above, pp. 20, 33-4, 45.

28 W&W, ii, pp. 45-6; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, nos 302-5, 359-69, 441-51, 452-9, 460-1, 654-71. William Botiller, lord of Warrington, died on 26 September; Sir John Southworth on 5 October: Abstracts of Inquisitions Post Mortem, made by Christopher Towneley and Roger Dodsworth, ed. by William Langton (Chetham Society, Manchester, 1875), pp. 112-14, 117.

29 Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 136; W&W, i, p. 3 n. 10; ii, p. 46 n. 6; Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem, nos 359-69. Ken Mourin, “Norwich, Norfolk and Sir Thomas Erpingham,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 80-1.

30 Monstrelet, iii, p. 85.

31 W&W, ii, p. 67 and n. 7; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” pp. 131-2, 139; MS E101/47/29, TNA.

32 Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem: 1413-1418, no. 343; GHQ, pp. 58-9.

33 Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” pp. 128, 130; Allmand, Henry V, p. 212.

34 Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 112 n. 1; Forty-Fourth Annual Report, p. 577; Anthony Smith, “‘The Greatest Man of That Age’: The Acquisition of Sir John Fastolf’s East Anglian Estates,” in Archer and Walker (eds), Rulers and Ruled, pp. 137-8.

35 GHQ, pp. 58-9; W&W, ii, p. 62 n. 8; Devon, pp. 345, 349.

36 Curry, p. 445; Registres de la Jurade, p. 257.

37 GHQ, pp. 58-9. Some of the ships had been released after six weeks’ service: that is, on 12 September, ten days before the capitulation of Harfleur. See, for example, Foedera, ix, p. 315.

CHAPTER TWELVE: THE MARCH TO CALAIS

1 GHQ, p. 60.

2 GHQ, p. 58 n. 5; le Févre, i, p. 229; First English Life, pp. 42-3; Curry, pp. 429-30; Bacquet, p. 110.

3 GHQ, p. 61. For Fusoris, see above, pp. 122-3, 164-5.

4 See above, p. 33.

5 Pizan, BDAC, pp. 37-8.

6 Ibid., p. 38 n. 50.

7 Norbert Ohler, The Medieval Traveller, trans. by Caroline Hillier (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1989), p. 98; Pizan, BDAC, p. 50 n. 72. The English chaplain (GHQ, pp. 60-1) believed that Calais was only 100 miles away (it was actually 150 miles away), but his mistake was not shared by the king.

8 GHQ, p. 61.

9 W&W, ii, p. 88 n. 3; St Albans, p. 93; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 114; GHQ, pp. 60-1. Those French chroniclers who attempted to give a date generally referred to “the first week in October”: see, for example, Cagny, Chroniques, p. 97.

10 C. R. Cheney (ed), Handbook of Dates for Students of English History (Royal Historical Society, London, 1978), pp. 1-2. The Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar throughout Christendom in 1582.

11 Ibid., pp. 3-6.

12 Ibid., pp. 12-13, 65-9. An added complication of using regnal years was that sometimes a moveable feast, such as Easter, either dropped out of a regnal year altogether, or occurred twice.

13 Monstrelet, iii, p. 103.

14 Cheney (ed), Handbook of Dates for Students of English History, p. 9; Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540: the Medieval Experience, pp. 154-5.

15 Ibid., pp. 155-6; Cheney (ed), Handbook of Dates for Students of English History, p. 9; Geddes, “Iron,” in Blair and Ramsay (eds), English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, pp. 178-9.

16 GHQ, p. 61; Cheney (ed), Handbook of Dates for Students of English History, p. 80.

17 W&W, ii, pp. 88ff. prefer the alternative dating, starting on 6 October, but for confirmation of 8 October, see below, n. 26.

18 W&W, ii, pp. 88-9. The fact that the English army was able to take the Montivilliers road indicates that the floods in the Lézarde valley had now disappeared completely: Henry must have breached his own dam and opened the sluices in Harfleur because he needed to re-establish the water supply on taking the town.

19 Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, p. 245. Curry, pp. 430-1, argues convincingly that reassignment to new retinues explains the difference in personnel that sometimes occurs between muster rolls and retinue lists. This is a more credible explanation than that the retinues were brought up to full strength by the recruitment of new men, as she suggests in Curry, Agincourt: A New History, pp. 130-1.

20 Curry, pp. 433-4. If the retinues of the dukes of Clarence and York had taken their allotted quota of horses in full, according to the terms of their indentures, Clarence would have set out with 1798, York with 646; they returned home with only 1225 and 282, respectively. York’s losses, at almost exactly half, were proportionately higher than Clarence’s, at just under a third. The earl of Oxford would bring home only half the horses reserved for his personal use, together with six horses to pull his carts; his thirty-nine men-at-arms still had sixty-nine horses between them but his eighty-four archers had only thirty-seven. The earl marshal, on the other hand, shipped home his full personal complement of twenty-four horses, all of which had survived siege, march and battle.

21 Foedera, ix, pp. 314-15. Bardolf, perhaps mistakenly, believed that the “notable knight” (that is, the sire de Laurois) was acting under the authority of the sire de Laviéville.

22 Bacquet, pp. 109-10; Monstrelet, iii, p. 78.

23 St-Denys, v, p. 550; Bacquet, p. 101.

24 Ibid., pp. 110-11; W&W, ii, pp. 110-11.

25 Nicholas Wright, Knights and Peasants: The Hundred Years War in the French Countryside (Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 57, 97. The underground city of Naours is now open to guided tourist visits: my description which follows is based on such a visit and the information provided on site.

26 GHQ, pp. 60-1; Nicolas, p. 361; W&W, ii, p. 90 nn. 9-10. One of the archers was called Robert Roger; the other, together with the esquire, was from the retinue of the earl of Suffolk who had died at the siege of Harfleur: according to the exchequer accounts, this ambush took place on 8 October, confirming that this was the actual date that the march began.

27 First English Life, p. 42.

28 Chronicles of London, pp. 117, 304; Nicolas, p. 361; W&W, ii, pp. 91-2, 91 nn. 4-7, 92 n. 3. According to a plaque in the abbey church, Estold d’Estouteville was abbot of Fécamp 1390-1423 and was buried in the nave.

29 Registres de la Jurade, p. 257. See above, pp. 213-4 and, for Bordiu, p. 180.

30 GHQ, pp. 60-3.

31 Le Févre, i, pp. 231-2; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 95-6; First English Life, pp. 43-4; GHQ, pp. 62-3.

32 Ibid.

33 See, for example, le Févre, i, p. 231; Thomas Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, ed. and trans. by Charles Samaran (Société d’Édition “les Belles Lettres,” Paris, 1933), i, p. 38.

34 GHQ, p. 65.

35 Vaughan, pp. 203-4. For the Cabochien revolt of 1413, see above, p. 56.

36 Vaughan, p. 204.

37 Ibid.

38 See above, pp. 96-7. For the proposed Anglo-Burgundian alliance of 1414, see above, pp. 66-7.

39 Vaughan, pp. 147, 199; W&W, ii, p. 394 and n. 4. The Armagnac duke of Bar, who was killed at Agincourt, also employed English mercenaries, and a hundred archers were still nominally in his pay more than three weeks after the battle: ibid., ii, p. 180 n. 1.

