The man known to history as King Edward III,
was born on the 13th of November 1312, at Windsor Castle in the English county of Berkshire. His father was Edward II, King of England,
Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine in France, who had succeeded his father, the imposing
Edward I, otherwise known as Edward Longshanks, in 1307, when he was just twenty-three years
of age, while Edward II had produced a son around the time of his accession, this child,
Adam Fitzroy, was illegitimate, and as a result the birth of the future Edward III in 1312,
was greeted with great joy, as he secured the royal succession. Edward III’s mother was Queen Isabella,
the daughter of the King of France, Philip IV, born in 1295, she grew up at the various
French royal palaces around Paris, before being married to Edward II in January 1308,
when she herself was just twelve years of age, and only a few months into what would
become, Edward’s highly tumultuous reign. The England into which the future Edward III
was born in 1312, was experiencing great instability, Edward I had created one of the most powerful
kingdoms in Europe, in his lengthy reign between 1272 and 1307, he completed the English conquest
of Wales, intervened in Scotland and extended English rule across the Irish Sea in Ireland,
he also reformed the judiciary and administration, to complete a process whereby England became
the most centralised state in Europe of the High Middle Ages. However, the formation of this highly centralised
and expanded English state under Edward Longshanks, presented a major problem following his death
in 1307, his son, Edward II, was a weak ruler, one who placed enormous power in the hands
of a series of favoured individuals throughout his twenty-year reign, a practice which created
great resentment amongst the English lords and political community. The first of these favourites, Piers Gaveston,
had established a close relationship with Edward in around 1300, when they were both
still teenagers, it is still widely debated whether or not the relationship was sexual
in nature, but upon Edward’s accession in 1307, Gaveston was granted immense powers,
he was eventually made first earl of Cornwall and granted many offices, however his behaviour
highly offended the nobility and the king was forced to temporarily exile him to Ireland,
where he served as the royal viceroy, and ultimately, having returned to England from
one such exile, he was in the summer of 1312, killed by two senior English nobles, the earl
of Lancaster and the earl of Warwick. This happened just months before the future
Edward III’s birth at Windsor Castle, but the years ahead did not see any improvement
in the circumstances of Edward II’s rule, in the course of the 1310s, the king began
displaying a similar partiality to that which he previously showed to Gaveston, towards
Hugh Despenser, the son and namesake of the earl of Winchester. As the Despenser family rose in power in the
years ahead, the English nobility’s opposition to Edward II’s rule increased ever further,
additionally, Edward I’s gains in Scotland were overthrown in 1314, when the English
were heavily defeated by a Scottish army led by Robert the Bruce at the Battle of Bannockburn,
as if all this were not bad enough, a famine gripped England in the mid-1310s, thus, the
England the future Edward III was living in during his infancy, was experiencing great
unrest, in large part owing to the poor governance of his father. Surprisingly little is known about his upbringing,
but young Edward would have been totally oblivious to the state of the country at the time he
was a young man, somewhat curiously, he was never made Prince of Wales, as nearly all
direct heirs to the throne of England since the late thirteenth century have been, instead
he bore the honorific title throughout his youth of earl of Chester. A separate household, independent from that
of the king and queen, was established for Edward and it was this which he was raised
in, Edward was also joined by several siblings in his youth, his brother John was born in
August 1316, followed by two sisters, Eleanor and Joan, in 1318 and 1321. Edward may have been partially educated by
Richard Bury, a distinguished scholar of fourteenth-century England, but in any event, his education and
upbringing would have centred more on the outward physical world, rather than the mental
word of books, he learned to read and write English and French, but he was only ever possessed
of a rudimentary ability to write Latin, he may also have learned some Flemish and German,
but, if the evidence of Edward’s later life is anything to go by, his primary concerns
in his youth, would have been horsemanship and skill in arms, this, after all, was the
High Middle Ages, when a king’s ability to lead his people in war, was of more consequence
than his knowledge of the minutiae of government administration. As he neared his tenth year, the political
situation in England reached breaking point, in 1321, a civil war broke out in England,
triggered in large part by the king’s ongoing support and lavish favour bestowed on the
Despenser family and their allies, this revolt was led by Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, a first
cousin of the king’s and one of those who had brought down Piers Gaveston in 1312. Although the king successfully snuffed out
this rebellion the following year in 1322 and Lancaster was executed that March near
Pontefract Castle, the tensions did not end there. Hugh Despenser was now ascendant within England,
but he increasingly had a new enemy in the queen herself, Isabella had always resented
her husband’s favourites, but she had not clashed with Gaveston, but with Despenser. In the 1320s it was different, the queen could
not see eye to eye with her husband’s favourite and as the months went by, this increasingly
drove her against her husband, and soon a showdown would occur. Ultimately, it was events in France, which
brought the political instability which had characterised Edward II’s entire reign to
a conclusion, the kings of England had held possessions in France since the time of the
Norman Conquest of England in 1066, England’s conqueror at that time was William, Duke of
Normandy, ruler of a large stretch of northern France. The two centuries that followed, saw this
continental empire increase to include further regions in the southwest of the country, including
the duchy of Aquitaine, and then decline, such that Normandy and other lands were lost. By the early fourteenth century, the kings
of England held only the duchy of Aquitaine in France, this was a personal possession
of the English Plantagenet monarchs, rather than a constituent part of the English kingdom,
moreover, because the duchy was a constituent part of the French kingdom, Edward II theoretically
owed fealty to the king of France, and until his death in 1314, this was Isabella’s father,
Philip IV, but thereafter a series of brief reigns followed, finally stabilising in January
1322 with the accession of Charles IV, Isabella’s brother. It was this familial tie, between the new
French king and the English queen, which provided the first stirrings of Edward II’s downfall
in the mid-1320s, shortly after Charles’s accession in France, in 1323 a dispute arose
in Aquitaine which saw an official of the French king hung by the seneschal of the duchy,
Edward II’s senior representative there. In response, Charles IV invaded the duchy,
an action which now led Hugh Despenser to have Isabella arrested in England, as a French
alien in the country, back in France, Charles IV responded to news of his sister’s imprisonment
in her adopted home, by sending an emissary to Edward II in England, recommending that
Isabella should be sent to France as his ambassador to undertake peace negotiations, it was an
unorthodox arrangement, but one which the English king consented to, Isabella left for
France in March 1325. This was the beginning of the end for Edward
II. In France, Isabella came into the orbit of
Roger Mortimer, an exiled English lord around whom a faction of Englishmen opposed to Edward
II and the Despensers had coalesced in France, the queen and Mortimer would soon enter into
a relationship. More significantly, in September 1325, the
young Edward, earl of Chester, the future great king, Edward III, was dispatched to
France. Why Edward sent his twelve-year-old son to
continental Europe is still something of a mystery, the most likely explanation is, that
he was unwilling to travel to France himself and appear before Charles IV as part of the
peace negotiations, during the course of which, he would have been required to pay homage
to Charles, a fellow king, but one who Edward was technically a subject of as duke of Aquitaine. Accordingly, Edward seems to have hit on the
idea of transferring the duchy of Aquitaine to his twelve-year-old son, as a way of avoiding
acknowledging his subordinate position to the French king. Whatever the reasons, it was a dreadful strategic
error. With the young Edward in France, the anti-Despenser
faction of English nobles at the Gallic court in Paris, led by Isabella and Roger Mortimer,
now had a viable contender to the English throne, to present as a figurehead for a revolt,
the error was soon realised in England, where the Despensers and the king, sent a command
to send the young Edward back home, but Isabella refused this. Thus, by the end of 1325, many of the necessary
conditions were in place, for Isabella and Mortimer to attempt to overthrow Edward II’s
regime and the Despensers in England, but Isabella’s brother was reluctant to help. For all that Charles IV had been willing to
help Isabella during her predicament in England, he drew the line at sponsoring an invasion
of England. Accordingly, in the summer of 1326, Isabella,
Mortimer and their supporters, with the young prince Edward in tow, headed for Hainault,
a small principality near what today is the border between France and Belgium, there,
Isabella came to an agreement with the count of the territory, William I, that in return
for military aid, she would marry Prince Edward to William’s daughter, Philippa, he agreed
and provided Isabella and Mortimer with several hundred men. This small force was ultimately enough, in
late September 1326, Isabella, Mortimer and about 700 men landed in Suffolk. In the weeks that followed, support for Edward
II simply evaporated throughout England, years of resentments at his reckless rule and the
undue favour he had shown to the Despensers suddenly burst forth. Most critically, the city of London declared
for Isabella and Prince Edward, in mid-November the king was apprehended in south Wales and
placed under arrest at Kenilworth Castle, while the senior members of the Despenser
family were captured and quickly put to death. Thereafter, the end of Edward II’s reign
was concluded with a relative degree of peaceful action, on the 13th of January 1327, parliament
resolved that Edward II had to be deposed in favour of his son and namesake. The resolution was put to the king at Kenilworth
and in tears, he agreed to abdicate on the 20th of January. The Crown Prince Edward, was accordingly proclaimed
