ABSTRACT
The Hundred Years War was arguably the last major war which the English lost. In July 1449 the French king, Charles VII, began his major onslaught on the duchy of Lancastrian Normandy which the English had held since Henry's V's campaigns of thirty years previous. Even after the loss of Paris, the English continued to rule the duchy of Normandy and its environs according to French practices and institutions as legitimate kings of France. For those who returned to England in the wake of the fall of Normandy in 1449-1450 there was, of course, more than an administrative nightmare. They suffered considerable loss of income as well as of face. Even if the account of 1448-1449 is able to show us that the financial system of Lancastrian Normandy was still operating reasonably effectively to the end of the financial year at Michaelmas 1449, there is much to suggest that thenceforward it was in a state of collapse.
