Events

Battlefields Trust Online Talk: English Military Ordinances 1385-1599

Tuesday 15th September 2026

Almost 14,000 soldiers gathered at Durham in the summer of 1385 for an invasion of Scotland under the teenage Richard II - an inconsequential campaign save in one respect. It saw the issue of a set of disciplinary ordinances for the English army which are the oldest to survive and which formed the basis of subsequent orders of this kind. This talk considers how English disciplinary ordinances developed down to the Irish campaign of the earl of Essex in 1599 and what they show about changes in how the army was organised and perceived. From time to time, special orders were also issued for garrisons not only in France but also, in the mid sixteenth century, in the new castles established by Henry VIII to defend England.

Professor Anne Curry is Emeritus Professor of Medieval History. Her special interest is the Hundred Years War, especially the battle of Agincourt, English armies and Joan of Arc. She was principal investigator on a major AHRC project which led to the creation of an online database of soldiers serving between 1369 and 1453 ( medievalsoldier.org ). There, you can also find an Agincourt 600 section showing the results of her research on English and French armies at the battle. In 2015, on the 600th anniversary of the battle, she was invited to speak in English and French at the inauguration of a new monument on the battlefield.

Anne was heavily involved in the creation of a new museum at Azincourt, which opened in September 2019. At the Historical of Joan of Arc at Rouen, you can see her as a hologram and ask her questions! She has also worked with French historians on an exhibition in Troyes to commemorate the treaty sealed there on 21 May 1420, which made Henry V heir to the French throne.

She is currently researching the English army in Normandy between 1415 and 1450 and has been awarded a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship to produce an online calendar of the Norman rolls of Henry V. She has completed a project to put online all of the Gascon rolls from 1317 to 1467 ( gasconrolls.org ). She is also working with colleagues from the Universities of Reading, Oxford and Glasgow on an AHRC project on the Peasants’ Revolt (‘The People of 1381’).

Anne was a Vice-President of the Royal Historical Society, President of the Historical Association (2006-9), and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Southampton (2010-18). She has been a Trustee of the Royal Armouries and, until recently, Chair of The Battlefields Trust. In 2022 she was appointed as the Arundel Herald Extraordinary.

Andrew Martinez is a late medieval military historian with a keen interest in the material and martial culture of the common soldier, and the actualities of battlefield experience and operations. He completed his PhD at the University of Southampton, publishing an article based on his preliminary studies of the military ordinances. His wider interests encompass martial arts, metalworking and experimental archaeology.