Keeping your eyes and ears open': a diplomatic counsel for an Anglo-Aragonese alliance at the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War

Late Medieval diplomacy intrinsically relied on informal diplomatic networks to remedy administrative and governmental deficiencies in the management of international affairs. In this article I examine the deeds of the Catalonian merchant Peter Sesers and his associates, who acted as informal diplomatic agents, and possibly spies, in England between 1333 and 1339, negotiating an Anglo-Aragonese alliance after the outbreak of the Hundred Years’

War. Significantly, Sesers’s activity in England is recorded in an unedited and overlooked counsel, presented to Edward III and his council between March and May 1338 and preserved at TNA. Acting as an international negotiator, in his counsel Sesers shows how, alongside their mercantile business on the south-east coast of England, he had gathered confidential information and rumours, exploited to build political arguments in favour of an Anglo-Aragonese alliance. In particular, Sesers focuses on the importance for the English of setting international alliances, especially on the Franco-Iberian borders. The latter would have allowed the English to surround the French kingdom and reconquer the Duchy of Aquitaine. Equally, Sesers addressed the importance for the English of exploiting the presence of Robert of Artois in England and his French connections in order to establish new

continental alliances. Finally, in his last section of the counsel, Sesers sheds new light on how unofficial diplomatic missions were organized, highlighting aspects of fourteenth-century diplomatic and administrative ractices which have been overlooked because of lack of surviving evidence. In conclusion, the article engages with established scholarly debates on the international dimension of the Hundred Years' War and the formation of iplomatic and administrative practices in the Late Medieval period.