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fighting France for over half a century ; almost every summer ships filled with eager young soldiers had sailed from Sandwich to Calais or from Southampton to Bordeaux. War was still the nobility’s ideal profession ; the English aristocracy saw a command in France much as their successors regarded an embassy or a seat in the cabinet. Moreover, men of all classes from Gloucester to the humblest bondman, regarded service in France as a potential source of income : if the War had cost the English monarchy ruinous sums, it had made a great deal of money for the English people, for many of whom peace meant more than just unemployment. In modern terms, refusing to continue the War was as though a government were to decide to abolish football pools and horse-racing.

Richard II finally destroyed the leaders of the war party in 1397. The Duke of Gloucester gave the King his opportunity during a banquet at Westminster in June. Some of the garrison of Brest, which had just been sold to Brittany, were present and in his cups the Duke asked his nephew what they were going to live on, adding that they had never been properly paid. The King answered that they were living at his expense at four pleasant villages near London and would certainly receive their arrears. Gloucester exploded. ‘Sire, you ought first to hazard your life in capturing

The routier Sir Nicholas Dagworth. Captain of Flavigny in Burgundy in 1359, he led a ‘free company’ of mercenaries into Spain in 1367. Ironically, he negotiated a truce with the French for Richard II in 1388. From a brass of 1402 in the parish church at Blickling, Norfolk.

a city from your enemies before you think of giving up any city which your ancestors have conquered.’ Richard was furious and the Duke realized he had gone too far. In August Gloucester, Arundel and their friends met secretly at Arundel Castle in Sussex to discuss how to seize power and imprison the King. They were soon betrayed and arrested. Arundel was beheaded while Thomas of Gloucester, despite begging for mercy ‘as lowly and meekly as a man may’ was smothered in a feather-bed in his prison at Calais. (Though Froissart heard that he was strangled with a towel.)

Richard had now become almost insanely tyrannical, flouting the established laws and customs of the realm. ‘The King did what he would in England and none dared speak against him.’ A figure even more tragic than that portrayed by Shakespeare, not only did he lose a kingdom but he lost it from wanting to possess it more completely. He finally overreached himself by exiling Henry of Bolingbroke, Gaunt’s son and heir, and then when Gaunt died in 1398, making Bolingbroke’s banishment lifelong and confiscating all his estates. This and other blatant injustices, such as making anyone he disliked pay a crippling sum for a pardon, outraged the English magnates. In 1399 Bolingbroke returned to England while Richard was away in Ireland and found so much support that he was able to depose the King, who, a modern biographer suggests, became ‘a mumbling neurotic sinking rapidly into a state of complete melancholia’. Bolingbroke ascended the throne as Henry IV, the first of the Lancastrian dynasty. Richard died a few months later, probably of self starvation-‘some had on him pity and some none, but said he had long deserved death,’ observes Froissart. Whatever his faults Richard II had been genuine in his attempts to make peace with France, and his failure meant the revival of the War.

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Burgundy and Armagnac: England’s Opportunity 1399-1413

The Duke of Burgundy ... was sore abashed and said ‘Out, harrow! What mischief is this? The King [of France] is not in his right mind, God help him. Fly away, nephew, fly away, for the King would slay you.’

Froissart

Normandy would still be French, the noble blood of France would not have been spilt nor the lords of the Kingdom taken away into exile, nor the battle lost, nor would so many good men have been killed on that frightful day at Agincourt where the King lost so many of his true and loyal friends, had it not been