In February 1345, Ralph, Earl of Stafford, sailed for Gascony after being appointed Seneschal of Aquitaine. Among the knights serving in his retinue was Sir William de Handsacre. Stafford immediately began operations against French-held towns including Blaye and Langon as England sought to strengthen its position in south-west France.
The campaign soon took an unexpected turn when Stafford’s army was itself besieged at Aiguillon. Relief arrived in August with the main English force under Henry, Earl of Derby. Derby’s victories at Bergerac and Auberoche transformed the campaign, bringing large numbers of prisoners whose ransoms generated enormous profits for the English commanders and many of those who fought under them.
The following year Sir William was almost certainly with Stafford when the earl joined Edward III’s great campaign in Normandy. After capturing Caen, the English army marched across northern France, devastating the countryside while avoiding being trapped by the much larger French army under King Philip VI.
On 26 August 1346 the opposing armies met near the village of Crécy. Edward III chose a strong defensive position on rising ground, where his men-at-arms fought on foot while the famous English longbowmen occupied the flanks. Sir William would have fought as one of these dismounted men-at-arms, protected by mail armour worn over a padded gambeson, carrying a sword, lance and shield.
The battle became one of the decisive English victories of the Hundred Years’ War. Repeated French attacks were broken by disciplined English formations and devastating longbow fire. Contemporary chroniclers described the fighting as relentless and exceptionally bloody, with heavy losses among the French nobility.
After Crécy, Edward III marched north and laid siege to the port of Calais. The town finally surrendered in August 1347 after an eleven-month siege, giving England a bridgehead on the continent that it retained for more than two centuries.
Sir William had served throughout one of the most successful periods of Edward III’s wars in France. His military service would have enhanced both his reputation and, quite possibly, his finances through the distribution of wages, booty and prisoners’ ransoms. For a knight from a comparatively small Staffordshire manor, the campaigns of 1345–1347 placed him at the centre of events that transformed England’s fortunes in the early years of the Hundred Years’ War.