The war that started in 1337 was to be different from all its predecessors, for it quickly assumed the character of a crusade fought by a true king against a usurper. In 1340 Edward III publicly proclaimed himself king of France and the lilies of France were added to his coat of arms, which remain there to this day. Edward played his role to the full, riding at the head of his troops into battle and addressing them with a speech. His son, Edward of Woodstock, called the Black Prince probably on account of his black armour, was even more famous than his father, being hailed as ‘the flower of chivalry of all the world’. At the age of sixteen he was already leading part of the English forces into battle. For over two decades the English won victory after victory. In the Battle of Crecy (1346) the king and his son defeated an enemy force more than twice their number. The victory was due to the use of the longbow and the king’s skill as a general. The battle was followed by the siege and surrender of the port of Calais which was to remain in English hands for two centuries. Ten years later came another legendary battle, Poitiers, in which the young Black Prince was the hero. He defeated the French and took their king prisoner.
That glorious phase of the war came to an end in 1360 when peace was made and the enormous ransom of three million pounds was paid for the French king. The English lands in France were enlarged as they now included Calais. Although the war was renewed in the 1370s it was never as successful. By then Edward was old and the Black Prince ill. The Valois kings shrewdly avoided battle. There was little active warfare during the next two reigns. Richard II (1377–1399), the grandson of Edward III and the last Plantagenet king, realized that the long war with France which he inherited was ruining the country. Henry IV (1399–1413), of the House of Lancaster, was a weak ailing monarch whose whole reign was marked by rebellions both in the north and in Wales. Yet the war was popular with the great lords, for through it they profited by plunder and ransoms. They had actually been permitted by Edward III to raise private armies for the French war. The lords were given what they wanted by the next king Henry V (1413–1422), a natural soldier and a born leader of men, immortalized by Shakespeare. Henry voiced his territorial claims to France from the moment of his accession. In 1415 he won the Battle of Agincourt, defeating a French army five times greater than his own and destroying the flower of the French nobility. During the next year the English were again victorious, this time over the French fleet. By 1418 the whole of Normandy had fallen into Henry’s hands. The French king agreed to disinherit his son and recognize Henry, married to his daughter, as ‘heir of France’. The child of this marriage would be destined to rule over the dual monarchy of France and England. However, this was not to happen. In 1422 Henry V died and Parliament began to complain about the cost of the war. The conquest of Normandy was not working, and it was proving impossible to administer. Besides, the war had united the French behind their Dauphin. Within a few years Joan of Arc appeared to inspire a new loyalty to the French crown and, with Henry V dead and his son Henry VI (1422–1471) a mere child (he was born in 1421), the English had lost their commander. Before long, the dual monarchy had vanished, and within thirty years England was reduced to its old foothold of Calais.
During the Hundred Years’ War some important changes and events were taking place in England. While the king was busy with his wars, Parliament quickly developed towards its present form. The common people’s representatives got into the habit of meeting privately to discuss their business before they joined the lords. By 1350 they also had a Speaker, whose duty was to speak for them all and to express their agreed opinion to the lords. Within the next ten years the old Parliament divided into three parts: a House of Commons, a House of Lords and a small permanent council. The third body was composed of the king’s official advisers who met regularly, the others only met when Parliament was called. As the War was going on, Parliament was being constantly pressed for funds, so it met more often and gradually secured greater and greater control of the purse strings. As long as parliament supported his wars, Edward III was quite happy to increase its powers and give it complete control of the taxes.
Edward III also began to appoint Justices of the Peace. They were unpaid servants of the Crown given the local powers of the king’s sheriffs and judges.
A major event that took place soon after the accession of Richard II is known as the Wat Tyler rebellion, the Great Revolt (1381). This was a rising of the English underclass, the poor villains and wage-earners, who, unlike the other classes of society (lords, knights, squires, townspeople, freemen), weren’t represented in Parliament and whose voice couldn’t be heard in the government. The villains (or serfs) were tied to their lord’s manor and had to do feudal service on the lord’s land for three days of the week, receiving in return strips of land often scattered over several large fields. Most of them, however, weren’t satisfied with their position, willing to pay rent for their farms and objecting to feudal service. Besides, owing to the devastating effects of the Black Death, the plague that scourged the country around the middle of the 14th century, the population fell dramatically, labour became expensive, and villains, growing prosperous, could sometimes buy their freedom. Yet most were refused it and the result was bitter resentment. To make matters worse, in 1380 Parliament, to meet the cost of the French war, imposed what was called a poll-tax on the whole adult population. The amount was one shilling, to be paid by every man no matter how much he earned. This was unfair on the poor labourers, whose average monthly wage was just about a shilling. When it came to collecting the tax, there was widespread evasion. When government officials were sent into the shires to force the collection, the result was open revolt, for the tax proved to be the final straw in the list of grievances. The rebellion quickly spread throughout the country, the discontented massed in thousands, and soon their leaders emerged, Jack Straw in Essex and Wat Tyler in Kent. Everywhere the rebels went they released prisoners but above all burnt documents, anything that recorded serfdom. Landlords were seized and forced to give their villains charters of freedom. The rebellion was eventually crushed, but the ruling class had a narrow escape (several of the king’s ministers including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Treasurer were killed) and learnt a bitter lesson. Gradually the lords gave up their claims to feudal service and accepted rent instead, which resulted in the emergence and rapid development of a class of yeoman farmers. The process accelerated with the arrival of sheep farming, for now the squire needed fewer hands and more money. Serfdom died a slow death through the following century. These changes signaled the beginning of the end of medieval England.
Another important factor that contributed to the eventual demise of the medieval order of things was the civil wars of the second half of the 15th century commonly known as the Wars of the Roses. The houses of Lancaster (the red rose) and York (the white rose) were both descended from Edward III and had equal claims to the throne of England. The last of the Lancaster kings, Henry VI, had a nervous breakdown in 1453, after which he became a pawn in the hands of whoever seized power, the victim of the rival parties who took sides in the conflict. These civil wars would never have happened if the character of Henry VI had been different. Law and justice in the political system created by William the Conqueror depended on the king making effective use of his nobles, because there was no army or police force. To make the system work the king had skillfully to choose the right allies among nobles and reward them with titles, lands and offices. His failure to do so meant that people now turned to the next best thing, the great lord whose power would protect them. So gradually the whole of England became divided up into groups loyal to this or that lord.
Warwick Castle, the residence of the Earl of Warwick
The only solution to the country’s problems was to get rid of the weak king, and this was finally achieved by Edward of York, Earl of March, descended from both the second and fourth son of Edward III. Supported by Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, nicknamed the ‘kingmaker’ because of the decisive role he played in the