Edward III and the Triumph of England: The Battle of Crécy and the Company of the Garter, by Richard Barber

Abstract

After a long period in the academic wilderness, Edward III has become the poster boy of the fourteenth century. Alongside Richard Barber’s new book, reviewed here, Ian Mortimer’s The Perfect King (2008), and Mark Ormrod’s wonderful contribution to the Yale English Monarchs Series (2011; rev. ante, cxxvii [2012], 694–6) have offered full-length biographies, while a host of works have explored Anglo-French and Anglo-Scottish relations (especially the Hundred Years War), socio-economic conditions in England, and cultural developments during his reign. Barber’s first task, therefore, is to draw together much of this varied scholarship into a digestible form for a wider audience. The material considered here is natural territory for a scholar who has contributed so much to our understanding of political and aristocratic life, and chivalric culture in the later middle ages. It deals with the transformation of England’s reputation ‘from that of an unimportant offshore island to that of a major military power with new methods of fighting which aroused dread and admiration among Continental princes’ (p. 4). The rehabilitation of England’s military and political status is not a premiss which will surprise students of the period, but Barber’s specific aim is to evaluate the role played in this process by the king’s companions in arms. This is a group which included those who became (founder) members of what Barber insists should be described as the Company of the Garter.