Part 2 can be found here

Introduction

In one sense, historical fiction can never be truly historically accurate. Even historians using the best available evidence are often only making best guesses or judgement calls, and much of the material for the ordinary medieval life simply does not exist (or if it hdoes, is unpublished). As such, it might be thought to a little unfair to criticise someone for writing historical fiction for not getting everything right. After all, the genre is, to quote Dan Jones, "self-evidently" fictional, and if anyone doesn't like inaccuracies they shouldn't read it¹ .

I've actually thought about this a lot since originally committing to writing a post on Dan Jones' Essex Dogs, and I've read two other recent historical fiction novels on the Crécy campaign - AJ Mackenzie's A Flight of Arrows and Michael Jeck's Fields of Glory - to see how other authors have written about the campaign and whether my issue is with the genre in general or with how Jones has written his book. The conclusion I've come to is that my low view of the book is entirely down to how Jones has portrayed the Crécy campaign and that it's entirely fair to criticise him for a lack of historical authenticity.

There are a couple of reasons for this. In the first place, Dan Jones' profile as a historian has absolutely helped him sell his book to the general public, and his reputation has ensured that many readers see the book as almost entirely accurate. Readers have praised it as a "brilliant portrayal of the early months of the Hundred Years War", a "well researched historical tale" and that, even though they know it's fiction, they learned "a lot about that campaign".

This last part - the inability to judge what is fact and what is fiction from the text - is another reason why I think it's worthwhile criticising how Jones has constructed his narrative. A recent survey by the American Historical Association found that 66% of respondents used historical fiction to learn about history and that 45% got a "great deal" or "some" history from it² . With a not insignificant proportion of readers getting at least a little history from historical fiction (just 19% learned "none"), it becomes doubly important for historians who write historical fiction to do their best to get as much as possible accurate.

While Jones does provide a reading list at the end of the book that includes all the most important works on the campaign and encourages the reader who wants to know what he changed from history or invented³ , the vast majority of readers are just going to take him at his word. I personally find reading 80 different accounts of the battle and reading in exhaustive detail everything we know about how the English army was raised and how it was structured (which is both a lot and not quite enough) to be a fun exercise, but most readers aren't going to bother. As a result, many are just going to accept things at face value, as that's easier.

The final reason is that Jones - intentionally to judge from his History Hit video - backs the accuracy of some of his least accurate scenes by saying that "most of the major episodes described here really occurred – from the landing at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue to the retrieval of the three knights’ heads at Saint-Lô to the crossing of the Blanchetaque and the final battle itself"⁴ . In a lot of instances we have multiple sources and not all of them agree, so some degree of interpretation is always necessary, but there are reasonable interpretations supported by evidence and then there is the Essex Dogs version of things.

Originally, this was just going to be a single post, with the bibliography in the comments if need be, but I'm a truly wordy bastard and realised, still writing about the Blanchetaque, that I had over 35 000 characters excluding the bibliography and would either need to split the post or give it a serious edit. Since I'm lazy, I decided to split it and just cover the first two thirds of the book in this post and the last third, plus a couple of excursuses, in a couple of weeks when I'm done. Since I'll have more space, I might even touch on why Michael Livingston's reinterpretation of the Crecy battlefield isn't "groundbreaking" and compare Essex Dogs to A Flight of Arrows and Fields of Glory to explain why they reassured me that my issue was with Essex Dogs and not the genre more broadly.

Edit

Since writing this post, I've been told that I really should have provided a brief overview of the Dogs and the book itself to help the reader understand the individual parts more clearly.

In short, the "Essex Dogs" consist of the grizzled Loveday FitzTalbot (their reluctant leader after the disappearance of "the Captain"), Scotsman (Scottish and angry), Pismire (small and angry), Millstone (a quiet killer), Father (an ex-priest who is useless at anything beyond drinking and murder), Romford (teenage drug addict from London's streets), Tebbe (an archer), Thorpe (another archer) and two Welsh brothers (the only competent members of the Dogs despite not speaking English). The whole company has been hired for the campaign by Sir Robert le Straunge, a fat, foppish incompetent.

The Dogs aren't natural soldiers, but rather bandits and strongmen who occasionally go to war but, given that only two have been out of England before the Crécy campaign, they haven't been to war since the Scottish campaigns of the mid to late 1330s. Loveday and Romford are the main POV characters, Loveday dealing with a sense of inadequacy as a leader and growing distaste for war, Romford dealing with being a drug addict and at war for the first time. The Dogs are - deliberately - broadly incompetent despite having a good initial start to the campaign and actually miss out on most of the real fighting prior to Crécy.

