ABSTRACT
For the first half of the period covered in this chapter, and again towards its end, England was involved in foreign wars. The trading community could suffer from the hazards which war created for shipping or through the destruction of possible export markets. It is harder to measure how far the campaigns of the civil wars affected the great mass of the population or the country's internal economy, but the damage may not have been particularly great, as much of the fighting was confined to limited areas. England's involvement in European wars fell into two broad periods, separated by over half a century. The first ended when Gascony fell to the French in 1453, and the second began when the ambitions of Henry VIII for military glory drew the country into the conflicts of a Europe which had been greatly changed by the emergence of powerful new states in the last quarter of the fifteenth century.
