Creativity, Contradictions and Commemoration in the Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of Nigel Saul 9781783276172, 9781800104785, 1783276177

Table of contents :
Front cover
Contents
Illustrations
Contributors
Abbreviations
Introduction
Part I: Sources
1: Froissart and the Great Revolt
2: ‘Defenders of truth’: Lord Cobham, John Gower, and the Political Crisis of 1387-88
3: The Authorship of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum: A Reconsideration
Part II: Government and Administration
4: The Bequests of Isabel of Castile, 1st Duchess of York, and Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’
5: Lollards in Arms: Lollardy, Loyalty, and the Trauma of the Hundred Years War
6: Pardons for Self-Defence in the Reign of Richard II: The Use and Abuse of Legal Formulas
7: The Representation of Devonshire in the ‘Bad’ Parliament of January 1377
8: John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Plantagenet Family Politics in the 1390s
9: Richard II’s Bishops: Fair Weather Friends?
10: The Cult of Corpus Christi and the 1389 Guild Enquiry in Lincolnshire
Part III: Commemoration
11: Edward, the Black Prince, and Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France
12: The Brass of Margaret of Cieszyn and Associated Monuments
13: Monuments of the Royal Household at Friars Minor London
14: The ‘Dreadful Draytons’ of Dorchester and their Brasses
Nigel Saul as a Teacher: An Appreciation
Bibliography of Prof. N. E. Saul’s Work
Index
Tabula Gratulatoria

Citation preview

Creativity, Contradictions and Commemoration in the Reign of Richard II

Creativity, Contradictions and Commemoration in the Reign of Richard II

 Essays in Honour of Nigel Saul

Edited by Jessica A. Lutkin and J. S. Hamilton

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Contributors 2022

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2022 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978 1 78327 617 2 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 80010 478 5 (ePDF)

The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Cover image: Coronation of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in the Liber Regalis, Westminster Abbey Library, MS 38, f.20r. Copyright: Dean and Chapter of Westminster

Contents vii ix x

List of Illustrations List of Contributors List of Abbreviations Introduction Jessica A. Lutkin and J. S. Hamilton

1

PART I: SOURCES 1.

Froissart and the Great Revolt Caroline Barron

11

2.

‘Defenders of truth’: Lord Cobham, John Gower, and the Political Crisis of 1387–88 Michael Bennett

35

3.

The Authorship of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum: A Reconsideration George B. Stow

53

PART II: GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION 4.

The Bequests of Isabel of Castile, 1st Duchess of York, and Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’ Jenny Stratford

75

5.

Lollards in Arms: Lollardy, Loyalty, and the Trauma of the Hundred Years War Jill C. Havens

97

6.

Pardons for Self-Defence in the Reign of Richard II: The Use and Abuse of Legal Formulas John L. Leland

121

viCONTENTS

7.

The Representation of Devonshire in the ‘Bad’ Parliament of January 1377 Hannes Kleineke

135

8.

John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Plantagenet Family Politics in the 1390s Mark Arvanigian

149

9.

Richard II’s Bishops: Fair Weather Friends? Joel T. Rosenthal

10.

Power, Piety, and Presence: The Cult of Corpus Christi and the 1389 Guild Enquiry in Lincolnshire Claire Kennan

179

203

PART III: COMMEMORATION 11.

Edward, the Black Prince, and Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France: Chivalry and Rivalry in Life and Death Chris Given-Wilson

221

12.

‘Suche scripture … shewyng what I was’: The Brass of Margaret of Cieszyn and Associated Monuments Kelcey Wilson-Lee

235

13.

The Patronage of Queen Isabella (d. 1358): Monuments of the Royal Household at Friars Minor London Christian Steer

249

14.

The ‘Dreadful Draytons’ of Dorchester and their Brasses † Jerome Bertram

269



Nigel Saul as a Teacher: An Appreciation David Carpenter

287

Bibliography of Prof. N. E. Saul’s work Index Tabula Gratulatoria

291 297 307

Illustrations Froissart and the Great Revolt Caroline Barron Table 1.1

Those present with Richard II on 12 and 14 June 1381

15–16

The Bequests of Isabel of Castile, 1st Duchess of York, and Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’ Jenny Stratford Table 4.1

Bequests in Money

92

Richard II’s Bishops: Fair Weather Friends? Joel T. Rosenthal Table 9.1 Table 9.2

Richard II’s Bishops Richard II’s Bishops in 1399

184–85 199–201

‘Suche scripture … shewyng what I was’: The Brass of Margaret of Cieszyn and Associated Monuments Kelcey Wilson-Lee Figure 12.1 The Felbrigg Brass

237

The Patronage of Queen Isabella (d. 1358): Monuments of the Royal Household at Friars Minor London Christian Steer Figure 13.1 Friars Minor London Figure 13.2 Choir of Friars Minor London Figure 13.3 Graves and Memorials in Friars Minor London

250 251 258

viiiILLUSTRATIONS

The ‘Dreadful Draytons’ of Dorchester and Their Brasses’ Jerome Bertram Figure 14.1 Effigy of Sir Hugh Segrave (d. 1387), showing differenced arms, Dorchester Abbey (Oxon) 270 Figure 14.2 Indent for cross brass, possibly for Gilbert Segrave, Dorchester Abbey (Oxon) 271 Figure 14.3 Brass of Sir William Drayton (d. 1398), Dorchester Abbey (Oxon) 272 Figure 14.4 Shield from brass of Sir William Drayton, Dorchester Abbey (Oxon) 274 Figure 14.5 Brass of Sir John Drayton (d. 1417) and his wife Isabel, Lady Scrope (d. 1437) 276 Figure 14.6 Head and crest of Sir John Drayton 278 Figure 14.7 Sword-hilt of Sir John Drayton 279 Figure 14.8 Brass of Drew Barentyne and wives Joan and Beatrix, Chalgrove (Oxon) 281 Figure 14.9 (a, b) Shields from the brass of Alice Drayton (d. 1468), Horton Kirby (Kent) 283 Figure 14.10 Indent of Richard Drayton (d. 1468) and his wife Alice (d. 1468) 284 Figure 14.11 The Draytons of Dorchester 286

Full credit details are provided in the captions to the images in the text. The editors, contributors, and publisher are grateful to all the institutions and persons for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apologies are offered for any omission, and the publisher will be pleased to add any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.

Contributors Mark Arvanigian, California State University, Fresno Caroline Barron, Royal Holloway, London Michael Bennett, University of Tasmania † Jerome Bertram, Oxford Oratory David Carpenter, King’s College, London Jill C. Havens, Texas Christian University Chris Given-Wilson, University of St Andrews Claire Kennan, Bader International Study Centre, Queen’s University, Canada Hannes Kleineke, History of Parliament John L. Leland, Salem University Joel T. Rosenthal, Stony Brook University Christian Steer, University of York Jenny Stratford, Institute of Historical Research, London George B. Stow, LaSalle University Kelcey Wilson-Lee, Architectural Heritage Fund

Abbreviations AALT BIHR BL Bodl. CCR CIPM Continuatio Eulogii CPR EHR Emden

Eulogium Historiarum GEC JGR 1372–76

JGR 1379-83

Knighton’s Chronicle ODNB

Anglo-American Legal Tradition Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research British Library Bodleian Library, Oxford Calendar of Close Rolls Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem Continuatio Eulogii, ed. and trans, C. GivenWilson (Oxford, 2019) Calendar of Patent Rolls English Historical Review A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, ed. A. B. Emden, 3 vols (Oxford, 1957–59) Eulogium Historiarum sive Temporis, ed. F. S. Haydon, 3 vols (London, RS, 1858–63) The Complete Peerage, ed. G. E. Cokayne, 13 vols (London, 1910–57) John of Gaunt’s Register 1372–1376, ed. S. Armitage- Smith, 2 vols (Camden Society 3rd Series, xx–xxi, 1911) John of Gaunt’s Register 1379–1383, ed. E. C. Lodge and R. Somerville, 2 vols (Camden Society 3rd Series, lvi–lvii, 1937) Knighton’s Chronicle, 1337–1396, ed. G. H. Martin (Oxford, 1995) The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew, B. Harrison, and others (Oxford, 2004–) available at http://www.oxforddnb.com

ABBREVIATIONSxi

PROME

RS St Albans Chronicle

Saul, Richard II Tout, Chapters

VCH Westminster Chronicle

The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. P. Brand, A. Curry, C. Given-Wilson, R. E. Horrox, G. Martin, W. M. Ormrod, and J. R. S. Phillips, 16 vols (Woodbridge, 2005); available at: http:// www.sd-editions.com/PROME/home.html Rolls Series The St Albans Chronicle. The Chronicle of Thomas Walsingham, ed. J. Taylor, W. R. Childs, and L. Watkiss, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2003, 2011) N. Saul, Richard II (New Haven and London, 1997) T. F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols (Manchester, 1920–33) Victoria County History The Westminster Chronicle 1381–1394, ed. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982)

Introduction JESSICA A. LUTKIN AND J. S. HAMILTON

T



his collection of essays is a tribute to the tremendous impact that Nigel Saul has had over a long and brilliant career, as a scholar, mentor, and friend. Contributors include a broad array of his colleagues from both sides of the Atlantic as well as a number of his doctoral students who continue to carry on aspects of his work in their own. These essays begin, quite fittingly, with a contribution from Caroline Barron, Nigel Saul’s long-time colleague at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, and fellow historian of the reign of Richard II. She presents the first of three studies of literary sources for the reign of Richard II. Taking her lead from a suggestion in Nigel’s biography of Richard II, she reconsiders the reliability and value of Froissart’s account of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in London through an examination of his likely sources of information. A detailed comparison of the individuals reported to be at the Tower of London on Wednesday, 12 June and at Mile End on Friday, 14 June by the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle on the one hand, and Froissart on the other, proves quite revealing. Barron identifies one primary stream of information that is absent from the Anonimalle Chronicle. This is a group of four Flemish nobles: Robert of Namur, lord of Beaufort; John Janche, lord of Gommegnies; Eustace de Bousies, lord of Vertaing; and Sir Henry of Senzeille. Robert of Namur was, in fact, Froissart’s earliest patron and a (generally) loyal subject and pensioner of the English Crown. He was certainly in England in the summer of 1381, but then returned to Flanders later in the year to assist Louis de Mâle at the siege of Ghent, raising the possibility that he shared fresh memories of the English revolt with the chronicler. Similarly, the other Flemings can be connected to both Robert of Namur and Froissart directly or indirectly, and this adds weight to his account of these crucial events in London in June 1381. Froissart’s emphasis on the role of William Montagu, earl of Salisbury, is also stressed as likely the result of an eyewitness account. Barron

2

JESSICA A. LUTKIN AND J. S. HAMILTON

argues strongly for a reconsideration of those unique elements of Froissart’s account that may well be the result of first-hand accounts of the events. Michael Bennett presents us with a window into the tumultuous events of 1387–88 and their reception by contemporary observers, with an examination of Lord Cobham, John Gower, and the identification of the Lords Appellant as ‘defenders of truth’. Our honorand has explored the question of whether Gower was a prophet or a turncoat, as well as the history and monuments of the Cobham family, and here Bennett amplifies the arguments in favour of seeing Gower as moving along a continuum of increasing dissatisfaction with the king that likely mirrored the experiences of Cobham at court in his many and varied capacities. Bennett re-dates the first part of Gower’s Cronica Tripertita to 1388, arguing that it fits the strong anti-Ricardian sentiment in London at that time, and his critical picture of Sir Simon Burley, for whose death the king would long blame Cobham, further reflects contemporary opinion among the Appellants’ sympathisers. Gower saw politics in essentially ethical terms, as did Cobham, who upon his banishment in 1398 is said to have claimed that he would have ‘willingly died in the cause for which he was being tried’. For both Cobham and Gower, this cause was the truth. The third analysis of sources comes from George Stow, who presents a reconsideration of the authorship of the Continuatio Eulogium Historiarum. Stow engages the historiography related to the Continuatio, from its first modern edition by F. S. Haydon in the Rolls Series (1858–63) to the most recent edition by Chris Given-Wilson in the Oxford Medieval Texts series in 2019, and re-examines the argument made in favour of John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph, by E. J. Jones in the 1930s, for the section of this composite text that covers the years 1367–1405. One deciding factor for Stow in pointing to Trevor as likely author is the conspicuous attention devoted to Wales between 1399 and 1405 – despite early adherence to the cause of Henry IV, Trevor soon aligned himself with Owain Glyn Dŵr – but his biographical profile also aligns with the other characteristic qualities that have long been associated with the unknown author of this important chronicle. The second section of the book focuses on the court of Richard II, with Jenny Stratford presenting a multi-faceted portrait of Isabel of Castile, 1st duchess of York. Although harshly criticised by the contemporary chronicler Thomas Walsingham, and later associated by John Shirley with the love affair portrayed in Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’, Stratford argues that Isabel overcame a tumultuous and difficult childhood in Castile. Following the marriage of her older sister Constanza to John of Gaunt, in 1372 Isabel was herself married to Gaunt’s brother, Edmund of Langley, later to be 1st duke of York. Stratford argues against the suggestion that Isabel’s son Richard, earl of Cambridge, was the illegitimate child of Isabel and Richard II’s half-brother, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, largely on the basis of Isabel’s will of December 1392, which made provision for her son Richard with the explicit consent of her

INTRODUCTION3

husband Edmund. Her bequests are examined in considerable detail, and the will itself is printed in the appendix to this chapter. She was the owner of nearly a dozen books, primarily devotional or liturgical in nature, but with at least one romance and one book of music. Stratford suggests that one of her books is likely the Astor Hours and Psalter, now in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. Stratford concludes with a critique of the arguments posthumously attaching Isabel of Castile to the ‘Complaint of Mars’. The first two executors named in Isabel of Castile’s will were Sir Lewis Clifford and Sir Richard Stury, two of the so-called Lollard knights at the court of Richard II. Jill Havens examines other members of this circle, in particular Sir John Clanvow and Sir William Neville, responding to Nigel Saul’s 2002 article, ‘A Farewell to Arms? Criticism of Warfare in Late Fourteenth-Century England’ and looking at the intersection of the trauma of war with Wycliffite preaching on pacifism. Havens begins with a consideration of Clanvow’s devotional text, The Two Ways, finding in it indications that Clanvow had rejected the ‘woodnesse’ or madness that would lead one to harm even his best friends. While Clanvow’s military career is well known, Havens attempts to explore how Clanvow and his brother-in-arms, Sir William Neville, experienced war and its manifestations. These include the uplifting, yet brutal, experience of the Anglo-Breton victory at Auray in 1364, but also the loss of his commander, Sir John Chandos, at Lussac in 1369. A year later, Clanvow and Neville were serving under Otto de Grandison at Pontvallain, where the English forces were overwhelmed by Bertrand du Guesclin, and both Clanvow and Neville were taken prisoner. Clanvow was present on John of Gaunt’s disastrous chevauchée of 1373–74, and both Clanvow and Neville were with Gaunt in 1378 at the failed siege of Saint-Mâlo. Were they affected by these traumatic events, those they witnessed as well as those they suffered directly? Havens suggests that this may explain the seeming hypocrisy of two men ascribing to Lollard principles while embarking on crusade and pilgrimage at the end of their lives in 1390. Their clear brotherhood-in-arms, physically embodied in their magnificent tomb in Istanbul, also speaks to their shared experience of war and devotion. Government and politics form the third section of this book, a fitting subject as this has been a consistent area of study for Nigel Saul dating back to his doctoral dissertation, published as Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century in 1981, through his landmark biography of Richard II (1997), and continues even now in his work on a forthcoming edition of the list of oath-takers in Lincolnshire in 1388 (TNA, C 255/20/1) for the Lincoln Record Society. John Leland begins this section with a fascinating study of pardons for self-defence in the reign of Richard II, making an exhaustive comparison of cases found in both coroners’ rolls and gaol delivery rolls. Making extensive use of the documentary sources from The National Archives in Kew that are now available online through the Anglo-American Legal Tradition project, Leland has been able to distinguish between the

4

JESSICA A. LUTKIN AND J. S. HAMILTON

patterns discerned by earlier historians for both the earlier fourteenth century and the fifteenth century with those for the reign of Richard II. Leland has identified 240 cases of pardons for homicide on grounds of self-defence in the reign of Richard II, and for some 180 of these both the indictments by coroners’ juries and verdicts reached at trials at gaol delivery have survived. Leland suggests that coroners’ inquest records are more credible than gaol delivery verdicts, which often adjust the narrative of events to make a selfdefence claim stronger. An interesting observation (at odds with earlier studies of self-defence claims) is that attackers tended to use a staff while defenders (those pleading self-defence) almost invariably were said to have used a knife. Moreover, in the majority of cases, these defenders were described as striking a single blow (solo ictu), usually in the chest. Leland concludes this rich and entertaining study by invoking Natalie Davis, who demonstrated that while there is undoubtedly plenty of fiction in the archives, there are also methods by which it often can be identified.1 Hannes Kleineke provides a more granular view of government by examining the lives of the two representatives of Devon in the ‘Bad’ Parliament of January 1377. Unlike many other parts of the country, the influence of John of Gaunt was limited in Devon, where the Courtenay earls of Devon held sway. But Sir William Asthorpe was not part of the Courtenay or broader Devon political circle, having married into Devon society through Margaret, daughter of Sir Oliver Dynham. He appears to have developed connections with the Bonvilles of Shute, the second family of Devon, and may have enjoyed patronage at the royal court in the person of Guy, Lord Bryan, with whom he had likely forged links campaigning in France. His colleague, Thomas Courtenay, although related to the earl – likely his illegitimate cousin – seems to have played a minor role in local affairs and had passed from the scene by 1381, having died on pilgrimage. He too seems to have had connections to Lord Bryan, perhaps indirectly, and both men were in the circle of Sir John Ralegh, who served as sheriff of Devon at the time of their appointment. Notably, Ralegh held office in spite of an appointment of Sir James Chudleigh to the shrievalty, a man who had notoriously poor relations with Lord Bryan. Kleineke’s suggestion that Asthorpe and Courtenay represent a ‘ticket’ in 1377, and a ticket in opposition to the ascendancy of John of Gaunt, is intriguing and calls for further studies at the county level. Mark Arvanigian examines the intersection of the ‘familial’ interests of Richard II and John of Gaunt and the house of Lancaster, with an emphasis on the final years of the reign. The importance of elevating the royal prerogative based on Richard’s sense of the royal office as distinct from the royal person, especially in his response to the Appellants, required the support of

N. Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France (Stanford, 1987). 1

INTRODUCTION5

the Plantagenet family, and most importantly Gaunt. The king’s attempt to establish a new nobility and a new ‘royal family’ in 1397, which Arvanigian describes as a ‘historic act of baronial social engineering’, could not succeed without Gaunt’s acquiescence. Richard’s primary emphasis was not on courtiers, particularly where lands and other endowment were concerned, but on family: his Holand half-siblings, his first cousins Bolingbroke and Rutland, and perhaps most notably, Gaunt’s newly legitimised Beaufort children. This was in the mould, if from a slightly different point of departure, of Edward III’s own family planning, which Richard’s uncles could surely understand. But at the same time, Gaunt’s aspirations finally turned away from a great Continental appanage, whether in Castile or Aquitaine, and toward England and Lancaster itself. He arranged a newly entailed Lancastrian inheritance for Bolingbroke, preferment for the Beauforts, and palatine status for the duchy itself. In the meantime, he was building an ever-greater retinue, but one peopled more by clerks such as John Scarle and William Gascoigne than by military retainers. Here Arvanigian sees the final purpose of the Lancastrian affinity: to protect the interests of John of Gaunt and his heirs while supporting the stewardly role bequeathed by tradition and the interest of the political community, a purpose that did not in the end align with Richard II’s vision of kingship. Joel Rosenthal offers a prosopographical study of Richard II’s bishops, wondering where allegiances fell, politically or otherwise. He begins with the famous speech that Shakespeare put into the mouth of Bishop Thomas Merke of Carlisle condemning the usurpation of Henry of Bolingbroke, yet what he finds is the lack of any unified episcopal position in 1399. His principal concern is with the group of courtier bishops that included Merke, but also Tideman of Worcester, Burghill of Coventry and Lichfield, Walden of Canterbury, Mitford of Salisbury, Mone of St David’s, and Reade of Chichester. Rosenthal considers numerous demographic variables, such as age or years in episcopal office, as well as attributes such as scholarship, administrative acumen, papal connections, and aristocratic background. Little of it seems to have mattered. With minor exceptions in the cases of Merke and Despenser of Norwich, the courtier bishops proved to be trimmers. Even more so were the rest of their episcopal brethren. Perhaps, Rosenthal suggests, the shadow of 1388 and the attacks of the Appellants on the episcopacy still lay heavy over many of the bishops. As in 1327, loyalty to the monarchy rather than to the monarch ‘seems to have been a guiding, if not an articulated policy’. Business as usual appears to have been the order of the day, tacitly agreed to by both the new king and his prelates. Claire Kennan completes this section with a consideration of the cult of Corpus Christi in Lincolnshire, as reflected in the guild enquiry ordered by Richard II’s government in 1389. She investigates the emergence of Corpus Christi as a popular guild dedication, European influences at work, and links to the development of processional practices and early pageantry. Some two-thirds of the Corpus Christi guilds in Lincolnshire were in rural parishes or provincial

6

JESSICA A. LUTKIN AND J. S. HAMILTON

market centres, challenging the assumption that it was predominately an urban phenomenon. Kennan details the significance of processions in these early Corpus Christi guilds but argues against the political meanings with which they became synonymous in later centuries. The prominence of the cult of Corpus Christi in Lincolnshire is likely to be, at least in part, attributable to geography and commerce. The trading links between Lincolnshire and the Low Countries and their connection to the guild, she argues, can most clearly be seen in the records of Boston, where all of the collectors of customs in the last decades of the fourteenth century were leading members of the town’s Corpus Christi guild. Commemoration has been another consistently, and increasingly, important theme in the writing of Nigel Saul, all the way back to his earliest published work, ‘Two Fifteenth-Century Brasses at Dodford, Northants.’, which appeared in Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society in 1977. Although much of Nigel’s work on memorials and commemoration has been devoted to physical monuments, his work on chivalry and the religious ethos of the fourteenthcentury gentry has also engaged with commemorations through the written word and ritual practice. In his study of the Black Prince and Bertrand du Guesclin, constable of France, Chris Given-Wilson examines the rivalry, in both life and legend, between two of the most famous chivalric figures of the age of Richard II. The two men first met in Bordeaux in 1365, where the prince, perhaps foolishly, allowed du Guesclin to recruit English routiers for his expedition into Spain. In the aftermath of du Guesclin’s intervention on behalf of Enrique of Trastámara, the Black Prince was victorious at Nájera, where du Guesclin was captured and subsequently ransomed for the immense sum of nearly £20,000. Du Guesclin would go on to great fame over the next dozen years prior to his death in 1380 as constable of France, while the Black Prince was incapacitated and died of a lingering illness in 1376. In the early 1380s, both were commemorated in chivalric biographies, the La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin by Cuvelier, and La Vie du Prince Noir by Chandos Herald. Although each is written in French verse, they are remarkably different. Chandos Herald’s Vie is the personal story of an idealised knight bordering on hagiography. Cuvelier’s Chanson, on the other hand, is, as Given-Wilson argues, ‘a more politically tendentious work’, less concerned with du Guesclin’s chivalric qualities than with his role in the recovery of France. Moreover, in the Black Prince, Cuvelier sees the hubris of the English as a nation. The element of rivalry is also present in the funerals of the two heroes. The Black Prince’s funeral in Canterbury included a procession of knights and armed men bearing his arms of both war and peace. Du Guesclin had wished to be buried with his ancestors in Dinan, but Charles V instead ordered his burial in the Chapel of St John the Baptist in Saint-Denis with a series of requiem masses. In May 1389, however, Charles VI further commemorated the late marshal with a week of chivalric festivities followed by a memorial service for du Guesclin, the loyal servant of the state.

INTRODUCTION7

Kelcey Wilson-Lee begins with an exploration of the monument of Sir Simon Felbrigg and his first wife, Margaret of Cieszyn, in the church of St Margaret, at Felbrigg near Cromer, dating to c. 1417. Margaret, or Malgorzata, was the daughter of Przemysław I, duke of Cieszyn in Bohemia. Both husband and wife were closely connected to the royal court, Sir Simon as royal standard bearer and chamber knight, and Margaret serving as one of Queen Anne’s close companions. Their monument is notable not only for its extensive heraldic decoration, incorporating the arms of their royal patrons, but also for its double effigy, which may, in some sense, reflect the better-known double tomb of Richard and Anne in Westminster. Beyond that, the extent to which the identities of both husband and wife are detailed in the Felbrigg brass, with a genuine individuality and parity, is striking, and reminiscent of the epitaphs for the king and queen. Wilson-Lee speculates that this might reflect a Bohemia precedent for the treatment of such high-status women. She then turns to another double effigy, that of Ralph Green and Katherine Clifton at Lowick (Northants.) dating to the same years, and as Catherine was the second wife of Simon Felbrigg, she was likely familiar with the memorial at Felbrigg. Although this alabaster monument features a double effigy and shows Simon and Catherine holding hands – as did the tomb of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, but not that of Simon and Margaret – it lacks the biographical detail present at Felbrigg, yet still places Catherine at the centre of its discourse. A third memorial, in the church of St Swithun in East Grinstead (Sussex), may also be linked to the Felbrigg memorial and is again suggestive of a new sensibility regarding women’s remembrances. Dame Katherine, daughter of Thomas Scales, is portrayed between her two husbands, Sir Thomas Grey and Richard Lewkenor, esq. Like Margaret of Cieszyn at the court of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, Katherine enjoyed a prominent place in the court of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and it is her acts during this period, rather than her husbands’ acts, that are recorded in ‘scripture’. Wilson-Lee’s final observation may be the most significant and points to a fruitful line for further investigation. This is the fact that each of the monuments she examines, showing equality between husband and wife and individuality for the female, represents a ‘failed union’ that produced no male heir. Their monuments do not, therefore, preserve the memory of a dynastic union, and do not need to be, in Nigel Saul’s words, ‘the bearer of a patrilineal discourse’. This failure, ironically, allowed these women to be remembered in their own right as individuals, and as women. Christian Steer begins by noting Nigel Saul’s observation that Richard II initiated a conscious programme of burials for favoured courtiers near to his own tomb in Westminster Abbey. In this, he was following a precedent set at Grey Friars London by his great-grandmother Isabella of France that had been continued into his own reign. Isabella, like her aunt Margaret, second wife of Edward I, was buried at Grey Friars church London, which both had patronised throughout their lives. Steer details the magnificence of Isabella’s tomb, burial

8

JESSICA A. LUTKIN AND J. S. HAMILTON

in November 1358, and subsequent commemorations. But he also goes on to discuss the burials of members of her household, suggesting an intentional desire to be surrounded by her familia. This included relatively lowly figures such as her former governess Theophania de St Pierre and her lady in waiting Joan Purle, as well as two of her confessors, Robert Lambourne and John Vye. It extended further to Margery Romsey and her son John de Romsey. The queen had her own arms inscribed on Margery’s tomb, and the closeness of the queen’s bond is also reflected in the fact that it was John who carried news of her death to Edward III. Given this royal endorsement, Grey Friars continued after Isabella’s death to be a favoured burial site for members of the extended royal household. While Richard II was able to have his chamber knights Sir James Berners and Sir John Salisbury buried in Westminster Abbey, other victims of the Merciless Parliament such as Sir Nicholas Brembre and Sir Robert Tresilian were buried at Grey Friars. Finally, an essay on the Drayton brothers of Dorchester by the late Jerome Bertram provides the sort of meticulous study of monuments for which both he and Nigel Saul are known. Although the Drayton brasses survive only in fragments, Bertram seeks to consider the individual histories of those commemorated and how both their lives and their monuments link them together. There were three Drayton brasses, those of the brothers Sir John and Sir William, and that of Sir William’s son Richard, forming a mini-mausoleum in Dorchester Abbey. The younger of the brothers, Sir William, died first, in 1398, perhaps murdered by Sir Roger de Clarendon, who was indicted for the crime but later pardoned. The indent for his brass survives along with a number of antiquarian drawings revealing its heraldic designs. Sir John outlived his younger brother and had a more impressive career, serving Thomas Holand, earl of Kent, and later serving in the household of Kent’s brother-in-law, Richard II. He was buried with his second wife Isabel. Sir William’s son Richard outdid both his father and uncle, serving with Henry V as well as with John, duke of Bedford. He entered the king’s household in the 1430s, and in that period he also married Alice, widow of Thomas Stonor. His tomb, now lost, was apparently similar to, and likely inspired by, that of his uncle John. Bertram notes the many bequests made by the Draytons and sees them as representative of a typical gentry family of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Throughout his long and distinguished career, Nigel Saul has examined the political, social, and cultural history of the reign of Richard II from a variety of perspectives. Whether studying the kingdom as a whole as in his magisterial biography of Richard II, or county communities, gentry families, or singular monuments, he has consistently broken new ground and provided new directions for future scholarship in the reign. The contributors to the present volume, his colleagues, friends, and former students, are each uniquely indebted to his intellectual leadership but equally to his generosity of spirit and constant support and encouragement.

PART I • SOURCES

1 Froissart and the Great Revolt CAROLINE BARRON

F



roissart’s account of the Revolt of 1381, while being much quoted, at the same time has been largely discounted as a reliable source.1 This is a tribute to Froissart’s skill as a chronicler and also to the attractive English translation of his work made by John Bourchier, Lord Berners, in 1523–25. Berners’ translation was edited into a ‘popular’ version by G. C. Macaulay in 1895, and both Berners and Macaulay were particularly interested in the heroic and chivalric aspects of Froissart’s work.2 The American historian George Kriehn, while he admired the passion with which Froissart wrote, argued that ‘the details, however, are so influenced by his moral and rhetorical purposes, by his prejudice against the insurgents and idealization of chivalry, that they are not to be depended upon’.3 One of the fiercest critics of Froissart, not surprisingly, was the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga in his Waning of the Middle Ages, first published in 1919 and translated into English in 1924. He found Froissart’s dialogues to be ‘empty and tedious’; and he was of the opinion that he lacked precision, had a shallow mind, and could comprehend only a limited number of stereotyped emotions.4 But over time, historical opinion has been moving in Froissart’s favour. Sidney Painter, in his introduction to a new edition of Macaulay’s edition of Berners’ translation of Froissart, published in 1959, noted that ‘while he was deeply imbued with chivalric ideas and his chief I am very grateful to Stephen Rigby, Andrew Prescott, and Michael C. E. Jones who all read earlier drafts of this essay and made many excellent suggestions for its improvement. 2 The Chronicles of Froissart, ed. and reduced into one volume by G. C. Macaulay (London, 1895). 3 G. Kriehn, ‘Studies in the Sources of the Social Revolt in 1381’, American Historical Review, 7 (1901–02), 254–85, 458–84, esp. p. 265. 4 J. Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages (1919; English edition, 1967), see esp. pp. 215–16, 248, 267, 269, 272. 1

12

CAROLINE BARRON

interest lay in the telling of noble deeds, he lacked the ordinary nobleman’s complete indifference to the lower classes. Froissart tells with obvious sympathy of the sufferings of the peasants.’5 In 1981, John Palmer edited a collection of essays Froissart: Historian in which historians from different countries evaluated Froissart’s assessment of a range of kings and battles. This led Palmer to conclude that Froissart’s value as a historian was his insight into the ‘mental and social dimensions of this [fourteenth-century] world’.6 But none of the contributors to that volume considered Froissart’s account of the Peasants’ Revolt. In his invaluable collection of the sources relating to the Peasants’ Revolt, first published in 1970 and reprinted in 1983, Barrie Dobson described Froissart as ‘inimitably mendacious’ and drew attention to the ‘notoriously difficult but not perhaps absolutely impossible problem of disentangling truth from fiction in Froissart’s voluminous chronicles’.7 But Dobson’s publication, which printed Froissart’s account of the causes and events of the Revolt alongside those of other chroniclers, made it possible to begin to make a new assessment of the reliability of Froissart. Then in his acclaimed biography of Richard II, published in 1997, Nigel Saul devoted a chapter to the Great Revolt of 1381. In it, he paid more attention than had been customary to Froissart’s account of the Revolt, observing: Froissart’s witness has sometimes been called into question because of the writer’s tendency to confuse events and to seek after rhetorical effect. But it is evident from his narrative that Froissart was well informed about events. He was an avid seeker-out of information and it is likely that he numbered among his informants two men who were present with Richard in the Tower, Sir Robert Namur and the earl of Salisbury. After the Anonimalle writer, Froissart was probably the best-placed of the chroniclers to know what was going on. In any attempt to reconstruct the chain of events in the Tower his narrative deserves the closest attention.8

It is generally acknowledged that the most reliable account of the events in London in the days from 12 to 15 June 1381 is to be found in the Anonimalle Chronicle. The identity of the author of this part of the chronicle is uncertain: he was probably a clerk employed in royal government. John Taylor argued that the author might have been ‘a Chancery clerk, or a clerk of the Privy S. Painter, ‘Introduction’ to Froissart’s Chronicles, Translated by Lord Berners, ed. G. C. Macaulay (New York, 1959), p. x; cf. Chronicles [by] Froissart, ed. G. Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1968), p. 21. See also Froissart: Historian, ed. J. J. N. Palmer (Woodbridge, 1981), pp. 1–5. 6 Froissart: Historian, ed. Palmer, p. 5. 7 R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd edn (London, 1983), pp. xxxii–xxxiii. 8 Saul, Richard II, p. 67. 5

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT13

Seal, located not too far from the person of the king’ and ‘almost certainly an eye witness of the events which he describes’.9 The other monastic chroniclers who provide accounts of events in London, Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, the Monk of Westminster, and the author of the Eulogium (possibly a monk of Canterbury), were certainly not present in the city in those tumultuous June days.10 It seemed, therefore, that it might be appropriate to follow Nigel Saul’s lead and look more closely at Froissart’s account of the Great Revolt. Jean Froissart was born in Valenciennes, probably in 1337. His talent was recognised by Jean de Hainault, seigneur de Beaumont, who was the uncle of Philippa of Hainault, who had married Edward III in 1328. As a result of this connection, in 1361 Froissart travelled to England, where he joined the household of Queen Philippa as a ‘clerc de chambre’. Here he met leading participants in the Anglo-French wars and honed his skills as a poet and chronicler. He witnessed the captivity of King Jean II and accompanied his body back to France for burial in 1364. In the following year, he went on a five-month journey to Scotland, where he stayed with King David II in Edinburgh, and in December 1366 he spent Christmas in Bordeaux with the Black Prince and Princess Joan and witnessed the baptism of the future Richard II at Epiphany 1367. In 1368, he accompanied Lionel of Clarence on his journey to Milan to marry Violante Visconti and made his return journey to England via Bologna, Ferrara, and Rome. When he reached Brussels in August 1369, however, he learned of the death of his patron, Queen Philippa, so he decided not to return to England and sought new patrons in the duke and duchess of Brabant. But it is worth remembering that he had spent eight years in and around the English court and had come to know England quite well. Froissart then remained in Brabant for the next fifteen years and began there to write his chronicle under the patronage of Robert of Namur. He also took the decision, in 1373, to become a priest and received a living in Cambrai from the duke of Brabant. He continued, however, to work on his chronicles, and Book 2, which covers the years 1377–85, was completed by 1387 under the patronage of Guy, count of Blois. Froissart travelled extensively, largely in France, and in 1388 he journeyed south to the court of Gaston de Foix at Orthez in Béarn. While there, he visited Bordeaux and made contact once more with English knights, which led him to decide to return to England in 1395, for the first time for nearly thirty years. Although Richard II received him graciously, Froissart was disappointed to find so much changed and so few people who recognised him. The following year, he attended the marriage of Richard to J. Taylor, English Historical Writing in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), pp. 318, 319. 10 For an excellent discussion of the various contemporary accounts of the Peasants’ Revolt, see Taylor, Historical Writing, Appendix 5, pp. 318–24. 9

14

CAROLINE BARRON

Isabella of Valois at St Omer, but soon afterwards he seems to have retired from court life and died at Cambrai, probably in 1404.11 It is quite certain that Jean Froissart was not present in England in June 1381. So the question is, how would a foreigner, a priest, living in Cambrai, be able to write a reliable account of events in England? Froissart’s method as a historian was not, as was often the case with monastic chroniclers, to include documents and stitch them together in a sequence. Rather, Froissart himself travelled extensively and interviewed those, particularly heralds, who had been present at royal events or at battles. In that sense, he was, perhaps, more of a journalist than a historian. But he had a wide network of ‘contacts’, and he wrote with style and imagination. He also revised his work, polished his prose, and had a good eye for the telling detail or anecdote. It may be that his skill as a writer has led later generations to discount the evidence of his chronicles, as if they were too good to be true. The account of the Peasants’ Revolt occupies some thirty pages in volume nine of the magisterial twenty-eight volume edition by Kervyn de Lettenhove of Froissart’s Oeuvres, published between 1867 and 1877.12 The account of the Revolt is sandwiched between a description of John of Gaunt’s expedition to the north of England in the summer of 1381 to arrange a treaty with the Scots (hence Gaunt’s absence from London in June 1381) and the duke’s return later that summer. Froissart’s account of the Revolt is clearly divided into three parts: 1. A twenty-page account of the causes and origins of the Revolt and of events in London on Wednesday, 12, Thursday, 13, and Friday, 14 June 1381.13 2. A three-page account of the death at the hands of the rebels of Sir Robert Salle in Norwich on Thursday, 13 June, which was the feast of Corpus Christi.14 3. An eight-page account of events in London, at Smithfield, on Saturday, 15 June.15 This essay will largely concentrate on the first, long section, which includes a detailed discussion of the causes of the Revolt followed by an account of the events on the evening of Wednesday, 12 June, when Richard II and members of his council were in the Tower of London. This is followed by a description of This short account of Froissart’s life is derived from M. Jones, ‘Froissart, Jean (1337?–c. 1404), Historian and Poet’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/50195. 12 J. Froissart, Oeuvres, ed. K. de Lettenhove, 28 vols (Brussels, 1867–77), vol. 9, pp. 386–424. References to Froissart in this essay will be to the passages translated by Berners and included in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt unless attributed to the Lettenhove edition. 13 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, pp. 386–406; Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 188–98. 14 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, pp. 406–09; Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 261–64. 15 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, pp. 409–17; Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 193–98. 11

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT15

Richard’s journey by river to Blackheath to speak with the rebels on Thursday, 13 June, the feast of Corpus Christi, and the discussions in the Tower that took place that evening and, finally, the section ends with an account of Richard’s journey from the Tower to meet the rebels at Mile End on Friday, 14 June. It is generally agreed that Froissart’s account of events is only ever as good as his sources (i.e. the people from whom he derived his information). Since his account of the origins of the revolt – and of the three days in London – contains information that is unique and, if accurate, also important, it is necessary to consider who Froissart’s informants might have been. Both Froissart and the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle provide lists of those who were with Richard II in the Tower on the night of Wednesday, 12 June, and they also both include the names of those who left the Tower and accompanied the young king to Mile End on Friday, 14 June. There is some correspondence between the lists of names provided by the two chroniclers, and this is best demonstrated by the following Table showing those who were with Richard II in London in June 1381. Table 1.1. Those present with Richard II on 12 and 14 June 138116 In the Tower, night of Wednesday, 12 June Anon. Chron. p. 129

At Mile End, Friday, 14 June

Froissart, Anon. Chron. pp. 142, 144 p. 161

Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury

X

XX

Robert Hales, Treasurer

X

X

William Courtenay, bishop of London

X

Thomas, earl of Buckingham

X

Thomas Holand, earl of Kent

X

Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel

X

Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick

X

William Ufford, earl of Suffolk

X

Froissart, p. 191

X X

X

[X]

XX

X

X

The texts of the chronicles referred to in this table are to the translations found in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, on the pages indicated. 16

16

CAROLINE BARRON

Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford

X

XX

William Montagu, earl of Salisbury

X

XXX

Princess Joan

XX

Lord John Holand

X

Sir Aubrey de Vere William Walworth, mayor of London

XX

X X

X [X] X

X

X

Sir Robert Knolles

X

Sir Thomas Percy

X

X

Robert of Namur, lord of Beaufort

XX

X

John Janche, lord of Gommegnies

XX

[X]

Eustace de Bousies, lord of Vertaing

X

X

Sir Henry [Thierri] of Senzeille

X

X Number of times mentioned by chronicler [X] Those who turned back on the journey to Mile End

The author of the Anonimalle Chronicle records that in the Tower on the night of 12 June (i.e. the eve of Corpus Christi) there were with the king, Archbishop Simon Sudbury, the chancellor, and Sir Robert Hales, master of the Hospitallers and treasurer of England. He also records that William Courtenay, the bishop of London, was present, but Froissart does not note his presence, and he is not mentioned in any of the other accounts of the Revolt.17 The Anonimalle Chronicler then goes on to list seven lords who were present with the king. Froissart corroborates the presence of the king’s half-brother, Thomas Holand, earl of Kent, Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford, and the veteran soldier, William Montagu, earl of Salisbury, to whom Froissart gives a prominent role, mentioning his presence three times in his account. Thomas, earl of Buckingham, whom the Anonimalle Chronicler says was present, was probably not there. He had recently returned from his abortive chevauchée that had culminated in the disastrous siege of Nantes, and Froissart explains that the earl was, in fact, in Wales but that several people in In his biography, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury (Philadelphia, 1966), J. Dahmus does not suggest that Courtenay was in London during the revolt. 17

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT17

London claimed to have seen him. This seems to have been a case of mistaken identity.18 Although Froissart does not corroborate the Anonimalle Chronicler’s claim that Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel, was present, it is probable that he was in the Tower, since he was certainly with Richard in the Great Wardrobe on the night of Friday, 14 June, when he was briefly entrusted with the Great Seal after the murder of Sudbury.19 It is less likely that William Ufford, the aged earl of Suffolk, was present in the Tower with Richard on 12 June, although he, like Buckingham, was active later in the trials and punishments of the rebels. Neither Froissart, nor the Anonimalle Chronicler, records that either Arundel or Suffolk accompanied Richard to Mile End on 14 June. Froissart also provides the names of two other Englishmen who were present in the Tower with the king: Lord John Holand, the brother of Thomas Holand, earl of Kent, and the king’s half-brother, and also the mayor of London, William Walworth. It is difficult to know whether Walworth was in the Tower. The Anonimalle Chronicler does not record his presence but does say that he accompanied the king to Mile End on the Friday. Significantly, perhaps, the official civic account of events in London during these days, written into the city’s Letter Book H, does not mention Walworth’s presence either in the Tower, or at Mile End, but only his heroic role at Smithfield the following day, Saturday, 15 June.20 Froissart, however, is unique in recording the names of four Flemish nobles who were with the king in the Tower and who also accompanied him to Mile End on Friday, 14 June. These four men were Sir Robert of Namur, John Janche, the lord of Gommegnies, the lord of Vertaing, and Sir Henry of Senzeille. There was no reason for Froissart to include the names of these men unless they were,

Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 143. Buckingham was probably in London by 20 June when he was commissioned, with Chief Justice Robert Tresilian, to suppress rebels throughout England, CPR, 1381–1385, p. 23. 19 CCR, 1381–1385, p. 84; Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 162 n. 2. 20 London Metropolitan Archives, Letter Book H, folio 133v, printed and translated in Memorials of London and London Life … 1276–1419, ed. H. T. Riley (London, 1868), pp. 449–51 and in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 208–11. In fact, the text written into the London Letter Book is not a free-standing account but is written as a preface to the recording of the royal letters patent, dated 15 June 1381, appointing Walworth and six others to safeguard the city and to investigate and punish offenders. The folio in Letter Book H is reproduced in H. Hansen, ‘The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the Chronicles’, Journal of Medieval History, 6 (1980), 393–415, at p. 397. In response to these letters patent, the mayor issued precepts to the aldermen, dated 16 and 20 June, to check on foreigners, to take oaths of fealty from the inhabitants in their wards, and to guard the city gates. These letters patent, together with the preface and the mayoral precepts, were probably entered into the Letter Book at some date after 20 June but before the following entry dated 23 September. The positioning of the text makes it clear that its purpose was to present the mayor and aldermen in the best light possible. 18

18

CAROLINE BARRON

in fact, present, and, if they were present, one (or two) of them is almost certain to have been the source of Froissart’s information about the events and discussions around the king during those three critical days. If that is the case, we should take more account of what Froissart writes, which, even allowing for the chivalric gloss, is likely to contain important insights into the discussions and debates around the king about the best course of action to take in response to the rebels. The prominent role given by Froissart to William Montagu, the earl of Salisbury, is also worthy of note. It is possible to trace the careers of these four Flemish knights in the pages of Froissart’s chronicle and in other English sources. Sir Robert of Namur, the lord of Beaufort, was the younger brother of William, count of Namur, and was married to Isabella, the sister of Philippa of Hainault. It was at the request of Robert, his ‘dear lord’, that Froissart had undertaken the writing of the first book of his chronicles in 1369,21 and although he acquired other patrons as time went on, there is no reason to suppose that he ever ‘broke’ with Robert, who had been a loyal ally of Edward III. Since he had joined the English forces at the siege of Calais in 1347, Robert had been in receipt of a pension, totalling 1,200 florins, from the English Crown.22 His loyalty, however, wavered in 1368 when Robert accepted a pension from Charles V, but Edward made a further grant to him of 600 florins, and in the following year he was made a knight of the Garter.23 In subsequent years, Robert seems to have fought for the English alongside the duke of Lancaster, and in 1378 Richard II confirmed both the pensions that his grandfather had granted to Robert.24 Froissart records that in 1381 Robert was in England and was present in May 1381 when Thomas (of Woodstock) earl of Buckingham returned from his expedition to Brittany.25 Robert then came to London ‘to see the king and to make his relief that he held of the king in England’ (ales veoir le roy et relever ce que il tenoit de luy en Engletiere).26 Later in 1381 he returned to Flanders to help the count, Louis de Mâle, at the siege of Ghent, which was then held by Philip van Artevelde. There seems to be no doubt that Robert was in England in the summer of 1381, and since he returned to Flanders soon afterwards he is very likely to have provided Froissart with an account of the Revolt. Another possible informant was John Janche, the lord of Gommegnies in the Pas de Calais. In 1359, he had joined the English cause and, like Froissart, served for a time in the household of Queen Philippa. Gommegnies was Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 2, p. 5. CPR, 1345–1348, p. 538. 23 CPR, 1367–1370, p. 389; E. H. Fellowes, The Knights of the Garter 1348–1939 (London, 1940), p. 69; H. E. L. Collins, The Order of the Garter 1348–1461 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 55–56, 290. 24 23 March 1378, CPR, 1377–1381, p. 184. 25 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 381. 26 Ibid. 21 22

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT19

retained by Edward III with a fee of 200 marks, considerably less than the higher-ranking Robert of Namur.27 In 1373, he was appointed as the captain of the English castle of Ardres in the Pas de Calais. 28 He seems to have been quite closely associated with the royal court. Although he managed to capture the young lord of St Pol, in a sally, in September 1377 he was forced to surrender the castle to the French.29 Froissart tries to put a brave face on this poor performance and blames the lack of artillery for Gommegnies’ failure to hold the castle.30 In the first parliament of Richard’s reign, in October 1377, Gommegnies was impeached for the loss of Ardres and was sentenced to death, by beheading rather than hanging, ‘because you are a gentleman and banneret and have served the grandfather (Edward III) in his wars’. 31 The judgement was respited and he was committed to the Tower. But he remained popular with the royal family, and in June 1378 his fee of 200 marks was confirmed.32 It is very likely that he remained in England. He seems (like Robert of Namur) to have had some attachment to the duke of Lancaster. At New Year 1381, he was given a gold cup by the duke that had been bought from the London goldsmith Adam Bamme.33 That Gommegnies may have had a household in London is suggested by the fact that after the Revolt, John Cook, ‘dwelling with the lord of Gomeneye’, was presented by the jurors of Coleman Street ward as suspected of ‘counselling with the rebels’.34 By 1385, Gommegnies was back in the Pas de Calais, where he received messengers from the duke of Lancaster.35 It is clear that after 1381, Froissart stayed in touch with John Janche, and he was one of the people whom he consulted

Grant confirmed, 19 June 1376, CPR, 1374–1377, p. 283. Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 7, p. 418. 29 Ibid., p. 419. 1 December 1369, sealed indenture with duke of Lancaster to guard fortress of Ardres. 12 May 1370, 8 June 1373, 26 October 1374, he is named as captain of Ardres and appointment confirmed. 21 December 1374, described as captain of Ardres, CPR, 1374–1377, p. 34. 30 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, pp. 403–16. 31 PROME, Parliament of October 1377, items 38, 40. For a detailed discussion of the charges against John Jaunche and his trial in the Parliament of October 1377, see R. Ambühl and Gwilym Dodd, ‘The Politics of Surrender: Treason Trials and Recrimination in the 1370s’, in Ruling Fourteenth-Century England: Essays in Honour of Christopher Given-Wilson, ed. R. Ambühl, J. Bothwell, and L. Tompkins (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 227–61. 32 CPR, 1377–1381, pp. 241, 265. 33 JGR 1379–83, vol. 1, p. 181. The ‘hanaper’ cost £11 16s. 8d. and 25s. for its making. See also A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in FourteenthCentury Europe (Harlow, 1992), p. 180. 34 Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls … of the City of London 1364–1381, ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1929), p. 289. 35 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 10, p. 313. 27

28

20

CAROLINE BARRON

before returning to England in 1395.36 He is very likely to have been a source for Froissart’s information about events in London in June 1381. It is likely that it was Gommegnies who told Froissart that Eustace de Bousies, lord of Vertaing, was among those who were with the king in the Tower and at Mile End. The two men frequently appear together in Froissart’s pages. In 1380, Vertaing had joined the earl of Buckingham at the siege of Nantes and could well have returned with the earl in May 1381.37 He seems to have been a young man in search of patronage, and at New Year 1382 he received a silver cup and cover from John of Gaunt.38 Three years later, he was retained by Richard II at a fee of 200 marks.39 It is very likely that he was among those who were present with Richard in June 1381, but it is, perhaps, less likely that he was the source of Froissart’s information, since he does not seem to have been one of Froissart’s usual informants. The final member of the quartet of Flemish knights is Henry (or Thierri) of Senzeille from Hainault. He was the only one of the four men who appears not to have been retained by the English kings. He seems to have fought, as the occasion demanded, both for and against the French, including in 1369 in a skirmish against the French, in the company of Robert of Namur, and in the host of John of Gaunt.40 It may have been his association with Robert of Namur that brought him to England early in 1381 and led to his being in London in June 1381. Froissart rarely refers to him, but the mention of his presence in the Tower in June 1381 points to the likelihood of Robert of Namur as one of Froissart’s informants. The two most likely sources of information for Froissart would thus seem to have been Robert of Namur and John Janche, lord of Gommegnies. Both men are known to have provided Froissart with information at different times, and there is good evidence that they were in London in the summer of 1381. If Froissart did, in fact, have information from men who were with the king and his other lords in those critical days (12 June to 14 June), then we should pay more attention to his account. It is worth reconsidering those incidents, encounters, and conversations that are unique to Froissart’s chronicle rather than discarding them as products of Froissart’s chivalric fancy. Froissart’s account is important, in part because, together with the Anonimalle Chronicle, he provides an insight into the debates and discussions within the king’s household at this crucial time. All the other accounts are written by those who viewed events from outside: Froissart can, among other things, provide an insight into the discussions among those who were, effectively, besieged within the Tower.