Part 1: Water

1 - The Shortest Day

The novel opens with the titular company - the Essex Dogs - in a small pinnace powered by only two Welsh oarsmen landing at Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue with a half dozen other landing craft ahead of the main fleet. Even before reaching the beach they come under fire from crossbowmen and trebuchets, and Saving Private Ryan is enacted with under a hundred men on either side, although the ten men of the Dogs are the only ones who actually get to do any killing - the rest of the English are superfluous. There is absolutely no other resistance whatsoever⁵ .

None of his sources support this idea. Jonathan Sumption makes the argument that Robert Bertrand made a brief attack on the beachhead with 300 men, while Andrew Ayton suggests that Robert Bertrand and his few hundred men were "easily dispersed", Michael Livingston merely says that the landings were "almost entirely unopposed", Livinstone and Witzel argue for more of a prolonged series of minor skirmishes on the first day or two after the initial landing had begun and Clifford J. Rogers proposes a total of a thousand men (300 men-at-arms and 700 infantry) and a strong attack on the beach just after landing⁶ .

The English primary sources - especially those written during the campaign - seem to back Livingstone and Witzel. That is to say, the landing itself was uncontested (because the Genoese set to guard the landing site had mutinied and left three days before), and since Robert Bertrand arrived too late to throw the English back into the sea he had to resort to small scale tactics including a nearly successful assault on the Earl of Warwick, which might have significantly hampered the English⁷ . The fighting could be fierce and may have fooled the English into thinking they faced a numerically superior enemy for a time, but it was ultimately not particularly dangerous to the army as a whole.

In short, there was no English D-Day. At best, there may have been an attack on the English after the first few troops were landed by up to a thousand French men-at-arms and militia, which was repulsed and a small scale series of clashes took place afterwards. Alternatively, as the English spread out from St-Vaast, the French may have harried them as they raided the neighbouring towns and villages. The scene as written is an attempt to work the D-Day landings into medieval history, but ends up rather pathetically small scale due to a lack of actual resistance at the first landing⁸ .

2 - All the Organisation of a Dog's Breakfast

The Essex Dogs are a group of brigands who occasionally hire themselves out as mercenaries, although almost none of their number has ever been outside of England, employed by Sir Robert le Straunge for only 40 days, who has also employed at least two other similar companies and possibly as many as five others. Of the ten members of the company initially, only five are archers. The English infantry - excluding here the Welsh archers and spearmen - are "crowds of ordinary footsoldiers – peasants carrying weapons of all sorts: short swords and daggers, mallets and clubs, axes and mowing scythes"⁹ .

This genuinely perplexes me. The English army at Crécy is famous for having large numbers of archers, and I see no narrative purpose for making the bulk of the English army absolutely worthless. Evidently there are still meant to be some English archers amongst that rabble¹⁰ , so not all the archers are envisioned as being Welsh, but even the most anti-English French author wouldn't dare suggest that most of the English infantry were poorly armed infantry!

The first issue is the idea that a knight - even an incompetent flamboyant idiot as Sir Robert is portrayed - would contract somewhere between twenty and a hundred poorly armed men - many of whom were not archers - to serve as foot soldiers is pretty ridiculous. For one thing, it's very unlikely that they could get an indenture with the king for such a pathetic company, since all of our evidence indicates that the indentured retinues of knights and the barons of England consisted entirely of men-at-arms and mounted archers or hobelars¹¹ . While not all of these were necessarily volunteers, most of them would most likely have been familiar with the men-at-arms they were serving alongside and were younger relatives, household servants or tenants of the men-at-arms they were serving alongside and so had at least some connection with the other mounted men¹² .

It is, of course, theoretically possible that some idiot knight might have wanted to hire large numbers of poorly equipped infantry, but given the great expensive this would involved (even 20 men on foot would cost £6 for 40 days) compared to the utter lack of prestige gained (because he has no men-at-arms or mounted infantry in his retinue as a result), I think even a fool like Sir Robert wouldn't bother with the Dogs. In fact, perhaps Sir Robert especially wouldn't want anything to do with the Dogs, given his constant obsession with how he appears to others.