as Edward III, King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine, in London on the 25th
of January, a week later, he was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey. All of these actions were undertaken in the
name of young Prince Edward, who had just turned fourteen in November 1326. There is no doubting that Edward was little
more than a pawn at this stage and that power in England now rested in the hands of his
mother Isabella, her lover Roger Mortimer, and their followers. It had been agreed by parliament in January,
that the young king would rule in conjunction with a council consisting of four bishops,
four earls and six barons of the realm, but this arrangement was quickly side-lined by
Isabella and Mortimer, the pair would effectively rule England for the three and a half years
that followed. A number of problems confronted the realm
during these early days of Edward III’s reign, the most pressing was the status of
the former king, Edward’s father. In the late spring of 1327, he was moved to
Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, however, a more lasting solution needed to be found,
Isabella and Mortimer’s regime was quickly creating unrest, particularly owing to dissatisfaction
at the power Mortimer now exercised, and this unrest was coalescing in some circles, around
the idea of freeing the former king and reinstating him on the throne, a final resolution to the
matter was reached on the 21st of September 1327, when the man who had ruled England for
two decades as Edward II, was discreetly murdered on Isabella and Mortimer’s orders at Berkeley
Castle. An arguably even greater problem confronted
the new regime to the north. Seeing the instability which the overthrow
of Edward II had created as an opportunity, the Scots, led by Robert the Bruce, had begun
a series of raids into northern England and the crown’s possessions in Ireland. Thus, in the summer of 1327, the young King
Edward III undertook his first military campaign into the north, this has become known as the
Weardale Campaign after the River Wear where so much of it occurred and played out in July
and August 1327. During the course of it James, Lord Douglas,
in association with the earls of Mar and Moray led a contingent of perhaps as many as 10,000
Scots south into northern England. Meanwhile, Isabella and Mortimer, as the newly
ascendant power in England, saw the possibility of a successful campaign against the old enemy
of Scotland as a good means of legitimising their new hold on power in young Edward’s
name. Thus in mid-July 1327 they headed north from
York with their own forces to engage Douglas and the Scots. Two weeks of jostling now occurred between
the two sides, as they manoeuvred around northern England trying to track each other’s location
and gain a tactical advantage before a stand-off occurred near the River Wear for three days. Then, finally, on the night of the 3rd of
August and into the early hours of the 4th, the Scottish attacked the English camp penetrating
to the very centre of the English royal encampment. In this moment, young Edward came exceptionally
close to being captured by Douglas’s troops, but although the ropes of the tent itself
were cut, the young monarch remained unharmed and uncaptured. This was the peak of the Weardale campaign. The Scottish attack was pushed back at its
most dangerous and although several further days of toing and froing ensued, ultimately
the Weardale Campaign was inconclusive and early in 1328, the regime was forced to stabilise
the northern border by agreeing to the Treaty of Northampton, whereby Edward renounced the
English crown’s claim to the throne of Scotland and acknowledged Robert the Bruce as King
of Scotland. However, the campaign and the nearness of
his capture had sparked in Edward a desire to master the art of war. Never again would he find himself so defenceless
in the face of an enemy on the field of battle. To compound matters, with the relative failure
of the Weardale Campaign, a diplomatic incident, which would have consequences which could
not have been foreseen at the time, erupted in February 1328. On the first day of that month, the French
king, Charles IV, Isabella’s brother, died, he had only daughters as his issue, and since
it had been decided that a woman would not succeed him, this brought the direct line
of the Capetian kings of France to an end, having ruled the country since the late tenth
century. There were just two candidates to succeed
Charles IV, firstly, Edward III of England who had the best claim, as a grandson of Philip
IV, Isabella’s father, the long ruling King of France from 1285 to 1314, and secondly
Philip of Valois. However, Edward’s claim was never given
real consideration in France, where the thought of a foreign monarch ruling France jointly
with England was not considered tolerable by the French nobility, consequently, the
claim of Philip of Valois, a direct descendant of Philip III of France, who had ruled between
1270 and 1285, was favoured, he was formally proclaimed as King of France on the 1st of
April 1328 and crowned at Rheims Cathedral as Philip VI on the 29th of May. It is important to remember when assessing
the events which followed, that Edward did have the better claim to the French throne
through his mother. Moreover, as a king himself already, he regarded
Philip as a social inferior, one who was merely a Count. This sense of his own divine right to rule
and superior claim would instil in Edward a great desire to emerge victorious from the
coming conflict. In the interim, between Philip’s accession
and his coronation at the end of May, a deputation arrived in Paris sent by Isabella and Mortimer,
to protest at Edward’s exclusion from the succession, however, despite their remonstrations,
the French would have none of it, eventually after months of objections Edward, by now
sixteen years of age, travelled to France in the spring of 1329 and paid homage at Amiens
Cathedral to Philip VI as his subject as Duke of Aquitaine. On the surface, this was an end to the matter,
but the dispute over the succession would prove much, much more extensive, than the
apparent show of acceptance in 1329 suggested. While these storms were brewing with both
Scotland and France, Edward was growing and developing his own independence. In November 1327, he had been married by proxy
to Philippa of Hainault, in line with the agreement Isabella had reached with Count
William of Hainault, in return for his support in overthrowing Edward II in 1326. However, while Edward had been willing to
follow his mother’s lead on this and many other matters in 1327 and 1328, by 1329 he
was becoming his own man and was less willing to allow the realm to be governed by his mother
and Mortimer. That year, allies of the young king sent secret
communiques to the Papacy in Avignon, where a rival Papacy to that in Rome had been established,
these messages alerted the Avignon Papacy, that the king was not able to rule in his
own right. Matters came to a head in 1330, enemies of
Mortimer’s had begun to spread rumours by now, that Edward II was still alive and a
plot was discovered to launch a rising in the old king’s name, led by his half-brother,
the earl of Kent. However, what really spurred the young king
to action, were rumours that Isabella was pregnant with Mortimer’s child. Concerns were now raised by Edward’s advisors,
notably a close confidante, William Montagu, that a plan might be undertaken by Isabella
and Mortimer to usurp the throne from Edward, in this scenario, Mortimer, who was still
married to his wife of nearly thirty years, Joan, would divorce her, then marry Isabella,
and the pair would place their own child on the throne. After a confrontation at Nottingham Castle
in mid-October 1330, Edward elected to act. On the night of the 19th of October, the young
king, still a few weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday, along with Montagu and a dozen or
so other companions, burst into Isabella and Mortimer’s apartments at Nottingham, a scuffle
ensued, in which a number of their attendants were killed, before the king had his mother
and her lover arrested. A parliament was summoned in the days that
followed and an announcement made to the political nation, that henceforth Edward would rule
in person. Mortimer was dispatched to London, where he
was accused and convicted without trial, of various high crimes and misdemeanours. On the 29th of November 1330, he was the first
individual to ever be executed at Tyburn, the site of a great many political executions
in England, in the centuries that followed. Edward spared his mother, but her political
career was over. In the aftermath of Mortimer’s execution,
she was packed off to Windsor Castle, where she is rumoured to have suffered a partial
nervous breakdown, she remained there under house arrest until 1332, before being allowed
to retire to Castle Rising in Norfolk, here she led an expensive, but largely sedentary
life for a quarter of a century. Her family retained contact with her and occasionally
there were even talks of her travelling to France, but Edward evidently balked at allowing
this, to a mother who had favoured Mortimer over her own son in the first years of his
reign. She became increasingly pious later in life
and became a nun of the Order of Saint Clare, shortly before her death on the 22nd of August
1358. With his mother and Mortimer now out of the
way, Edward III was free from late 1330 onwards, to begin ruling in his own right, just as
he turned eighteen years of age. The years ahead would see many triumphs, while
England had endured a quarter of a century of nearly constant turmoil, owing to Edward
II’s weak rule and then the usurpation of the throne by Mortimer, Edward’s reign would
see England’s power restored and expanded. Under his leadership, the country would ascend
to a height unparalleled at any other time in the medieval period. This expansion of English power began in Scotland,
in the aftermath of the Treaty of Northampton, agreed early in 1328, between King Robert
of Scotland and Mortimer and Isabella on Edward’s behalf. Robert had agreed to accept the territorial
claims of several English border lords, to lands in southern Scotland, notably Henry
Percy and Henry Beaumont, however, little was done to actually convey ownership of the
lands in question to these lords of northern England by Robert, nor was that state of affairs
remedied by the minority government which ruled Scotland from 1329 onwards, following
Robert’s death and the accession of his young son, David II. As a consequence, these lords began to agitate
to acquire these lands in the early 1330s. Known as ‘The Disinherited’, they now
began conspiring to overthrow the Bruce line in Scotland, by supporting once again, the
Balliol claim to the Scottish monarchy, the family which had been championed by Edward’s
grandfather, Edward Longshanks, over thirty years earlier, thus, Edward Balliol, the rival
claimant to the Scottish throne, was brought over from France by the ‘Disinherited’
lords, led by Henry Beaumount. Simultaneously they petitioned Edward III
for permission to undertake an invasion of Scotland, which was refused, although perhaps
