Keeping Your Eyes and Ears Open: A Diplomatic Counsel for an Anglo-Aragonese Alliance at the Outbreak of the Hundred Years War

Abstract Late medieval diplomacy relied on informal networks to remedy administrative and governmental deficiencies in the management of international affairs. This article examines the case of the Aragonese merchant Peter Seseres and his associates, who acted as informal diplomatic agents, and possibly spies, in England between 1333 and 1339, and especially in plans for an Anglo-Aragonese alliance soon after the outbreak of the Hundred Years War. Significantly, Seseres’s activity in England appears from the counsel (consilium) he presented to Edward III and his council between March and May 1338, recorded in an unedited and hitherto overlooked document preserved at The National Archives. Putting himself forward as an international negotiator, in his counsel Seseres showed how, alongside his mercantile business on the south-east coast of England, he had gathered confidential information and rumours, and exploited them to build political arguments in favour of an Anglo-Aragonese alliance. In particular, Seseres focused on the importance for the English of forging international alliances, especially on the Franco-Iberian borders, which would allow them to surround the French kingdom and reconquer the duchy of Aquitaine. Seseres also addresses the importance for the English of exploiting the presence of Robert of Artois in England and using his French connections to establish new continental alliances. Finally, the last section of the counsel sheds new light on how unofficial diplomatic missions were organised, highlighting aspects of fourteenth-century diplomatic and administrative practices which have been overlooked because of lack of surviving evidence. The conclusion engages with established scholarly debates on the international dimension of the Hundred Years War and the formation of diplomatic and administrative practices in the late medieval period.