36 37 38 39 40

Ibid., vol. 15, p. 141. Ibid., vol. 9, pp. 244, 252–56, 260–63, 323, 324. JGR 1379–83, vol. 1, p. 233. 27 October 1384, CPR, 1381–1385, p. 475. Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 7, p. 433.

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT21

Froissart is the only chronicler to recount that Princess Joan was on a pilgrimage to Canterbury at the time of the outbreak of the Revolt. As Anthony Goodman pointed out, Princess Joan was very likely to have been in Canterbury for the annual mass for the Black Prince that took place on 8 June.41 Froissart reports that Princess Joan, on her way hastily back to London, encountered some of the ‘unhappy people of Kent’ who dealt rudely with her in her char (cart or chariot), and she feared for herself and her ladies, but they were unscathed and made their way to the Tower of London in one day.42 It is unlikely that the princess made the journey to London in one day, although it is possible that she may have made part of the journey by water. But, by 12 June, the eve of Corpus Christi, she seems to have been able to join her son in the Tower. It is more than likely that, having arrived in the Tower, she talked with her countrymen there about the frightening incidents that she had met with on her journey. Froissart then provides a unique account of the events within the Tower of London on the evening of Wednesday, 12 June, when the rebels from Kent had converged on London and were encamped at Blackheath. As is well attested, many minor manorial officials, and royal officers, were swept up into the gatherings of rebels: some constrained to join the rebels and others were sympathetic to their demands.43 Froissart recounts that the rebels sent a messenger to the king, one Sir John Newton. The presence of such a knightly messenger from the rebels is substantiated by the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle, and Thomas Walsingham also recounts that Sir John Newton was present at Smithfield on 15 June and acted as a messenger between the king and Wat Tyler.44 It seems likely that a messenger from the rebels did arrive in the Tower on the eve of Corpus Christi, and although the speeches put into the mouths of Sir John and the king are unlikely to be verbatim, the outcome was clear. After Richard had ‘taken counsel’, Sir John was sent back to the rebels at Blackheath with the message that the king would sail down the river the next day to hear their demands. Froissart may well be correct in naming the messenger as Sir John Newton, who was, at the time, the constable of Rochester castle, which he had been forced to surrender to the rebels. That he had been coerced into acting as the spokesman for the rebels is suggested by the fact that he was later appointed as the escheator for Kent and Middlesex.45 A. Goodman, Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent: A Fourteenth-Century Princess and Her World (Woodbridge, 2017), p. 154. 42 ‘car ses mescans gens saloient sur son char en venant et li faissoient moult de desrois’, Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 391. 43 J. Barker, England Arise, the People, the King and the Great Revolt of 1381 (London, 2014), pp. 178–79, 227–28, 273. 44 Ibid., p. 274; Anonimalle Chronicle, in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 130; St Albans Chronicle, p. 434. 45 June 1381, Rochester castle had been taken by the rebels, Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 127, 140; CPR, 1381–1385, pp. 18, 48. 41

22

CAROLINE BARRON

As he had agreed, the king did indeed sail down the river to meet the rebels the next day, the feast of Corpus Christi. Only the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle and Froissart provide detailed accounts of the king’s journey by river to meet the rebels at Blackheath.46 The Anonimalle author recounts that the king sailed in his own barge accompanied by four other barges for his men.47 Froissart also records that before the journey down the river, Richard heard mass in the Tower of London, which seems very likely, and that when the barges arrived at Rotherhithe the rebels brought with them Sir John Newton as a hostage.48 When the king and his lords saw the ‘demeanour of the people’, they were ‘in dread’ and decided not to land but kept rowing up and down the river. Froissart records that the rebels insisted that the king should land, but the earl of Salisbury replied for the king, saying ‘Sirs ye be not in such order or array that the king ought to speak with you’, and then the king on the advice of his lords sailed back to the safety of the Tower.49 The author of the Anonimalle Chronicle recounts that it was Sudbury and Hales who responded on the king’s behalf, but it seems more likely that it would have been the experienced soldier, William Montagu, who spoke for the king in these circumstances.50 Froissart provides a unique account of the discussions that took place in the Tower after the journey down the river had failed to disperse the rebels. According to his account, the mayor of London, William Walworth, had, by this time, joined the king and his brethren (the two Holand brothers) and the other lords in the Tower. Walworth’s advice was to sally forth under cover of night and fall on the sleeping and drunken rebels who were encamped to the east of the Tower around St Katherine’s Hospital. He argued that it would be easy to overpower them because very few had horses and there were several well-armed men in the city, such as Sir Robert Knolles51 and Sir Perducas d’Albret who

Walsingham writes of the exchange of messengers on 13 June but does not mention the river journey, St Alban’s Chronicle, pp. lxxxviii, 414–17; the continuator of the Eulogium Historiarum briefly mentions that the king and the archbishop went by water, but when they saw the rebels, the archbishop would not allow the king to land and talk to them, Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 206. 47 Ibid., p. 130. 48 Ibid., p. 144. It is very likely that the rebels, encamped at Blackheath, would have moved westwards towards London to meet the king at Rotherhithe. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., p. 130. The author records that the king was advised not to go to meet the Commons (on land) ‘because they were unreasonable men and did not know how to behave’: a similar sentiment to that which Froissart attributes to William Montagu. 51 Sir Robert Knolles had owned a house in the parish of All Hallows Barking, near the Tower of London, since at least 1372, see Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1364–81, ed. Thomas, p. 141; London Assize of Nuisance 1301–1431, ed. H. M. Chew and W. Kellaway (London Record Society, 1973), p. 157; Calendar of Letter Books … of the City of London: Letter Book H, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1907), p. 173. 46

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT23

would join in the assault on the rebels. But there was a counter-argument that there were also many in the city who would join with the rebels and the earl of Salisbury, and the wise men about the king argued that if such an assault failed, then all would be lost and the situation would be unrecoverable: ‘it were best and most profitable’, Salisbury argued, to ‘appease them with fairness (par belles parolles) … and to grant them everything that they desire’.52 Here again Froissart records the essence of the discussions that must have taken place in the Tower on the night of Corpus Christi. The advice of the mayor was overridden and the decision taken to pursue a path of appeasement. One of Froissart’s informants about the discussions in the Tower that evening must have had a discussion with Mayor Walworth, who reported the divisions of opinion within the court of aldermen: nine of them held with the king and three ‘took the part with these ungracious people’. Although Froissart appears to have been wrongly informed about the number of aldermen (there were twentyfour not twelve), it is possible that only twelve of them were in London at the time of the Revolt. But what must have been Walworth’s report on the failure of the aldermen to form a single plan of action is not surprising and led later to mutual recriminations.53 Every account of the Revolt of 1381 describes, if in varying detail, Richard II’s journey to meet the rebels at Mile End on Friday, 14 June, and the events that took place in the Tower of London on that day while he and many of his lords were absent. Although all the accounts acknowledge that Richard rode out from the Tower to meet the rebels, only the author of the Anonimalle Chronicle and Froissart provide any details, and they are the only accounts that name the king’s companions on this perilous journey.54 Both authors agree that the king was accompanied by the earls of Kent, Warwick, and Oxford and that William Walworth, the mayor of London, was also present. The Anonimalle Chronicler also adds the names of Sir Robert Knolles, Sir Thomas Percy, and Sir Aubrey

Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 190; Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 402. Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 190. When in October 1381 Walworth, a fishmonger, was replaced as mayor by John of Northampton, a draper, inquisitions were rapidly taken to pin the blame for letting the rebels into the city and encouraging their acts of destruction on five aldermen led, in particular, by John Horn, a fishmonger like Walworth and the alderman of Billingsgate ward. In one of the inquisitions, John Marchaunt, the recently appointed chamber clerk (controller), is stated to have handed over ‘a standard bearing the royal arms’ to John Horn ‘although he had absolutely no knowledge of what he intended to do with it’, Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 215. After Nicholas Brembre, a grocer and Northampton’s great rival, was elected mayor in October 1383, a new jury in January 1384 found the five accused aldermen to be innocent. See also C. Barron, Revolt in London: 11th to 15th June 1381 (London, 1981), pp. 15–16, 19–20. 54 See Table above, pp. 15–16. 52 53

24

CAROLINE BARRON

de Vere, ‘who carried the royal sword’.55 All three of these men were skilled soldiers and veterans of the wars in France. Froissart includes in the retinue William Montagu, earl of Salisbury, the king’s two half-brothers, and also three of the four Flemish knights who had been with Richard in the Tower: Robert of Namur; John Janche, lord of Gommegnies; and Eustace de Bousies, lord of Vertaing. Sir Henry of Senzeille is not named, although it is possible that he was among the ‘diverse others’ also noted as present.56 The author of the Anonimalle Chronicle claims that Princess Joan accompanied her son in a whirlicole (carriage), and the account in the city of London Letter Book also reports that the princess followed her son to Mile End in a currus (cart or chariot),57 but Froissart does not say that she was present. Instead, he provides an account of the rebels’ encounter with the princess in her chamber in the Tower of London. This encounter is also related, although somewhat differently, by Thomas Walsingham, and Henry Knighton records that the king’s mother was in the Tower with her daughter Joan, duchess of Brittany, together with the young Henry earl of Derby, son of John of Gaunt.58 Although the rebels treated Princess Joan in a very familiar way (Walsingham says that they invited the princess to kiss them), she was not physically attacked. So the question remains: where was Princess Joan on Friday, 14 June? It seems probable that she did, indeed, set out for Mile End with Richard, but that, at some point, she turned back and returned to the Tower. If this is what happened, it would explain a curious episode that is unique to Froissart’s account of events that day. He records, in Berners’ translation, that: When the king came to the said place of Mile End, without London, he put out of his company his two brethren, [Thomas Holand] the earl of Kent and Sir John Holand, and the lord of Gommegnies, for they durst not appear before the people.59

The original French may be translated rather differently: And the king, coming to the place which is called Mile End outside London, it seemed to him, that for fear of death, he should put out from him his two brothers, the earl of Kent [Thomas Holand] and Sir John Holand. Also

The Anonimalle chronicler again adds the name of Thomas, earl of Buckingham, who was almost certainly not present. See above n. 18. 56 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 191. 57 Ibid., pp. 161, 209. 58 St Alban’s Chronicle, p. 425. It is strange that only Henry Knighton mentions the presence in the Tower of Henry, earl of Derby, but he definitely seems to have been there, at least on 14 June. See Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 210–13, esp. p. 212 and n. 1. 59 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p 191. 55

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT25 the Lord of Gommegnies went with them and they did not dare to show themselves to the people in that place of Mile End.60

It may be that it was decided that the princess should return to the security (or so it seemed) of the Tower, and it was natural that her two sons should accompany her. John Janche, lord of Gommegnies, might well have feared for his life at this point: the rebels were demanding the heads of traitors, and he had recently been condemned to death as a traitor in the Parliament of 1377.61 Once Princess Joan was back in the Tower, she suffered the indignities that Walsingham described: the rebels lay down on the king’s bed and made jokes and went so far as to invite Princess Joan to kiss them.62 Froissart recounts that the rebels entered her chamber and ‘despecierent tout son lit’ (broke her bed). Princess Joan was so afraid that she swooned, and her valets and servants then took her in their arms and carried her to a postern on the waterside (presumably the Tower watergate) and put her in a barge and from there, in secret, took her upstream to Dowgate, from where she could be carried north of Thames Street to her wardrobe, La Riole.63 Here she remained, so Froissart tells us, like a woman half dead until her son returned from Mile End to the queen’s wardrobe and comforted his mother.64 This is the end of that part of Froissart’s account that we can attribute to one of the Flemish knights. It seems likely that one or all of them was with Princess Joan and Richard in the queen’s wardrobe on the night of Friday, 14 June, but at this point they may well have decided to leave London, by water, for some safer place. In consequence, Froissart breaks off his narrative of events in London and moves abruptly to describe events in Norfolk and the heroic death of Sir Robert Salle, a veteran of the French wars. It is generally agreed that Froissart’s ‘En venant le roy en celle place que on dist la Milinde au dehors de Londres, s’emblerent de li, pour le doubtance de la mort, et se bouterent hors de sa route si doy frere, li contes de Kent et messires Jehans de Holandes. Ossi fist li sires de Gommegnies et s’en ala avoecq eulx, et ne s’oserent amonstrer au peuple en celle place de la Milinde’, Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 404. 61 See above, n. 31. 62 St Alban’s Chronicle, p. 424; Thomas att Sole of Gravesend later confessed that he was in the Tower of London on Friday, 14 June and ‘fincit’ the bed of the king with his sword, The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards, ed. E. Powell and G. M. Trevelyan (London, 1890), p. 10. 63 I follow here not Berners’ translation of Froissart (Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 191) but that provided by Mark Ormrod in his chapter ‘In Bed with Joan of Kent: The King’s Mother in the Peasants’ Revolt’, in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain; Essays for Felicity Riddy, ed. J. Wogan-Brown, R. Voaden, A. Diamond, A. Hutchison, C. Meale, and L. Johnson (Turnout, 2000), pp. 277–92 , at p. 278; for the queen’s wardrobe, see The City of London from Prehistoric Times to c. 1520, ed. M. D. Lobel (Oxford, 1989), p. 84. 64 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 191, 193. 60

26

CAROLINE BARRON

account of Sir Robert fighting manfully and killing twelve of the rebels with his Bordeaux sword, before he himself was cut down, is largely a product of his chivalric imagination and does not constitute a reliable account of events in Norwich. It is not known who was Froissart’s source for this incident.65 Froissart’s narrative then returns to London, and he provides a detailed description of the events that took place on Saturday, 15 June in Westminster, in London, and particularly at Smithfield. But his account no longer carries the authenticity of the view from inside the king’s council. With the probable departure of the Flemish knights on the evening of Friday, 14 June, Froissart would have had to rely on different sources of information. He mentions that William Montague, earl of Salisbury, was present with the king and supported his decision to use gentle words to dispel the rebels, rather than to rely on the force favoured by Sir Robert Knolles.66 Only Froissart mentions the presence of Salisbury, but several of the other accounts mention that Sir Robert Knolles was present and played a crucial role in dispersing the rebels.67 Unique to Froissart’s account also is his inclusion of Sir Perducas d’Albret, who, in association with Sir Robert Knolles, had men at his command in the city of London ready to use their arms against the rebels.68 It seems likely that some of Froissart’s information may have come from this Gascon knight of a prominent family. The county of Albret was important to the English for the security of Gascony. Perducas’s father, Bernard Ezi II, lord of Albret from 1324 to 1358, had received a pension of £1000 p.a. from Edward III in 1352.69 Perducas was probably his illegitimate son, and he appears frequently in the pages of Froissart’s chronicle, being noted for the first time in 1364 when he fought at the battle of Cocherel against the French.70 Perducas was a freebooter with a sword and a gang. He largely raided with the English and attacked French strongholds in Gascony, but when his loyalty wavered he was persuaded by Sir Robert Knolles to return to the English allegiance.71 He was at the battle of Nájera on the English side in 1367 and was taken prisoner. In April 1381, Sir Thomas Felton, the seneschal of Aquitaine, died. He had been given the barony of Chaumont in Gascony by the English Crown, and it was the prospect of acquiring this barony that drew Perducas to England in 1381. It is likely that he was with John of Gaunt at Hertford castle in May 1381, when, on the sixth of that month, Gaunt granted him the ‘guardianship and lieutenancy’ of the town Ibid., pp. 261–64; St Albans Chronicle, pp. 488–89. Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 197. 67 St Albans Chronicle, p. 439; Knighton’s Chronicle, p. 221; continuator of Eulogium in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 207. 68 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 190, 197. 69 12 June 1352, CCR, 1349–1354, p. 431. 70 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 6, pp. 428, 432, 439. 71 Ibid., vol. 7, p. 360. 65 66

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT27

and castle of Bergerac.72 It seems certain, then, that Perducas was in England in the summer of 1381, and it is very likely that he was staying in London with Sir Robert Knolles at the time of the Revolt. He duly received the barony of Chaumont from Richard II on 5 September, which may well have been a reward for his help during the Revolt in London.73 He is frequently mentioned in the chronicles and is likely to have been Froissart’s informant about events in London, especially those that took place on 15 June. But he was not in the inner royal circle as the Flemish lords had been, and may well not have been at Smithfield to witness the encounter between Richard and Wat Tyler. Froissart does, however, recount one intriguing and unique anecdote. While Tyler is preparing to talk with Richard, he is accosted by a London ‘juponnier’ called John Ticle (Tycle) who had provided sixty ‘jupons’, which Tyler and the other rebels were now wearing.74 Ticle wanted to be paid 30 marks (£20) for the jupons, and Tyler assured him that he would be paid that day.75 A jupon was the garment worn under armour, and presumably Tyler’s men needed these undergarments (known in London as linen-armour) to wear under such armour as they had been able to acquire. On the previous day, the rebels had stolen arms and armour from the privy wardrobe in the Tower including 110 coats of mail that would have needed linen undergarments.76 Unfortunately, it has not, yet, been possible to locate John Ticle the juponnier/linen-armourer in the London records, but this is not the sort of anecdote that Froissart would have invented. The ghost of a true incident lurks behind Froissart’s account of this brief exchange. Froissart’s description of the encounter between Richard II and Wat Tyler at Smithfield includes some somewhat improbable speeches exchanged between the king and the rebel leader. A squire in the king’s entourage, who seems to have been the king’s swordbearer, was compelled to hand his dagger to Tyler but refused to hand over the king’s sword. Following an exchange of insults, William Walworth, the mayor of London, rode up with twelve well-armed men and, after an altercation, struck Tyler on the head with his sword. At this point,

JGR 1379–83, vol. 1, pp. 168–69; vol. 2, p. 346 where Perducas’ name is recorded as ‘Bertonqat de la Bret’. 73 Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 20, p. 19. 74 There is a John Tykhill active in London in the years between 1374 and 1378 as the master of the butchers in St Nicholas Shambles, Letter Book H, pp. 6, 17, 44, 61, 113. His widow, Alice, died in 1398, Archdeaconry Will, London Metropolitan Archives 9051/1 f. 63. They may be the Johannes Tykell and his wife who entered the Fraternity of the Holy Trinity in the parish of St Botolph Aldersgate in 1392–93, see Parish Fraternity Register, ed. Patricia Basing (London Record Society, 1982), p. 8. 75 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 194: Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 411. 76 For a complete list of the arms and armour taken by the rebels from the Tower, see Tout, Chapters, vol. 4, p. 461 and n. 1. 72

28

CAROLINE BARRON

a royal squire, whom Froissart names as John Standish,77 drew his sword and plunged it into Tyler’s belly and mortally wounded him. At this dangerous juncture, Richard rode forward and assured the rebels that he was their king and their captain. Although many of the rebels began to disperse, some remained. Mayor Walworth counselled the use of force, and the two veteran warlords, Sir Robert Knolles and Sir Perducas, together with the Londoner, Nicholas Brembre, appeared on the scene with a contingent of armed men, ready to fall on the remaining rebels.78 The king, however, supported by the emollient earl of Salisbury, asked for the return of the royal banners and the letters of manumission that the rebels had been given. Once this was done, most of the rebels laid down their arms and returned to London and so dispersed, much to the displeasure of Sir Robert Knolles. The king and his company returned to London, and Froissart provides one of his classic chivalrous set pieces in which Richard goes to the queen’s wardrobe to visit his mother who recounts the pain and anguish of the last two days, and he replies that he knows well her anguish but now they can rejoice because with God’s help ‘I have this day recovered mine heritage and the realm of England which I had near lost.’79 So Froissart adds little material of significance to the other accounts of the famous encounter between the king and Wat Tyler, but he does provide a chivalric ending to that remarkable day. Froissart’s account of the death of Tyler and the subsequent dispersal of the rebels is largely corroborated by the other chroniclers. The conversation between the king and his mother is unique to Froissart. *** If we can accept Froissart as a reliable source for the events of 12–15 June 1381 in London, if not for the events in Norwich, then perhaps we might look again at his interpretation of the causes of the Revolt. They may not be as fanciful as usually thought. Froissart is alone in suggesting that the revolt was precipitated by discontent in London. He describes how the ‘menues gens’ (little people) in London were envious of the rich people and believed the realm to be badly governed and that gold and silver were taken from them by the nobles. As a result, Knighton correctly names the squire as Ralph Standish, Knighton’s Chronicle, p. 221; Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 186. Ralph Standish was a royal esquire from Lancashire who had served Edward III for many years. After the Revolt, he was rewarded financially and given the constableship of Scarborough castle. He died in 1382. See Barker, England Arise, pp. 273 and 452 n. 34. 78 Froissart records that after the encounter at Smithfield the king knighted William Walworth, Nicholas Brembre, and John Standish. Knighton says those knighted also included the Londoners John Philpot, John Launde, and Nicholas Twyford, Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 186. These men, like Nicholas Brembre, had all served as aldermen but were not currently in office because of the recent introduction of annual elections. 79 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 198. 77

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT29 these unhappy men of London began to rebel and assembled them together, and sent word to the foresaid countries [Kent, Essex, Sussex and Bedford] that they should come to London and … they should find London open to receive them and the commons of the city of the same accord.80

Thus Froissart suggests that the Revolt began in London and that it was the Londoners who encouraged the men of the surrounding counties to rise up and come to London. This interpretation of the origins of the Revolt has been largely discredited and taken as evidence of Froissart’s general misunderstanding of the situation in England. But it is worth remembering that two of Froissart’s possible informants had been living in London before the Revolt: John Janche, lord of Gommegnies, and the war veteran Sir Robert Knolles.81 London was, without doubt, particularly turbulent in the years following the Good Parliament in 1376. There had been sustained protests against the oligarchy of wealthy ruling aldermen, and the Common Council now contained representatives of the artisan crafts, the ‘menues gens’ described by Froissart. Moreover, the aldermen were elected every year, instead of holding office for life, and they could not serve for two consecutive years. This meant that the twenty-four aldermen in office in June 1381 had only been elected the previous March: some had served two years before, but four were completely new to the job; only the mayor, William Walworth (elected 1368), had more than four years’ experience as an alderman. In short, they were inexperienced, and the annual turnover meant that there was no coherent policy or agreed course of action. There were also rival economic groups such as the victuallers who wanted to maintain food prices, and the non-victuallers who wished to reduce the prices, especially of the staple food of fish. The shortage of labour following the Black Death of 1348–49 had led to restlessness among those who worked as day labourers and wished to increase their wages. Since the Good Parliament of 1376, taxation in the city had been especially heavy, and Froissart notes that ‘gold and silver were taken from the “menues gens” and given to the nobles’. Apart from the three notorious poll taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1380, there had also been two parliamentary grants of tenths and fifteenths.82 Royal grants of monopolies (e.g. on the sale of sweet wines) enhanced prices and, in order to maintain the city’s defences in the face of a possible French attack, the citizens were subjected to special additional taxation or, if they wished, they could work themselves on the city’s defences rather than pay the tax. These were unprecedented measures, and in spite of the rise in per capita income, the commons of Ibid., pp. 137–38; Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, pp. 389–90. See above, nn. 34 and 51. 82 Two fifteenths and tenths, 1377, one and half fifteenths and tenths, 1380, see M. Jurkowski, C. L. Smith, and D. Crook, Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188–1688 (Richmond, Surrey, 1998), pp. 56–62. 80 81

30

CAROLINE BARRON

London were resentful of the increased financial burdens that were being placed on them when they believed, sometimes with justification, that the wealthier merchants were not bearing their appropriate share of the burden. In addition, it seems that there had been a breakdown in the administration of justice in the city, and disputes about inheritances (aggravated by the death toll in 1348–49 and 1362) had failed to be resolved in the mayor’s court.83 Froissart records what Walworth must have reported to the royal councillors on the evening of 13 June, namely that the London aldermen were unable to fashion a coherent, unified policy when facing the rebels of Kent and Essex.84 Not only was the court of aldermen divided, but there was a fear that some of the inhabitants of the city would join the rebels from the countryside. In the event, the aldermen responsible for London Bridge (Walter Sybyle, a stockfishmonger) and Aldgate (William Tonge, a vintner) opened the gates on 13 June and let the rebels into the city.85 They did this because they feared that if they failed to do so, they would be attacked by discontented Londoners within the city. The official city account of the revolt glides swiftly over these events: speaking of the rebels from Kent and Essex, it reported that ‘By the aid within the city of perfidious commoners of their own condition, who rose in countless numbers there, they suddenly entered the city together …’86 There is no mention of the city gates, nor of those who were defending (or opening) them. Froissart’s description of the unrest in London is corroborated not only by an examination of the events in London in the preceding five years but also by the assessment of the chronicler known as the Monk of Westminster, who was well placed to assess the situation in London: The whole of London, the prey of internal confusion and, as many thought, of some degree of internal dissension, was without a clear view of what was to be done. While the city … lacked both the power and the courage to oppose the yokels [rustici]: it was, indeed, feared that if resistance were offered to the growing strength of the serfs (servi), the city’s lower orders (communes) might champion their own class and join the serfs in rising against the rest of the citizens and that in this way the entire city, divided against itself, would be ruined.87

The turbulent situation in London is described in detail in Barron, Revolt in London, pp. 12–20. The failure of the judicial system in London is emphasised in A. Prescott, ‘London in the Peasants’ Revolt: A Portrait Gallery’, The London Journal, 7 (1981), 125–43. 84 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 190. 85 Ibid., p. 188. 86 Ibid., p. 209 and see above note 20. The inquisitions of November 1381 are at pains to place the blame for opening the city gates on Sybyle and Tonge. Ibid., pp. 217–18, 223. 87 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 8–9 and see pp. lxix–lxx. It is suggested that the author of this section of the chronicle is the monk, Richard of Chichester. 83

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT31

So Froissart’s brief account of the origins of the Revolt in London should not be discarded by historians. It is true that the other accounts of the Revolt tend to suggest that the protests originated in the counties around London, but an examination of the records from the city in the years preceding the Revolt would suggest that Froissart may well have been correct in seeing the stirrings of trouble in the city itself. And it should be remembered that many of those living in London in 1381 had themselves come from Essex and Kent and had relatives still living in those areas. London may have had walls, but those who lived within them had much in common with those outside, including their families.88 The account of the Revolt provided by Froissart throws further light on its causes as he perceived them. He is not unique in recording that the main concern of the rebels, expressed at Mile End and at Smithfield, was the abolition of serfdom. But he is very consistent in his focus on this as the root cause. He writes that the Commons of London were in agreement with the rebels from the countryside that there should not be one serf left in England.89 At Mile End, the only demand of the rebels recorded by Froissart was that they be freed forever, our heirs and our lands and ‘ne soions tenu, ne nomme serf’. Richard promised charters of manumission sealed with his seal and, thus appeased, the rebels began to disperse.90 That evening, Froissart records that the king ordered thirty clerks to write letters patent to be delivered to the rebels thus encouraging them to depart. The author of the Anonimalle Chronicle also records that at Mile End Richard promised the Commons that he would confirm and grant that they should be free and that later that day he caused clerks to write out charters, patents, and letters of protection, as he had promised the Commons ‘without taking any fines for the sealing or transcription’. That is just the sort of additional comment that we would expect from a chancery clerk, used to taking fees for copies of documents.91 In the altercations at Smithfield between the king and Wat Tyler, Richard’s promise of written documentation is again noted by both authors.92 Following Tyler’s death at Smithfield, when the rebels were leaderless and vulnerable, Froissart records that they were instructed to hand back the letters that they had received and ‘many of them delivered their letters,

Many of the aldermen had not been born in London, e.g., of the aldermen accused of betraying the city, Adam Carlisle, grocer, came from Romford in Essex, Walter Sybyle, the stockfishmonger from Suffolk, William Tonge the vintner from Northamptonshire, and the mayor, William Walworth, came from Surrey. See also Prescott, ‘London in the Peasants’ Revolt’, pp. 127–30. 89 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 138. 90 Ibid., p. 192; Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 405. 91 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 161, 162–63. 92 Ibid., pp. 164, 195; the reference to a charter, or charters, is also found in St Alban’s Chronicle, pp. 432–43; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 7, 11; Knighton’s Chronicle, p. 213; continuator of the Eulogium Historiarum, in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 207. 88

32

CAROLINE BARRON

but not all’.93 Froissart was certainly right that not all letters of manumission were handed over at Smithfield or later destroyed. Copies of such charters of manumission have survived addressed to the men of Hertfordshire (dated 15 June), the men of Somerset (dated 2 July), and another for the men of Kent (dated 15 June).94 This focus on the demands of the rebels for freedom from serfdom brings us to Froissart’s analysis of the causes of the Revolt. It all arose, he writes, ‘pour la grant aise et abondance de biens ou li menus command d’Engletiere gratoit et vivoit’ or, in Berners’ translation, ‘because of the ease and riches that the common people were of’, and this moved them to rebellion.95 Clearly not all the ‘menus peuples’ enjoyed ease and riches. Froissart then goes on to explain how serfdom worked in England: tenants had to labour on their lords’ lands, gather and bring home their corn, and some to thresh and to fan, and by ‘servage’ to make their hay and to hew their wood and bring it home. What Froissart is describing here is tenurial serfdom, although the demand of the rebels at Mile End had clearly emphasised the desire for freedom from personal serfdom: ‘We will that you make us free for ever, ourselves, our heirs and our lands, and that we be called no more bond nor so reputed (nous ne soions tenu, ne nomme serf).’96 Froissart continues his analysis of ‘servage’ by writing that there were more of these people (i.e. villeins/serfs) obliged to serve the nobles and prelates in England than in any other realm. All men, they claimed, were formed in the same image as their masters and yet they were treated like beasts. In return for their labour, they wanted to receive wages like other men.97 It may be the case that ‘servage’ was more common in England than elsewhere in Europe. Paul Freedman has pointed out that there were very few serfs in France after 1300, and serfdom was ‘weak in Languedoc and rare in Castile’.98 In Flanders, the country that Froissart knew best, there was very little serfdom, and certainly it was much less prevalent there than in England.99 So Froissart may have Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 197. St Alban’s Chronicle, pp. 440–43; A. K. McHardy, The Reign of Richard II: From Minority to Tyranny 1377–97 (Manchester, 2012), pp. 86–87; BL, Cotton Charter IV.51. This interesting charter in the Cotton collection was discovered by Andrew Prescott, who will be publishing it soon. 95 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 370; Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 386. 96 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 192; Oeuvres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 9, p. 405. The differences between these two aspects of serfdom and their varied incidence and chronology are well analysed by M. Bailey, The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England: From Bondage to Freedom (Woodbridge, 2014), esp. chapter 13. 97 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 370. 98 P. Freedman, ‘Rural Society’, in The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. M. Jones (Cambridge, 2000), vol. 6, pp. 82–101 at p. 86. 99 See D. Nicholas, Medieval Flanders (London, 1992), pp. 104–07. 93 94

FROISSART AND THE GREAT REVOLT33

been correct in observing that the obligations of serfdom were particularly burdensome in England, but he may also have been out of date. His observations may have derived from his time in England in the 1360s. It is clear that by 1381 serfdom was in decline in England. But the chronology of this decline varied on different manors, and the incidents of serfdom also varied greatly across England.100 Whereas in the thirteenth century serfdom had offered a measure of security when the population was growing and food sometimes in short supply, following the Black Death of 1348–49, food was plentiful, and those who were free could choose to work for wages and enjoy a higher standard of living.101 Resentment of serfdom, in all its different manifestations, was a unifying grievance for the rebels of 1381, and Froissart seems to have understood this. His observations about serfdom in England led Froissart to write of the ‘foolish’ priest John Ball, who had been in trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities on several occasions and seems to have been in prison in Maidstone at the time of the outbreak of the Revolt.102 But the rebels were able to free Ball from prison, and he was at Blackheath when the Kentishmen gathered there on 12 June. Walsingham preserves the text of the sermon that Ball was said to have preached on that occasion. It begins with the couplet ‘Whan Adam Dalf, and Eve span / Wo was thanne a gentilman?’103 Froissart also claims to provide the text of Ball’s sermon, although he does not say that he delivered it at Blackheath. As in the text to be found in Walsingham, Ball was said to have argued that ‘We be all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve: whereby can they say or shew that they be greater lords than we be … ?’104 Such egalitarian sentiments are comparatively common in fourteenth-century sermons.105 But Froissart’s text of Ball’s sermon, as translated by Berners, becomes, as Dobson claimed, ‘the most moving plea for social equality in the history of the English language’.106 So how does this sermon fit with Froissart’s generally assumed See Bailey, Decline of Serfdom, chapter 13. See C. Dyer, ‘The Social and Economic Background to the Rural Revolt of 1381’, in The English Rising of 1381, ed. R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 9–42. 102 See A. Prescott, ‘Ball, John (d. 1381), Chaplain and Leader of the Peasants’ Revolt’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1214. 103 St Albans Chronicle, pp. 546–47; versions of this couplet can be dated to the 1340s, and the egalitarian message it encapsulated was also preached by Thomas Brinton, see The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester (1373–1389), ed. M. A. Devlin, Camden Society, Third Series (London, 1954), vol. 85, pp. 153, 194. The continuator of the Eulogium Historiarum records that the bishop of Rochester was present at Blackheath, but this is unlikely to have been the case, in Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 206. 104 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 371. 105 See S. H. Rigby, English Society in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1995), p. 315. 106 Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 369. 100 101

34

CAROLINE BARRON

hostile attitude to the peasants?107 In fact, Froissart is not as hostile to the rebels as Walsingham and the other monastic chroniclers. Of course, he had not been threatened by the actions of the rebels in the way that Walsingham, Henry Knighton, and, to a lesser extent, the Monk of Westminster had been. But it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that although Froissart was a notable chronicler of chivalry and warfare, and enjoyed the company of nobles and courtiers, since 1373 he had also been an ordained priest. We may, perhaps, hear Jean Froissart the priest speaking here in the words that he puts into the mouth of Ball. He had no reason to include Ball’s sermon unless he himself shared some of the sentiments. Nigel Saul was surely correct in urging historians to take more note of Froissart’s account of events in England in the summer of 1381. Although Froissart, himself, was probably in Cambrai at the time, he clearly made contact with men who had been present in London during those days in mid-June: Sir Robert of Namur; John Janche, lord of Gommegnies; Sir Perducas d’Albret; and, perhaps, William Montagu, earl of Salisbury. Some of these informants were members of the group of men who were with the king in the Tower of London on 12 June and accompanied him to Blackheath the following day and to Mile End on Friday, 14 June. Some of them were at Smithfield on Saturday, 15 June. As a result, Froissart’s account of the course of events has an authenticity that should not be ignored. And because he was in Flanders, and so, in some sense, detached from the immediate impact and consequences of the Revolt, unlike the monastic chroniclers, he can view it with a certain detachment shading, on occasion, into sympathy. His account of the Revolt is not confused, but it was written to achieve a certain rhetorical effect. As Nigel Saul argued nearly twenty years ago, Froissart’s account of the Great Revolt ‘deserves the closest attention’.108

E.g., J. Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), pp. 321–22. 108 Saul, Richard II, p. 67. 107

2 ‘Defenders of truth’: Lord Cobham, John Gower, and the Political Crisis of 1387–88 MICHAEL BENNETT

I



n 1387, Peter Mildenhall, skinner and citizen of London, was in deep trouble. A former alderman, he operated at the higher end of his trade, supplying furs and skins to the elite, including Lady Mohun, one of Richard II’s favourites, who was running up an account with him as late as June 1387.1 In August, a writ was issued for his delivery to Nottingham castle, and he seemingly died there in 1388.2 The nature of the charge against him is evident in the pardon secured in 1391 by his son, William, also a prisoner, in which he acknowledged that he had not reported his father’s treason in declaring that Richard was unfit to rule and should stay in a latrine, and that, with twelve men, he could take the king captive as he rode between Sheen and Westminster.3 Though the treasonous outburst is undated, the reference to Richard’s movements suggests a date either in September 1386 or, if Mildenhall were still at liberty, in November 1387, both moments of high political tension.4 The allegation speaks to the increasing agitation and animosity in England, with a parliamentary crisis in late 1386, confrontation and recourse to arms in late 1387, and brutal reprisals in the Merciless Parliament in 1388. In the last months of 1387, London was a potential battleground. When Richard sought the city’s support against the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, the mayor found that most citizens refused to fight against the lords, whom they regarded as ‘friends of the king and kingdom’ and ‘the defenders of truth (ueritatis defensores)’.5 CP 40/559, m. 271d. Calendar of the Letter Books of the City of London … Letter Book H, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1907), p. 312; Calendar of Select Pleas and Memoranda of the City of London: A.D. 1381–1422, ed. A. H. Thomas (Cambridge, 1932), p. 151. 3 CCR, 1389–1392, p. 527. 4 For Richard’s presence at Sheen in 1386 and 1387, see Saul, Richard II, p. 471. 5 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 406–07. 1 2

36

MICHAEL BENNETT

Alarmed by hostility towards the court party in London, the king issued a proclamation forbidding, under pain of death, any speech or writing against him, the queen, or his friends.6 Even as the three magnates mobilised to defend themselves against the king’s ‘false counsellors’, the earl of Northumberland advised Richard that the lords were his most faithful subjects and had the support of the populace, and Lord Basset declared that, though he was a loyal subject, if he had ‘to go into battle’, he would not fight for Robert de Vere, Richard’s unpopular favourite, but would wish to hold ‘to the true side (partem ueracem) and the party of truth (ueritatis sectatricem)’.7 Traditional scholarship on the crisis of 1387–88, with its focus on constitutional and parliamentary history, and modern revisionist scholarship, with its emphasis on aristocratic power-play and patronage, has neglected or downplayed the scale of the mobilisation and the political ideas that animated it.8 In this chapter, I re-examine the significance of the crisis by focusing on John Cobham, 3rd Lord Cobham, who despite his personal attachment to Richard and impressive record of service to the Crown, was a key figure in the movement. The young king’s guardian in 1380, he became a prominent member of the council appointed in parliament to rule in the king’s name in 1386. An elder statesman, he was widely respected for his piety and public-spiritedness, including his foundation of Cobham College, strengthening Kent’s defences ‘in help of the cuntre’, and rebuilding Rochester Bridge.9 Although he did not join the so-called Lords Appellant in arms, he was deeply committed to the cause in 1387–88. A focus on Lord Cobham, then, may provide insight into the broader movement, involving lords, gentry, townsmen, and clerks, that saw ‘truth’ as central to their cause and the Lords Appellant as its champions.10 Although it is possible to make inferences from his career and contemporary chronicles, there is little direct evidence of his view of events and the political ideas that informed it. Accordingly, the scope of this study is broadened to include John Gower, squire of Kent, a member of Cobham’s circle, and a poet who had a lot to say about Richard and kingship. Memorials of London and London Life … 1276–1419, ed. H. T. Riley (London, RS, 1868), p. 500. 7 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 406–09. 8 A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971); G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), pp. 161–68. 9 R. Allen, ‘Cobham, John, Third Baron Cobham of Cobham (c. 1320–1408)’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/5744. 10 Most of the references to ‘truth’ are translations from the Latin terms (verus, veritas, and so on), with a semantic range that includes ‘factual’ and ‘a matter of fact’ and the moral qualities associated with truth-telling and keeping faith, but there are also references to Middle English ‘trowthe’, which was beginning to occupy the same semantic space in the late fourteenth century. For a brilliant exploration of the changing connotations of ‘trowthe’, see R. F. Green, A Crisis in Truth: Literature and Politics in Ricardian England (Philadelphia, 1999), esp. pp. 1–31, 221–30. 6

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8837

Generally hard to please, Gower was a great admirer of Cobham. As has been argued elsewhere, his connection with Cobham, the principal trustee of his manor of Aldington in Kent, may help to explain his letter of advice to Richard, his knowledge of the young king’s character and circumstances, and his changing attitudes to him in his Confessio Amantis and Cronica Tripertita.11 A redating of relevant sections of the three poems makes possible a new approach to a problem addressed by our honorand Nigel Saul, namely the issue of Gower’s consistency, and supports his challenge to the common claim that he was a turncoat.12 The poet’s observations, it is hoped, can augment and enrich an understanding of the principles, perspectives, and predicaments of supporters of the Lords Appellant, not least Cobham himself. John Cobham, 3rd Lord Cobham, the head of a baronial family rooted in Kent, is well enough known, not least from the researches of our honorand.13 Two marriages – his father’s to the daughter of Sir John Beauchamp, baron of Somerset, and his own to the daughter of the earl of Devon – cemented his position in noble circles. Born around 1330, he served in the French wars, appearing as a banneret in 1353, serving in Edward III’s great expedition of 1359–60, and leading a company of 110 men-at-arms and 110 archers in a naval expedition over the winter of 1377–78.14 Well regarded in chivalric circles, he was skilled in diplomacy, undertook missions to the papal curia, and was involved in negotiations with France from the 1360s to the early 1390s.15 On Richard’s accession in 1377, he was appointed to serve on the regency council; in 1379, chosen by parliament to serve on a committee to ‘examine the estate of the king’; and, in 1380, appointed to remain in the royal household for ‘the safeguard of the king’s person’, replacing Sir Simon Burley as Richard’s governor and tutor.16 Knowing Richard well, he presumably gave thought to the guidance he needed. Around this time, Gower began to pen a letter to Richard (Epistolam ad Regem) that drew on traditional advice to kings but is custommade for him. Incorporated as Book VI of Vox Clamantis, the letter shows a confidence of address, an insight into Richard’s character, and a concern about M. Bennett, ‘Gower, Richard II and Henry IV’, in Historians on Gower, ed. S. H. Rigby with S. Echard (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 425–88. Gower’s poems are cited by title (VC, CA, and CT), book or part, and line number(s) from John Gower, The Complete Works, ed. G. C. Macaulay, 4 vols (Oxford, 1899–1902). 12 N. Saul, ‘John Gower: Prophet or Turncoat?’, in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation and Tradition, ed. E. Dutton with J. Hines and R. F. Yeager (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 85–97, at 90–91. 13 N. Saul, Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and Their Monuments (Oxford, 2001), esp. pp. 21–25. 14 Saul, Death, Art and Memory, p. 21 n.; E 101/393/11, f. 81v; E 101/36/29. 15 Saul, Death, Art and Memory, pp. 21–22. 16 Tout, Chapters, vol. 3, pp. 327–29; 347–49; PROME, Parliament of February 1388, Part 3, item 12. 11

38

MICHAEL BENNETT

his development that suggest inspiration from someone close to the court. Interestingly, in addition to warning the king about his young companions, Gower also noted the danger of older men introducing vice (VC: VI.570–76*). Early in 1381, Lord Cobham was succeeded as governor by the earl of Arundel. Overseas during the Peasants’ Revolt, he may have been heartened by reports of Richard’s bravery and presence of mind. The royal marriage at the beginning of 1382 raised further hope that he was making steady progress towards adulthood. During the year, however, his lack of restraint and indulgence of favourites became a matter of increasing concern. When Lord Scrope, his chancellor, refused to endorse his ill-advised grants, Richard summarily dismissed him. In returning the great seal, Scrope told him that while he remained his loyal subject he would never again hold office under him.17 In the parliament at Salisbury in 1384, Cobham doubtless witnessed the incident in which the sixteen-year-old king, enraged by the earl of Arundel’s speech lamenting the state of the realm, declared that if he were blaming him he was a liar and could go to hell.18 Even more disturbing was another incident when Richard, informed by a friar of a plot by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, his uncle, to assassinate him, immediately ordered his uncle’s execution. Although he calmed down after Gaunt and others refuted the allegation, the speed with which the king’s companions tortured and effectively silenced the friar raises the suspicion that they had set up the friar to destroy Gaunt.19 Early in 1385, some courtiers ‘with the king’s approval, it was said’, plotted to kill Gaunt at a tournament. Confronting Richard, Gaunt declared that it was ‘shameful for a king in his own kingdom … to avenge himself by means of private murder’. He was likewise admonished by Archbishop Courtenay for heeding advice that would lead to greater evils and the ruin of the realm. In a subsequent meeting on the royal barge, Richard drew his sword on the archbishop and was only with difficulty prevented from killing him. Joan of Kent, the king’s mother, though unwell, laboured hard to achieve a reconciliation between her son and Gaunt.20 In January 1385, Richard turned eighteen and was probably hoping that he would be declared of age. He had qualities that fitted him for his regal office, not least his aspiration to be a munificent king presiding over a splendid court. In the summer of 1385, he led a great expedition to Scotland, in which almost all the knights of the realm took part, including Lord Cobham. Far from promoting unity, the campaign brought new tensions between the king and Gaunt and courtiers and magnates. In the autumn, after parliament raised concerns about royal expenditure and made a subsidy conditional on reform, it established a committee of nine to examine the state of the king 17 18 19 20

St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 620–25. The Westminster Chronicle, pp. 68–69. Ibid., pp. 68–81; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 722–27. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 110–17; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 750–51.