with enough implicit support for their actions, that the ‘Disinherited’ now elected to
launch their own military action, independent of the king. In the summer of 1332, these lords launched
a naval expedition from Yorkshire, which landed at Kinghorn in Fife in eastern Scotland. Proceeding inland, they won a crushing victory
over the Scots at the Battle of Dupplin Moor, on the 11th of August 1332, the figures are
very imprecise, but perhaps as many as 5,000 Scots were killed, with very minimal losses
for the forces of the ‘Disinherited’ and the Balliols. Six weeks later at Scone, Edward Balliol was
crowned as King of Scotland, thus setting in motion the Second Scottish War of Independence,
which would last for a quarter of a century. Edward had not directly supported the ‘Disinherited’
and Balliol in their invasion of Scotland, but a decision now needed to be made on his
stance towards the usurper. At a parliament in England which convened
at Westminster in September 1332, it was quickly suggested to Edward, that the Treaty of Northampton,
agreed in 1328, should be scrapped and Balliol’s claim to the throne of Scotland acknowledged. In order to gain Edward’s support, Balliol
even let it be known, that he was willing to concede that Scotland would be a fief or
vassal state of the English crown and would pay homage to Edward III. These offers aside, Edward was reluctant to
commit himself to a potentially lengthy war in Scotland, but his hands were forced early
in 1333 when Balliol was pushed into northern England, having suffered a military reverse
at the Battle of Annan in December 1332, this set of circumstances now required Edward to
throw his full support behind Balliol. The English parliament and the government,
including the offices of the exchequer and the courts, were moved to York, where they
would remain for the next several years, as the young king sought to re-impose English
control over Scotland, which his grandfather had been able to establish many years earlier,
but which had evaporated under Edward II’s ineffectual rule, it is an indication of the
single-mindedness and clarity of purpose with which Edward III pursued his goals throughout
his reign, that he simply relocated the organs of English government to the north of the
country, once he committed himself to the war in Scotland. The first action to be taken, was to try to
seize the border town of Berwick, which was a part of Scotland at the time, a siege was
initiated by Balliol, with Edward’s support in March of 1333. The king arrived himself to campaign on the
border in the early summer, by which time, the garrison and townspeople had made it clear
to the government of David II to the north, that they would surrender if they were not
provided with military support by mid-July. The response to this ultimatum from the townspeople
of Berwick, would lead to the first of Edward III’s many great military victories. The Guardian of Scotland during David II’s
minority, Sir Archibald Douglas, now assembled a significant army of upwards of 20,000 men
and advanced southwards to engage Edward’s forces, they clashed on the 19th of July 1333
at Halidon Hill, some two kilometres to the north-west of Berwick. Edward III started the Battle of Halidon Hill
heavily outnumbered, the English army consisted of less than 10,000 men, while Douglas led
approximately twice this amount to Berwick, however, what Edward lost in numbers was partially
made up for in strategic positioning, the king had occupied Halidon Hill specifically
because it dominated the surrounding region and he had resisted all temptations to move,
even when Douglas raided further south into northern England in the days leading up to
the battle. The English were also possessed of superior
military abilities, which would benefit Edward not just at Halidon, but many other times
in the years to come, paramount here was the use of the six foot long longbow, which could
deploy volleys of iron-tipped arrows, that penetrated chain mail armour in rapid succession,
this was a much more effective projectile than the slow, cumbersome crossbows that were
the mainstay of most European armies in the early fourteenth century, the widespread use
of the longbow was just one component of the military revolution, which Edward III was
responsible for in the mid-fourteenth century. The Battle at Halidon Hill commenced at about
midday, although numerically superior, the Scots were required to advance up Halidon
Hill where Edward’s armies occupied the high ground. It would have been advisable for Douglas to
have never tried to engage Edward while he maintained the high ground, but with the ultimatum
given by Berwick to the Scottish government about to expire the next day, Douglas had
little option but to try to relieve the town before it surrendered to the English besiegers. The result was an utter rout, the English
longbow was used to devastating effect, to decimate the Scottish armies as they attempted
to advance up the hillside, eventually the Scottish forces broke and the English, led
by Edward, advanced downwards themselves, chasing the fleeing Scots towards the sea,
by the end of the day thousands of Scottish troops were dead, perhaps as many as half
of Douglas’s army of 20,000, while Douglas himself and five Scottish earls lost their
lives during the battle. Halidon Hill was an immense triumph for Edward,
one of the most substantial victories ever won by an English force against the Scots,
it also began developing Edward’s reputation throughout Europe as a very formidable military
commander, moreover, English arms were now in the ascendant, where previously English
armies had been regarded on the continent, as distinctly inferior to their counterparts
in France and elsewhere. Politically the victory placed Edward in an
extremely advantageous position in Scotland, Berwick quickly surrendered and a number of
Scottish magnates paid homage to the English king in the days and weeks that followed,
more pressingly, Balliol was restored to the Scottish throne and in February 1334, he agreed
to surrender eight counties constituting the entirety of southern Scotland below the Firth
of Forth and the Solway Firth, then in June 1334, Balliol paid homage to Edward as his
liege lord at Newcastle. David II and his followers fled to France,
completing a whirlwind campaign in which Scotland had been almost entirely brought under English
control in eighteen months. Thus, by mid-1334, the northern frontier seemed
to have been secured, in a way which it had not been since the days of Edward Longshanks,
but where Edward III succeeded, his erstwhile ally, Edward Balliol, seemed to constantly
be found wanting, no sooner had Edward reinstated him in Scotland, than Balliol managed to provoke
another revolt in the summer of 1334, he was quickly forced to flee Scotland again, once
again leading Edward to intervene on his behalf, late in 1334 and into 1335, in 1336 he would
even campaign into the Highlands, but his encroachments continued to generate resistance. Thus, by 1337, Scotland remained somewhat
unsecured and the war would drag on for many years to come, yet, there is little doubting
the overall success of Edward’s policies towards Scotland in the 1330s, he put England
on a surer footing in the north than it had been for thirty years and secured territorial
concessions along the border, most significantly he captured Berwick, which would remain an
English stronghold on the Scottish border henceforth, except for a brief period in the
fifteenth century. Moreover, Edward might well have gone on to
establish an even greater control over Scotland, had it not been for other affairs drawing
his attentions elsewhere in 1337, the distraction would come from France and the fallout would
have consequences for both England and France which would reverberate for over one-hundred
years. The causes of what has come to be known as
the Hundred Years War lay in the earlier death of Charles IV in 1328 and the end of the Capetian
dynasty in France, as we have seen, Charles’s death led to the accession of Philip of the
House of Valois as Philip VI of France in the spring of 1328, in reality, Edward had
a better claim to the throne of France, but the French nobility had quickly elected to
support Philip’s accession, being unwilling to have an English foreigner rule them, Isabella
and Mortimer had reluctantly accepted this state of affairs and sent Edward to France
in 1329, to pay homage to Philip, in his role as Duke of Aquitaine, however, the matter
did not end there and would be resurrected in the years ahead once tensions created an
opportune moment for the issue of the succession to be revisited. In many ways, it was the war in Scotland which
created the opportunity for Edward to renew his claims in France. France and Scotland were perennial allies
throughout the late medieval period, this ‘Auld Alliance’ being formed out of their
mutual antagonism with England at various times, it is unsurprising then to find that
David II and his advisors had fled to France, following Edward’s victory at Halidon Hill
in 1333. Over the next few years as Edward attempted
to fully conquer Scotland, Philip VI of France offered substantial support for David’s
cause, this peaked in 1336, when an enormous French invasion of Scotland was mooted, but
Edward was able to stave off the possibility of this, by devastating the coastal regions
of Scotland, burning crops and rounding up livestock, no French army could land there
if it would not be able to find food to sustain itself in the weeks that followed, and so
the invasion was called off. Other controversies led to a further deterioration
in relations between France and England in the mid-1330s, notably the refuge that Edward
provided to Philip VI’s cousin and mortal enemy, Robert, count of Artois, in England,
but in the end it was the simplest route towards the eruption of conflict, which caused the
Hundred Years War. Edward’s most vulnerable territory lay in
France itself, on the 24th of May 1337, Philip VI formally announced that he was confiscating
the Duchy of Aquitaine from Edward. Late that summer, the Count of Eu was sent
into the Gascony region with an invasion force, which devastated the countryside, but did
not seize the duchy’s main town of Bordeaux from the English there, this invasion constituted
the first military action of a war that would last for over a hundred years. Once the war was entered into in 1337, Edward
and England were immediately faced with a tactical problem, Aquitaine was located in
the south-west of France and was relatively difficult to supply from England, as a result,
Edward’s strategy from the very inception of the war was to strike at the French, by
attacking Philip VI’s possessions directly across the English Channel in northern France
and to use territorial gains here, as a means of pressuring the French monarch into ceasing
his attacks on Aquitaine. Yet there were problems with his methods too. As he had done in Scotland recently, Edward
would try to attempt to burn and pillage the countryside of France as a means of forcing
the French to the negotiating table and gaining a strategic advantage. But his approach may have been more counter-productive
