Michael Prestwich
The trappings of war were everywhere in late medieval England. Knightly families prided themselves on the military insignia of their coats of arms. Tombs showed knights in full armour. Seals displayed lords mounted on their chargers. Even a water jug might take the form of a fully armed and mounted knight. The concept of war was glorified in a world of chivalric values. War was not, however, a matter of colourfully caparisoned knights riding to battle in a glamorous cavalcade. It was a highly complex business. Resources were mobilised on a massive scale to ensure that armies were properly supplied and financed. Bankers gambled as they lent to competing monarchs. Fortunes were won and lost, notably in the ransom market that followed success on the battlefield. War was also a powerful engine for social change; fortunes could be lost and won, not only by those who fought, but also by those who financed and supplied the campaigns.
The intensity of war varied considerably. In the early thirteenth century England was a backwater in military terms. King John lost his continental possessions with the exception of those in south-western France, and by the end of his reign there was a very real possibility that Capetian France would absorb the English monarchy. Under his successor Henry III expeditions to France were few, and did little more than defend existing English possessions; there was no realistic hope of recovering Normandy. Civil war in the mid 1260s was fierce, but brief. There was a series of campaigns in Wales, which culminated in conquest under Edward I, but war was not a constant element in men’s lives in the thirteenth century. Matters began to change in 1294, with a four-year-long French war that was the precursor of the frequent campaigns of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century. War against the Scots began in 1296; this was the one conflict that seriously spilled over into England itself. Hard lessons were learned in the Scottish wars, and applied to war in France. The so-called Hundred Years War began in 1337, and although the conflict was punctuated by some extended periods of truce, war not peace became the normal situation. English armies were the most formidable in Europe, and achieved astonishing successes at Crecy in 1346 and at Poitiers ten years later. In the fifteenth century, after Henry V’s great victory at Agincourt in 1415, the momentum could not be maintained, even though hardly a year went by without an English expedition to France until the war ended in 1453. Sporadic civil war between the houses of Lancaster and York followed, along with intermittent campaigning in Scotland, notably in 1481-2. The possibility of English intervention in France also retained a powerful attraction. Edward IV invaded in 1475, and even Henry VII found himself drawn into military involvement on behalf of Brittany.
The scale of English involvement in war was as varied as its intensity. Large armies were the rule under Edward I. He had some 30,000 men involved in putting down the Welsh rebellion of 1294-5, and almost as many in the Scottish campaign of 1298. Edward III had roughly 30,000 men at the siege of Calais in 1346-7, but most of the armies of his reign were much smaller. Henry V had some 10,000 troops with him when he landed in France in 1415, but by the time his troops reached Agincourt sickness had substantially reduced the number of the ‘happy few’ who won that famous battle. Numbers in the final campaigns in France were very much smaller; it was rare for an expeditionary force in Henry VI’s reign to exceed 2,000 men.
The higher up a man was in the social hierarchy, the more likely he was to fight. It was highly exceptional to find an earl who did not campaign; the case of two successive earls of Hereford in Edward III's reign who never fought in war is perhaps to be explained by some physical incapacity. Knights were expected to fight; in the course of an inquiry held in 1324 the sheriff of Buckinghamshire explained with some surprise that John Stonor was a man of arms who had never actually taken up arms - the explanation is that he was a lawyer. Arguments that another justice, Henry le Scrope, lacked nobility were countered in a lawsuit of 1386 by the fact that his father had been knighted at the battle of Falkirk. When Bartholomew de Lisle abandoned his duty defending the Isle of Wight in 1340, he was sternly rebuked: ‘It is not becoming for belted knights to eloign themselves from places where deeds of war may take place, but rather to go to those places and stay there for honour’s sake’.1
The number of knights in England changed radically in the course of this period. At the start of the thirteenth century there were probably up to 5,000, but in the relatively peaceful years of Henry III’s reign there was
Calendar of Close Rolls, Preserved in the Public Record Office, Edward III, 1339—41 (1901), p. 444.
