A Great and Glorious Adventure (49 page)

14
. Placed under the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, it has been part of the coronation of every English and British monarch since,
including that of our present queen. It was returned to Scotland in 1996 but will be brought back to London for future coronations.

15
. According to the Chronicle of Lanercost, William Wallace had a sword belt made from the flayed skin of Hugh de Cressingham, the treasurer
of England, killed at the battle. As leather made from human skin is far too frail to hold the weight of a sword, this seems unlikely.

16
. The £ sterling was then worth twenty-four grams of gold, which at 2010 values is £619.20, or by the silver standard
£82.50.

17
. Described by Robbie Burns as ‘A bridge without a middle arch, a church without a steeple, a midden heap in every street, and damned
conceited people’, Berwick changed hands between England and Scotland thirteen times between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries.

18
. The term really should be ‘drawn [tied to a hurdle dragged by a horse to the place of execution], hanged and quartered’.

19
. He was earl of Winchester. The Lanercost Chronicle says he was ninety years old when executed, which seems unlikely.

20
. While this author is not convinced, a strong case is made by Ian Mortimer for Edward II’s not being done to death but surviving for
many years incognito in Italy (see Mortimer,
The Perfect King: The life of Edward III
, Jonathan Cape, London, 2006).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

61
. Some sources suggest that he had.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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