In the year 1400, an uneasy quiet lay over the fields of northern France. The great war between the crowns of England and France, a conflict already grinding on for over sixty years, was in a phase of truce. Yet for the English aristocracy, from the mightiest duke to the humblest knight in a Lincolnshire manor house, France was not a foreign country but an idea, a promise, and a battlefield upon which their fortunes, honour, and very identity were forged. This long, sprawling contest, which posterity would name the Hundred Years’ War, was the defining stage upon which the English nobility played out its European destiny. For a man of substance, a landholder in the county of Lincoln, the call to war in France was a constant, almost gravitational pull, shaping his politics, his wealth, and his relationship with a newly insecure Lancastrian crown.
The Quarrel of Kings: A Legacy of Land and Blood
The origins of the war, formally declared by King Edward III in 1337, were a complex tangle of feudal rights, dynastic ambition, and economic necessity. At its heart lay the English king’s status as Duke of Aquitaine, a vast and wealthy swathe of south-western France. This made him a vassal of the French king, a galling subservience for a sovereign monarch. The final insult came in 1328 when the Capetian dynasty failed in the male line. Edward III, through his mother Isabella (the "She-wolf of France"), had a credible, though disputed, claim to the French throne itself. When the Valois dynasty took power, Edward initially paid homage, but the combination of French encroachment in Aquitaine and their support for England’s enemy, Scotland, provided the casus belli.
For the barons and knights of England, this was more than a king's quarrel. It was an opportunity. Lincolnshire, a county rich in agricultural wealth and a cornerstone of the vital English wool trade, was deeply connected to the continent. The great port of Boston thrived on exports to the cloth towns of Flanders, a region whose economic loyalties were a key flashpoint in the early war. For a Lincolnshire landholder, a French king interfering with the wool trade was not a distant abstraction but a direct threat to the price of his primary commodity and the rents he could collect.
Furthermore, the war offered a path to enrichment and social advancement that peacetime England could not match. The concept of chivalry, burgeoning in the fourteenth century, provided the ideological framework. War was a noble pursuit, a test of Christian manhood. But beneath the veneer of honour lay the brutal economics of the chevauchée—a devastating raid through enemy territory designed to destroy morale and reap plunder. More lucrative still was the practice of ransom. Capturing a French knight or, with divine fortune, a great lord, could make a man’s fortune overnight. The ransom for King John II of France, captured at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356, was an astronomical three million gold écus, a sum that reverberated through the English economy.
The Crécy Generation and the Profits of War
The first phase of the war, under the brilliant generalship of Edward III and his son, Edward the Black Prince, was a story of stunning English success. The victories at Sluys (1340), Crécy (1346), and Poitiers (1356) were not just triumphs of arms; they were validations of a new military system. The English army, combining disciplined men-at-arms with ranks of yeoman archers wielding the formidable longbow, proved devastatingly effective against the larger, more chaotic charges of French chivalry.
Men from Lincolnshire were present from the beginning, answering the king’s summons to war. These were not just professionals, but tenants-in-chief, holding lands directly from the crown, their service a feudal obligation. Among the great magnates at Crécy was Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus and Lord of Kyme in Lincolnshire. A veteran of the Scottish wars, he commanded a significant retinue, fulfilling his duty as one of the kingdom’s premier nobles. His presence demonstrates how the war mobilised the entire aristocratic structure, from the highest echelon downwards.
Below the earls were the bannerets and knights, the backbone of the officer class. Families who would dominate the Lincolnshire landscape for centuries—the Beaumonts, the Welles, the Willoughbys—all cut their teeth in these French campaigns. They returned, if they survived, not only with honour but with coffers swelled by loot and ransom. They invested this new wealth back in their estates, founding chantries, rebuilding churches, and expanding their manor houses. The war in France was physically and architecturally inscribed upon the English landscape. This injection of French wealth, however, was predicated on continued success, a dangerous foundation for aristocratic prosperity.
The 1370s and 1380s saw a dramatic reversal of fortune. A resurgent France under King Charles V and his capable commander, Bertrand du Guesclin, slowly clawed back almost all the English gains. The Black Prince was ailing, and Edward III was lapsing into senility. The war became a costly, demoralising quagmire. In England, the huge expense, without the offsetting income from plunder, led to increasingly desperate fiscal measures. The imposition of a series of Poll Taxes to fund the failing war effort was the primary catalyst for the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. While centred on Kent and Essex, the revolt found fertile ground in Lincolnshire, where social tensions ran high. The aristocracy, once seen as victorious leaders, were now perceived by many as rapacious landlords demanding taxes for a lost cause.