A rapid decline.99 By the third quarter of the century numbers had fallen by over half, and in the early fourteenth century there were probably some 1,500 knights in England. Numbers then changed little until the third quarter of the fourteenth century; success in war no doubt encouraged men to take up knighthood. There was a truce in the French war from 1360 to 1369, and when fighting began again it became far more difficult to recruit knights than it had been earlier. In the fifteenth century the proportion of knights in English armies could be very low indeed. When the earl of Huntingdon took a force of over 2,000 men to Gascony in 1439, he had no more than six knights with him. As knightly numbers declined, so their place came to be taken by squires, who, by the later fourteenth century, were armed and equipped in a way that made them virtually indistinguishable from knights. Gentility, rather than specifically knighthood, became a key social distinction. When in 1433 an esquire serving in Gascony, William Packington, heard Thomas Souderne say that he was ‘no sort of gentleman’ and that he was really a haberdasher, he promptly killed him in hot blood.100
Fighting as a knight was not reserved for the young and fit. Many knights continued to campaign into what would now be regarded as their retirement years. Sir Thomas Ughtred fought at Bannockburn in 1314, and led his retinue in Edward Ill’s campaign of 1359-60, in a military career lasting forty-six years. Hugh Calvely, a hero of Edward Ill’s French wars, campaigned for over forty years. John de Sully claimed to have fought his first battle in 1333 and his last in 1367 - a thirty-four-year career. The earl of Shrewsbury was sixty-six when he was killed in battle at Castillon in 1453. No doubt there were some men of knightly and gentle rank who did not fight in many campaigns, but in the French wars many fought year in, year out. John de Lisle did not miss a single major campaign between 1338, when he was twenty, and his death on the Black Prince’s expedition of 1355. He had a vested interest in the war, for the king had granted him ?40 a year for as long as it lasted.
Knightly ideology was distinctive. Chivalry provided knights, and those who fought in knightly fashion, with a culture that helped to justify war. Men sought to emulate such heroes of myth and history as Arthur and Alexander. The values of generosity, courtesy, prowess and loyalty were promoted; great stress was laid upon honour. Women gave their heroes tokens to wear in war, as a means of encouraging them to perform deeds of valour. The emblems of chivalry were highly prized. Heraldic devices had an obvious utility as a means of recognising men in battle, but became an important emblem of lineage, symbolising family honour and pride. The roof of Henry III’s great new church of Westminster Abbey was seen as an appropriate place to display the coats of arms of the upper nobility. The way in which men sought to be remembered emphasised the importance of war and chivalry in their lives. Effigies of knights on their tombs showed them in full armour, even on occasion on horseback, and memorial brasses likewise perpetuated the military image.
Tournaments were great celebrations of chivalry and major social occasions. The government frequently tried to control or even prevent them from being held, for rather than providing useful training they offered a distraction from the hard business of war. They might also provide a cover for unwelcome political gatherings, as in Edward II’s reign. Edward III, however, developed the tournament as a way of building support for his military enterprises. He even planned an Arthurian order of knights, with a great round table at Windsor, though in the event what was carried forward with the foundation of the Order of the Garter in the late 1340s was a cut-down economy version.
Chivalric attitudes both influenced, and were influenced by, contemporary literature. Brian FitzAlan, who fought for Edward I in Scotland, possessed a copy of the Arthurian romance Perlesvaus. James Audley, one of the heroes of Crecy, owned at least four volumes of what were termed romances. Tales of Arthur and Alexander emphasised the way in which war, as well as love, should be conducted with honour. The story of William Marmion, given a helmet with a golden crest by his ladylove in the early fourteenth century and told to make it famous in the most dangerous place in Britain, demonstrates the way in which the ideals of romance might be turned into distinctly dangerous reality. He charged into the Scottish forces besieging Norham Castle. Of course, in practice men did not always behave in a chivalrous manner. The annals of warfare are full of unchivalrous incidents. Dishonest ruses de guerre, attacks on enemies when they were unprepared, pillage, destruction and rape: these were the common currency of medieval knights as well as of those soldiers who were their social inferiors. Men found surprisingly little difficulty in accepting both the ideals of chivalry and the tough realities of war. The one no doubt helped to make the other more acceptable.
The way in which armies were organised had its effect on the changing structure of aristocratic society. English forces had never been fully feudal (that is, raised on the basis of service owed in return for tenure of land), and certainly could not be so described in this period. Even in the early thirteenth century there was no question of the king’s tenants-in-chief going on campaign at the head of contingents formed from their landed tenants, and producing the service of over 5,000 knights that was their theoretical obligation. Geoffrey FitzPeter, for example, served on the Irish campaign of 1210 with ten knights, not the ninety-eight and a third that he was formally obliged to provide. Radically reduced new quotas were established by 1245, which meant that there could no longer be any expectation that the land making up a traditional knightly fee carried a burden of providing a knight for royal campaigns. Feudal service at the reduced level continued to be requested, though not for all campaigns, until it was effectively abandoned in 1327. In Edward I’s Welsh campaign of 1277, 228 knights and 294 sergeants (two of the latter being equivalent to one knight) served for the forty days of feudal service. In 1322 about 500 troops performed feudal service on a futile campaign against the Scots. A late revival of feudal service, in 1385, was essentially fiscal, not military, in purpose.
