A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  21. Or perhaps more properly Ludwig IV, of the Wittelsbach dynasty.

  22. By comparison, HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805, displaced 3,500 tons, and HMS Warrior, the Royal Navy’s first ironclad launched in 1860, displaced 9,000 tons.

  23. This meant one in every nine sacks of wool, sheaves of grain and lambs, and one ninth of the value of every town dweller’s moveable goods.

  24. He was replaced by his brother, so the family was hardly disadvantaged.

  25. Tierce was a monastic office said at the third hour of the day, the day beginning at what we term 0600 hours.

  26. Among those killed were four knights: Thomas de Mouhermere, Thomas de Latimer, John Butler and Thomas de Poynings (Lanercost).

  27. Although sometimes men qualified if the king’s standard was on the field even if the monarch himself was not.

  28. Horses are measured without shoes from the top of the withers vertically to the ground, the unit of measurement being the hand of four inches. Thus, a horse described as being 14h 2 means one of fourteen hands and two inches.

  29. But this may be intended for a parade horse, rather than one to be ridden in battle.

  30. The going rate was £80 (see pay rates below), so either Montagu was finding the rest from his own pocket, or he had persuaded his men to take a cut in pay and was hoping to make up the shortfall from plunder.

  31. The modern-day comparison is 3¼:2¼:1¾:1, which bears little relation to what the job actually entails but does illustrate the reluctance in a democracy with universal suffrage to pay senior commanders what they are worth.

  32. Not, as might be expected, a parliament in the English sense but the supreme royal court and supposedly superior to all duchy and provincial courts.

  33. Beer, which is made from hops, was drunk in Europe at this time but not in England. In modern usage, the terms ‘beer’ and ‘ale’ are interchangeable, except to the purist.

  34. Today, a gallon of real ale (admittedly much stronger than its medieval ancestor) costs £22, an inflation factor of 5,280. On the other hand, a gallon then cost a third of a day’s pay for a foot archer and today costs about a third of a day’s pay for a mid-band private soldier, so perhaps the ale standard is the most accurate comparator of monetary values yet.

  35. Froissart says the English did not burn the town, but he was not there, whereas Michael de Northburg, one of the royal clerks (quoted in George Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, Harrison and Sons, London, 1898), was there and says it was burned.

  36. Blanchetaque, or Blanche Tarche, was so called because the water ran over white marl, hard enough for wagons to cross even when the tide was out. Today the lower reaches of the Somme have been diverted into a canal, so the ford is long gone, but it was roughly opposite the present-day hamlet of Petit-Port.

  37. As no mention of them is made in any of the sources, we may assume that the 100 ships and archer reinforcements called for had not yet arrived at Le Crotoy.

  38. The obvious exception is Towton, 1461, but it was fought on muddy ground in a snowstorm, so much battlefield detritus was trampled into the ground and not found by contemporary scavengers.

  39. The rain would surely have had the same effect on the longbowmen’s bowstrings. But it takes only a few moments to change the string on a longbow (and archers carried spare bowstrings, often coiled inside their hat or helmet) and much longer to replace it on a crossbow.

  40. Stand by a fence at a National Hunt race meeting and see how the horses twist and turn in mid-air to avoid fallen jockeys. This author, having been thrown from a green mount, has had the whole hunting field gallop over him with no injury except to his pride.

  41. According to the chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker, writing in 1357/8, if the oriflamme was raised, it signified that no prisoners were to be taken.

  42. The French did make one for the siege of Breteuil in 1356. It took a month to fill in the moat, and when the belfry was finally pushed up to the walls, the defenders set it on fire.

  43. Edward’s miners were from the Forest of Dean. Thanks to their skill in tunnelling under walls, by royal decree of Edward I any male born within the Forest of Dean who had worked in a mine for a year and a day was granted the right to mine anywhere in the forest without a licence – a right still enjoyed today, although as most boys are now born in the local hospital, which is not in the forest, there are fewer and fewer who are eligible.

  44. In Professor Maxwell’s translation of Lanercost, published in 1913, he refuses to translate this accusation, presumably on the grounds that it was not suitable for the more tender ears of the time. He does make the point that the chronicler continually shows ‘monkish spite’ against all things Scots – but then, if your priory was plundered and burned every time the Scots crossed the border, you would feel quite spiteful.

  45. Neville’s Cross is now a western suburb of Durham and the (refurbished) cross is still there, albeit that the area is now heavily built up.

  46. Probably Sir Patrick Dunbar, and for readers whose Latin may be rusty, non hic means ‘not here’.

  47. A highly infectious respiratory disease of horses caused by the bacterium Streptococcus equi. Often fatal even today, it spreads with incredible speed in large horse populations. Even if a horse recovers (unlikely in 1346/7), it can still be a carrier and never returns to its previous form.

  48. Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais, erected in 1889, still stands in Calais, while a copy is in Victoria Tower Gardens in London.