than anything else. This type of scorched earth policy could often
have the direct opposite result, instead instilling a hatred of Edward and his armies amongst
the common people of the regions they were brutalising. As such, it did not serve to win over these
areas, but actually made them more solidly loyal to the French in the long run. Even this strategy, though, had its drawbacks,
principally in terms of the logistics of transporting an army to northern France. By the mid-fourteenth century, the English
merchant fleet was substantial, but the ships of the time were small and it would prove
highly difficult to transport an army of the size Edward would need to gain military victories
in northern France, this was the problem which Edward faced in 1337 upon the outbreak of
war with France. The solution which presented itself, mirrored
a strategy which Edward’s grandfather, Edward I, had employed in the 1290s, he looked for
support amongst the many princes and rulers of the Low Countries and in Germany, hence,
in the summer of 1337, the young king, still just twenty-four years of age, dispatched
the bishop of Lincoln, Henry Burghersh, and his close ally, William Montagu, recently
ennobled as the earl of Salisbury, to Europe. Alliances were quickly negotiated in the weeks
that followed, with Hainault, Gelders and Brabant in the Low Countries, and, most significantly,
with Louis, Duke of Bavaria, the current Holy Roman Emperor. Overall Burghersh and Montagu were able to
acquire commitments from these rulers to provide approximately 7,000 troops to aid Edward in
France, as well as shipping and other logistical support, to bring the 10,000 men which Edward
intended to bring across to France himself, meaning that a force of nearly 20,000 men
would be brought into the field in northern France. Yet these alliances came at a cost, Louis
and the other princes had been promised substantial financial subventions from England to pay
for the mobilisation of their armies, these amounted to £124,000 alone by the end of
1337, a very considerable sum for its time which amounted to several times Edward’s
annual income, therefore Edward was forced to borrow heavily from the merchant banking
families of Italy in the opening stages of the war, to pay for the alliance he had created,
new taxes were also introduced in England and parliament was persuaded to vote Edward
an extensive subsidy or one-off payment. This latter development was significant. Though some accounts tend to view the manner
in which kings such as Edward III and earlier his grandfather, Edward I, had recourse to
parliament for subsidies and financing as a self-indulgent use of the parliament, such
recourse was actually crucial to the development of the English parliamentary system. It was always understood in Late Medieval
and Early Modern times, that parliaments were called when the king or queen of the day needed
funding from the political nation and the political nation in return could express its
grievances and requests to the monarch. Edward’s use of parliament in this way,
actually facilitated the gradual development of the ‘mother parliament’ in the fourteenth
century. Eventually Edward set sail with his armies
from England on the 16th of July 1338 and passed Antwerp in the days that followed with
nearly 5,000 men, a meeting followed on the 5th of September at Koblenz on the River Rhine
in Germany between Edward and Louis of Bavaria, at which the Holy Roman Emperor appointed
the English king as vicar general of the Empire, a significant title which theoretically put
the military resources of the entire Empire at Edward’s disposal. With this title in place and his armies largely
assembled in the Low Countries, Edward was finally in a position to take the field in
northern France in the spring of 1339, however, this first year of active military campaigning
brought with it some frustration, as Philip VI refused to engage Edward in direct combat,
an engagement at La Capelle in north-eastern France in October was the closest they came
to meeting on the field of battle and this proved a largely abortive clash. Perhaps it was owing to his frustrations at
this first year of military campaigning, that Edward now made the momentous decision to
resurrect his claim to the French throne. Up until early 1340, his stated reason for
being in France was to defend his possessions in Aquitaine, but this changed in January
1340, the decision may have been due to a new ally of Edward’s, Jacob van Artevelde,
a native of Ghent who had become the predominant political figure in the towns of Flanders,
in what is now modern-day Belgium. Van Artevelde threw Flanders’ support behind
Edward in 1339 and persuaded the English monarch to resurrect his claims to the French throne,
a right which Edward formally expressed on the 26th of January 1340, when he first began
using the title and arms of the kings of France. Edward’s decision to claim the French throne
was perhaps his most famous and enduring act, in a lifetime characterised by innovations
and achievements, the monarchs of England would claim the French throne down to 1802,
more immediately it gave England reason to involve itself on the continent, in ways which
would allow the English state to retain a foothold in France, until the middle of the
sixteenth century. Having claimed the French throne at the outset
of 1340, the focus of the war shifted that year to the naval campaign in the English
Channel, Philip VI had been building up an impressive fleet in the early stages of the
war, which, with contingents provided from his ally, the Kingdom of Castile in Spain,
amounted to just over 200 ships by the summer of 1340, the English fleet was being quickly
added to and by the time a decisive engagement was fought in 1340, it had been brought to
approximately 150 ships. The decisive naval engagement of this period
of the Hundred Years War, occurred at Sluys off the coast of Flanders on Midsummer’s
Day, the 24th of June 1340. Here the numerically smaller English fleet
managed to engage the French ships from relatively close quarters, as a result, the English longbow
which had been used so effectively in Edward’s armies since Halidon Hill in 1333, was used
to devastating effect, by the evening it is estimated that as many as 18,000 French mariners
and soldiers had lost their lives, and all but 23 of over 200 French ships had been destroyed
or captured, while all of the French senior naval commanders had lost their lives. Edward demonstrated here, that he was not
just a military commander on land, but that he was also able to win substantial victories
at sea, indeed, he had been in the thick of the fighting himself and was wounded by an
arrow in the thigh. Sluys was a very considerable victory indeed
for Edward, it secured English control over the English Channel for years to come and
ensured that the south of England was free from any potential naval attacks, throughout
the mid-fourteenth century. However, a challenge now faced Edward, which
could not be defeated in a land or naval battle, the cost of the war had escalated considerably,
accordingly, in November 1340, a few months after the victory at Sluys, Edward returned
in a secretive fashion to England, to confront the government, which he had placed in charge
of affairs in his absence, on the financial issues. Notably the archbishop of Canterbury, John
Stratford, was furious at first, but a reconciliation of sorts was eventually patched up between
the pair in 1341, as Edward’s attention was yet again drawn to Scotland. While the war had been raging in France in
the late 1330s and into the early 1340s, events in Scotland had necessarily fallen down the
pecking order of priorities for Edward, but the conflict here had never ended, indeed
David II, by now entering his late teenage years and developing his own independence
as a claimant to the Scottish throne, had returned to the country from France in the
summer of 1341, both Edinburgh and Stirling had quickly been seized for the Bruce cause
thereafter, these occurrences now required Edward’s attention and in the autumn of
1341, he once again made Scotland a priority, campaigning on the Anglo-Scottish border throughout
the winter of 1341 and 1342. Yet, while Edward might have wished to divert
his attentions in a sustained fashion towards Scotland, before long, the war in France became
the ultimate priority again. In April 1341, John III, the duke of Brittany,
the ruler of the duchy of Brittany, a substantial fiefdom in the extreme northwest of the country,
died without a clear heir, the succession dispute which now arose, presented an opportunity
for Edward to test whether his claim to the title of the crown of France had any weight
in France. To do so, Edward supported the claim of John
de Montfort, a relative of the recently deceased duke through his niece, while King Philip
VI of France was supporting the claim of Charles, Count of Blois, to succeed to the duchy. Thus began what is known as the War of the
Breton Succession, a major component part of the wider Hundred Years War, and one which
would drag on in its own right, for the ensuing quarter of a century. In the immediate sense, the war in Brittany
offered Edward a good opportunity to continue to challenge Philip’s authority in France,
one which he exploited expertly in the years ahead. The War of the Breton Succession continued
apace into the mid-1340s and it was this localised conflict which was the pretext for Edward,
to begin preparing a major new invasion force in England in 1345. It would be the following year before it finally
left for France, but when it did the campaign of 1346, would produce some of the most significant
engagements of the entire Hundred Years War, and some of Edward’s most famous military
victories. The exact goals and purpose of the 1346 expedition
to France, were kept largely secret while it was being prepared in England early in
the year, and indeed it is still not clear if there was a specific strategy in mind from
the beginning, or if the approach was eventually decided upon and developed in response to
events in France. Whatever the overall plan had been, we know
what actually occurred, Edward’s army, consisting of between 12,000 and 15,000 men landed on
the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy on the 12th of July 1346, his goal was to undertake
an extensive chevauchée or military raid across French territory, a strategic approach
which Edward became particularly fond of in France and which formed another central plank
of the military revolution which Edward implemented amongst the English armed forces in the mid-fourteenth
century. The campaign was enormously successful in
the weeks that followed, the first major strategic victory came on the 26th of July, when the
town of Caen in Normandy was seized by Edward, a sack of the city lasted five days thereafter,
before Edward’s forces headed west, the route to Paris now lying open. As substantial as the sacking of Caen had
been, though, the main military success of Edward’s 1346 campaign, occurred a month
later. As the English king advanced on Paris, Philip
VI was furiously gathering his forces to protect the French capital, and by mid-August, the
