The long and grinding conflict we now call the Hundred Years’ War is most often remembered for its brutal and decisive battles: the shocking English archery at Crécy, the capture of a French king at Poitiers, the mud-soaked triumph of Agincourt. These were the moments of thunder, when fate was settled by steel and sinew. Yet, between these clashes, the war was fought in a different arena: the gilded halls of diplomacy. Around the year 1400, a fulcrum point in English history, the art of negotiation was not merely an adjunct to war but a primary weapon of statecraft. For the English Crown, grappling with dynastic upheaval at home and a powerful, resentful France abroad, the ambassador was as vital as the knight. For the nobility and gentry, including those with deep roots in the Lincolnshire soil like the notional Lords of Brattleby, this was an era when service to the king demanded not only valour in the field but also cunning at the negotiating table.
The Foundations of Service: A Lincolnshire Lordship Through Time
To understand the role of a Lincolnshire landowner in the great affairs of state in 1400, we must first appreciate the deep-seated tradition of service that defined their class. The very origins of lordships like Brattleby are rooted in a pact of land for service forged in the crucible of the Norman Conquest. The Domesday Book of 1086 records Brattleby—or Brotelbi as it was then known—as a substantial holding in the possession of one of the Conquest’s great magnates, Gilbert de Gant, a nephew of the Conqueror himself. Gilbert held this land directly from the King, and in return, he owed the Crown military service, counsel, and loyalty. The lesser lords who held manors like Brattleby from him were, in turn, bound by the same feudal obligations. This chain of service, stretching from the king down to the local knight, was the bedrock of the medieval English state.
Over the succeeding centuries, the nature of this service evolved. The raw military obligation of the 11th century was gradually commuted and supplemented by new duties. During the turbulent reign of King John, the barons of England, demanding a check on royal power, forged the Magna Carta in 1215. While no lord of Brattleby is named as a surety, the rebellion was driven by the great northern lords, many of whom, like the Mowbray and Percy families, held extensive lands in Lincolnshire. A local landowner would have been inexorably drawn into this conflict, forced to choose between his rebellious overlord and his king. This was a political, not just a military, decision. Just two years later, Lincolnshire became the theatre for the decisive battle of the First Barons' War. In the Battle of Lincoln of 1217, royalist forces under the peerless William Marshal defeated a combined army of rebel English barons and their French allies in the city's streets. A knight from nearby Brattleby would have heard the call to arms, his allegiance and future determined by the outcome of a struggle fought just a few miles from his home. By 1400, this inheritance of military, political, and administrative duty had created a gentry class that was intimately involved in the governance of both the shire and the realm. They served as Justices of the Peace, as commissioners of array (organising local levies for war), and as Knights of the Shire, representing their county in Parliament. It was from this pool of experienced, loyal, and ambitious men that the Crown increasingly drew its diplomats.
The Twilight of a Reign: Richard II's Diplomatic Revolution
By the 1390s, England and France were exhausted by decades of war. King Richard II, a monarch whose aesthetic and intellectual tastes ran counter to the martial piety of his grandfather, Edward III, actively sought a new path: a lasting peace with his adversary, the mercurial Charles VI of France. This policy was deeply controversial among a nobility weaned on the glories of Crécy and Poitiers, but Richard pursued it with single-minded determination. His tool was not the longbow, but the diplomatic embassy.
The culmination of his efforts was the Truce of Leulinghem, finalised in 1396. This was no mere seasonal ceasefire; it was an ambitious 28-year truce intended to entirely reset Anglo-French relations. The negotiations were a masterpiece of diplomatic theatre, involving the highest echelons of both kingdoms. England’s chief negotiator was Richard’s powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, whose vast estates made him the effective ruler of much of the north, including great swathes of Lincolnshire.
Our hypothetical Lord of Brattleby, as a significant landowner in the county, would have existed within Gaunt’s sphere of influence. His loyalty and career progression would have been tied to the great Duke of Lancaster’s political fortunes. When Gaunt led the embassy to France, he travelled with an enormous retinue of knights, esquires, clerks, and lawyers – a demonstration of his power and the seriousness of the mission. Men from his Lincolnshire estates would have been a natural part of this following. A prominent local figure like Sir Thomas Swynford of Kettlethorpe, Gaunt's own stepson via his famous marriage to Katherine Swynford, epitomised this class of knightly administrator and diplomat. Sir Thomas served Gaunt in his campaigns in Spain and was a trusted figure in his ducal affinity. It is through service in the entourage of a man like Swynford that the Lord of Brattleby would have gained his first exposure to the intricacies of international statecraft. He would have witnessed first-hand the careful drafting of clauses, the deployment of rhetoric, and the vital importance of personal relationships between the negotiators.