Given the outdated and ineffective character of feudal military service, it is not surprising that the crown attempted to introduce other systems of military obligation, based on an assessment of men’s wealth. Edward I’s attempt to recruit all landowners worth at least ?20 a year ran into acute political difficulties in 1297, but Edward II attempted the summons of all ?50 landholders in 1316, and a radical reconstruction of military service was considered in 1324. Edward III introduced a graduated scale for assessing landholders’ contributions to the army in 1344, but an attempt to recruit men on this basis in the following year was extremely unpopular. Obligatory service was effectively abandoned by the crown in 1352. The success of the war in France meant that pay and the prospects of profits from booty and ransoms were all the persuasion men needed to fight.
The main building blocks for the armies of the later middle ages were thus not feudal contingents, but aristocratic retinues. These might vary very considerably in size, from a small handful of men to a force numbered in hundreds. Formal agreements between lords and their followers for the provision of service in war and elsewhere survive from the late thirteenth century, although it is clear that the practice of retaining was much older than that. Retainers were granted fees and robes annually in return for their services; they were also paid wages and might receive other benefits. The evidence suggests that, while most men would have a small core of regular retainers, there was a considerable turnover of men in military retinues. Of the fifty-two men known to have been in the earl of Lincoln’s retinue in Scotland in 1307, no more than eighteen had campaigned with him previously. In the case of the Yorkshire knight Thomas Ughtred, two-thirds of those he employed in his following in the second quarter of the fourteenth century cannot be shown to have served under him for more than a single campaign. The stability of retinues increased in time, but the military retinue was never identical with that of peacetime conditions. As discussed in the previous chapter, lords needed estate managers and lawyers just as they needed knights and esquires in their armed followings. The extent to which military retaining patterns conditioned the development of what is often termed bastard feudalism was, therefore, limited. Lords retained men by means of indentures and grants of annuity for many different reasons, of which the need for a military following was only one.
The general populace was far less involved in war than were the aristocrats and knights. Recruitment was at a higher level in some regions than others. Cheshire, for example, was called on with great regularity, with the result that a tradition of service built up in the county. Some of the archers and infantrymen must have been, in effect, professional soldiers during the campaigning of the Hundred Years War, but it is not possible to reconstruct their careers in the way that can be done for the knights. There is very little evidence to show what sort of training villagers received to turn them into soldiers, but an ordinance of 1363, frequently reissued thereafter, condemned the popularity of worthless games such as football, and ordered men to practise archery on every holiday. Records of musters at which commissioners of array recruited villagers for the wars suggest that most men possessed some appropriate equipment, but local communities had to bear the cost of providing them with the full accoutrements required. Under Edward I the cost to a village was about 5s for each soldier recruited, but by the 1330s, when lightly armed horsemen or mounted archers were requested, the sum rose to about ?2. One indication of the burden on local communities is the bribes that they were prepared to pay to be let off. The men of Grantham, for example, paid ?i 6s 8d for exemption from providing two archers in the late 1330s. Not surprisingly, many of those who were recruited came from the dregs of society. Edward I began the practice of filling the ranks of the army by emptying the country’s gaols. Robert Knollys was said to have recruited for his raid in France in 1370 ‘various escaped men of religion and apostates, and also many thieves and robbers from various gaols’.101 Desertion by the infantry shows that military service was not popular. Edward I’s armies, especially in Scotland, suffered losses on a massive scale, and harsh measures were threatened against those who left the army without permission. Once in France, however, desertion was less of a problem, for it was far less easy to return home from overseas.