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8839

and kingdom, make recommendations for reform, and incorporate them in an ordinance. A committee member, Cobham was probably also a member of the sub-committee appointed to oversee the implementation of the reforms.21 Far from accepting the ordinance, Richard encouraged his ministers to ignore it, continued to lavish patronage on his favourites, pursued his own agenda in foreign policy, and in the course of another altercation with the earl of Arundel knocked him to the ground.22 In November 1386, the king was confronted by a parliament determined to call his regime to account. Gloucester and some knights of the shire ‘did not hesitate to speak what was true and beneficial to the realm’.23 Articles for the impeachment of Michael de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, the chancellor, were drawn up, the first of the charges being his failure to institute the reforms ordained by the previous parliament. In response to demands for the chancellor’s dismissal, Richard declared that he would not dismiss his most menial servant at parliament’s bidding and withdrew from Westminster. There were soon rumours of a royalist plot to invite Gloucester and forty knights of the shire to a banquet in London and put them to death.24 When Gloucester and Thomas Arundel, bishop of Ely, went to Eltham to confront him, Richard denounced them as rebels and threatened to seek aid from the French king. Appalled, the duke and bishop drew his attention to an ‘ancient law’ that provided that if a king ‘estrange himself from his people’ and refuse to ‘be governed and guided by the laws of the land’, it was lawful to depose him and ‘raise another of the royal lineage in his place’.25 Bowing to pressure, Richard acceded to the chancellor’s impeachment and his replacement by Bishop Arundel, and on 19 November agreed to the establishment of a ‘continuous council’ of eleven who, along with the officers of state, would take on the business of government for twelve months. According to his defence at his later trial, Cobham claimed that the king had appointed him to the ‘continuous council’.26 Given his long record of service to the Crown, he may then still have been on good terms with the king. As a former guardian of the king, a confidant of the king’s mother, and brother-in-law of Archbishop Courtenay and Lady Luttrell, Queen Anne’s chief lady-in-waiting, however, he cannot have been unaware of his violent temper, the state of his J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Parliament of 1385 and the Constitutional Crisis of 1386’, Speculum, 46 (1971), 477–90, at p. 485, n. 34. 22 C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Earl of Arundel, the War with France, and the Anger of King Richard II’, in The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones, ed. R. F. Yeager and T. Takamiya (New York, 2012), pp. 27–38, at 27–29. 23 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 802–03. 24 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 354–57; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 800–03; Eulogium Historiarum, vol. 3, pp. 359–60. 25 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 354–61. 26 The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), pp. 38–39. 21

40

MICHAEL BENNETT

household, and the malign influence of his favourites. His increasing pessimism about the king can perhaps be seen in the writings of John Gower, who probably looked to him for information and guidance. Seemingly completed in 1382, Gower’s Epistola ad Regem contained forthright advice, not least about the importance of a counsellor ‘who is willing to tell the truth (vera dicere verba velit)’ (VC:VI.553–54*, 672), but its general tone was affectionate, respectful, and even celebratory. Critically, it absolved the young king of blame for the misgovernment that had led to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. It is not known if the book found its way into Richard’s hands, but it seems likely that he was aware of the author and his work. Around 1385, on a barge on the Thames, Richard talked to Gower and teased him with a request to write a love poem, the genesis of his vernacular masterpiece, Confessio Amantis, completed around 1389.27 In between times, though, Gower revisited the Epistola, rewriting sections to register growing concerns about the king’s behaviour. Among the changes, presumably not for wide circulation, he describes the king as ‘an undisciplined boy’ and writes pointedly about companions who encourage his misbehaviour, and older men who in their greed permit scandals to please him (VC: VI:555, 563–66). In stating that even a mother does not know what fate holds for her child, he may have been alluding to Richard’s mother, who died in 1385. According to a chronicle tradition, she had declared that while she had taken great pride in her son at his coronation she had since come to feel great shame.28 Cobham, one of Joan’s confidants and executors, would have known the truth or otherwise of this story and may well have been Gower’s source for this allusion.29 From 1386, Lord Cobham was on the frontline. Several colleagues on the continual council, including Archbishop Courtenay, Bishop Arundel, the duke of Gloucester, the earl of Arundel, and Sir Richard Scrope, had all tried, at some risk to themselves, to keep the king in check. They were men committed to a strong monarchy. The problem that they believed they were addressing was a king who had been led astray by false counsellors who had blinded him with lies and flattery for their own purposes and entrenched their position by mocking and slandering his uncles and other magnates and stoking his suspicions and fear of them. For his part, the king responded to opposition and criticism with petulant and violent behaviour and by doubling down on his generosity to his friends. He honoured Robert de Vere, his notorious favourite, as marquis of Dublin in 1385 and then, during the parliamentary crisis of October 1386, made him duke of Ireland. Although Cobham was widely respected, he was becoming more politically aligned. As a veteran of the French wars and an experienced Bennett, ‘Gower’, pp. 435–36. Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 10–11. 29 A Collection of All the Wills of the Kings and Queens of England …, ed. J. Nichols (London, 1780), p. 79. 27 28

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8841

diplomat, Cobham had reason to be anxious about Richard’s secret diplomacy and his readiness to make deals with France. Among his closest associates were the duke of Gloucester and the earl of Arundel, who sought to hold on to hard-won gains in France and negotiate only from a position of strength.30 In Kent, where he had some responsibility for the maintenance of order and coastal defence, Cobham had reason to deplore the consequences of feckless policies and favouritism. The appointment of Sir Simon Burley, chamberlain of the household, as constable of Dover castle in 1384 and his aggrandisement in Kent provoked local resentment and concern about national security.31 Further entrenching courtier interest in the county was the appointment of de Vere as constable of Queenborough in 1385. Richard himself was evidently aware that the measures would be ill received locally: he acceded to Burley’s request to attend his installation at Dover and added to the terms of the charter to de Vere the curse of God and St Edward on anyone who opposed it.32 Since he had a house in London, Cobham was probably one of the most active members of the council. Richard immediately showed his resolve not to co-operate with them. Accompanied by Archbishop Neville of York, de Vere, and de la Pole, he withdrew to Windsor, headed northwards in the new year, and spent the next six months largely in the midlands. A brief return to Windsor for the Garter Feast offered an opportunity for bridge-building, but a testy exchange between the courtiers and Arundel and an alleged plot to assassinate Gloucester widened the divide.33 Over the summer, the king secured a ruling from judges that the continual council was treasonous and prepared for a showdown. In August, he summoned sheriffs from across England to rally political and military support for his cause in their communities only to be told that elections to parliament were free and that ‘all the commons supported the lords’.34 Undeterred, the king and his advisors drew up treason charges against Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, sent out agents to distribute royal sun and crown badges and enlist men for his service, and made their way back to Windsor to prepare for the descent on the capital.35 Apprehending the Cobham was a member of Gloucester’s council in the early 1390s and was appointed as an executor for Arundel in his will in 1393: J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969), p. 505. Collection of Wills, ed. Nichols, pp. 142–43. 31 CPR 1381–1385, pp. 366–67; Saul, Richard II, pp. 112–17; The Reign of Richard II: From Minority to Tyranny 1377–97, ed. Alison K. McHardy (Manchester, 2012), pp. 145–47. 32 CPR 1381–1385, pp. 366–67, 542. 33 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 184–85; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 824–25. 34 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 824–27. 35 ‘Historia sive narracio de modo et forma Mirabilis Parliamenti apud Westmonasterium anno Domini millesimo CCCLXXXVI per Thomam Favent clericum indicatum’, ed. M. McKisack, Camden Miscellany XV, Camden Society, Third Series, 37 (1926), pp. i–viii, 1–27 separate pagination), p. 4. 30

42

MICHAEL BENNETT

danger, Gloucester took an oath before the bishop of London and other lords, doubtless including Cobham, in which he affirmed his loyalty to the king and insisted that his quarrel was with de Vere.36 When news of the treason charges leaked out, he and his colleagues took steps to defend themselves and, as they saw it, to save the realm from destruction.37 As a member of the continuous council, Cobham must have realised that he too was deemed guilty of treason. On 10 November, Richard made a triumphal entry into London. With his supporters, he walked barefoot from Charing Cross to the shrine of St Edward in Westminster, snubbing five bishops, including members of the council, who came to greet him. With Sir Nicholas Brembre, former mayor of London, at his side, he may have felt that he was in a strong position. Summoning Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick to appear before him the next day, however, he soon learned that they had already begun raising large companies of knights and archers. As the lords approached London, alarm spread through city, the streets went quiet, and no barges plied the Thames.38 Although some of the court party were ready to fight, it was evident that the Londoners could not be counted on in a conflict with the ‘defenders of truth’.39 Richard instructed the earl of Northumberland to secure the surrender of the earl of Arundel, but, given his sympathy with the magnates, he may not have tried too hard to arrest him.40 Richard had little option other than to turn to members of the continual council to assist in making terms. Cobham himself played a role in brokering a meeting between the king and the lords.41 On 17 November, Gloucester and his colleagues, wearing armour under their gowns, came to the capital. Enthroned in Westminster Hall, the king received their professions of loyalty, accepted their appeal of treason against five of his counsellors for adjudication in the next parliament, and issued a proclamation taking the rival parties under his protection. The preamble, presumably dictated by Gloucester and his colleagues, declared that the lords had been defamed, and that the king, ‘weighing the truth (ueritatem) most scrupulously’, had found the defamation to be ‘false, iniquitous, unworthy, and entirely void of all truth’.42 With Richard’s withdrawal to Windsor, Lord Cobham and the rump of the continual council, whose twelve-month term had now come to an end, continued in harness. The Lords Appellant remained vigilant, and their spies kept them abreast of the activities of the court party, including Richard’s alleged Westminster Chronicle, pp. 206–07; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 826–29. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 206–07; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 826–27; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 394–95; Historia per Thomam Favent clericum indicatum, p. 7. 38 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 206–09; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 402–03. 39 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 406–07. 40 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 208–09; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 408–09. 41 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 402–03. 42 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 414–17. 36 37

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8843

offer to surrender Calais in return for French assistance.43 The king certainly instructed de Vere to raise an army in Cheshire and lead it under the royal standard against his opponents. At the same time, he made another bid to raise troops in London and ordered the arrest of anyone in London defaming him, the queen, or the members of his entourage, and instructed officials to compile a list of citizens believed to be disloyal.44 Cobham and his colleagues on the council were doubtless furious at the king’s bad faith in setting aside his agreement to settle matters in parliament. In response to the military threat, the Lords Appellant again assembled their followers and were soon joined by Henry of Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, who led the Lancastrian affinity in Gaunt’s absence, and Thomas Mowbray, the earl marshal.45 Assisted by a more general mobilisation on their behalf, the five lords routed the royalist army at Radcot Bridge in Oxfordshire on 20 December. Gaining admission to London after Christmas, they held meetings with the king in which they made clear to him the scale of their following. Affecting complacency, Richard told Archbishop Courtenay, Cobham’s brother-in-law, that he would wait until the men in arms returned home and then deal with his antagonists one by one.46 By threatening him with deposition, and perhaps briefly dethroning him, the lords secured his formal acquiescence in the purge of his household and the trial of his ‘false counsellors’.47 Since the proceedings were based on the proposition that Richard was still a minor and not legally responsible for the misrule, there was some incentive to settle matters before his twenty-first birthday on 6 January. In January 1388, Lord Cobham was appointed to a small council responsible for the ‘day-to-day guidance’ of the king and the ‘continuous government’ of the kingdom.48 When parliament opened in February, the Lords Appellant set forward an appeal of treason against Archbishop Neville, de Vere, de la Pole, Chief Justice Robert Tresilian, and Sir Nicholas Brembre. In the first article, they implicitly presented themselves as the champions of truth by declaring that the five men were traitors who, ‘seeing the tenderness of the age of our lord the king and the innocence of his royal person, caused him to apprehend as truth so many false things’ that they ‘caused him to hate his loyal lords and subjects by whom of right he ought rather to have been governed’.49 In subsequent articles, they laid general and specific charges relating to treasonable actions that had brought the realm to the brink of civil war and destruction. J. J. N. Palmer, England, France and Christendom (London, 1972), pp. 115–19. Memorials of London and London Life … 1276–1419, ed. H. T. Riley (London, RS, 1868), p. 500. 45 Goodman, Loyal Conspiracy, p. 29. 46 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 844–47. 47 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 218–19, 228–29; Saul, Richard II, pp. 189–90. 48 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 228–33. 49 Ibid., pp. 270–71. 43 44

44

MICHAEL BENNETT

Since the first three of the accused had already fled overseas, and Tresilian had gone into hiding, only the former mayor of London, Brembre, was present to face his accusers. In highly irregular proceedings, the three absentees were condemned on the grounds of the notoriety of their treason. Once Tresilian was discovered and dragged from sanctuary, he and Brembre were convicted of treason and hanged at Tyburn. By this time, the Commons were preparing the impeachment of other royal advisors and agents as traitors. Four knights of the king’s household, including Sir Simon Burley and Sir John Beauchamp, were executed; two other squires were hanged; and the king’s confessor, five judges, and several courtiers were banished. Cobham was active in the proceedings and complicit in the death sentences. With Gloucester, he broke sanctuary to arrest Tresilian in Westminster and subsequently did penance for his sacrilege.50 At the king’s request, Cobham approached the Commons to allow a retrial of Burley but may not have been unhappy at their refusal.51 When the king, queen, and several lords, including Henry of Bolingbroke, pleaded for Burley’s life, Cobham remained resolute. A decade later, Richard bore him a deep grudge for his role in his favourite’s death.52 A Latin poem by John Gower offers a hitherto neglected perspective on the crisis of 1387–88. Surviving as a part of the Cronica Tripertita, it was almost certainly written close to the events it described and not, as has always been assumed, after the revolution of 1399.53 In the opening stanzas, he excoriates the king for his wickedness and avarice in his plotting to destroy the magnates and the kingdom (CT: I.13–26). Generally taken as proof of its composition after the Lancastrian revolution, his harsh denunciation of Richard appears consistent with the strong anti-Ricardian sentiment implicit in the mobilisation on behalf of the magnates and evident too, not least in the king’s proclamation against slandering the royal family, in and around London in late 1387.54 Significantly, Gower’s representation of the king is more dispassionate in the second half of the poem when he is describing the king on the throne, seemingly chastened, and overseeing the punishment of his false counsellors. Gower’s partisanship is most obvious in his representation of the contending parties. He hails Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick as great heroes, praises the Ibid., pp. 310–13, 332–33; cf. Saul, Death, Art and Memory, p. 23, n. 66. Westminster Chronicle, pp. 328–31. 52 PROME, Parliament of September 1397, Part 1, item 15; Part 2, items 6–8, 10. 53 John Gower, Poems on Contemporary Events: The Visio Anglie (1381) and Cronica Tripertita (1400), ed. D. R. Carlson, trans. A. G. Rigg (Toronto, 2011), pp. 249–67. The case for re-dating the first part of the Cronica is presented more fully in Bennett, ‘Gower’, pp. 441–47. 54 Memorials of London, ed. Riley, p. 500. In addition to the case of Peter Mildenhall, see the charges against Thomas Austin and his wife in 1387–88: A. J. Prescott, ‘The Accusations against Thomas Austin’, in P. Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagining of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, 1992), pp. 161–77, at 175. 50 51

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8845

timely support of Bolingbroke and Mowbray, and makes honourable mention of Northumberland for being with the lords in spirit if not in person (CT: I.55–56), an assessment that shows special insight on his role in 1387. His identification of Richard as the sun, the magnates by reference to their livery badges, and the false counsellors by interlingual puns, would have appeared cryptic in 1399 but not in 1388. Gower was writing for people who knew the basic story and shared his prejudices. Some of the particularities of his depiction of Burley and Beauchamp may fairly directly reflect table-talk among members of Cobham’s circle. A hate-figure in Kent, Burley had some notoriety for his ostentation in dress. In naming him Vestis stragulata, Latin for ‘burel cloth’( CT: I.144), a cheap cloth used by servants, Gower was probably Latinising a derisory nickname coined by his enemies.55 Mockery of Beauchamp’s controversial elevation to the baronage (CT: I.152–53) would have come naturally to friends of Lord Cobham, who took pride in his baronial rank and whose grandfather had been Baron Beauchamp of the first creation.56 His pseudonym for Brembre, namely Tribulus (‘bramble’; CT: I.154–59), likewise reflects the play on his name by Brembre’s critics in London in 1387.57 While scholarship has focused on the magnates, the evidence does indicate a broad public interest and engagement in the political crisis. After all, the king and the court party themselves made significant effort to secure the support of the lords, the gentry, and the citizens of London in the political and military struggle. The magnates were evidently more successful in garnering support for their cause. The chronicles suggest large-scale mobilisation on behalf of the Lords Appellant that went significantly beyond their own private retinues.58 Among unaligned magnates, Northumberland sympathised with the Lords Appellant, and Basset expressed his preference to stand with the ‘party of truth’.59 Notwithstanding divisions and apprehensions among the mercantile elite, there was strong support for the Appellant cause in London as well.60 A petition from the mercers against Brembre mirrored the national concerns about the court party. It alleged that the former mayor had slandered them as traitors and declared that twenty or thirty of them were worthy to be drawn and hung, and it requested the lords to appoint a judge to declare the ‘trowthe’

For Carlson’s decipherment of the nickname, see Gower, Poems on Contemporary Events, p. 340. 56 Bennett, ‘Gower’, pp. 444–45. 57 An Anthology of Chancery English, ed. J. H. Fisher, M. Richardson, and J. L. Fisher (Knoxville, 1984), pp. 194–97. 58 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 224–25; Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 420–21, 426–27; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 224–25. 59 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 406–09. 60 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 824–27. 55

46

MICHAEL BENNETT

of the matter as no one among them dares tell the ‘trowthe’.61 Richard would probably have agreed with Gower that his downfall began in London (CT: I.58–59). All the major chronicles include material favourable to the Appellants that cannot be dismissed simply as their being more successful in a propaganda war. Thomas Favent, a possible associate of John Waltham, keeper of the privy seal, wrote a remarkable history of the events that presents the magnates, somewhat impersonally, as the divinely ordained champions of the common weal.62 The Lords Appellant presented themselves in this fashion, declaring in parliament that what they proposed to do ‘would be chiefly for the honour of God, and the aid and salvation of the estate of our lord the king and all his realm, and for the preservation of their lives’.63 Prominent churchmen and bureaucrats lent their support, and the parliamentary proceedings inspired both a remarkable petition for more thoroughgoing reform and popular agitation for the punishment of courtiers.64 Despite his focus on the heroes, reflecting its immediate celebratory purpose, Gower likewise sees the ‘Three’ as acting out of principle: reforming the king, reordering the kingdom, strengthening its law, and then withdrawing from the public stage. He presents them as ‘models of good Englishmen’ who assume the burden of others and uphold the kingdom (CT: I.208–11, 217–18). By May 1388, the Merciless Parliament had earned its sobriquet, the king had formally acquiesced in the destruction of the court party, and England looked to the re-establishment of the realm under the Crown. There was naturally great concern about the permanence of the settlement and indeed the future safety of the men who had imposed it on the king. The only warrant for subjecting the king to conciliar restraint and the highly irregular proceedings in parliament was that the king was a minor and that his authority had been usurped by false counsellors, but this convenient fiction could not be maintained indefinitely. There was certainly the need for transitional arrangements from the end of parliament until the point at which Richard took over the reins of power. One measure was the appointment of a council of five, including Lord Cobham, who would be in constant attendance on the king, who would ‘do nothing without their consent’.65 As the parliament drew to its close, all that could be done The petition is now attributed to the Parliament of 1388: PROME, Parliament of February 1388, Introduction, Appendix 1a; Anthology of Chancery English, ed. Fisher, Richardson, and Fisher, pp. 194–97. It was presumably drawn up at the end of 1387. 62 C. Oliver, Parliament and Political Pamphleteering in Fourteenth-Century England (York, 2010), esp. pp. 124, 139; G. Dodd, ‘Was Thomas Favent a Political Pamphleteer? Faction and Politics in Fourteenth-Century London’, Journal of Medieval History, 37 (2011), 397–418, at p. 406. 63 PROME, Parliament of February 1388, Part 1, item 8. 64 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 442–51; ‘Historia per Thomam Favent clericum indicatum’, p. 21. 65 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 332–33. 61

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8847

was for all the parties to make solemn undertakings to uphold the settlement. Richard was persuaded to issue a general pardon, with the only exclusions being some former courtiers and servants, and a specific pardon of the Londoners. For their part, the Lords and Commons renewed an oath to maintain the statutes and judgements made in parliament, with writs sent to the sheriffs to administer the oath to all freeholders across England. Enthroned in Westminster Abbey, Richard repeated his coronation oath and received the homage of the lords, and thirteen bishops declared excommunicate anyone who violated the oaths and sought to arouse the king’s anger against the magnates.66 The supporters of the Appellant cause could only hope that Richard would keep his word. Apprehensive on this score, Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick agreed among themselves that they would never all be in the king’s presence at any one time for fear of an ambush.67 In seeking to draw a line under the troubles of the past, the settlement of 1388 encouraged forgetting if not forgiving. After a recitation to a select few or perhaps an airing at a celebratory banquet, Gower’s triumphalist poem would surely have been put in a safe place. Fearful that the events of 1387–88 would pass into oblivion, Thomas Favent consciously presented his narrative as a record for posterity of what had been achieved in England through the grace of God.68 In May 1389, Richard declared his majority and appointed his own council. Headed by the veteran Bishop Wykeham, the new council inspired some confidence and, later in the year, gained ballast with the return of John of Gaunt, thenceforward a pillar of the Ricardian regime. In opening parliament in January 1390, Wykeham presented the king as possessing ‘greater knowledge and discretion than ever before’ and ‘a greater and better intent and firm purpose’ to govern well.69 In a piece of political theatre, Richard called on his council to resign in parliament and then, on hearing no objections to any of the members, reappointed them, adding Gloucester to their number. For the ruling elite, the imperative was to back Richard in his resolve to rule wisely and support his ambition to strengthen royal authority. Leading churchmen, including former critics like Bishops Arundel and Waltham, applied themselves to rebuilding the ideological edifice of monarchy. Even Gloucester flattered his nephew’s ambition to be a great king. He addressed to ‘his most excellent and powerful prince’ a treatise on the court of chivalry in which he described its procedures ‘as it should be governed by justice and equity to your honourable renown, in which all justice should remain and be’.70

66 67 68 69 70

M. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), p. 33. Eulogium Historiarum, vol. 3, p. 367. ‘Historia per Thomam Favent clericum indicatum’, p. 1. V. Davis, William Wykeham: A Life (London, 2007), p. 90. The Black Book of Admiralty, ed. Sir T. Twiss, 4 vols (London, RS, 1871), vol. 1, p. 300.

48

MICHAEL BENNETT

Richard was proving an astute rather than a wise ruler. He drew his three uncles to his side, cultivated church leaders, and recruited able and ambitious knights into his service to secure his interests in parliament and the provinces. For many people, not least Cobham, Gloucester remained the main guarantor of the settlement of 1388. When the duke set out on crusade in September 1391, many people reportedly feared disaster as ‘the hopes and comforts of the whole country seemed to repose in him’.71 Three months later, Richard welcomed a parliamentary petition that he ‘should be as free in his royal dignity as any of his predecessors’ and that any statute to the contrary should be annulled.72 There were signs that Richard was seeking to renege on his promises in 1388 and recall de Vere and others from exile. Early in 1392, Cobham attended council meetings, including a great council at Eltham, at which a new accord was struck between the king and the magnates in which the king swore not to do harm against any magnate for past offences or restore the men condemned in 1388, and the magnates swore to support the king against any of their number who opposed him unlawfully.73 Over the summer, however, Richard’s quarrel with the city of London raised suspicions that he was seeking to settle old scores, especially when he appointed Sir Baldwin Raddington, Burley’s nephew and Brembre’s son-in-law, to negotiate the city’s humiliating and costly submission.74 Around 1389, John Gower completed Confessio Amantis, describing it as ‘a bok for king Richarde’s sake’ (CA: Pro. 24*). The respectful tone of his address to Richard and the ambition of this vernacular poem, which combined engaging and ethically instructive tales in the fictional framework of the confession of Amans, speak to its conception in happier times in 1385 but also to the circumstances of 1389, with Richard presenting himself as a king ready to seek counsel and rule well and the concern of magnates and churchmen to support him in his resolve. As literary scholars have shown, however, Gower is less fulsome in his praise than first appears and, although he makes no explicit reference to the events of 1387–88, he evidently has them in mind.75 He offers a prayer to God that Richard’s ‘crowne longe stonde’ (CA: Pro.33*). He attests the king’s mercy backhandedly, by the fact he had ‘yit nevere unpitously’ sought vengeance St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 912–13. Tout, Chapters, vol. 3, p. 474. 73 Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 491–95. 74 Bennett, ‘Gower, Richard II and Henry IV’, pp. 456–57. Cf. C. M. Barron, ‘The Quarrel of Richard II with London, 1392–7’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay and Caroline M. Barron (London, 1971), pp. 177–201. 75 Andrew Galloway, ‘The Literature of 1388 and the Politics of Pity in Gower’s Confessio Amantis’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (Ithaca, 2002), pp. 67–104, especially 90–92; K. Olsson, ‘Composing the King, 1390–1: Gower’s Ricardian Rhetoric’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 31 (2009), 141–73. 71 72

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8849

against his lieges for faults that he had found in them (CA: VIII.2994–3028*). In Book VII, he offers a mirror for princes and outlines five points of policy, with the chief virtue being ‘trouthe’ (CA: VII.1723–24). If men do not find truth in their king, it ‘were an unsittende thing’ (CA: VII.1734–36), something, according to Russell Peck, that ‘might provoke revolution’.76 In retelling Livy’s story of Apius, he makes the petty tyrant a king rather than a magistrate, and reports that he was deposed for his wickedness by the ‘comun conseil’ of the citizens as a warning to future kings (CA: VII.5293–5306).77 While stressing the importance of choosing good counsellors, Gower makes clear that, ultimately, it is the king’s own virtue, his sense of justice, and commitment to the common good that are essential. His view of kingship, and probably Lord Cobham’s, was, in Stephen Rigby’s formulation, ‘regal’ rather than ‘political’.78 Although the king’s subjects could offer advice and admonishment, the king was accountable only to God. Even a tyrant had to be suffered, unless and until God brought him down, perhaps through the voice of the people. During the early 1390s, Cobham and Gower had reason to give up any hope that they entertained for a remodelled Richard. Sent on a diplomatic mission in the summer of 1392, Cobham was out of England during Richard’s quarrel with London. The display of royal arrogance and resentment may have been a precipitant of Gower’s decision to make some small but highly significant alterations to Confessio Amantis in 1392–93, when he excised all reference to Richard, presented his poem as written for England’s sake, and dedicated it to Henry of Lancaster, as his ‘oghne lord’ (CA: Pro.24*, 24, 86–87). Gower probably knew and admired Henry in 1387–88 and increasingly looked to him as the best-placed, as Richard’s cousin, to serve as moderating force in the Ricardian regime and indeed to succeed Richard if he died without issue. In 1392–93, he was granted Henry’s livery and, in the same accounting year, appears on the pay-roll of the earl of Warwick, another of the Lords Appellant.79 During this time, Lord Cobham was distancing himself from court. He attended council meetings, though certainly on one occasion, and perhaps more generally, as proxy for the duke of Gloucester. He remained close to the earl of Arundel, whose relations with the king broke down completely in 1394.80 In his seventies, Cobham was seeking to retire from worldly affairs and lead a more contemplative

R. A. Peck, Kingship and Common Profit in Gower’s Confessio Amantis (London, 1978), pp. 142–43. 77 J. Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 119–22. 78 S. H. Rigby, ‘Gower’s Political Theory’, in Historians on Gower, ed. Rigby, pp. 381–424. 79 DL 41/424, m. 15; BL, Harl. Ch. IV. 27. 80 CPR 1388–1392, p. 482; Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 503–05; Collection of Wills, ed. Nichols, pp. 142–43. 76

50

MICHAEL BENNETT

life. According to Gower, he spent time with the Carthusians in London (CT: II.219–20), but he also had a cell at Maiden Bradley Priory in Wiltshire. Based at Southwark from the mid-1390s, Gower was engaged in securing his legacy as a poet and planning his tomb in the Priory of St Mary Overy.81 Both men doubtless expected that the reign would come to a bad end but saw no option other than to pray for the salvation of the kingdom. For Richard, a succession of events – the death of Queen Anne in 1394, the expedition to Ireland in 1394–95, and negotiation of a new marriage in 1396 – created distractions and raised new possibilities. In July 1397, however, the king suddenly showed his hand by arresting Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, declaring that he was not seeking revenge, that the arrests were for new not old treasons. His bad faith was soon made evident by his failure to present new charges, his arrest of Lord Cobham for his role in the conciliar regime, and his demand that all who joined the magnates had to compound for their pardon. It was also belied by the theatrical manner in which he followed the precedents and applied the punishments of the Merciless Parliament. In September, Gower took up his ‘weeping pen’ to report Gloucester’s murder, Arundel’s execution, and Warwick’s banishment (TC: II.233–34, 340–41). In lamenting the fate of his three heroes, he was very conscious that he was writing a sequel to the poem that celebrated their achievement. In the prologue, though, he introduces two victims of the king’s wrath, unmentioned in his early poem despite their profile in 1387–88, namely Thomas Arundel, now archbishop of Canterbury, and Lord Cobham (TC: II.Pro). His focus on Cobham reflects a long-standing admiration. In words echoing the discourse of ‘truth’ a decade earlier, he praises him as ‘ever a true friend of the realm’, ‘pious and philanthropic, prudent and just’, and as a ‘truth-teller (veridicus)’ a constant friend of the Three (TC: II.Pro, 213–15, 227). Arrested before September 1397, Cobham was not brought to trial until the final session of parliament in February 1398. Active in the trial, Richard accused him of a leading role in setting up the continual council and Burley’s execution. Convicted of treason, Cobham was banished rather than executed but reportedly declared that he would have willingly ‘died in the cause for which he was being tried’.82 In praying for his return, Gower appears to speak on behalf of his friends (CT: II.231–32). Observing Richard’s ‘tyrannical pomp’ in 1397–98, Gower sought solace in prayer and his belief that all was in God’s hands (CT: II.346–47). He would have surely agreed with the assessment of Thomas Walsingham, chronicler of St Albans: ‘Nobody dared to stand up for the truth (pro veritate), or declare what the truth (verum) was, because of the malicious, tyrannical nature of the king.’83 When Gower again picked up his pen to report the third act in the 81 82 83

M. Carlin, ‘Gower’s Life’, in Historians on Gower, ed. Rigby, pp. 56–61, 97–98, 108. St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 104–07. St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 102–05.

LORD COBHAM, JOHN GOWER, AND THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF 1387–8851

drama, around the autumn of 1398, he was starting to see some hopeful signs. If he had felt some disappointment in Henry in 1397, he saw him now gaining in public esteem through his dispute with Mowbray and the injustice of his banishment. The death of John of Gaunt simplified the politics, especially when Richard summarily extended Henry’s banishment to life, making it possible to hope that Henry, in seeking justice for himself, would prove the agent of the king’s downfall. Gaunt’s demise, too, ended a family feud with the Arundels, setting the scene for Henry and the exiled archbishop to make common cause in the invasion of England. Scholarship has often focused on the perjury of Henry in swearing that he only wished to secure his inheritance. It is worth noting, though, that his inheritance included the stewardship of England, his status as Richard’s heir in the male line, and his double descent from Henry III.84 Once the movement gathered momentum, it was hard to envisage any settlement with Richard, and many of the people who rose in rebellion were understandably reluctant to accept an outcome in which Richard could regain power.85 Over the summer of 1399, Gower witnessed the great rejoicing at Henry’s return and his success in conquering the kingdom (CT: III.158–59, 224, 244–47). While there was a broad consensus that Richard should lose his crown, a legal basis for a deposition was as difficult to establish as it was in 1387. The safest course was to secure an abdication and nail it down with articles of deposition. There is evidence that Richard was already contemplating abdication, and it is not inconceivable that he did agree to abdicate ‘with a smiling countenance’, if only to create confusion and divide his enemies.86 Given Henry’s providential success in winning the kingdom, the strength of his hereditary claim, and the election of the estates of the realm, his elevation to the empty throne was a foregone conclusion. It may seem perverse to present the men who set Henry on the throne in 1399 as the heirs of ‘the defenders of truth’ in 1387–88. While the record of Richard’s deposition was highly selective and hardly true and accurate, however, it is likely enough that most people found the account acceptable as a legal fiction. The three men who treated with Richard in 1399 – Henry, Archbishop Arundel, and Northumberland – were all involved in negotiations in 1387, knew him to be slippery but had given him then the benefit of the doubt, set him back on the throne, and served him loyally until he broke his promises and turned against them. It is perhaps to their credit that in 1399, as in 1387, they held back from M. Bennett, ‘Henry of Bolingbroke and the Revolution of 1399’, in The Reign of Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (York, 2003), pp. 9–33. 85 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 140–43; A. K. Gundy, Richard II and the Rebel Earl (Cambridge, 2013), p. 224. 86 Chronicles of the Revolution 1397–1400: The Reign of Richard II, ed. C. GivenWilson (Manchester, 1993), p. 211; Bennett, ‘Henry of Bolingbroke’, pp. 19–25. 84

52

MICHAEL BENNETT

more brutal means of setting him aside. If Gower is any guide, the key consideration for many people at the time was that God intervened, through the voice of the people, to bring Richard down for his sins and crimes and to raise Henry up as his successor.87 As he brought together his poems on the events of 1387–88, 1397–98, and 1399–1400 as a tripartite chronicle, he attributed new meaning to the three episodes: the first was the work of the people, the second the work of hell, and the third the work of God (CT: Pro 1–5). Lord Cobham, on his return from exile, evidently saw the revolution in a similar light. For once, there is a record of his own views in a speech he made at a meeting of Henry IV’s council in which the punishment of the nobles who had abetted Richard’s tyranny was discussed. He spoke at length about the troubles of Richard’s reign and made it plain that he believed that the king had been justly deposed and punished. His main theme was the lack of truth in the realm as, ‘under such a king and nobles’, the English, for fear of the loss of their worldly goods, or of being ruined through exile or death, had not ‘dared to do what was true, or spoken the truth (verum) while such men were their rulers’.88 In seeking an understanding of the revolution of 1399, and the stance of arguably the most respected statesman and most accomplished poet of the age, it is necessary to look back, as they did, to Richard’s record as king and the events of 1387–88.

87 88

Rigby, ‘Political Theory’, pp. 416–21. St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 250–53.

3 The Authorship of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum: A Reconsideration GEORGE B. STOW

T



he continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, otherwise known as the Continuatio, is an important source for often unique insights into the tumultuous events surrounding the deposition of Richard II and the ensuing reign of Henry IV. As well known as it is, however, the chronicle is fraught with problems, not the least of which concerns its authorship, a subject of considerable conjecture that has yet to be convincingly resolved. F. S. Haydon, the Continuatio’s first editor, could only conclude that ‘nothing is known of its author; and I have been unable to discover anything which will lead to his identification … The personality of the writer is completely disguised.’1 From Haydon’s day to the present, the identity of the author has never been convincingly established. Rather, it has been taken for granted that the Continuatio was written by a single author, most likely a Franciscan friar affiliated with the Grey Friars at Canterbury,2 a view manifested in the latest edition of the Eulogium Historiarum, vol. 3, pp. li, lxxxii. Like Haydon, C. L. Kingsford was unable to supply any insights concerning authorship beyond noting that ‘it would be hazardous to draw any positive conclusions as to the place the composition was made’: English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 1913), p. 28. 2 By way of example, A. Gransden notes that it is ‘fairly certain that the continuation was by a Franciscan friar who was possibly a member of the convent of Grey Friars in Canterbury’: Historical Writing in England, II, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), p. 158, n. 5. Similar views are put forward by J. Taylor: ‘although Kingsford suggested that this Continuation was based upon a number of missing sources, it seems more likely that it was the work of a single author, a Minorite from the Greyfriars at Canterbury, who had some legal expertise and interests, and who had probably studied at Oxford’: English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), p. 21. Similarly, our honorand Nigel Saul states: ‘The Eulogium continuation was almost certainly written at Canterbury’, Richard II (New Haven, 1997), p. 1

54

GEORGE B. STOW

Continuatio, which asserts that internal evidence ‘suggests that the author of the Continuatio was almost certainly a Franciscan, and probably based at the grey friars’ convent at Canterbury’.3 However well entrenched, this conclusion is not above criticism; indeed, it has previously been challenged. During the 1930s, a contrarian point of view took issue with this interpretation, going so far as to propose that the chronicle was in reality a composite text written by an individual of importance around the turn of the fifteenth century. Acknowledging that ‘no mention is made of the name of the author or of the copyist’, Evan J. Jones has observed that ‘the value of this work would be greatly enhanced could but the name of the chronicler be established, especially as certain events are recorded by him, of which he is the sole authority’.4 For Jones, the composition of the Continuatio plays a major role in determining its authorship; its text consists of separate segments, one from 1390 to 1395, another from 1395 to 1405, which he labels ‘the main body of the work’, and yet another from 1405 to 1413.5 After close analysis, Jones asserts that the chronicle is remarkably free from errors down to the entries under the year 1390; but for years 1390–95 there is considerable confusion in the record … the entries under the year 1390–95, and 1405–13, do not belong to the Continuatio proper.6

Furthermore, Jones stipulates that ‘Whoever the author might have been, he was unable or unprepared to record the events which took place during the five years 1390–5, and the years following 1405.’7 177; cf. ibid., pp. 374, 394, n. 107. W. Marx also endorses the standard interpretation, remarking that ‘it is probable that its author was a Franciscan and that the text is a near-contemporary account of events of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, and was completed after 1413 the date of its final entry, and before 1423’: An English Chronicle 1377–1461, ed. W. Marx (Woodbridge, 2003), p. xxix. 3 Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxi; cf. pp. xv, xvi–xxi, xx. Nevertheless, Given-Wilson notes that ‘Repetition of material, errors of dating, and an inherent sense of unevenness in both quality and the quantity of the information presented all tend to the same conclusion: the Continuatio Eulogii is, in some sense at least, a composite work, a concoction of material from a number of different sources – written, oral, or eyewitness – cobbled together to form a disjointed and at times a clumsy whole.’ Ibid., p. xxxii. 4 E. J. Jones, ‘The Authorship of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum: A Suggestion’, Speculum, 12 (1937), 196–202, at p. 196. Jones’ interpretations follow the conclusions of Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century. 5 Jones, ‘The Authorship of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, pp. 197–98. 6 Ibid., pp. 197, 200. 7 Ibid., p. 200. Jones adds that ‘although the chronicle continues to 1413, … the interest of the chronicler in the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr ceases abruptly in 1405’, p. 198.

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 55

In light of what he considered ‘striking coincidences’, Jones notes that ‘events in the life of John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph’ align with the abovementioned points, as well as with others.8 For one thing, in order to secure papal confirmation of his election as bishop of St Asaph, Trevor ‘left England in 1390 not to return until 1395 [sic]’; thus, ‘Trevor was away from England during the very years 1390–5, when … entries in the chronicle were slight and inaccurate.’9 For another, Jones points out that Trevor’s training as a lawyer, his interest in political matters, his sympathy with Welsh ambitions, all seem to be reflected in this Continuatio … if Trevor were the writer, then a satisfactory explanation is forthcoming for the high standard of the Latinity, for the gaps in the chronicle, and for the peculiar interest displayed in the Welsh history, which terminates abruptly at the year 1405.10

Jones’s postulation has been categorically dismissed by subsequent scholars. Jeremy Catto notes that ‘only tenuous and circumstantial evidence has been adduced to prove that Trevor was the author … there is no reason … to accept the suggestion that Trevor was the author of any part of the Continuatio’.11 Yet another critique is presented by Stephen Clifford, who rejects out of hand most of Jones’ arguments regarding Trevor’s authorship of the Continuatio; he finds Jones’ attribution of the Continuatio to the pen of Trevor ‘very hard to accept’.12 The views of Catto and Clifford were reiterated in later works. Antonia Gransden describes Jones’ interpretation as ‘an unconvincing attempt to prove that the continuation was by John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph (1395?– 1410)’.13 More recently, Given-Wilson dismisses without hesitation Jones’ attribution of the Continuatio to John Trevor: ‘Jones … suggested that most of the chronicle was written by John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph, but his argument is weak and has found no support.’14 Which of these interpretations comes closest to the mark? Having addressed aspects of the Continuatio, primarily the complexities attending its composition, in previously published articles,15 it is necessary now to reconsider Jones’ Ibid., p. 202. Ibid., pp. 200–01. 10 Ibid., p. 201. 11 J. Catto, ‘An Alleged Great Council of 1374’, EHR, 82 (1967), 764–71, at p. 765. 12 S. Clifford, ‘An Edition of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, 1361–1413’, (Unpublished M. Phil. thesis, University of Leeds, 1975), p. 37. 13 Gransden, Historical Writing in England, p. 158, n. 5. See also Alicia Marchant, The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr in Medieval English Chronicles (York, 2014), p. 14. 14 Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxvii. 15 G. B. Stow, ‘The Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum: Some Revisionist Perspectives’, EHR, 119 (2004), 667–81; and G. B. Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio 8 9

56

GEORGE B. STOW

proposition regarding Trevor’s role in the compilation of the Continuatio. True, a case cannot be made for Trevor’s composition of the entire chronicle from 1364 to 1413.16 If, however, we accept that the Continuatio is a composite work, then it can reasonably be argued that Trevor may well have compiled one of the Continuatio component texts – that which terminates in 1405. It is the purpose of this study to revisit the evidence supporting Jones’ advocacy of the authorship of Bishop Trevor. To begin, it is instructive to consider the Continuatio’s composition. Extending from 1364 to 1413, the original text of the chronicle has long been lost and is extant in only a single manuscript, BL, MS Cotton, Galba E. VII. According to Haydon, the Continuatio is a late composite text, pulled together from several smaller bits at some date after 1428. Thus, in its account of events for the year 1384 an interpolated passage mentions the death of John Wyclif, along with an accompanying reference to the later exhumation of his corpse, which we know occurred in 1428; therefore, the text was compiled at some date after this event.17 Kingsford not only endorsed this interpretation, but also went further, noting that ‘in its present form [the Continuatio] is certainly a composite and not an original work’.18 After careful examination of the relationship among several texts, Kingsford concluded that the completed Continuatio was compiled from two principal texts, one extending from 1367 to 1401, and the other, a chronicle in either Latin or English, from 1402 to 1413. For its narrative from 1367 to 1401, Kingsford pointed to ‘a brief Latin Chronicle possibly of Canterbury origin’, which he labelled the Southern Chronicle, found in BL, MS Additional 11714, and which in his opinion was compiled between 1423 and 1426.19 As for the portion of the Continuatio running from 1402 to 1413, Kingsford singled out a closely related English text known as ‘Davies’s Chronicle’ (or the English Eulogii: Yet Another Alleged Historical Incident?’, in Fourteenth Century England, V, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 116–29. 16 Trevor died in Paris on either 10 or 11 April 1410. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. Cf. Handbook of British Chronology, ed. Sir F. M. Powicke and E. B. Fryde, 2nd edn (London, 1961), p. 278. See also J. Tait, revised by R. R. Davies, ‘John Trevor [Siôn Trefor] (d. 1410/1412), Bishop of St Asaph’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27726; R. T. Jenkins, ‘TREVOR, JOHN (I) (died 1357), Bishop of S. Asaph’, in Dictionary of Welsh Biography (London, 1959). Available online at: https://biography.wales/article/s-TREV-JOH-1357. 17 Eulogium Historiarum, vol. 3, p. l. Haydon also points out that BL, MS Galba E. VII is a later copy of the original text, since it ‘is written in one hand apparently of the former half of the fifteenth century, and is remarkably free from erasures and interlineations. It is therefore in all probability not the autograph of the author of the Chronicle which it represents.’ 18 Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, pp. 28, 31. 19 Ibid., p. 275.

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 57

Chronicle), whose narrative spans the years 1377 to 1461. But this text was itself taken from earlier bits, proven by the appearance of three textual divisions in its alignment with the Continuatio – one at 1401, another at 1405, and yet another at 1413. After observing that ‘as far as 1401 the two works seem to have had a common Latin source which may have been of Canterbury origin’, Kingsford noted that another source apparently terminated in 1405: ‘since the resemblance of the English Chronicle to the Continuation after 1405 is not so close as before, it is possible that another of the common originals may have ended about this date’.20 What is the nature of this commonly shared original? More likely than not, according to Kingsford, this text is reproduced in the narrative of the Southern Chronicle: ‘as for the character of the ultimate original the evidence of the Southern Chronicle would seem to show that down to 1401 it was a brief Latin Chronicle possibly of Canterbury origin’.21 In this connection, it is all important to recall that the Southern Chronicle as it now appears was stitched together from two disparate texts: the first extended from 1367 to 1401, and the second from 1402 to 1422. Moreover, both the syntax and contents of the Southern Chronicle up to 1401 indicate that it represents a short prototype text, dashed off hastily – probably from memory – and perhaps written by a layman, since it contains no Canterbury references. Furthermore, yet another indicator concerns the chronicle’s unusually large number of mistakes.22 What becomes quickly apparent, however, is that the Continuatio text ending in 1405 presents numerous examples of alterations, emendations, and interpolations for its narrative, clearly indicating that its composer deviated considerably from the original Latin text by correcting or augmenting the 20 Ibid., pp. 127, 129. That there was a component of the Continuatio with a terminal date of 1405 can be demonstrated by a comparison of its text with that of the English Chronicle. For their coverage of events from 1377 to 1401 (for the reign of Richard II), the Continuatio and the English Chronicle present similar accounts. One notable difference between them, however, concerns Richard II. The English Chronicle omits the lengthy description of Richard’s character found in the Eulogium Historiarium, vol. 3, p. 384; cf. An English Chronicle from 1377 to 1465, ed. J. S. Davies, Camden Society, First Series, 44, (1856), p. 18. Beginning at 1401, however, and running down to 1405, subtle differences in their texts begin to crop up; although they follow similar contours, many of the details are different. Truly prominent differences soon begin to appear after 1405, supporting Kingsford’s view that after 1405 their texts ‘are not as close as before’. Cf. Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 677, n. 50, and Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio Eulogii’, p. 123, n. 24. See also J. Nuttall, The Creation of Lancastrian Kingship: Literature, Language and Politics in Late Medieval England (Cambridge, 2009), p. 18. 21 Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, p. 30; Continuatio, vol. 3, pp. 359–61. See also Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, pp. 676–77. 22 Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 677, n. 48; cf. Continuatio Eulogii, pp. xxviii–xxix.

58

GEORGE B. STOW

shorter text conveyed in the Southern Chronicle. Two exemplary references demonstrating distinctions between the Southern Chronicle and the 1405 text – both overlooked by Kingsford, Clifford, and others – consist of scathing and acerbic descriptions of Richard II, almost certainly inserted as later interpolations into the original source. There is first of all the description of Richard II’s character. This appears in the Southern Chronicle as a brief, simplistic, and apparent afterthought. Found at a most awkward place, sandwiched in between a brief account of Richard’s expedition to Ireland in 1395 and an equally brief account of Queen Anne’s death in 1394, these entries are oddly presented in reverse chronological order.23 In the Continuatio text, however, the description of Richard II, rather lengthy and preachy in tone, appears as a tacked-on, final entry dealing with the climax of Richard’s reign in 1399, before launching into the coronation of Henry IV.24 There can be little doubt that upon encountering the character description in the text of the Latin original from which he was transcribing, the author of the 1405 narrative recognised its awkward setting and consequently proceeded to remove it to a more logical location, and to supplement its brief text with a sardonic rant, designed to cast aspersions on the late king’s memory. The other example presents the well-known, if not bizarre, crown-wearing scene in the king’s chamber under its account of events in 1397. In the Southern Chronicle’s coverage for this year, we find a brief, simplistic, and straightforward account of Richard II’s appointment of Roger Walden, clerk of the king’s treasury, as archbishop of Canterbury, followed by the king’s convening of bishops and councillors at Nottingham from fear of travelling through hostile areas of the realm.25 In the Continuatio, however, we encounter a more extensive and detailed account of Walden’s appointment and consecration as archbishop of Canterbury. Instead, however, of continuing with the convention of bishops at Nottingham, we encounter in medias res the crown-wearing scene, after which we return to the affair in Nottingham.26 The absence of the crown-wearing passage in the Southern Chronicle is consistent with the brief, annalistic nature of the Latin original ending in 1401. BL, Add. MS 11714, f. 12r; Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 676; Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio Eulogii’, p. 122. 24 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 94: Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 675; Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio Eulogii’, p. 122. 25 BL, MS Add. MS 11714, f. 12r; Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 675; Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio Eulogii’, pp. 118–19. 26 Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 82–84. Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, p. 675; Stow, ‘Richard II in the Continuatio Eulogii’, pp. 117–18. According to GivenWilson, the crown-wearing passage is only one of several ‘wholly original’ passages included within the chronicle’s text: Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxxviii. For additional examples of ‘scissoring and pasting’ on the part of the author of the 1405 segment, see Stow, ‘Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum’, pp. 677–80. 23

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 59

As well, a seamless account of events in 1397 provides a narrative that flows more logically and smoothly. When considered within the 1405 text, however, its textual context seems oddly out of place in relation to the subject matter on either end of its appearance. Leading up to the entry, we are informed about events attending the appointment and Roger Walden’s subsequent consecration as archbishop of Canterbury. Following the crown-wearing passage, the narrative returns to matters of church and crown with an account of Richard’s gathering together the newly minted archbishop and others at a council at Nottingham.27 Clearly, then, the crown-wearing reference bears all the hallmarks of a later textual interpolation. With all of this before us, we may draw the following conclusions. First, both the Continuatio and the Southern Chronicle relied upon a common Latin original for their narratives from 1367 to 1401. Secondly, the Southern Chronicle – whose text clearly antedates that of the Continuatio – represents a close replica of this Latin original. Thirdly, since the Continuatio was also compiled in part from this Latin original – and since its narrative clearly represents an expanded version of this shorter text – both the derisive portrayal of Richard II’s character and the crown-wearing passage can only be seen as contextual manipulations and interpolations into the earlier text from 1367 to 1401. It appears, therefore, that the Continuatio draws upon the Latin original for its narrative from 1367 to 1401, and that this text was incorporated into an evolving continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum by an anonymous author writing in or near 1405. We must now consider who may have been the author of the narrative extending from 1367 to 1405. To begin, several clues to the author’s possible identity may be gleaned from chronological and personal inferences conveyed in the Continuatio. It is apparent that our compiler was at work in crafting his compilation around the turn of the fifteenth century. Given-Wilson notes that ‘the author, realizing that he was living through momentous events, began writing at some point in 1399–1400 … Once he began writing … the great events that shook England between 1397 and 1405 … clearly fired his imagination.’28 More precisely, this segment of the Continuatio was written after early March There are several reasons for thinking that the crown-wearing passage was most likely inserted into the text of the Continuatio compiled around 1405. It makes no sense to consider the segment ending in 1401, since it has been demonstrated above that its text fails to include the crown-wearing passage. Nor should we consider the portion of the Continuatio extending from 1405 to 1413, since it has also been shown above that this segment was most likely drawn from a later English text. 28 Continuatio Eulogii, pp. xxxiv, xxxv; cf. p. li. Moreover, ‘More than 40 per cent of a chronicle covering fifty years is devoted to the eight years either side of the revolution (1397–1405).’ Ibid., p. xxxix. Regarding numerous contextual errors, Given-Wilson notes that ‘there are fewer of them after 1397 – surely a sign of more contemporaneous composition’. Ibid., p. xxxiv. See also references regarding ‘accounts of the trials of the friars in 1402 and the dispute within the order in 1404–05’, p. xxxiii, and ‘detailed 27

60

GEORGE B. STOW

1401, the date of William Sawtry’s execution.29 But since the text refers to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, as alive when the text was composed – and since he died on 27 April 1404 – this segment was compiled sometime before this date.30 Perhaps most important, our compiler states emphatically that he is ignorant of events for the years 1390 to 1395. For the year 1391, he writes ‘For the year of the Lord 1391 nothing is recorded here, because the kingdom of England was in a poor state’; and for the years 1393–94, he notes ‘What was done in the realm in the years 1393 and 1394 is not recorded here, however, on account of the vicissitudes of the kingdom of England.’31 As for the character, personality, and background of the author of the narrative of the Continuatio ending in 1405, it is quite apparent that he was a learned man, adept at literary expression. This, since the text of the Continuatio presents a noticeable difference between the inferior prose of those portions borrowed from the Latin original of 1401 and the more elevated Latin of the compiler written near 1405. Evidence of disparities in writing, as noted by Jones, are that In respect of language … there is a distinct difference between the style … the writer of the main portion of the Continuatio indeed showed a real feeling for style and a lively appreciation of the value of words, especially of pairs and groups of nouns and verbs … here is a mannerism of style that deserves mention, viz., a fondness of the use of pairs of words for the sake of emphasis …32

Given-Wilson also mentions signs of clever writing on the part of the author: ‘for the most part, the author’s tone is one of intellectual curiosity rather than the entrenched hostility characteristic of other chroniclers of the time’.33 summary of the articles of complaint circulated by Archbishop Scrope in 1405 …’, p. xxxiv; cf. p. xlii. 29 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 100. Details regarding Sawtry’s arrest and subsequent execution (2 March 1401) are provided in Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi, ed. G. B. Stow (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 212–13, n. 496. 30 Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 8, 44. See also Eulogium Historiarum, vol. 3, p. l. 31 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 68. For a different perspective, see Given-Wilson, Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxxi, who notes that ‘the chronicler’s reportage of the years 1390–5 as a whole is feeble, which might reflect the fact that this interlude between the great crises of 1386–9 and 1397–9 failed to catch his imagination’. Alternatively, Given-Wilson suggests ‘it is hard to believe that he could not have discovered more about the years 1391–5 had he wished to … but perhaps laziness or impatience got the better of him, or perhaps he felt that, following the first great crisis of Richard II’s reign, that of 1386–9, it would make more sense to move directly on to the second’: ibid., pp. xxxiv–xxxv. 32 Jones, ‘Authorship of the Continuation’, pp. 198–99. 33 Continuatio Eulogii, p. xix. And, ‘the Continuatio abounds with picturesque and quotable turns of phrase and, regardless of whether or not these really were the

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 61

It is also evident that our writer was more likely than not an ecclesiastic, or at the very least educated in ecclesiastical issues, as borne out by frequent contextual references. Evidence of having been educated in theology is apparent, as reflected in references not only to the Eucharist, but also to biblical passages.34 We find, for example, accounts of the Great Schism in 1378, the foundation of Westminster Abbey, and affairs of the Franciscans, along with an expression of considerable interest in John Wyclif’s affiliation with Oxford, particularly concerning his interpretations of the Eucharist.35 Obviously disgruntled by Wyclif’s pronouncements, our author sarcastically relates that ‘his disciples preached and disseminated this doctrine throughout England, seducing numerous laymen, including nobles and great lords who defended these false preachers’.36 These factors are noted by Given-Wilson, who remarks that the author’s considered interest in Wyclif’s issues, ‘taken together with the chronicler’s knowledge of and concern for Oxford … indicate that he probably studied theology at the university, possibly around the time of Wyclif’s controversial determinations’.37 Our author was also possessed of a background in legal affairs. Many of his accounts include legalistic inferences exemplified in several ways, revealed in numerous instances throughout the narrative from 1395 to 1405. In his description of the duke of Gloucester’s letter to Richard II requesting mercy from execution, we are informed that in response to one of the king’s justices for his thoughts, the duke wrote his reply in his own hand in English, sealed the letter, and sent it to the king. Wisely, the justice handed the letter to the king on condition that he kept a copy for himself authenticated with the king’s seal.38 ipsissima verba of those into whose mouths the chronicler put them, it has, not surprisingly, been much quoted in histories of the period’. Ibid., p. xxxvii. By way of contrast in regard to the text of the Continuatio, particularly the numerous mistakes in case endings and other usages by the author, Clifford notes that these ‘lead to the suspicion that his knowledge of Latin was greatly inferior to that of the author of the Continuation itself’: Clifford, ‘An Edition of the Continuation’, p. 40. 34 Continuatio, p. xx. 35 Ibid., pp. 24, 28–36, 42–44. Additionally, Wyclif is referred to as ‘master of theology, known as the flower of Oxford’ on p. 24. 36 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 34. The author’s tendency to bring in ecclesiastical references is also represented by his occasional homiletic outbursts, as displayed in his pious harangue in the matter of Richard II’s character-description, particularly the phrase ‘Vigili jubente Coelesti’: cf. n. 22, supra. 37 Continuatio Eulogii, p. xx; cf. p. xxi. 38 Ibid., pp. 128–30. Moreover, ‘There is much to indicate that the chronicler also had some legal knowledge … little wonder that he regarded with such distaste the exclusion of those who were “learned in the law” from the parliaments of 1397 and 1404.’ Ibid., p. xviii.