  49. Joan was known sarcastically at the time as the Virgin of Kent because she wasn’t, and later prudery called her the Fair Maid of Kent. She married Sir Thomas Holland of Caen fame in 1340, when she was twelve. The marriage was clandestine but lawful and was consummated. When Sir Thomas went off with the Teutonic Knights in late 1340 to fight the heathens in what is now Prussia, her mother married her to William Montagu, son of the earl of Salisbury and later the second earl of Salisbury himself, which ceremony duly took place with much pomp. When Sir Thomas returned, he appears not to have mentioned that the girl had been married to him and became the Montagus’ steward. Only after the 1346/7 chevauchée, when Holland had made his name and his fortune, did he begin proceedings in the papal court to get his wife back, which he eventually succeeded in doing in 1349. They had five children before Holland died in 1360, after which, still only thirty-three, she married the Black Prince and gave him a son, later Richard II. Quite a girl!

  50. Although Edward III’s fifteen-year-old daughter Joan died of the plague in Bordeaux on her way to marry the heir to the throne of Castile.

  51. Later, it became three feathers and has been the badge of Princes of Wales ever since.

  52. Jean II’s son, Charles, was the first to be styled ‘dauphin’, henceforth the title of the heirs to the French throne. It came from the territory Dauphiné, embodied into France by his grandfather, Philip of Valois.

  53. It is said that the English Cockney slang expression ‘All my eye and Betty Martin’, meaning incomprehensible rubbish, comes from what the English thought the French ‘Aidez moi, beate Martin’ to be.

  54. Although, if the Black Prince’s soldiers were anything like their modern descendants, they were probably shouting something very different.

  55. At this pre-schism stage, the Avignon pope was regarded as legitimate by all Christian countries.

  56. Jacques was then the commonest French Christian name among the peasantry.

  57. ‘There are many men who cry for war without knowing what war amounts to.’

  58. John of Gaunt had married Blanche, daughter of Henry of Grosmont, cousin of Edward III and the first duke of Lancaster – and only the second duke to be created in England, after the Black Prince (who was duke of Cornwall, a title borne by all Princes of Wales ever since). When Henry died without male issue in 1361 (probably of the plague, which had returned to England after the Treaty of Brétigny), Edward III made John duke of Lancaster in 1362.

 
59. In the event, having sold himself to both sides, Charles arranged a bogus kidnapping so that he would not have to go on campaign himself. Both sides saw it for what it was and the whole caper only served to make Charles the laughing stock of Europe.

  60. Felton was the son of a soldier and part of the vanguard commanded by John of Gaunt. He was probably there to look after the duke of Lancaster on his first serious military campaign.

  61. Some sources suggest that he had.

  62. It is still there and was the centre of the French General Gazan’s position at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813 when Wellington destroyed the last major French army in Spain.

  63. Although Richard Barber, in his Dictionary of National Biography entry on the Black Prince, quotes local historians in Limoges as saying that only the garrison, and not civilians, were put to death.

  64. Edward’s mistress, Alice Perrers, is variously described as a sorceress, a wanton and the daughter of a thatcher. She was more probably of perfectly decent origins and certainly a lady-in-waiting to Queen Philippa when she came to Edward’s attention.

  65. In 1379, Gaunt managed to have it agreed that ‘fraudulent debtors’ had no right of sanctuary.

  66. Froissart says only 600 altogether (400 men-at-arms and 200 archers), but, given the number of senior commanders in the force, including Sir Hugh Calveley and Sir Thomas Trevet, this seems for once to be too low.

  67. As most of the army had gone off to Spain with John of Gaunt, the reception might not have been very fierce, and there was certainly panic around the ports on the English south coast.

  68. ‘To appeal’ then meant ‘to accuse’, so these were the ‘Lords Accusing’.

  69. Descent through the female line could not be cited as an objection to Edmund’s claim, as it was the basis of the English claim to the French throne.

  70. Glyn Dŵr was believed by many of his followers to have been a magician with the ability to make himself invisible. This is probably untrue.

  71. Including Sir Walter Blount, ancestor of the English pop singer and ex-officer of the Household Cavalry James Blunt (Blount).

  72. Presumably an arrow that had bounced off someone else’s armour, as a direct hit would surely have killed him. And it presumably struck him on the right side of his face, as his most famous right-facing portrait – and one that is thought to be most life-like – shows no scar.

  73. The prince was fortunate that the archer had not adopted a common practice of dipping his arrowhead in human faeces before shooting it, which would have poisoned the wound.

  74. The best assessment of the dead and wounded is probably in Appendix 4 to Ian Mortimer’s The Fears of Henry IV but even he can only make a very rough approximation.

  75. The distance is around 130 miles and he would have changed horses every twenty miles or so. At a trot and canter, he would probably have been able to do around ten miles an hour on the roads as they then were.

  76. An act, or bill, of attainder was often resorted to when the government did not want to risk a trial. It was the passing by Parliament of a law declaring the accused, or in this case the late accused, to be guilty of whatever he was charged with. The titles and lands were restored to Hotspur’s son by Henry V, and the present head of the Percy family is the twelfth duke of Northumberland.