French monarch had gathered together an army, consisting of well in excess of 20,000 men,
which heavily outnumbered Edward’s forces, which numbered approximately 12,000 men by
the late summer. Meanwhile, Edward had skirted Paris and turned
north towards Flanders, where he hoped to combine with some of his erstwhile allies
from the Low Countries, thus, when the two monarchs finally clashed on the 26th of August
1346, it was far to the north of Paris near Calais, just outside the town of Crécy-en-Ponthieu. The Battle of Crécy on the 26th of August
1346, would prove to be one of the most consequential engagements of the entire Hundred Years War. When word reached Edward that Philip’s army
was nearby, he had his own forces occupy the high ground on the right bank of the River
Maie, as it flowed passed the village of Crécy, the use of the high ground had served Edward
well at Halidon Hill and it would do the same here. The English forces were formed into three
units, one of dismounted close combat fighters led by Edward himself, and these were flanked
on either side by two divisions of longbow-men. The French attack came late in the afternoon
and would prove disastrous, the favoured French projectile weapon of the crossbow, proved
completely inferior to the English longbow and a division of French crossbowmen quickly
broke, under sustained English longbow fire, Philip then attempted to send his cavalry
directly up the hill towards the English centre, but like the Scottish at Halidon Hill, the
French cavalry was completely overpowered by sustained longbow fire from the English,
as they attempted to surmount the high ground. By the time the cavalry charge reached Edward’s
arrayed close-quarters infantry division, they were already severely weakened. The resulting clash was an enormously bloody
affair, with the French suffering many casualties, by the time the French broke off and left
the field in defeat, towards dawn on the 27th of August, approximately 4,000 French troops
had been killed, while just a few hundred of Edward’s troops had been lost. If there were any doubt by 1346 of the superiority
of the English longbow against continental methods of warfare and the use of the crossbow
as a projectile, the Battle of Crécy dispelled that doubt, it also solidified Edward’s
reputation as one of the great military commanders of Europe, having comprehensively defeated
the French king, despite being outnumbered by nearly two to one at the outset of the
engagement on the 26th of August, significantly, Crécy was also notable, for the use by Edward’s
forces of a small number of canon, the first recorded instance of the use of artillery
in a field battle in Western Europe. The immediate implication of Edward’s astounding
victory at Crécy, was that northern France was now largely unprotected, as a result,
Edward turned his forces towards the nearby town of Calais and laid siege to it on the
3rd of September. It would take nearly a full year to capture
the northern French port, but eventually on the 3rd of August 1347 it fell, this must
surely stand as one of Edward’s greatest accomplishments. Calais would remain in English hands for over
two centuries, only finally being retrieved by the French in 1558. The victory at Crécy and the inception of
the eventually successful siege of Calais, were not the only major successes Edward’s
England was enjoying in the late summer and autumn of 1346. While the king was in France, the conflict
had continued on England’s northern border with Scotland, in the early autumn David II
now attempted to take advantage of Edward’s absence on the continent by invading northern
England, it would prove to be a catastrophic error, he was encouraged in this by Philip
VI, who called on his Scottish ally to honour their alliance by attacking England. On the 17th of October 1346, David II’s
forces, numbering approximately 12,000 men, clashed with an English force of just slightly
over half the number David brought into the field, at Neville’s Cross near Durham. The English forces, led by Lord Ralph Neville,
comprehensively routed the numerically superior Scots, perhaps as many as 2,000 of the Scottish
army’s troops were killed, but most ominously David II was captured by Neville’s forces. Thus, by the autumn of 1347, Edward’s fortunes
were soaring. In France he had won a stunning victory over
Philip at Crécy, in the late summer of 1346 and he followed it up a year later, by capturing
the town of Calais. In Scotland, the de Bruce contender to the
throne had been captured, leaving Edward in an extremely powerful negotiating position,
both in France and Scotland. To consolidate his position, Edward negotiated
a nine months long truce in October 1347 and set off for England victorious. It was at this zenith of achievement back
in England during the winter of 1347 and 1348, that Edward elected to follow through on an
idea he had been harbouring since at least 1344. Enthralled by the idea of King Arthur and
his Round Table, Edward had long had designs to set up his own Round Table and knightly
order, and in 1344, he had even begun construction work on a headquarters for such a knightly
order at Windsor Castle. Now, with his military fortunes prospering
in both France and Scotland, he elected to implement a version of this scheme, this was
to be a knightly order dedicated to St George, it was named for the sword belt which the
knights of the order would carry, thus was born the Order of the Garter, a chivalric
order which remains the most senior order of knighthood in the British honours system,
down to the present day. The order’s emblem is a garter with the
motto Honi soit qui mal y pense, which translated from the Middle French means ‘Shame on him
who thinks evil of it’. The phrase is said to have been uttered by
King Edward at court when the Countess of Salisbury’s garter slipped from her leg
while she was dancing. The king uttered the words as a rebuke to
some courtiers who were laughing at the incident and so his words became emblematic of chivalrous
honour. However, this story is most likely spurious
and there is no actual written account of this version of events until the 1460s, over
a century after the founding of the Order. At the time of its foundation, the Order of
the Garter consisted of Edward himself and twenty-five knights. Many of those who were amongst the founder
knights are unsurprising, for instance, Edward’s eldest son and namesake, Edward, known as
the Black Prince, was one of the first knights, as was Henry, earl of Lancaster, and several
of the most senior nobles of the realm and supporters of Edward’s cause such as Thomas
de Beauchamp, eleventh earl of Warwick; Jean de Grailly; Ralph Stafford, first earl of
Stafford; William Montagu, second earl of Salisbury; John de Lisle, second Baron Lisle;
Bartholomew Burghersh, second Baron Burghersh; John de Beauchamp, first Baron Beauchamp;
John de Mohun, second Baron Mohun; Thomas Holland, first earl of Kent; and John Grey,
first Baron Grey. But there were one or two surprising figures
amongst the first Knights of the Garter, in particular the inclusion of Roger Mortimer,
second earl of March, seems a curious pick. This was the grandson of none other than,
the attempted usurper of Edward’s royal authority in the late 1320s, Roger Mortimer,
who was executed at Tyburn in 1330, this younger Mortimer had been rehabilitated in the early
1340s, in part owing to his friendship with the Black Prince. Rounding out the list of the first members
of the Order of the Garter were Sir Hugh Courtenay; Sir Richard Fitzsimon; Sir Miles Stapleton;
Sir Thomas Wale; Sir Hugh Wrottesley; Sir Nele Loring; Sir John Chandos; Sir James Audley;
Sir Otho Holand; Sir Henry Eam; Sir Sanchet D’Abrichecourt and Sir Walter Paveley. Many of these individuals had accompanied
Edward in his campaign to France in 1346 and it seems relatively clear that the Order was
created in 1348 in part, as a means of memorialising the great victories Edward had won at Crécy
and Calais. In tandem with the establishment of the Order
of the Garter, Edward began a vast reconstruction of Windsor Castle. Conscious of the propaganda value of an imposing
royal residence, Edward oversaw the most significant expansion of the primary royal residence of
the High Middle Ages, eventually expending £50,000 on the new complex, the most expensive
building project undertaken by any English monarch during the medieval period. And yet it was just one of many great residences
which Edward could hold claim to. For instance, he had inherited Woodstock Palace
in Oxfordshire, a vast royal residence in Oxfordshire which King Henry I had built and
where the Black Prince was born in 1330. Woodstock would later become the site of Blenheim
Palace. However, just as Edward’s reign was peaking,
it was hit by catastrophe, one which Edward could do nothing to prevent, the bubonic plague,
or what is more commonly referred to as the Black Death in its fourteenth century iteration,
arrived in Europe in 1347, having been carried to the continent from the Black Sea region,
where it was hosted in the fleas which lived on black rats. These were transported to Western Europe in
1347, on board the ships of some Genoese merchants who had trading concessions in the ports of
the Crimea, on the northern shores of the Black Sea. Bubonic plague causes a dreadful illness and
death, during the first week of infection the infected individual develops flu-like
symptoms including a fever, headache and vomiting, then the individual’s lymph nodes begin
swelling to form what were known in the fourteenth century as ‘buboes’, generally on the
neck, armpits and groin or where one had been bitten by the fleas which carried the plague. These ‘buboes’ would eventually break
open and gangrene would develop in the extremities of the body such as the fingers, toes and
the tip of the nose, death, when it occurred, however, would be due to organ failure, as
the disease ravaged the body internally. Estimates of both the population of Europe
at the time and the mortality rate of the plague, are notoriously imprecise, but it
is generally understood that between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed as many as
30 million people in Europe, approximately one-third of the population of the continent. The plague arrived in England in the late
summer of 1348 and the first recorded cases in London occurred in October. Edward was wholly aware of how fatal it could
prove, as his fourteen-year-old daughter Joan had succumbed to the disease in Bordeaux in
France right around the time that the disease first appeared in England in the summer of
1348. As a consequence, like many other English
monarchs after him, Edward left London and spent much of the months that followed, in
less densely populated areas, where this catastrophic plague was circulating less aggressively,
this was effectively a form of medieval quarantine. The Black Death caused enormous difficulties
in England, not just in terms of the sheer scale of the mortality and suffering inflicted
by it, but also in terms of the social and economic disruption the pandemic unleashed. A parliament which had been planned for 1349