40 W&W, i, p. 416; le Févre, i, p. 251; Waurin, i, p. 205; Foedera, ix, p. 304; W&W, ii, p. 106 n. 1.

41 W&W, ii, p. 101; Bourgeois, pp. 62-4; Morosini, Chronique, i, p. 64.

42 W&W, ii, p. 103; St-Denys, v, p. 546. Even if the duke had sent the aid he promised, it was already too late for Harfleur, which had surrendered two days before he replied to the dauphin.

43 Monstrelet, iii, p. 90.

44 W&W, ii, pp. 52-3, 52 n. 11, 53 n. 1; Monstrelet, iii, p. 90.

45 Ibid., iii, pp. 90-3. This letter, which is given as an example, was addressed to Philippe d’Auxy, bailli of Amiens, who, together with his son and his two brothers, was killed at Agincourt: ibid., iii, p. 113.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: CROSSING THE SOMME

1 Bacquet, p. 110.

2 Le Févre, i, pp. 232-3; GHQ, p. 64-5; Waurin, i, p. 189, says that the story of the Gascon prisoner which follows was told him by le Févre, “who had been present throughout this campaign.”

3 Ibid.; le Févre, i, p. 232. The coast as far as Cap Gris-Nez is clearly visible from the road between St Valery-en-Caux and Veules-les-Roses and from the long stretch between Eu and Ault.

4 Ibid.; GHQ, pp. 64-7; W&W, ii, p. 112; Cagny, Chroniques, pp. 97-8.

5 GHQ, p. 67; Monstrelet, iii, p. 96.

6 GHQ, p. 67. Despite having put patriotism before party, Vaudémont was killed at Agincourt.

7 Ibid., pp. 68-9; Bouvier, pp. 69-70, 69 n. 5.

8 GHQ, pp. 68-9; le Févre, i, p. 234.

9 Ibid.

10 W&W, ii, pp. 115-16; Nicolas, pp. 351, 374; GHQ, pp. 68-9; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 96-7. It is unlikely that Bourchier was involved in this skirmish as he had been assigned to the garrison of Harfleur: see above, pp. 236-7.

11 GHQ, pp. 68-71. The chaplain attributes the idea to the king, which seems most probable, but later English sources attribute it to the duke of York: see First English Life, p. 55; Brut, ii, pp. 378, 554-5.

12 Rogers, “The Age of the Hundred Years War,” in Keen, MW, pp. 137-42; Matthew Bennett, “The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War,” in Curry and Hughes, pp. 15-16; Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421), pp. 58-72.

13 W&W, ii, p. 116. Henry’s decision to cut across to Nesle must have been taken after his arrival at Corbie, as it would have been quicker and easier to have gone there straight from Boves.

14 GHQ, p. 69.

15 St Albans, p. 93; GHQ, pp. 70-1; le Févre, i, p. 234.

16 Henry did not burn the villages but this does not prove that the location of the fords was betrayed to him by a local inhabitant; once he had found the crossings, his priority was to secure them and get his men across safely. He would have had neither the time nor the manpower to carry out his threat.

17 GHQ, pp. 71-3.

18 Ibid.; le Févre, i, p. 235; Waurin, i, pp. 193-4; Vegetius warned that armies were often caught in a trap at river crossings as a result of delays caused by the baggage-train: Pizan, BDAC, p. 38 n. 49. At Voyennes, the land rises steeply up the northern bank to a small plateau which would have been the obvious place for the vanguard to set up their bridgehead overlooking the crossing: at Béthencourt, the land on either side does not rise above the level of the river, suggesting that this would have been an easier route for the baggage carts. The Canal de la Somme, running alongside the river, has drained the marshes and reduced the flow in the river itself. Even so, the river is still wide, deep and fast-flowing, particularly at Béthencourt, with pools and submerged trees on either bank indicating the extent of the original marshes and giving an idea of how difficult it must have been to effect the crossings.

19 GHQ, pp. 72-3; le Févre, i, p. 235.

20 GHQ, p. 73.

21 Ibid., p. 75.

22 Le Févre, i, p. 236.

23 See above, p. 179.

24 Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421), p. 94.

25 Le Févre, i, pp. 236-7. GHQ, p. 74 n. 4, following W&W, ii, p. 125, identifies two of the heralds as Jacques, sire de Heilly and Jean, sire de Graville, but this is a confusion with their different embassy to Henry V on the morning of 25 October (see below, pp. 272-4ff). Le Févre and GHQidentify the three messengers of 20 October as “officiers d’armes” and “haraldos” respectively; de Heilly and de Graville were both laymen. Curry, Agincourt: A New History, pp. 158-9, 161, 170-1, 248-9, argues that Henry V agreed to do battle at Aubigny on 24 October 1415 then reneged on his promise, but this story appears only in Bouvier, pp. 66-7, a devoted servant of Charles VII, who was writing forty years after the event. It is improbable that Henry V, who was punctilious in his observance of the law of arms, would have commited such a flagrant breach of protocol, or that such a breach would have passed unnoticed by his contemporaries.

26 GHQ, pp. 74-5; le Févre, i, p. 237.

27 GHQ, pp. 74-7, esp. p. 77; W&W, ii, p. 127 n. 2.

28 There is an unbearable poignancy in following this route today: the front line in 1916 lay between Péronne, Albert and Miraumont, and there are cemeteries and memorials to the British, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand dead seemingly by every ridge, village and roadside.

29 Le Févre, i, pp. 240-1. The reason for Henry’s refusal to retrace his steps is completely misunderstood in W&W, ii, p. 128 (which wrongly places Henry at Blangy for the night of 23 October) and also in Curry, Agincourt: A New History, p. 166.

30 Le Févre, i, p. 242; GHQ, p. 77.

31 Vaughan, pp. 207-8, who nevertheless believes that the duke did intend to join the campaign against the English. For the duke’s itinerary between 1 September and 24 October (when he was at Fleury-sur-Ouche), see W&W, ii, p. 106 n. 2.

32 For the justification for this claim, see above, pp. 188, 229-30.

33 Gilles de Roye, “Chronique, avec les Additions d’Adrien de But,” Chroniques Relatives à l’Histoire de la Belgique sous la Domination des Ducs de Bourgogne, ed. by Kervyn de Lettenhove (Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et de Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, 1870), i, p. 168; le Févre, i, pp. 238-40; Waurin, i, pp. 197-8.

34 Foedera, ix, pp. 297, 309; W&W, ii, p. 122 n. 9.

35 Cagny, Chroniques, pp. 101-2.

36 Waurin, i, p. 197; Bouvier, p. 67.

37 Nicolas de Baye, Journal de Nicolas de Baye, ed. by Alexandre Tuetey (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1888), ii, pp. 231-2; St-Denys, v, pp. 586-8.