The Anxious Peace and the Lancastrian Usurpation
The reign of Richard II (1377–1399) was marked by a preference for a diplomatic settlement with France, a policy that alienated a significant portion of his nobility. For a generation of barons who had known only war, peace felt like a betrayal of their purpose and a denial of their chief source of income and prestige. Figures like the king’s uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, became leaders of a 'war party', criticising the king's perceived Francophilia and perceived tyranny. This internal strife, culminating in Richard II’s deposition by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke (who became Henry IV) in 1399, was inextricably linked to the war.
For the English aristocracy, 1400 was a moment of profound uncertainty. They had a new king, a usurper, whose claim to the throne was tenuous. Henry IV’s immediate years were consumed with securing his position against rebellions at home—from the Welsh under Owain Glyndŵr and from powerful northern families like the Percys, former kingmakers who now felt betrayed. Henry IV could not afford a full-scale resumption of the war in France, but the claim to the French throne was a legacy he could not abandon. It was a key part of the Plantagenet inheritance he had seized, and to renounce it would be a sign of weakness.
For a Lincolnshire knight, this was a time for careful calculation. Loyalty to the new Lancastrian regime was paramount, but the security it offered was fragile. Families like the Scropes, who had holdings across the north including in Lincolnshire, found themselves on the wrong side of the new king; the execution of Archbishop Scrope of York for treason in 1405 was a shocking demonstration of Henry IV’s ruthlessness. Meanwhile, the avenue for martial glory and profit in France remained tantalisingly closed, leading to a build-up of frustration among the younger generation of nobles.
"Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!": The Agincourt Campaign
The accession of Henry IV’s son, Henry V, in 1413 changed everything. Young, dynamic, and pious, Henry V understood that the surest way to unite his factious kingdom, silence questions about his dynasty’s legitimacy, and satisfy the ambitions of his nobility was to prosecute the French war with a vigour not seen since the days of Edward III. He presented the war not as a matter of plunder, but as a just and holy cause to reclaim his rightful inheritance.
In 1415, he launched his great enterprise. A meticulously planned invasion force of around 12,000 men gathered at Southampton, destined for Normandy. The Agincourt Roll, a muster list of the men-at-arms who served on the campaign, is a roll call of the English gentry. Lincolnshire was well-represented, providing a clear window into the composition of the king's army.
Here we find not only the great lords like Thomas Beaufort, Duke of Exeter and Henry, Lord Scrope (who was executed for his part in the Southampton Plot on the eve of departure), but a host of local knights and esquires. Sir Thomas Cumberworth of Somerby, a significant Lincolnshire landowner, was present with a retinue of two men-at-arms and six archers. Sir Walter Tailboys of Goltho, another prominent local figure, served in the retinue of the king’s brother, the Duke of Clarence. John de la Launde and William Rempston, names familiar from Lincolnshire’s administrative records, also took the king’s wages.
These were the men who endured the gruelling siege of Harfleur, where dysentery ravaged the English army, and who then undertook the desperate march across northern France, hoping to reach the safety of English-held Calais. Famously, they were intercepted near the village of Agincourt by a vast French army. Outnumbered, exhausted, and sick, their situation seemed hopeless.
The Battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 became the stuff of legend. The combination of sodden ground, a narrow battlefield that funnelled the French charge, and the devastating volleys of the English longbowmen resulted in a cataclysmic defeat for the French. Thousands of French nobles were killed or captured, while English losses were astonishingly light. For the likes of Cumberworth and Tailboys, survival at Agincourt was a mark of supreme distinction, an honour they and their descendants would bear for generations. The victory was seen as a sign of God’s clear favour for the Lancastrian cause, and it galvanised the English war effort.
In the years following Agincourt, Henry V systematically conquered Normandy. The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 represented the absolute zenith of English ambition: Henry was recognised as heir to the French throne and married Catherine of Valois, the French king's daughter. English aristocrats were granted French titles and lands. For a brief, intoxicating moment, the dual monarchy of England and France was a reality. A Lincolnshire knight could now dream not just of ransom, but of becoming a Norman lord himself, fulfilling a destiny that had begun with the Conquest of 1066 in reverse.
The Bitter Fruits of Defeat and the Turn Inward
This apex of fortune was tragically brief. Henry V’s sudden death in 1422 left his nine-month-old son, Henry VI, as king of both England and France. The English war effort, though managed capably for a time by the king’s uncle, John, Duke of Bedford, lost its driving force. The emergence of Joan of Arc in 1429 was a turning point, catalysing a French spiritual and military revival.