62

GEORGE B. STOW

Other matters of a legal nature involve issues between church and state. In one example, the author discusses Henry IV’s involvement in a dispute among Franciscans in 1404–05, ‘a great and truly shameful dispute within the orders of the friars minor in England’.39 Quite possibly because of his familiarity with, and involvement in, ecclesiastical and legal matters, our author was at the centre of important events in the late 1390s and early 1400s, particularly events attending the deposition of Richard II and the accession of Henry IV. Interestingly, a large number of important events are presented in an official tone and augmented by frequent reference to recorded sources.40 For example, the Continuatio’s account of events surrounding Richard’s resignation in the Tower, along with its coverage of the parliament of 30 September 1399, seems to come from a person most likely present at the these events. The author, whoever he was, provides a unique and apparently eyewitness account of the proceedings; when Henry of Lancaster entered Westminster Hall, ‘Before him was carried the principal royal sword, embellished with gold and precious jewels; and he sat down in his father’s seat, that is, next to the Bishop of Carlisle.’41 In any case, our author was driven by a determined dislike of Richard II, which, according to Given-Wilson, ‘helps to explain the tone of the chronicle, which is thoroughly inimical to the king’.42 As noted above, he displays his visceral dislike of Richard not only in the diatribe regarding his character, but also in limning a damning portrait of the king’s autocratic behaviour during alleged crown-wearing sessions in his chamber. In addition to these references, the author augments his account of the deposition parliament by presenting a list of ‘the numerous crimes which Richard had committed against the estates, his oath, and the laws of the realm were recited and the death and banishment

Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 128–29. For additional coverage, see Continuatio Eulogii, pp. xxxii–xxxiv. Clifford notes that ‘It can be said with certainty … that the author had access to the accounts in the Parliament Rolls’, ‘An Edition of the Continuation’, p. 24. Jones points out that the author was ‘able to consult original sources, and was very probably an eye-witness of much that had taken place during the latter years of the reign of Richard II and the early years of the reign of Henry IV’: Jones, ‘Authorship of the Continuation’, p. 200. 41 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 92. 42 Given-Wilson remarks that the chronicler regarded Richard II ‘as his own worst enemy’, Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxxvi. Cf. Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. GivenWilson, p. 6. In the view of Given-Wilson, ‘the fact that the chronicler only began writing after 1399 naturally colours his portrayal of Richard … By the late 1390s … it is becoming clear that it is Richard’s own inclinations – his willfulness, his insecurity, his vindictiveness, his vainglory – that underlie England’s descent into tyranny’, Continuatio Eulogii, pp. xxxix, xli. 39 40

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 63

of lords who were peers of the realm, and his will …’43 In addition, the author frequently incorporates anti-Ricardian material from the Lancastrian ‘Record and Process’, in stating that Richard was never really interested in his subjects’ welfare, and that before departing for Ireland in 1399 Richard made his will ‘which according to those who saw it was greatly prejudicial to the realm’.44 We are also reminded of Richard’s duplicitous behaviour in his dealings with Thomas Arundel, the archbishop of Canterbury, in forcing him to deliver his brother Richard for trial before the Revenge Parliament of 1397: You are a fine-looking man, but you are the falsest of men. You promised me, and swore upon the body of Christ, that you would not harm my brother. Yet after I brought him into your presence, I never saw him again.45

Finally, the Continuatio follows the Lancastrian line in saying that Richard died of either voluntary starvation or grief: ‘it was said that he died after refusing to eat because of his despondency’.46 By all appearances, our author began to write with an evident dislike for Richard II, but then for whatever reasons subsequently took a similarly disparaging view of Henry IV.47 For example, in its account of Richard’s deposition in 1399, the Continuatio incorporates material not only from the Lancastrian ‘Record and Process’, but also from the ‘Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation’.48 From this source, the Continuatio’s author provides a unique account of Richard’s resignation in the Tower. Not only does the narrative recount Richard’s unconditional surrender of the crown ‘absolute et sine conditione’, but it mentions that witnesses to this event took notes to be used in future proceedings.49 In essence, he gives the impression that Richard reluctantly resigned the crown, and then only when he was told that he had no choice but to resign. Continuatio Eulogii, p. 92. This follows nearly verbatim the account of Richard II’s deposition as presented in the ‘Manner of the King’s Renunciation’. Cf. Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 162–67. Cf. C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation: A “Lancastrian Narrative”’? EHR, 108 (1993), 365–69. See also Continuatio Eulogii, pp. xxiv, xlii–xliii. 44 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 88. 45 Ibid., p. 90. 46 Ibid., p. 98. 47 Given-Wilson points out that the author expresses a ‘deeply ambivalent’ image of Henry IV: ‘no other contemporary chronicler raises as many questions about Henry’s claim to the throne as he does’. Continuatio Eulogii, p. xlii. 48 Ibid., pp. xlii–xliii. Given-Wilson also notes that ‘the author certainly did not succumb, as some of his contemporaries did, to the propaganda circulated by the new king …’, and that the author ‘presents a more ambiguous view of the usurpation then the well-oiled and much-publicized fabrications of the “Record and Process”, the official Lancastrian account of the revolution’. Ibid., pp. xxiii, xlii–xliii; cf. p. xxxiv. 49 Ibid., p. 93. 43

64

GEORGE B. STOW

Our author then provides additional information, perhaps from first-hand sources, apparently intended to demean Henry IV’s popularity among his subjects. Among these is a narrative on the ‘Epiphany Rising’ in the opening months of 1400.50 The Continuatio also relates the fullest description of rumours that Richard II was still alive in 1400, and living in Scotland.51 Then in 1403 and 1404, the Continuatio conveys additional insinuations of the former king’s activities, including the capture of John (William) Serle, who confessed to fraudulently representing Ricard as yet alive, for which he was subsequently executed.52 Additional references to Henry IV bear the appearance of eyewitness accounts. For one, we are given an interesting description of the king’s incursion into North Wales in order to suppress supporters of the Welsh rising, including friars minor holed up in the convent of Llanfaes, where ‘the royal army killed and captured the friars and plundered the convent’.53 For another, the author conveys a heated conversation between Henry IV and Henry Percy at the precipice of the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403 that could only have come from an eyewitness. Having had his fill, Henry IV bellowed out: ‘“Go forward, standard-bearer”, which is to say, “Banners advance”’!54 Perhaps the most interesting of these depictions of Henry IV are detailed and sustained interests in regard to the Franciscans’ distrust of his person in the early years of Henry IV’s reign. In Derek W. Whitfield’s view, for these years, and more especially from 1401 to 1405, the Eulogium [sic] is a source of prime importance for the political history of the English Province … The most detailed account which has survived is that used alike by the continuator of the Eulogium and the writer of Davies’ English Chronicle … the former is richer in detail and must provide the general framework of the present narrative …55

Indeed, so well informed is the Continuatio’s account of Franciscans’ involvement in resistance movements against Henry IV, along with the king’s vigorous suppression of their activities, that details related to the trial of a

Ibid., pp. 96–98. Ibid., pp. 104–06. 52 Ibid., p. 104; cf. pp. 122, 126. 53 Ibid., p. 102. 54 Ibid., p. 116. 55 D. W. Whitfield, ‘Conflicts of Personality and Principle: The Political and Religious Crisis in the English Franciscan Province, 1400–1409’, Franciscan Studies, n.s., 17 (1957), pp. 336, 326. For these reasons, it is difficult to imagine that a Franciscan could have either penned the hostile allegation concerning Richard’s crown-wearing ceremony or limned the negative portrait of his character as found in the Continuatio. 50 51

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 65

priest-friar represent extraordinarily detailed and valuable accounts of coram rege proceedings relating to the friar conspirators … they must be regarded as genuine reports, written in the first instance either by an eye-witness or by one having access to the Coram Rege Rolls, with which the chronicler’s accounts closely agree.56 In a larger sense, our composer of the part of the Continuatio terminating in 1405 was conspicuously interested in, and well informed about, affairs in Wales; he most certainly had a ‘keen interest in Welsh affairs during the years 1399 to 1405’.57 Above all else, and perhaps from personal involvement, our author presents a veiled sympathy for the Welsh cause, especially the activities of Owain Glyn Dŵr, the leader of the Welsh revolt. The most relevant of these relates the bishop of St Asaph’s admonition to parliament in 1401 to treat Glyn Dŵr with leniency, ‘lest the Welsh should rise up’, followed by the reply ‘that they cared naught for barefooted buffoons’.58 It is interesting to note here the author’s evident admiration of Glyn Dŵr in all of this, for he says that, when approached by the Percys to form a mutual alliance against Henry IV, the wily Welsh rebel suspected trickery on Percy’s part.59 Likewise, the author pays particular attention to Glyn Dŵr’s siege of Cardiff castle in 1404, which again gives the impression of an eyewitness account. The chronicler tells us that ‘Owain seized the town and burned it, apart from one quarter in which the friars minor lived, which he spared, along with their convent, out of love for the friars.’60 He adds that when the friars requested the return of their books and chalices, Glyn Dŵr remarked: ‘Why did you put your valuables in the castle? If you had held on to them yourselves, they would have been safe with you.’61 This seems to manifest kindness on the part of Glyn

Ibid., p. 327, n. 19. Examples abound of the Continuatio’s uniquely detailed reporting of the friars’ conspiracy, along with Henry’s attempts at suppressing the movement during the years 1401–02. Prominent among these is the trial and ultimate execution of Roger Frisby, the friars’ leader. Ibid., pp. 106–12. 57 Jones, ‘Authorship of the Continuation’, p. 198. Interestingly, amidst his discussion of events in 1404, our chronicler remarks that ‘In Somerset … numerous crows from foreign parts could be seen arriving, and starlings attached and killed them. Later, Bretons arrived there looking for plunder, and poor common people killed them …’, ibid., pp. 126–28. In Kingsford’s estimation, this passage may indicate that this portion of the Continuatio represents a textual interpolation ‘made by a west-country compiler when putting together material derived from various sources’, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century, p. 28. 58 Continuatio Eulogii, p. 100; cf. pp. 102, 112. 59 Ibid., p. 114. 60 Ibid., pp. 122–24. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. 61 Ibid., p. 124. 56

66

GEORGE B. STOW

Dŵr; and it turns out this incident represents the final instalment of the author’s personal reporting on events connected with the Welsh revolt.62 Upon reflection, it appears that many aspects of Trevor’s life and career coalesce with the clues presented above; they therefore contribute to the possibility of his authorship of the portion of the Continuatio extending from 1367 to 1405. Educated at Oxford during the 1380s, Trevor was a ‘man of letters’, well known for his interest in the arts, and described by contemporaries as ‘a patron of poets and master of the art of versification’.63 The fourteenth-century Welsh poet Iolo Goch, who had close ties to St Asaph and who was apparently patronised by Bishop Trevor, wrote two cywydds or poems in honour of Trevor. In the first of these, Goch notes that the bishop’s court included ‘scholars, readers of books, and squires, handsome company …’64 The second poem was addressed to Trevor as he was about to embark to Scotland in 1397 as Richard’s ambassador. As in the earlier poem, Goch praises Trevor’s interest in the arts, calling him ‘priest, magnate of the church, proprietor, poet’s friend’,65 and he prays for Trevor’s safekeeping and return. With these accolades associated with Trevor’s love for the arts, it would appear that perhaps Trevor was possessed of the requisite literary skills to have composed the portion of the Continuatio extending from 1367 to 1405.66

A. Marchant points out that the Continuatio’s account of the destruction of Llanfaes abbey presents Glyn Dŵr as ‘fairly sympathetically characterized’: Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr, p. 111. 63 E. J. Jones, ‘An Examination of the Authorship of the Deposition and Death of Richard II Attributed to Creton’, Speculum, 15 (1940), 460–77, at p. 472. Cf. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. 64 Iolo Goch, Poems, ed. Dafydd Johnston (Llandysul, Dyfed, 1993), 16: ll. 4–5. Goch adds that at Trevor’s court he ‘would get eloquent nostalgic poetry, string music, splendour …’, ibid., ll. 53–54. 65 Ibid., 17: ll. 2–3. 66 It has been suggested that Trevor was the author of three works, the most notable of which is a late fourteenth-century Latin treatise on the science of heraldry, the Tractatus de Armis (Treatise on Heraldry) written under the pen-name Johannes de Bado Aureo: Medieval Heraldry, ed. E. J. Jones (Cardiff, 1943), pp. xxxvii–xliv. Cf. E. J. Jones, ‘Sion Trevor, Llyfr Arveu, and Buchedd Sant Martin’, Bulletin of Celtic Studies, V (1931), 37–39. Suggestive of his authorship of this work, Trevor is listed as ‘Master John Trevor, doctor of laws’ when appointed to a commission in 1389 assigned to settle a dispute between two families over a coat of arms in the court of chivalry: CPR, 1388–1392, p. 130. Cf. J. E. Lloyd, Owen Glendower (Oxford, 1931), p. 124. Trevor may also have authored a Welsh translation of the life of Saint Martin – the Buchedd Sant Marthin: Jones notes that ‘The Welsh Life of St Martin was composed in honor of the patron saint of the Church of St Martin near Oswestry, where the bishop of St Asaph had a seat in virtue of his position as bishop’: ‘Authorship of the Continuation’, p. 201. 62

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 67

Trevor was also a prominent figure in matters ecclesiastical. As noted above, Trevor began his career at Oxford; in 1381, he was pronounced B.C.L. (Bachelor of Civil Law), and by 1389 he was designated D.C.N. and C.L. (Doctor of Civil and Canon Law).67 His rise to considerable prominence in ecclesiastical circles began shortly thereafter. In 1382, he was canon and prebendary of St Asaph, and precentor and canon of Bath and Wells, an office that he held until 1393.68 In the meantime, the chapter at St Asaph elected him as their bishop in 1389, and in 1390 he was granted permission to travel to Rome to seek papal confirmation of his election. Unfortunately, however, Pope Urban VI had previously appointed another to the position, so Trevor spent the next five years in Rome as auditor of the papal palace.69 When the bishopric of St Asaph once again became vacant in 1394, the congregation again elected Trevor as their bishop; on 6 April 1395, he received royal permission to accept the position, and he was consecrated on 17 April 1395.70 Owing to his legal training and experience in canon law, Trevor also developed important political connections and involvements. Described by Adam Usk as ‘utriusque iuris doctor’,71 Trevor’s counsel was sought out by Richard II in the later 1390s, and he emerged as one of Richard’s most trusted ecclesiastical advisors. Along with John of Gaunt, Trevor was appointed by Richard as one of the envoys for negotiations with Scotland in February 1398 and again in April 1399. Trevor was next appointed by Richard to a council scheduled to meet at Oxford in January 1399 to advise the king on matters related to the ongoing papal schism.72 For reasons unknown, however, Trevor was among the first to abandon Richard and to join the side of Henry of Lancaster when he landed at Bridlington. On the very day (16 August) when Henry took control of Richard at Flint, Trevor was made chamberlain of Chester, Flint, and North Wales; and Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. Cf. R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (Oxford, 1995), p. 59: ‘His career was a glittering demonstration of what opportunities should have been open to a talented Welsh cleric: a doctor of canon and civil law from the university of Oxford, he came to hold canonries in five English and Welsh bishoprics, gained experience at the Roman curia, and was entrusted with major diplomatic missions by the English court.’ 68 Tait (rev. Davies), ‘John Trevor’; Emden, vol. 3, pp. 1898–99 provides a complete list. 69 Jones notes that, in order to secure papal confirmation of his election as bishop of St Asaph, Trevor ‘left England in 1390 not to return until 1395 [sic]’, J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry the Fourth, 3 vols (London, 1894), vol. 2, p. 11. 70 Emden, vol. 3, p. 1898. Cf. Handbook of British Chronology, p. 278. 71 The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377–1421, ed. and trans. C. Given-Wilson (Oxford, 1997), p. 218. According to E. M. Thompson, ‘Adam was no doubt acquainted with Trevaur …’, Chronicon Adae de Usk A.D. 1377–1421, ed. Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, 2nd edn (London, 1904), p. 287, n. 2. 72 Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. 67

68

GEORGE B. STOW

on 24 August, ‘in presence of Henry, Duke of Lancaster, Trevor received from the captured Richard the chamberlain’s seals’.73 In September 1399, Trevor was the sole bishop chosen to represent the clerical estate on the commission appointed to draw up formal charges of deposition against Richard II; and it was Trevor who read the sentence of deposition before parliament.74 In the same session, Trevor delivered an angry and heated harangue to the Commons for questioning Lancaster’s making of royal grants, at which, according to Adam Usk, the bishop of St Asaph burst out, ‘This petition is rude, and it is unjust, because it encourages the king to be niggardly, and that is a disservice to kingship, which is better served by a generous degree of largesse. It also suggests that his subjects ought to impose restraints upon the king’s natural benevolence, and such ideas seem wrong to me. Rather than he being punished, it is those who submit unreasonable and unmerited requests to him who ought to be punished.’75

For all of his efforts on Henry IV’s behalf, Trevor was rewarded by his new royal patron. Trevor’s star must have risen rapidly among the leading men within Henry’s court, for early in 1400 he was dispatched as a royal envoy to Spain to announce Henry’s accession to Enrique II of Castile; later on, in August, Trevor accompanied Henry and the English army in its unfortunate invasion of Scotland.76 In January and February 1402, Trevor was named as one of the lieutenants of North Wales to act as nominal governor; and on 22 April of the following year, the prince of Wales appointed Trevor as lieutenant for the counties of Chester and Flint.77 Trevor was next listed from 13 June to 10 July among the prince of Wales’s ranks in Wales; it was he who led ten esquires and forty archers during the battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403.78 Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 10; CPR, 1396–99, p. 591. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. Cf. ‘The Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation’, pp. 165–66; ‘The Record and Process’, p. 185. See also Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. GivenWilson, p. 68; St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 202–03; cf. pp. 212–13. See Wylie, History of England, II: 10; J. L. Kirby, Henry IV of England (London, 1970), p. 69, D. R. Carlson, ‘Feriby’s “Lament for Richard II” and the English Literary History ca. 1400’, The Chaucer Review, 54 (2019), 373–410, at p. 377. 75 Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 82. Usk adds that ‘I liked this response, for it accords with the Codex [in the Corpus Iuris Civilis], “Concerning petitions, the granting away of goods”, the second law.’ 76 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 2, pp. 278–79. Taylor describes Trevor as ‘a lawyer experienced in diplomatic missions’, ibid., p. 279, n. 380. Cf. Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 10; Kirby, Henry IV, p. 82. 77 Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, pp. 10–11. Cf. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899. 78 Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 11. Cf. Lloyd, Owen Glendower, pp. 123–25. See also Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 114–18; St Albans Chronicle, pp. 368–77. 73

74

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 69

In spite of all this, Trevor was indelibly a Welshman. Welsh by birth, Adam Usk describes him as ‘Johannem Trevar de Powysia’.79 It comes as no surprise, then, that in the early days of the Welsh rebellion led by Owain Glyn Dŵr, Trevor warned parliament in 1400 ‘not to treat the said Owain with complete disdain, lest the Welsh should rise up …’80 Trevor’s dire warning proved prophetic. In 1402, after defeating royalist forces, Glyn Dŵr embarked on a brutal campaign to punish those Welshmen who had sided with the enemy. Glyn Dŵr and his men laid waste the town of Bangor, after which the bishop of St Asaph was apparently singled out for special retribution owing to his perceived collusion with Henry IV. During Trevor’s absence from his diocese, the cathedral at St Asaph and three of Trevor’s manor houses, along with all of their sacred contents, were ‘burnt and utterly destroyed’ by Glyn Dŵr’s forces, leaving ‘no stick left’.81 Forced into poverty, and for a time dependent on the archbishop of Canterbury for the bare essentials of life, Trevor soon began to reconsider his loyalty to Henry IV and the English. A variety of factors finally influenced Trevor to once again shift his loyalty from one patron to another. Whether it was his sudden penury, whether Trevor’s attitude towards Henry IV soured when the government did nothing to render any form of assistance to his diocese, whether it was his disgust with the Crown’s increasingly harsh suppression of the Welsh revolt, or whether as some critics allege he sensed that the tide was shifting in Glyn Dŵr’s favour, Trevor ‘slipped away secretly’ and joined Glyn Dŵr’s resistance movement during the summer of 1404.82 R. R. Davies notes that as Trevor ‘wrestled with his conscience’, he may have gone over to Glyn Dŵr for one of three reasons. The first of these was ‘immediate and geographical: in the summer of 1403 the Welsh of the county of Flint, and with it much of the diocese of St Asaph, defected en masse to Glyn Dŵr’s (or Hotspur’s) cause’.83 The second prompt

Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 68. Kirby, Henry IV of England, p. 69. 80 Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 101–02. 81 Wylie, History of England, vol. e, p. 11; cf. D. R. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St. Asaph (London, 1874), pp. 66–67. Cf. G. Williams, Renewal and Reformation: Wales c. 1415–1642 (Oxford, 1987), p. 21. 82 Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, pp. 11–12. Adam Usk informs us that Trevor ‘threw in his lot with Owain for both peace and war …’, Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 218. Walsingham, clearly displeased, labels Trevor’s jump to Glyn Dŵr as a ‘retrograde step’, and he remarks that Trevor ‘turned into a deceitful bow, and as an enemy now that he had joined an enemy, he was judged a public enemy of the realm’, Chronica Maiora, vol. 2, pp. 428–29; C. Given-Wilson, Henry IV (New Haven, 2016), pp. 240, 355, 359. 83 Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, p. 213. Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 12. 79

70

GEORGE B. STOW

may have been cultural and genealogical … He would almost certainly have been acquainted with his contemporary and neighbour, Owain Glyn Dŵr … and once Owain’s uprising became a truly national revolt, the strains on Bishop John’s patriotic heartstrings were more than he could withstand.84 For the next six years, from 1404 to 1410, Trevor ‘remained a prominent figure among Owain’s barefoots, burning, slaying, robbing, flogging, and imprisoning his former friends’.85 For example, as he had led a contingent of forces during Henry IV’s assault at Shrewsbury in 1403, Trevor almost certainly played a part in Glyn Dŵr’s siege of Cardiff sometime during the fall, 1404.86 More than that, Trevor was undoubtedly a great asset to Glyn Dŵr in terms of diplomatic affairs. In the view of R. R. Davies, Trevor, ‘a distinguished ecclesiastic, diplomat, and administrator … brought an immense amount of experience and wide contacts to Glyn Dŵr’s cause when he defected to it in 1404’.87 In February 1405, Trevor was instrumental in arranging the so-called Tripartite Indenture between Glyn Dŵr, Edmund Mortimer, and the earl of Northumberland.88 Then in March 1406 Trevor was appointed to a deliberative assembly to advise Glyn Dŵr regarding negotiations with the French for their martial assistance in return for Glyn Dŵr’s support of the Avignonese pope, Benedict XIII. After consultation, a letter from Glyn Dŵr to Charles VI, known as the Pennal Letter, was dispatched on 31 March 1406.89 Trevor apparently maintained his loyalty to Glyn Dŵr’s movement for several more years, for as late as May 1409 he is still referred to as ‘episcopus praetensus’, and as the leader of the rebels in Wales.90 At some date around this time, Trevor was sent by Glyn Dŵr to France to pursue further assistance for the revolt, and he died in Paris on either 10 or 11 April 1410.91 From the foregoing analyses of the Continuatio’s composition and authorship, we can draw the following conclusions. First, it has been demonstrated that Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, pp. 213–14. In August 1405, Trevor was deprived of the temporalities of his see by Henry IV, Tait (rev. Davies) ‘John Trevor’; Biographical Register, vol. 3, p. 1899. 85 Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 12; cf. D. R. Thomas, A History of the Diocese of St Asaph (London, 1874), pp. 66–67. Cf. Williams, Renewal and Reformation, p. 21. 86 Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, p. 116; cf. Given-Wilson, Henry IV, pp. 240, 285, n. 16. 87 Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, p. 116; cf. pp. 164, 187. 88 Lloyd, Owen Glendower, pp. 93–94, 124. Cf. Given-Wilson, Henry IV, p. 6; Wylie, History of England, vol. 2, p. 12. 89 Lloyd, Owen Glendower, p. 119; cf. n. 1. Cf. Emden, vol. 3, p. 1899; The Welsh Academy Encyclopedia of Wales, ed. J. Davies, N. Jenkins, and M. Baines (Cardiff, 2008). 90 Tait (rev. Davies), ‘John Trevor’; cf. Medieval Heraldry, ed. Jones, p. xxxvi. 91 Davies, Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr, p. 214. Cf. Handbook of British Chronology, p. 278; Adam Usk says that Trevor died in Rome on 5 October 1412; Chronicle of Adam of Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 218–19, n. 3. 84

Authorship of the Continuation of the

eulogium historiarum 71

so far from consisting of a unified text written by a single author, perhaps a Franciscan, around the year 1413, the Continuatio’s narrative represents a composite narrative compiled of several segments denoted by textual divisions at 1401, 1405, and 1413. Most important, it has been shown that an anonymous author, writing in or near 1405, carried his continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum from 1367 to 1405 – incorporating the short Latin original from 1367 to 1401 – while from 1405 to 1413 the Continuatio text was constructed at a much later date from a series of component sources. As for the author, several aspects of Trevor’s chequered career discussed above, along with his character and personality, present compelling arguments in favour of his identity as the author of the segment of the Continuatio terminating in 1405. For one thing, that Trevor studied theology and canon law at Oxford falls in line with the observation that ‘internal evidence … suggests that the author of the Continuatio … had studied theology, probably at Oxford’.92 For another, Trevor’s education in law at Oxford coalesces with the observation that ‘In good lawyerly fashion, the chronicler often cites the authorities … upon which legal arguments were based.’93 Finally, Trevor’s reputation as a ‘man of letters’ and a ‘patron of the arts’ provided the wherewithal to write in a ‘higher standard than that of the Eulogium itself’, and with ‘a real feeling for style and a lively appreciation of the value of words, especially of pairs and groups of nouns and verbs’.94 Particularly telling are chronological references consistent with the notion that Trevor’s composition of the pre-1405 portion of the Continuatio was written ‘in the form of a diary during his active career, and discontinued while he was a fugitive’.95 First, the Continuatio’s skimpy coverage of events from 1390 to 1395 aligns with Trevor’s absence in Rome during this period. Secondly, Trevor’s vacillations in loyalty from 1399 through 1405 contributed to the Continuatio’s value in that it reveals ‘much that is not found in any other primary source’; its narrative conveys ‘passages which are wholly original to the Continuatio’ and ‘unique information … where the chronicler adds significant detail, some of it seemingly derived from eyewitnesses’.96 Among the more significant plethora of eyewitness passages that betray Trevor’s personal presence at each event – discussed above – are the following: Trevor’s recital of deposition charges against Richard II in 1399; his parliamentary outburst in support of Henry IV’s power to dispense favours in the same year; his dire warning in parliament in 1400 against riling the anger of the Welsh; and his repetition of an exchange between Henry IV and Henry Percy before the battle 92 93 94 95 96

Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxi. Ibid., p. xviii. Jones, ‘Authorship of the Continuation’, p. 199. Jones, Medieval Heraldry, p. xlviii. Continuatio Eulogii, p. xxxviii.

72

GEORGE B. STOW

of Shrewsbury in 1403, where he led a cohort of royal forces. Furthermore, following his defection to Glyn Dŵr in the summer of 1404, Trevor was most likely present during the colourful account of a warm-hearted exchange between Glyn Dŵr and the friars amidst the besiegement of Cardiff later in the same year. A critical eyewitness account, this reference has been described as ‘an intriguing entry’, primarily because ‘it is the only example of direct speech from Owain Glyn Dŵr in all the chronicles examined’.97 Perhaps most revealing are Trevor’s distracting engagements in all manner of subsequent diplomatic endeavours launched by Glyn Dŵr in 1405; for example, missions to Scotland and France, which taken together precipitated the abrupt termination of his continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum in precisely this year. Particularly relevant attributions of the Continuatio to Trevor’s pen are manifested among the Continuatio’s ‘wholly original’ passages; most notable among these are the interpolated texts alleging Richard II’s crown-wearing ceremonies, along with the inimical and scathing depiction of the king’s character, conveyed only in the 1405 segment of the Continuatio. As pointed out earlier, it is quite apparent that for whatever reasons Trevor bore an unbounded grudge and outright hatred of Richard II; thus, ‘the chronicler’s tone of bitter hostility towards Richard’.98 Well known for his quick temper and harsh tongue, particularly regarding perceived wrongdoings, these passages are of a piece with Trevor’s own character and personality. For a keen insight into his temperament, we are fortunate in having the following portrait provided by Trevor’s loyal and adoring contemporary, the poet Iolo Goch: lord of splendid office over a monastic community; proud to the proud, like a hawk he watches, … harsh to the harsh – by the strength of the cross! – Overbearing his nature, strong and vigorous, …99

John Trevor, bishop of St Asaph, was the ideal man to chronicle such turbulent times.

97 98 99

Marchant, Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr, p. 110. Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 64. Poems, 16: ll. 88–93.

PART II • GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION

4 The Bequests of Isabel of Castile, 1st Duchess of York, and Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’ JENNY STRATFORD

 A lady of sensual and self-indulgent disposition, she had been worldly and lustful; yet in the end by the grace of Christ, she repented and was converted. By the command of the king she was buried at his manor of Langley with the friars, where, so it is said, the bodies of many traitors had been placed together.1

T

homas Walsingham’s characterisation of Isabel of Castile (1355–92), 1st duchess of York, is not his only harsh moral judgement of a great aristocrat. The editors of the St Albans Chronicle have underlined his traditional outlook and his marked preference for ‘ladies of extreme piety’, attitudes that no doubt influenced his view of the duchess.2 His information was not obtained at first hand. In both this part of the Chronica maiora, completed by 1400, and in Ypodigma Neustriae, dedicated to Henry V, Walsingham recorded the date of Isabel’s death as 1394, two years after it occurred. Some four decades after the duchess died, the scribe, John Shirley, added a gossipy and unreliable afterword to Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’ in the anthology he compiled between 1429 and 1432. Shirley linked the love affair in the poem with a court scandal involving ‘Eodem anno obiit ducissa Eboraci, soror uterina ducisse Lancastrie, domina carnalis et delicata, mundialis et venerea, set tamen in fine, Christe gracia, penitens et conuersa. Hec sepulta est iussu regis apud manerium suum de Langeleye, inter fratres, ubi collocata sunt, ut dicitur, multorum corpora proditorum’, St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 962–63; Ypodigma Neustriae, ed. H. T. Riley (London, RS, 1876), p. 366, ‘mulier mollis et delicata, sed in fine prout fertur, satis poenitens et conversa’. I thank Caroline Barron, Julia Boffey, and Ann Payne, who kindly read an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 For Walsingham’s general outlook, his preference for pious ladies, and his approving comment at the death of Isabel’s sister, Constanza, ‘femina mirabiliter Deo devota’, ibid., pp. cv–cxi, 960. 1

76

JENNY STRATFORD

‘the lady of York’ and Richard II’s half-brother, John Holand, earl of Huntingdon (c. 1352–1400). This has been thought to endorse Walsingham’s misanthropic view of a Spanish princess. In particular, it has lent colour to the suggestion that the duchess’s youngest child, Richard (1385–1415), was the illegitimate son of Huntingdon.3 A very different side to Isabel’s story emerges from the little that is known of her life, from her husband’s will, and especially from the dispositions in the last will and testament she made on her deathbed in 1392. Isabel was the third of four children of Pedro I, also known as Pedro the Cruel, who ruled Castile from 1350. Their mother was the vivacious and intelligent Maria de Padilla, often described as Pedro’s mistress. In 1361, when Isabel was only six, her mother died. The following year, Pedro declared that he and Maria had been lawfully married before he was forced to espouse his estranged French wife, Blanche of Bourbon, who was by then also dead, some said murdered by her husband. His claim of an earlier marriage was subsequently endorsed by the Cortes, thus legitimising Pedro’s children by Maria. Their youngest child and only son, Alfonso, had died aged about three in 1362, making Beatriz (1353–67), the oldest of the three daughters, heir to the Crown. By 1367, only the second and third daughters survived, Constanza (1354–94), later the wife of John of Gaunt, and Isabel, who was younger by a year.4 For most of Isabel’s childhood, Castile was at war.5 In March 1366, Enrique of Trastámara, Pedro’s bastard brother, usurped the throne as Enrique II. Pedro fled from Seville in late May, taking with him his two younger daughters and what he could save of his treasure. The royal party travelled for many weeks by land and sea seeking refuge. Pedro made first for Portugal, where he had earlier sent the eldest, Beatriz, who was betrothed to the Portuguese heir. There, Pedro was refused shelter and the betrothal was broken off. From Galicia, the royal party travelled to Bayonne, arriving there at the beginning of August. On reaching Bordeaux, Pedro was honourably received by the Black Prince and Joan of Kent; he was lodged with his hosts in the abbey of Saint-André. The Black Prince agreed to intervene in the civil war in Castile on behalf of Pedro. This was in accordance with the Anglo-Castilian alliance of 1362, but harsh financial terms and territorial concessions were imposed in the agreements sealed at Libourne in September 1366. Pedro sold or pledged most

Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20, pp. 129–39. I thank Nicolas Bell, librarian of Trinity, for his assistance. 4 For the historical background, P. E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III and Richard II (Oxford, 1955), and for Isabel, ibid., esp. pp. 53–54, 311; GEC, XII: 2, pp. 898–99. 5 Russell, English Intervention, esp. chapters 2–7; Pedro López de Ayala, Cronica del rey Don Pedro y del rey Don Enrique …, ed. G. Orduna, 2 vols (Buenos Aires, 1994–97), indexed by regnal year; Ferñao Lopes, Chronique du roi D. Pedro I, ed. G. Macchi and J. Steunou (Paris, 1985), chapters 37 to 40. 3

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK77

of his treasure to meet the costs of the army. The Castilian princesses remained in Gascony as the Black Prince’s hostages to guarantee repayment by Pedro of the vast sums involved.6 Pedro was temporarily restored to his throne after the Black Prince’s great victory at Nájera in April 1367, but in 1369 Enrique captured and assassinated his half-brother. Since Beatriz, the oldest of the three princesses, had already died, Constanza became the legitimist claimant to the throne of Castile. In 1371 at Roquefort near Mont-de-Marsan, John of Gaunt married her, fostering English counter claims to French influence in the Iberian Peninsula. Gaunt and his new wife sailed for England from La Rochelle, taking the sixteen-year-old Isabel with them. For the voyage, Gaunt commandeered a carrack laden with salt, obliging the captain to discharge his cargo to make room for the passengers.7 In late November or early December, they disembarked near Plymouth. By 30 January 1372, Edward III and the council had recognised Gaunt’s claims to be king of Castile in right of his wife; his new armorial bearings were endorsed by proclamation. Ten days later, on Shrove Tuesday, Constanza made her ceremonial entry into London, where she was greeted by the Black Prince, nobles, and citizens. Isabel was no doubt among those in the procession as it rode through Cheapside and on to Gaunt’s great house, the Savoy.8 In July of the same year, at the behest of Edward III, Edmund of Langley (1341–1402), his fourth son, then earl of Cambridge, and from 1385 1st duke of York, married Isabel at Wallingford.9 The marriage was intended to protect the English claim to the Crown of Castile, in that it guarded against the possibility of Constanza dying without an heir.10 Among the presents John of Gaunt Foedera, iii (ii), pp. 115–23. The treasure Pedro pledged to the Black Prince probably included the jewel-encrusted and immensely valuable ‘armour of Spain’. The whole set (sword, saddle, helmet, and crown) was among Edward III’s treasure at his death. Various pieces from it were pledged for loans to the Crown by Richard II and the Lancastrian kings. See J. Stratford, Richard II and the English Royal Treasure (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 298–99. 7 JGR 1371–75, vol. 1, p. 94; A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (London, 1992), pp. 47–48 with references for the carrack and the itinerary on arrival in England. 8 The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333 to 1381, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester, 1927), p. 69. Shrove Tuesday fell on 9 February in 1372. 9 On the evidence of the letter cited by Russell, English Intervention, p. 176, the date of the marriage at Wallingford was probably Sunday, 4 July, not Sunday, 11 July as usually stated. The date is expressed as the Sunday after the translation of St Thomas. The apostle’s feast (3 July) fell on a Saturday in 1372, whereas that of Thomas Becket (7 July) was on a Wednesday. 10 Cf. A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England, ii, c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1996), p. 284 and n. citing P. E. Russell. I thank Peter Rycraft for alerting me to documents showing that the claim to Castile on behalf of Edmund and Isabel’s descendants persisted; letters of credence, May 1413, on behalf of the childless 6

78

JENNY STRATFORD

gave to Isabel to mark her marriage was a set of silver-gilt vessels. The tripod, hanap (cup), and ewer were bought from the leading London goldsmith, Nicholas Twyford. The tripod (a stand to support a cup with a short foot) was an elaborate display piece in the shape of a monster. Three sergeants with maces stood guard against buttresses on a platform of green enamel. The hanap was not described, but the ewer was enamelled with grotesques and with crowned roses. Gaunt paid for a second silver-gilt hanap and ewer, the hanap made by Twyford, given on the same occasion by Constanza to her sister. These entries provide the only descriptions known of Isabel’s household plate.11 The new countess of Cambridge does not feature very often in the narrative sources, but in 1381 and 1382 she emerges briefly from obscurity. She accompanied her husband on his abortive Portuguese expedition to intervene in the war against Castile. The earl and countess took with them their son, Edward (c. 1373–1415), later earl of Rutland, and from 1402, 2nd duke of York, who was then about eight years old. The chronicler, Ferñao Lopes, describes the ceremonial reception when they reached Lisbon in early July. He reports that King Fernando went on board ship to greet the new arrivals and to parlay with the earl, bringing the royal party ashore to a welcome by the citizens. As they walked in procession to the cathedral, Lopes writes very plausibly (the slope up from the Tagus is steep), that the king supported Isabel on his arm. After prayers, horses were waiting, and as a further mark of honour, Fernando led Isabel’s mount ‘by the rein’ to the monastery of Săo Domingos where the principal guests were lodged. At the welcome feast in the castle of Săo Jorge, rich gifts were exchanged, as was customary at all European courts.12 The papal schism posed problems. Fernando had opted to support Clement VII, the Avignon pope. The English, who supported the Roman pope, Urban VI, arrived with papal bulls condemning this allegiance. They refused to hear mass said by a schismatic Portuguese priest or friar, and in the face of this obstacle for some weeks the proposed betrothal of Edward and Beatriz, the king’s ten-year-old daughter and heiress, could not take place. On 29 August (the date no doubt chosen as an important feast day), Fernando declared in the

Edward, duke of York, to King Fernando of Aragon cited the claim in an abortive proposal of marriage between the king’s oldest daughter and Edward’s nephew, the son of the earl of Cambridge: Madrid, Real Academia de Historia, Colleccion Salazar, A 4, f. 257; A 8, f. 14. 11 JGR 1371–75, vol. 2, p. 108. 12 Ferñao Lopes, The English in Portugal, 1367–87: Extracts from the Chronicles of Dom Fernando and Dom Joăo …, ed. D. W. Lomax and R. J. Oakley (Warminster, 1988), pp. 62–69. Lopes was Portuguese royal archivist by 1418. His chronicle, written about 1440, is thought reliable, Russell, English Intervention, p. xii, and for the context, pp. 302–44; Saul, Richard II, pp. 95–99, both with bibliography.