Similarly, the English infantry were far from the peasant rabble depicted. It's true that quite a number of them must have been from the poorer elements of society rather than ranks of the men with £2-5 pounds of land per year as was the ideal, and we know of instances where inadequate men were presented in the muster, but those who eventually shipped with the king must have had at least a basic level of competence¹³ . In addition, they would all have been supplied with a bow, arrows, a sword, a knife and "uniform" clothing that marked them as members of their shire¹⁴ .

The shire levies would have been grouped into vintenaries - groups theoretically of twenty men - led by a vintenar and also into centuries, led by a centenar. The vintenars, at least in costal defence roles, seem to have generally been moderately well equipped with at least an aketon, bascinet and plate gloves, while the cententars were equipped as hobelars or men-at-arms¹⁵ . These were prominent local men, with some degree of social (or even financial/landlordly) clout, who could at least keep their men together, even if they didn't necessarily keep them under control.

None of this is to suggest that the English army didn't have deficiencies or that the English infantry were paragons of discipline and martial vigour. The fact that the king couldn't stop them from pillaging the countryside says an awful lot about that, but they were also far from a disorganised and poorly equipped peasant rabble. If only few of them wore any armour, they were at least all relatively uniformly equipped within their county divisions, wearing distinct colours and possessing at least a sword (or other similar sidearm) and knife in addition to their bow.

The other thing is that, except for the Welsh, all foot infantry were to be archers¹⁶ . There's no room in the record for non-Welsh non-archers like half of the Dogs are, and even if they did exist it's unlikely they would be spear-less as the non-archers in the Dogs are. Rather than an eclectic collection of melee weapons and tools as their primary weapons, the Dogs would have been given spears - and perhaps also shields - in order that they could actually fulfil a role in the army.

3 - "Powder"

Romford, the youngest member of the Dogs, is addicted to what he calls "powder", a mixture of "mandrake, hemlock" and "poppy of the Indies" that he rubs on his gums to get high and eventually gets the Black Prince addicted to¹⁷ .

Opium existed in medieval England, and the mix of ingredients seems to be a simplified version of what was known as "dwale" in medieval England. Dwale, and other earlier versions, was a form of anaesthetic that - in England but not in France or Italy - was mixed with wine and then drunk by a person about to undergo surgery¹⁸ . Jones has, no doubt inspired by the very real opioids crisis, decided that there must have been a substantial population of addicts in the medieval world¹⁹ .

While I can't say with 100% certainty that no medieval English person took dwale recreationally, I also can't find any evidence that they did. If there were indeed hundreds of people in London who were heavily addicted I find it hard to believe that no churchman ever used the fact as a symbol of the degeneracy of the common man or as a sign that the people of England needed to repent their sins.

More importantly, the combination described is pretty lethal. For anaesthetic uses, a total of 3.5ml each of the poppy and hemlock would have been dissolved in 2.276 litres of wine and the wine drunk until it took effect. 3.5ml of opium on its own is a near lethal dose, while as little as 1ml of hemlock can be fatal²⁰ . I haven't been able to determine what a dangerous dose of mandrake would be, but it certainly can't have helped.

Now, the powdering of fingers or small pinches of powder dissolved in wine aren't going to come close to even 1ml²¹ , but there's still a huge risk of death from such a deadly combination of ingredients. If there were people addicted to narcotics in medieval England or France, then they almost certainly used straight opium rather than dwale, since opium on its own would have been much easier to source and the actual poisons would not have greatly enhanced the experience²² .

On a related note, although technically more "bad science" than "bad history", there is a reference to "men who drank or took powder" being "violent" or "gripped with a manic urge to fuck" in the book²³ . Opium and hemlock are both system depressants, and opium in particular is known to reduce sexual drive. Addicts might resort to violent or sexual means to get the money for their next fix, but in context (Romford being happy that the Black Prince isn't boring, violent or horny while high) it's clear that Jones isn't referring to the times between drug use but to the period of actual drug use.

Part 2: Fire

4 - The Re-Knighting of Sir Henry de Burghersh

The Black Prince, being a drunken fool, "knights" Sir Henry de Burghersh while the English army draws up before Saint-Lô in anticipation of an enemy attack²⁴ .

Originally I was just going to make the point that the epigraph of this chapter - a quotation from the Acta Bellicosa (an eyewitness source to the campaign) - makes it pretty clear that this was a genuine pre-battle knighthood and leave it at that.