38 Pizan, BDAC, pp. 21-2.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE EVE OF BATTLE

1 GHQ, p. 79; Curry, p. 69; le Févre, i, p. 242; MS C1/68/213, TNA.

2 GHQ, p. 79.

3 Even the venerable W&W, ii, pp. 131-2, 207-10, while drawing attention to the more fanciful descriptions of previous historians, believed that the site was unchanged. Modern military historians and television documentaries frequently make the same mistake, as does the entertaining but far too Shakespeare-reliant Centre Historique Médiévale at Azincourt.

4 GHQ, pp. 74, 79. The “very little valley,” which is no more than a long depression in the ground, can still be seen running parallel to the D104; the “certain wood” to the left of the English line is the woodland round Tramecourt. At this point the two armies were at right angles to their final positions.

5 Waurin, i, p. 211, claims that the space between the woods was so narrow that only the French men-at-arms could be deployed; there was not room for the bowmen.

6 Le Févre, i, p. 242, says that d’Albret did not arrive until later that evening, suggesting that Boucicaut alone was in charge at this stage. Waurin, who was in the French army, does not mention d’Albret’s arrival, late or otherwise.

7 Bacquet, p. 102; Pizan, BDAC, p. 22.

8 Ibid., pp. 55, 53-4.

9 Monstrelet, iii, p. 102; W&W, ii, p. 130 n. 3.

10 GHQ, p. 81; le Févre, i, p. 243; Brut, ii, pp. 377-8; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 121.

11 Le Févre, i, p. 243. W&W, ii, p. 141 and n. 1 wrongly translate this to mean that the prisoners should return to the king “with their masters” rather than “and to their masters,” that is, to those who had captured them.

12 Bacquet, p. 93; Waurin, i, p. 244.

13 See, for example, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. with an introduction by Helen M. Mustard and Charles E. Passage (Vintage Books, New York, 1961), pp. 94, 125, 139, 166 and 127.

14 Curry, p. 69.

15 GHQ, pp. 83, 87. For the long-running dispute about where the archers were placed, see W&W, ii, pp. 148-50; Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, pp. 129-30; Matthew Bennett, “The Battle,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 24-32; Strickland and Hardy, pp. 306-10.

16 Le Févre, i, pp. 244-5; Waurin, i, p. 203.

17 See below, pp. 261-2, 266-7.

18 Brut, ii, p. 378; GHQ, pp. 82-3 and 82 nn. 3 and 4. Waurin, ii, p. 199, following Monstrelet, iii, p. 100, puts the duke in charge of the vanguard as early as 22 October, but le Févre, i, p. 241, who relates the same incident and was in the English army, does not make that mistake. The choice of Camoys is puzzling as he was not yet a Garter knight and his military career had been undistinguished: see ODNB.

19 Bacquet, p. 104.

20 C. Philpotts, “The French Plan of Battle During the Agincourt Campaign,” English Historical Review, xcix (1984), pp. 59-66; Allmand (ed), Society at War, pp. 194-5. This document detailing in writing not only the deployment of the French army but also the tactics to be adopted is one of only two medieval battle plans to have survived. The other extant plan was drawn up by John the Fearless on 17 September 1417 as he was approaching Armagnac-held Paris; it is given in full in Vaughan, pp. 148-50.

21 Despite being master of the crossbowmen of France, de Rambures did not personally lead them into battle. In 1411 his predecessor in the post had been forced to concede to Marshal Boucicaut the right to muster and review archers and cannoneers, and to have jurisdiction over them (Strickland and Hardy, p. 330). At Agincourt de Rambures fought in the vanguard with the other royal officers (see above, p. 265).

22 Louis de Bourdon’s name is variously given as Bourbon, Boisredon and Bosredon in the different sources. He is not to be confused with Louis de Bourbon, count of Vendôme.

23 Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, p. 124.

24 Despite this absence of evidence, Curry asserts that the French army was only c.12,000 strong (as against c.9000 English), a figure she is unable to substantiate. While contemporaries vary wildly in their estimates of numbers, all agree that the French greatly outnumbered the English and that this was a contributory factor in their defeat. Although they also agree that French casualties were very high, not one of them goes so far as to suggest that half of all the French forces at the battle were killed, which follows inevitably from Curry’s figures since she accepts that the dead numbered c.6000. Such a proportion of fatalities is unrealistic in a medieval battle. See Curry, Agincourt: A New History, pp. 187, 192, 233, 248.

25 Bacquet, pp. 101, 104. Juvénal des Ursins, a dedicated Armagnac, even went so far as to suggest that there were 8000 Frenchmen in the vanguard and main battle, but claimed that they were defeated by an English army 20,000-22,000 strong! There is a useful table giving the various chroniclers’ estimates of numbers in both armies and of the dead on each side in Curry, p. 12, but it should be used with caution, as some of the figures (for example, those given for Morosini) are not accurate and others do not distinguish between the numbers of English who invaded and those present at the battle.

26 GHQ, p. 94; le Févre, i, p. 247; Waurin, i, pp. 206-7. Waurin’s actual numbers add up to 28,400 but a rearguard of 7600 seems appropriate, given the size of the other battles.

27 Bradbury, The Medieval Archer, pp. 127-8; le Févre, i, pp. 247-8; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 103-4.

28 St-Denys, v, p. 558; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 103-4; Bouvier, p. 69; Bacquet, pp. 103-4. Fenin, Mémoires, p. 64.

29 Waurin, i, p. 206; le Févre, i, p. 248; St-Denys, v, p. 562; Bouvier, pp. 68-9. Monstrelet, iii, pp. 103-4, is alone in attributing the leadership of this wing to Guichard Dauphin but his text is obviously corrupt and unreliable at this point: Waurin and le Févre both correct this to Vendôme.

30 Bouvier, pp. 68-9; St-Denys, v, p. 560.

31 St-Denys, v, p. 560; Monstrelet, iii, p. 104; le Févre, i, pp. 85, 102, 105, 248, 288; Waurin, i, pp. 206, 213.

32 Bacquet, pp. 112-13. This account of Agincourt, in a court case of 1460, makes it clear that Bouvier, p. 69, is right in saying that the count of Marle and his company were in the main battle, not in the rearguard as in Monstrelet, iii, p. 104, Waurin, i, p. 206 and le Févre, i, p. 248.

33 GHQ, p. 81; Fenin, Mémoires, p. 64; Allmand (ed), Society at War, p. 195.

34 Le Févre, i, p. 248, using the phrase “tout le surplus des gens de guerre.” Gens de guerre is a general term, meaning all soldiers; it is different from gens d’armes or hommes d’armes, which specifically refers to men-at-arms.

35 St-Denys, v, p. 548.

36 Ibid., v, pp. 558-60; Waurin, i, p. 206; W&W, ii, p. 53. The decision was not without precedent. Jean II had similarly dismissed most of the “poorly equipped and ill-disciplined foot-soldiers raised by the arrière ban” before the battle of Poitiers (1356) on the grounds that their presence at Crécy (1346) had hampered the more professional troops and contributed to the defeat. See Strickland and Hardy, p. 234.