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK79

cathedral for Pope Urban in the presence of the English. Edward and Beatriz were then solemnly betrothed.13 The expedition so enthusiastically welcomed on its arrival was a failure. Cambridge proved an ineffective commander. His appeals for support from England went unanswered. The troops were unpaid and ravaged the countryside over the winter. In August of the following year, Fernando made peace with Castile, reverting to his earlier allegiance to Pope Clement, who annulled the betrothal. In the autumn of 1382, the diminished English army returned home in Castilian ships, and the following April Beatriz was married to the Castilian king, Juan I, the son of the usurper. By 1379, Isabel’s daughter, Constance (c. 1375–1416), who may have been no more than four years old, was married to Thomas Despenser (1373–1400), Edmund’s ward.14 Despenser took part in the abortive Epiphany Rising of 1400 against Henry IV and was executed. Isabel’s third child, Richard, the king’s godson, was born in 1385, about twelve years after his older brother. As earl of Cambridge, an instigator of the Southampton plot against Henry V, Richard was beheaded in 1415.15 Some historians have inclined to the view that Richard may have been the illegitimate son of Isabel and Richard II’s half-brother, the notorious John Holand, earl of Huntingdon.16 Among the reasons advanced is the fact that neither Richard’s father nor his older brother made any provision for him in their wills. This is true, but quite apart from the fact that a testator may not include all his bequests in his will, the tenor and contents of the wills of Isabel and her husband, the 1st duke of York, in no way conflict. In November 1400, when Edmund made his will, he named his place of burial as Langley ‘near his beloved Isabel, formerly his companion’. The duke was burdened with debt and ordered the sale of all his valuables to pay his creditors, to fund the burial costs, and to endow a perpetual chantry. He left nothing in the will to any of his three children, and his doubts that there would be a residue with which to reward his loyal servants proved correct. The duke’s heavy debts, which already August was the feast of the decollation of St John the Baptist. According to custom, on the evening after the religious ceremony the children were put in a bed together. It was spread with a magnificent coverlet, afterwards given to Beatriz when she married King Juan I of Castile, Ferñao Lopes, English in Portugal, pp. 68–71. 14 For her troubled life and involvement in treason, see R. Horrox, ‘Despenser, Constance, Lady Despenser (c. 1375–1416)’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/57622. 15 T. B. Pugh, Henry V and the Southampton Plot of 1415 (Southampton Records Series 30, 1988), esp. pp. 88–108. 16 Cautiously suggested by G. L. Harriss, ‘Richard [of Conisbrough], Earl of Cambridge (1385–1415)’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23502; cf. A. Tuck, ‘Edmund (Edmund of Langley), First Duke of York (1341–1402)’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16023. 13

80

JENNY STRATFORD

existed when Isabel died, provide the context for her will and have nothing to do with illegitimacy. By 17 August 1415, when the childless Edward, the 2nd duke, sealed his will before leaving for the Agincourt expedition, there was every reason for him to avoid any mention of the younger brother who had been his heir. Richard had been beheaded less than two weeks earlier for his complicity in the Southampton plot to dethrone Henry V.17 Isabel’s last will and testament in French and Latin, printed as an appendix to this chapter, is preserved in The National Archives at Kew in a register of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The will was sealed on Monday, 16 December 1392. The duchess died a week later on 23 December aged only thirty-seven. Administration was organised very speedily, on 6 January 1393, even before she was buried.18 It was unusual although by no means unknown for a woman to make a will during her husband’s lifetime, but to do so required the husband’s formal permission.19 According to Isabel’s will, Edmund gave his verbal consent and confirmed it by letters under his seal. Some of the people named in the will were her husband’s officers and reappear in his own will of 1400, strongly suggesting that the duke and the leading members of his familia were in full agreement with its provisions. The principal purpose of Isabel’s will was to provide for their youngest child, Richard, then aged seven. Edmund gave his wife full powers to dispose of her horses, jewels, robes, the furnishings of her chamber, and her other chattels. She made a number of bequests, notably including books, but offered the majority of her valuables to Richard II if he would agree to provide her younger son, his godson (filiol), with an income of 500 marks per year for life. If the king did not so wish, Isabel’s oldest son, then earl of Rutland, was invited to do so on the same terms. The 1st duke of York was not endowed with lands commensurate with his status. He had difficulty in obtaining payment of the monies owing to him from the Crown. The Portuguese expedition, undertaken largely in the interests of his brother, John of Gaunt, had left him burdened with heavy debts Will of Edmund, 1st duke of York, 25 November 1400, Lambeth, Reg. Arundel A, f. 194v, printed with an abbreviated probate clause in A Collection of All the Wills … of the Kings and Queens of England, ed. J. Nichols (London, 1780), pp. 187–89. An abstract is in Testamenta vetusta, ed. N. H. Nicolas, 2 vols (London, 1826), vol. 1, pp. 150–51. Will of Edward, 2nd duke, 17 August 1415, The Register of Henry Chichele, ed. E. F. Jacob and H. C. Johnson, 4 vols (Canterbury and York Society, 1937–47), vol. 2, pp. 63–66. 18 PROB 11/1, Rous, ff. 48v–49. She was buried on 14 January, GEC, XII: 2, p. 898. The summary in English, Testamenta vetusta, vol. 1, pp. 134–35, after Dugdale, is not wholly accurate. 19 Elizabeth de Bohun (d. 1356), wife of William, 1st earl of Northampton, for whom see below, similarly made her will in her husband’s lifetime and with his permission (Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Islip, ff. 122–122v). Lady Lestrange made her will, 28 March 1438, ‘ex memento et licencia’ of her husband (PROB 11/3, Luffenam, ff. 195–195v). I thank Michael Bennett for this reference. 17

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK81

not liquidated by the time he made his own will in 1400. Gaunt had refused to contribute to these debts, later expressly forbidding his executors to do so in his will of 1398. In 1410, eight years after Edmund’s death, his executors still could not meet all the claims on his estates.20 It seems clear that the arrangement to provide in this way for their youngest child, especially if the king were party to the arrangement, was proposed because money raised by Isabel’s jewels and plate (her personal chattels) would circumvent claims on the duke by his creditors, not because of the supposed illegitimacy. It would avoid as far as possible diminishing the duke’s own income, or reducing that of his heir. The annual sum fixed for young Richard’s income, 500 marks, ultimately intended to be provided from lands, although these were never granted, was fixed at the same amount as one of Duke Edmund’s annuities of which Isabel already held the reversion. The first grant of £100 p.a. made to Richard in February 1393 was from the issues of York, already held since 1385 by the duchess.21 The king’s consent had probably already been secured when Isabel’s will was drawn up, since the first arrangements were in place less than two months after she had died, although provision for the full amount was delayed for two years. By mid-March, the duchess’s executors had deposited jewels and plate said to be worth over £2,000 by indenture in the treasury.22 The following December, some of these objects, valued at £666 13s. 4d., were sold to defray Richard II’s expenses over the Christmas season.23 Some of the duchess’s jewels can be recognised in the rediscovered long inventory of Richard II’s jewels and plate, drawn up in 1398 or 1399, and others in the short inventory printed in the nineteenth century by Palgrave, where they are among the precious objects of miscellaneous provenance delivered from the treasury to Henry IV’s chamber in November 1399. Some pieces may have come with Isabel from Castile, but most of those documented displayed distinctive Yorkist heraldry: the falcon badge of York and the lock or fetterlock. The fetterlock would later be combined with the T. B. Pugh, ‘The Lands and Servants of Edmund of Langley (1341–1402), Duke of York, and Edward, Duke of York (1373?–1415)’ (Unpublished B.Litt. thesis, University of Oxford, 1950). I thank George Bernard for kindly making this available. Tuck, ‘Edmund of Langley’, at pp. 762, 764. John of Gaunt’s will, Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. J. Raine et al., 6 vols (Surtees Society, Durham, 1836–1902), vol. 1, p. 231. 21 500 m. annuity, CPR, 1388–1392, p. 207; £100 p.a. from the issues of York, held by the duchess since 1385 ‘in aid of the maintenance of her chamber’, CPR, 1385–1389, p. 38; grant to Richard, 3 February 1393, CPR, 1391–1396, p. 212; reassigned with arrears, 12 April 1393, CCR, 1392–1396, p. 55; confirmed by Henry IV, 18 November 1399, CPR, 1401–1405, p. 108. 22 Provision was made for future payment of the balance of £233 6s. 8d. p.a. in equal portions at the Exchequer until the king granted his godson equal value in lands, rents, or marriage, Foedera, iii (iv), p. 84, 16 March 1393; CPR, 1391–1396, p. 245; grant confirmed with arrears, 20 February 1408, CPR, 1405–1408, pp. 409, 438. 23 E 403/546, m. 13, 3 December 1393; Tout, Chapters, vol. 4, p. 324. 20

82

JENNY STRATFORD

falcon, but at this date was the duchess’s personal badge. None of these objects is known to survive. As a possible measure of the value of Isabel’s treasure, a petition in the Coventry Parliament of 1404 claimed that Richard II had taken jewels worth £4,000 rightfully belonging to the earl of Cambridge.24 The individual bequests in Isabel’s will evoke some of the networks surrounding her, as well as her concern for servants of the ducal household and some of their families.25 After the dispositions for her soul and body and arrangements for any debts to be paid, her first bequests were to the king and queen. Richard II was left a gold hart with pearls, that is, his own hart badge as depicted round the king’s neck in the Wilton Diptych. Harts, including some of gold enriched with gems and pearls, were widely distributed among the king’s kinsmen and courtiers. Queen Anne was to have a gold belt with ivy leaves, perhaps the most valuable of the two listed in the long Richard II inventory.26 Isabel’s brother-in-law, John of Gaunt, who was named with King Richard as a supervisor of the will, was left a tabler or gaming board of jasper. It had been given to Isabel by Leo, the exiled king of Armenia, no doubt during his visit to Richard II’s court at Christmas 1385 and New Year 1386.27 Her husband, the duke, was to have all her horses except the best, which was reserved for the customary gift (mortuary), owing to the priest of the church of her burial. The duke was also to have all her state beds and their appurtenances, except for several pairs of sheets left to six or seven ladies, as well as her best gold brooch (ouche), her best covered gold cup and her large Primer, that is, the largest of the three Books of Hours bequeathed in her will. The duchess’s children were named in order of age. The principal bequest Isabel made to her elder son, Edward, earl of Rutland, was a family heirloom, a Spanish crown that he was instructed to keep for his heirs, but if the line failed it was to be sold for the benefit of their souls.28 He was also to have two books, Stratford, Richard II, pp. 53–55, 418–21. For the badges, M. P. Siddons, Heraldic Badges in England and Wales, 4 vols (Woodbridge, 2009), ii/i, pp. 104–07; for £4,000, Rot. Parl., iii, p. 547; PROME, Parliament of October 1404, item 12. 25 In his testament of 1400, the duke requested his executors to remember his loyal servants and officials (unnamed), but only if anything remained after settlement of his debts and provision for his soul. 26 For numerous jewelled harts as detached objects and as nouches/ouches (brooches), see Stratford, Richard II, index, s.v. hart. Two belts with ivy are listed, R 446 and R 450, see also ibid., pp. 53–54, 420, R 446 was valued at £35, R 450 at only £1 6s. 8d. 27 Westminster Chronicle, pp. 154–56. A gaming board, not a devotional tablet. W. W. Skeat wrongly assumed this was a tablet, as did Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 274 at n. 8. 28 See Pedro López de Ayala, Cronicas de los reyes de Castilla: Don Pedro, Don Enrique II, Don Juan I, Don Enrique III, 2 vols (Madrid, 1779–80), i, pp. 558–70, for Pedro’s testament, 1362, providing for the inheritance of his kingdom, and listing crowns, jewels, and precious textiles, including chapel goods, to be divided between 24

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK83

a Lancelot and a Machaut, as well as several other valuables. These were a covered gold cup displaying Isabel’s arms, a chaplet in the fashionable technique of white enamel on gold, a gold brooch set with sapphires and large pearls, which had been the gift of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, and a belt with pearls of Paris work. The brooch, one of three gifts from named donors, is the only item in the will said to have been given to Isabel by Huntingdon. Moreover, it was left to Edward, not to Richard, the putative illegitimate younger son. Her daughter, Constance, her second child, was to have a headdress (frette), consisting of a net of pearls in star shapes (mouletes, mullets as in heraldry), as well as the duchess’s second best collar or necklace (fillet),29 her two small Books of Hours, and her silver saddle (scelle).30 As well as the annuity, Richard, the youngest, was to have his mother’s ‘beautiful’ Psalter. Two more of the duchess’s wider family were remembered, as well as nine other ladies and over two dozen men and boys, many of them belonging to the Yorkist familia. Eleanor de Bohun, duchess of Gloucester, Isabel’s sisterin-law, was left what seems to have been a gold devotional polyptych (tablez), with imagery, perhaps in enamel, and a Psalter with the Bohun family arms of Northampton. It is significant that the book-loving Eleanor de Bohun was singled out as a special friend. The earl of Huntingdon was to have Isabel’s best collar (fillet), this conceivably intended for his wife, Gaunt’s daughter, Elizabeth of Lancaster, and what are described as Isabel’s two Bibles, perhaps a Bible Historiale in two volumes. Many of the ladies remembered by Isabel received fur-lined gowns, four also with mantles. The four best were lined with luxurious white miniver, one with grys (grey back fur), and the others with unspecified fur. Marie SaintHillere, the first lady to be named, was left Isabel’s best gown and her best mantle ‘without pearls’, as well as her second-best brooch (the best having been reserved for the duke), and a pair of sheets. Three other ladies were to have gowns and mantles lined with miniver, as well as sheets, and brooches with fetterlocks, the duchess’s personal badge. Two of these privileged ladies, Marie the three daughters then living, pp. 563–65. At that stage, Isabel, the youngest, was to inherit (p. 563) the French crown of Blanche of Bourbon (d. 1361), who married Pedro in 1353. On stylistic grounds, Blanche of Bourbon’s crown cannot have been the later crown now in Munich, datable to c. 1370 to 1380, for which see Stratford, Richard II, R 7, pp. 258–62, with bibliography. 29 The term filet may be a synonym for collier (coler in the Richard II inventory), a neck ornament worn by both men and women, or indicate a finer chain. 30 The meaning of selle is probably saddle, cf. Stratford, Richard II, R 354, celle. Isabelle of France had in her trousseau in 1396 eleven saddles (scelles) of velvet with the harnois of silver-gilt, L. Mirot, ‘Un trousseau royal à la fin du XIVe siècle’, Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île-de-France, 29 (1902), p. 151. Two different spellings for seal were used by the copyist. The duke’s written permission was authorised by his scell, but Isabel caused the will to be sealed with her seel.

84

JENNY STRATFORD

Worston and Agnes Stancebe, were the wives or other close relatives of trusted Yorkist servants active in the duchess’s business, William Worston Junior and Robert Stanceby, both named as executors.31 Another Agnes, the lady who received the gown lined with grys, was presumably the wife of Henry Monge, who was no doubt himself another Yorkist servant. A third member of each of these three families was remembered in the duchess’s will: John, son of William Worston; Edmond Stanceby; and a child of Henry Monge. The order in which Agnes Monge and the next three ladies were remembered suggests that the list descended to the person of least high status; the last two were to receive with their fur-lined gowns presents of money instead of sheets: Marie Forster, £6 13s. 4d., and Ideyne, £5. Margerie Faucon, mentioned at the very end of the will, was to have the same handsome sum as Marie Forster. The copy of the will in the probate register contains a number of slips, including the mistake in the first duke’s name: Edward instead of Edmund. Something also seems to have been omitted. The text refers to the fifth lady as the ‘aforesaid Galience’, but she is not previously mentioned and may therefore also have been left robes and sheets. Galience was to have a little gold tablet that had been in her charge and that John of Gaunt had given to Isabel. This suggests that Galience and the other ladies may have been Isabel’s gentlewomen. The tablet was no doubt a devotional object and could have been freestanding or possibly designed to be worn on a chain around the neck.32 The description ‘little’ makes it most unlikely to have been the costly tablet set with gems and depicting the Nativity that Gaunt purchased for £7 from a prominent London goldsmith, Robert Launde, as a present to Isabel for New Year 1381.33 Circumstantial detail is typical of many women’s wills. Gaunt’s present is one of three objects in Isabel’s will associated with its donor, the second being the gaming board of jasper from Leo of Armenia, and the third, the sapphire and pearl brooch given by the earl of Huntingdon.

For William Worston Junior, MP (al. Wrofton, Wroughton, d. 1408), his son John, and another John, probably his grandson (d. 1496), see VCH, Wiltshire, ix, pp. 23–43, Clyffe Pypard, Woodhill estate; History of Parliament, 1386–1421. William’s widow in 1408 was Margaret, not Marie, but there could have been a second marriage (CCR, 1405–1409, p. 425). The Robert Stanceby who bequeathed £10 was either the executor or a son of the same name; Edmond Stanceby (perhaps so named as a godson of the duke), who was left £5 and a gown, was probably Stanceby’s son. 32 The scribe copying the will used a plural verb. This may have been a small diptych or polyptych. For extant small pendant reliquary tablets, one depicting St Catherine, the other St Geneviève, datable to c. 1380–90, see Paris 1400: Les arts sous Charles VI [exhibition catalogue], ed. E. Taburet-Delahaye and F. Avril (Paris, 2004), no. 21, with bibliography. For tablets, see Stratford, Richard II, p. 465; R 994 and R 1002 were large pendant tablets for the chapel, cf. R 387 a small tablet given with a rosary. 33 JGR 1379–83, vol. 1, p. 182. 31

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK85

The duchess’s stables feature prominently in her will. Besides her best horse designated, as was customary for her mortuary, and her other horses bequeathed to her husband, she left money to the palfreyman and two charioteers. She also remembered the sumpterman, who was no doubt in charge of the baggage horses when the household travelled. Other household occupations revealed by the legacies include the keeper of the beds and the wardrober. Isabel left 10 marks (£6 13s. 4d.) to be shared among the priests, clerks, and children of ‘her husband’s’ chapel. Edmond Bukyngham, who was left 40s., may, given his name, have been a godson of the duke. It seems likely that he can be identified as the priest who was a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, by 1381, and warden of Merton from 1398 until his death in 1416. The warden was a learned man; his lectures on geometry and arithmetic are recorded.34 The total cash sum Isabel intended for distribution was £120 6s. 8d. In the absence of any surviving household accounts, it is impossible to identify, or to be sure of the occupations of most of those named. The largest individual money bequest was 20 marks (£13 6s. 8d.), to one Robert Scheplake, while the smallest, 6s. 8d. (the equivalent of a gold noble and about thirteen days’ pay for a skilled labourer) was to Scherewode, whose name suggests he was a forester or woodcutter. John Duraunt, identified as a valet of the duke, was to have £1 6s. 8d. Not all those remembered were household members or officials. Simon Mone, one of three men left a substantial £10, was a courtier who had been appointed a king’s esquire in 1390.35 The first two executors named, Sir Lewis Clifford (c. 1330–1404) and Sir Richard Stury (c. 1327–95), are remembered as Lollard knights, but there is nothing to suggest any interest in Lollardy on the part of the duchess. She left a favourite gown embroidered with hemp leaves (chanvre) to make a vestment for the church of her burial (unnamed because the king was to decide where this was to be), and provided for immediate commemorative masses (trentals) and psalters to be recited for the good of her soul, as well as ordering further masses. Clifford and Stury were chamber knights and prominent courtiers who had been in the service of the Black Prince; Isabel may have met Clifford first as a girl in Gascony when he fought with the prince in 1367. Both men had attended Richard II’s mother, Joan of Kent, around the time of her death in 1385 and were among the princess’s executors. Both served as councillors in 1393.36 The Emden, Oxford, vol. 1, p. 155 for ‘Edmund Bekyngham’. Caroline Barron drew my attention to this entry and the recorded spelling variants of the name. 35 CCR, 1389–1392, p. 218, with an annuity of £20. 36 K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), p. 148 ff.; C. Kightly, ‘Lollard Knights (act. c. 1380–c. 1414)’, in ODNB: available at https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50540; P. Fleming, ‘Clifford, Sir Lewis (c. 1330–1404), Soldier and Suspected Heretic’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50259. Clifford was a member of the council between 1389 and 1393. After the duchess’s 34

86

JENNY STRATFORD

duchess’s older son, by then earl of Rutland, was also present in council around this time. In appointing Clifford and Stury, Isabel may have expected that they would help to forward the arrangement for young Richard. They may well have done so, but they were both elderly men still busily engaged in affairs of state, especially in France. Both declined to act in the administration of the will. This was not necessarily significant. Many similar decisions by executors could be paralleled in medieval and modern times. The third and fourth executors to be named, William Worston Junior and Robert Stanceby, both esquires, were no doubt always expected to do much of the work. William was the older brother of Thomas Worston, the duke’s chancellor, who was appointed in 1400 one of his executors. Stanceby, who has so far eluded identification, was not named in the probate clause of the duchess’s will, administered in the province of Canterbury; he was perhaps a trusted official in the northern province. Others nominated were William Galandre, the duke’s treasurer, who was probably already acting in this capacity by 1392, and Friar Robert Rede, Dominican, probably of Langley. Rede was often with Richard II at court. He died in 1415 as bishop of Chichester, leaving many learned books as well as sacred and secular objects.37 He may have been close to the duchess, perhaps her confessor. Rede and Worston were the two men charged with administering her will when probate was granted. Rede’s own will confirms that his links with Isabel’s son, Edward, 2nd duke of York, were sustained until the last days of both their lives.38 The provision in Isabel’s will for the king to approve her place of burial was not a mere formality. Langley, a royal manor from the time of Edward I, was a favourite residence of Richard II. The Dominican church was so close to the King’s Manor that during works in 1388 or 1389 a lock and key were supplied for the church door ‘to keep and exclude the said friars from the king’s household’.39 In his will of November 1400, Duke Edmund elected to be buried at Langley near to Isabel, his ‘beloved companion’. His tomb was moved to All Saints Church, King’s Langley, before the destruction of the Dominican Friary in 1575. When the tomb was opened in 1877, three bodies were found, two of them plausibly identified as the duke and duchess. The tomb was moved again in 1878 to the royal chapel at the east end of the north chancel, newly built at the behest of Queen

death, Stury, a frequent attendee in 1392 to 1393, was also often present, J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913), pp. 133, 492 ff. 37 For Rede, Stratford, Richard II, p. 105; J. Rosenthal, ‘Richard II’s Bishops, Fair Weather Friends?’, below, pp. 179–202. 38 ‘Item lego domino meo duci Ebor’ unum parvum librum de Gallico et de historia Britonum sibi intitulatum’, 10 August 1415, Reg. Chichele, ed. Jacob and Johnston, ii, p. 38. 39 R. A. Brown and H. M. Colvin, in The History of the King’s Works: The Middle Ages, 2 vols (London, 1963), i, pp. 257–63; ii, pp. 970–77, at p. 976.

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK87

Victoria. What seems to be the indent of Isabel’s lost brass, perhaps from her earlier burial a decade before her husband’s death, survives on a separate slab.40 Turning now to Isabel’s books, Lewis Clifford was the only executor to receive one as a bequest, a Livre des Vices et Virtues. The title has elicited sardonic comment from some of Isabel’s detractors, but this is misplaced. It was probably one or another confessional manual, possibly the popular Somme le Roi, written in the thirteenth century for the French king, Philip IV, by his Dominican confessor, Frere Laurent, a text that gained wide currency in the later Middle Ages. Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, Isabel’s brother-in-law, had a copy of this work, now in Reims, specially written for him and decorated with his arms.41 With the book of Vices and Virtues, we have either ten or eleven books mentioned in Isabel’s will, a significantly large number, which tells us something important about her. As already suggested, the two Bibles left to the earl of Huntingdon could have been a two-volume Bible historiale. Very probably all the books bequeathed by Isabel were illuminated. She possessed at least two Psalters and at least three Books of Hours, the large Hours, termed a Primer, left to her husband, and two small ones bequeathed to her daughter, Constance. Devotional and liturgical books left as legacies reminded the recipients to pray for the soul of the departed donor. They are consequently more often found in wills than secular works, but the latter are of special interest in shedding light on Isabel’s tastes. The Lancelot left to Rutland may not have been the only Arthurian romance she possessed.42 The second book left to Rutland suggests Isabel delighted in verse and music. Machaut’s lyrics and music circulated in England as well as in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.43 Both sacred and secular music were fostered in York’s household. Isabel remembered the men and boys of her husband’s chapel in her

H. C. Baker, ‘The Royal Tomb at King’s Langley, Herts, and the Indented Slab Believed to be for Isabel of Castile’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, xi/4 (1972), 279–83. I thank Christian Steer and Martin Stutchfield for their assistance. 41 M. W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (East Lansing, 1952), p. 125; J. Stratford, ‘La Somme le Roi (Reims, Bibl. mun., ms. 570), the Manuscripts of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, and the Scribe, John Upton’, in the Le statut du scripteur au moyen âge: Actes du xiie colloque du Comité international de paléographie latine, ed. M.-T. Hubert, E. Poulle, and M. M. Smith (Paris, 2000), pp. 267–82. 42 Cf. BL, Royal MS 20 D. iv, a copy of part of the prose romance, Lancelot du Lac, adapted for a member of the Bohun family, see Royal Manuscripts, the Genius of Illumination [BL exhibition catalogue], ed. S. McKendrick, J. Lowden, and K. Doyle et al. ( London, 2011), no. 131, at p. 373; L. F. Sandler, Illuminators and Patrons in FourteenthCentury England: The Psalter and Hours of Humphrey de Bohun and the Manuscripts of the Bohun Family (London, 2014), pp. 162–63, 347; both with bibliography. 43 Cf. Bnf, MS fr. 9221, Guillaume de Machaut, Oeuvres, illuminated in Paris c. 1390, given in 1412 to Henry IV’s second son, Thomas, duke of Clarence, by John, duke of Berry, see Paris 1400, no. 15. 40

88

JENNY STRATFORD

will; York’s minstrels are recorded performing for John of Gaunt at New Year 1380, and again in 1381, at New Year, at Epiphany, and in March at Henry of Derby’s betrothal to Mary de Bohun.44 It is strongly probable that the Psalter with the arms of Northampton left to Eleanor de Bohun, duchess of Gloucester, can be identified with an illuminated manuscript known today as the Astor Hours and Psalter, and that Isabel’s will supplies a gap in its provenance.45 The heraldry in this book demonstrates that it was made for Eleanor de Bohun’s paternal grandmother, Elizabeth de Bohun, countess of Northampton (1313–56), who was born Elizabeth Badlesmere. Her first husband was Sir Edmund Mortimer (d. 1331). The Badlesmere and Mortimer arms occur once in the first and earlier part of the manuscript containing the Hours, now altered, but originally of Dominican use. The Psalter belongs to a different and later campaign dating from after Elizabeth’s second marriage in 1335 to William de Bohun, 1st earl of Northampton, and before her death in 1356. The Northampton arms are the most prominent in the Psalter. They appear on the Beatus page illustrating Psalm 1, and in six other borders, whereas the Mortimer and Badlesmere arms occur only on the Beatus page, and the arms of the Bohun earls of Hereford only on the Beatus page and on one other folio. Just as in Isabel’s bequest, this book was termed a Psalter, rather than a Psalter and Hours, in the added calligraphic inscription recording its bequest in 1450 by a later owner, Joan, Lady Clifton of Buckenham castle, Norfolk, to the Dominicans of Norwich.46 The picture of Isabel of Castile that emerges from her network of friends and from her possessions is of a lively and intelligent woman, resembling her mother Maria de Padilla. She chose as her friends bookish men and women. Eleanor de Bohun bequeathed to her children some thirteen sacred and secular books, including a Livre des vices et vertues.47 The courtiers Isabel named as executors are both remembered as cultivated men. Clifford was a friend of both JGR 1379–83, vol. 1, pp. 113, 180; Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 276, 325, n. 104. Washington, DC, Museum of the Bible, MS 000761, formerly Astor MS, A.1. See L. F. Sandler, Gothic Manuscripts, 1285–1385, 2 vols (London, 1986), vol. 1, pls 286–90, vol. 2, no. 111, pp. 123–24; Christie’s sale-catalogue, 7 July 2010, both with bibliography. M. A. Michael arrived independently at the same conclusion. A Matins of the Virgin and a Psalter bequeathed by the countess to her daughter, Elizabeth (d. 1385), first wife of Richard Fitzalan, 4th earl of Arundel, are listed in Eleanor’s will (Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Islip, f. 122) as if they were two separate volumes. 46 Washington, DC, Museum of the Bible, MS 000761, formerly Astor MS, A.1, f. 1: ‘Memorandum quod venerabilis domina Johanna de Clyfton quondam uxor domini Johannis Clyfton militis de Bokenham Castell, quorum animabus deus propicietur, per procuracionem fratris J. Gillyngham istud psalterium preciosum contulit conventui ordinis fratrum predicatorum Norwiciensis. Que obiit … [15 November 1450].’ 47 Lambeth Palace Library, Reg. Arundel A, ff. 163–64; A Collection of All the Wills …, ed. Nichols, pp. 177–85. 44 45

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK89

Deschamps and Chaucer. Stury, who died in 1395, was a friend of Froissart. His illuminated copy of the Roman de la Rose survives among the manuscripts of the Old Royal Library. It was bought from Stury’s executors by Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, husband of Eleanor de Bohun.48 Rede too had a notable collection of books. Isabel appreciated fine illumination, bequeathing to young Richard her ‘beautiful – bel – psalter’. As well as books, she seems to have enjoyed music, playing at tables, and other courtly pleasures. Besides being conscious of her lineage, witness the Spanish crown and the cup with her arms bequeathed to her elder son, Isabel seems from her will to have been a loving mother, a caring mistress to her servants, and probably, as also suggested by her husband’s testament, a devoted as well as a dutiful wife. *** It remains to consider the few but disproportionately influential words of the scribe, author, and translator, John Shirley. Some forty years after Isabel’s death, Shirley completed his second large anthology, now divided between Lambeth Palace Library and Trinity College, Cambridge.49 Chaucer’s ‘Complaint of Mars’ followed by his ‘Complaint of Venus’ are first recorded in the Trinity manuscript, and are there linked as a pair, as well as in five later fifteenthcentury manuscript copies and in two early printed editions.50 ‘The Complaint of Mars’ recounts a short-lived but passionate love affair between the planets Mars and Venus. This is set in an astronomical framework, which J. D. North has argued persuasively can only apply to 1385.51 ‘The Complaint of Venus’ is Chaucer’s translation from the French of Granson (the Savoyard knight, Otto de Grandison). It is still an open question whether Chaucer intended these two poems in very different form and metre to belong together. However that may be, Shirley liked to provide a context for the works he anthologised, and his gossipy remarks about these two poems seem, together with Walsingham’s aspersions, BL, Royal MS 19 B. xiii, Royal Manuscripts, ed. McKendrick et al., no. 129, pp. 368–69, no. 131, p. 373. 49 For Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.20, M. Connolly, John Shirley: Book Production and the Noble Household in Fifteenth-Century England (Aldershot, 1998), is fundamental. See chapter 4, pp. 69–101, esp. pp. 85–86. 50 Julia Boffey generously shared with me her work on these poems for the forthcoming Cambridge University Press edition of Chaucer’s works (general editors A. S. G. Edwards and J. Boffey), where there will be full details of the manuscript witnesses. 51 J. D. North, Chaucer’s Universe (Oxford, 1990), pp. 318–28, Appendices 5 and 6, has argued that the astronomical framework of the poem can only date to 1385, the year in which Gaunt’s daughter, Elizabeth of Lancaster (1364?–1425), already betrothed to John Hastings, earl of Pembroke (1372–89), who was then aged only thirteen (and so under the canonical age for ratifying the marriage), began an affair with John Holand. They married with Gaunt’s consent in June 1386.

48

90

JENNY STRATFORD

to be the only and very unreliable ‘evidence’ on which the long-standing belief in an adulterous affair between the duchess and the earl of Huntingdon has been based. Shirley’s heading to ‘The Complaint of Mars’ states not implausibly that this poem was composed at the command of John of Gaunt. The afterword, introduced with the caveat ‘some men sayne’, links the love affair between the planets to ‘my lady of York doughter to the kyng of Spaygne and my lord of Huntyngdon’ some tyme duc of Excestre’. Shirley’s afterword to ‘The Complaint of Venus’ (again introduced with a qualification, ‘Hit is sayde’), suggests that Grandison intended Venus to represent ‘my lady of York’, answering the complaint of Mars. Since the original French ballade is composed in the masculine voice, this claim at least can be discounted. In reading ‘The Complaint of Mars’, the impression is of a court entertainment, intended to be read aloud or performed in some way. In BL, Harley MS 7333, the poem is introduced as ‘The broche of thebes …’, and this is how Lydgate alludes to it.52 These fifteenth-century sources refer to the stanzas late in the poem (deriving from the Thebiad of Statius), describing the fateful brooch – a metaphor for the lover’s desire – set with so many rubies and oriental gems that all those who saw it desired to possess it, but suffered horribly if they did so. There is no question that brooches and other jewellery were presented to great ladies at marriage, at feasts, at arrivals and departures, and on other ceremonial occasions such as New Year. It is improbable, however, that an actual brooch, such as the sapphire and diamond brooch given to Isabel by Huntingdon and left to Rutland in her will, was presented at a reading or performance of this poem, a poem where the brooch brings misfortune. We cannot know if ‘The Complaint of Mars’ was indeed written on the orders of Gaunt, or whether it was in fact heard by Isabel of Castile and the earl of Huntingdon, but it is certain that they were kinsfolk, and credible that they were friends rather than lovers. The princess who emerges from a reading of her will and the mention of some of her books would surely have been well qualified to appreciate the subtleties of Chaucer’s poetry. W. W. Skeat and other early editors and critics, probably aware of Walsingham’s condemnation of Isabel, and of John Holand, earl of Huntingdon’s post-medieval reputation as a murderer and the seducer of Gaunt’s daughter, Elizabeth, assumed that ‘The Complaint of Mars’ referred to a court scandal, involving him and the duchess of York, or alternatively for some critics, Elizabeth of Lancaster.53 Other more recent commentators BL, Harley MS 7333, f. 132, ‘The broche of thebes as of the love of mars and venus.’ Prologue to book I of Lydgate, The Fall of Princes, ‘the broche which that Vulcanus At Thebes wrouhte’. 53 For a summary of earlier scholarship and allegorical interpretations, see The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 2nd edn (London, 1957), pp. 856–57; see 52

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK91

have rightly questioned whether real people were in fact meant by Chaucer. If the planetary setting of the poem indeed corresponds with the year 1385, the year young Richard was born, and when Huntingdon’s relationship with Gaunt’s daughter is thought to have begun, on these grounds alone an illicit connection with Isabel of Castile around that time seems improbable. The references to Huntingdon in Isabel’s will, her bequests to him, and in particular his gift to her of a brooch (Huntingdon is named with Gaunt and Leo of Armenia as one of three donors), have been misinterpreted in the light of Shirley’s remarks. John Holand was the king’s favoured half-brother as well as the son-in-law of John of Gaunt, her husband’s powerful brother, whom Isabel requested to act with the king as one of the supervisors of her will. In her anxiety for Richard II to provide the annuity for her younger son, she had every reason to include Huntingdon, her nephew by marriage, among the circle left a bequest in her will. The brooch Huntingdon had given to Isabel was left not to Richard, but to her older son, Rutland. Isabel’s daughter, Constance Despenser, who led a troubled life in Henry IV’s reign, had an illegitimate daughter before 1404 by Edmund Holand, 7th earl of Kent.54 A rumour originating with this unhappy affair, then distorted in the retelling, may lie behind the belief in Isabel’s liaison with another Holand, the earl of Huntingdon, which reached the ears of Shirley. The full text of Isabel’s will, a document made with her husband’s consent, and with the advice of his familia, argues against any ready acceptance of either Walsingham’s characterisation of Isabel, or of Shirley’s insinuations. The duchess herself emerges in a favourable light. In face of her husband’s debts, the arrangement to provide an income for the seven-year-old Richard by transferring to Richard II most of her jewels and plate, her personal chattels, was eminently practical. It limited the possibility of claims by the duke’s creditors, while grants previously made to Isabel were subsequently reassigned to fund the annuity. These provisions seem very unlikely to indicate that young Richard was illegitimate, any more than a gap of twelve years between the age of the oldest and youngest of the duchess’s three living children was necessarily significant. The duke’s will drawn up a decade after Isabel’s death speaks of his devotion to her. It is true that he made no bequest to Richard, but he left nothing in his will to any of his children. The extent of the duke’s debts meant that even the clause also The Riverside Chaucer, ed. L. D. Benson, 3rd edn paperback (Oxford, 1988), pp. 1078–79. For Elizabeth, see J. D. North, Chaucer’s Universe: Criticism and Interpretation (Oxford, 1990). Cf. M. Connolly, John Shirley (London, 1998), pp. 85–86. 54 Constance’s daughter was named Eleanor; the liaison predated 1407 when the earl married Lucia Visconti. See Horrox, ‘Despenser, Constance’. C. L. Kingsford in his biography of Edmund of Langley, Dictionary of National Biography (1892), cast no aspersions on Isabel but referred to her daughter, Constance, as a ‘woman of evil reputation’.

92

JENNY STRATFORD

about the rewards he wished to make to his loyal servants had to be conditional. By the time the childless 2nd duke sealed his will in 1415, his younger brother, Richard, who had been his heir, had been executed for treason. Table 4.1. Bequests in Money £

s.

d.

6

13

4

1

Marie Forster with a furred gown

2

Ideyne with a furred gown

5

0

0

3

Robert Scheplake

13

6

8

4

Colinet

10

0

0

5

Raulin

6

13

4

6

Roger Palfrayman

6

13

4

7

Johan de la Charre

2

0

0

8

Robert Sumpterman

1

0

0

9

John Pevereech

1

0

0

10

Cok de la Charre

13

4

11

Scherewode

6

8

12

‘Sir’ Edmond Bukyngham

2

0

0

13

Perrot de Champe

2

0

0

14

Loys with a furred gown

2

0

0

15

Richard Makeseye

2

0

0

16

Cok Sonnyng

1

0

0

17

Synkyn des lyt

1

0

0

18

Jake Bray

13

4

19

Johan de la Garderobe

20

John son of William [Worston]

21

13

4

6

13

4

Symon Mone

10

0

0

22

Robert Stanceby

10

0

0

23

Edmond Stanceby with a gown

5

0

0

24

Piers Felip

6

13

4

25

‘La fils’ Henry Monge

2

26

John Thomas

27

Priests, clerks and children of the duke’s chapel

28

John Duraunt valet (vaillet) of the duke

29

Margerie Faucon Total

0

0

13

4

6

13

4

1

6

8

6

13

4

120

6

8

Appendix TNA, PROB 11/1/56, ff. 48v–49 The Testament and Last Will of Isabel of Castile, 1st Duchess of York, Fotheringhay, Monday, 16 December 1392 Editorial Method

P

aragraphs have been introduced for clarity. The only paragraph in the original is the abbreviated probate clause.1 Abbreviations and contractions have been extended silently where possible, but in the instances where the scribe’s intentions over number and gender are uncertain, the suspension mark has been retained. Punctuation, capitalisation, and word division are editorial. The uses of i/j and u/v have been standardised. s. for sous (shillings) and d. for deniers (pence) have been retained. [f. 48v] In nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti amen. Sachent tout gentz qe le lundi seisime jour de decembre l’an de grace mille CCC quatrevintz et douse moy Isabell douchesse d’Everwyk et countisse de Cantebrigge esteyant en mon ben cens et plaine memory connsyderaunt q’il n’est chouse si certeine come ore mort mondeyne moy r[em]enbrant des perils du monde et desirant grace par la auctorite et licence qe mon tres honoure seigneur et mary monseigneur Edward [sic] duc d’Everwyk et counte de Cantebrigg’ m’a plainement donne conngie de faire testament et devis par sa bouche et soubz sez lettres et scell de tous les biens, joels et chivals qe je aveye touchant l’array et gemiernement de mon corps, chambre et servantz, faire faiz et ordeine moun testament et darraine volunte soubz la forme2 qe s’ensuet. Premerement je recomande ma alme a dieu qi la fourma et a madame seint Marie et a toute la celestiell’ compaigne de paradis. Et moun corps a geiser la ouut il plera a mon tres honoure seigneur le roy ordeyner et dispouser au q’il je pri supple et requier q’il li plese de sa benigne grace et de sourveoir aidier et counseiller a mes executours cy desoubz nommez qe cest moun testament et darreine volunte puisse estre bonement acompliz selont ma disposicion et devis. Et en mesme la manere je pri mon tres honoure seigneur et frere de Lancastr’

I thank Jane Sayers and Diana Greenway who kindly assisted with the reading of the probate clause. 2 Followed by la deleted. 1

94

JENNY STRATFORD

qe en cest mesme fait vouille estre aidant et counseillant en mesme la manere. Item je devise et ordene qe le jour de mon trepassement qe cent trentals et cent sautres soyent ditz poure mon alme. Item quatre prestes pur chaunter pour moy on outrement un prest pur quatre ans. Item au jour de mon enterment mon meillour chival pur mon principal. Item je devise qe si je doy aucun debte qe puisse estre bonement coneu ou prove q’il soit paye. Item je devise a mon tres redoute seigneur le roy moun cerf de perles. Item a ma tres redoutee dame la royne un saintur d’or ovec fuilles d’yve. Item a mon tres honore seigneur et frere de Lancastr’ mon tabler de jaspe qe le roy d’Armonye me donna. Item a mon tres honore seigneur et mary d’Everwyk susdit tous mes chivaux horspriz mon principal susdit et tous mes litz ovec tous les appourtenantz sauve3 aucuns lincols par moy cy desubz devisez et ovec ce la meillour ouche qe j’ay, la meillour couppe d’or et covercle et mon large primer. Item je devise a mon tres ame fils Edward counte de Ruttellond ma corone entiere a li et a ces heris et se ainsi soit q’il n’ait heirs qe ele retourne au prochein heir de mon dit seigneur son pere et se null heire ne demeure mye q’ile soit vendue et dispousee pur noz alms, et avecques deux livres, Machaut et Launcelot. Item je divise a mon dit fils de Ruttellond un coupe d’or ovec le covercle de mes armes et un chappellet ovec blanches floretes d’or et un ouche d’or ovec tros4 grousses perles et troys safirs qe le counte de Huntyndon m’a donna et un sainture de perles de Paris. Item je devise et ordone a ma tres amee fille Constance la Despenser un frette de perles a mouletes et a le meillour fillet qe j’ay saunce un et mez deux petit premers et ma scelle d’argent. Item je supplie et requier a mon tres redoute seigneur le roy q’il luy5 plese a prendre et avoir sonn humble filiol a cuer mon tres cher fils Richard par tele condicion qe se il luy plest de luy avauncer de cinq centz marcs par an a terme de sa vie q’il ait tout le residu de tous mes biens aprés le complessement de cest mon testament et devis. Et en cas q’il ne voudra soyt offers a mon dit fils de Ruttellond per telle condicioun q’il face bone seurte de pourchasser a mon dit fils Richard attant de avancement come le dit residue avantdit demeure a mes executours pour achater tant de garnison pur mon dit fils. Item mon dicte fil avera mon6 bel sauter. Item je devise a ma tres honoure suer de Gloucestr’ mes tablez d’or ovec ymages et mon sauter ovec les armes de Northampton. Item al counte de Huntyngdon le meillour fillet qe j’ay et mes deux bibles. Item je devise a Marie Seint Hillere ma meillour gone et mon meillour mauntel fourrez de menuver sans perls et avec ce la meillour ouche aprés mon 3 4 5 6

Followed by et deleted. tros read trois not tres. Followed by plest de luy avancer underlined with dots for deletion. Followed by beal deleted.

THE BEQUESTS OF ISABEL OF CASTILE, 1ST DUCHESS OF YORK95

dit tres honoure seigneur et un paire de lincols. Item [a]7Alienor Schefeld a Marie Worston’ a Agnes Stancebe a chescune un gone fourre [f. 49] de menuver, un ouche ovec lockes, et une paire de lincoille, et a chescune une mauntell fourr’.8 Item [je]9 divise a la dit Galience un petit tabletz d’or qu’x10 ele ad an sa garde q’ furent de mon frere de Lancastr’. Item a Agneys M[o]nge11 une goune fourree de grys et un pair de lincols. Item a Marie Forster dix marc’ et une goune fourre. Item a Ideyne cent souldz et une goune fourre. Item a Robert Scheplake vint marcs. Item a Colinet dix livres. Item a Raulin dix marcs. Item a Rouger Palfrayman dix marcs. Item a Johan de la Charre qarante souldz. Item a Robert Sumpterman vint souldz. Item a Johan Pevereech vint souldz. Item a Cok de la Charr’ tres souldz quatre d. Item a Scherewode six sould oyt. Item a Sir Edmond Bukyngham quarante souldz. Item a Perrot de Champe quarante sould’. Item a Loys une gone fourree et quarante sould’. Item a Richard Makeseye vint souldz. Item a Cok Sonnyng’ vint souldz. Item a Synkyn des lyt vint souldz. Item a Jake Bray trese souldz quatre d. Item a Johan de la garderobe trese souldz quatre d. Item a Johan fils William dix marcs. Item Symon Mone dix livres. Item a Robert Stanceby dix livres. Item a Edmond Stanceby cent souldz et une gone. Item a Piers Felip’ dix marcs. Item a la [sic] fils Henry Monge quarante souldz. Item a Johan Thomas tres souldz qatre d. Item ma goune embroude de fuilles de chanvre la ouut je seray ensevelie pur une vestment. Item a monseigneur Lewys Clyfford mon livre de Vices et Vertuz. Item as prestes, clercs et enfanz de la chappelle monseigneur dix marcs pour parter entre enly. Item a Johan Duraunt vaillet de monseigneur vint et six s. et oyt d. Et a cest mon testament et devis susdit faire et acomplir j’ay ordennez monseigneur Lewes Clyfford et monseigneur Richard Stury chivaliers, William Worston’ le joeune et Robert Stanceby esquiers, Frere Robert Rede et Sir William Galandr’ pour counseiller et aidere as quels je done plain povoir de faire pour mon alme tout ce qe dessus est devise. Et autre ce qe de tout le resideu de tous mes beiens, joyels, perles et vaisselle qe ils les gardent jusques attant q’ils aient le volunte de mon tres honoure seigneur le roy et seurte de l’avauncement de mon dit fils Richard lour priant a tous qe pur l’amour de dieu et pur la graunt …12 qe j’ay en loure loyalte q’ils vellent prendre cest travaill’ pur le profret de mon alme aviez coustagez. Et se acune chouse demeur’ aprés toutes cestes chouse acompliez q’il ent soit fait et ordenne solont l’advis et bonn regard de mes executours a supplied. Something concerning ‘the aforesaid’ Galiance seems to have been omitted when the will was copied into the register. 9 je supplied. 10 un petit tabletz but … furent plural. 11 Read Monge, but written M[n/u]ge. 12 A word appears to be missing here. 7 8

96

JENNY STRATFORD

sance nulle destourbance poure la disposicion de ma alme. Et en tesmoignance qe cest ma darrane volunte13 j’ay fayt mettre mon seel a cest present escript a Foderingey l’an et jour susditz. Item je devise a Margerie Faucon dix marcs. Tenore presencium nos Johannes Lynton, etc., notum facimus universis quod sexto die Januarii anno domini millesimo CCCmo nonagesimo secundo [1393] in ecclesia sancti Pauli London’ testamentum Isabelle ducisse d’Everwyke defuncte pro eo et ex eo quod eadem defuncta quamplurima, etc., pertinere auctoritate dicti reverendi patris, etc., administracionemque omnium bonorum dicte defuncte et eius testamentum concernencium ubicumque infra dictam provinciam existencium fratri Roberti Redde et Willelmo Worston juniori executoribus in dicto testamento nominatis commisimus et commitimus in forma iuris prefatis primitus ab eisdem, etc., inquisitis dominis Lodowico Clyfford et Ricardo Stury coram nobis comparentibus ac omnis huius administracionis expresse recusantibus reservato dicti reverendo patri, etc., potestate, etc.

13

volunte repeated.

5 Lollards in Arms: Lollardy, Loyalty, and the Trauma of the Hundred Years War JILL C. HAVENS

I



n his 2002 article, ‘A Farewell to Arms? Criticism of Warfare in Late Fourteenth-Century England’, Nigel Saul argues that views about warfare and the role of the knight had changed by the end of the fourteenth century.1 Using examples from contemporary literature, Saul surveys complaints from the early decades of that century incorporating targeted criticism of the financial burdens of war and more general complaints about the evils of the time.2 He then shifts his study to explore poetry from the end of the century, mainly John Gower’s Latin poem Vox Clamantis, that change these criticisms to something more ‘introspective, almost pained’.3 Gower’s views about knights are further developed in his last poem, Confessio Amantis, and it is through this poem, Saul argues, that Gower voices his strongest reproach of knights who ‘make werres and to pile / For lucre and for no other skyle.’4 Saul’s survey of literature goes on to include Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee and Sir Thopas, claiming that ‘nowhere in Chaucer’s work do we find the fascination with knightly combat that excited Froissart’.5 And he ends with The Two Ways of Sir John Clanvow, a career knight and friend of Chaucer, who ‘emphatically rejects the values of his own class’.6 Nigel Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms? Criticism of Warfare in Late Fourteenth-Century England’, in Fourteenth Century England, II, ed. Chris Given-Wilson (2002), 131–45. 2 Ibid., pp. 131–32. 3 Ibid., p. 132. 4 Gower’s Confessio Amantis quoted in Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms?’, p. 134. A more recent assessment of Gower’s attitude towards chivalry can be found in D. Green, ‘Nobility and Chivalry’, in Historians on Gower, ed. S. Rigby with S. Echard (Cambridge, 2019), pp. 141–65, esp. at pp. 152–57. 5 Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms?’, p. 136. 6 Ibid., p. 137. 1

98

JILL C. HAVENS

So what caused this change in views about knighthood that is so clearly seen in the literature of the late fourteenth century? A variety of factors are proposed by Saul, but most persuasively the fact that through the earlier phases of the Hundred Years War with France, many ‘substantial fortunes were being won’ and the knightly class had become a ‘professional class of mercenaries and freebooters’.7 This, coupled with the significant loss of English-controlled territory in France in the 1370s and early 1380s, left the government of England ‘with little taste for war’.8 Another voice heard at this time, Saul maintains, was that of the religious reformer John Wyclif and the heretical movement he inspired known as Wycliffism or Lollardy.9 While Lollard pacifism represented more marginal views, their concerns can be seen in the ‘more solidly mainstream figure of Gower’ and eventually in the decision made by Richard II to seek peace with the French.10 As Saul concludes, for Richard and England in the 1380s and 1390s, ‘the blessings of peace were esteemed more highly than the heroism of war’.11 In examining the literature of poets like Gower, Chaucer, and Clanvow, the pacifist rhetoric of the Wycliffite heresy, and the changing attitudes about the war with France in Richard II’s court, Saul treats these factors as separate threads. I would like to further his argument about the changing attitudes towards warfare at the end of the fourteenth century, tying these separate threads together by focusing on a group of men often referred to as the ‘Lollard knights’. These men were career soldiers, members of the household of Edward III and Richard II, writers and literary patrons, and accused by the chroniclers Henry Knighton and Thomas Walsingham of being supporters of the Lollard heresy.12 The life of one of these men, Sir John Clanvow, provides a focal point for the issues Saul explores, a life where all these threads of warfare, politics, religion, and literature clearly intertwine.13 Whether the ‘Lollard knights’ were truly supporters and protectors of the early Wycliffites has been debated for many years, and recent opinions, among both historians and scholars of heresy, suggest that the accusations of Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 139. 9 The use of the terms ‘Wycliffite’ and ‘Lollard’ to describe the followers of Wyclif and later adherents of the heresy has been a point of contention among scholars for some years. For the purpose of my argument here, I use these terms interchangeably. For more on the debate on the use of these terms, see, for example, A. Cole, Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 72–74. 10 Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms?’, pp. 142–43. 11 Ibid., p. 145. 12 Knighton’s Chronicle, p. 295; Chronicon Angliae, ed. E. M. Thompson (London, RS, 1874), p. 377, Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley (London, RS, 1864), vol. 2, p. 159. 13 For more on Clanvow’s life and works, see V. J. Scattergood, The Works of Sir John Clanvowe: The Boke of Cupide and The Two Ways (Cambridge, 1975). 7 8

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR99

the chroniclers are legitimate.14 But why would this group of prominent and powerful men have become adherents of the Wycliffite heresy? An oft-suggested reason, put forth by W. T. Waugh and others who have examined this group of knights, has been that these men endorsed the Lollard campaign to disendow the Church of its wealth.15 While the idea of reappropriating the church’s lands for their personal benefit does not seem surprising, I would like to argue here that something else drew these men to a heresy that inspired personal devotion, provided access to the scriptures in English, and preached pacifism: the trauma of their experience as military leaders during the Hundred Years War. While their shared military service brought these men closer together by bonds of loyalty, this experience also motivated their support of the Lollard heresy with its moral aversion to violence and rejection of war. By examining some of the disastrous campaigns in France, the bonds of loyalty forged through shared military experience, and early Wycliffite views of war, I will argue that Clanvow’s interest in this reforming movement helped to heal the spiritual wounds of war. For many discussions of the ‘Lollard knights’, Clanvow’s devotional text, The Two Ways, has become a focal point and used in a variety of ways as an expression of Clanvow’s beliefs, whether orthodox or heterodox. Most recently, his poem The Boke of Cupide has garnered similar attention, with a few scholars claiming, as Helen Barr does, that the poem ‘can be seen to be informed by Lollard issues’.16 Opinions about The Two Ways has ranged from Anne Hudson’s The core group of ‘Lollard Knights’ includes Sir John Clanvow, Sir William Neville, Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir John Cheyne, Sir Thomas Latimer, Sir John Montague, and Sir Richard Stury. Their lives have been covered in some detail in the following: W. T. Waugh, ‘The Lollard Knights’, Scottish Historical Review, 11 (1914), 55–92; K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), pp. 139–226; C. Kightly, ‘The Early Lollards: A Survey of Popular Lollard Activity in England, 1382–1428’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of York, 1975); ODNB entries for the knights are: C. Kightly, ‘Lollard Knights (act. C.1380–1414)’; N. Saul (revised), ‘Clanvow, Sir John (c. 1341–1391), Courtier and Poet’; available at https:// doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37286; J. A. F. Thomson, ‘Neville, Sir William (c. 1341–1391), Lollard’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19966; P. Fleming, ‘Clifford, Sir Lewis (c. 1330–1404), Soldier and Suspected Heretic’; N. Saul, ‘Cheyne, Sir John (d. 1414), Diplomat, Heretic, and Speaker-Elect of the House of Commons’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/41195; M. Jurkowski, ‘Latimer, Sir Thomas (1341– 1401), Soldier and Alleged Heretic’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50260; A. Goodman, ‘Montagu [Montacute], John, Third Earl of Salisbury (c. 1350–1400), Magnate and Courtier’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/18995; there is no separate ODNB entry for Sir Richard Stury. 15 Waugh, ‘Lollard Knights’, 89; McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 192. 16 H. Barr, Socioliterary Practice in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2001), pp. 158–87. See also L. Patterson, ‘Court Politics and the Invention of Literature: The Case of Sir 14

100

JILL C. HAVENS

oft-quoted statement that ‘the text is of an insipidity that hardly encourages … further exploration’ to others claiming that Clanvow ‘[identifies] himself with the despised sect’.17 Several sentences in the text have drawn the most critical attention as scholars try to determine what Clanvow meant: And also swiche folke þat wolden fayne lyuen meekeliche in þis world and ben out offe swich forseid riot, noise, and stryf, and lyuen symplely, and vsen to eten and drynken in mesure, and to clooþen hem meekely, and suffren paciently wroonges þat ooþere folke doon and seyn to hem, and hoolden hem apayed with lytel good of þis world, and desiren noo greet naame of þis world, ne no pris ther of, swiche folke þe world scoorneth and hooldeþ hem lolleris and loselis, foolis and schameful wrecches.18

Clanvow’s use of the word ‘loller’ here is ‘a critical mystery’; does he include himself in this group, which he then praises as ‘moost wise and most worsshipful’ in the eyes of God?19 Most critics trying to assess how this word was used at the end of the fourteenth century, considering its political and social context, seem to think he does.20 With the work of J. Patrick Hornbeck, Stephen Lahey, and Fiona Somerset on Wycliffite spirituality and a more nuanced approach to vernacular devotional texts like Clanvow’s, I believe his text comfortably falls into this category of spiritual Wycliffism.21 Other parts of Clanvow’s text merit our consideration; in Saul’s article, he focuses on Clanvow’s condemnation of ‘greete werreyours and fiȝteres and þat distroyen and wynnen manye loondis, and waasten and ȝeuen muche good John Clanvowe’, in Culture and History, 1350–1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing, ed. David Aers (Detroit, 1993), pp. 7–41. Patterson interprets the poem as a political allegory and critique of Richard II. See also K. Kerby-Fulton, Books under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, 2006), pp. 350–57. A newer edition and overview of the poem is by Dana Symons, Chaucerian Dream Visions and Complaints, TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo, 2004), https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/ symons-chaucerian-dream-visions-and-complaints-boke-of-cupide-introduction. 17 A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988), p. 7; J. A .F. Thomson, ‘Knightly Piety and the Margins of Lollardy’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (New York, 1997), p. 97. Clanvow’s text is given as an example of a Wycliffite ‘form of living’ in Wycliffite Spirituality, ed. J. P. Hornbeck II, S. Lahey, and F. Somerset (New York, 2013), pp. 164–82. 18 The Two Ways, in The Works of Sir John Clanvowe: The Boke of Cupide and The Two Ways, ed. Scattergood, p. 70. 19 Cole, Literature and Heresy, p. 50. 20 See most recently Cole, Literature and Heresy, pp. 50–52. 21 The best explanation of indicators of Wycliffite spirituality in vernacular texts is given in Wycliffite Spirituality, ed. Hornbeck, Lahey, and Somerset, pp. 7–22.