How were men rewarded for their service? Pay was one answer, but in the thirteenth century many magnates were ready to provide substantial numbers of troops at their own expense. It was beneath an earl’s dignity to take pay from the king, and many barons followed the same line of thinking. There was a reluctance to accept the subordination implicit in accepting pay from the crown, and an expectation that the king would provide rewards in a different way, above all by granting out conquered land. Evidence suggests that about two-thirds of the cavalry in Edward I’s Scottish campaigns served on a voluntary basis. The burden on noble budgets was considerable, and it is not surprising that Edward received complaints in 1297 from some great men, arguing that they lacked the resources to provide troops. Overseas campaigns were more expensive than those in Britain, and were therefore viewed differently; pay was acceptable abroad. Under Edward II, the powerful earl of Lancaster was not prepared to take pay from a king he despised. By Edward III’s reign, however, noble attitudes had changed, and pay was universal.
Pay was intended less as a reward than as a means of covering costs. There was nothing new in the thirteenth century in paying troops. Mercenaries had been a very significant component in the Anglo-Norman armies of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The knights of the royal household, who formed the core of many armies, were normally paid wages in addition to receiving fees and robes. In the initial phase of the Hundred Years War the king paid double wages in order to encourage men to join in what must have appeared a very risky venture. This proved too expensive, and became less necessary as enthusiasm built up for the war. The 1340s saw the introduction of the ‘regard’, a bonus paid quarterly, which enhanced the direct rewards men received. Pay was certainly not sufficient to meet the costs of buying horses to replace those lost on campaign, and until the later fourteenth century the crown paid compensation for any horses that were killed or found to be incapable of further campaigning.
The rates of pay for infantry troops were set at very reasonable levels. In the thirteenth century the normal rate was 2d a day; this rose in the
Hundred Years War, when mounted archers would receive 6d. In comparison with agricultural wages, these were good sums of money. It is striking, however, that whereas the Black Death of 1348-9 and the resultant labour shortages caused a substantial rise in agricultural and other wages in England, military wage rates were not affected in the same way. Wages had stood at the same levels for a long time, and recruitment was not so difficult as to make a change necessary.
Other forms of reward were probably more important than pay. Grants of conquered land were much sought after, particularly by the greater men. After his conquest of Wales in 1282-3, Edward I distributed major estates in North Wales to the earls and others who had made his success possible. The earl of Lincoln received Denbigh and Earl Warenne was granted the lordship of Bromfield and Yale. In Scotland, the king promised lands to his followers even before they had been captured, and a significant vested interest in the war was built up. The position in France was less easy, for there Edward III was fighting, as he saw it, to establish his rightful claim to the throne. He could hardly afford to alienate his potential French subjects by promising their lands to his English followers. Henry V, however, following his conquest of Normandy, had no scruples about granting Norman estates to his commanders and others in his armies. He made no fewer than 358 grants of Norman land, establishing a strong English interest in retaining the duchy. Grants of regular annuities to those who served well in war were also important, particularly under Edward III.
Captured prisoners might be ransomed. This was unlikely to yield much in the case of Welsh or Scottish campaigns, but in the fourteenth century the fruits of the ransom trade in France were ripe and ready for picking. Guy of Flanders, captured by Walter Mauny in 1337, was sold to Edward III for ?8,000. At Crecy both sides were ordered to fight to the death, but even so some prisoners were taken. Poitiers was a very different story. A host of prisoners was taken, and huge ransoms demanded. Edward III bought three captives from his son, the Black Prince, for ?20,000 and the earl of Warwick ransomed the archbishop of Sens for ?8,000. The crown benefited greatly from the royal ransoms received as a result of the capture of David II, king of Scots, in 1346, and above all that of the French king, John II, in 1356. This latter ransom was worth ?500,000, though in practice not all of it was paid. The ransom trade was not, of course, all one-way. The Scots benefited financially as well as militarily from their triumph at Bannockburn, with the capture of men such as the earl of Hereford and John de Segrave. The crown contributed ?3,000 towards the ransom of Henry Percy, taken prisoner at Otterburn in 1387. English defeats in France carried a heavy financial penalty. John Talbot could not afford the heavy ransom demanded after his capture at Patay in 1429, and received a grant of ?9,000 from the crown to help him purchase his release. The crown was not always so generous. Henry IV’s refusal to contribute to the ransom of Edmund Mortimer, captured by Owain Glyn Dtvr in 1402, led to Mortimer joining forces with his captor. Despite such examples, the English undoubtedly gained more than they lost from the business of ransoming prisoners.
