Much of this paper is based upon the accounts of the Receivers-General of John the Fearless duke of Burgundy, which are in the archives of the Department of the Côte-d’Or at Dijon. This material has been well used by historians in the past. Some of it found its way, very indirectly, into J. H. Wylie's account of the English expeditions to France in 1411 and 1412 in the fourth volume of his History of England under Henry the Fourth. Françoise Lehoux made extensive use of it in her monumental study of John duke of Berry; while Richard Vaughan used it as the main source for his summary of the income of John the Fearless in his study of the duke. Christopher Allmand found material there for his study of Henry V. Michel Mollat provided a general survey of the material in his introduction to the Comptes Généraux de l’Etat Bourguignon, under the general editorship of Robert Fawtier, and B.-A. Pocquet du Haut-Jussé published the accounts of the Receiver-General of the Kingdom from 1418 to 1420, which are also in the Côte-d’Or departmental archives. Although the English chroniclers record the expedition, there is no information about it in the English government records, no doubt because of its mercenary nature.

For this paper, however, I have used the material to throw light on the earl of Arundel's expedition to support the duke of Burgundy in his war against the Armagnac princes in the autumn of 1411. The material in the archives provides information not just about the financing of the expedition, but also about the participants’ winnings from war, and the extent to which the duke of Burgundy displayed those characteristics of good lordship which encouraged men from England to serve him. It may well be that this expedition, and the one that followed in 1412, served to remind a new generation of nobles, knights and esquires of the profits that could still be made from campaigning in France, and, perhaps, to whet their appetites for participation in the much more substantial expeditions which Henry V was soon to lead.

From the outset of his reign, it was evidently Henry IV's intention to avoid becoming involved in war with France. In the early years of his reign he lacked both the financial resources and the domestic security which might have made a resumption of war possible.