Seeds of the Hundred Years War

Deep in the bowels of the Archives Nationales in Paris is a document dating from 1294. It is written in Old French and has holes for sealing cords, long since rotted away. The document bears the endorsement ‘Non est ibi sigillum’ and the words (in a later hand):

“Certain conventions which the king of England’s men requested before the war, but the lord king [Philip le Bel] refused to consent to them.”

This is the original secret treaty implemented by Edmund of Lancaster, Edward I’s younger brother, in an effort to avoid war with France. The terms offered by Edmund are clearly laid out:

1) In exchange for peace, King Edward would marry Philip’s sister, Margaret of France.

2)The firstborn son of this union and his heirs would hold Gascony in perpetuity.

3) Edward’s subjects in Gascony would no longer be allowed to appeal to the French king in Paris if they rejected the justice of the English king-duke.

The treaty reveals the extent to which the Plantagenets were prepared to go to hold onto the remnants of the Angevin empire. In return for peace with France, Edward offered to take Gascony out of the direct line of succession. Instead the duchy would be held by a younger half-brother of his heir, the future Edward II. This meant that future kings of England would no longer have to perform the humiliating ritual of homage and fealty to the kings of France in Paris. It also meant the Capetian kings would not be able to cook up any excuses for invading Gascony: the child of Edward and Margaret would be of mixed Plantagenet and Capetian blood, and thus acceptable to all parties. Philip himself could hardly object to his own nephew as Duke of Gascony.

In return for this concession, Edward sought to take Gascony out of the legal orbit of Paris. The French royal pennonceaux, symbolic of Capetian protection and safeguard, would no longer fly over the castles, town-houses or maison-fortes in Gascony. Edward’s policy failed thanks to the duplicity of Phillip, who privately promised to abide by the terms of the treaty and then broke them in public.

The English king was perfectly aware of what would happen in the future: unless legal ties with Paris were severed, the French would seize upon one pretext after another to invade Gascony and drive the English from their last land holdings in France. And so it proved: the duchy was invaded repeatedly over the next 150 years, until the French finally conquered it in the reign of Henry VI.