was abandoned and the courts were adjourned for months, meanwhile, mass graves were dug
to bury the dead and the country began implementing quarantine and sanitation measures, as best
it could for a medieval state. Though such measures seem relatively simple
by contemporary standards, recent events of the twenty-first century, have highlighted
how critical simply quarantining and removing of the still diseased bodies of the dead are,
to solving any pandemic and Edward’s government was efficient in doing so after the initial
onslaught of 1348. But the most pressing issue in the aftermath
of the first calamitous wave of the disease was the issue of labour shortages, with the
population of the continent drastically reduced, a lack of manpower would bedevil the European
economy for decades to come, however, this crisis was offset in England through one of
Edward’s most subtle but significant achievements. In the summer of 1349, a preliminary ordinance
regulating labour was issued by the king and this was followed up on in 1351, with the
Statute of Labourers. Through this, the labour market was regulated
by fixing wages at their pre-plague level, ensuring that the English economy could continue
to function, even with a drastic labour shortage in the 1350s. Although it may lack the fanfare of Edward’s
military victories, the passage of the Statute of Labourers was a highly significant aspect
of the reign of Edward III. It stabilised the English labour market in
the period of chaos which ensued from the Black Death and through it, England was the
only country in Europe, which was able to implement effective labour controls in the
1350s. There is some debate as to efficacy though,
and historians have also pointed to the fact that the Statute did create social tensions
and unrest as well amongst workers, who felt they were being short-changed in a labour
market which was advantageous to them in the aftermath of the plague. Moreover, enforcement of the Statute of Labourers
on the local level in England was largely entrusted into the hands of the Justices of
the Peace, judicial officers who enforced the laws on the county level. These officers already existed prior to the
emergency created by the Black Death, but the 1350s saw them gain greater authority
and significance as local officers of the crown, hence, Edward not only oversaw the
stabilisation of the labour market in the aftermath of the Black Death, through the
Statute of Labourers, but the method by which this was done, saw the office of the Justice
of the Peace begin to emerge in its modern form. The Justices of the Peace would occupy an
important position in English local government for centuries to come and the office was exported
to many other countries, between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Further domestic reforms were implemented
by Edward in the 1350s, to better respond to the crisis brought on by the Black Death,
the most noteworthy was surely a considerable reform of the English coinage which was initiated
in 1351, gold coins were introduced and a new silver coin called the groat also entered
circulation. Edward was no administrator with a penchant
for the minutiae of government reforms such as were being carried out in the early 1350s,
but his strength in this respect, lay in his ability to pick individuals who were well
suited to overseeing his domestic policies and delegating authority to them. Paramount here, were officials such as John
Thoresby and William Shareshull, who oversaw the implementation of measures such as the
re-coinage in the middle years of the century. The reform of England’s finances was especially
necessary to maintain the perennial war effort, the wars with France and Scotland had not
gone away, but the continent-wide emergency created by the Black Death, ensured that the
truce which Edward had negotiated with Philip VI, late in 1347, was largely maintained through
the late 1340s. The death of the French king, Edward’s long-standing
rival, on the 22nd of August 1350, encouraged Edward to begin aggressively pursuing his
claims in France again, against Jean II, Philip’s son, however, a renewed French alliance with
the kingdom of Castile in Spain, and the presence of a Castilian fleet in the English Channel
in the early 1350s, limited Edward’s ability to carry out any further invasion of France
at this time, in the meantime, the succession war continued in Brittany as a proxy of the
Hundred Years War. As a result of this latter delay and the fallout
across Western Europe from the Black Death, no new major campaign would take place in
France until the mid-1350s. When it eventually came in 1355, Edward planned
a two pronged invasion, one directly across the English Channel to northern France, beginning
in Normandy, with a subsidiary campaign being undertaken to the southwest in Gascony. The latter campaign through Gascony would
feature one of Edward’s sons in a prominent fashion for the first time. Edward and Queen Phillipa had at least twelve
children, born at regular intervals between 1330 and the mid-1350s, nine of these lived
beyond infancy, a high ratio for the late medieval period, of these nine, five were
sons and four were daughters. Edward’s heir was his son and namesake,
Edward, born in 1330 and known as the Black Prince, he would play a significant role in
the war in France from the late 1350s onwards, having previously commanded a detachment at
Crécy, when he was just sixteen years of age and having also been a founding member
of the Order of the Garter two years later. Indeed, it was the Black Prince who commanded
the campaign in Aquitaine in 1355. Of his other issue, Edward’s third oldest
surviving son, John of Gaunt, so-named after the town of Ghent where he was born in 1340,
just three months before the Battle of Sluys, was also destined to play a significant role
in the Hundred Years War as well as in England’s domestic politics in the last fifteen or so
years of Edward III’s life. The dual expeditions of 1355, did not arrive
in France until late in the year, the king himself led his expedition in person across
the Channel to Calais, in the very later autumn, but news then arrived in France that the Scots
had yet again, taken advantage of the English engagements on the continent to invade northern
England, accordingly, Edward quickly made his way back across the English Channel, and
in January 1356 he led his last military campaign into Scotland, reasserting English control
over the border region. As a result of this ‘about-turn’ in northern
France, the Black Prince’s campaign to Aquitaine, would prove much the more consequential of
the two English expeditions to France of the mid-1350s, the heir to the throne travelled
with roughly 300 ships and several thousand men for southwest France in mid-September
1355 and was at Bordeaux by October. The military campaign season was nearly over
by this time, but Edward Jr. made a short foray inland towards Toulouse, before retiring
back to Bordeaux for what remained of the winter. While the campaigns of 1355 had proved lacklustre,
that of 1356 was one of the most significant of the Hundred Years War. The Black Prince set out in July, on a great
chevauchée, an extended military raid through France, proceeding east through central France
with a force of approximately 6,000 men, the Black Prince’s forces burnt several towns
and villages including Bourges, before doubling back towards Bordeaux in late August. It was during this movement that the French
king, Jean II, elected to engage the English army. Jean might well have believed that the Black
Prince was an inferior commander compared with his father and in any event, the French
forces numbered over 10,000, holding an extensive numerical advantage over the English, but
if Jean II believed these factors would give him the upper hand, he was sorely mistaken. At the resulting Battle of Poitiers, which
took place on the 19th of September 1356, the Black Prince’s forces heavily defeated
the French yet again, a feigned retreat first throwing the French lines into disarray and
the English longbow once again being used to devastating effect, perhaps as many as
2,500 French troops were dead by the end of the battle, but most substantial was the capture
of Jean II himself. With David II of Scotland still in English
custody since the Battle of Neville’s Cross ten years earlier, the kings of France and
Scotland were now both Edward III’s captives, this placed the English king in a highly advantageous
position, he eventually elected to ransom both in return for military, territorial and
political concessions. On the 3rd of October 1357, the Treaty of
Berwick was reached with the Scots, whereby David II was released after eleven years in
captivity. Edward Balliol had relinquished his claim
to the Scottish throne in 1356, so Edward III could now have pressed his own claim to
Scotland had he wished to, but instead he opted for a more sanguine approach. David II was released in return for a ransom
of 100,000 marks, or just under £67,000, but the arrangement ensured Edward’s final
acceptance of the de Bruce kings’ suzerainty over Scotland, thus bringing the long Second
Scottish War of Independence to a conclusion, after a quarter of a century of conflict. The arrangement eventually arrived at in France,
in return for Jean II’s release, took longer to negotiate. In the interim, the French king was taken
to England and held at various locations including the Tower of London and a preliminary treaty
to release Jean and put an end to the war, was worked out in London in 1358. Through this it was agreed that Edward would
be acknowledged in his possession of Calais and granted the neighbouring County of Ponthieu
in the north around the modern-day region of Picardy, while the duchy of Aquitaine would
be expanded to incorporate much of western France, a very sizeable ransom would also
be paid in return for Jean’s release. Yet this draft agreement could not be finalised
and as a result in 1359, Edward began preparing a new military expedition against France and
expanded his demands to include former English possessions in Normandy, as well as control
over Maine and Anjou and suzerainty over the duchy of Brittany. In return, Edward promised to renounce all
of his claims on the throne of France, but the territorial concessions the English king
was now seeking, would have involved England taking direct possession of almost half of
France and virtually the entirety of the north and west of the country. The French could not seriously consider acquiescing
to this latest negotiating position, even with their king in English custody. As a consequence, active military campaigning
recommenced in the autumn of 1359, when an army of over 10,000 men commanded by Edward
himself, departed across the Channel for Calais, a long and destructive march through eastern
and central France followed in the ensuing months, with Edward threatening, though not
taking, both Rheims and Paris, although he was unable to win a strategic victory which
would have improved his bargaining power at renewed peace negotiations. By the late 1350s, the French were wary of
