Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Thursday, 27 August 2026

The Battle of Crécy 1346


Yesterday was the 680th anniversary of the battle of Crécy in 1346, the first of the great military victories of the English forces on land in the Hundred Years War. Not only was it a devastating defeat for King Philip VI and his army with a huge number of elite casualties but it was also the battle in which the heir to the English throne, Edward, Prince of Wales ‘won his spurs’. A decade later at Poitiers and eleven years later still at Nájera he was to achieve further great victories.


Edward Prince of Wales
Figure from St Stephen’s Chapel Westminster

Image: world4.eu

Wikipedia has a detailed account of the campaign and the battle at Battle of Crécy
 

King Edward III
Detail from the decoration of St Stephen’s Chapel at Westminster commissioned by the King

Image:royal.uk

On Substack King Edward I has a translation of King Edward III’s letter about the events of the day and of the ensuing events, complete with a little humour at King Edward I (@edwardlongshanks1979) 
  


 A donor statue thought to be King Philip VI
and now in the Metropolitan Museum 

Image: metmuseum.org




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