However, digging a little deeper, I'm unsure whether or not Jones has purely decided to make the Black Prince be a drunken buffoon as part of the theme which runs through the book (of no one remembering you being the butt-monkey if you're technically in command during enough battles) or if he has been confused by an entry in the Close Rolls for 1343. The entry, dated 2nd December 1343, features "Henry son of Bartholomew de Burgherssh, the father, knight" gaining the manor of Stodham in Bedfordshire²⁵ . The editors of the text took this phrase to mean that Henry de Burghersh was already a knight in 1343, and it's possible that this inspire Jones.

However, there's a problem: in the feudal aid of 1346, for the knighting of the Black Prince, Henry de Burghersh is not a knight ("milites"), while other knights in the same hundred are clearly distinguished as such²⁶ . From the inquisition post mortem for Edward/Edmund de Saint John in 1347, Henry de Burgersh is not identified as a knight and is listed as a minor (that is, under 21), although the Black Prince recognised him as a knight a couple of months earlier²⁷ , and when Henry died in November 1348, he isn't listed as being either a knight or a minor²⁸ .

There is a remarkable inconsistency in how he is referred to in the sources between 1346 and 1348, and it's difficult to determine whether or not he was a knight at the time of Crecy. However, several things stand out. In August of 1347, he was still a minor, but he was not one in November of 1348. At most, he can only have been a month or two into his 22nd year, which would put him at 16 or 17 in 1343. He held only a single manor in 1346 - judged at 1/2 of a knight's fee (20s. paid when 40s. was due for a knight's fee) - and is not listed as knight when other men in the hundred are, but by 1347 the Black Prince's clerks are referring to him as a knight and he is married to the 14 year old Isabel de Saint John, holding several more manors in right of her.

The balance of probabilities would seem to suggest that Henry de Burghersh was not a knight in 1346; knighthood was expensive and he does not seem to have had the lands to support a knighthood in 1346. He does, however, end up with a good marriage and several more manors, enough to support a knight, by August 1347. The Black Prince also regards him as a knight earlier in the year, but in 1347 and 1348 the king's clerks don't consider him to be a knight.

This does suggest that there have been some irregularity concerning the knighting of Henry Burghersh, but given all the available facts it's highly unlikely that it concerned him being "re-knighted" during the Crécy campaign. The 1343 reference has likely been misinterpreted by the original editors of the text and the "knight" refers to Sir Bartholomew Burghersh the Elder, not to his son Henry.

5 - Northampton is Not a Real Town

After Saint-Lô is compared to Leicester, William de Bohun, the Earl of Northampton, claims that Leicester is the "arsehole of England" and that you should come go to Northampton if you "want to see a real town"²⁹ .

I did a whole bunch of research demonstrating that Leicester was larger than Northampton and that the Earl of Northampton does not, in fact, seem to have owned land in Northamptonshire or really recruited from there, but then I reread one of the sources and found that Jones was mixing up Carentan and Saint-Lô, so now I have an excursus to put in the second part.

Anyway, according to Michael Northburgh, Saint-Lô is "larger than Lincoln" while Carentan was "as large as Leicester"³⁰ . Why is this important? Because Lincoln was the fifth largest town in England at the time, almost four times as wealthy as Northampton and nearly two and a half times as populous³¹ . It's not a mistake that Northampton would make, and it's unlikely that he'd try and claim that Northampton was better than a city over twice its size and much wealthier besides, so this is pure author error.

6 - Getting Ahead

Three friends of Sir Godefroi d'Harcourt were executed after he waged a private war with Sir Robert Bertrand after King Philippe ruled that Robert, not Godefroi, should marry Jeanne, heiress of the Bacon family, and their heads were spiked above the gates of Saint-Lô. Northampton assigns the Dogs to retrieve the heads before the town is sacked³² .

Honestly? Not really a "bad history" element, just a WTF element. According to Jones in his episode on Get Medieval, this whole scene was inspired by him wondering how the heads were retrieved. And the question I have to ask is why? There's no reason given for why this should be urgent, and the easiest and most logical explanation is that they were retrieved after the town was taken.

Still, this could have been used as a chance to talk about the state of disrepair the walls were and how they had only been very hurriedly patched, making it clear that preparations had been made for the English but that they were inadequate. Instead, Jones simply suggests that all the men have fled leaving just the women and boys behind. Boys, apparently, to young or too stupid to shoot a crossbow at the English soldiers standing around gawping at the three heads (or in the case of the East Anglians, insulting the French). Naturally, the town is sacked, etc etc and it turns out that the richest men have apparently stayed behind and there are many war crimes³³ .

