ABSTRACT
The Welsh esquire, Dafydd Gam, was one of the few casualties named in contemporary English accounts of the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. In these sources, his status as an esquire was not contested and these sources informed William Shakespeare, who included his name among the dead in his play Henry V (1599). Later antiquarians and modern traditions consistently refer to Dafydd as Sir Dafydd Gam and state that he was knighted as he lay dying on the battlefield. The article argues that the tradition that Dafydd Gam was knighted before or after the battle is erroneous, and that its origins lie not in the legends associated with Agincourt but in the political concerns of Dafydd’s descendants, principally his grandson, William Herbert (d. 1469), in asserting his ancestry and status in the political struggles in England in the 1450s and 1460s.