37 See above, pp. 59-60.

38 GHQ, pp. 81-3.

39 Ibid., pp. 82-3; le Févre, i, p. 244.

40 It was customary practice to draw the wagons into a circle behind the lines, forming an enclosure with a single entrance that could be more easily protected from enemy attack. The horses of all of the dismounted men and the non-combatants sheltered within this laager. See Strickland and Hardy, p. 225.

41 Le Févre, i, p. 245 and n. 1. Certain manuscripts of this chronicle also add the banner of the Virgin Mary; this is also implied in GHQ, pp. 66-7, which refers to the army being under the protection of “the Glorious Virgin and the Blessed George.” See also above, pp. 235, 240.

42 Le Févre, i, p. 253. Sir John Holland was allowed to use his standard as earl of Huntingdon, even though he was not yet fully restored to the earldom. See below, p. 344.

43 Pizan, BDAC, pp. 152-3.

44 Le Févre, i, pp. 245-6, 251. Curry, p. 158, wrongly translates this as “victory over your enemies” instead of “our enemies,” a subtle but important difference of emphasis. Medieval archers, unlike modern ones, used only two fingers to draw their bows. Sir James Douglas (d. 1330), Robert the Bruce’s lieutenant, was reputed to cut off the right hand or put out the right eye of any captured enemy archer, but it had been standard practice for centuries simply to execute them. See Strickland and Hardy, pp. 181, 79. After the English victory at Agincourt, the archers are said to have taunted the defeated French by sticking their two bowstring fingers up at them, a gesture which is still used vulgarly in England today to express contempt.

45 Bouvier, pp. 67-8; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 118; Capgrave, p. 132; Baye, Journal, pp. 224-5; W&W, i, pp. 135-6, 136 n. 1; ii, p. 125 n. 6. An investigation into the escape was ordered on 26 October 1415: CPR, p. 410. De Heilly had previously been captured fighting for the Scots at Homildon Hill (1402) but had been ransomed and released: Wylie, History of England under Henry IV, i, p. 293; ii, p. 61.

46 First English Life, pp. 57-8.

47 Le Févre, i, p. 251; St-Denys, v, p. 554; Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, i, p. 41. W&W, ii, pp. 132-3 place this parley the night before the battle and take the French accounts at face value.

48 Le Févre, i, p. 251.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: “FELAS, LETS GO!”

1 Bennett, “The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War,” p. 11. See also Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, ed. by Léon Lecestre (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1889), ii, p. 63, where de Bueil applies this dictum to Agincourt.

2 Le Févre, i, pp. 252-3; Bacquet, p. 93.

3 GHQ, p. 82; St-Denys, v, p. 558.

4 GHQ, pp. 85-7.

5 Curry, p. 72; Brut, ii, p. 555.

6 For Erpingham’s career, see Curry, “Sir Thomas Erpingham: A Life in Arms,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 53-77.

7 Brut, ii, pp. 378, 555, 596; le Févre, i, p. 253; An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. Written Before the Year 1471, ed. by Rev. John Silvester Davies, Camden Society, 64 (1856), p. 41; Allmand, Henry V, p. 91 n. 17.

8 Guillaume Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, Connétable de France, Duc de Bretagne (1393-1458), ed. by Achille le Vavasseur (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1890), p. 17; St-Denys, v, p. 560; Bouvier, pp. 70-1.

9 Waurin, i, p. 213; GHQ, pp. 86-7.

10 Waurin, i, pp. 206, 213; Monstrelet, iii, p. 255.

11 The word is variously given as “nesciecque,” “nestrotque” and “nestroque” in French sources; it has been translated as “I do not know what” (that is, that Monstrelet, the reporter, did not know what Erpingham said), “Knee! Stretch!,” the option favoured by W&W, ii, p. 156, and taken to be a command to the archers to shoot because they bent their knees when they did so, or, my own preferred option, “Now strike!,” which seems the most logical command. Erpingham’s Norfolk accent clearly confounded his auditors. See Monstrelet, iii, p. 106 and n. 1; Waurin, i, p. 212; le Févre, i, p. 253; W&W, ii, p. 156 n. 6. All three chroniclers have Erpingham give his signal before the English moved to their new position, so it may have been a general order to advance rather than a command to fire.

12 St-Denys, v, p. 560; GHQ, pp. 86-7; Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, p. 17; Alain Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, ed. by Marie-Louise Auger and Gustave Jeanneau (Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, 1986), ii, p. 253; “Chronique de Normandie de l’an 1414 à 1422,” in Henrici Quinti, Angliae Regis, Gesta, p. 219.

13 Bouvier, p. 70 and n. 3; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 116, 118 n. 5.

14 Le Févre, i, pp. 198-9, 248, 309, 323, 330; Monstrelet, iii, p. 128. It is possible that Guillaume was the father, rather than the brother, of Hector and Philippe de Saveuses. Neither Hector nor Philippe took any further part in the battle after the death of their brother and, immediately afterwards, they were among those personally summoned to join the army that the duke of Burgundy was preparing for his march on Paris. Both men took a leading role in John the Fearless’s attempts to seize the city and in its eventual capture in 1418.

15 Le Févre, i, pp. 205-6, 42. At Montendre in Aquitaine in 1402, de Brabant had also taken part in a combat of seven Frenchmen against seven English, celebrated in three ballads by Christine de Pizan: Bouvier, pp. 9-10 and 9 nn. 1 and 2.

16 Ibid., p. 21 and n. 3.

17 Ibid., p. 124 and n. 3. Katherine, Pierre de Giac’s widow, was the daughter and heiress of Jean, sire de l’Île Bouchard, who was killed at Agincourt; her second husband, Hugues de Chalon, count of Tonnerre (Pierre de Giac was her third), was killed fighting against the English at the battle of Verneuil in 1424.

18 Ferry de Mailly was a Burgundian and close associate of the de Saveuses brothers: le Févre, i, pp. 248, 271, 275-6, 297, 327; Monstrelet, iii, p. 128.

19 But see below, p. 293.

20 Bouvier, p. 70. The fact that so many of them did escape capture or death appears to contradict the monk’s claim that it was their men who turned tail and fled, abandoning their leaders to their fate: St-Denys, v, p. 560.

21 Monstrelet, iii, p. 105; le Févre, i, pp. 250-1.

22 GHQ, pp. 86-7; W&W, ii, p. 159 n. 4. In Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, i, p. 244, he is called Roger Hart.

23 Le Févre, i, p. 154.

24 David Nicolle, French Armies of the Hundred Years War (Osprey, Oxford, 2000, repr. 2002), pp. 18, 21; The Beauchamp Pageant, p. 65.

25 GHQ, p. 89. The “iron furnace” is a biblical reference (Deuteronomy 4.20) to Egypt and the slavery of the Israelites there.