Slowly, inexorably, the English were pushed back. The 1430s and 1440s were a long, painful story of retreat, broken truces, and diplomatic failures. Normandy, won at such cost by Henry V, was lost in 1450. The final blow came in 1453 at the Battle of Castillon, which confirmed the loss of Gascony after nearly 300 years of English rule. Of all their vast French possessions, only Calais remained. The Hundred Years’ War was over.
For the English aristocracy, the defeat was a catastrophe on multiple levels. Financially, the stream of wealth from France dried up completely. Nobles who had been granted French estates suddenly found themselves landless, returning to England dispossessed and embittered. Psychologically, the loss was profound. An entire class had defined its identity through the lens of martial superiority over the French. That certainty was now shattered.
This created a volatile and dangerous situation in England. The country was flooded with a generation of militarised nobles, men like Richard, Duke of York, and the Beaufort Dukes of Somerset, whose careers and reputations had been forged in the French wars. They were skilled in raising private armies, accustomed to violence, and now lacked a foreign outlet for their ambitions. The weak and ineffectual rule of Henry VI created a power vacuum at the centre, and these discontented magnates turned their martial energies against each other.
The factionalism that had simmered during the long defeat erupted into open conflict. The Wars of the Roses were not a separate phenomenon, but a direct and brutal consequence of the end of the Hundred Years’ War. The very skills, retinues, and aggressive mentalities honed over a century in France were now deployed in the fields of St Albans, Towton, and Tewkesbury.
The Lincolnshire connection provides a stark and tragic illustration of this continuity. The Welles family, prominent landowners in the county, had served the Lancastrian crown faithfully. Richard de Welles, 7th Baron Welles, had fought in the French wars. His fortunes, however, were tied to the failing Lancastrian dynasty. In 1470, his hot-headed son, Sir Robert Welles, raised a rebellion in Lincolnshire against the Yorkist king, Edward IV. In a classic example of the era’s brutal politics, Edward IV forced Lord Welles to write to his son telling him to disband his army, promising him a pardon. When Sir Robert refused, Edward IV had Lord Welles and another captured knight, Sir Thomas Dymoke (the King’s Champion, from Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire), summarily executed. The subsequent rout of the rebel army near Stamford became known as the Battle of Losecoat Field. Here, on Lincolnshire soil, the violent legacy of the French wars came full circle, consuming a family that had once sought its fortune on the battlefields of Normandy.
The Hundred Years’ War was, therefore, far more than a foreign adventure. It was the central, defining experience of the late medieval English aristocracy. It offered them wealth and glory, forged a common identity, and professionalised them as a military class. But its ultimate failure proved their undoing. Having gambled their European destiny on the fields of France, they returned home with an appetite for conflict that could no longer be satisfied abroad. The long war had acted as a pressure valve for the violent energies of the nobility; when that valve closed in 1453, the resulting explosion tore the kingdom apart for the next thirty years. The destiny they had sought in Paris and Rouen would ultimately be resolved in the mud and blood of Barnet and Bosworth Field.
Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
The Agincourt Roll. (Accessible online via collections like the Medieval Soldier Database, which lists participants by county). Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated by Geoffrey Brereton. Penguin Classics, 1968. (For the Edwardian phase of the war). Gesta Henrici Quinti: The Deeds of Henry the Fifth. Translated by Frank Taylor and John S. Roskell. Clarendon Press, 1975. (A key contemporary account of the Agincourt campaign). Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office. H.M. Stationery Office. (Contains records of appointments, land grants, and commissions of array for figures like Cumberworth and Tailboys).
Secondary Sources:
Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300–c. 1450. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Curry, Anne. Agincourt: A New History. Tempus Publishing, 2005. (The definitive modern account of the campaign, with extensive data on participants). Goodman, Anthony. The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452-97. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. (Connects the end of the French wars to the outbreak of civil war). Hicks, Michael. The Wars of the Roses. Yale University Press, 2010. (Provides context for the Welles rebellion and the Battle of Losecoat Field). Pollard, A. J. The Wars of the Roses. Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Sumption, Jonathan. The Hundred Years War (series). University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991–present. (The most comprehensive narrative history available, though ongoing). Swinburn, P. and D. L. Green, eds. The History of the County of Lincoln, Vol. 2 (The Victoria History of the Counties of England). Archibald Constable & Co., 1906. (For local context on landholding families). Walker, Simon. The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361-1399. Clarendon Press, 1990. (Excellent for understanding the political networks of the pre-Lancastrian period, with relevance to Lincolnshire).