Plunder was another way that soldiers profited from war. The purpose of the great raids or chevauchees, so characteristic of Edward Ill’s French wars, was to ravage the countryside and to place intolerable economic pressure on the enemy, as well as to force them to battle. For individuals, there were splendid opportunities to capture valuables. It was later said that, after the capture of Caen in 1346, there was not an English matron who was not decked with splendid cloths taken from the French. There were conventions about the taking of plunder; the lord claimed a proportion. When the earl of Salisbury made an indenture with Geoffrey Walsh in 1347, it was laid down that the earl was to receive half the profits of ransoms and booty. By the 1370s, the normal proportion retained by the lord was one third; when the custom of paying for lost horses was given up, the proportion of booty men could retain was increased.
War was a major enterprise, which affected the English economy in a wide range of ways. Good-quality horses were needed, even when knights were expected to fight on foot in battle, as they were first asked to do in 1327, and the demands of war transformed horse-breeding. Records of royal stud farms show the great efforts put into this, and magnates must have also striven to improve the quality of their mounts. There was also a substantial trade in high-quality bloodstock from abroad, particularly from southern Europe. Edward I began importing horses at the time of his first Welsh campaign in 1277, and early in Edward Ill’s reign horses were bought for the king in Sicily and Spain.
Armies needed to be fed, and this could have a significant impact on the agrarian economy. This was especially the case with campaigns in Wales and Scotland. Although there was a much greater expectation that soldiers fighting in France could live off the land, supply from England was important for them, too. In Henry V’s reign there was a royal victualling office at Harfleur performing much the same function as Edward I’s offices had done at Berwick and Skinburness; and even when supply systems within Normandy had been organised, some foodstuffs were still
Brought by sea from England. The quantities that were purveyed by royal officials might be very considerable. Late in 1296 Edward I ordered the seizure of 33,000 quarters of grain, and accounts from 1297 suggest that the king seized at least 10,300 quarters of wheat, 6,700 quarters of oats, 2,400 quarters of barley and malt, and 1,000 quarters of beans and peas for his armies. The calculation that London, with a population of up to 100,000, required some 165,000 quarters of grain a year helps to put these figures into perspective. The impact of such demands was not felt equally; regions near the campaigning areas, and the ports where the troops mustered, were especially hard hit. The eastern counties in particular suffered from demands for prises, as these compulsory purchases of foodstuffs were known. The process was highly unpopular. In contrast to the political conventions surrounding taxation, there was no principle of obtaining parliamentary consent for prises, and the process of collection itself was very open to corruption. In Edward III’s reign the situation was eased, partly as armies were expected to live off the land in France and partly because increasing use was made of contracts with merchants to provide the foodstuffs needed by armies. In the fifteenth century commanders were largely expected to make their own arrangements to ensure that they had adequate supplies, thus reducing the burden on England and its government.
An army needed weaponry and other equipment. The work of armourers, fletchers, farriers, carpenters, wheelwrights and coopers was vital. Bows were simple weapons, but those of the highest quality could cost as much as 2s 6d each, though is 6d was a more normal price. Huge quantities of bows and arrows were accumulated by the crown in the middle years of the fourteenth century and stored in the Tower of London. In the late fifteenth century, by contrast, parliament was exercised by the perceived shortage and high cost of imported bow staves. Tents were needed. These might be splendid structures; early fourteenth-century accounts detail a seven-post ‘hall’ with two porches on each side. Carts were required for transport. On occasion major engineering projects were needed. Edward I had prefabricated pontoon bridges constructed, at very considerable expense, for the crossing from Anglesey to the Welsh mainland in 1282, and in Scotland to enable his forces to cross the Firth of Forth in 1303—4. The building of siege engines was another major undertaking. Edward I had no fewer than thirteen such pieces of equipment at the siege of Stirling in i304, one of which, the great Warwolf, took some fifty carpenters three months to construct. It was less easy for the English to use large-scale siege equipment in the French wars;
Big siege engines were difficult to transport across the Channel. Henry V, however, at the siege of Rouen in 1419, made full use both of trebuchets, huge throwing engines, and of artillery. The provision of all this equipment was a substantial burden.
Naval support was essential, even for campaigns within the British Isles; one of the keys to Edward I’s successes was the proper co-ordination of land forces with support from the sea. The need for shipping in the Hundred Years War was great; in particular, it was not easy to transport large numbers of troops, with horses and equipment, to Gascony. It took at least one sailor for every two soldiers transported across the Channel. Some 300 vessels were needed to take Edward I’s force of under 9,000 to Flanders in 1297. There was no permanent royal navy, but at some periods the crown possessed a number of vessels. Henry V owned about forty ships, but such a fleet came nowhere near meeting the needs of war. The great majority of ships used to transport troops, and for naval service, were merchant vessels, requisitioned by royal officials in an unpopular process. Although shipowners were usually rewarded for their service, seaports were badly affected by the demands made on them by the crown. Ships were frequently commandeered long before they were needed, and the prosperity of the ports, and indeed of English trade, undoubtedly suffered as a result, particularly during the fourteenth century. Yarmouth, for example, was hard hit by the crown’s demands.