26 Ibid., pp. 88-9; le Févre, i, p. 256.

27 GHQ, pp. 89, 91.

28 Ibid., pp. 90-1. Suffocation in similar circumstances was the main cause of death among the Scots at the battle of Dupplin Moor (1332) against the English. As at Agincourt, the losses were almost entirely on one side and the dead “fell in a remarkable way in a great heap.” See Strickland and Hardy, pp. 184-5, 266.

29 Le Févre, i, pp. 249-50. Jehan de Croy, a leading Burgundian and grand butler of France, and his sons, Jehan and Archembaut, were all killed at Agincourt: Bacquet, pp. 77-8.

30 GHQ, p. 98; Curry, p. 62; St-Denys, v, pp. 570, 572; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 119-20. Both the acts of striking off part of Henry’s crown and wounding the duke of Gloucester, as well as killing the duke of York, were later falsely attributed to Jean, duke of Alençon. One of Charles d’Orléans’ closest friends, the thirty-year-old Alençon had been created a duke on 1 January 1415, in recognition of his services against the duke of Burgundy. Like Orléans, he had been one of the most eager to fight the English, throwing caution to the winds and himself into the combat with such ardour that his men were not able to keep up with him and he was struck down. According to later legend, he was killed by Henry’s bodyguard as he was in the very act of surrendering himself to the king. By one of those terrible ironies so often created by the complexities of medieval intermarriage, he was distantly related to the king, his mother-in-law, Joan of Navarre, being Henry V’s stepmother. As W&W, ii, pp. 165-6, point out, Alençon’s own family chroniclers did not attribute such feats of valour to him, but French pride demanded the creation of a suitable hero.

31 Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, p. 246; Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, p. 18; Waurin, i, pp. 217-18; le Févre, i, p. 260. A French knight, Jean Valentin, was wounded trying to come to the aid of Charles d’Orléans: Belleval, Azincourt, p. 335.

32 GHQ, pp. 90-3.

33 Pizan, BDAC, pp. 169-70.

34 GHQ, pp. 91-3.

35 Le Févre, i, p. 258.

36 Seward, Henry V as Warlord, p. 80, suggests that there were perhaps as many as three thousand.

37 Ghillebert de Lannoy, Oeuvres de Ghillebert de Lannoy: Voyageur, Diplomate et Moraliste, ed. by Ch. Potvin and J.-C. Houzeau (P. and J. Lefever, Louvain, 1878), pp. xii-xiv.

38 Ibid., pp. 49-50.

39 See, for example, W&W, ii, p. 172 and n. 11; Curry, p. 472.

40 The Portuguese similarly executed their prisoners at the battle of Aljubarotta (1385) when threatened by a Castilian rally. See Strickland and Hardy, p. 254.

41 St-Denys, v, p. 564; Lannoy, Oeuvres, p. 50. Ghillebert de Lannoy’s claim that it was the duke of Brabant’s arrival which prompted the killing of the prisoners is supported by at least two other chroniclers from opposite sides of the French political divide, but others are equally adamant that there was a genuine rally behind the lines. The fact that this was attributed in some sources to the leadership of Clignet de Brabant suggests that this might be where the confusion arose, as it was cries of “Brabant! Brabant!” which first alerted the English to the new danger and this war-cry was equally applicable to the duke and Clignet. The chaplain (GHQ, p. 91) is in no doubt about what he saw and heard: “a shout went up that the enemy’s mounted rearguard (in incomparable number and still fresh) were re-establishing their position and line of battle in order to launch an attack on us, few and weary as we were.” See also Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, p. 45; “Le Livre des Trahisons de France envers la Maison de Bourgogne,” in Chroniques Relatives à l’Histoire de la Belgique sous la Domination des Ducs de Bourgogne, ed. by M. le baron Kervyn de Lettenhove (Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Bruxelles, 1870), ii, p. 129.

42 Serge Boffa, “Antoine de Bourgogne et le Contingent Brabançon à la Bataille d’Azincourt (1415),” Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire, 72 (1994), pp. 259-62; Curry, pp. 172-3; Bacquet, pp. 93, 103.

43 See, for example, St-Denys, v, p. 564; Pierre de Fenin, Mémoires de Pierre Fenin, ed. by Mlle Dupont (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1837), p. 64.

44 Le Févre, i, p. 258. How the English archers obtained a new supply of arrows to carry out this bombardment is not explained, but it was standard practice to collect spent arrows from the battlefield during lulls in the fighting: see above, p. 379 n. 8.

45 Monstrelet, iii, p. 109; Waurin, i, pp. 215-16; le Févre, i, p. 257; Fenin, Mémoires, pp. 64-5; Bacquet, pp. 93-4.

46 See above, p. 262.

47 GHQ, p. 85; Foedera, ix, pp. 356-7.

48 Ibid.; Bacquet, p. 94; Fenin, Mémoires, pp. 64-5; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 109-10.

49 Curry, p. 72; le Févre, i, pp. 267-8.

50 Monstrelet, iii, p. 111. W&W, ii, p. 178, misunderstand the reason for Montjoie’s presence, believing him to be an English prisoner.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE ROLL OF THE DEAD

1 St Albans, p. 96; GHQ, pp. 95-7; Morosini, Chronique, ii, p. 85. Morosini actually lists twenty-seven dead barons, but his names are garbled and, in some cases, demonstrably wrong. The table in Curry, p. 12, should be treated with caution, as it does not distinguish between numbers of armigerous dead and overall figures that include commoners.

2 Le Févre, i, p. 258. The same number is given by Waurin, i, p. 217, but the two chronicles are interdependent and heavily reliant on Monstrelet, iii, p. 110, who gives six hundred dead, which is still probably too high a total, but which suggests that their sixteen hundred is a manuscript misreading for his lower figure.

3 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 67.

4 ODNB; Foedera, ix, p. 309.

5 Ibid., ix, pp. 307-9; Marks and Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, p. 439 no. 327.

6 Edward, duke of York, The Master of Game by Edward, Second Duke of York, ed. by W. A. and F. Baillie-Grohman (Chatto and Windus, London, 1909), p. 1. See ibid., pp. 2-3, for his quotation from Chaucer’s The Twenty-Five Good Women.

7 Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk, Appx. iii, p. 266.

8 Edward, duke of York, The Master of Game, pp. 8-9, 11-12.

9 See, for instance, Seward, Henry V as Warlord, p. 79. W&W, ii, p. 187 n. 5, point out that the description of the duke as “a fatte man” originates with John Leland’s Itinerary, compiled in the 1530s and 1540s.

10 Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” in HVPK, p. 41.

11 W&W, ii, p. 186 n. 5. He lost almost exactly half his horses too: see above, p. 410, n. 18.

12 See below, p. 307.

13 Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 128. Thomas, Lord Camoys, for example, who led the English left wing, lost none of the twenty-six men-at-arms and fifty-five archers who accompanied him into battle. John Holland, the future earl of Huntingdon, lost only four archers (plus one who died afterwards at Calais) and one man-at-arms out of a combined company of eighty: ibid., pp. 128-9, 134.

