Because Edward's household knights were retained though a system of biannually allocated robes and fees, the size and personnel of his knightly household changed from year to year, sometimes quite dramatically. Each year new men entered household service while others left, all, in theory, at the king's will. This chapter examines how and why the number of household knights retained, and the reasons behind the selection of these men, changed from year to year as it did during Edward's reign. This is done in three sections. The first considers the overall size of the knightly household, assessing how external factors influenced the number of household knights Edward retained. The second investigates the continuity of service among household knights, the rate at which new men were recruited into the household, and the length of time spent by household knights in royal service. Finally, the third section examines the personnel of Edward III's knightly household, asking who the household knights were and by what criteria they were chosen for service. From this, an initial flavour of what they offered Edward III will begin to emerge.

This chapter will also offer important prosopographical data for the study of the late-medieval military retinue. Since 1994, when Andrew Ayton's Knights and Warhorses first highlighted the paucity of our understanding of who served in the private military retinues of the fourteenth-century English nobility, a great push has taken place to rectify this. Important progress has been made in the work of several historians and as a result of the Medieval Soldier Database project, which offers an online catalogue of all known soldiers who served in English armies between 1369 and 1453. Nonetheless, the current state of affairs remains unsatisfactory: a great deal has yet to be understood about the stability and continuity of personnel in military retinues at this time, the recruitment networks which provided men for each retinue, and why certain individuals chose a career in military service. This chapter adds to the recent wealth of work in this area by offering a study of the greatest ‘retinue’ of them all: that of Edward III's knightly household. This is especially valuable as records for service in the knightly household at this time are far fuller than anything that exists for contemporary noble retinues, and therefore a more detailed investigation of the retinue is possible.