War was costly. Edward I conquered Wales in his campaign of 1282-3, and this meant expenditure of some ?80,000, excluding the cost of the castles that were built to consolidate the achievement. The French war of 1294-8 saw about ?165,000 spent on building up a grand alliance of continental princes. The defence of Gascony cost a further ?400,000, and the king probably spent another ?50,000 on his campaign in Flanders in 1297-8. The initial stages of the Hundred Years War saw relatively little fighting, and did not involve the recruitment of large English armies, but purchasing allies proved very costly. By October 1339 Edward III’s debts were estimated at ?300,000. In the early 1350s, which was not a period of especially heavy fighting, annual military expenditure ran at about ?118,000, compared with ?21,000 on domestic matters. In 1359-60, when Edward III conducted a large but ultimately unsuccessful campaign in France, the department of the royal wardrobe (which covered most of the war costs) incurred expenditure approaching ?150,000. Defence was particularly expensive. The English success in capturing Calais in 1347 was a military triumph, but proved to be a financial disaster. Holding the town cost around ?12,000 a year. The decision to adopt what was known as a ‘barbican’ policy in the late 1370s involved heavy expenditure on maintaining English-held fortresses on the French coast. The conquest of Normandy under Henry V was a superb military achievement, but it proved very costly to defend the duchy in the reign of his son. On a smaller scale, the English capture of Berwick in 1482 was thought by one disgruntled contemporary to have committed the country to more expense than it was worth.5
Taxation offered one solution to the problem of war finance, but even the combination of direct taxes and heavy customs duties might prove insufficient at such times of heavy expenditure as the 1290s and the late 1330s. The crown therefore needed loans to finance its campaigns. Italian merchant companies, notably the Riccardi and the Frescobaldi, provided funds under Edward I and his son. Such loans were a risky investment for hard-nosed men of business, for returns were very uncertain. Not surprisingly, the Italians regarded Edward III’s military adventures sceptically, and failed to produce sums on the immense scale that the king required. The Bardi and Peruzzi companies did lend money in the early stages of the French war, but after both firms suffered major losses in the 1340s the way was left open to English financiers. The first great English merchant banker was William de la Pole, a Hull wool merchant by origin. Other merchants followed his lead, generally preferring to spread the risk by forming consortia. Courtiers might also lend to the crown. William Latimer, operating in partnership with the merchant Richard Lyons, was deeply involved in some distinctly questionable dealings with Edward III’s government in the king’s later years. In the fifteenth century Cardinal Beaufort did well for himself by lending to his nephew Henry VI in support of the war effort. Men of such eminence stood a good chance of being repaid. Smaller lenders were more vulnerable, and most vulnerable of all were the involuntary lenders: men who were not paid for goods and services supplied for the war effort.
War could have a profound effect on individual fortunes. It could make a man, or bankrupt him, and was an important determinant of social mobility. The cost of fighting was clearly a very considerable burden for magnates in the thirteenth century, especially if they did choose not to accept royal wages. Horses were expensive; a good warhorse might cost a knight a year’s income. In 1297 William de Ferrers borrowed ?200 from a merchant, William de Coumbmartin, to whom he mortgaged his manor of Newbottle, so that he could take part in the Flanders expedition.
