From the reign of Edward I onwards, the English were almost constantly involved in warfare both with their near neighbours, the Welsh, Scots and Irish, and with the French and their continental allies. This had a marked effect on the nature of English armies. Under Edward I, the proportion of paid, as opposed to unpaid and feudally provided, troops began to increase substantially. By the 1330s all soldiers serving the English crown, whether at home or abroad, received wages. The escalating need for funds to pay military wages determined the concurrent development of parliament. In their turn, the intensity of warfare and the opportunities for paid service, especially during the Hundred Years’ War with France (c. 1337–1453), which involved occupation of territory as well as periodic campaigning, both stimulated and facilitated the rise of the professional soldier. We are currently exploring this phenomenon in detail1 by collecting the names of all known soldiers serving the English crown in the second and third phases of this war between 1369 and 1453.2 We are already detecting lengthy military careers, performed over several theatres of war – we are not limiting ourselves to campaigns in France – and extending from the various ranks of nobility through the men-at-arms, whose status was described as armiger/scutifer/escuier/esquire, to the archers, who were commonly described as sagitarii/valetti/valets/archiers/archers.

As will be seen from this mention of terminology, the sources we are exploiting can be in any of three languages in use in later medieval England – Latin, Anglo-French and Middle English. To date, however, there has been little assessment of the use of languages in a specifically military context.3 It has often been suggested that language was considered an expression of national identity in the context of England's late medieval wars. On five occasions, the crown called on the support of parliament with the justification that the French intended to invade England and destroy the English language. The first is found in the writ of summons in 1295 (Stubbs 1913: 480) when Edward I was at war with the French as well as the Scots and facing a rebellion in Wales (linguam anglicam … omnino de terre delere proponit). The other four are to be found within the parliament rolls themselves: in 1344, four years after Edward III had declared himself king of France (a destruire la langue Engleys); 1346, just after his victory at the battle of Crécy (a destruire et anentier tote la nacion et la lange Engleys); 1377, when English successes in France were at a low ebb and when the French were preparing to launch raids on the south coast (et d’ouster de tout la langue Engleys); and under similar circumstances in 1380 (d’ouster oultreement la lange Engleise).4 There is some irony that the argument was expressed on the first occasion in Latin and on the next four in Anglo-French. In 1431 the notion appeared in English, not with direct reference to the threat of French invasion but calling to mind the Welsh rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr in the first decade of the fifteenth century.5 It is possible, of course, that on earlier occasions the arguments had been rehearsed in parliament in English.6 Here, as in so many other contexts in the later middle ages, we face a major problem – that the language of record is not necessarily the language of use.