Allow me to introduce you to
General Sir John Hawkwood English, Knight of the Fourteenth Century who left the small North Essex village of Sible Hedingham to become one of the most powerful men in the Florentine Republic of the early Italian Renaissance.

Hawkwood is said to be the "Knight" in the Prologue of Geoffrey Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"

Machiavelli saw him as a man to note, to be written into "The Prince". Both authors were writing of social change, political intrigue and the struggle for power at all levels.

Today Hawkwood is seen as an inspiration to the modern soldier and his tactics and strategies are studied in Military Colleges.

In Italy he remains a hero of the highest order, his name synonymous with honour, stamina, courage and vitality, who was also seen to have a dry wit. John Hawkwood removed his army from the employ of the Pope, because of the Pope's continued unacceptable requests to butcher survivors of engagements and civilians (i.e. Ethnic Cleansing). A man of culture his extant correspondence is in Italian, French, Spanish, German, Latin and English.

A closer look at Hawkwood reveals him to be a man of his time, not just of the moment, changing the old-established orders, as Chaucer was doing with literature, Petrarch and Boccaccio with poetry, Giotto in art and Brunelleschi in architecture, Whittington with trade route expansion and Wycliffe with translations of the Bible into the language of the populace.

Feudal power was decaying and the revolution of the individual had begun (although in some states this would not happen for 600 years).

Hawkwood and his contemporaries were setting out new concepts, taking on challenges, questioning established practice, and knocking down old ideas to widen the horizons for future change.

Hawkwood's life and times was the "soup" out of which travel to the Moon came.
"Man can do much if he questions and accepts the challenges that bring about change".

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