Introduction

Summary

This book is a study of the outlook and development of late-medieval English chivalric society, and its appetite for warring against the ‘enemies of Christ’. It is an account of English military involvement in the later crusades and an attempt to show how crusading remained a defining function of chivalric society, particularly during the fourteenth century, the so-called ‘golden age’ of English chivalry. It contributes to the growing corpus of literature on the late-medieval crusade movement, supplying a case study from a local and regional perspective, centred largely on the experiences of crusading's most active constituents, the military elite, and it looks mainly from that perspective at English contributions to the crusade campaigns themselves. It presents a mixed picture of continuity and change. Failure to launch a grand Jerusalem crusade after the fall of Acre and the destruction of Christendom's hold on the Holy Land (1291), or later to field a meaningful force against the Turks, contrasts sharply with crusading's tenacious appeal across courtly and magnate circles. Here it continued to colour attitudes towards chivalry, personal honour and religion, despite such disruptive factors as the Anglo-French war, plague, church schism and political revolt. As a normative value of military society, the vogue for far-flung crusading (or at least the idea of far-flung crusading) was the route to paradise, worldly fame and the prettiest girls – if contemporary poets and churchmen were to be believed.