'Edward III, like Mrs Thatcher, needed a good war.' Edward, of course, ended up fighting more wars than he really needed, but the assertion focuses on a basic element in his kingship whose aim was the restoration of royal authority and prestige. In this policy, public relations and image-building were central tools, and they have attracted a large literature.
Yet although this reign was an important one in the history of public relations, image-making and political point-scoring, Edward's record as a propagandist was mixed. It is true that the king's military achievements were publicized by the use of newsletters, some of which have survived embedded in chronicles. Edward also became skilled at manipulating both parliament and the convocation of Canterbury province. In the case of the latter there were occasions when he sent war heroes to address the assembly when seeking exceptional tax grants. Thus, in 1356, he dispatched Sir Walter
Manny to argue in favour of a sexennial tenth, though this resulted in the grant only of a biennial tenth; the grant of the triennial tenth in 1371 was achieved only by the personal intervention of the Black Prince after per- suasion by Gaunt and others had failed.
On the other hand, aspects of his propaganda effort appear haphazard and amateurish when contrasted with some continental kings. Unlike the kings of Aragon he neither preached to meetings of parliament nor wrote chronicles himself; and unlike his French rivals he did not sponsor the writing of an official chronicle. Though, as we shall see, some of the documents he sponsored were sophisticated, he never achieved the levels of subtlety and insidiousness generated by some of the Valois propaganda. Even some of his information dissemination made less impact than we would have supposed. When in 1337, for example, Edward issued a manifesto explaining the cause of the French war, this was copied into the register of the Archbishop of York, William Melton, but otherwise made no impact on ecclesiastical records (though who knows what the lost register of archbishop Stratford contained).9 The other point at which we might have expected precise information and opinion-forming to be evident was in publicising the reasons for Edward's claim to the French throne.