Events

Battlefields Trust Online Talk: Certain old Knights much broken in the Wars: Edward IIIs Poor Knights of Windsor, 1348-c.1514

Tuesday 24th February 2026

In 1348, in the wake of the Battle of Crécy, and amid the Hundred Years War, Edward III founded the College of St George in 1348 – a new chapel and collegiate foundation linked with the Order of the Garter and based in a centre of royal power, Windsor Castle. As part of the new foundation, however, he included an odd and novel addition. Alongside the priests, vicars and choristers providing the daily liturgy, Edward specified that the college was also to include a group of ‘poor knights’, men who had served the King in his wars with France, but had become impoverished as a consequence of their service (either through injury, old age, or financial ruin), to be sustained by the college in return for daily prayers in Edward’s new chapel.

From their foundation, however, Edward’s ambitions proved to be too great, his endowment too small, and the poor knights would spend much of the next 150 years in conflict with their collegiate community. Planned endowments never materialised, flaws in the college’s statutes regarding their management were exploited, and their numbers subsequently limited. Grand designs for the poor knights were replaced by modest means, and while the knights would persevere under future monarchs, they would not fulfil Edward’s grand expectations until their re-foundation under the Tudors.

Dr Euan Roger is a Principal Medieval Specialist at The National Archives (UK), specialising in the records of late medieval and early Tudor English government, the central law courts, and the secular clergy. He has published on a wide variety of subjects, including the life-records of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, Tudor quarantine and social distancing, and the history of treason in the UK, his work featured in publications including the New York Times, TIME Magazine, The Guardian, and The Times. He is currently in the latter stages of writing a book on the late medieval college of St George’s, Windsor, to be published with Boydell & Brewer.