14 W&W, ii, p. 185 n. 3, 188 n. 4; Beamont, Annals of the Lords of Warrington, i, pp. 244-5; Abstracts of Inquisitions Post Mortem, p. 116; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 134 n. 1. Harington additionally lost from his personal retinue the archer Roger Hunt, who was killed by a gun in the battle: see above, p. 284. Another leader of a contingent of fifty Lancashire archers, Sir William Botiller, also died at Harfleur, leaving his men leaderless, but their fate is not recorded: see above, p. 204.

15 The only other named man-at-arms killed at Agincourt, apart from those mentioned in the text, is Sir John Skidmore, who had indented to serve himself, with three men-at-arms and twelve archers: Usk, p. 126, is the only source to mention that he was killed in the battle. For his retinue, see MS E101/45/5, TNA; Nicolas, p. 384.

16 ODNB; St Albans, pp. 61, 67.

17 W&W, ii, pp. 188-9, 188 n. 7, 189 n. 4, 218; Wylie, “Notes on the Agincourt Roll,” p. 135. Vaughan’s funeral effigy, wearing his Lancastrian SS collar, is in the chancel of Bredwardine church, near Hereford. Watkin Lloyd took only one mounted archer with him, which I take to be the meaning of Jeuan Ferour “cum equo cum Watkin Lloyd,” not that Lloyd was Ferour’s groom, one of the alternatives suggested by Hardy, “The Longbow,” p. 163.

18 Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, ii, p. 254.

19 Ibid., iii, pp. 112-13, 113 n. 1, 119-20; le Févre, i, p. 265. W&W, ii, p. 182, add the count of Dammartin, but see below, p. 311.

20 Monstrelet, iii, p. 118. The corruption of Monstrelet’s text makes it impossible to give a definitive figure, as family names are sometimes given with titles and sometimes without, making it difficult to identify them as one or two people.

21 W&W, ii, p. 222, suggest this was a Burgundian institution, but see Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, pp. 137-8.

22 W&W, ii, p. 222; St-Denys, v, p. 572; Bacquet, p. 105. His nephew, Charles de Montaigu, sire de Marcoussis, was also killed in the battle: St Denys, v, p. 572.

23 See, for example, Monstrelet, iii, pp. 114-18, 117 nn. 3 and 7, 118 n. 5; le Févre, i, p. 267.

24 Nicolas, p. 375.

25 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 113-15, 117; Bacquet, pp. 76-81.

26 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 113, 116, 114; Bourgeois, p. 79; http:// gilles. mailet. free. fr/ histoire/recit/recit_duche_et_comte_de bourgogn.htm; http:// membres. lycos.fr/valsoleil/hellandes/histoire_du_fief_de_hellande.htm. For the bailli of Evreux, Pierre de Hellenvillier, see below, p. 312. Robin de Hellande, the bailli of Rouen, was captured but died of his wounds on 15 December 1415: see below, p. 343.

27 Bacquet, pp. 76-8, 80; www.defense.gouv.fr/gendarmerie/lexique/ aafcbcbefbf. htm; www.ville-auchydeshesdin.fr/default_zone/fr/html/ page-77. html.

28 See below, p. 356.

29 Monstrelet, iii, p. 112; Bouvier, p. 20 n. 3; St-Denys, v, p. 572.

30 Bouvier, pp. 68-9 and 68 nn. 4 and 5; Baye, Journal, ii, p. 224 and n. 1.

31 St-Denys, v, p. 570; le Févre, i, p. 242.

32 Monstrelet, iii, p. 118 n. 5; www2.ac-lille.fr/fjoliot-calonne/calonnort/ historiqueCalonne.htm; le Févre, i, 266; http://perso.wanadoo.fr/ jean-claude. colrat/enigmes.htm; Liste.

33 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 118 n. 5, 120 and n. 2; Liste; http:// jarnou. free.fr/ degribauval.htm.

34 Liste; http://jarnou.free.fr/site078.htm; http://pascale.olivaux.free.fr/ Histoire/Pages/Picardie.htm; Monstrelet, iii, p. 113.

35 http://jeulin.chez.tiscali.fr/Normandie/Mesnieres/histoire/MesnBois.htm; Baye, Journal, i, pp. 95 n. 1, 98.

36 On 6 December 1415, “Theobaldus Chauntemarle,” a prisoner, and two servants, were among a group of Frenchmen given safe-conducts to return to France to negotiate their ransoms. Perhaps he was unsuccessful and had to return to England, or died before he set off: Foedera, ix, p. 323.

37 http://jeulin.chez.tiscali.fr/Normandie/Mesnieres/histoire/MesnBois.htm.

38 Siméon Luce, La France Pendant la Guerre du Cent Ans: Épisodes Historiques et Vie Privée aux XIVe et XVe Siècles (Libraire Hachette et Cie., Paris, 1904), pp. 150, 166-70, 174-5.

39 Le Févre, i, pp. 266, 265, 248; Bouvier, pp. 68-9, 69 n. 1; Monstrelet, iii, p. 113; Allmand (ed), Society at War, p. 25.

40 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 104, 124; Luce, La France Pendant la Guerre du Cent Ans, pp. 176-7.

41 Ibid., pp. 183-8, 190-3; St-Denys, v, pp. 310-12.

42 www.ville-auchyleshesdin.fr/default_zone/fr/html/page-77.html. Their burial site was lost when the abbey was destroyed.

43 Curry, pp. 459-60.

44 Curry, p. 467. The petition was inspected under a vidimus of July 1416, by which date presumably nothing had changed.

45 Le Févre, i, p. 260; GHQ, p. 92.

46 Ibid., p. 93; le Févre, i, p. 260.

47 W&W, ii, pp. 176 n. 4, 220.

48 Bacquet, p. 95; le Févre, i, p. 260.

49 Ibid.; W&W, ii, p. 217 n. 6, quote other examples of this practice.

50 http://home.tiscali.be/lathuyfdlc/gen/pafg131.htm#2705; Bacquet, pp. 83, 84, 87.

51 Ibid., pp. 95-6, 83-4. The heralds’ list, which was preserved in the duke of Brabant’s library in Brussels, is reproduced in ibid., pp. 85-6.

52 Monstrelet, iii, p. 122; W&W, ii, p. 225. Monstrelet, and other Burgundian apologists, attribute the initiative to the charitable piety of Philippe, count of Charolais, son of John the Fearless, who was absent from the battle.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE RETURN OF THE KING

1 GHQ, p. 93.

2 Capgrave, p. 134; Brut, ii, p. 557; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 123; Keen, Chivalry, p. 47.

3 GHQ, p. 99.

4 W&W, ii, p. 190 n. 7; Bacquet, p. 103.

5 “Le Livre des Trahisons de France envers la Maison de Bourgogne,” p. 129; Basin, Histoire de Charles VII, i, p. 44; W&W, ii, p. 202 n. 4; St-Denys, v, pp. 558-60.