The truce was sealed in October 1396 with the most powerful diplomatic gesture of all: a royal marriage. Richard II, a 29-year-old widower, married Isabella of Valois, the seven-year-old daughter of Charles VI. The two kings met in a magnificent tented camp between the English and French garrisons of Calais and Ardres. Chroniclers like Jean Froissart describe the scene in breathless detail: the lavish pavilions, the exchange of sumptuous gifts, and the choreographed ceremonies of fealty and friendship. For an English knight in attendance, this would have been an unforgettable spectacle. He would have seen that power could be projected not just through force of arms, but through displays of wealth, culture, and magnanimity. The peace, cemented by the body of a child-queen, seemed to herald a new age. Diplomacy had, for a moment, triumphed over war.
The Usurper's Dilemma: Henry IV and the Collapse of Peace
This new age was brutally cut short. In 1399, John of Gaunt died, and Richard II, in an act of supreme folly and tyranny, confiscated the entire Lancastrian inheritance. Gaunt’s exiled son, Henry Bolingbroke, returned to England not merely to claim his ducal rights but to seize the throne itself. His successful usurpation in October 1399, when he was crowned King Henry IV, plunged English diplomacy into crisis.
For the French court, this was an outrage. Richard II was not just a fellow monarch; he was the husband of their princess, Isabella. His deposition, and subsequent mysterious death in Pontefract Castle in early 1400, was seen as a barbarous act of rebellion. Charles VI, who suffered from recurring bouts of madness, was plunged into a fresh wave of illness by the news, and his court, led by his brother Louis, Duke of Orléans, clamoured for vengeance. The 28-year truce lay in tatters.
For Henry IV, the situation was perilous. His hold on the English throne was insecure, with plots and rebellions simmering across the kingdom. The last thing he needed was a full-scale war with France. His first two years on the throne were therefore dominated by a desperate diplomatic effort to salvage the peace. Where Richard had negotiated from a position of security, Henry negotiated from one of profound weakness. His primary goals were to secure French recognition of his legitimacy and to prevent the outbreak of hostilities.
His first move was to dispatch an embassy in early 1400, led by the Earls of Northumberland and Worcester (Henry Percy and his brother, Sir Thomas Percy). Their presence was significant; the Percys had been instrumental in Henry’s rise to power, and their lands in the north and elsewhere (including Lincolnshire) made them crucial allies. For a Lincolnshire knight like the Lord of Brattleby, the political landscape had been violently reconfigured. Loyalty to the Lancastrian cause, once a matter of fealty to his regional overlord Gaunt, was now a matter of loyalty to the King himself. Men who had served Gaunt and Richard were now compelled to serve Henry. Failure to adapt could mean ruin. Knights and gentry from Lincolnshire would have been part of the new king’s affinity, their local standing now dependent on demonstrating their loyalty to the Lancastrian regime.
The central, and most painful, point of negotiation was the fate of the young dowager Queen, Isabella. The French demanded her immediate and unconditional return, along with the full repayment of her enormous dowry. Henry’s ambassadors prevaricated. They played for time, fully aware that Isabella was a valuable diplomatic pawn. At one point, Henry IV audaciousy proposed that Isabella marry his own son, the future Henry V, in a bid to maintain the dynastic link. The French were utterly scandalised by the suggestion that their princess marry the son of the man who had deposed and murdered her husband.
Multiple embassies crossed the Channel between 1400 and 1402. These were tense, often hostile, affairs. The English delegation, which included seasoned administrators like Sir Thomas Erpingham and Bishop Henry Beaufort (Henry's half-brother), had to endure the open contempt of the French court. They were tasked with justifying the deposition of Richard II, an almost impossible legal and moral argument. They argued, unconvincingly, that Richard had abdicated willingly. They stalled on the dowry, claiming a lack of funds. Every meeting was a battle of wits and wills. While the French refused to formally recognise Henry as king, addressing him simply as 'our cousin of Lancaster', the English diplomats succeeded in their primary objective: they avoided open war. By talking, they kept the French from acting. They negotiated a series of short-term truces, buying their new king precious time to consolidate his power at home against rebellions in Wales and the north. For the Lord of Brattleby and his peers, this was a stark lesson: the survival of the Crown, and by extension their own security and property, now rested on the skill of these envoys.
The Knight as Diplomat: More Than Just a Warrior
The crisis of 1400 highlights a crucial evolution in the identity of the English nobility. The ideal knight was no longer simply a brave warrior; he also had to be a man of affairs. An embassy to a hostile court like Paris required a specific and sophisticated skillset.
First and foremost was language. While formal proceedings were often in Latin, fluency in French was essential for the informal conversation and intelligence-gathering that were the true currency of diplomacy. Secondly, a knowledge of law, particularly civil law which governed treaty-making, was indispensable. The great embassies were therefore composite bodies: led by a magnate for prestige and authority, they included career administrators, lawyers, and theologians to handle the technical details.