meeting Edward and his English forces head-on, having suffered multiple defeats against English
armies which they heavily outnumbered over the past fifteen or so years. In the midst of this stalemate, negotiations
recommenced in the early summer of 1360, the resulting Peace or Treaty of Brétigny, so
named after the town near Chartres where it was negotiated, was eventually ratified by
Edward on the 24th of October 1360. Under its terms, Jean II was to be released
in return for an enormous ransom of £500,000, Edward was to renounce his claims on the French
throne and in return, he would receive the territorial concessions which Jean had agreed
to in London in 1358, being Calais, the county of Ponthieu and an enlarged duchy of Aquitaine. Ultimately some of the terms of the Treaty
of Brétigny would never be ratified. Specifically, Edward was reluctant to relinquish
all his claims on the crown of France and Jean II was reticent about removing all claims
he had to suzerainty over the duchy of Aquitaine, yet the Treaty was agreed to and would hold
for nearly a whole decade. The treaty is typically seen as marking the
conclusion of the first phase of the Hundred Years War, if one were to try to evaluate
it in these terms, it would have to be concluded that the Treaty signified a major victory
for England in that same conflict and marked arguably the peak of Edward’s reign. England’s territorial possessions in France,
were greater as a result of the Treaty of Brétigny than they would be at any other
point during the Hundred Years War. Clearly then, the peace of 1360 was a major
victory for Edward and ensured that during the 1360s, the English king could rest easy,
knowing he was at the height of his powers in France and the Scottish border had been
firmly secured, with the arrangement reached with David II in 1357. By comparison with the three decades which
had preceded it, the 1360s were a comparatively tranquil period of Edward’s reign. The Peace of Brétigny would last for nearly
the whole of the 1360s and as a consequence England enjoyed the first period of sustained
peace of Edward III’s long reign. Given the entirely advantageous footing the
country was on by the time the first stage of the Hundred Years War ended in 1360, this
was hardly an undesirable situation. On the domestic front, there were a number
of important developments during these years, for example in 1362, with the assent of parliament,
Edward set about reforming the wool staple, the mechanism whereby wool was exported out
of England. The goal now, was to set up a new staple at
Calais for the export of wool to the continent, through a single continental port, the initiative
had considerable significance, as the English wool trade, arguably the country’s greatest
export commodity for the ensuing three centuries, was largely sold through markets in northern
France and above all in the Low Countries, through the thriving mercantile centre of
Antwerp. For many years to come after the reform of
the staple in the 1360s, in attempting to establish a staple at Calais, Edward was pre-empting
the market demands of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Yet the most substantial domestic reform of
the 1360s concerned the English language. When the Normans conquered England between
1066 and the early 1070s, they brought with them the French language and established it
as the language of government and the law courts. During the course of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, a new language developed, a hybrid of Norman French and the Germanic tongue spoken
by the Anglo-Saxons prior to the Norman Conquest. This ‘English’ language, known as ‘Middle
English’, had become the common tongue of the English people by Edward III’s reign,
but French remained the language of the courts and government nonetheless. Edward attempted to overhaul this, in 1362
a Statute of Pleading was passed, which ordered English to be used in the law courts, similarly,
when parliament met in 1363, the opening formalities were conducted in English, rather than French,
for the first time, consequently the 1360s saw a number of important advances in the
formal adoption of English as the language of government and the courts in England. Elsewhere, the 1360s were also an important
period in the governance of the Lordship of Ireland, because of the focus on France and
Scotland during the majority of his reign, Edward had been unable to devote much time
personally to Ireland, a country which the English crown ruled about half of in the east,
north and south of the island. A number of Irish lordships ruled the western
half of the country and continued to challenge English rule there. Accordingly, in the early 1360s, Edward entrusted
the governance of Ireland to his second eldest surviving son, Lionel of Clarence. This appointment bore significant fruit in
the years that followed, in 1366 a parliament was held at the town of Kilkenny in the Irish
midlands, in which a series of statutes were promulgated to separate the English from the
Irish in Ireland and protect the English parts of Ireland from Irish encroachments. The Statutes of Kilkenny, as they became known,
would serve to insulate the English of Ireland from Irish cultural interference in the decades
that followed, for instance, the statutes prohibited intermarriage between the Irish
and English and put measures in place to prevent the English of Ireland, from adopting Irish
cultural and political customs. These measures substantially arrested any
potential decline of English power in Ireland during the mid-fourteenth century and in one
shape or another, formed a major foundational basis of the English lordship of Ireland through
to the early sixteenth century. While the 1360s was a relatively placid period
of Edward’s reign, the last decade in which he reigned, the 1370s, would bring with it
fresh challenges, yet, any assessment of Edward III’s reign and his legacy, must acknowledge
that the king was not the central figure in the governance of the realm during the last
seven or eight years of his reign. We first find references to Edward’s health
failing in 1369, when he was fifty-seven years of age, he would live on for a further eight
years, but there are clear indications that the king was suffering an increasing number
of afflictions, both physical and mental, as the 1370s wore on. As with so many instances of illness in medieval
monarchs, we cannot be entirely sure what Edward was actually suffering from during
his last years, although it seems that the most serious of his maladies might have been
caused by a series of strokes which he experienced, in the last eight or so years of his life. These afflictions certainly limited Edward’s
role in the governance of his realms, but he still played a part, though by the 1370s
the day to day functions of government were increasingly carried out by his sons and extended
family, nevertheless some significant events can be tied to Edward, even in his final years. Paramount here was the resumption of the war
in France, peace had lasted for the better part of a decade since the settlement of 1360,
but this was becoming more and more tenuous as the years went by. Charles V had succeeded his father Jean II
as King of France in May 1364, the son was a more aggressive figure, who in the years
that followed, attempted to re-establish the strength of the French monarchy after the
bruising it had taken during the 1340s and 1350s. For instance, he entered into a rapprochement
with Charles of Navarre, the small kingdom on the southern border of France, but more
conspicuously the French King re-asserted the suzerainty of the French monarchy over
the duchy of Brittany. But the spark for renewed conflict with England
came, when Charles exploited internal unrest within the duchy of Aquitaine in 1369, to
demand that the Black Prince appear before him. When the heir to the English throne declined
to do so, Charles V declared the duchy of Aquitaine forfeit, in an instant reigniting
the dormant Hundred Years War. In response, in the summer of 1369, Edward
resumed his claim to the throne of France, which he had agreed to surrender in 1360,
consequently, the war was rejoined just as Edward’s health was beginning to deteriorate
at the end of the 1360s. This new chapter in the conflict between England
and France, was a fundamentally different affair to those of the 1340s and 1350s. For one thing, Edward would not lead an invasion
of France himself and the execution of the military campaigns was to be largely carried
out by Edward’s sons, the Black Prince and John of Gaunt, notably in this regard Edward
had intended to lead an expedition to France himself, when the conflict first broke out
in 1369, but he had to abandon his plans for this and it was eventually John who commanded
this army when it crossed the Channel. Moreover, in this new phase of the war, the
conflict between England and France became increasingly mixed up with a series of civil
wars and inter-state conflicts in Spain involving the two major powers there, the kingdoms of
Castile and Aragon. It is perhaps a reflection on how much the
victories of the 1340s and 1350s had been dependant on the dynamic leadership and brilliant
general-ship of Edward III, that in this latest phase of the war, England floundered without
the old king’s direct involvement. Much of the duchy of Aquitaine was overrun
in the early 1370s, in part because the Castilians, with whom the French had allied, managed to
defeat the English at sea off La Rochelle in south-western France in June 1372, this
defeat limited the degree to which the English territories on the continent could be resupplied
from England. A major campaign was undertaken in 1373, in
an attempt to overturn the defeats which English arms had suffered between 1369 and 1372, this
great chevauchée or raid was led by John of Gaunt and proceeded from Calais south,
through eastern France and then west to Bordeaux. Although it left much destruction in its wake,
it was a strategic failure and failed in its main goal of reimposing English authority
in Brittany. As a result, by the mid-1370s, without Edward’s
leadership to draw upon, the English position in France was much depleted and was largely
confined to Calais in the north and the coastal regions of Gascony, including the town of
Bordeaux. It was with English fortunes at this low ebb,
that Pope Gregory XI offered to broker a peace between the belligerents in 1374, the resulting
treaty, known as the Treaty of Bruges, was agreed on the 27th of June 1375, it allowed
England time to regroup, but was unpopular at home, in large part because the peace had
seen the English position in the north of France weakened. Yet it would not last long, the issue of the
sovereignty of the duchy of Aquitaine was not resolved by this latest treaty and in
the months ahead, this became a cause for fresh unrest. The English wanted Aquitaine to be freed entirely
from French sovereignty, a move which would ensure that the kings of England would never
have to pay homage to the monarchs of France again. While Charles V was somewhat understandably
reluctant to effectively abandon any claim he had on the duchy, war would quickly resume
