John of Gaunt and English policy towards France 1389–1395

Abstract

In the years after the truce of 1389, English and French embassies met in a series of conferences to formulate a peace treaty. The chief English diplomat, John of Gaunt, negotiated for his own ambitions in Guyenne rather than for the claims of his nephew, King Richard II. Despite his skill at the conference table, these claims continued to prevent the achievement of a definitive peace. In the duchy of Guyenne, Gaunt failed to establish himself by force or diplomacy, and the truce remained fragile. With his uncle's peace policy in ruins, Richard took control of foreign affairs and agreed a long truce with France in 1396. A reconsideration of the diplomacy of these years casts new light on Anglo-French relations at the central point of the Hundred Years War.