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR101

to hem þat haan ynouȝ’.22 As Saul rightly concludes, ‘rarely did a knight so completely disclaim the trappings of his former existence’.23 Clanvow goes on to condemn the ‘worsship’ and fame when ‘men maken bookes and soonges’ about those ‘þat woln bee venged proudly and dispitously of euery wrong þat is seid or doon to hem’.24 Clanvow further showing his disdain for the literature that glorified the exploits of great soldiers of his day like Chandos Herald’s Life of the Black Prince. But what might have driven Clanvow to say these things? The answer to this question is found elsewhere in the text where Clanvow expresses a deep anxiety and desire to amend the past: and also þouȝ we myȝte lyue manye þousand ȝeeres ȝet at þe laste we moten nedys dyen and been ydeemed after oure werkes þat we haan ydoon in oure lyf. And þerfore ȝef þat we haan wel ylyued it is good þat we hoolden vs so til þat we dyen, and ȝef þat we haan yuel ylyued it is tyme þat we amende vs toward oure eende.25

Throughout the text, Clanvow shares his rejection of the material world, of the sort of wealth and riches he would have acquired as a knight because ‘þere is no thyng withouten trauail, or dreede, or anger, or sum diseese’. These things are only temporary and distract us from the love of God; therefore ‘sette we not oure hertes so muche vpon þe foule, stynking muk of þis false, faillynge world’.26 It is not just the temptations of worldly wealth that he eschews, but also ‘euel companye’ and people that are called ‘goode felawes’ who can also draw a man into sin: Ofte tymes men good to þe tauerne and been drunken or to þe bordel and doon leccherye. And þere þei fiȝten oþerwhile and doon manye oothere synnes for plesaunce of yuel felasshipe þat þei folewen.27

The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. Scattergood, p. 69. Saul, ‘A Farewell to Arms?’, p. 137. 24 The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. Scattergood, p. 69. 25 Ibid., p. 63. 26 Ibid., p. 67. He goes on to warn of the great burden and stress that comes with wealth: ‘And þei þat haan þe greete rychesses of þis world þei been as ofte sithes ateened, as ofte adrad, as ofte seeke, and as soone deede, as þei þat haan noone swiche richesses. And whan þei been deede it letteth hem to comen to heuene moore þan it helpeth hem’ (at p. 68). 27 Ibid., p. 71. Chaucer also uses this expression ‘good fellow’ in a similarly sarcastic way when he describes the Shipman in his ‘Prologue’ to The Canterbury Tales at l. 395. See The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. M. Allen and J. Fisher (Boston, 2012), p. 20. 22 23

102

JILL C. HAVENS

Though much of his text echoes the sermons and other vernacular devotional writings and literature of the time, like these warnings against the ‘tavern sins’, there are moments when an earnest and personal voice comes through, such as when he speaks of ‘woodnesse’ or madness: And, þerfore, ȝef we shuln in at þe strayte ȝaate we musten keepe oure flessh in right reule as men keepen a seek man þat is disposed to fallen into woodnesse, hoopynge to bryngen hym to heele. ffor oure flessh hath alwey þat seeknesse þat he is disposed to be woode ȝef þat he haaue al þat he desireth. And ȝef þat he weere woode þanne wolde he raþest doon harme to hise nexte and hise beste freendis, for þat is þe kynde of woodnesse.28

Clanvow’s description of ‘woodnesse’ that can lead one to harm ‘hise beste freendis’ suggests a familiarity with the psychological harm wrought by years of exposure to the brutality of medieval warfare. The emotional scars of years of combat seem to inform his constant pleas to his readers to abide by the model of suffering that the life of Christ provides, for ‘he coom on so poore and so meeke a wise into þis world al for to ȝeuen vs ensaumple of meeknesse and of wilful pouerte’, and while he lived in this world, he ‘suffrede heete and coolde, and þirst booþe weet and drie, and euel heberewe, scoornes, repreues, bacbitynges, chidynges, wroonges, and manye oothere dispites and greete diseeses’.29 As Christ suffered, so must we. Clanvow’s overall theme of the ‘two ways’ also incorporates love; we must ‘truste of Goddis mercy’ and ‘to doo good for þe loue of God’, always in helping our neighbour, for it is natural ‘we shulden iche oon hertely loue oothere with good skile’.30 Again, the reader senses a feeling of regret and sadness behind Clanvow’s words, yet now he is also looking back at his life with the wisdom of experience and the consolation of a faith that gives him hope. *** In all of the biographies written of Sir John Clanvow, a brief summary is usually given of his military career, with more detail about his later political career as a chamber knight in Richard II’s court, and the evidence of his financial and legal connections to the other ‘Lollard knights’ and famous figures like Geoffrey Chaucer.31 These discussions are often shaped by the author’s desire to find connections between Clanvow and other more easily identifiable Lollards.32 It is The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. Scattergood, p. 66. Ibid., pp. 75–76. 30 Ibid., pp. 65, 78. 31 A perfect example of this is ibid., pp. 22–27; Saul, ‘Clanvow, Sir John (c. 1341–91)’. 32 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 142–47. Though McFarlane claims that his reassessment of the Lollard knights ‘is how the evidence compels me to see them’ (p. 144). 28 29

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR103

often in this context that suggestions about Clanvow’s interest in the Wycliffite heresy are made, often reverting back to the idea that the ‘Lollard knights’ were mostly interested in the disendowment of the church.33 While K. B. McFarlane provides a brief overview of their military service, no one has yet looked more closely at the wartime experience of these knights, either as a group or as individuals.34 In the limited space I have here, I would like to briefly consider what Clanvow and his ‘brother-in-arms’ Sir William Neville experienced in their years as career soldiers during the Hundred Years War to argue that some of the disastrous campaigns they participated in had long-lasting effects on the way they viewed war and its impact on their society. Clanvow’s earliest known documented experience of war is his service under Sir Walter Huet in Brittany in 1364.35 With Huet, he would have been at the battle of Auray on 29 September where Anglo-Breton forces soundly defeated the enemy, killing Charles of Blois and imprisoning the great commanders Bertrand du Guesclin and Jean de Chalon.36 Jonathan Sumption describes the brutality of the battle, in which ‘the losers suffered appalling losses … crushed and suffocated as they lay wounded in the front line’ trampled by the forces behind them.37 For the winners, ransoms from the prisoners made ‘even very minor captains … small fortunes’.38 Clanvow’s earliest experience would have been for the young knight an affirmation of his calling, following in the footsteps of other great knights who came from similarly humble origins, like Sir Robert Knolles and Sir John Chandos. But the war for all of these men changed dramatically in the 1370s. For much of 1369, we find Clanvow in Aquitaine serving under the Black Prince, but on the eve of the new year, Clanvow is in the company of Sir John Chandos at Lussac battling the troops of Jean de Kerlouet on a bridge over the River Vienne.39 As Froissart dramatically tells the story, there was frost on the bridge that caused Chandos to slip, falling on to the lance that had been thrust below his eye by a French squire. What happens next, according to Froissart, is very striking: His people, on seeing this mishap, were like madmen. His uncle, sir Edward Clifford, hastily advanced, and striding over the body (for the French were endeavoring to get possession of it), defended it most valiantly, and gave such Waugh, ‘Lollard Knights’, p. 89, where Waugh argues that ‘the temporalities of the clergy must have seemed a promising source of plunder’. 34 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, pp. 177–79. 35 N. H. Nicolas, The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor (London, 1832), vol. 2, p. 437. Foedera, vol. iii, pt. 2, p. 725. 36 J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, II: Trial by Fire (London, 1999), pp. 518–19. 37 Ibid., p. 519. 38 Ibid. 39 J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War III: Divided Houses (Philadelphia, 2009), pp. 47–48; Waugh, ‘Lollard Knights’, p. 75. 33

104

JILL C. HAVENS

well-directed blows with his sword that none dared to approach him. Two other knights, namely, Sir John Chambo [Clanvow] and sir Bertrand de Cassilies, were like men distracted at seeing their master lie thus on the ground.40

Like a scene out of Homer’s Iliad, Chandos’ men desperately defend his body and fight the French ‘like madmen’, clearly ‘distracted’ and distressed at the loss of their illustrious leader.41 While the loss of Chandos was a significant one for England, it is hard to gauge the impact on a young knight like Clanvow, though Froissart’s embellished account and those of other contemporary chroniclers suggest it was felt deeply. Some months later in 1370, Clanvow and Neville joined Knolles’ chevauchée in northern France, a campaign referred to as ‘a large-scale plundering raid’.42 But the promise of ransom money and the spoils of war did not pan out. After a long march through northern France to the gates of Paris, Knolles’ army saw little action and so they headed west towards Normandy.43 Fairly early on, Knolles’ army was, according to Vernier, ‘plagued by professional jealousies, disputes over booty, and even treachery’.44 So the five leaders eventually parted ways: Knolles heading farther west with his companies, while those under Grandison, Calveley, Fitzwalter, and Minsterworth stayed on.45 Clanvow and Neville were with Grandison by this point, and their force of about 600 to 1,200 men were caught completely by surprise by du Guesclin at

Chronicles of England, France and Spain … by Sir John Froissart, ed. T. Johnes (New York, 1857), p. 193. See also Chroniques de J. Froissart, ed. S. Luce (Paris, 1878), vol. 7, p. 203. The death of Chandos is also recorded in Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana and the Chronique Normande, but neither includes the details here of the manner of Chandos’ death or his soldiers’ response, so it must be taken as Froissart’s editorial elaboration, though the fact that Froissart feels the need to add this moment and the language he uses is still highly suggestive. Walsingham does comment about the grief of others, namely the king of France, who, upon learning of Chandos’ death ‘maxime doluisse et asseruisse’ and that Chandos ‘tantum ab omnibus amabatur’ at p. 312. See Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, vol. 1, p. 312; A. and E. Molinier, Chronique Normande du XIVe Siecle (Paris, 1882), pp. 194–95. Cuvelier’s account of Chandos’ death in the Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin is also dramatic and similar to the account in Froissart. See R. Vernier, The Flower of Chivalry: Bertrand du Guesclin and the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 2003), p. 152. 41 This moment seems to echo the battle for Patroclus’ body in Homer’s Iliad, Book 16, ll. 42 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 84. Foedera, vol. iii, pt. 2, p. 897. 43 Sumption, Divided Houses, pp. 84–86. 44 Vernier, Flower of Chivalry, p. 160. 45 Sumption, Divided Houses, pp. 87–88; M. Prestwich, The Hundred Years War (London, 2018), pp. 56–57. Prestwich argues that Minsterworth led the challenge to Knolles’ leadership ‘in a rare example of mutiny’ (p. 57); The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381, ed. V. H. Galbraith (New York, 1970), pp. 64–65. 40

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR105

Pontvallain on the morning of 4 December.46 Most of Grandison’s men were killed in the encounter, while he and his lieutenants and captains were captured, including Clanvow and Neville.47 The other companies fared no better than Grandison’s. Fitzwalter’s corps was caught at Vaas and massacred, Fitzwalter himself being captured, and another group was trapped outside the fortress of Bressuire, where they were also slaughtered.48 Minsterworth who had regrouped with Knolles marched across Brittany to return to England, but finding only two ships at the port of Sainte-Mathieu, those who could not pay for passage remained on the shore only to be trapped and captured or killed by Olivier de Clisson.49 According to Sumption, the devastation to Knolles’ army had a lasting impact because ‘it ended the myth of English invincibility’.50 While we know that Clanvow and Neville were imprisoned from the time of the battle at Pontvallain in 4 December 1370 to a few months later when they showed up at Sir Alan Buxhall’s fortress of Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte on 25 March 1371, we do not know what their experience as prisoners for four months was like.51 According to Froissart, the French ‘behaved very handsomely [to their English captives], allowing them to go at large on their parole for their ransom. They neither shut them up in prison, nor put on shackles and fetters.’52 In reality, though, Grandison died shortly after his release, his health ‘destroyed by prison conditions’, and the others ‘returned to England ruined men’.53 As Sumption, Divided Houses, pp. 88–90. On p. 69, Sumption states incorrectly that Clanvow was nineteen at the time. This mistake is based on N. H. Nicolas’s biography of Clanvow in The Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, which gives Clanvow’s birth year as 1351, not 1341; J. Henneman, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France under Charles V and Charles VI (Philadelphia, 1996), pp. 59–60. 47 R. Ambühl, Prisoners of War in the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 224, 243–44; Vernier, Flower of Chivalry, p. 161; Chronicles … by Sir John Froissart, ed. Johnes, p. 202. Froissart only mentions Neville’s capture and that he, Grandison, and others were taken to Le Mans. 48 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 91. 49 Ibid.; Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. Galbraith, pp. 64–65. Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, p. 60. Henneman suggests that this was probably at Sainte-Mâlo or SainteMaur-sur-Loire rather than Sainte-Mathieu (p. 258, n. 33). 50 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 93. 51 Rémy Ambühl, ‘The English Reversal of Fortunes in the 1370s and the Experience of Prisoners of War’, in The Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century , ed. A. Bell, A. Curry, A. Chapman, A. King, and D. Simpkin (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 191–207, at pp. 192–93. 52 Chronicles … by Sir John Froissart, ed. Johnes, p. 202. 53 Sumption, Divided Houses, pp. 91–92. Sumption states that years later these ‘ruined men’ were mentioned in parliament, though he provides no direct reference to a source for this. It appears that he is referring to a petition made in 1376 by several knights, including Geoffrey Workesley (or Worsley), to parliament for financial support to pay 46

106

JILL C. HAVENS

Wendy Turner claims in her article on the mental health of returning soldiers in fourteenth-century England, ‘a number of individuals had mental breakdowns following their service in battle or an imprisonment awaiting payment of their ransom’.54 Whether treated well or poorly, imprisonment would have been a difficult but bonding experience for Clanvow and Neville, and though Buxhall paid their ransoms, imprisonment meant the individual worry of personal financial disaster.55 Clanvow and Neville’s imprisonment, however, did not discourage them from returning to the field of battle, and by 1373 Clanvow was again in France with John of Gaunt on his great chevauchée of 1373–74.56 This long march from Calais to Bordeaux took its toll not only on the French countryside ‘leaving behind … a broad swathe of looted barns and burning farmsteads and villages’, but after months of marching, it also took a toll on the troops themselves.57 The long train was very vulnerable, and according to the Chroniques de Flanders,

off their ‘outrageous ransoms’ from earlier imprisonments going back to 1370. See Ambühl, Prisoners of War, pp. 207–08. 54 W. J. Turner, ‘Mental Incapacity and the Financing of War in Medieval England’, in The Hundred Years War II: Different Vistas, ed. L. J. Andrew Villalon and D. J. Kagay (Leiden, 2008), pp. 387–402, at p. 390. 55 Ambühl, ‘The English Reversal of Fortunes’, p. 202. Ambühl notes that this is the only instance he has found where a captain paid the ransom of his fellow captains or soldiers (p. 202, n. 66). 56 Ibid., at p. 195 talks about how common it was to see soldiers return very soon after being captured: ‘many prisoners show this remarkable capacity to recover and rearm’. Their return was probably inspired by their need to reverse their financial fortunes. The records here are somewhat confusing. Clanvow enrolled a letter of attorney to join the earl of Hereford in July 1372 for service in France (C 76/55, m. 32), but they do not seem to have gone, being perhaps part of the troops still waiting in England to disembark when news of the loss of Poitou came in the fall. By January 1373, the earl was dead, so Clanvow’s service was transferred to the king (McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 165). There is no additional letter of attorney or letter of protection for Clanvow before Gaunt’s expedition to France in 1373. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 179, claims that Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir Thomas Latimer, and Clanvow were part of Gaunt’s army, but offers no documentary evidence to support Clanvow’s involvement. Latimer and Clifford are listed in John of Gaunt’s retinue in JGR 1372–6, vol. 1, pp. 33, 125, but not Clanvow. McFarlane’s claim is reiterated by Scattergood in The Works of Sir John Clanvowe (at p. 25) and by Saul in the ODNB entry for Clanvow. It is not mentioned in Nicolas’ summary nor in Waugh’s article. Given the presence of captains like Sir Walter Huet, whom Clanvow served with before, it would be more than likely that he was. Meanwhile, Neville appears to have been imprisoned by the French at this time and having difficulty raising funds for his ransom; see Letters, Orders and Musters of Bertrand du Guesclin, 1357–1380, ed. M. Jones (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 268. 57 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 189.

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR107 En ches poursieutes furent Englès moult fot grevés: car il perdirent, au passer le riviére de l’Alier, tout leur caroy entirement, qui par lesdis poursuiwans leur fu fouré et pillié. Et apriés eubrent tant de famine et de mesquief que toute la plus grant partie d’eulx et de leurs chevauls morurent; car on les trouvoit mors par là où il passoyent sans bataille avoir.58

Marching in November, Gaunt’s troops encountered terrible weather and a barren landscape that offered little to sustain such a large army.59 When they reached Bordeaux, the army was starving, dirty, with many knights on foot, and with heavy casualties, and Bordeaux was grappling with an outbreak of plague, ‘from which many of the troops would die in the following weeks’.60 Very soon, many soldiers simply deserted and headed home to England.61 As Walsingham claims in his Historia Anglicana: Nam qui [in] ingressu Franciae apud Kalesiam triginta et amplius millia equorum in suo comitatu habuerat, perpaucos, ut fertur, equos Burdegaliam secum vivos adduxit: ubi cernere possent spectaculum miserandum, milites famosos et nobiles, delicatos quondam et divites terra Anglicana, amissis hominibus et jumentis, ostiatim mendicando panem petere; nec erat qui eis daret.62

Anthony Goodman discusses at some length whether this campaign was as much of a failure as contemporary chroniclers and modern scholars claim.63 Though he ultimately concludes that the extent of Gaunt’s armies’ breakdown ‘remains open’, it seems now widely accepted that the campaign accomplished very little, was very costly in lives lost, and it is hard to imagine that those who participated in it were not traumatised by the experience.64 Yet by 1378 Neville and Clanvow are together again, serving as captain and lieutenant respectively under John of Gaunt.65 But this naval campaign proved to be yet another humiliating disaster for Gaunt and all involved. Istore et Croniques de Flandres, ed. K. de Lettenhove (Brussels, 1880), vol. 2, p. 138; Sumption in Divided Houses provides a detailed summary of this campaign, pp. 189–94. 59 Sumption, Divided Houses, pp. 194–95. 60 Ibid., p. 195; Istore et Croniques de Flandres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 2, p. 139; The Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. Galbraith, pp. 74–75. 61 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 197. 62 Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, vol. 1, p. 315. 63 A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power in FourteenthCentury Europe (New York, 1992), pp. 233–35. 64 Ibid., p. 234; McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 179. McFarlane calls this expedition a ‘disastrous fiasco’. 65 Their records of letters of attorney and letters of protection can now be found on The Soldier in Later Medieval England online database: http://www.medievalsoldier. org/dbsearch. 58

108

JILL C. HAVENS

Walsingham in his Chronica Maiora tells how the town of Saint-Malo had offered to surrender to the English in exchange for protection from destruction. But Gaunt arrogantly refused, desiring the complete surrender of the town, and so his forces attacked.66 Unable to gain control of the town and their attempts to undermine the walls destroyed, a disagreement between Gaunt and the earl of Arundel led to further problems.67 In the end, ‘the English were ignominiously thrown back’ and Gaunt ‘departed angrily, disdaining any approach to so savage an enemy’.68 The campaign abandoned, most of the retinues who had not already left headed home. Concludes Sumption, ‘The general view in England was that they had been defeated by “incompetence and inertia”. John of Gaunt … received most of the blame. He never commanded an English army in France again.’69 This was also the last French campaign for Clanvow and Neville; that both would spend part of the next decade negotiating for peace with the French is hardly surprising. *** What evidence might there be that Clanvow and Neville were affected by their earlier experience in war? On 19 October 1386, Sir John Derwentwater was at Westminster Abbey deposing witnesses for the case of Scrope vs Grosvenor for the Court of Chivalry. Both Clanvow and Neville, along with their friend Sir Lewis Clifford, gave their statements. Of the 250 witness depositions collected, all of which provided a survey of each deponent’s military service, only one refused to say anything about his military career: Sir John Clanvow.70 As N. H. Nicolas remarks, ‘His deposition is chiefly remarkable for the petulance which he displayed at being interrogated’, saying only that if one were to put all the interrogatories in the world to him, he would answer, once for all, and say, certainly, that wherever he was armed in the King’s wars he never saw any man bear the said arms, nor be armed in them, nor use them, but those of the name of Scrope; and before this debate he had heard nothing of the Grosvenors or their ancestry.71

What might be behind this unwillingness to say anything about his military career? Historians who have looked more closely at the testimony of deponents from this case have characterised their statements as old soldiers reminiscing about ‘the good old days, those well-remembered days of action St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, vol. 1, p. 235. Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 325. 68 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, p. 235. 69 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 327. 70 Patterson, ‘Court Politics and the Invention of Literature’, p. 25. 71 Nicolas, Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, vol. 2, pp. 438–39. 66 67

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR109

and fellowship’.72 Philip Caudrey, focusing on the testimony of East Anglian knights, cautions that witnesses only mentioned what they fondly remembered or felt was most relevant for the case.73 In Caudrey’s more recent book-length study of these depositions, he distinguishes between the older deponents who fought during the glorious first phase of the war and shared lengthy narratives of heroic deeds in battle and the younger campaigners of the 1370s and 1380s whose testimonies instead ‘proffered straightforward statements’ that lacked the nostalgia of their seniors.74 Still, in spite of the younger deponents’ unease with the disasters they witnessed, a wholesale failure to mention any military service at all seems striking in the case of Clanvow.75 While Lee Patterson concludes that this seems to fit Clanvow’s tendency to ‘retreat into silence’, I find this silence possibly indicative of the coping mechanism of disassociation or repression of memory commonly associated with trauma.76 Historians are understandably hesitant to use modern concepts like ‘trauma’ when dealing with the past, but more recent research assessing evidence ‘through the lens of trauma’ has proven fruitful. Donna Trembinski’s proposal to use trauma as a ‘category of historical analysis’ offers the historian another tool, along with race, class, and gender, which ‘injects ambiguity and complexity into the thoughts, emotions and actions of historical actors’.77 Though warning that the experience of trauma differs across cultures and time periods, Trembinski persuasively demonstrates, using the story of St Francis’ transition into a life of religious asceticism, how ‘trauma as a category of historical analysis … can provide a potential explanation for certain behaviours’.78 In the case of Sir John Clanvow and his fellow ‘Lollard knights’, it is curious that these men would have abandoned their martial lifestyle for a puritanical faith that encouraged pacifism. Using the lens of trauma and their wartime experience, some of which has been described above, enables us to make sense of this choice. The category of trauma also helps to make sense of inconsistent behaviour. Again, scholars have noted the seeming hypocrisy of Clanvow and J. Rosenthal, Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England (University Park, 2003), p. 65. 73 P. Caudrey, ‘War, Chivalry, and Regional Society: East Anglia’s Warrior Gentry before the Court of Chivalry’, in Fourteenth Century England, VIII, ed. J. S. Hamilton (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 126–27. Caudrey goes on to discuss how, in spite of the ‘depressing period’ in which these men fought, their memories focused on the more illustrious and triumphant moments (at pp. 136–37). 74 P. Caudrey, Military Society and the Court of Chivalry in the Age of the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 154–55. 75 Ibid., p. 156. 76 N. C. Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 61–67. 77 D. Trembinski, ‘Trauma as a Category of Analysis’, in Trauma in Medieval Society, ed. W. Turner and C. Lee (Leiden, 2018), p. 31. 78 Ibid., p. 21. 72

110

JILL C. HAVENS

Neville and their participation in Louis de Bourbon’s Crusade to North Africa in 1390, followed soon after with their last trip, heading east on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.79 These two men had never participated in a crusade or pilgrimage before, why would they do so now? And why would they do so while supposedly being supporters of a religious movement that vehemently rejected both crusade and pilgrimage? Placing these actions within the context of their traumatic wartime experience, these men were clearly seeking a way to find peace with their violent past. While Clanvow and Neville would have experienced trauma from their imprisonments and the hardships of war, such as the deprivation caused by the shortage of supplies, they could have also experienced trauma as both witnesses and perpetrators of violence.80 An oft-cited example of the sort of cruelty they might have witnessed during the Hundred Years War occurred at Derval castle in Brittany in 1373.81 Sir Hugh Browe, possibly a nephew of Sir Robert Knolles, had custody of the castle and gave hostages to the French besieging it, promising that he would give it over if not soon relieved. When Knolles arrived and declared that the agreement was made without his knowledge, either Olivier de Clisson or Louis, the duke of Anjou, beheaded the English hostages, while Knolles responded in kind, beheading the French prisoners and throwing their headless bodies into the castle ditch.82 Soldiers were not the only ones to suffer during the Hundred Years War; the common people of the French countryside were also victims of the violence, and research by Nicole Archambeau and Aleksandra Pfau has explored the impact of war on non-combatants. Pfau’s study of mental illness evidenced J. A. Tuck, ‘Carthusian Monks and Lollard Knights: Religious Attitude at the Court of Richard II’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 1 (1984), 151–52; Patterson, ‘Court Politics and the Invention of Literature: The Case of Sir John Clanvowe’, pp. 12–13. Patterson argues that the reason Clanvow leaves from the crusade and pilgrimage soon after ‘bespeaks a desire to distance himself from a court in which he had lost faith’ at p. 13. Anthony Luttrell has suggested that though Clanvow and Neville ‘received protection for a journey abroad’, there is no evidence that they actually participated in the siege. See S. Düll, A. Luttrell, and M. Keen, ‘Faithful unto Death: The Tomb Slab of Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, Constantinople 1391’, The Antiquaries Journal, 71 (1991), 179–80. 80 J. Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York, 1994), pp. 121–24. Shay explains that deprivation is the second leading cause of PTSD in Vietnam veterans. 81 A. Bell, ‘The Soldier, “hadde he riden, no man ferre”’, in The Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century, ed. Bell et al., p. 214. 82 Istore et Croniques de Flandres, ed. Lettenhove, vol. 2, p. 137; Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 192; Henneman, Olivier de Clisson, pp. 68–69. Henneman discusses the various discrepancies between accounts and confusion over chronology but concludes that ‘Clisson had acquired a reputation for conspicuous brutality towards the English’ (at p. 69). 79

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR111

by letters of remission granted by the French Crown clearly shows the impact of the English chevauchées of the 1370s and 1380s on the mental health of the French peasantry.83 These letters, according to Pfau, detail the sorts of brutal violence suffered by the people living in the countryside, so fierce it led to ‘aberrant behavior – suicide, brigandage, murder of loved ones, even the violation of one’s political allegiance’ all ‘manifestation[s] of mental illness brought on by seemingly unending warfare’.84 Though the people suffered, they also sought out ways to heal. Using the canonisation inquest for Delphine de Puimichel, countess of Ariano in the region of Provence, Archambeau argues that for the ravaged populace, the devotion to Delphine provided healing and consolation to a community suffering from the depredations of war.85 People who had suffered for years from trauma found that their ‘prayers to Delphine gave them agency over war, plague, and doubt’.86 The soldiers who inflicted this pain and suffering also looked to religion and spirituality as coping mechanisms for trauma.87 Christina Lee, in her article on the Vita of St Guthlac and the ‘warrior who has exchanged arms for the life of a religious’, argues that soldiers had to live with what they had done and sought healing through the power of religious narrative.88 These soldiers also sought healing by developing close bonds of brotherhood with their fellow warriors. As Nigel Hunt advocates in his study of combat trauma and memory, ‘one of the most effective strategies for coping with the traumatic events of war, comradeship is a sense of belonging to a group of people who share similar experiences’.89 *** Scholars who have worked on the records of the ‘Lollard knights’ have all remarked upon the unusual closeness of this particular group of men, going back to Nicolas who noted in his work on the Scrope–Grosvenor controversy A. Pfau, ‘Warfare, Trauma and Madness in French Remission Letters of the Hundred Years War’, in The Hundred Years War (Part III): Further Considerations, History of Warfare, vol. 85, ed. L. J. A. Villalon and D. J. Kagay (Leiden, 2013), pp. 437–54. Pfau qualifies her argument: ‘Given the extent to which scholars disagree on the issue, instead of seeking echoes of modern diagnoses in these texts from the past, this essay will allow the texts to speak for themselves, revealing the complex ways in which medieval people understood the effects of warfare on the mental health of individuals’ (at p. 442). 84 Ibid., p. 454. 85 N. Archambeau, ‘Miraculous Healing for the Warrior Soul: Transforming Fear, Violence, and Shame in Fourteenth-Century Provence’, Historical Reflections, 41 (2015), 14–27. 86 Ibid., p. 17. 87 Trembinski, ‘Trauma as a Category of Analysis’, p. 26. 88 C. Lee, ‘Healing Words: St Guthlac and the Trauma of War’, in Trauma in Medieval Society, ed. Turner and Lee, p. 262. 89 Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, p. 150. 83

112

JILL C. HAVENS

in 1832 that ‘an intimate connection seems to have existed between Sir Lewis Clifford, Sir William Neville, and Sir John Clanvow’.90 The many documents that survive attest to their friendship and loyalty in spite of their differences; as McFarlane argues, Of very widely scattered geographical origins and of widely different inherited blood and property, their public careers and employments had brought them into intimate association over a long period. Their names occur together in scores of private instruments, as witnesses, feoffees, mainpernors, and executors. There is clear and plentiful evidence that ties of friendship and mutual trust existed between them. The court was their common ground, but it cannot wholly explain their intimacy.91

Yet McFarlane does no more than list all of these documents to ‘explain their intimacy’. What I would like to argue here, though based only on a limited discussion of the shared experience of Clanvow and Neville, is that the bonds of ‘mutual trust’ for these men were established long ago on the battlefield and continued throughout the rest of their lives. Returning to the testimony of the deponents in the Scrope–Grosvenor case, Caudrey talks about how so many of the military men interviewed were witness to a developed ‘bond of circumstance’ over the years of fighting together, which enabled them to establish ‘trust at the strategy table, around the campfire, and in the heat of battle’.92 In his study of combat trauma and its effects on memory, Nigel Hunt explains how the friendship between soldiers is different: ‘Comradeship is seen as deeper than ordinary friendship, the depth of the relationship arising because of the shared hardships, the shared personal lives, and the sense of dependency for one’s life on others.’93 Clanvow and Neville’s shared experience of imprisonment and the various disastrous campaigns they served on brought these two men together as brothers in arms. The phrase ‘brothers in arms’ has long served to describe this relationship between soldiers; as Jonathan Shay, author of Achilles in Vietnam, states, ‘The kin relationship, brother, seems to be the most accessible and commonly spoken symbol of the bond between combat soldiers who are closest comrades.’94 Though these observations are from studies of modern soldiers, the concept of ‘brothers in arms’ was well known in the Middle Ages. Maurice Keen’s work has established the understanding of ‘brother in arms’ to refer to a Nicolas, Controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir Robert Grosvenor, vol. 2, p. 439. 91 McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, p. 160. 92 Caudrey, ‘War, Chivalry and Regional Society’, p. 135. Though Caudrey centres in on relationships based on ‘a common regional background’. 93 Hunt, Memory, War and Trauma, p. 157. 94 Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p. 40. 90

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR113

legal and financial arrangement, similar to the confraternities of the age, that created bonds between armed men for their mutual benefit.95 Alan Bray’s book The Friend explores the many ways in which ‘brotherhood’ was expressed with phrases like freres darmes, compaternitas, fratres iurati, and fraternitatis fedus.96 Both Keen and Bray examine a variety of evidence for public ‘brotherhood’ contracts and ceremonies through several examples of close relationships between men.97 But Bray includes other material evidence of a deeper emotional bond of ‘brotherhood’, focusing on a tomb preserved in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, Turkey: the joint tomb of Sir John Clanvow and Sir William Neville.98 Discovered in the last century, this tomb is quite remarkable because it presents the memorial to these men as a single slab with their arms impaled like a married couple and the profiles of their helmets facing each other.99 Unusual as it is, the tomb ‘was clearly to commemorate the long standing personal bond between’ Clanvow and Neville ‘and their well attested mutual affection’.100 While this joint tomb signifies their bond of brotherhood, its very existence also indicates that the servants or retainers who arranged for this tomb’s making knew them well and wanted to ensure that this relationship was publicly acknowledged.101 There is no surviving evidence that Clanvow and Neville ever entered into a legal bond of brotherhood like that described by Keen and Bray, but clearly their bond was so well known that the Westminster Chronicler made sure to memorialise it in words: It was also on 17 October that in a village near Constantinople in Greece the life of Sir John Clanvow, a distinguished knight, came to its close, causing to his companion on the march, Sir William Neville, for whom his love was no less than for himself, such inconsolable sorrow that he never took food again and two days afterwards breathed his last, greatly mourned, in the same village. These two knights were men of high repute among the English, gentlemen of mettle and descended from illustrious families.102 M. Keen, ‘Brotherhood in Arms’, History, 47: 159 (1962), 1–17. A. Bray, The Friend (Chicago, 2003), pp. 13–41. 97 See also E. A. R. Brown, ‘Ritual Brotherhood in Western Medieval Europe’, Traditio, 52 (1997), 357–81. Both Brown and Bray discuss the ritual brotherhood ceremony as a marriage and the possible sexual implications of the relationship. What I find interesting in these discussions is that, to my knowledge, none talk about the role of trauma and shared military experience as the foundation of such a brotherhood bond. 98 Bray, The Friend, pp. 13–19. 99 For a very thorough description of the tomb and its uniqueness, see Düll et al., ‘Faithful unto Death’, pp. 174–90. 100 Düll et al., ‘Faithful unto Death’, p. 184. 101 V. J. Scattergood, ‘The Date of Sir John Clanvowe’s The Two Ways and the “Reinvention of Lollardy”’, Medium Aevum, 79 (2010), p. 118. 102 Westminster Chronicle, p. 481. 95 96

114

JILL C. HAVENS

Like the grief Achilles shows upon the death of Patroclus, Neville starves himself in his grief at the loss of his dear comrade. Though this seems like a romantic exaggeration in the chronicle, it is not a surprising reaction when compared to the experience of modern soldiers. Shay describes combat veterans feeling ‘already dead’ at the loss of a ‘special comrade’, which leaves many in ‘prolonged states of numbness – the inability to feel love or happiness or to believe that anything matters’.103 The trauma they experienced was bonding, as Kai Erikson, a sociologist who has examined communities affected by natural disasters, explains: people who share a traumatic experience ‘know one another in ways that the most intimate friends never will, and for that reason they can supply a human context and a kind of emotional solvent in which the work of recovery can begin’.104 Clearly, Clanvow and Neville shared a strong emotional bond, and I want to argue that their shared experience of war influenced their mutual desire to seek solace and healing in a new religious experience that advocated for access to scripture in the vernacular, a personal relationship with God unmediated by the clergy, and a belief in the immorality of war and violence. *** As brothers in arms, these men not only shared their past military experience, but they also seemed to share their attempts to heal by collectively engaging and supporting a new religious movement. In fact, there were several religious movements at the time that attracted the interest and support of a generation of military men. In Anthony Tuck’s article about religious attitudes in the Ricardian court, he marks a similar interest in the Carthusian order, arguing that underlying all these ideas, and the different expressions they received, was a common concern with direct relationship between the individual and God, a common interest in the writings of the mystics, and a common emphasis upon a degree of puritanism and asceticism in religious life.105

Similar to the emphasis on the individual spiritual experience of the Carthusians, Lollardy encouraged the reading of scripture in the vernacular and the removal of the clerical middleman, the priest. More recent assessment of the Wycliffites in context with these various conservative religious movements at the end of the fourteenth century suggests that ‘lollardy appears to have been less a heretical movement … than one among a number of forms of Christianity current in

Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, pp. 49–53. K. Erikson, ‘Notes on Trauma and Community’, in Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. C. Caruth (Baltimore, 1995), p. 187. 105 Tuck, ‘Carthusian Monks and Lollard Knights’, p. 160. 103

104

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR115

late medieval England’.106 Perhaps what was also attractive to these brothers in arms was Wycliffite criticism of the morality of war. But before any discussion of Lollard or Wycliffite beliefs about war can proceed, several things need to be made clear. First, that there was a range of religious belief at the end of the fourteenth century that existed between what was considered heterodox or Lollard and orthodox.107 Next, that the line between what was heretical and orthodox seems to have also been very permeable in the last decades of the fourteenth century, where examples exist of orthodox and heterodox beliefs intersecting.108 Lastly, what Lollards believed was in no way consistent or stable across space or time.109 Looking through the records of heresy trials and reading texts written by Wycliffites and their enemies, it becomes apparent that the beliefs of the various geographically distant groups were different and changed over time, especially as the heresy moved from the scholarly environment of Oxford to the village conventicles of towns like Norwich and Coventry.110 And we must always remember that the picture we have of Lollard belief is mainly through the record of church authorities who were eager to establish an efficient and effective way to detect heretics.111

A Companion to Lollardy, ed. J. P. Hornbeck II, M. Bose, and F. Somerset (Leiden, 2016), p. 211. 107 A. Hudson, ‘“Who Is My Neighbour?”: Some Problems of Definition on the Borders of Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy’, in Wycliffite Controversies, ed. M. Bose and J. P. Hornbeck II, Medieval Church Studies 23 (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 79–96. Hudson argues that the space between orthodoxy and heterodoxy is populated by a ‘grey area’ that ‘allows for considerable variation in the degree of similarity or difference from either extreme’ at p. 96. I have explored the space of the ‘grey area’ in ‘Shading the Grey Area: Determining Heresy in Middle English Texts’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, ed. H. Barr and A. Hutchison, Medieval Church Studies 4 (Leiden, 2005), pp. 337–52, and in ‘Lollard Book Production and Richard Rolle’s English Psalter’, in Writers, Editors, and Exemplars in Medieval English Texts, ed. S. Rowley (New York, 2021), pp. 185–210. 108 This is most visibly seen in vernacular manuscripts that contain both heterodox and orthodox material. See Havens, ‘Shading the Grey Area’, pp. 337–52. 109 J. P. Hornbeck II, What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 2010), pp. 1–24. 110 Hudson, Premature Reformation. This is still the best survey of the history and literature of the movement. For the later period, see J. A. F. Thompson, The Later Lollards, 1414–1520 (Oxford, 1965). For the heresy trials, see N. Tanner, Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, Camden Society, Fourth Series, 20 (London, 1977); S. McSheffrey and N. Tanner, Lollards of Coventry, 1486–1522, Camden Society, Fifth Series, 23 (Cambridge, 2003). 111 J. Arnold, ‘Voicing Dissent: Heresy Trials in Later Medieval England’, Past and Present, 245 (2019), 3–37. Hudson has for many years warned that ‘heresy is always defined, even invented, by the enemy’ (‘Who Is My Neighbour’, p. 80); more recently, Arnold has 106

116

JILL C. HAVENS

As with the Lollards who follow him, Wyclif’s views on war changed over time, most deeply impacted by Bishop Despenser’s Crusade in 1383, and more recent evaluation of his theology suggests that his views were much stronger than previously believed.112 Rory Cox, in his book John Wyclif on War and Peace, argues that, to Wyclif, war was morally illicit, and to claim that one was permitted to wage war was effectively admitting that one was predestined to damnation. The chivalric warrior ethos, through which the nobility had come to identify itself as a virtuous Christian knighthood, was exposed as a chimera. According to Wyclif, the true miles Christi was a warrior of spiritual, not material, arms. There could be no such thing as a Christian knight, because Christianity and war were incompatible.113

Cox also argues that ‘the potential audience for Wyclif’s pacifist polemic, whether Latinate or non-Latinate, clerical or lay, was considerable’.114 The variety of Latin and early vernacular Wycliffite writings that express opinions about the morality of war are plenty, but the most succinct statement of the early Lollard stance is found in the ‘Twelve Conclusions’ posted in Westminster during the parliamentary session from 27 January to 15 February 1395.115 Using scripture as its authority, the tenth conclusion declares that manslaute be batayle … withouten special reuelaciun is expres contrarious to þe newe testament, þe qwiche is a lawe of grace and ful of mercy. Þis conclusiun is opinly prouid be exsample of Cristis preching here in erthe, þe qwiche most taute for to loue and to haue mercy on his enemys, and nout for to slen hem.116

The tenth conclusion clearly shows the impact of Despenser’s Crusade when it states ‘it is an holy robbing of þe pore puple qwanne lordis purchase indulgencis a pena et a culpa to hem þat helpith to his oste, and gaderith to slen þe concurred that ‘“heretics” are always made thus by authority … manufacturing their dissent as a useful phantom threat to orthodox authority’ (‘Voicing Dissent’, p. 4). 112 Hudson’s assessment is that Wyclif’s views, such as those expressed in his De Mandatis, ‘are moderate – that war for a just cause is lawful but often misguided’ (pp. 367–68). Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 368. For more on Despenser’s Crusade, see M. Aston, ‘The Impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, BIHR, 38 (1965), 127–48. 113 R. Cox, John Wyclif on War and Peace (Woodbridge, 2014), pp. 154–55. 114 Ibid., p. 163. 115 Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. A. Hudson (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 24–29. See also Wendy Scase’s ‘The Audience and Framers of the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale, ed. H. Barr and A. Hutchison (Turnhout, 2005), pp. 283–301. 116 ‘Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards’, in Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. Hudson, p. 28.

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR117

cristene men in fer londis for god temperel, as we have seen’.117 That Despenser’s Crusade drew the ire of Wyclif and his followers is well known and articulated at length in Wyclif’s Latin writings, such as De Cruciata, and in anonymous Latin works like the Opus Arduum.118 Though many veterans of the French wars answered Despenser’s call to arms, the ‘Lollard knights’ are noticeably absent from the list of captains recruited for this crusade.119 Testimony from later heresy trials in the fifteenth century suggests that pacifist attitudes towards war among later Lollards diminished. In Norman Tanner’s discussion of the beliefs among the Norwich defendants, he places concerns about killing in war or capital punishment in the category of moral belief, specifically that killing was wrong under all circumstances, that fighting for a country or inheritance was wrong, and that capital punishment also was wrong because vengeance belongs to God alone.120 Even in spite of the death penalty for heresy, there seems to be little interest in capital punishment and killing in war in the defendants’ statements.121 Out of sixty men and women tried in Norwich from 1428 to 1631, death as an unlawful punishment is mentioned by only eight of the accused and only five claim to have ‘taght and afermed that it is not leful ony mon to fighte or do bataile for a reawme or a cuntre’.122 This lack of interest in beliefs associated with killing was probably due to the social status of these later Lollards. In these later trials, most of the heretics being questioned were local tradesmen and merchants; and because of their lower social status, their beliefs became more limited.123 When Lollardy moves to the broader social sphere of common laypeople, the list of beliefs reflects the daily lives of its adherents and their immediate interaction with the local

Ibid. Cox, John Wyclif on War, pp. 103–08; Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 368–69. On the Opus Arduum and the Despenser Crusade, see A. Hudson, ‘A Neglected Wycliffite Text’, in Lollards and their Books (London, 1985), pp. 63–64; and C. Bostick, Antichrist and the Lollards: Apocalypticism in Late Medieval and Reformation England (Leiden, 1998), pp. 103–13. 119 J. Magee, ‘Sir William Elmham and the Recruitment for Henry Despenser’s Crusade of 1383’, Medieval Prosopography, 20 (1999), 181–90. 120 Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, p. 15. 121 Heresy becomes punishable by death in England in 1401 with the passage of De Heretico Comburendo. See P. McNiven, Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badby (Woodbridge, 1987), pp. 79–92, and A. K. McHardy, ‘De Heretico Comburendo, 1401’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. M. Aston and C. Richmond (New York, 1997), pp. 112–26. 122 Tanner, Heresy Trials in Norwich, p. 58. From the confession of John Skylly of Flixton, a miller. The Latin charge against him: ‘Item quod nullo modo licet pugnare pro patria, pro iure hereditario, nec placitare coram iudice pro aliquo iure’ at p. 53. 123 McSheffrey and Tanner, Lollards of Coventry, pp. 25–27, quote at p. 20. McSheffrey and Tanner refer to this more limited set as ‘the trinity of Lollard beliefs … objections to the sacrament of the altar, to pilgrimages, and to the veneration of images’. 117

118

118

JILL C. HAVENS

church, including the sacraments, the veneration of images, and tithing.124 Concern with the morality of war seems only relevant to the early supporters of the heresy, like the ‘Lollard knights’, because their experience in war enabled them to better understand why war could be morally problematic. *** In 1389, a truce between the English and French was reached at a conference at Leulinghem. One of the negotiators present was Sir John Clanvow.125 Now a respected veteran of the wars with France, Clanvow served from 1381 until his death, along with several of the other ‘Lollard knights’, as a Knight of the Chamber for Richard II.126 Throughout the 1380s, the war with France was increasingly seen as expensive and futile, and as Nigel Saul suggests in his biography of Richard II, the king ‘was moved by a genuine abhorrence of the shedding of the blood between Christians’.127 The early Wycliffites shared this abhorrence in their condemnation of those who were sent ‘to slen þe cristene men in far londis’ during the Despenser Crusade in 1383, and protested more generally against the necessity of war in their contemporary English sermons, arguing that ‘siþ oure werris wiþ oþere londis smacchen synne on many sidis … ech man shulde coueyte pees … pees is good for to haue’.128 Both Saul and Sumption note Clanvow’s presence at these meetings and turn to The Two Ways to shed some light on the sentiments of those involved in the negotiations, citing his condemnation of ‘greete werreyours and fiȝteres and þat distroyen and wynnen manye loondis, and waasten and ȝeuen muche good to hem þat haan ynouȝ’.129 Saul argues that Clanvow and other writers of the time condemned the war ‘because it was savage, immoral and unjust’, and Sumption briefly mentions that Clanvow and ‘Englishmen of his class were touched, although perhaps less profoundly, by the same mood of guilt, pessimism and insecurity’.130 But it was not just ‘guilt, pessimism’ or knightly self-indulgence that informed these men; I would argue that the impact of war trauma and a desire to find peace with the violence of the past decades also inspired men like Clanvow to seek solace in the words of the Wycliffites. With the mutual experience of the futility and brutality of war, these ‘brothers in Ibid., p. 16. Mention of unlawful killing is completely absent from Coventry trials, but this is because the authorities were much more interested in learning about the social networks of the heretics and their use of books to spread their beliefs. 125 Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 776. 126 C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity (New Haven, 1986), p. 217. 127 Saul, Richard II, p. 207. 128 ‘Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards’, p. 28; Ferial Sermon 23 on Mathew 5:43–6:4; English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. A. Hudson (Oxford, 1990), vol. 3, p. 61. 129 The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. Scattergood, p. 69. 130 Saul, Richard II, p. 206; Sumption, Divided Houses, p. 776. 124

LOLLARDY, LOYALTY, AND THE TRAUMA OF THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR119

arms’ turned to a new faith that reaffirmed their belief in the immorality of war but also provided a spiritual path to heal the wounds of their violent past and to teach them to love their neighbours as themselves, as Clanvow beseeches his reader at the end of The Two Ways, to louen oure neiȝebour as oure self it is ful merye booþ to body and to soule, so þat þe loue of God and of oure neiȝebour it is ful of merthe and it is of grettere delite þan is any oother þing. And also it is profitable to loue God abouen alle oothere þinges and oure neiȝebour as oure self, for he þat dooþ so shalle haue þe blisse of heuene þat euere shal laste. And þat is þe althergretteste profit þat may bee.131

131

The Works of Sir John Clanvowe, ed. Scattergood, p. 78.

