British
The English Naval Levy
King Alfred’s Saxon Navy. A visual depiction of a Danish ship clashing with one of Alfred’s new English ships. Although nineteenth-and early twentieth-century British historians wrote quite a lot about Anglo-Saxon “naval forces,” and even claimed that Alfred was the founder of the Royal Navy, very little has been written since. Finds of English ships from the pre-Norman period have…
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The Pirate War, 1402–1404 Part II
Brittany was not an economic or maritime power on a level with Flanders, but shipowning was just as important to its people. Much of the population of the duchy was concentrated in the innumerable small harbours of its coastal fringe and drew their subsistence from the sea. Breton ships were…
The Pirate War, 1402–1404 Part III
The Percies’ resentment of the Nevilles’ growing status in the north was aggravated by their precarious financial position. They had personally borne much of the heavy burden of funding the defence of the Scottish and Welsh marches. Henry IV was tardy in repaying them, the result of his own acute…
The Pirate War, 1402–1404 Part IV
In England lessons were being learned from the debacle at Plymouth. During October, as reports came in from Calais of Saint-Pol’s activities, coast-guards were mobilised in the maritime counties, regional commanders assigned to them and beacons prepared on cliff-tops for the first time in more than two decades. Two new…
The European Context of the Wars of the Roses
Illustration of the Battle of Barnet (14 April 1471) on the Ghent manuscript, a late 15th-century document The Wars of the Roses were part of a common north-western European phenomenon of internal political conflict and civil war in the second half of the fifteenth century. The kingdoms of the Atlantic…
The Battle of Cromdale, 1690 Part I
The second year of the campaign began with dissension in the Jacobite camp; a not uncommon state of affairs for any force without a clear leader and command hierarchy, especially one that has suffered military defeat and has not received the promised support in terms of men and money. To…
The Battle of Cromdale, 1690 Part II
Mackay learnt that Buchan was ‘taking the field’ and ordered Livingstone to monitor his progress. His command, based in Inverness, consisted of three regiments of infantry, his own regiment of horse and an unquantifiable number of dragoons. He was also instructed to ‘labour, by a detachment of the best of…