The impact of a disastrous national war on the thoughts and feelings of Englishmen during the years 1337 to 1399 is the focus of this lively, well-informed study.

By skillful use of sources rarely exploited by historians of the period, Mr. Barnie delineates the emotions and reactions that the war provoked in an extraordinarily wide range of social groups. In addition to the chronicles, he turns to a wealth of literary evidence - the romances, poetry, pamphlets, Latin literature, and sermons -to reveal the ideas and attitudes of the court and military elite, regular and secular clergy, educated professional men, and the laity.

Mr. Barnie is particularly concerned with the ways in which chivalry and nationalism were affected by three generations of warfare. He suggests that historians have frequently misunderstood the nature and function of chivalry in the later Middle Ages, and he argues that nationalism in its fullest sense did not emerge until the fifteenth century.

An illuminating account of English social mentality from Crecy and Poitiers to the collapse of England's military fortunes in the 1370s and 1380s, this book will be invaluable to students of medieval history and literature.

Contents

Acknowledgements    ix

Introduction    xi

1          Aspects of the War 1337-99  1

2          The Popular Response           3 2

3          Aristocracy, Knighthood and Chivalry           56

4          Patriots and Patriotism          97

5          Conservatives and Intellectuals: The Debate on War          117

Appendices

A  Walsingham's Panegyric on Edward III     139

B  The Dangers of Political Comment in Fourteenth-century England        142

C   The Date of Composition of the Bridlington Prophecy 145

D  Morte Arthure and the Hundred Years War         147

Abbreviations 151

Notes  152

Bibliography   184

Index   197

Endpapers

1          The House of Plantagenet

2          The House of Valois