N. Pronay and J. Cox, eds., The Crowland Chronicle Continuations 1459—1486 (1986), pp. 148—9.
On the same occasion, the earl of Arundel claimed that he was impoverished and received a royal licence to lease some of his lands for ?ioo a year so that he could meet his military costs. At the end of the Flanders campaign, William Martin lost all his equipment when his ship was wrecked in a storm, and the king promised him compensation of ?510. Even in the successful years of the fourteenth century, fighting in France could prove costly for individuals. William Ferrers of Groby, for example, was exonerated in 1360 from paying any levy for the defence of Ireland from his Irish lands, since he had spent so much on the campaign in France in 1359-60. As the fortunes of war turned against the English in the fifteenth century, times became more difficult. In 1422 a merchant, Geoffrey Hebbe, enrolled in Henry V’s army, perhaps in an attempt to restore his declining fortunes. He had to sell family property in his hometown of Chichester in order to fund his new career, which did not bring him the financial success he sought. Thomas Hostell, a manat-arms who lost an eye from a crossbow bolt at Harfleur in 1415, went on to fight at Agincourt and at sea. Much later, he petitioned Henry VI, complaining that he was ‘sorely hurt, maimed and wounded; as a result of which he is much enfeebled and weakened, and now being of great age has fallen into poverty’.6 William Peyto was captured by the French in i443, and had to mortgage his estates in order to pay his ransom. He was unable to obtain wages due to him from the crown, and by the time of his death in 1464 one of his manors was still in the hands of his creditors. At a higher level of society, the capture of Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, in Gascony in 1453, and the need to pay a ransom of ?6,000 for him, was a disaster for his family.
In contrast to the stories of financial disaster, there were many success stories. Men could make their fortunes as well as their reputations out of war. Thomas Rokeby was the lucky man who located the Scots and brought the news to the English army in 1327. For this he was knighted and received a promise of lands worth ?i00 a year. He prospered in the service of Edward III and became a major figure in the north. Walter Mauny, a Hainaulter, came to England at the start of Edward Ill’s reign as a page to Queen Philippa. Through a mixture of royal patronage and the profits of campaigning, he established himself in England, eventually becoming a Knight of the Garter. Had his children not both been illegitimate girls, he would no doubt have established a new and powerful landed family in England. Walter Bentley was a Yorkshire knight of no A. Curry, The Battle of Agincourt: sources and interpretations (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 435, 449.
Great standing, but the confused situation in Brittany in the 1340s offered ample opportunities to someone of military skill and driving ambition. It was, however, marriage to a wealthy Breton widow, Lady de Clisson, rather than the direct proceeds of war, which enabled him to create a virtually independent lordship in the duchy. John de Coupland made his name and fortune after his success in capturing the Scottish king at Neville’s Cross in 1346, receiving an annuity of ?500 for life. In his case, success was cut short by his murder at the hands of a group of Northumberland gentry, angered by the methods he used to build up his landed wealth.7 Thomas Erpingham’s family were local Norfolk gentry of no great distinction. His military career began in Gascony in the late 1360s; he became a Knight of the Garter in 1400 and steward of the royal household under Henry V. His greatest moment came at Agincourt, when he was almost sixty; he was said in some accounts to have commanded the archers in the battle. Erpingham built up a substantial estate in his native county, partly through grants he received and partly by purchase. In spite of the difficulties encountered by the English regime in France following the death of Henry V, men such as John Fastolf were still able to do very well for themselves. Fastolf s inheritance had been worth about ?46 a year, but with the profits he sent back to England, above all in the 1420s and 1430s, he was able to buy estates worth ?775 a year. He also spent lavishly on jewellery, plate and books.
Men invested the fortunes of war in different ways, but many decided to put their winnings into stones and mortar. The great front of Warwick Castle stands as a very visible reminder of the success of the fourteenth-century earls of Warwick in the French wars. At a knightly level, John de la Mare’s castle at Nunney in Somerset, John Cobham’s at Cooling in Kent and Edward Dalingrigge’s at Bodiam in Sussex all reflect the glories of fourteenth-century campaigns across the Channel, their battlements at least as much symbolic as practical. Walter Hungerford’s castle at Farleigh Hungerford and John Fastolf’s fine brick castle at Caister provide fifteenth-century examples. Raglan Castle on the Welsh border, with its great keep known as the Yellow Tower of Gwent, also reflects the profits of war gained by the Herbert family in the fifteenth century.
The successes of the aristocracy and gentry in bolstering their fortunes with the profits of war can be demonstrated much more easily than for soldiers of lower rank. There were not many who rose from the lowest status through their military achievements, and those who did could face Robert Salle, discussed below, is an analogous case, p. 88.
