Hundred Years War

Men took up arms for many reasons during the Hundred Years War. In the wake of new research into soldiers’ lives, Nicholas Gribit reveals how the promise of fortune was as big a draw as any.

On the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt, Britain found itself in need of a national myth to bolster enlistment and morale. The victory of 1415 was soon put to service by the army of 1915.

The Battle of Agincourt is among the most celebrated of all English victories. Yet, argues Gwilym Dodd, Henry V’s triumph against overwhelming odds sowed the seeds for England’s ultimate defeat in the Hundred Years War. 

The Civil War began in Scotland, so why did its radical ideas not appear to take hold north of the border?

The eldest son of Edward III took a decisive part in the battles of the Hundred Years’ War and was regarded as a paragon of chivalry. C.T. Allmand describes how the Black Prince, as he would become known, was his father’s chief lieutenant in Aquitaine, 1355-72.

Harold F. Hutchison compares fact with fiction in Shakespeare’s historical dramas.

On its centenary, Maurice Powicke traced the history of the Lanchashire educational establishment.

Derek Wilson looks at the life of a French princess, who married and helped depose an English king during a tumultuous period of Anglo-French relations that was to end in the Hundred Years War.

Christopher Allmand examines Alain Chartier’s Le Livre des Quatre Dames, a poem written in response to the English victory at Agincourt, and asks what it can tell us about the lives of women during this chapter in the Hundred Years War.

During the Anglo-French conflicts that characterised the 14th century, the Oxford theologian John Wyclif challenged the  ‘un-Christian’ pursuit of war and wealth. Yet, just like anti-war protesters today, Wyclif had little influence on Parliament or the king, writes Rory Cox.