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The King and the Gentry In Fourteenth-Century England: The Alexander Prize Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

C. Given-Wilson
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Abstract

Late medieval English historians have recently become quite interested in the gentry, and particularly in magnate-gentry relationships. The ubiquity of indentures of retainer in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is evidence that the outward form of these relationships was changing; the question is, do they also indicate a change in the nature and purpose of such relationships? And if so, then why? G. L. Harriss, for example, has argued that the fifteenth-century bastard feudal affinity was

an attempt by the traditional leaders of society—crown and nobility—to contain the increasingly diversifying armigerous class within the old traditions of lordship and chivalry… (This) solution disintegrated not under any attack from the crown but as cumulative wealth and access to political authority gave the broad class of landowners independence from the nobility as mediators of patronage and power.

This theme of gentry ‘independence’ from the nobility was also taken up by Christine Carpenter, who suggested that forceful monarchical government in the shires could only be achieved once ‘the gentry who administered the shires could be separated from the nobility’—and this, she speculated, may have occurred as a result of the wars of the roses.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 37 , December 1987 , pp. 87 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1987

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References

1 McFarlane, K.B., England in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar, introduction by G. L. Harriss, xxvii; see alsoSaul, N., Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981)Google Scholar; Naughton, Katherine, The Gentry of Bedfordshire in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Leicester University Occasional Papers, 2, 1976)Google Scholar;Bennett, M.J., Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1983)Google Scholar; Cichmond, Colin, ‘After McFarlane’, History, Ixviii (1983)Google Scholar; see also a number of unpublished theses cited in later footnotes.

2 Carpenter, Christine, ‘Political Society in Warwickshire, c. 1401–1472’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1976), 310–22Google Scholar.

3 McFarlane, xxvi.

4 Chibnall, M., ‘Mercenaries and the Familia Regis under Henry I’, History, lxii (1977)Google Scholar; Prestwich, J.O., ‘The Military Household of the Norman Kings’, EHR, xcvi (1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Walker, R. F., ‘The Anglo-Welsh Wars 1217–1267’, (unpublished D. Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1954), 66–90Google Scholar.

6 Though £100 was quite exceptional; the majority of the 117 tabulated by Walker got £15 or less; only eleven got £30 or more.

7 Prestwich, M. C., War, Politics and Finance under Edward I (1972), 41–66Google Scholar.

8 The term milites simplich was often used to differentiate them from the bannerets; although initially a military rank, the term ‘banneret’ evolved during the fourteenth century to include wider social implications.

9 The following selection gives some idea of the numbers of bannerets and knights of the household over this period, and of the fluctuations in those numbers:

References: Prestwich, War, Politics and Finance, 46–7; PRO, E101/352/31; E101/352/4; E101/375/8; E101/376/7; E101/378/6; E101/377/1; Society of Antiquaries MSS. 120, 121; BL Add. MSS. 9, 951 and 17,362; BL Stowe MS. 553; PRO, E101/385/4; E101/392/12; E101/393/11; E101/398/18; The Wardrobe Book of William de Morwell, ed. Lyon, M., Lyon, B. and Lucas, H. S. (Brussels, 1984), xcii, 301–3Google Scholar; A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (Society of Antiquaries, 1790), 10Google Scholar.

10 M. C. Prestwich, 59.

11 There are a very few references to knights de retinentia regis or defamilia regis in the later years of Edward Ill's reign but these are clearly associated with military service, and relate to Edward Ill's projected campaign of 1372. Also, in 1385, John Holand and Ralph Stafford the younger are described as knights of the household(familia) in proceedings relating to the brawl at Mustardthorpe during which Holand killed Stafford while the royal army was travelling north for the Scottish campaign of that year, but again what is clearly meant is that they were both members of the king's military retinue. Otherwise I have not found the term used at any time in the period 1377–1413 (PRO, E403446, 5 August, 11 August; £403/451, 27 February; CPR, 1370–74, 261–4; Ibid., 1377–81, 241; Ibid., 1385–89, 62, 99).

12 Myers, A. R., The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), 240Google Scholar.

13 See generally Tout, T. F., Chapters in the Administrative History oj Medieval England (6 vols, Manchester, 1920–1933), iv. 227–348Google Scholar; and Fryde, Natalie, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II 1321–26 (Cambridge, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Chronicles of Edward I and Edward II, ed. Stubbs, W., i (Rolls Series, 1882), 287–8Google Scholar; Davies, J. Conway, ‘The First Journal of Edward II's Chamber’, EHR, xxx (1915), 677–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 PRO, E101/391/15, mm. 5–6; E101/394/16, m.9.

16 PRO, E101396/2,11; E101/397/5; E101/398/9; E101/401/2; E101/402/2,10, 20; E101/403/10; E101/404/21; BL Harl MS. 318; from 1395–6 they are described as ‘knights of the chamber and hall’, but the addition is not significant; it is clear that some of those who were called simply knights of the chamber before 1395 in fact had duties in the hall as well as the chamber, such as William Murreres and Thomas Peytevyn (E101/400/4, m. 21; E101/400/24; E101/401/6, m. 16).

17 Myers, , Household of Edward IV, 106–8Google Scholar.

18 They included James Berners, John Salisbury, Nicholas Dagworth, Richard Abber-bury, Baldwin Bereford, Thomas Clifford, John Clanvow, John Golafre, and Aubrey de Vere.

19 Lists of the knights retained by Richard II and Henry IV may be found inGoogle ScholarGiven-Wilson, C., The Royal Household and the King's Affinity (1986), 282–90Google Scholar.

20 Two of those referred to in note 11 above were however new recruits—Gilbert Giffard and Thomas Banfeld—but they were almost certainly recruited for the 1372 campaign.