again around this issue and several others in 1377, but when it did it would be the task
of the government of Edward’s successor to oversee it. While the last years of Edward’s reign saw
some reverses in France, on the home front a number of domestic crises were navigated
with admirable skill, these largely concerned the issue of financing a fresh period of war
on the continent and in 1371 and again in 1373, parliaments were called in order to
obtain a loan and subsidy from the lords and gentry of England, in both instances, Edward
had to make several concessions to the political nation in order to attain the requisite financing,
notably by replacing a number of his senior ministers who were churchmen with lay officials. Yet resentment was building about the kingdom’s
finances throughout the decade, which came to a head in 1376, in a parliament convened
just one year before Edward’s death, known to history as ‘the Good Parliament’, this
latest assembly was called to provide further financing for the crown. When it met in April 1376, however, it took
advantage of the opportunity to lay forth a series of accumulated grievances, particularly
with several of Edward’s advisors. John of Gaunt also became a target of the
parliament, especially so during the summer of 1376, when the Black Prince died from dysentery
on the 8th of June. A relatively amicable series of solutions
were eventually worked out, whereby the counsellors who had offended the political nation were
dismissed and some further reforms implemented, consequently, the end of Edward’s life saw
the English parliament functioning as a means of redress for the English political community,
in a manner which would break down in later times. That this was avoided and with it, England
spared any form of revolt during Edward’s long reign, is a testament to the stability
of his reign on the domestic front, despite the regular strains of financing extended
wars in France and Scotland. However, that stability was fracturing, it
would have been apparent to the assembled parliamentarians and nobles in London in 1376,
that the king’s health was deteriorating sharply, at the age of sixty-four and after
nearly a half a century on the English throne, in late September he became seriously ill
from a large abscess, days later, he was making some final amendments to his will in preparation
for his impending death, but it did not come, rather the old monarch rallied in the weeks
that followed. However, early in February 1377, the abscess
burst, as a result his movements were highly encumbered for the remaining months of his
life. When he died at Shene Palace, where Richmond
Palace would subsequently be built, near London on the 21st of June 1377, it was almost certainly
from another stroke, he was sixty-four years of age, he died having achieved so much in
his lifetime, in a long and influential reign as England’s monarch. The most significant chronicler of Edward’s
reign and the first half of the Hundred Years War, Jean Froissart, wrote stirringly of Edward’s
death and funeral in his Chronicles, an event Froissart lived through himself: “On 21 June 1377, the gallant and noble
King Edward III departed this life, to the deep distress of the whole realm of England,
for he had been a good king for them. His like had not been seen since the days
of King Arthur, who once had also been King of England, which in his time was called Great
Britain. So King Edward was embalmed and placed with
great pomp and reverence on a bier borne by twenty-four knights dressed in black, his
three sons and the Duke of Brittany and the Earl of March walking behind him, and carried
thus at a slow march through the city of London, the face uncovered. To witness and hear the grief of the people,
their sobs and screams and lamentations on that day, would have rendered anyone’s heart.” It was a fitting last journey for one of England’s
greatest kings. Edward was succeeded by his grandson, Richard,
the son of the Black Prince, just ten years old at the time of his accession, Richard
II would rule until he was usurped by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, in 1399, Richard’s
reign would be characterised by military reverses and mass social unrest within England, the
most significant being the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, his reliance, like his great-grandfather,
Edward II, on a cohort of favourites, aroused widespread discontent throughout the Plantagenet
realms and foreshadowed the Wars of the Roses of the fifteenth century, consequently Edward
III’s reign appears all the more remarkable in retrospect, for having been an oasis of
stability in the midst of the chaos that otherwise characterised England’s politics, throughout
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There is little doubting that Edward was one
of England’s most substantial and successful monarchs ever, in the nineteenth century a
generation of historians began to vilify the king and questioned whether his reign could
be considered a success. However, this view is problematic, as the
writers of the Victorian Era attempted to impose their own value systems on the appraisal
of Edward, instead of assessing the king on his own terms as a Late Medieval monarch. For a king who was born and lived in warfare,
the moral concerns of later generations would have made little sense, indeed imposing moral
judgments on the actions of people who lived hundreds of years ago is always problematic. More recently, historians such as Ian Mortimer
and William Ormrod have successfully restored Edward III’s reputation. While there is no denying that Edward’s
last years saw some setbacks, particularly in France, he was at this time very ill and
power had largely devolved to his sons, when we disregard this latter period, there is
no doubting the success of Edward’s reign. Under his rule, England reached the peak of
its power during the medieval period, at points between the 1330s and 1360s Edward was not
just the ruler of England, Wales and much of Ireland, but was able to impose his authority
fairly thoroughly on Scotland and large sections of northern and western France, some of the
territorial gains were either permanent, as in the case of Berwick on the Anglo-Scottish
border, or long-lasting, as in the case of the town of Calais in northern France. Moreover, the Hundred Years War which he initiated,
was a key component in the eventual formation of England and France into modern nation ‘states’,
owing to the manner in which, it drew on their administrative and financial resources and
fostered a fledgling sense of patriotism through national endeavour. Indeed, when Edward sent requests for men
and money around his dominions to fund his campaigns in France, he was effectively commanding
his local officials to come up with better ways of taxing the country and exploiting
its resources. This is the very basis of the modern nation
state, one which is expertly placed to exploit the resources available to it to the maximum
extent possible in the name of government. Much of this territorial expansion was achieved
on the back of both Edward’s outstanding abilities as a general and the military revolution
which he oversaw, during his rule the English longbow made England the military superpower
of its day, at Halidon Hill, Crécy, Neville’s Cross, Poitiers and several other battles,
English armies consistently managed to defeat French and Scottish armies, which were substantially
numerically superior to those commanded by Edward and his nobles, moreover, an English
army was quite possibly the first to utilise field canon in all of Europe at Crécy in
1346, nor was Edward’s military prowess confined to land, as at Sluys in 1340, Edward
demonstrated how effective the English longbow could be, even at sea. Given all this, there is little doubting that
Edward III should be viewed as one of the great commanders of English and British military
history, a figure who stands alongside John Churchill, first Duke of Marlborough, whose
command of England’s forces during the War of the Spanish Succession in the early eighteenth
century, catapulted England to the rank of major powers in Europe, or perhaps even Arthur
Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, whose successful prosecution of the Peninsular War
in Portugal and Spain, which took place between 1807 and 1814, became the bane of Napoleon’s
dominance of Europe, while Wellington was also central to Bonaparte’s final defeat
at Waterloo in 1815. Certainly, Edward III’s legacy as a military
commander probably surpasses his grandfather, Edward I. While he may not have been able to convert
his military victories as successfully into political victories, there is little doubting
Edward III was a more skilled commander on the field of battle. But Edward’s legacy should not just be measured
through assessing his prowess on the battlefield. In the late 1340s, he established the Order
of the Garter, England’s highest chivalric order to this day and in doing so, contributed
to England being considered the most chivalrous kingdom in western Europe at the height of
the Middle Ages. As a further statement to the world of his
rule, he also re-edified and expanded Windsor Castle as a symbol of English royal power. Another lasting achievement was seen in the
late 1340s and early 1350s, when Edward successfully steered England through the crisis wrought
by the arrival of the bubonic plague in Europe, the Black Death was the greatest crisis faced
by Europe during the Late Middle Ages, perhaps as much as a third of England’s population
died within the space of half a decade, but rather than succumbing psychologically to
the onslaught of illness and death which ravaged England in the late 1340s, Edward guided the
country through this period by stabilising the economy through the passage of the Statute
of Labourers, moreover, in strengthening the office of the Justice of the Peace, in order
to effectively implement the Statute on the local level in England, Edward’s government
made a lasting contribution to English local administration, one which was subsequently
exported to Ireland, North America, India and Australia in later centuries. Yet in many other ways, Edward’s reign and
its success was about long-term nation building. Parliament became more important during his
reign and he began to use many of the emblems which came to symbolise England itself, notably
carrying the cross of St George into battle. But perhaps Edward’s greatest legacy was
in the reorientation of the courts and government to favour Middle English as the language of
government and officialdom in England, as a result, in the centuries that followed,
when England and then Britain began settling colonies elsewhere all over the world, it
was English which was spread globally as the language of England and Britain. There is no doubting the importance of Edward
III to all these key developments of the fourteenth century, making him perhaps England’s greatest
king. What do you think of King Edward III? Was he England’s greatest ever king and
if so is he unjustly forgotten about today? Please let us know in the comment section,
and in
the meantime, thank you very much for watching.