Hostility. Robert Knollys probably began his career as a humble bowman. He acquired great fame fighting for Edward III in France in the fourteenth century, but his landed acquisitions in his native Cheshire were not on a large scale. Command in Brittany and elsewhere brought him power, but lasting wealth escaped him. Promises of land in Normandy did not amount to much. Nor did those of knightly birth who were under his command always appreciate his abilities; John Minsterworth, a Gloucestershire knight, led a mutiny against him. Robert Salle was another soldier of low birth, said to be of villein origins. He did well in the wars, became a knight, and acquired property in his native Norfolk. Resentment at his rise may explain his death at the hands of the East Anglian rebels in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. ‘We know you well, ye be no gentleman born, but son to a villein such as we be.’8
Most of the wars of this period were fought abroad, not on English soil. The immediate impact of war was, as a result, far less than in France. The regions bordering on Wales and Scotland, however, were directly affected. Welsh raids into England, and counter-raids launched from the marches, were a regular part of life before the Edwardian conquest. The holders of the marcher lordships established by the English crown in south and east Wales during earlier generations maintained a strong military tradition: it was their experience of war against the Welsh, indeed, that helped them to played a major part in the English civil wars of the mid-thirteenth century. Their lordships continued to be a fertile recruiting ground through the fourteenth century; this was a much more deeply militarised area than the peaceful areas of central, southern and eastern England.
The Scottish border was largely peaceful during the thirteenth century, but from 1296 the north of England experienced the agony of frequent foreign invasion, with all the horrors of burning and looting that entailed. The years of Edward Il’s reign in particular saw the north transformed as Scottish raiding parties destroyed swathes of territory with fire and sword, rendering previously profitable manors almost worthless. Men suffered greatly. In 1315 Robert de Reymes claimed that he had lost horses and armour worth 100 marks (?66 13s 4d), that he had paid a ransom of 500 marks (?333 6s 8d) to the Scots, and that his lands had been destroyed, at a loss of ?1,000. Manorial accounts and valuations, even allowing for understandable exaggeration, provide testimony to the widespread damage done by the Scots. No defensive strategy seemed to work. The
R. B. Dobson, ed., The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (2nd edn, 1983), p. 263.
Great castles of the north, such as Warkworth and Alnwick, were no real obstacle to the Scots, and the best technique was simply to pay the latter off with heavy tributes. One response by the local gentry, notably in the later fourteenth century, was to build a large number of tower houses and small-scale fortifications to provide a measure of defence for their estates. When Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, the future Pope Pius II, was travelling in the north in 1435, he dined one night in a village close to the border. After eating, the party became fearful that the Scots were approaching. The men went to take refuge in a tower some way off. The women remained; they said that they did not consider rape a wrong. This was a society hardened to the horrors of war. Yet recovery was possible. In periods of truce, the north showed a remarkable degree of resilience as lands were restocked. The Percy family, and to a lesser extent the Nevilles, rose to prominence in the fourteenth century, and a very different northern political society from that of the thirteenth century emerged in the north, toughened by the severe test of war.
War had many indirect effects on society in England. For example, it may have encouraged crime. Men’s absence from their estates while they campaigned in France and elsewhere provided criminals with some opportunities. More importantly, the practice of granting men pardons in return for military service, initiated on a large scale by Edward I in 1294, was an easy method of recruiting tough soldiers, but did nothing for the preservation of law and order at home. The homecoming of men hardened by campaigning was not always welcome. Something of a crime-wave seems to have followed the return of Edward III’s forces from the siege of Calais in 1347, and in 1361 the justices of the peace were empowered to force those returning from France since the treaty of Bretigny (1360) to take up work lest they be encouraged to continue the unruly ways of war. In the north, war came to be accompanied by a lack of respect for central authority, and offered openings for criminal activity.
It is impossible to provide a convincing balance sheet to demonstrate the success or failure of English military enterprises during the later middle ages. In some years, notably the 1290s and the late 1330s, there is no doubt whatsoever that war cost the country a great deal, with very little by way of gains to offset the huge sums spent in subsidies to foreign allies, on war wages and on preparations for campaigns. In other periods, above all in the years from 1346 to the late 1350s, the war was highly profitable. The impact of war varied according to social status. Some of the aristocracy undoubtedly gained much; their castles stand as testimony to their success. Knightly families as a whole did not prosper so obviously;
Their declining numbers by the fifteenth century suggest that the strains of war may have been too much for some. There were, however, many success stories among the knights, men who gained wealth as well as reputation. Further down the social scale, it is much harder to see the benefits of war. The pressures of war taxation and of seizures of foodstuffs were heavy, and few of those recruited into the army from the ranks of the peasantry can be shown to have profited from campaigning. Despite all the glories of war, the ideal vision of society was one in which the king was ‘dwelling in his own land in the seat of peace, desiring above all the quiet and tranquillity of nobles, lords and commons’.102
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