Here Jones seems to be reconciling two narratives. The first, in Froissart and Jean le Bel, is that there was some token resistance from the town, the town was then sacked and many prominent citizens were sent to England to be held for ransom. The second, found in Michael Northburgh's letter and a contemporary diary known as the Cleopatra Itinerary, is that almost everyone in the town had fled before the English attacked the town, with only a few remaining and these not offering any fight³⁴ .

Other, French, sources also support the idea that Saint-Lô was effectively abandoned by its inhabitants. The Chronique Normande, an anonymous chronicle written by a Norman knight, says that Saint-Lô was "robbed and wasted, because it was all open"³⁵ , and the Grandes Chroniques, which is the only source to mention the heads being retrieved, makes no mention of any assault on the town either³⁶ .

Sometimes, it's impossible to reconcile two accounts and best to go with one or the other. Had Jones committed to assaulting and sacking a Saint-Lô rather than trying to have it both ways - with all the men of fighting age abandoning their friends and family who decide to stay for reasons? - I could have respected it as a dramatic choice. I might still have made the point that it's the least likely scenario, but I could have respected the literary decision. By attempting to combine the two sources, Jones has made something that is neither fish nor fowl and which fouls the historical narrative.

7 - The Fathering of Geoffrey de Maldon

After Romford and Father (the Dog's drunken, cracked-even-before-his-skull-was-fractured ex-priest) get into a fight with the East Anglians over drugs, the East Anglian leader winds up dead and they're sentenced to death but spared because Northampton hates Sir Robert. Romford becomes the Black Prince's squire while Father becomes Geoffrey de Maldon and is thrown off a tower by the Bishop of Bayeux³⁷ .

Honestly? Another weird and unnecessary deviation from history. Geoffrey de Maldon did exist - and Jones isn't trying to say that he didn't³⁸ - but there's no reason to think that Brother Geoffrey wouldn't be sent to negotiate with the Bishop of Bayeux. He had worked tirelessly in 1338 to try and bring the Count of Savoy and minor French lords from that region over to the English, along side Sir Ralph "the joint lord of Hauteville"³⁹ . He was clearly an experienced negotiator and, being a Man of the Cloth, he could act as an ambassador with near impunity.

While he was imprisoned, he was alive the morning after Caen was taken, as was discovered after the capture and interrogation of some of the Bishop's servants when they attempted to flee the castle. In comparison, Father is thrown from a tower of the castle while the battle is still ongoing⁴⁰ . The eyewitness testimony again doesn't match up with the story in the book.

8 - I Caen't Stand It

Following Father's capture by the Bishop of Bayeux, the Essex Dogs participate in the capture of Caen. After watching the Black Prince sack an abbey, they join the Earl of Warwick and walk almost the whole way around the town to a small gatehouse that is partially opened via a traitor and then fully opened by the Dogs. Pismire is killed during the process of opening the gate, giving the Dogs shock and/or bloodlust, and they race through the town to the bridge across the Odon, where they encounter a barricade. They mostly have success against the very few defenders, many of whom commit suicide by climbing over the barricade to fight protagonists, and the timely arrival of Northampton allows them to completely take the barricade⁴¹ .

Caen...Caen was a hard fought, bloody battle. It was the first time the English had faced any real resistance, beyond the occasional skirmish between men-at-arms or archers burned in a house by peasants, and they paid a price in blood. Getting into the walled city itself was easy, and they faced no resistance. The Black Princes' men even began to be quartered in the abandoned houses and to consumed the abandoned food and wine⁴² . Where they entered isn't stated, but it was probably one of the eastern gates.

The archers of the vanguard made an initial assault on the bridge, and seem to have been ambushed by French men-at-arms and had the worst of it until the Earl of Warwick arrived with some men-at-arms. Even then he didn't make much headway. Meanwhile, English archers and Welsh spearmen (most likely from the rearguard) attacked across the Odon on the north-eastern side of the Ile Saint-Jean, where the citizens had retreated. This was possible because the year had been so dry and the river was low, but the Genoese crossbowmen and French men-at-arms stationed on boats on this side resisted for quite a long time before the English managed to set some of the boats on fire and the rest retreated⁴³ .