6 Le Févre, i, p. 261; Bacquet, pp. 94-5, 105.

7 St Albans, p. 97; le Févre, i, pp. 268-9; St-Denys, v, p. 574; Bacquet, p. 95; W&W, ii, p. 243 n. 8.

8 Curry, p. 63; le Févre, i, p. 263.

9 GHQ, pp. 98-100; le Févre, i, p. 260; Monstrelet, iii, pp. 111-12.

10 Le Févre, i, p. 261; Monstrelet, iii, p. 112; W&W, ii, p. 186 and nn. 2, 5.

11 Bacquet, p. 112.

12 Le Févre, i, pp. 261-2; W&W, ii, p. 248 and nn. 3, 4; Devon, p. 342. On 2 November 1415, the men of Falkenham in Suffolk were ordered to send ale and other victuals with all possible speed to Calais, “as it is well known that [the king] is now at Calais in person with his army”: CCR, p. 237.

13 See above, p. 117.

14 Le Févre, i, p. 263; W&W, ii, p. 248 and nn. 7, 8, 10.

15 Nicolas, Appx vi, p. 24. The names of twenty-four are given in W&W, ii, p. 252 n. 5. Jean, sire d’Estouteville, is not mentioned there, but it is clear from de Gaucourt’s account that the two men presented themselves to Henry V together.

16 http://membres.lycos.fr/valsoleil/hellandes/histoire_du_fief_de_hellande. htm; W&W, ii, p. 251 n. 9. The surviving nine prisoners were shipped to England in February 1417 and sent to the Fleet prison in London.

17 W&W, ii, pp. 251 n. 9, 252 n. 5; Devon, pp. 355-6. Peter Altobasse (d.1427), a Portuguese who was naturalised as an English citizen in 1420, was physician and clerk to the first three Lancastrian kings: Talbot and Hammond, The Medical Practitioners in Medieval England: A Biographical Register, pp. 246-7.

18 W&W, ii, p. 244 n. 3, p. 249 n. 6.

19 Ibid., ii, p. 249 n. 6; Devon, pp. 344-5.

20 GHQ, p. 100. De Gaucourt and the Harfleur prisoners clearly accompanied the king, since £40 11s 11d was paid by the treasurer of the king’s household for their expenses at Calais for five days only (that is, 11-16 November): they did not remain in Calais until 10 December, as suggested by GHQ, p. 100 n. 1, based on conflicting statements in W&W, ii, p. 252 nn. 4, 6.

21 Le Févre, i, p. 264; Monstrelet, iii, p. 125; St Albans, p. 97. Later chroniclers, such as the First English Life, p. 64, built upon these reports to glorify Henry’s insouciance in the face of danger and to denigrate the cowardice of the French, who were said to have been as afraid as they had been at Agincourt.

22 GHQ, p. 100; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 124; Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 (Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1987), pp. 479-81.

23 See above, p. 114.

24 GHQ, p. 100; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 124; Memorials of London and London Life, p. 621.

25 Ibid., pp. 621-2; Letter-Books, p. 144.

26 GHQ, p. 103; Usk, pp. 258-61.

27 Ibid.; Brut, ii, p. 558; le Févre, i, p. 264.

28 GHQ, p. 103; Usk, p. 261. The differing characters of the two men are also evident in the fact that Adam sees a lance, the chaplain only a baton, in the giant’s hand.

29 Ibid.; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” pp. 125-6; GHQ, pp. 104-5.

30 GHQ, p. 107; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 126.

31 GHQ, pp. 107-9; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” pp. 126-7.

32 GHQ, pp. 108-11; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 127; Usk, p. 261. “Glorious things of thee are spoken” is from Psalms 44.8.

33 Ibid., p. 261; W&W, ii, pp. 268-9, where, following later sources, the presentation is placed on the day after the king’s formal entry into London.

34 GHQ, pp. 110-13; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” pp. 127-8.

35 GHQ, p. 113; McLeod, p. 133. See also Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” pp. 128-9.

36 GHQ, p. 113; Elmham, “Liber Metricus,” p. 129; Usk, p. 263.

37 W&W, ii, p. 271 n. 5; Marks and Williamson (eds), Gothic Art for England 1400-1547, p. 439. The choir and the duke’s tomb were destroyed during the Reformation; the nave, built by Richard, duke of York, survived as the parish church. The existing memorial to the duke in the church was erected later in the sixteenth century. The remains of Michael de la Pole, the young earl of Suffolk, were likewise removed from London for their interment, probably at Wingfield in Suffolk, though legend has it that he was buried in a silver casket at Butley Abbey in Suffolk. I am grateful to Ian Chance for this information. W&W, ii, p. 274, wrongly assert that he was buried at Ewelme, Oxfordshire: the family connection with this church did not begin until William de la Pole married Alice Chaucer over a decade later.

38 Jacques Godard, “Quelques Précisions sur la Campagne d’Azincourt Tirées des Archives Municipales d’Amiens,” Bulletin Trimestre de la Société des Antiquaires de Picardie (1971), p. 134; Bacquet, p. 111.

39 Curry, p. 462; Godard, “Quelques Précisions sur la Campagne d’Azincourt Tirées des Archives Municipales d’Amiens,” p. 135.

40 St-Denys, v, p. 582.

41 W&W, ii, pp. 282-3.

42 Ibid., ii, pp. 281, 286-7; St-Denys, v, pp. 586-8; Baye, Journal, ii, pp. 231-2.

43 Vaughan, pp. 208-10; W&W, ii, pp. 293-4.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE REWARDS OF VICTORY

1 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, p. 62.

2 Ibid., pp. 63-4; GHQ, pp. 122-5; Harriss, “The Management of Parliament,” in HVPK, p. 147. The extraordinary and personal nature of the grant was reflected in the condition that it was not to establish a precedent for future kings.

3 Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, p. 281; ODNB; W&W, ii, pp. 238-9.

4 Allmand, Henry V, pp. 100-1.

5 Heath, Church and Realm 1272-1461, p. 281. St John’s bones had been translated twice, so his other feast day, 7 May, was also upgraded in the church calendar.

6 McKenna, “How God Became an Englishman,” pp. 35-6; GHQ, pp. xviii, xxiv, 181. The first of Henry’s three victories referred to by the chaplain was over the Lollards.

7 Ibid., pp. xxviii-xxix; Keen, The Pelican History of Medieval Europe, pp. 288ff.

8 GHQ, p. 17; Keen, “Diplomacy,” in HVPK, p. 195; Devon, p. 345.

9 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, pp. 100-1; ODNB; Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” pp. 36, 39.

10 Rotuli Parliamentorum, iv, p. 96; ODNB.

11 E358/6, TNA, is the final set of accounts for fifty-nine indentees, including the duke of York and Lord Camoys, to have survived. It records details of cash payments, jewels received in pledge, the value of war winnings and the numbers and status of men lost during the campaign and shipped home from Calais (with their horses) in each company.

