Ordinance of Normandy

The Ordinance of Normandy is the name given to a paper authored by Philip VI of France on 23 March 1338. It called for a second Norman conquest of England, with an invading army led by the Duke of Normandy, and England was to be divided between the Duke of Normandy and his nobles as a fief for the King of France.^[1] It was discovered by the English army at Caen in 1346. After it was carried back to England by the Earl of Huntingdon when he was invalided home it was read out in St. Paul's in London by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John de Stratford.^[2] King Philip vowed to "destruire & anientier tote la Nation & la Lange Engleys" [destroy and eliminate the entire English nation and language].^[3]

Notes

1. ^ John Aberth, From the Brink of Apocalypse. Confronting Famine, War, Plague, and Death in the Later Middle Ages (Routledge, 2001), p. 74.
2. ^ Anne Curry, The Hundred Years' War (Palgrave, 2003), p. 7.
3. ^ Deanne Williams, The French Fetish from Chaucer to Shakespeare (Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 18.