With all this said, there does appear to have been weak spot in the French defences that a sneaky group of the English did exploit. There was a gate in the southern wall of the town leading on the Ille de Pres from an area known as "La Boucherie", where the towns butchers worked. This, leading from the fortifications - not into them - allowed the English to enter the Ile Saint-Jean, possibly at about the same time as the English and Welsh were overwhelming the Genoese in the boats to the north-east⁴⁴ . The English who entered the town at this point, however, ran into stiff resistance from the townspeople - both men and women - and had to engage in fierce street to street fighting. Those who had crossed the Odon, however, fell upon the bridge of Saint Pierre and finally defeated those holding the barricades⁴⁵ .

In other words, a few dozen men did not sneak into the fortified part of the town and then do most of the heavy lifting in assaulting and defeating the French at the barricades on the bridge. That haphazard assault was largely stalled until the more successful assault across the Odon in the north-east allowed the English to attack from the rear. The English attack from La Boucherie likely also drew off defenders and prevented reinforcements from going to the docks when they were needed most.

End Notes

¹ Dan Jones, Essex Dogs (Kindle Edition), p434; Gone Medieval: Essex Dogs and the Crécy Campaign with Dan Jones

² AHA, History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National Survey: 3. Where Do People Get Their History?; AHA, History, the Past, and Public Culture: Results from a National Survey: 4. Which Sources of the Past Are Viewed as Trustworthy?

³ The three most important books on the campaign are The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, The Road to Crécy: The English Invasion of France, 1346, by Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel and The Battle of Crécy: A Casebook, ed. Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries. Sumption's Trial by Battle - also listed - is wonderful for some overall context and a chronological account of the HYW, but is now badly showing its age, while Michael Livingston's Crécy: Battle of Five Kings is a good popular summary of the lead up to the HYW and the campaign spoiled by Livingston's contortions to try and re-site the battle itself.

⁴ Jones, Dogs, p434. He very explicitly gives his version of a contested landing in the Retracing the English Victory at the Battle of Crécy | Hundred Years' War which, as I show in the first part of my post, is not supported by any of the primary sources, especially those written by English participants in the battle.

⁵ ibid, p12-25

⁶ Jonathan Sumption, Trial by Battle (Google Play Edition), p892; Andrew Ayton, "The Battle of Crécy: Context and Significance" in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, p1 and Ayton "The Crécy Campaign" in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, p43; Michael Livingston, Crécy: Battle of Five Kings (Kindle Edition), p120; Marilyn Livingstone and Morgen Witzel, The Road to Crécy: The English Invasion of France, 1346, p110-112; Clifford J. Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p218-9

⁷ Livingstone and Witzel discuss it best (p110-112 and p136fn9-11). The best primary sources for the battle at the campaign letters and the Acta Bellicosa, translated in Richard Barber's The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince.

⁸ According to Jones, he initially had the idea for the Essex Dogs in 2017, and subsequently worked them into the Crécy campaign in 2019 after walking on Omaha Beach. Utah Beach was not, as he suggests, the same place as where Edward III landed, but was adjacent to it (Jones, Dogs, p434). His confirms this and says that it was an attempt to create the landings in the Gone Medieval podcast

⁹ ibid p12 (ten men, five archers total), p13 (40 days service), p30-32 (2 dozen captains and their lieutenants listening to Sir Robert, including an East Anglian company), p157 (Midlanders under Sir Robert), p27 and 253 (English peasant army)

¹⁰ ibid, p225

¹¹ Andrew Ayton, "The English Army at Crécy" in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, p175-181. For examples of men who might not be serving entirely willingly, see George Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, From the Original Records in the Public Record Office, p80-1 for the situation in Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where apparently some men who had been assessed as owing service as a man-at-arms, hobelar or mounted archer were "under forfeiture of life and limbs" unless they arrayed themselves. The county coroners where to "arrest and safely guard" anyone on the list who didn't turn up at the pre-arranged array.

¹² ibid, also p215-224. See also Nicholas A. Gribit's Henry of Lancaster's Expedition to Aquitaine, 1345-1346, p30-32 and p178-181.

¹³ Ayton "English Army", p 184-186

¹⁴ ibid. See also Andrew Ayton "Topography and Archery: Further Reflections" in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, ed. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, p360 and H.J. Hewitt *The Organisation of War Under Edward III, p39-40

¹⁵ Ayton "English Army", p186; J.R. Alban, National Defence in England, 1337-89” (Ph.D. thesis, Liverpool, 1976), p412-418

¹⁶ Wrottesley, Crecy and Calais, p58-60.

