English Fleet Crushes Invasion Force at Margate

An English fleet caught the invasion force before it could reach the coast. On March 24, 1387, ships commanded by the Earls of Arundel and Nottingham intercepted and destroyed a combined Franco-Castilian-Flemish fleet off Margate in the English Channel. The victory eliminated the most serious threat of a foreign invasion that England had faced since the Norman Conquest of 1066, and it would not face another until the Spanish Armada two centuries later. England in the 1380s was vulnerable. Richard II was a teenager, the kingdom was still reeling from the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and France had been probing English coastal defenses with increasing aggression. Charles VI of France assembled a massive invasion fleet at Sluys, the same Flemish port where Edward III had won a decisive naval victory in 1340. French plans called for landing troops on the English coast and linking up with Scottish allies in a two-front war. Richard Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel, sailed from the Thames with a fleet of English warships and caught the enemy force near the North Foreland. The battle was decisive: English archers and men-at-arms boarded the enemy vessels in close combat, capturing or sinking the majority of the fleet. Contemporary chronicles report over 100 enemy ships taken, along with large quantities of wine, armor, and supplies intended for the invasion. The Battle of Margate secured England's southern coast for a generation and strengthened the Lords Appellant, the noble faction that included Arundel, in their power struggle against Richard II's court favorites. Arundel's military success made him one of the most powerful men in England, a position that Richard II would later remember and punish when he arrested and executed Arundel in 1397.