12 POPC, ii, pp. 222-3, 225-7; Nicolas, Appx xi, pp. 50-2. The meeting was held on 6 March 1417.

13 Ibid., Appx xiii, pp. 55-8; Harriss, “The King and his Magnates,” p. 41.

14 Nicolas, pp. 171-2; Devon, p. 423. Clyff’s claim for wages alone would have amounted to £126, so he must have already received three-quarters of what the crown owed him.

15 Keen, Origins of the English Gentleman, p. 33. I am indebted to Maurice Keen for his personal comments on this case.

16 CPR, pp. 380, 385, 386, 395; Reeves, Lancastrian Englishmen, p. 94; Nicolas, Appx. xii, p. 54.

17 Nicolas, p. 174.

18 Ibid., pp. 170-1; Henry Paston-Bedingfield, “The Heralds at the Time of Agincourt,” in Curry, Agincourt 1415, pp. 136-7; Elizabeth Armstrong, “The Heraldry of Agincourt: Heraldic Insights into the Battle of Agincourt,” ibid., p. 132.

19 Gruel, Chronique d’Arthur de Richemont, pp. 19-20; M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (Eyre Methuen, London, 1974), p. 35.

20 Devon, pp. 344, 345; Foedera, ix, pp. 324, 337; Forty-Fourth Annual Report, p. 578; McLeod, p. 134; Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421), p. 171.

21 McLeod, pp. 145, 150; Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421), p. 171; W&W, ii, p. 253 n.1. Waterton kept a lavish household, spending more than £340 (the equivalent of $226,624 today) in 1416-17: C. M. Woolgar (ed), Household Accounts from Medieval England Part II, Records of Social and Economic History, New Series xviii, pp. 503-22.

22 By comparison with other countries, the English had a reputation for treating their prisoners well. The Spanish “know not how to show courtesy to their prisoners” and, like the Germans, were notorious for holding even aristocratic captives in shackles and fetters in order to obtain greater ransoms. French merchants who were unfortunate enough to be apprehended in Normandy in 1417 by English, Burgundian and French forces in succession complained that the Burgundians treated them worse than the English, and the French were more cruel than Saracens. Barber, The Knight and Chivalry, p. 206; Lewis, Later Medieval France: The Polity, p. 50.

23 Monstrelet, iii, pp. 120-1; http://tyreldepoix.free.fr/Site/Histoire.htm; Foedera, ix, p. 360; Bacquet, p. 112.

24 See above, pp. 73, 272-3. For twenty-two prisoners in the Tower who were “plegges” for prisoners released on licence in 1423, see POPC, iii, 11.

25 The very personal nature of his view of this obligation—and the extreme narrowness of its definition—was demonstrated two years later when Henry V died. Having spent seven years as the king’s prisoner, Richemont immediately returned to Brittany, considering himself to be released not only from his oath but also from his duty to pay a ransom. This was, by any standards, a highly debatable interpretation of the laws of war. Bouchart, Grandes Croniques de Bretaigne, pp. 271-2, 280.

26 Nicolas, Appx vi; Forty-Fourth Annual Report, p. 578.

27 Nicolas, Appx vi.

28 Forty-Fourth Annual Report, p. 586; Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (1399-1422), p. 164 no. 800; Foedera, ix, p. 430; W&W, ii, pp. 39-41.

29 Foedera, ix, pp. 424-6; Nicolas, Appx vi; Foedera, ix, p. 337; Stansfield, “John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon (d.1447) and the Costs of the Hundred Years War,” pp. 108-9. De Gaucourt returned to France once more to arrange a joint ransom of twenty thousand crowns, with authority from d’Estouteville to sell one of the latter’s estates to raise his share; instead, de Gaucourt raised all the money himself, relying on d’Estouteville to repay him. On his deathbed, d’Estouteville charged his son to repay de Gaucourt the seventeen thousand crowns he now owed him but the son repudiated the debt and de Gaucourt therefore sued him in the Paris Parlement.

30 Raoul de Gaucourt was “eighty-five years old, or thereabouts” when he gave evidence on 25 February 1455 to enable the pope to reverse the judgement against Joan of Arc. He is said have died on 21 June 1462. See Procès en Nullité de la Condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. by Pierre Duparc (Société de l’Histoire de France, Paris, 1977), i, p. 326; Chenaye-Desbois et Badier, Dictionnaire de la Noblesse, ix, pp. 33-5; Prevost, d’Arnot and de Morembert (eds), Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, xv, p. 689. After 1453 the only part of mainland France still in English hands was Calais.

31 Vale, Charles VII, pp. 35-7; http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/ richmond.htm.

32 Vendôme, who was a prisoner of Sir John Cornewaille, was effectively exchanged in 1423 for John Holland, earl of Huntingdon, who had been captured at Baugé: Foedera, ix, p. 319; Stansfield, “John Holland, Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon (d.1447) and the Costs of the Hundred Years War,” pp. 108-9.

33 McLeod, pp. 153, 161, 190, 192; Bacquet, p. 88.

34 Lalande, Jean II le Meingre, dit Boucicaut (1366-1421), pp. 171-4; John Harthan, Books of Hours and Their Owners (Thames & Hudson, London, 1977, repr. 1978), p. 73. See plate 33.

35 W&W, iii, p. 187.

36 ELMA, pp. 389-93, 396-8; www174.pair.com/mja/chuck.html. In 1414, Charles d’Orléans had paid £276 7s 6d for 960 pearls which were to be sewn onto his sleeve in the form of the words and music of his chanson, “Madame je suis plus joyeulx”: ibid., p. 8 n. 36. See also plate 35.

37 www.unibuc.ro/eBooks/lls/MihaelaVoicu-LaLiterature/CHARLES%20DORLEANS.htm p. 2.

38 McLeod, pp. 171-2.

39 Alain Chartier, The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier, ed. by J. C. Laidlaw (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974), pp. 198-304, esp. pp. 262 (ll. 2138-45), 275-6 (ll. 2585-99).

40 Alain Chartier, Le Quadrilogue Invectif, ed. and trans. by Florence Bouchet (Honoré Champion, Paris, 2002), p. 89. It should be pointed out that Chartier himself does not necessarily agree with this view, which is enunciated by his fictional knight on behalf of his class.

41 Pizan, The Writings of Christine de Pizan, p. 339; Forhan, The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan, p. 72. Nevertheless, the importance of peace was the single most prominent recurring theme in Christine’s work: ibid., p. 141.

42 Usk, p. 259. The last word of every line ends in “osa,” a scholarly device typical of medieval Latinists: ibid., p. 258.

43 Musica Britannica: A National Collection of Music, vol. iv, Medieval Carols, ed. by John Stevens (Royal Musical Association, London, 1952), p. 6, no. 8. See plate 30.

44 Richard Olivier, Inspirational Leadership: Henry V and the Muse of Fire (Industrial Society, London, 2001), p. xxiii. In more recent times Henry V has been used to put across an anti-war message. Kenneth Branagh’s film version was made after the Falklands War; the National Theatre’s stage version, with a black actor in the title role, came in the wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Curry, pp. 260-359, provides an excellent overview of the literary response to Agincourt throughout the centuries, and cites many valuable examples of the different genres.