  77. In some parts of the world it still is: India would have gone communist decades ago were it not for the Hindu religion, which preaches a stoic acceptance of one’s position in the social order in the hope that good behaviour in this life will ensure reincarnation to a higher degree in the next.

  78. Heresy might be defined as a belief that is in opposition to the orthodox teachings of the church, but to avoid confusing reform with heresy the definition used by Michael Lambert, the authority on medieval cults, is convenient: ‘Heresy is whatever was explicitly or implicitly condemned by the papacy.’ See Lambert, Medieval Heresy (2nd edn), Blackwell, Oxford, 1992.

  79. This was not as daft an argument as it sounds. It was all about how often something could be divided and whether there was a basic particle which could not be reduced further. It was in a sense the forerunner of atomic theory.

  80. There are a number of belief systems in which eating the body, or parts of the body, of a dead hero, a dead enemy or a dead animal such as a lion allows the consumer to absorb the qualities of that person or animal, so the mass may be a vestige of ritual cannibalism.

  81. It has been suggested that this was because Gascoigne had committed Henry as Prince of Wales to prison for interfering in the trial of one of his servants, but, as there is no evidence whatsoever that this incident ever took place, it is much more likely that Gascoigne, having refused to try Archbishop Scrope in 1405, was dismissed because he was of too independent a mind.

  82. It was well known that a number of nobles held Lollard sympathies, while falling well short of potential rebellion.

  83. The village of that name had been obliterated by a tidal wave in 1370 and rebuilt as Saint-Adresse (as it still is today). As there is no saint by the name of Adresse, this is presumably some form of French humour impenetrable to Anglo-Saxons.

  84. A barbican was a fortified gatehouse with towers in front of and behind the actual gate.

  85. Today the Master General of Ordnance and until very recently one of the most senior appointments in the British Army.

  86. He was the youngest of John of Gaunt’s sons out of Katherine Swynford.

  87. His brother had been executed for treason in 1405, but the family had been forgiven and lands and titles restored. The appointment stayed in the family and his direct descendant (through the female line, the male line of the Mowbrays having died out), Edward Fitzalan-Howard, eighteenth duke of Norfolk, is Earl Marshal of England today and responsible for state ceremonial.

  88. At the most optimistic – it would probably have taken nearer six weeks.

  89. The crossing was probably somewhere north of where Napoleon I’s Canal du Nord joins the Somme and south of Béthancourt.

  90. The village where the battle took place is and was Azincourt in French and Agincourt in English (medieval spelling had not yet been standardized). In 1415, the English only found out the name by asking a local herald, and it is easy to mishear a Z as a G.

  91. The English V sign of two fingers is said to originate from this period, as archers taunted the enemy ranks by showing that they still had the requisite digits to carry on the fight.

  92. He had supported Henry IV’s seizure of the throne and was created one of the first knights of the Order of the Bath as a reward.

  93 Nearer to our own day, W. E. Gladstone regularly held crowds of 10,000 or more for several hours at a time.

  94. Much of Tramecourt Wood is still there, but the Agincourt flank is now open.

  95. Orléans spent the next twenty-five years in (comfortable) captivity in England, where he won some fame as a poet.

  96. As horseflesh was and still is sold openly for human consumption in France, this cannot have been any great hardship, but it did reduce the number of cavalry and transport animals.

  97. The Scots turned up outside the walls with what appeared to be large numbers of English prisoners tied to their horses’ tails. In fact, they were English-speaking Scots.

  98. The model for Shakespeare’s Falstaff, Fastolf was born of minor gentry in Norfolk and rose to eminence by his performance as a soldier, a progress not hindered by his marrying a rich wife.

  99. In accordance with a thirteenth-century papal instruction, Christians were required to refrain from eating meat on Fridays and throughout Lent, hence the herrings. The Second Vatican Council of 1962–5 made the Friday requirement advisory rather than mandatory, and prior to that soldiers in the modern British Army (and presumably in others too) had a dispensation excusing them when in the field.

  100. The legitimate son, now the duke, was of course still composing poetry in the Tower of London.

  101. Henry Tudor, who reigned as Henry VII, was the son o
f Margaret Beaufort, who was a great-granddaughter of John of Gaunt out of his third wife, Katherine Swynford. In the male line Henry’s only claim to status was from his grandfather’s marriage to Queen Katherine of Valois, widow of Henry V. Richard III had a much stronger blood claim, but did not help his cause by (almost certainly) having Edward IV’s young son, who would have been Edward V, and his brother murdered in the Tower.

  102. The population of England and Wales in 1450 was around 3 million; today it is over 60 million.

  103. This lesson seems, however, to have been forgotten in the recent Iraq campaign. British forces performed brilliantly in the war-fighting phase, taking Saddam Hussein’s second city of Basra in a classic example of the cost-effective use of force in 2003, only to be forced into a humiliating scuttle in 2009 largely because there were insufficient boots on the ground to seal the borders from infiltration.