ABSTRACT
The writer of the Libelle in many ways put his finger precisely on the principal ways in which the medieval sea mattered to England. Medieval English monarchs could not ignore the role of the sea, whether as the route of invaders, or as a moat. Sea battles dominate the narrative in most English wars from the late sixteenth until the twentieth century. The role of the sea as a ‘moat’ was limited at this early period by the enormous difficulties in finding, intercepting, and fighting an invasion fleet at sea. A similar view that travel over the seas for trade was often a highly risky endeavour seems to emerge from the relatively scant evidence surviving from the same period. Medieval English monarchs could not ignore the role of the sea, whether as the route of invaders, or as a moat.
