"Pillaged and Robbed so Well": Captains in the Hundred Years War 1350-1380

Abstract

Captains were among the most influential military figures of the Hundred Years War. Despite this, there is scant scholarship on captaincy as a position within medieval society. This thesis seeks to rectify this gap in the scholarship by exploring the careers of influential captains serving England and France during the period from 1350-80. Drawing primarily from chronicle sources, this thesis examines the careers of this group of captains chronologically. It examines how their careers progressed and how they interacted with key cultural systems such as territorial lordship, chivalric culture, and the economic mechanisms of war. The overall findings of this paper reveal that these three systems mutually reinforced each other through captaincy by justifying chivalric violence.