21 See for example the Westminster Chronicler's description of Richard's attempt to whip up support in the summer of 1387 by sending a royal sergeant-at-arms to East Anglia to hand out the king's livery badges to the local gentry; the sergeant-at-arms was eventually imprisoned. The charge is supported by other chroniclers and by the articles of the appeal of treason in 1388(The Westminster Chronicle 1381–94, ed. and trans. Harvey, B. and Hector, L. C. (Oxford, 1983), 187Google Scholar; Rotuli Parliamentorum, iii, 232–3Google Scholar; Chronicon Henrici Knighton, ed. Lumby, J.R., Rolls Series 1895, ii, 291Google Scholar; Walsingham, Thomas, Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, H.T., Rolls Series 1863–1864, ii 162)Google Scholar.

22 There were, for example, only two counties (Derby and Rutland) from which Richard failed to recruit any of his knights, and in general it is clear that they were more or less evenly spread around the various regions of the country. More significantly, it is worth noting that whereas before 1389 only nineteen of Richard's knights had come from the northern half of the country, between 1389 and 1399 he recruited a further forty-six knights from the north. Nor is this to be explained by the concentration on the north-west after 1397, for during the early 1390s Richard was focusing his attention more on counties like Yorkshire and Lincolnshire than on Cheshire and Lancashire. From Yorkshire and Lincolnshire combined, there were only five king's knights before 1389; by 1396, there were twenty. So if Richard's government was as unpopular in the north as has sometimes been suggested, then at least during the early 1390s he was trying to do something about it.

23 John Bussy, William Bagot, Henry Green, Edard Dalyngridge, Gerard Bray-brooke the younger, Simon Felbridge, and Roger Strange of Knokyn were all supporters of the Appellants in 1387–8, and all became king's knights in the early 1390s; for these men and their connections with the Appellants see Anthony Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy (1971), 19, 34, 37, 43.

24 Of the twenty-eight new king's knights recruited by Richard during the last two years of his reign, eleven came from Cheshire or Lancashire, and of the 170 or so new king's esquires recruited during the same time, about 140 came from these two counties.For Richard's obsession with Chester in the later years of his reign see Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism, passim; Davies, R. R., ‘Richard II and the Principality of Chester’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. Boulay, F. R. H. Du and Barron, Caroline (1971)Google Scholar; andGillespie, j. L., ‘Richard IPs Cheshire Archers’, Transactions of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, cxxv (1974)Google Scholar.

25 The crucial document for the study of Richard's Cheshire retinue is in the Public Record Office: E101/402/10.

26 See especially Barron, Caroline, ‘The Tyranny of Richard II’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xli (1968)Google Scholar, andTuck, Anthony, Richard II and the English Nobility (1973)Google Scholar, chapter 7. Walsingham's remark that it was in the summer of 1397 that Richard began to tyrannise his people has often been quoted.

27 For a very comprehensive study which shows just how chaotic royal finance was, especially during the first half of Henry's reign, seeRogers, Alan, ‘The Royal Household of Henry IV’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Nottingham, 1966)Google Scholar.

28 Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. SirNicholas, H. (1834), i. 109Google Scholar.

29 See above, n. 22. Twenty-five of Henry's knights came from Yorkshire alone, and Over half of the total came from the less well populated northern half of the country.

30 For the army (including the king's retinue) of 1394–5, see PRO, E101/402/20, ff. 31-40; the records for the army of 1399 are less complete, but a partial picture of it can be gained from the enrolled account of the keeper of the wardrobe (E361/5/26) and from the letters of protection issued in chancery (CPR, 1396–99, 22 Richard II, parts II and III).

31 McFarlane, xi.

32 John of Gaunt's Register 1379–83, ed. E. C. Lodge and R. Somerville (Camden 3rd ser. lvi, 1937), i, 6–13.

33 It is worth noting that even for a duke and a royal uncle Gaunt seems to have been quite exceptional; his brother the Duke of York was apparently only retaining about forty knights and esquires in 1399: Ross, C.D., ‘The Yorkshire Baronage 1399–1435’ (unpublished D.Phil,thesis, University of Oxford, 1950), 394Google Scholar.

34 Phillips, J. R. S., Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke 1307–1324 (Oxford, 1972), 148–51Google Scholar.

35 See the quotations at the start of this paper.

36 Saul, , Knights and Esquires, 260–2Google Scholar; Bennett, , Community, Class and Careerism, 82–4Google Scholar; Carpenter, , ‘Political Society’, 18Google Scholar,Astill, G. G., ‘The Medieval Gentry: A Study in Leicestershire Society 1350–1399’, (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, 1977), 17Google Scholar; Susan Wright, , ‘A Gentry Society of the Fifteenth Century: Derbyshire circa 1430–1509’ (unpublished Ph.D.thesis, University of Birmingham, 1978), 9–10Google Scholar.

37 At roughly £60 per knight and £20 per esquire, the annuities promised by both Richard and Henry amounted in total to over £10,000; of course annuities were often in arrears, but even so very substantial payments were made, for the king could not afford politically to allow arrears to accumulate for too long.

38 Griffiths, R. A., The Reign of King Henry VI (1981), 800–2Google Scholar; Wright, , ‘Gentry Society’, 221Google Scholar; Carpenter, , ‘Political Society’, 46–53Google Scholar.

39 Saul, Nigel, ‘The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II’, EHR, xcix (1984), 1–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Given-Wilson, , Royal Household, 267Google Scholar.

41 Ibid., 221–2, 233–4; see alsoGoodman, Anthony, ‘John of Gaunt’, in England in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Ormrod, W. M. (Woodbridge, 1986), 79Google Scholar.