6 Pardons for Self-Defence in the Reign of Richard II: The Use and Abuse of Legal Formulas JOHN L. LELAND

O



ne theme of this collection of essays in honour of Professor Nigel Saul is the study of sources, especially chronicles, but there are other sources that also present narratives of historical significance. As with chronicles, some may be more reliable than others. In studying homicides in late medieval England, records of cases involving claims of self-defence often include much fuller narratives than other homicide records, since making such a claim credible usually required putting forward a more detailed description of how the defendant was attacked and allegedly had to kill the attacker in order to save his (or rarely her) life.1 Unfortunately, it has been recognised at least since the time of Naomi Hurnard’s classic study The King’s Pardon for Homicide before 1307 that many stories put forward to justify claims of self-defence included stylised expressions intended to fit the strictly defined circumstances that made a claim of self-defence legally acceptable.2 It is therefore necessary to distinguish between elements in the records that were formulaic and those that might actually be based on the real events behind the records. To make these distinctions, this study has examined as many as possible of the cases in the reign of Richard II (1377–99) in which pardons were granted on grounds of self-defence and information beyond the bare fact of the pardon could be found. In the Calendars of Patent Rolls for Richard’s reign, about 240 cases were identified in which the king granted pardons for homicide on grounds of self-defence. Of these, K. E. Garay, ‘“No Peace Nor Love in England?”: A Study of Crime and Punishment in the English Counties, 1388–1409’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1977), pp. 203–04. 2 N. D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicide before 1307 (Oxford, 1969, special edn, 1997), pp. 92–98, 124–25, 129 etc. 1

122

JOHN L. LELAND

significant additional information beyond the fact of the pardon has so far been found for about 180 of the cases, roughly three-fourths of the total. More data may be found, but this is already enough to distinguish patterns in the use of formulas in the self-defence narratives. In particular, it permits recognition of the differences in the use of formulas in the indictments (primarily made by coroners’ juries, though some were made before justices of the peace or other authorities) and the later verdicts in the same cases (primarily made by juries at trials at gaol delivery, though a few appeared elsewhere). In many cases, the later verdicts are significantly more formulaic than the indictments, which appear more likely to be closer to the underlying reality of the original events. The primary procedure used to analyse the patterns in these narratives was the collection and comparison of the different versions of these events described by the coroners’ rolls (TNA JUST 2) and gaol delivery rolls (TNA JUST 3) in The National Archives, supplemented by the use of the former Chancery Miscellanea (formerly TNA C 46, now often TNA C 260) when they included copies of records whose originals no longer existed or were badly preserved.3 Examination of these cases confirmed the observations of Hurnard and others that there were substantial stylised elements in these records. As Hurnard put it, ‘A verdict might by adroit selection and emphasis present a more impressive account of the slayer’s predicament and his exemplary self-control than an unedited recital of the events might have given.’4 In particular, Carrie Smith has laid out what she presents as the standard self-defence narrative offered by coroner’s juries: The dead person is conveniently blamed for starting the fight. (This helped to slant the evidence and made it easier to sue for a pardon). The two men meet. One attacks the other, who turns and flees, only to find his escape blocked by an obstacle such as a wall or hedge. He turns and faces his attacker, sometimes (not always) drawing his knife but not striking out with it. By this time, his attacker, who has been continuously threatening to kill him, is apparently so demented with blood lust that he hurls himself upon his intended victim and is promptly impaled by that victim’s knife, either held innocently in the hand or even more innocuously tucked into the belt. It is all

Dr Paul Dryburgh very kindly made available the spreadsheet of former TNA C 46 (Chancery Miscellanea) items that he and his colleagues at The National Archives had prepared, which permitted the identification of the relevant items formerly in this series. Citations to National Archives documents JUST 2 and JUST 3 refer to the digital archive assembled by Robert C. Palmer, Elspeth K. Palmer, and Susanne Jenks, The Anglo-American Legal Tradition, available at aalt.law.uh.edu/aalt.html. C 260 and C 258 references are not available on AALT; they are taken directly from The National Archives documents. Additional sources were used when they provided further information. 4 Hurnard, King’s Pardon, p. 260. 3

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 123 his own fault. There are no grey areas here: inquest jurors, confused by what was necessary if a pardon was to be obtained, and concerned to ensure that the suspect received a favorable verdict, brought in every element possible to demonstrate not only self-defence but a certain degree of accident as well.5

Although this description is recognisably related to the Ricardian records of self-defence cases, there are some necessary qualifications. Smith was discussing cases found in coroners’ juries earlier in the fourteenth century, and the results differ in some respects from those found in verdicts used to justify pardons for self-defence under Richard II. In the first place, while the opening elements of Smith’s sample narrative – the quarrel started by the eventual victim, the meeting (usually before the quarrel), the attack by the eventual victim, the defendant’s flight, the obstacle preventing further flight, the continued attack by the eventual victim, and the drawing of a knife by the defendant – are indeed common form, the last phase in which the attacker ‘hurls himself upon the intended victim and is promptly impaled on the victim’s knife’ is extremely rare in the self-defence cases under Richard II. In cases in which the combatants’ actions are specifically described, only seven explicitly make the claim that the attacker ran on to (‘cucurrit’) the defender’s weapon, and some of these reports were modified in other versions of the cases, especially the gaol delivery verdicts. For instance, the coroner’s inquest said that Richard de Sandon was driving his cart on the king’s highway when John Hawvyle rushed at him and wished to slay him with a dagger, whereupon Richard struck John in the side with a staff so he died. However, at the gaol delivery, the jury found that John, armed with both a bill and a knife, cornered Richard (not on a cart), who held out his staff defensively so that John ferociously ran on to the staff (‘ferociter cucurrit super baculum’) and received an injury from which he died. Another coroner’s jury found that John Brocour ran on the knife (‘currebat super cultellum’) of John Gunnell, while the gaol delivery found that John Gunnell had struck John Brocour the conventional ‘single blow in the breast’ (‘solo ictu in pectore’), a term discussed below. Exceptionally, the first record of an inquest found that John Wilcok simply struck John Hert in the head with a staff, while a second record, supposedly taken the same day from the same jury, found that Hert attacked Wilcok with a dagger, but when Wilcok drew a knife in self-defence, Hert ‘ran on the said knife’ (‘cucurrit super dictum cultellum’). Then the goal delivery found that Wilcok had given Hert the usual ‘solo ictu in pectore.’6 Some 147 others say C. Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls: Legal Fiction or Historical Fact?’, in Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, ed. D. E. S. Dunn (New York, 1996), pp. 93–115, at p. 112. 6 The ‘running onto the weapon’ motif was also recognised by Hurnard, King’s Pardon, p. 259. The seven cases in which the ‘running onto the weapon’ motif was 5

124

JOHN L. LELAND

frankly that the defender ‘percussit’ (‘struck’) or ‘repercussit’ (in this context, ‘struck back’) with the weapon, rather than holding it in a defensive position.7 The tale of the self-impaled attacker, though known in other periods, may have been perceived as too improbable to be widely used at this time. Smith’s stylised summary was based on coroners’ reports from the earlier fourteenth century, but the actual coroners’ jury verdicts in self-defence cases under Richard II, when they can be located, are often less stylised and less favourable to the defendants than the gaol delivery verdicts. Although the reliability of coroners’ inquest records has been much debated,8 in these Ricardian self-defence cases they often seem more credible than the gaol delivery verdicts. This is not always true. There are exceptional examples in which there are two or more coroners’ inquests or other indictments in the same case with quite different versions of events, and at least one example (the second record in the John Wilcok case) where one verdict has replaced another on the coroner’s roll while keeping the same date and jurors, but such cases are rare in the records studied here.9

clearly used in the Richard II self-defence cases were (as identified by defendant): Simon Andreu, JUST 3/179/ m. 27; Thomas Baron, JUST 3/179/ m. 38d; Richard de Sandon, JUST 3/178 m.2, although JUST 3/217/3/ m. 118 includes a coroner’s jury finding that Sandon simply struck his attacker in the side; John de Staunford, JUST 2/91 m. 6; John Gunnell, JUST 2/91 m. 3, ‘running onto the weapon’ in the coroner’s report, though the gaol delivery copy preserved in C 260/108/13 gives the conventional knife ‘solo ictu in pectore’; John Smale, gaol delivery JUST 3/179 m. 39d (running on to a javelin, not a knife); John Wilcok (Wilcoks), coroner’s inquest JUST 2/85 m. 7 – the second of two versions of the coroner’s inquest on his case – has his attacker running on to Wilcok’s weapon, but the first coroner’s inquest report, JUST 2/85 m. 6d and the gaol delivery verdict, JUST 3/177 m. 74 have Wilcok striking his victim, with a staff (the inquest) or a knife (the gaol delivery). 7 Representative examples of ‘percussit’ include: Roger Abraham, JUST 3/167 m. 46d; John Abyndon, JUST 2/155 m. 24; Robert Alderman, JUST 3/181 m. 11; David Ashwy, JUST 3/180 m. 30; Thomas Astell with others, JUST 3/173 m. 21; John othe Baille, JUST 2/81. 8 The debate is judiciously reviewed with references to the work of Hanawalt, Hunnisett, and Post in Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls’, especially pp. 93–94. For R. F. Hunnisett on stylised self-defence verdicts, see ‘The Reliability of Inquisitions as Historical Evidence’, in The Study of Medieval Records, ed. D. A. Bullough and R. L. Storey (Oxford, 1971), pp. 206–72, at p. 207 and n. 4. S. M. Butler has made a major contribution in favour of the value of coroners’ rolls in Forensic Medicine and Death Investigation in Medieval England (New York, 2015). She also reviews the debate at pp. 32–33. 9 Cases with two or more (somewhat contradictory) indictments include: Robert Hogeson, JUST 3/176 m. 32; William Sherecroft, the coroner’s inquest JUST 2/91 m. 1 and the gaol delivery record, JUST 3/177 m. 81; John Wilcok, discussed above, JUST 2/85 m. 6d, cf. JUST 2/85 m. 7, and JUST 3/177 m. 74 giving three different stories.

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 125

In the Ricardian period, the kind of stylised pattern Smith and others describe is more typical of the gaol delivery jury verdicts than the coroners’ inquests, and when both reports can be compared, the information in the gaol delivery verdict has often been adapted to support the conventional self-defence story more closely than the earlier coroner’s inquest.10 Sara M. Butler says that the gaol delivery juries showed ‘great respect’ for the coroners’ inquest verdicts because the latter had better opportunities for gaining accurate local information.11 That the inquests frequently had better information is true, but in these self-defence cases the gaol delivery juries were often willing to reverse or revise the inquest accounts. To what extent the gaol delivery jurors knew the details of the inquest verdicts is uncertain. The gaol delivery roll normally says that the indictment by the coroner’s jury (or by justices of the peace) was ‘inspected’ by the gaol delivery justices before the gaol delivery jury was formally called, though it was probably read to the jurors after they were empanelled. In self-defence cases, the indictment would often have provided the gaol delivery jurors with considerable information about the alleged crime. Thomas A. Green says ‘those (coroners’ rolls) that do survive generally contain only the operative phrase “felonice interfecit” with few operative details from which the nature of the act can be deduced’, though he does discuss certain cases where detailed records survive in which the trial jury modified the inquest result.12 Actually, in Richard For the parallel case of two inquests on the same death, see Hunnisett, ‘Reliability of Inquisitions’, pp. 208–10. 10 John othe Baille, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/81 m. 6, gaol delivery (with brief indictment) JUST 3/177 m. 64; Robert Boroughbridge, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/61 m. 2, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 34d; Robert Ermeston, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/85 m. 5, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 87; Thomas de Glen, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/31 m. 9, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 47d; William Godeman, coroner (widow’s appeal), JUST 2/31 m. 9, gaol delivery, C 260/92/49, Robert Gunnold, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/14 m. 9, gaol delivery JUST 3/164 m. 4; William Kereby, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/59 m. 1, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 28; John Mabeley, coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/24 m. 12d, gaol delivery JUST 3/158 m.12; John Mody, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/125/4, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 47; John Prentys, coroner’s inquest TNA JUST 2/89 m. 5, gaol delivery JUST 3/173 m. 3; John Russell, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/85 m. 5, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 64d; John Smyth (with victim William Bene – there is another John Smyth case with a different victim), coroner’s inquest JUST 2/85 m. 3, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 68d; John de Staunford, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/91 m. 6, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 95. 11 Butler, Forensic Medicine, p. 111. 12 T. A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Trial Jury, 1200–1800 (Chicago, 1985), p. 35. Green discusses examples of modification of the coroners’ jury verdicts by the gaol delivery jury in cases where he located both the goal delivery verdict and a detailed coroner’s inquest pp. 35–46, one of which is also found in my study (John Colles, pp. 43–44).

126

JOHN L. LELAND

II’s reign, although many simple homicide indictments are as laconic as Green says, this is not true of the surviving inquests in cases later found to be selfdefence, most of which are comparatively detailed, though the details may not support the self-defence verdict later found at gaol delivery. Whether the gaol delivery jury had access to the full coroner’s roll, or to more informal sources of information, may have varied from case to case. As Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic Maitland put it, ‘Separately or collectively, in court or out of court, they [the jurors] have listened to somebody’s story and believed it’, and similar views have been expressed by more recent scholars such as Daniel Klerman and Anthony Musson.13 When this chapter describes gaol delivery juries as ‘manipulating’ the findings of the coroner’s inquest, that need not imply that the gaol delivery jurors were always aware of the full earlier findings, though in some cases such awareness appears very likely. However, gaol delivery juries often adapted whatever information they received to fit their own verdicts. There are cases in which the previous indictment quoted in the gaol delivery record is radically different from the gaol delivery result. William Riche was indicted before the justices of the peace in Devon, and the gaol delivery record quotes the indictment as saying that John Donnyng and William Riche lay in wait for Richard White on the king’s highway, and when he came by, they assaulted and murdered him. However, the gaol delivery jury found that Richard White assaulted William Riche (no mention of John Donnyng), knocked William down, and while William was lying on the ground attempted to kill him, so in self-defence William struck Richard one blow with a knife, whereof he later died.14 Claims like ‘lying in wait’ and ‘on the king’s highway’ and the verb ‘murder’ (‘murdraverunt’) rather than the conventional ‘killed’ (‘interfecit’) were all intended to make the crime appear more heinous, and they may have been artificially added in the indictment just as the self-defence story may have Sir F. Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of English Law, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1968), vol. 2, p. 628 (speaking chiefly of land cases); Placita corone, ed. J. M. Kaye Selden Society, supplementary series, 4 (London, 1966) pp. 19–20 has a classic selfdefence case told by the defendant himself to the judge and confirmed by the jury, whereupon the defendant was remanded to the king’s grace; Green, Verdict According to Conscience, pp. 16–18 (and throughout) argued for the independence of the jury. More recent discussions of the sources of juror information include A. Musson, ‘Twelve Good Men and True? The Character of Early Fourteenth-Century Juries’, Law and History Review, 5 (1997), 115–44, especially pp. 139, 142–44; Daniel Klerman, ‘Was the Jury Ever Self-Informing?’, in Judicial Tribunals in England and Europe 1200–1700: The Trial in History, ed. M. Mulholland and B. Pullan with A. Pullan (Manchester, 2011), vol. 1, pp. 59–76, especially pp. 66–67 on self-defence and pp. 74–76 on juries in the fourteenth century; and Butler, Forensic Medicine, pp. 94–96. The earlier development of juries as witnesses is discussed in M. McNair, ‘Vicenage and the Antecedents of the Jury’, Law and History Review, 17 (1999), 537–90. 14 William Riche: JUST 3/179 m. 38d. 13

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 127

been artificially adapted in the gaol delivery verdict, but the differences are still striking.15 John Bruton, Thomas Kendale, and Richard Stragulford had similar negatively worded indictments but received self-defence verdicts at gaol delivery.16 There are also cases in which the coroner’s inquest or equivalent says nothing of an attack by the ultimate victim, but the gaol delivery verdict describes such an attack to justify self-defence. The inquest simply found Roger Abraham struck John de Marche in the arm with a knife, from which John died, but the gaol delivery jury found John struck Roger on the head with a pair of tongs before Roger struck back with the knife. Attacks by the eventual victim were also added by the gaol delivery verdicts on John Norman, William de Normanby, Simon Peny, William Ryngebourne, and William Trutecote.17 Sometimes both sources agree there was a conflict, but the terms of the struggle are adjusted to make a self-defence claim stronger, as in the case of John othe Baille. The coroner’s jury found that John Lange attacked John Roke with a hammer; John othe Baille attempted to part them, whereupon Lange attacked him, and Baille in self-defence struck Lange on the head with another hammer, so Lange died. This story already favoured Baille, but the gaol delivery jury regularised it by omitting the attack on John Roke and finding that John Lange simply attacked John othe Baille with a hammer, whereupon Baille fled as far as a well (‘puteus’) and then drew a knife and killed Lange with a single blow to the breast. The only surviving unusual element was Lange’s use of a hammer, while Baille’s hammer became a knife.18 The defendant’s weapon was reportedly a knife in 113 cases, whatever it actually might have been.19 The terms for edged weapons afforded considerable scope for manipulation. For instance, the coroner’s inquest found that William de Kernyngton (without being attacked) feloniously struck John de Ely

Green, Verdict According to Conscience, pp. 74–75 on murder, lying in wait etc.; also, Butler, Forensic Medicine, pp. 111–12. Pollock and Maitland, History, vol. 2, p. 464 calls the claim that a crime was committed on the king’s highway ‘a mere rhetorical ornament’ by the later period. 16 John Bruton, C 260/107 m. 48; Thomas Kendale, JUST 3/177 m. 35, also CPR, 1396–1399, p. 315; Richard Stagulford, JUST 3/177 m. 31d. 17 Roger Abraham, JUST 2/84 m. 1, cf. JUST 3/167 m. 46d; John Norman, JUST 2/81 m. 1, cf. C 260/89/24; William de Normanby, JUST 2/85 m. 7, cf. JUST 3/177 m. 68d; Simon Peny, JUST 2/89 m. 4, cf. JUST 3/173 m. 3 (m. 5 has a version in which Simon was acquitted without the self-defence claim); William Ryngebourne has a relatively detailed indictment and gaol delivery verdict in C 260/90/26; William Trutencote coroner’s indictment (brief note), JUST 3/217/2, cf. C 260/96/57 (gaol delivery). 18 John othe Baille: coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/81 m. 6; gaol delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 64. 19 Representative examples include: Simon Andreu, JUST 3/179 m. 27; John Bailly (victim John Gotham), JUST 3/177 m. 32; Thomas Baron, JUST 3/179 m. 38d; Robert Bate, JUST 3/168 m. 7; Robert Beghall, JUST 3/183 m. 1 AALT; John Bocher, C 260/92/50. 15

128

JOHN L. LELAND

in the belly with a ‘basilard’ (standard spelling ‘baselard’) value six pence, while the gaol delivery jury found that John quarrelled with William and attacked William with a knife, repeatedly wounding him and forcing him to flee to a wall, where William drew a knife and struck John a single blow in the chest whereof he soon died (‘mox obiit’).20 Since the coroner’s inquest was expected to examine the wound(s) on the body and evaluate the weapon used, it is more likely John was killed by a blow to the belly with a baselard, not a blow to the chest with a knife.21 Although a baselard was sometimes described in the records as a form of knife (cultellus), it was apparently regarded as a more dangerous, probably larger, weapon. The Cambridge Parliament of 1388 adopted a statute that ‘no servant of husbandry, nor labourer, nor journeyman nor victualler shall henceforth carry baselard, dagger or sword upon pain of forfeiture of the same, unless it be in time of war and for the defence of the realm … or when they travel the country with their masters or on their masters’ business’,22 and swords and baselards appear in a higher proportion among the reported weapons of attackers than defendants. The records show twenty-three baselards, thirteen swords, and three daggers, compared with twenty-eight common knives, used by attackers, while defendants reportedly used seventeen baselards (one of them a ‘short’ baselard), seven swords, and six daggers (probably the smallest of the three weapon forms) compared with 113 knives.23 These ‘knives’ were by far the most popular weapons for defenders, and though usually described simply as knives (‘cultelli’), they were occasionally described in terms suggesting they were intended primarily for peaceful purposes – they might be called ‘twitells’ (various spellings), ‘trenchours’, or ‘the knife with which (the defendant) cut his food’ or simply ‘small knives’. An example of the contrasting weapons is in the case of David Smyth. The indictment simply found that Smyth ‘feloniously killed’ John Putham. However, the gaol delivery verdict reported that John first William de Kernyngton: coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/81 m. 5; gaol delivery, JUST 3/173 m. 1. 21 R. F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner (Cambridge, 1961), pp. 57–58; Butler, Forensic Medicine, pp. 41–45, 127; and for a later era, C. Loar, ‘Medical Knowledge and the Early Modern Coroners’ Inquest’, Social History of Medicine, 23 (2010), 475–91 especially p. 478. 22 Statute of Cambridge in Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 516–17, also in Great Britain, The Statutes of the Realm (London, 1810–28), vol. 2, p. 57 and n. 4, which mistakenly reads ‘bucklers’ for ‘baselards’. This statute is in answer to a commons petition: PROME, Parliament of September 1388, appendix. 23 Representative examples include: baselard (attacker): Robert Borughbrigge, JUST 3/177 m. 34d and John Boys, C 258/22/20; sword (attacker): William Catour JUST 3/158 m., and Thomas de Glen, JUST 3/177 m. 47d; dagger (attacker) in coroner’s roll becomes baselard in gaol delivery: John de Staunford, JUST 2/91 m. 6; cf. JUST 3/177/95; dagger (defender) John Panton, C 260/89/19. 20

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 129

hit Smyth on the right jaw with his fist and then drew a baselard with which he pursued Smyth down a dark lane between two houses that ended with a high wall, where Smyth, being unable to escape, struck Putham a fatal blow in the belly with a ‘thwytel’.24 The numbers above show that the defenders reportedly used many more edged weapons (chiefly knives) than the attackers. In fact, the most common weapon that attackers were reported to use was the staff. Hurnard believed that the use of an edged weapon, even a small one, might count against a claim of self-defence by a party fighting against a staff. She cited a man being beaten with a staff who stabbed his attacker with a knife and was convicted and hanged.25 Hurnard regarded this as standard practice in the late thirteenth century, but by Richard II’s reign similar stories regularly resulted in pardons for self-defence. There were sixty-five cases found to be self-defence in which the attacker was reported to have used a staff, thirty-four of them being cases in which the staff was used against a form of knife.26 In the case of Thomas Coke, the weapons were reversed in the reports: the coroner’s jury that indicted Coke for homicide found that William Wardale had attacked Thomas with a knife, and Thomas had then killed William with a staff, while the gaol delivery jury that found self-defence said that William had attacked Thomas with a staff, but had been killed by Thomas with a knife.27 A similar reversal was found in the case of Robert Whitswyre.28 This suggests that in Richard II’s time a staff was regarded as a more dangerous weapon than a knife, so an attack by a staff was seen as a better justification for a claim of self-defence. The staff appeared much less frequently as a defensive weapon (twenty-three times),29 and when it did, as with the knives, there were sometimes attempts to describe it in ways that minimised its lethal potential. Hurnard commented

For David Smyth, TNA JUST 3/163 m. 9. For another use of twitell, see John Colles, C 260/105/13; for trenchour, John de Wright, JUST 2/83 m. 3; for ‘the knife with which he cut his food’ (‘cum quo comestum secuit’), Henry Pipere, JUST 3/164 m. 27 and Thomas de Stanhowe, whose record also uses ‘tranchour’, JUST 3/164 m. 38d.; for ‘small knife’ (‘parvus cultellus’), John Wyston, JUST 3/164 m. 24d. 25 Hurnard, King’s Pardon, p. 93. 26 Representative examples of staff versus knife include: William Broun, JUST 3/180 m. 39d; William Colton, JUST 3/176 m. 16; John Cook, JUST 3/164 m. 50d; Ralph Doget, JUST 3/175 m. 7d; Thomas Glatton, JUST 3/168 m. 7d; John Haweson, JUST 3/177 m. 56. 27 Thomas Coke, coroner’s roll: TNA JUST 2/81 m. 5d; gaol delivery: JUST 3/177 m. 91d. 28 Robert Whitswyre: coroner’s jury: TNA JUST 2/30 m. 5; gaol delivery: C 260/106/6. 29 Examples of staff/knife cases: William Broun, JUST 3/180 m. 39d; William Colton, JUST 3/176 m. 16; John Cook, JUST 3/164 m. 50d; Ralph Doget, JUST 3/175 m. 7d; Thomas Glatton, JUST 3/168 m. 7d; John Haweson, JUST 3/177 m. 56. The full list is omitted to save space but will be available on request. 24

130

JOHN L. LELAND

that the frequency of ‘staff’ was due to the limits of the law clerks’ Latin: ‘The impression of sameness would be relieved, if, for example, they had known Latin terms to differentiate between stick, stave, club, pole, cricket bat, hockey stick, goad, instead of having to fall back on the ubiquitous baculum.’30 However, some of the Ricardian verdicts did attempt to be more specific in ways that would help the defendant. Henry Sampson was reported to have used a ‘small’ staff to defend himself against the ‘staff’ wielded by Henry Irissh, Henry Tebbe reportedly used a ‘small staff with a point’ to defend against a pitchfork, John Vygel allegedly used a piece of a staff that broke off the originally ‘bifurcate staff or pyk’ used against him, Robert Warde was reported in the coroner’s roll to have used a ‘non-ferrat staff’ (unshod with iron?) against a specifically ‘large staff’, and when the gaol delivery jury changed the ‘non-ferrat staff’ to the conventional defensive ‘cultellus’, they symmetrically changed the ‘large staff’ to a baselard.31 Besides the matter of size, there was also the use of terms suggesting the staff used in defence had other legitimate functions. Margaret Smyth, the only woman defendant in this database, used a staff ‘called a sanghe’, which may be a variant of ‘sang’ (standardised ‘stang’), a pole used for purposes such as carrying a vat or fulling cloth, though also as a weapon.32 Robert Snawe used a ‘sotre’, defined as ‘a pole inserted through the handles of a large tub or vat’, which he actually took out of a vat, according to the coroner’s inquest.33 These last examples bring up Hurnard’s suggestion that alleged use of improvised weapons made self-defence claims more plausible.34 As has been shown, the knives and staves used could be described to make them seem less inherently dangerous, but considering non-standard objects used as weapons, there seem to be similarly low numbers used by attackers and defenders – about fourteen improvised weapons for attackers and eleven for defenders. These ranged from rocks – used by two attackers, in one case specified as ‘grossas petras’ – up through a billet of wood, tongs, a sickle, a whip, hammers, spades or mattocks (‘vanga’), rakes, in one case specifically a limerake, and pitchforks.35 Hurnard, King’s Pardon, pp. 267–68. Henry Sampson, JUST 3/175 m. 7; Henry Tebbe, JUST 3/177 m. 34; John Vygel, JUST 3/179 m. 41; Robert Warde, coroner’s roll JUST 2/85 m. 10, cf. gaol delivery C 260/107/45. 32 Margaret Smyth, JUST 3/180 m. 32. See ‘stang’ in the Middle English Compendium, part of the Middle English Dictionary online at https://quod.lib. umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/dictionary?utf8=%E2%9C%93&se arch_field=hnf&q=stang. 33 Robert Snawe, JUST 2/83 m. 6. See ‘sotre’ in the Middle English Compendium online. 34 Hurnard, King’s Pardon, p. 93: ‘It was all to the good if the weapon or instrument used had been picked up by the unarmed victim of attack as he fled.’ 35 Attackers’ weapons: Rock: Richard Heafurs, JUST 3/179 m. 36; Walter Benge, JUST 2/31 m. 6d; tongs: Roger Abraham, JUST 3/167 m. 46d; Whip: John Colliere, JUST 30 31

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 131

The limerake case shows clear revisions in the story. The coroner’s inquest said that John Howeson quarrelled with his master Richard Freeman. When Richard left to take drink to his men working in the fields, John followed Richard with a staff in his hands, meaning to kill him. Robert Rolston, one of Richard’s men working in a limepit, saw John following Richard, so Robert rose up out of the limepit and struck John on the side of his head ‘with an iron instrument called le Rake’. John languished from that Wednesday until the following Saturday when he died. In the gaol delivery version, however, the whole story about John’s intended attack on Richard was replaced by a conventional self-defence case: John attacked Robert with a staff, so Robert fled as far as a limepit (in this version, just the conventional obstacle), so Robert, unable to flee further, struck John with a ‘lymrake’ and John soon died (‘mox obiit’).36 The recurrence of the limepit and the limerake strongly suggests that the gaol delivery jury knew the original story, but they apparently revised it in the interests of creating a more standard case. Besides descriptions of weapons, another formula used to mitigate the culpability of a defender’s behaviour was the description of the use of the weapon. The ‘solo ictu in pectore’ (single blow in the chest) was a standard form that appeared in many cases; blows struck elsewhere on the body by the defendant were also frequently described as ‘solo ictu’. The cases examined included ninety-nine in which the defendant reportedly struck ‘solo ictu’, of which sixty-two were ‘solo ictu in pectore’.37 The emphasis on ‘solo ictu’ is shown in the changes in the case of John Mody. The coroner’s jury said that Thomas Smyth hit John Mody on the arm with a hammer; John Mody, being very angry (‘valde iratus’) and in fear of his life, hit Thomas Smyth on the head with a hammer three times, inflicting injuries from which Smyth died six days later. The gaol delivery verdict, however, said that Smyth pursued Mody 3/168/ m. 7d; Hammer: John othe Baille, JUST 2/81 m. 6; John Mody, JUST 2/125 m. 4; Spade: Peter Milner, JUST 3/169 m. 7; Rake: Thomas Beryet, JUST 3/179 m. 16d; Pitchfork: John Burwell, JUST 3/177 m. 94d; Thomas Hampton, JUST 3/33 m. 3; John Mabel, JUST 2/24 m. 12d; William Ryngebourne, C 260/90/26; Henry Tebbe, JUST 3.177 m. 34; John Vygel, JUST 3/179 m 41. Defenders’ weapons: Billet of wood: Gilbert Falk, C 258/48/16, cf. CPR, 1381–1385, p. 346; Sickle: Robert Catelot, C 260/98/36; Hammer: John othe Baille (see attackers), John Mody (see attackers); Spade: John Derby, JUST 3/179 m. 23d; ‘Nude’ spade: John Leffert, JUST 3/164 m. 12; Rake: John Uppeley, JUST 3/171 m. 8. Limerake: Robert Rolston, JUST 2/61 m 142; gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 38d and JUST 3/185 m. 6. Pitchfork: furca lignea Robert Gunnold, JUST 2/14 m. 9; furca pro garbis (for sheaves) Thomas Beryet (see attackers). 36 Robert Rolston, coroner’s roll JUST 2/61 m. 142; gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 38d and JUST 3/185 m. 6. 37 Examples of ‘solo ictu in pectore’ include: John Burwell, JUST 3/177 m. 94d; Richard Cokson, JUST 3/177 m. 62; John de Croft, JUST 3/177 m. 81d. The full list will be available on request.

132

JOHN L. LELAND

‘always wounding’ him with the hammer, until Mody reached a ditch he could not cross, whereupon Mody struck Smyth a single blow in the chest with a knife from which he soon died (‘mox obiit’).38 It is only fair to say a single blow to the chest with a knife may have sometimes occurred. In the case of Richard Ruskyn, the coroner’s jury and the gaol delivery jury agreed that Richard killed Robert Horn by a single knife-blow to the chest, though the surrounding circumstances were described entirely differently: the coroner’s jury found that Richard ambushed Robert on his way from church, while the gaol delivery jury reported that Robert had originally attacked Richard with a baselard.39 The ‘solo ictu’ by the defendant was often contrasted in self-defence verdicts with the repeated attacks by his opponent, who reportedly pursued the defendant attacking ‘continue’ or ‘semper’ percuciendo, vulnerando, verberando, and the like. The ‘semper’ constructions occur at least fifty-five times, and there are many similar expressions, usually added in the gaol delivery verdicts.40 An example of the addition of the ‘semper’ phrase is the case of John Bocher, where the coroner’s jury simply found that Reginald Walysshman ‘made an assault’ (‘insultum fecit’) on John, whereupon John hit Reginald on the left side of the head with a sword, so Reginald languished for eight days and died. However, the gaol delivery jury declared that Reginald hit John on the head with an ash staff and knocked him down; John rose and fled, while Reginald, always striking (‘semper percuciendo’), pursued John to a stone wall he could not cross, so John drew a knife (not the more dangerous sword) and struck Reginald a single blow in the chest, from which he soon died (‘mox obiit’).41 Another opportunity for manipulation already mentioned in the cases of Robert Rolston, John Mody, and John Bocher was length of time between the combat and the death of the victim. Smith suggested juries were likely to find verdicts of self-defence when they faced cases in which minor wounds from casual encounters became infected, leading to the deaths of persons who had not been victims of deliberate, serious attacks.42 This seems plausible, but comparing the inquests with gaol deliveries, it appears medieval jurors did not emphasise a delayed death as an exculpatory factor. When the coroner’s roll recorded how long a wounded man lingered before death, and whether he received the last rites of the church, the gaol delivery verdicts often simply reported that the victim had died ‘soon’ (‘mox obiit’) or ‘immediately’ (‘statim obiit’), omitting any details. John Mody: coroner’s inquest JUST 2/125 m. 4; goal delivery JUST 3/177 m. 47. Richard Ruskyn, coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/59 m. 19? (Numbers end at 16, this is my count), gaol delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 27d. 40 Examples include William Cook, JUST 3/168 m. 12d, John Elys, JUST 3/177 m. 82d, and Richard Hogg, JUST 3/168 m. 14. 41 John Bocher, coroner’s inquest JUST 2/119A m. 6; gaol delivery C 260/92/50. 42 Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls’, p. 100. 38 39

PARDONS FOR SELF-DEFENCE IN THE REIGN OF RICHARD II 133

Altogether, including many gaol delivery verdicts and a few coroners’ inquests, there are forty-nine uses of ‘mox’ and thirty-five of ‘statim’, for a total of eightyfour implying a quick death.43 The term ‘postea’ (‘later’) occurs only thirty times, with smaller numbers for ‘postmodum’ (‘afterward’) and similar expressions. Given the weapons used and the state of medicine at the time, it seems likely that the number of victims reported to have died quickly has been exaggerated. When both the coroner’s inquest and the gaol delivery verdict are available, the cases of John Bocher, Gilbert (servant of John Forester), William de Kernyngton, John Mody, John Robyn, Robert Rolston, Richard Ruskyn, Robert de Wartre, and John Wilcok have explicit accounts of slow deaths in one version, and ‘mox obiit’ or ‘statim obiit’ in another.44 The gaol delivery jurors seem to have preferred to record a sudden death rather than a lingering one. There are cases elsewhere in medieval records that turned on the argument that a wounded man recovered and then was killed by a different cause, but none of the cases studied here offered that explanation.45 Much more could be said about the ways conventional expressions affected the reporting of homicides in self-defence. There were different descriptions of the times and place the crimes occurred, of the motives for the quarrels, of the actions of the parties after the crime, and so on, which cannot be discussed in detail here. The fundamental point is that conventional expressions can de differentiated from less stylised and probably more accurate accounts, and on the whole the coroners’ inquests seem to have less stylised, more credible accounts than the gaol delivery verdicts.46 Considering the imposition of the pattern intended to satisfy the legal requirements for claims of self-defence in Examples include: John Gate, JUST 3/172 m. 3; John Leffert, JUST 3/164 m. 12; Henry Pipere, JUST 3/164 m. 27. 44 Cases where slow deaths became fast deaths: John Bocher, coroner’s inquest: JUST 2/119A m. 6?; gaol delivery copy in C 260/92/50; Gilbert (no surname, servant of John Forester) coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/87 m. 2, gaol delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 73 (checked against copy C 260/195/5); William de Kernyngton, coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/81 m. 5; gaol delivery: JUST 3/173 m. 1. John Mody, coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/125 m. 4; goal delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 47. John Robyn, coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/85 m. 12, gaol delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 73. Robert Rolston: coroner’s roll JUST 2/61 m. 142; gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 38d and JUST 3/185 m. 6. Richard Ruskyn: coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/59 m. 19, gaol delivery, JUST 3/177 m. 27d; Robert de Wartre, coroner’s inquest: JUST 2/91 m. 6, gaol delivery, TNA JUST 3/177 m. 91d; John Wilcok (Wilcokes) coroner’s inquest, JUST 2/85 m. 6d, gaol delivery JUST 3/177 m. 74. 45 Examples of recovery followed by death from other causes include Hurnard, King’s Pardon, pp.105–06. Butler, Forensic Medicine, pp. 99, 181, 187–88. This last recognises that a wound could cause a fatal ‘fever’ we would call infection. 46 Smith, ‘Medieval Coroners’ Rolls’, p. 115 also concluded that coroners’ inquests were likely to be more reliable than gaol delivery records, though she did not discuss gaol deliveries in detail. Green, Verdict According to Conscience, pp. 35–46 and elsewhere recognised these differences, which he attributed to jury nullification. My belief is that 43

134

JOHN L. LELAND

the gaol delivery verdicts, changes from the coroners’ inquests can be found in a number of categories. These include the contrasting weapons reportedly used by the attackers and defenders, the more or less aggressive methods by which they were allegedly used, and the sudden or lingering kinds of death the weapons supposedly inflicted. The gaol delivery records very regularly show more formulaic descriptions intended to justify verdicts of self-defence when their verdicts are compared with the often more realistic versions in the coroners’ inquests. As Natalie Zemon Davis demonstrated for sixteenth-century France, so too in fourteenth-century England there is undoubtedly plenty of fiction in the archives, but there are also methods by which it often can be identified.47

they represented an accepted custom rather than a deliberate challenge to the government’s attempt to prosecute crimes. 47 N. Z. Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in SixteenthCentury France (Stanford, 1987).

7 The Representation of Devonshire in the ‘Bad’ Parliament of January 13771 HANNES KLEINEKE

E



dward III’s final parliament of January 1377 has had a bad press. Summoned in the wake of its dramatic precursor that was considered even by contemporaries as the ‘bonum parliamentum’, its business was chiefly to undo the reforms agreed in the previous year. In marked contrast to the ‘Good Parliament’ that gained its name in popular discourse, the assembly of January 1377 owes the epithet by which it has become known to the Victorians.2 There was, however, also some contemporary criticism of the parliament. In particular, the St Albans chronicler Thomas Walsingham claimed that John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, had exerted his influence in an attempt to secure the return of his own supporters.3 This claim has been challenged by modern scholars who have pointed out that if Gaunt indeed pushed for the election of his own men, he was oddly unsuccessful, as only a limited number of Lancastrian retainers (albeit including the Speaker, Thomas Hungerford) have been identified among the membership of the Commons in the parliament, although it is impossible to be certain of the proportion of the lower house that sympathised with the duke.4 Particular attention has been drawn to the comparatively low rate of I am grateful to Dr Laura Tompkins for her comments on a draft of this essay. The earliest use of the term I have been able to find occurs in C. L. Kingsford’s biography of Alice Perrers in the original DNB, originally published in 1896, Dictionary of National Biography, ed. L. Stephens and S. Lee, 22 vols, 2nd edn (London, 1901–09), vol. 15, p. 899. I am grateful to Professors Chris Given-Wilson and Gwilym Dodd for discussing this point with me. 3 St Albans Chronicle, vol. 1, pp. 68–71. 4 PROME, Parliament of January 1377, introduction; W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, 2011), p. 570; Saul, Richard II, p. 20; H. G. Richardson, ‘John of Gaunt and the Parliamentary Representation of Lancashire’, Bulletin of the John Rylands 1 2

136

HANNES KLEINEKE

re-election of the members of the previous year’s Good Parliament, but even this evidence, as Professor H. G. Richardson pointed out many years ago, is ultimately inconclusive.5 Other factors may nevertheless provide an indication of unusual circumstances prevailing in a given county’s choice of parliamentary representatives, and an examination of the careers of individual MPs offers a useful starting point. One county ostensibly unlikely to have been affected directly by the duke of Lancaster’s machinations was Devonshire. Here, Gaunt held only limited estates and sway in a community that had long been dominated by the senior resident magnates, the Courtenay earls of Devon.6 Nevertheless, the county’s choice of knights of the shire in early 1377 was an unusual one. In the 1360s and early and mid-1370s, the county’s representatives were normally drawn from a range of families well connected with the earls of Devon. While there were occasional re-elections, there was no sense that any individuals or families dominated Devon’s parliamentary representation. This changed after Richard II’s accession, when a small number of knightly families, foremost among them the Bonvilles of Shute, came to claim the county seats almost as a matter of course. In the seven years between October 1377 and 1384, Sir William Bonville, who had also sat for Devon in 1371 and in the Good Parliament, was returned as one of the county’s knights to at least seven of the eleven parliaments summoned.7 Bonville was no stranger to the duke of Lancaster, having served under him at Caux and Boulogne in 1369. Yet, in January 1377 two different men, neither of whom had previously sat in parliament or would do so again subsequently, were chosen to represent Devon: Sir William Asthorpe and Thomas Courtenay.8 The parliamentary events of 1376 and January 1377 occurred against the backdrop of the sunset of Edward III’s long reign, but they also looked ahead Library, 22 (1938), 201–05; G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), p. 184; S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1991), p. 239; J. S. Roskell, The Commons and Their Speakers in English Parliaments, 1376–1523 (Manchester, 1965), pp. 120–21. 5 PROME, Parliament of January 1377, introduction; K. L. Wood-Legh, ‘The Knights’ Attendance in the Parliaments of Edward III’, EHR, 47 (1932), 398–413, p. 406; Richardson, ‘John of Gaunt’, pp. 203–06. 6 A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Exercise of Princely Power (Harlow, 1992), p. 293. On Devonshire in the reign of Edward III, see R. J. Burls, ‘Society, Economy and Lordship in Devon in the Age of the First Two Courtenay earls, c. 1297–1377’ (Unpublished D.Phil. dissertation, Oxford University, 2002). 7 M. Cherry, ‘The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Formation and Disintegration of a Late Medieval Aristocratic Affinity’, Southern History, 1 (1979), 71–97, at p. 80; The History of Parliament: The Commons 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell, L. Clark, and C. Rawcliffe, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), vol. 2, p. 282. 8 C 219/7/25.

