From the Battle of Poitiers to the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais

This chapter focuses on the period between the battle of Poitiers (19 September 1356), when the English defeated the French army and managed to capture the French king, John II, and the ratification of the Treaty of Brétigny-Calais (24 October 1360), which concluded the first phase of the Hundred Years’ War and marked Edward III’s renunciation of the French crown in return for ample territorial concessions in northern France. The Anglo-French negotiations of 1356–60 overlapped with noticeable bureaucratic developments in England and the papal curia, where the management and record-keeping of diplomatic correspondence was increasingly administered not in the chancery, but by the privy seal office and the pope’s secretariat in the apostolic chamber. The chapter investigates how far smaller and less institutionalized departments took over the management of diplomatic correspondence not only because of administrative necessity but also owing to changing political circumstances that characterized the complex Anglo-French peace negotiations in 1356–60, first looking at the activity of the chancery and privy seal in England and then moving to the work of the papal chamber.