War is a theme so central to the history of thirteenth-century England that it is surprising that at least one of the wars fought by King Henry III appears entirely to have escaped the notice of English historians. Yet the war fought in southern Gascony in the 1240s between the supporters of Henry III and those of Theobald I King of Navarre, although briefly noticed by modern Spanish commentators, has elicited virtually no comment from the historians either of England or of Gascony. Matthew Paris devoted only a single sentence to the conflict, noting in his chronicle entry for 1244 that Nicholas de Molières, seneschal of Gascony, continued to prosecute war against Navarre and by his manful persistence obtained victory. Because modern English accounts are so dependent upon Paris for their narrative of thirteenth-century politics, Paris's omission of all details here has no doubt played a part in effacing the memory of a dispute which, even in the 1240s, was seen as at best tangential to English concerns. And yet, in the archives, sufficient evidence for this war survives to enable us to reconstruct its features in considerable detail: a reconstruction that, as we shall see, is not without significance for the wider history of English rule in Gascony and the south.

My chief source in what follows is a set of rolls detailing the Anglo-Navarrese disputes before, during and after the war of 1243–4, compiled in 1248–9 as part of the arbitration process to which claims for compensation were submitted by King Theobald of Navarre and by Simon de Montfort during his period of rule in Gascony.