The role of the knightly class, the men from counties like Lincolnshire, was twofold. They provided the retinue, the security, and the physical presence that demonstrated the ambassador's status. An embassy arriving with only a handful of clerks would be dismissed as insignificant. An earl arriving with a hundred knights and squires was a force to be reckoned with. But they were more than mere muscle. Experienced knights like Sir Thomas Swynford or Sir Thomas Erpingham were veterans of both war and administration. They had fought in France, so they understood the military realities underpinning the negotiations. They had served as sheriffs and MPs, so they understood how to manage men and resources.
This blend of experience was invaluable. In the fraught negotiations over Queen Isabella's return, the English diplomats had to be firm but not provocative, masters of the subtle insult and the veiled threat. It was a dangerous game. A misstep could trigger the war everyone sought to avoid. The men carrying out these missions were not abstract figures; they were landowners whose wealth was based on the rents and harvests from their manors in places like Brattleby. For them, peace meant security and prosperity; war meant royal taxes, disruption to trade (especially the wool trade, so vital to Lincolnshire), and the risk of personal service and death overseas. Their role as royal diplomats was a direct extension of their role as protectors of their own and their region's interests. This was service to the Crown, but it was not selfless. A successful diplomatic career could bring immense rewards: royal favour, grants of land and offices, and appointments to powerful positions. The arena of diplomacy was becoming a new path to power and influence, an alternative to the battlefield.
Conclusion: A Precarious Peace, A New Era of Statecraft
The period around 1400 was a crucible for English diplomacy. Under Richard II, it was used to build an ambitious, if fragile, new structure of peace. Under Henry IV, it became a desperate tool for survival, a shield to protect a vulnerable new dynasty. The negotiations, stalling tactics, and political manoeuvring of 1400-1402 were as decisive as any battle. They successfully neutralised the immediate French threat, allowing Henry IV to survive the critical early years of his reign and defeat his domestic enemies.
This period fundamentally embedded diplomacy into the skillset required of the English ruling class. The great lords and humble gentry alike learned that the nation’s fate, and their own, could be decided not only on the fields of France but in the antechambers of Paris and Calais. The knight from Lincolnshire, whose ancestors had served the king with sword and shield, was now called upon to serve with rhetoric, law, and cunning. The diplomatic ‘weapon’ had been forged, and it would be wielded with devastating effect by Henry IV’s son, Henry V, who would masterfully combine ruthless diplomacy with brilliant warfare to bring the English crown closer than ever before to the prize it had sought for a century: the throne of France itself. The foundations for that later success were laid in the tense, uncertain, and perilous negotiations at the turn of the fifteenth century.
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Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources: Domesday Book: A Complete Translation. (London: Penguin, 2003). For the entry for Brattleby (Brotelbi) in Lincolnshire under the tenancy of Gilbert de Gant. Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Edited and translated by Geoffrey Brereton. (London: Penguin, 1978). Provides invaluable, if often romanticised, accounts of the chivalric culture and diplomatic encounters of the late 14th century, including the meeting of Richard II and Charles VI. The Westminster Chronicle, 1381-1394. Edited and translated by L.C. Hector and Barbara F. Harvey. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). A key contemporary source for the politics of Richard II’s reign. Walsingham, Thomas. The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, Vol. II, 1394-1422. Edited and translated by John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011). Offers a monastic, often critical, perspective on the events of Richard II's fall and Henry IV's accession. Calendar of the Patent Rolls and Calendar of the Close Rolls. These official government records are essential for tracing the appointments of ambassadors, commissioners, and the issuing of safe-conducts.
Secondary Sources: Curry, Anne. The Hundred Years War, 1337-1453. (London: Routledge, 2003). An excellent and accessible overview of the entire conflict. Given-Wilson, Chris. Henry IV. (London: Yale University Press, 2016). The definitive modern biography, with detailed analysis of the diplomatic challenges of Henry’s early reign. Given-Wilson, Chris. The Royal Household and the King's Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360-1413. (London: Yale University Press, 1986). Essential for understanding the structure of royal service and the role of the gentry. Harriss, G.L. Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). A magisterial survey of the period, placing diplomacy within the wider context of state formation. Saul, Nigel. Richard II. (London: Yale University Press, 1997). The standard modern biography, providing extensive detail on Richard’s personality and his peace policy with France. Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War, Vol. III: Divided Houses and Vol. IV: Cursed Kings. (London: Faber & Faber, 2009 and 2015). An epic, superbly detailed narrative history of the war, with unparalleled coverage of the diplomatic negotiations. Volume IV is particularly relevant for the events of 1399-1422. Walker, Simon. The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361-1399. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). The key work on John of Gaunt’s retinue and political network, vital for understanding the context of service in counties like Lincolnshire.