On 8 September 1435, at the peace conference held at Arras, the English delegates received from the French ambassadors a letter with their ‘last offers’ to put an end to the war between the two nations. The main condition was ‘that upon the part of England, there be a renunciation, sufficiently and for ever, of the title and right they advance to the crown of France’. In which case, the French king consented and agreed

The English ambassadors’ refusal to take this offer seriously caused the Arras meeting to fail and gave the duke of Burgundy a reason to ally with King Charles. This wasted opportunity may be considered a cause for the English discomfiture, which reached its conclusion fifteen years later, with the loss of all English possessions on the Continent, with the exception of Calais.

This little-known document is an appropriate introduction to this article because of its rather odd character. It is not common knowledge that the Hundred Years War could actually have resulted in a revival of the Anglo-Norman realm. For this reason, it is likely to arouse the curiosity of historians of the Anglo-Norman period. Indeed, the Arras proposal took place more than two centuries after the Capetian conquest of the duchy. During this long period of time, notwithstanding the Anglo-French war, it had become a matter of fact for European rulers that there were two well-established kingdoms occupying the two shores of the Channel. It has been often argued that the border between them was not only a question of political theory and sovereignty, or of language and national identity, but also something deeper, which affected culture, society and economy.

Two Kingdoms on Two Sides of an Economic Border