¹⁷ Jones, Dogs, p114-116, p354-355

¹⁸ Linda E. Voigts and Robert P. Hudson, "A Surgical Anesthetic from Late Medieval England" in Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture ed. Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall and David Klausner, p34-35; Anthony J. Carter, "Dwale: an anaesthetic from old England", BMJ. 1999 Dec 18; 319(7225): 1623–1626

¹⁹ Jones, Dogs, p114-115

²⁰ Carter, "Dwale"

²¹ I used sugar and a measuring spoon to check. A fair sized pinch of sugar is less than half a millilitre, although it also weighs less than the 4-5 grains of opium regular addicts in the Ottoman Empire often ingested. Frankly, I don't know enough about medicine and the effects of opioids, but I nonetheless can't imagine a combination of two depressants - one of which is famous as a poison and is toxic in very small doses - and a psychoactive also-poison is going to be safe in even low doses.

²² Opium poppy seeds are not uncommon in medieval English cesspits, so some native opium poppies seem to been grown (L. Moffett, "The Archaeology of Medieval Plant Foods" in Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition ed. C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson and T. Waldron, p54. Hemlock would have no psychoactive affect and, if it did have any effect, it would be to kill the user (Voigts and Hudson, "Surgical Anaesthetic", p38-39

²³ Jones, Dogs, p356

²⁴ ibid, p137-138

²⁵ Calendar of Close Rolls, Edward III, Volume 7, p250-251

²⁶ Inquisitions and assessments relating to feudal aids, p24

²⁷ Inquisitions Post Mortem, Edward III, Volume 9, nos. 52, 53; Register of Edward, The Black Prince, Volume 1, p80. See also CCR Vol. 8 p331 where, in October 16 1347 he is again called just "Henry de Burghersh"

²⁸ IPM v9, no. 241

²⁹ Jones, Dogs, p142

³⁰ Barber, The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince (1979 ed.), p15-16

³¹ W.G. Hoskins, Local history in England, p277-278

³² Jones, Dogs, Chapter 11

³³ ibid; ibid Chapter 12

³⁴ See Livinstone and Witzel, Road to Crécy, p144-5 and 167fn9 for a discussion. Rogers tends to support Froissart and Le Bel (Rogers, War Cruel and Sharp, p244-5 and 245fn40), but Northburgh and the Itinerary both say that the inhabitants of the town abandoned their attempts to hold the town and fled (see also fn35-6 below).

³⁵ Chronique normande du XIVe siècle ed. Auguste and Émile Molinier, p75

³⁶ "Grandes Chroniques" in The Wars of Edward III: Sources and Interpretations ed. Clifford J. Rogers, p123

³⁷ Jones, Dogs, Chapters 13-18

³⁸ The Bishop of Bayeux is aware of Geoffrey de Maldon and knows father can't be him (Jones, Dogs, p221;

³⁹ Treaty Rolls preserved in the Public Record Office Volume 2, nos. 167, 203 and 483. See also CCR v4 p340, 358. One previous mission, with not surviving reference to Ralph, whose details don't appear to survive, is referenced in CCR v3 p597, 631. Ralph would appear to be one of those Hautevilles who settled in England, not a Norman exile, although I have no firm evidence either way right now.

⁴⁰ Barber, Life and Deeds, p33-4; Jones, *Dogs, p254

⁴¹ Jones, Dogs, Chapters 17 and 18

⁴² According to the Acta Bellicosa (Barber, Life and Campaigns, p32) and Bartholomew Burghersh (ibid, p16), although Burghersh does not paint a picture of a discipline quartering of archers but of chaos.

⁴³ op. cit.. The assumption for the harbour and "ford" being on the north eastern side comes from Philippe Buache's Plan de la ville de Caen, which has the quay in this location. The location is implied to be the same in the anonymous Le vray portrait de la ville de Caen en 1585, so it had clearly been the side used for docking size the late 16th century. The Acta Bellicosa also mentions "the mouth of the harbour", which would best fit the confluence of the Orne and the Odon in this location.

⁴⁴ Rogers, "Grandes Chroniques", p124. As you can see from the maps above, the area was known as "La Boucherie" and Rogers has mistranslated it as "the butcher's shops". c.f. Livingstone and Witzel, Road to Crécy, p155-165 and Chronqiue Normande p76, which states that the English entered the Ill Saint-Jean in "several places".

⁴⁵ op. cit.