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT137

to the rule of his grandson. The formal recognition of the young Richard of Bordeaux as prince of Wales was among the demands of the Commons of 1376,9 and many of the principal actors of the crisis of that year went on to play leading parts during the royal minority that followed the old king’s death. If bit part players like Asthorpe and Thomas Courtenay did not reappear on the main stage after Richard’s accession, an examination of their careers and connexions, both in their locality and the centre of government, nevertheless offers an interesting insight into the complex politics of the crucial months of transition. *** In 1377, Sir William Asthorpe was still a relative newcomer to Devon society. Of illegitimate birth, no definite evidence of his parentage has come to light, but he may have been a descendant of a knightly family that took its name from a manor in Dickering wapentake in the East Riding of Yorkshire. War service to the king of England provided an avenue for young men such as Asthorpe to make their way in life, and William, whose youth coincided with the most profitable phase of Edward III’s French wars, the years around the Black Prince’s great victory at Poitiers, seems to have done so.10 The details of his earliest exploits are largely obscure, but that he had fought on the European mainland is evident from a pardon that he was granted in July 1359 in recognition of ‘good service done in the war of France’.11 By the second half of the 1360s, he was active in the war in the Channel, and in early 1367 was retained by Sir Walter Hewet, then newly appointed warden of the Channel Islands, as one of his lieutenants, specifically, it seems, to relieve Hewet from having to oversee himself the garrisons of the fortified places in the islands.12 Garrison service may have promised to be rather duller than participation in the great chevauchées in France, but Asthorpe’s spell in Guernsey was anything but uneventful. Saul, Richard II, p. 17. CFR, 1347–56, p. 336; CCR, 1354–1360, p. 608; D. Hay, ‘The Division of the Spoils of War in Fourteenth-Century England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser. (1954), 91–109; and also see the classic discussion by K. B. McFarlane, ‘War, the Economy and Social Change: England and the Hundred Years’ War’, Past and Present, 22 (1962), 3–15. It is possible that it was a connection with the great northern family of Daubeney, a branch of which had established itself in Somerset, that first drew the Asthorpes to the south-west: CPR, 1345–1348, p. 146. 11 CPR, 1358–61, p. 398. Asthorpe may be added to the collection of martially experienced MPs discussed by King: A. King, ‘“What Werre Amounteth”: The Military Experience of Knights of the Shire, 1369–1389’, History, 95 (2010), 418–37. 12 CFR, 1356–68, p. 348. In November 1367, Asthorpe was preparing to cross over with a retinue of fifty men, twelve horses, and a quantity of supplies to take control of the castles of Gurry on Jersey, and Cornet and Beauregard on Guernsey: CPR, 1367–1370, p. 60. 9

10

138

HANNES KLEINEKE

Even in the early months of his time in the islands, he was accused of unlawfully seeking to protect John Cok, another of Hewet’s lieutenants, and Richard de Seint-Martin, the bailiff of the island of Jersey, from prosecution for their allegedly high-handed imprisonment and murder of one Andrew des Angres, said to have taken place on the night of 1 May 1367.13 French assaults on the English strongholds in the Channel were increasingly expected, and in November 1369 Edward III ordered active preparations for the defence of the islands. A first assault under the leadership of Owain of Wales (a scion of the princely house of Gwynedd) on Guernsey came about in the early summer of 1372, but the defenders entrenched themselves in the castle of Cornet until fresh orders from France caused Owain to abandon the siege.14 In Walter Hewet’s absence, it seems to have been Asthorpe who bore the brunt of the defence of the island, and in recognition of this, he was appointed keeper in his own right in Hewet’s place in the spring of 1373.15 The appointment came not a moment too soon, for in the summer of 1373, the constable of France, Bertrand du Guesclin, himself mounted a concerted attack on the island of Jersey.16 The French assault all but succeeded in capturing the islands, and the defenders of Montorgueil were forced to abandon the battlements of the castle and withdrew into the donjon, but fortunately for the English, other matters called du Guesclin back to Brittany, and by 2 September Montorgueil had been retaken. The French attacks were aggravated by factional squabbling among the native population of the islands, some of whom took the English part, while others favoured the French, and this situation provided the backdrop to the arrest and trial of the native-born bailiff of Jersey, Jean de Seint-Martin, who was accused of having traitorously surrendered the castle to du Guesclin, was placed in the Tower, and only finally cleared in 1387. Blame nevertheless also attached to Asthorpe, who was prematurely replaced by Sir Thomas Beauchamp in 1374, several years shy of the full nine year-term of his appointment.17 There is some suggestion that far from being profitable, Asthorpe’s time in the Channel Islands placed his finances under strain, for he was for some years CPR, 1367–1370, pp. 202–03. It is not clear, but on chronological grounds doubtful, whether these events were connected with Asthorpe’s arrest and committal to the Tower of London about the same time. If he was indeed at liberty at the time when he was said to have exerted himself in favour of Cok and his accomplices, it seems improbable that he ever reached the royal fortress: CCR, 1364–1368, p. 377. 14 T. Thornton, The Channel Islands, 1370–1640: Between England and Normandy (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 12–13; J. Lemoine, ‘Du Guesclin à Jersey (1373–1376)’, Revue Historique, 61 (1896), 45–61, at p. 48; E 101/620/14. 15 CFR, 1369–77, p. 210; Lemoine, ‘Du Guesclin à Jersey’, p. 55. 16 Thornton, Channel Islands, pp. 12–13; Lemoine, ‘Du Guesclin à Jersey’, p. 48. 17 CPR, 1374–1377, p. 394; Thornton, Channel Islands, p. 14; Lemoine, ‘Du Guesclin à Jersey’, pp. 50–51, 53; C 76/57, m. 12. 13

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT139

to be engaged in litigation over debts running to hundreds of pounds with the former receiver of the Channel Islands, one John Wyntred alias Champion, and other associates from his time in Guernsey and Jersey.18 It is, nevertheless, possible that over the course of his military career Asthorpe had been able to amass sufficient wealth to allow him to purchase the marriage of the young heiress of a tenant in chief, thus gaining an entry into Devon landed society.19 Margaret, the eldest of the four daughters of Sir Oliver Dynham (1325–51) of Hemyock, was descended from a cadet branch of the great Dynhams of Hartland, the wealthiest gentry family in Devon after the Courtenay earls. She brought her husband an estate encompassing the manor of Camerton in Somerset, and those of Sampford Peverell, Aller Peverell, Hemyock, Clayhidon, and Moreleigh in Devon, along with the two hundreds of Halberton and Hemyock, holdings that at the time of Asthorpe’s death in 1399 were said to be worth nearly £120 p.a.20 For several years following his marriage, Asthorpe continued to serve in France and the Channel Islands, and it was not until the mid-1370s that he began to establish himself in Devon. Initially, the Asthorpes may have made their principal home at Sampford Peverell, where an episcopal licence of 1375 allowed them to have mass celebrated before them,21 but before long they transferred their seat to Hemyock, and the licence to crenellate the manor house that they secured in 1380 emphasised the status to which they laid claim.22 It appears that Asthorpe was an energetic manager of his estates, E 13/93, rots. 19–19d. Wyntred seems to have been selected during Walter Hewet’s keepership by Asthorpe’s fellow-lieutenant, John Cok, and while he appears to have been efficient enough at the job, he soon clashed with Asthorpe and found himself in irons in London’s Newgate gaol. Among Asthorpe’s claims, ultimately dismissed by the barons of the Exchequer, was the ransom of a French prisoner (one Richard Carbonel) amounting to as much as £1,000. 19 C. J. Tyldesley, ‘The Crown and the Local Communities in Devon and Cornwall from 1377 to 1422’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Exeter, 1978), p. 141. It is possible that a bond for 200 marks sealed by Asthorpe to Margaret’s guardian, Guy, Lord Bryan, and enrolled in Chancery in January 1359 offers a rough date for the marriage: CCR, 1354–1360, p. 608. 20 Pedes Finium, Commonly Called Feet of Fines, for the County of Somerset, 21 Edward III to 20 Richard II, ed. E. Green, Somerset Record Society 17 (London, 1902), p. 12; Feudal Aids, iv. 279, 313, 323, 360; Devon Feet of Fines, ed. O. J. Reichel, F. B. Prideaux, and H. Tapley-Soper, 2 vols (Exeter, Cornwall Record Society, 1912, 1939), vol. 2, pp. 1042, 1045, 1135, 1141; CIPM, XVIII, no. 104–7; C 143/395/13. 21 The Register of Thomas de Brantyngham, Bishop of Exeter, ed. F. C. HingestonRandolph, 2 vols (London, 1901), vol. 1, p. 363. In 1385, Bishop Brantingham granted the Asthorpes a wider-ranger licence for divine service anywhere within his diocese (ibid., vol. 2, p. 595). 22 CPR, 1377–81, p. 552; Tyldesley, ‘Crown and the Local Communities’, p. 24. On the manor of Hemyock more generally, see C. Sherwin, ‘Hemyock Castle’, Transactions of 18

140

HANNES KLEINEKE

but this came at a price. Not only did his enforcement of his seigneurial rights cause resentment among his tenants, but his increased emphasis in the management of his lands on animal husbandry brought him into direct conflict with his more influential neighbours, including the abbey of Dunkeswell and the priory of Taunton, over rights of pasture.23 Moreover, half a lifetime spent at war had hardly predisposed Asthorpe to seek to settle conflicts by mediation rather than armed force, and before long he faced an entire litany of accusations of acts of extortion and gratuitous violence.24 In 1360, he had sued out a pardon for the murder of one John Traveys, and he was once again implicated in the murder of one Robert Trybel in 1367.25 And then there was Henry Tyrel. A minor lawyer employed by a number of members of the Devon gentry and nobility, including the dowager countess of Devon, and also one of the county coroners, Tyrel had first come into conflict with Asthorpe in July 1383, when he had assisted the abbot of Dunkeswell in an attempt to recover his livestock seized by Sir William. On a Wednesday in late October 1385, matters came to a head when Asthorpe, accompanied by a gang of armed retainers, made his way to Tyrel’s house at ‘le Mersshe’ with the intention of murdering him, and finding the man absent, proceeded to beat his wife and threaten his servants.26

the Exeter Diocesan Architectural and Archaeological Society, 3rd ser., 4 (1929), 47–53. 23 KB 27/490, rex rots. 17–17d; KB 27/491, rots. 64–64d; C 66/340, m. 26d; Cornwall Record Office, Arundell MSS, AR1/881. On the manor of Clayhidon, for which good runs of accounts survive, the herd of cattle doubled in size from sixty-two heads in 1377 to 125 heads in 1382, and whereas in 1378 no sheep had been recorded in the manor, in 1383 there was a flock of over 400. The lower livestock figures recorded at Clayhidon at the end of the 1380s probably resulted from a division of the different kinds of animals between Asthorpe’s manors: the cattle herds were concentrated at Aller Peverell and Hemyock, while the sheep flock was based at Sampford Peverell, and Clayhidon may have functioned as a clearing house for the sale of excess livestock: Cornwall Record Office, AR2/494–95; H. Kleineke, ‘The Dinham Family in the Later Middle Ages’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 1998), pp. 69–71. 24 KB 27/490, rex rots. 17–17d; E 13/103, rot. 5. In the case of some accusations, particularly those made against him in connection with his shrievalty of 1383–84, Asthorpe was clearly blameless. This was the case when the executors of Sir John Beaumont, one of the knights of the shire for Devon in the Parliament of January 1380, sought to recover his parliamentary wages from Asthorpe, claiming to have delivered the writ de expensis to his under-sheriff, John Mille, in July 1384. Asthorpe and his officers had, it seems, ignored the writ, taking the reasonable view that the wages had probably been levied in the immediate aftermath of the parliament by Sir John Strecche who had then been sheriff, but an inquiry held before the justice of assize in March 1386 found otherwise: E 13/103, rot. 6; E 13/104, rot. 7d. 25 CPR, 1358–61, p. 398; KB 27/490, rex rots. 17–17d. 26 KB 27/491, rots. 64–64d; SC 8/104/5167; Cornwall Record Office, AR1/881.

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT141

In the light of all this, it is not surprising to find Asthorpe largely isolated among the regional gentry, although there is some limited evidence to suggest that he did at least establish ties with one of the leading families of eastern Devon, the Bonvilles of Shute.27 In Devon, where the Courtenay earls dominated local politics, his actions were challenged before the justices of the peace, but in the longer run this afforded his victims and opponents little relief, for Asthorpe evidently enjoyed the protection of an influential patron at court. Thus, he was repeatedly able to secure royal pardons for his offences, both for himself and the retainers associated with him in his violent endeavours,28 and he even received a number of appointments to local office, most notably, in the light of his track record, as a justice of the peace for Devon from March 1382, and as sheriff of Devon in the autumn of 1383 – a choice unique in these years of a man firmly outside the earl of Devon’s circle.29 The timing of this unusual appointment, coming as it did at the very point when Richard II is thought to have begun to take a more active part in the government,30 raises the tantalising possibility that the king himself, or at least someone very close to him, had some part in it, but there is no other evidence to corroborate this view. Nor is there definite evidence of the identity of Sir William’s patron, but a likely candidate is Guy, Lord Bryan (c. 1319–90). A soldier of distinction, Bryan had borne Edward III’s standard at Calais in 1349 and was some years later rewarded for his military exploits by election to the Order of the Garter. Over the course of Edward III’s long reign, Bryan rose through the ranks of the king’s household to become its steward, and on the accession of Richard II he became the young king’s chamberlain.31 Moreover, Bryan was Margaret Dynham’s maternal uncle,32 who in 1353 had acquired the wardship of Sir Oliver Dynham’s lands and heirs,33 and who later had also secured custody during her minority of the estates that Margaret stood to inherit from her great

Devon Archives, Petre MSS, 123M/TB270. CPR, 1385–1389, pp. 78, 89, 94. 29 CFR, 1383–91, p. 6; M. Cherry, ‘The Crown and the Political Community in Devonshire, 1377–1461’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wales, Swansea, 1981), p. 144. 30 Saul, Richard II, pp. 109–10. 31 On Lord Bryan and his family, see C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity (New Haven, 1986), esp. pp. 156–57; F. Swabey, Medieval Gentlewoman: Life in a Widow’s Household in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1999), pp. 34–36. 32 Sir Oliver’s marriage to Joan Bryan had taken place before 17 May 1348: CPR, 1348–1350, p. 96. It was probably a different Oliver, a son of Sir John Dynham (d. c. 1332) by Margaret Botreaux (d. 1361), born in about 1312 who by 1346 had married Alice, the heiress of the Cornish landowner William Bassett of Tehidy: Feudal Aids, i. 209; CIPM, XI, no. 374; Cornwall Record Office, AR1/564. 33 CFR, 1347–1356, p. 381. 27 28

142

HANNES KLEINEKE

grandmother, Margaret de Hydon.34 While there is no concrete evidence of an early link between Bryan and Asthorpe, or of its origins, it is not unreasonable to suppose that they had become acquainted in the context of the war in France. In spite of the support that Asthorpe clearly enjoyed at court, it is nevertheless possible that in the aftermath of his attack on Tyrel, the dowager countess’s steward, Devon was for the time being deemed too hot to hold him: in August 1386, he was granted (or perhaps sued out) the reversion of the keepership of the dilapidated royal castle at Marlborough in Wiltshire. Under the terms of the letters patent, he was assigned the castle as his dwelling place, but this was hardly an attractive proposition, for after decades of neglect the castle was scarcely fit for habitation. A month after the original grant to Asthorpe, commissioners were appointed to look into the necessary repairs, but just five years later a local jury declared the buildings to be beyond repair, unless they were to be rebuilt in their entirety.35 Wherever Asthorpe made his home at this point, for a time at least he became active in Wiltshire society: in May 1389, he found sureties for the acquisition by Robert Cricklade of the custody of the manor of Broad Town in Clyffe Pypard during the minority of Thomas, Lord Despenser.36 Another problem had by now also arisen closer to home. As far as it is possible to tell, relations between Asthorpe and his wife’s cousin, Sir John Dynham, head of the senior branch of her family, had been, if not outright cordial, at least not openly unfriendly either. This may have changed with the arrival on the scene of Sir John’s eponymous son. The younger Sir John was a grasping and ambitious man, who sought to mix with, and indeed marry into, the local baronage in pursuit of social advancement. He had succeeded to his father’s estates when the latter was murdered by two common robbers in 1382, and had begun his adult career by making short work of the murderers.37 Central to his subsequent concerns was the consolidation of his land holdings. For two generations since the death of his great-grandfather in 1301, the Dynham estates had been divided among a succession of long-lived dowagers, but by the 1380s only the lands held by Asthorpe and his wife remained beyond Sir John’s control.38 It may have been as part of some arrangement that ensured their Bryan delivered his niece’s inheritance to Asthorpe even before the latter had formally proved his wife’s age, although the Crown would only grant the couple formal seisin in December 1365: Cornwall Record Office, AR2/494, rot. 20; CIPM, XI, no. 389; CCR, 1364–1368, p. 157. 35 CPR, 1385–1389, pp. 197, 208, 260; R. A. Brown, H. M. Colvin, and A. J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works, 3 vols (London, 1963), vol. 2, p. 738. 36 CFR, 1383–91, p. 287; VCH, Wiltshire ix. 24–27. 37 Kleineke, ‘Dinham Family’, pp. 169–70; CPR, 1381–1385, p. 242; Register of Thomas de Brantyngham, ed. Hingeston-Randolph, pp. 158–59. 38 The lands at issue had been brought to the Dynhams by the marriage of the shortlived head of the family, Sir Josce de Dynham (d. 1301), to Margaret, the heiress of Sir 34

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT143

reversion to the Dynhams of the main line that Sir John agreed to the payment of a substantial annuity of £250 to Asthorpe, but no details of the agreement have survived. If the arrangement was indeed made verbally, it would go some way to explain why it was before the court of chivalry, rather than in one of the common law courts, that Asthorpe brought his challenge to Dynham, under a rather arcane procedure that allowed a suitor to sue for a debt by claiming a breach of faith on the part of the defaulting debtor.39 The litigation was under way by the early months of 1389, and the records show that Dynham actively sought to oil the wheels of justice with gifts and payments to the officers of the court.40 There is no reason to suppose that Asthorpe was any less diligent in pursuing his interests, and in the first instance the judges found in his favour. Dynham appealed, and – following a challenge by Asthorpe to the composition of the panel of judges chosen to hear the appeal – in late 1389 a high-powered commission, including the earls of Huntingdon and Salisbury, was appointed to adjudicate the matter. It is possible that these commissioners were instrumental in bringing about the settlement that was set down in writing in the autumn of 1390, under the terms of which Asthorpe and his wife retained tenure of the Hydon inheritance for the term of their lives in survivorship, with reversion thereafter to Sir John Dynham and his heirs.41 From the early 1390s, Asthorpe gradually disappeared from public life. In the spring of 1392, he was for a last time included in the commission of array for Devon, and by the summer of 1393 he had been stripped of the keepership of Marlborough castle, which was instead granted to Sir William Scrope.42 The death of Lord Bryan in 1390 had robbed him of a patron at court, and he seems to have become guilty of some major misdemeanour, a ‘monstrous rebellion’ (ingens rebellio) for which he was amerced the huge sum of £1,000 before the

Richard de Hydon of Clayhidon and Hemyock, and her subsequent settlement of part of her inheritance on her younger son Oliver, Margaret Asthorpe’s grandfather: CIPM, XI, no. 384; Kleineke, ‘Dinham Family’, pp. 25, 30. 39 L. W. Vernon Harcourt, His Grace the Steward and Trial of Peers (London, 1907), pp. 364–65. Pending the publication of the forthcoming Selden Society volumes on the court of chivalry in the Middle Ages by Dr Nigel Ramsay, the standard work on the court remains G. D. Squibb, The High Court of Chivalry: A Study of the Civil Law in England (Oxford, 1959), and see also the relevant articles collected in Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty in Later Medieval Europe, ed. A. Musson and N. Ramsay (Woodbridge, 2018). 40 Cornwall Record Office, AR37/54. 41 CPR, 1388–1392, pp. 45, 51, 130; SC 8/225/11243; CP 25(1)/49/66/113; A. Musson, ‘Law and Arms: The Politics of Chivalry in Late Medieval England’, in Monarchy, State and Political Culture in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of W. Mark Ormrod, ed. G. Dodd and C. Taylor (York, 2020), pp. 94–116, at p. 112. 42 CPR, 1391–1396, p. 309.

144

HANNES KLEINEKE

Devon county JPs at the end of August 1390.43 The timing of the amercement – less than two weeks after Lord Bryan’s death – might suggest that Asthorpe’s enemies had moved against him swiftly, and in spite of the king’s efforts to establish his half-brother John Holand, earl of Huntingdon, in the south-west as a counter-weight to the regional power of the earl of Devon, Courtenay influence continued to be dominant in Devon.44 If Asthorpe, indeed, actively sought Holand’s patronage, no evidence to this effect has come to light, but it is equally possible that his disappearance from the records was quite simply the result of his advancing years. Asthorpe survived Richard II’s deposition by little more than a week, dying, according to an inquisition taken the following January, on 8 October 1399. If the timing of his death invites the supposition that it was in some way connected with the king’s downfall, there is no further evidence to support such a hypothesis. The execution of his will was entrusted to two clergymen, Alan Benet, the rector of Moreleigh, and Thomas Garlond.45 *** By contrast with Asthorpe’s well-documented career, his parliamentary colleague, Thomas Courtenay, is a rather more shadowy figure, in spite of his evident kinship with the comital line. There has, indeed, been some confusion over his identity: traditionally, the knight of the shire of January 1377 has been said to have been a younger son of Hugh Courtenay, earl of Devon.46 An alternative, and in the present context perhaps more persuasive possibility is that Courtenay, like Asthorpe, was a bastard. He was indeed closely related to the earl of Devon, but he was his cousin, rather than his son or brother. Courtenay was an illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Courtenay, a younger son of Hugh, 1st earl of Devon, who married Muriel, one of the two daughters and co-heiresses of John, last Baron de Moeles. The couple had three legitimate children: a son, Hugh, who died under age, and two daughters, Muriel, who married Sir John Dynham, a cousin of Asthorpe’s wife, and Margaret, who became the wife of Thomas Peverel of Sampford Peverell.47 Relations between the Peverels and Margaret’s half-brother Thomas, who served as one of Sir Thomas Courtenay’s executors, seem to have been cordial, and about the time

E 13/111, rot. 16. It may have been no accident that the judgment was dated just two weeks after Bryan’s death. 44 Saul, Richard II, p. 244. 45 CP 40/567, rots. 144d, 512d; CFR, 1399–1405, p. 77. 46 J. J. Alexander, ‘Devon County Members of Parliament, Part II: The Middle Plantagenet Period (1327–1399)’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 45 (1913), 247–69, p. 263; J. L. Vivian, The Visitations of the County of Devon (Exeter, [1895]), p. 244. 47 GEC, IX, 8. 43

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT145

of the Bad Parliament they settled on him a share of lands in Offwell, West Raddon, and ‘Euerford’, perhaps an endowment originally intended for him by his father.48 Intriguingly, the Peverels may have been loosely connected with the duke of Lancaster’s affinity, for their younger daughter Katherine would later marry Walter, a younger son of Sir Thomas Hungerford, the duke’s chief steward, who was chosen Speaker of the Commons in January 1377.49 The younger Thomas Courtenay for his part also acquired an interest in the Cornish manor of Trevisquite in St Mabyn, but it is not clear how this came about: his widow, Joan, who was said to have been the sister of Sir Thomas Daventry, is unlikely to have brought it to him.50 Thomas Courtenay’s activities are difficult to distinguish from those of any namesakes who may, as postulated by J. L. Vivian, have existed, but it was probably he who in the early months of 1380 sued out letters of attorney as he was planning a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He never returned from this journey, having died at an unspecified date before 12 October 1381, ‘while beyond the court of Rome’. He left a nine-year-old son, John, as his heir, and two younger sons, Edmund and Thomas, as well as a daughter, Clemencia, all of whom seem to have survived into the reign of Henry IV.51 If Courtenay’s kinship with the earls of Devon ostensibly made him a credible candidate to serve as a knight of the shire, his return in early 1377 was nevertheless an unusual one, for in marked contrast to later centuries, it had not yet become common for any of the Courtenays to represent their neighbours in parliament.52 *** How did the unusual Devon return of 1377 come about? By its nature, the choice of pre-modern members of the Commons was susceptible to external intervention, for elections were normally arranged, rather than contested, and only in the reign of Henry IV did the formal process of choosing knights of

Cornwall Record Office, AR2/858; CP 25(1)/44/61/420. ‘Euerford’ was said in a document of 1341 to be near Honiton: Cornwall Record Office, AR1/635. 49 GEC, VI, 613, 615–16. 50 C 241/198/84; E 326/6538; CCR, 1369–1374, p. 560; J. Maclean, The Parochial and Family History of the Deanery of Trigg Minor, 2 vols (London, 1876), vol. 2, pp. 454–55; CIPM, XXII, no. 163. Joan Daventry went on to marry two further husbands, Philip Walweyn and Thomas Beaumont, and died in December 1421. 51 C 241/198/84; CFR, 1377–81, p. 301; CIPM, XV, no. 477. 52 It took another six years before another Courtenay cadet, Sir Philip Courtenay of Powderham, was returned to the Commons. The Courtenays’ long tradition of parliamentary service was interestingly chosen as a principal theme for the maiden speech of the most recent holder of the comital title, Charles Courtenay, earl of Devon, on taking his seat in the House of Lords as one of the representative hereditary peers: House of Lords Hansard, 25 April 2019, cols. 756–57. 48

146

HANNES KLEINEKE

the shire become subject to some statutory regulation.53 A central figure in any parliamentary return was the sheriff of the day, and complaints about shrieval corruption were common. The south-west of England was no exception to this. In 1379, Sir John Strecche, a Devon man, claimed that although in the previous year Sir John de la Mare, sheriff of Somerset, had warned him that he had been chosen to serve as one of the knights for the latter shire in the parliament to be held at Gloucester that October, the sheriff had subsequently returned Thomas Hungerford in his place.54 Closer to home, the burgesses of Barnstaple would assert in 1386 that Sir James Chudleigh, sheriff of Devon in the previous year, had returned John Henrys, a Somerset man, as one of their representatives in parliament ‘without their knowledge or assent’.55 In the autumn of 1376, the appointment to the Devon shrievalty was itself apparently subject to some controversy. On 26 October 1376, Sir John Ralegh was named sheriff in succession to Sir Nicholas de la Pomeray, and on 6 November he found sureties for his execution of the office. Just a day later, however, a fresh patent was issued to Sir James Chudleigh, but it was Ralegh who made the return to the January Parliament, and who was confirmed in post following Richard II’s accession in the following summer: clearly, Chudleigh was never admitted to the office, and Ralegh served a full year’s term.56 Crucially, for our present purposes, the Raleghs were part of the same network of families as the men returned in January 1377, while relations between Lord Bryan and Chudleigh, who was denied the shrievalty in 1376, were said to be threatened by possible ‘guerris et dissencionibus’.57 If a connexion with the sheriff of the day was an important asset in seeking a seat in parliament, other factors must also have come into play. Few sheriffs went so far as to fix a parliamentary return of their own accord and without the bidding of a powerful patron. In the case of the Devon elections of January 1377, it is reasonable to surmise that Guy, Lord Bryan, William Asthorpe’s J. G. Edwards, ‘The Emergence of Majority Rule in English Parliamentary Elections’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 14 (1964), 175–96; J. S. Roskell, ‘Electoral Practice’, in The Commons 1386–1421, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 1, pp. 55–68; H. Kleineke, ‘Parliamentary Elections’, in The History of Parliament: The Commons 1422–1461, ed. L. Clark, 7 vols (Cambridge, 2020), vol. 1, pp. 219–73, esp. pp. 245–46, 254–56. 54 Parliamentarians at Law, ed. H. Kleineke, Parliamentary History Texts and Studies ii (Oxford, 2008), pp. 106–07. 55 The Commons 1386–1421, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 2, p. 574. 56 C 219/7/25. R. W. Dunning erroneously ascribed to Chudleigh a term of office from November 1376 to June 1377: The Commons 1386–1421, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 2, p. 573. 57 The Commons 1386–1421, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 2, p.574; vol. 4, p.564; Wykeham’s Register, ed. T. F. Kirby, 2 vols (London, Hampshire Record Society, 1896–99), vol. 2, p. 378. 53

THE REPRESENTATION OF DEVONSHIRE IN THE ‘BAD’ PARLIAMENT147

long-standing patron, played a part. The case for Bryan’s patronage of Thomas Courtenay is more circumstantial, but in view of the man’s close kinship to his parliamentary colleague, and indeed to Sheriff Ralegh, it is likely that he was returned in the same interest and perhaps even as part of the same ‘ticket’ as Asthorpe.58 Rather more difficult to fathom are Bryan’s motives. If by 1376 he had distanced himself from the court, and, perhaps as a direct consequence, was held in high regard by the Commons, to the degree of being nominated to the council established by the Good Parliament, he was also beyond question loyal to the king and his heir. His relations with Gaunt, by contrast, were fractious: the less than distinguished part played by Bryan on the occasion of the London mob’s attempted attack on the duke of Lancaster in February 1377 has been repeatedly commented upon.59 If a few weeks earlier he intervened in the parliamentary elections of that winter, it was certainly not in support of the duke. The Devon elections to the Parliament of January 1377 provide an interesting perspective on the usually well-informed Thomas Walsingham’s commentary on the event. There can be little doubt that noble influence was brought to play to secure the return of two relative outsiders in a county normally dominated by the Courtenay earls of Devon, but it was not that of the duke of Lancaster. Indeed, there has to be a question over the extent to which John of Gaunt even sought to bring his influence to bear in all parts of England. The evidence assembled by Simon Walker for the duke’s parliamentary patronage shows it to have been extensive in the 1390s, but far less so in the 1370s.60 At the same time, the analysis of the return of aristocratic retainers to parliament is an inexact science: as Paul Cavill has argued for a later period, it is possible to suggest that rather than inducing the county electorates to return his retainers, Gaunt might just as well be said to have retained such men as were likely to be returned by their neighbours in any event.61 To thus suggest that the duke’s agency in securing the presence of a Lancastrian ‘party’ in parliament was rather less active than certainly Walsingham supposed62 would lend support One of the best known examples of a late medieval election ‘ticket’ is the candidature of John Paston and John Berney in opposition to Sir William Chamberlain and Henry Grey junior in the disputed Norfolk elections of 1461: C. H. Williams, ‘A Norfolk Parliamentary Election, 1461’, EHR, 40 (1925), 79–86; H. Kleineke, ‘The East Anglian Parliamentary Elections of 1461’, in The Fifteenth Century X: Parliament, Personalities and Power; Papers Presented to Linda S. Clark, ed. H. Kleineke (Woodbridge, 2011), pp. 167–87, at 170–74. 59 Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 293; Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 157. 60 Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 238–39. 61 P. Cavill, The English Parliaments of Henry VII 1485–1504 (Oxford, 2009), pp. 130–31. 62 Walsingham, of course, had an axe to grind with the ‘adulterous and proud’ duke of Lancaster and thus had a reason to overstate his machinations: A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca, NY, 1982), p. 129. 58

148

HANNES KLEINEKE

to Anthony Goodman’s view (reiterated in Mark Arvanigian’s chapter in the present volume) that in the late 1370s Gaunt had his sights set on a wider, even international, political stage, and cared little for county politics.63 This left the way open for other members of the court who were equally hostile to the demands of the Commons of 1376 to exercise their own, more limited influence where they could. What the Devon example certainly indicates is that the story of the elections to the ‘Bad’ Parliament of January 1377 was more complex than Walsingham’s sweeping claims suggest, and future research into the circumstances of the elections in other counties and regions may yet throw up further examples of just this.

63

Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 372–73.

8 John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Plantagenet Family Politics in the 1390s MARK ARVANIGIAN

T



he reign of Richard II continues to provoke debate amongst students of late-medieval politics, especially for its seemingly limitless capacity for drama. Nowhere is that drama more in evidence than in Richard’s last years, a tumultuous thirty months that proved to be the turning point of the reign. That conclusion is not one invented by modern historians but is supported by evidence available in the records of government and also by contemporary writers such as Thomas Walsingham, the St Albans’ chronicler who was Richard’s most prominent contemporary critic. Walsingham described the king’s behaviour in the months between the January Parliament of 1397 and his eventual deposition as ‘tyrannical’.1 For their part, a number of modern historians have since adopted Walsingham’s assessment: Caroline Barron’s influential 1973 essay on the subject and Nigel Saul’s royal biography are very much cases in point.2 More recently, a surge of interest in the reign has yielded a somewhat less emphatic interpretation for the events that unfolded in those dramatic final months. Notable among these is the work of Christopher Fletcher, who has considered Richard’s kingship through the twin lenses of manhood and masculinity. Fletcher argues forcefully that Richard was saddled with a bevy of images suggesting adolescence well into adulthood, weakening his rule and remaining a consistent political problem throughout his reign.3 For Fletcher, Richard could never quite liberate himself from the persona of the Boy King who had been so thoroughly invested with the hopes of the nation following

The tone is consistent throughout, but see, for example, Chronica Monasterii S. Albani: Ypodeigma Neustriae, ed. H. T. Riley (London, RS, 28, 1857), p. 380. 2 C. M. Barron, ‘The Tyranny of Richard II’, BIHR, 41 (1968), 1–18; Saul, Richard II. 3 C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics, 1377–99 (Oxford, 2008). 1

150

MARK ARVANIGIAN

the deaths of his father and grandfather – though he fought mightily to do so. This problem made the affronts levelled against him in the Merciless Parliament and the persecution of his friends more than simply blows struck against the royal dignity; they amounted to a kind of violence against his manhood, as well. In weaving this tale of adolescence, his enemies were able to point to his relative reticence in martial pursuits (reinforced by his preference for peace with the French), and to his failure to produce an heir. And while it is unlikely that conceptions of masculinity played a decisive role in his downfall, Fletcher certainly makes a compelling case that opposition to Richard’s rule was driven by more than disagreements over royal policy. That opposition sprang principally, of course, from the magnates. Modern interpretations of Richard II’s final years seem to share the view that his eventual downfall hinged upon his relationships with his magnates – whether supporters or adversaries.4 Most enduring amongst the latter, of course, were those behind the uprising of the ‘Lords Appellant’, the baronial opposition movement turned rebellion led by the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick and, at least initially, Bolingbroke and Mowbray.5 Their quarrels with the king initially arose over foreign policy, though as they grew over time, they came to encompass other matters, most importantly questions concerning the scope and extent of the royal prerogative. Some historians of the reign have concluded that the king’s response to the Appellant affair was consistent with a need to protect his person and preserve the dignity of his royal office, something always of great interest to Richard.6 One has gone so far as to argue that Richard drew more than a passing rhetorical parallel between the Appellant rising and the treatment of his great-grandfather by Thomas of Lancaster and others in justifying his attempt to eliminate all perceived royal opposition, and thereby elevating the royal prerogative to new heights.7 For him, it held out the promise

For a discussion of the general contours of magnate politics and rebellion in the period, see A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973); A. Dunn, The Politics of Magnate Power in England and Wales, 1389–1413 (Oxford, 2003); Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: The Reign of Richard II , ed. C. GivenWilson (Manchester, 1993), especially the Introduction; M. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 2000). 5 A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971); Saul, Richard II. 6 S. Walker, ‘Richard II’s Views on Kingship’, in Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Gerald Harriss, ed. R. Archer and S. Walker (London, 1995), pp. 49–63; W. M. Ormrod, ‘Richard II’s Sense of English History’, in The Reign of Richard II, ed. G. Dodd (Stroud, 2000), pp. 97–110. 7 C. Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II, Edward II, and the Lancastrian Inheritance’, EHR, 109 (1994), 553–71; N. Saul, ‘Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship’, EHR, 110 (1995), 854–77. 4

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS151

of not only liberating his kingship from its shackles, but of settling an old score and repairing damage done to the royal dignity.8 Richard’s efforts at reparations involved the singling out of specific magnates that he believed now collectively occupied the role of chief royal antagonist, a position once the province of his great-grandfather’s rival, Thomas of Lancaster. On the surface, this seems like little more than paranoia and the replaying of old dramas. Yet at a deeper level, if we can believe Walsingham’s account, Richard was indicating something a good deal more profound: the ongoing existence of a single great magnate at the head of the political community, one informally vested with balancing royal policy against the broader interests of ‘the people’, ‘the kingdom’.9 In this sense, that magnate was, like the king, expected to see a broader horizon, one beyond his simple self-interest alone – a kind of constitutional officer. Because that role had for some time become the province of the earls of Lancaster, it is possible to see in it the barest kernels of what Bishop Stubbs long ago called ‘Lancastrian constitutionalism’, which he coined to describe a new, more inclusive ruling style after 1399: a more conciliatory, even consensus, approach to governance, presented to the nation as a stark alternative to Richard’s own discredited notions.10 Other historians, Nigel Saul prominent amongst them, have seen these months as a more specific reaction to the transgressions of the Appellants, who had, according to Richard himself in a letter sent to Emperor Manuel Palaeologus, violated the king’s peace.11 Both of these divergent ways of understanding Richard II’s fates nonetheless share a common conclusion: among his many difficulties, it was Richard’s tumultuous relations with his magnates that ultimately proved to be his downfall. This essay will concern itself with Richard’s fraught relationship with John of Gaunt and Henry Bolingbroke, his greatest subjects. Much of Gaunt’s most important work in the service of the duchy of Lancaster took place in the months surrounding the September 1397 Parliament. It was this work that ultimately unbalanced the English polity and produced a baked-in pretender with an unusual degree of political power. It was, in fact, this work

For insights into Richard’s ideas on the subject, see Walker, ‘Richard II’s Views on Kingship’, pp. 49–63. 9 The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, 1376–1422, ed. J. G. Clark and trans. D. Preest (Woodbridge, 2005), p. 302. 10 See, for example, W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England in Its Origins and Developments, 5th edn, 3 vols (Oxford, 1896), vol. 3, pp. 2 and 5. 11 Richard describes the Appellants, ‘while we were yet of tender age and afterwards’, as having ‘made many attempts on the prerogative and royal right of our regal state’, and in so doing, he frames them not simply as his personal enemies, but as enemies of the monarchy itself as an institution. N. Saul, ‘The Kingship of Richard II’, in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 37–57, at 51–52; A. R. Myers, English Historical Documents, 1327–1485 (Oxford, 1969), vol. iv, pp. 174–75. 8

152

MARK ARVANIGIAN

that Henry exploited when he returned to England in 1399 and ended Richard’s reign, and this work that therefore demands our attention. *** The group of ‘senior’ Appellants from 1386 had been led by Richard’s most prominent critic, his uncle Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, who regularly and publicly voiced opposition to his friends, advisors, and policies. Those criticisms and a recalcitrant king led to armed confrontation at Radcot Bridge in 1387, and following their victory a subsequent attempt by the Appellants to govern without the king, through parliament.12 Richard never forgot or forgave the affront to his royal dignity, and in 1397 his stated intention was to show the Appellants the same mercy that they had shown in summarily executing his tutor and close friend, Sir Simon Burley.13 The fact that he interpreted these events as harmful to both his person and his office lends credence to Chris Given-Wilson’s belief that Richard associated his own mistreatment with that of his great-grandfather more than a half-century prior.14 Indeed, it implies that Richard was possessed of a well-developed and nuanced conception of kingship, something greater than simply the sum of his personal will, title, and prerogatives. At least in the abstract, he was able to conceive of a royal office as at least partially distinct from, even independent of, the royal person.15 In a lengthy consideration of Richard’s view of English history and his own place in it, Mark Ormrod found him to have been more cognisant of the royal tradition, and paradoxically more encumbered by it, than were his predecessors. It is difficult not to see in this an important motivation for his consistent attempts

The details of the so-called Merciless Parliament are best related in Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy, pp. 16–48. The context of the feud, and its implications for the king’s relations with the nobility, are considered in Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility, pp. 111–29; and A. Tuck, ‘Lords Appellant (act. 1387–1388)’, in ODNB, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/53093. 13 This exchange between the king and Gloucester was alleged to have taken place at the duke’s residence at Pleshy, as attested by the continuator of the Eulogium chronicle; see An English Chronicle, 1377–1461: A New Edition, ed. W. Marx (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 16–17. 14 Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II, Edward II’, passim, uses the lens of the various challenges to Edward II, and the possibility of an ongoing Lancastrian challenge to the royal dignity, to explore this issue. This article, and subsequent work in fourteenth-century political life, would seem to point toward the need for a fuller consideration of a Lancastrian ‘culture of opposition’. 15 Walker, ‘Richard II’s Views’, discusses the implications of Bagot’s self-reported conversation with the king in 1398, in which he reports that Richard discussed the crown in just these terms, as an abstraction, with its attendant duties and, interestingly, also discusses some potential royal heirs. See also, Chronicles of London, ed. C. L. Kingsford (Oxford, 1905), p. 52. 12

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS153

to expand the royal prerogative, one that from his perspective was only restored fully following his actions of 1397.16 As historians have long known, Richard’s attempt to rehabilitate the royal dignity and expand the royal prerogative to its greatest possible extent came in the form of a multi-faceted attack on critics and institutions hostile to these aims; prominent among them were the Appellants and the parliament. He responded by attempting to establish a new nobility and a newly constituted ‘royal family’. Each seems to have served in a dual capacity, by both shielding the king from opposition – such as the one he experienced in 1386 – while simultaneously helping him to advance the royal prerogative through surrogates. Richard’s likely exemplar in this was his grandfather, Edward III, whose considerable international influence came largely through the provision of European marriages for his many children, which he began arranging very early on, around mid-century.17 Yet Richard had no such offspring; nor were any soon to be forthcoming. It was this weakness that he sought to rectify through policy, by promoting a new ‘family’ of surrogates – extended family, in-laws, and friends – bound to him via the mechanisms of patronage, the household, and the court. This was in fact the eventual outcome of his parliamentary promotions of 1397, which were to the principal benefit of his cousins and in-laws, along with a few close confidants. The January 1397 parliamentary session was only the start of Richard’s annus mirabilis. In the September Parliament of that year, he finally gained his long-sought revenge over his old adversaries of 1386 – the duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick – and simultaneously promoted several courtiers and allies largely using what turned out to be their forfeited estates. This was a historic act of baronial social engineering on the part of the king. While the convictions were conducted with the imprimatur of parliament, they nonetheless resulted in the usual reversion of estates to the Crown following their forfeiture. In cases such as these involving members of the greater nobility, heirs would have expected an opportunity at length to make their amends, come into their inheritance, and thereafter prove their personal loyalty to the Crown, often via devices like loyalty oaths or especially onerous royal commissions. The fact that this did not happen, though not emphasised by contemporary writers, surely did not escape the notice of other members of the nobility.18 If, for Ormrod, ‘Richard II’s Sense of English History’, pp. 97–110. W. M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and His Family’, Journal of British Studies, 26 (1987), 398–422. 18 Even pro-Lancastrian commentators were more preoccupied with the chivalric promotions and less concerned with the practical redistribution of wealth that accompanied it. As an example, see The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377–1421, ed. C. GivenWilson (Oxford, 1997), pp. 36–37. A summary of these grants can be found in Bennett, Richard II, p. 106. The duke of Gloucester, widely regarded as the Appellants’ leader 16 17

154

MARK ARVANIGIAN

Richard, Gloucester’s prosecution was as satisfying personally as it was politically, those of the other senior Appellants likely fell into the general category of useful political economy. Even amongst the magnates, the Fitzalan earls of Arundel were legendary for their wealth; and the Beauchamp estates in and around Warwickshire were both among England’s most extensive and were widely envied for their contiguous character, their cohesiveness. As Christine Carpenter has shown, the Beauchamp estates gave the earls of Warwick a strong basis for their traditional regional dominance.19 Yet it was precisely their stature that made the senior Appellants such high-value targets for the king. Contemporary opinions over the rectitude of Richard’s political purges have served to engender a good deal of historical debate, owing largely to the many literary interpolations that took place after Richard’s downfall. Some, like Thomas Walsingham, were already critics of long standing, so their contemporary opinions are almost certain to have been hostile to Richard’s coup d’état, whatever the impact of later interpolations. Others were disturbed by the extreme character, and political violence, which the king’s revenge entailed, this evidence that Richard had truly become a venal and arbitrary monarch.20 Some were no doubt sympathetic to the king and considered the prosecution of traitors as consistent with any treatment of enemies of the state. Richard’s unusually deep understanding of history, and his rather extreme views on royal prerogative, would certainly seem to support the idea that his actions were constitutional, as well as personal and political in the usual sense. For Richard’s supporters, his response to the treasonable acts of the Appellants was delayed, but wholly justified; its form and process, gaining the imprimatur of parliament, confirmed this belief.21 What Gloucester and his allies had sown was nothing less than treason, and now they reaped the whirlwind of royal justice for their misdeeds. For the first several months after the September 1397 Parliament, the king continued to act against them and in favour of his own partisans not by extraordinary means, but through the usual mechanisms of parliamentary statute and royal administration. To Richard, this was the important first step in re-asserting authority over his magnates, and the parliamentary show trial of the earl of Arundel was his opening

by contemporaries and modern historians alike, contributed energy and chivalric and royal prestige, to be sure, but comparatively little in the way of landed wealth – a longstanding source of his discontent. 19 C. Carpenter, ‘Beauchamp, Richard, Thirteenth Earl of Warwick (1382–1439)’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1838; and Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992). 20 Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 71; Barron, ‘Tyranny of Richard II’. 21 The critical session, the so-called Revenge Parliament, came in September 1397; PROME, Parliament of September 1397.

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS155

salvo.22 Yet this also (unwittingly) served to broadcast the arbitrariness that could henceforth be expected of this government, which would act summarily against even the greatest of England’s magnate families, and even after having reconciled with them formally. On 18 September, having already laid out their case against Arundel, the Commons voted for impeachment, an act to which the king responded by rescinding Arundel’s charter of pardon and calling for his arrest for treason. The earl’s trial came on the 21st, in the presence of the king and the council and with John of Gaunt presiding as steward. It was short and apparently loud, with Gaunt and Arundel exchanging slanderous accusations before the latter’s predetermined execution on Tower Hill that same afternoon. Two days later, the earl’s brother Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, was also impeached for treason as a co-conspirator of the Appellants.23 On the 26th, Richard completed his destruction of the Fitzalans by exiling the archbishop for life, concluding once and for all (he no doubt believed) the political destruction of a great and antagonistic family. Yet for psychological and symbolic effect, little can have matched the king’s arrest and confinement of his uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester. Taken from his bed at Langley and spirited away in the night, he was subsequently held without trial at Calais by Thomas Mowbray, his eventual (likely) assassin.24 Indeed, Gloucester’s assassination without trial was recognised for what it was virtually from the start, and while Mowbray steadfastly professed his innocence of the crime for the rest of his life, few were convinced of it.25 The method of Gloucester’s arrest/kidnaping, his spiriting away from the country in the dead of night and imprisonment at Calais, were all deeply suggestive.26 Richard’s publication of a proclamation announcing the complicity in the duke’s arrest of Gaunt, Bolingbroke, and Edmund of York were further proof of the king’s understanding of its legal tenuousness.27 Perhaps most of all, the mysterious and deeply troubling circumstances of Gloucester’s death spoke loudly of Richard’s newfound ruthlessness in pursuit of his goals. Yet at a deeper level, the treatment of Gloucester and other magnates served to open clear blue water between the king’s ruling style The charges were taken up by the Commons very quickly in the parliamentary session; PROME, Parliament of September 1397, items 11–12. 23 PROME, Parliament of September 1397, items 14–16. 24 Bennett, Richard II, pp. 91–92 and 97–98; Chronica Maiora, trans. and ed. Preest and Clark, pp. 298–99, 302. 25 Saul, Richard II, p. 400. 26 Perhaps as much as any of the other Counter-Appellants, Mowbray was already indebted a great deal to the king, who had granted him the earl of Warwick’s great lordship of Gower, in Wales, worth perhaps as much as 8,000 marks per year in profits; Saul, Richard II, pp. 372–73; C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1987), pp. 168–69. 27 Foedera, viii, pp. 6–8. 22

156

MARK ARVANIGIAN

and the one now understood to be typical of Plantagenet tradition – namely an approach to governing that favoured family and promoting its collective interests to strengthen the Crown as a whole. This was Edward III’s ‘family business’ approach to governing, and while his goals were somewhat similar to Richard’s – royal rule with the greatest possible latitude – his kingship was crucially underpinned by several important assets lacking from Richard’s own political arsenal. Edward’s legendary chivalric and military achievements brought with them popular support for his ongoing efforts in France while simultaneously serving to soften opposition to taxation in the Commons; this was particularly the case prior to the resumption of formal hostilities after the failure of the Treaty of Brétigny in 1368. Yet Edward was also possessed of other unique elements critical to his success. His orthodox and traditional expression of faith gave him a genuine aspiration to assume the role of Christ’s vicar to his people, an important feature in retaining the goodwill of the English Episcopate. He was also exceptionally dynastically minded, focused on the enrichment and advancement of the prospects of his own offspring, who in turn served as his natural support system in the projection of Plantagenet influence abroad, while also proving instrumental in undergirding his rule at home. For Richard, matters were different. Absent his grandfather’s legendary battlefield successes, his chivalric reputation, or his strong familial support, his approach was necessarily different, even if his aspirations were similar. Yet the arrest and subsequent treatment of Gloucester made it clear to any with eyes to see that even those of royal blood were not above reproof – and indeed, brutal retaliation – even where the king had issued assurances to the contrary. Richard was, if anything, acutely aware of both his royal estate and his personal prestige, and of the damage that had been done to both at Radcot Bridge. Yet as the heir to the Black Prince and Edward III, his own keen awareness of the Plantagenet lineage gave him an unusual historical perspective on kingship, in particular of the importance of the symbolic side of his royal office. Indeed, the most recent commentator on the events of 1397 acknowledges Richard’s revenge motive for the Appellants’ personal affront in 1386, but considers Richard’s larger ambition the preservation – indeed, liberation – of the royal prerogative his most important motivation to proceed.28 Christopher Fletcher has argued strongly that Richard struggled to be seen as a grown man throughout his political life, in part because of his distinguished parentage.29 He reminds us that the opposite of manliness was not femininity, but youthful immaturity. In that sense, masculinity lay at the heart of Richard’s kingship, a formidable obstacle in establishing greater power. His final victory over the senior Appellants in 1397 may have been an attempt to

28 29

Given-Wilson, Henry IV, pp. 100–01. Fletcher, Richard II, pp. 273–74.

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS157

overcome that very history and strike back against an older generation that remained politically formidable, led of course by his uncles and the senior Appellants. Yet, satisfying though he may have found it personally, subduing the Old Guard also produced important tangible benefits. For example, the senior Appellants favoured a more belligerent (and by now, more traditional) stance toward the war with France, echoing the policy presumptions of Edward III’s generation. Their demise brought to an end any sustained opposition to the king’s new policy of a prosperous (and profitable) peace. Indeed, his recent rapprochement was presaged the previous October by his betrothal to a French princess, a match that promised not only the attendant financial advantages of any peace, but also the luxury of the young Princess Isabella’s substantial dowry.30 For Richard, both of these held out the promise of greater domestic authority, by freeing him from the fiscal problems that promised to bring him into conflict with parliament and his magnate opponents.31 In fact, by the start of 1397 the king was already stretching his newfound diplomatic muscles: in the January Parliament, he used his new ties to the French Crown to propose a joint Anglo-French military operation in Lombardy.32 By introducing this to the assembled parliament as a fait accompli, Richard in a stroke introduced both the implications of his new, more amenable relationship with the French king and his new approach to governing generally.33 Indeed, for all the many blessings that a renewed French peace promised to bestow upon Richard, his proposed stance also had important domestic political implications.34 The prospect of long-term peace ran counter to the aspirations of many among the nobility, who generally preferred Edward III’s policy of vigorous prosecution. Moreover, because of Queen Isabella’s youth (she was six years old at the time of their marriage), their union did little to assuage the concerns of the political community over the royal succession. Yet for Richard, there were too many attendant advantages to peace for these to alter his course. Other factors provided the opportunity for him to favour this approach. Many, like the writer Philippe de Mézières, had renewed calls for the Peace of God Negotiated in November 1396. The king’s treasure roll details the treasures given to the new queen, much of which was extracted from the holdings of the disenfranchised Appellants; E 101/411/9. 31 The initial terms of the peace agreement of 1396 called for a twenty-eight-year peace; Saul, Richard II, p. 227. 32 PROME, Parliament of January 1397, item 9. 33 PROME, Parliament of January 1397, items 9–12. 34 Anne Curry has commented on this at length, arguing that peace was the product of a careful political calculation on the king’s part. See A. Curry, ‘Richard II and the War with France’, in Reign of Richard II, ed. Dodd, pp. 33–50. I take Walsingham’s description of the over-sumptuous nature of the banqueting and the fabulous expense of the nuptial negotiations and celebration as a mark of his own disapproval. See Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, vol. 2, pp. 221–22. 30

158

MARK ARVANIGIAN

amongst Christian nations, looking instead to a renewed crusade to the Holy Land.35 James Gillespie has discussed at length the great importance Richard placed upon the notion of launching a crusade and its place amongst his own personal chivalric persona; he argues that the king was convinced of the importance of crusading and found the calls to do so by contemporary writers persuasive on their merits, and not simply strategically useful arguments to be employed cynically because they aligned with his own policy preferences. Yet these are not mutually exclusive: Richard may well have found them moving on both counts. Lynn Staley has argued that Philippe himself may have acted as a kind of intellectual bridge between the ideas of Charles V, the reign of Charles VI, and the political necessities of Richard II.36 Though there is little evidence that he seriously entertained the grand crusade proposed by the French writer, Richard may well have believed in its long-term possibility while in the near term recognising the practical value of championing the project in order to shore up support for his own (more modest) aims at peace. Certainly, the king believed that a French peace was a necessary step in establishing a more expansive rule in England, Ireland, and Wales. Distinctly short of close family and supporters amongst the higher nobility and the episcopacy, any enhancement to his personal authority would likely originate from his own resources, namely from capital not tied to public or parliamentary scrutiny; these could more easily be turned into the currency of patronage so necessary in extending any king’s prerogative. Perhaps for this reason, more than any other issue, Richard’s marriage and peace with France were crucial in altering the trajectory of his reign. The attendant political and financial advantages bought peace with the house of Lancaster, allowed him to engage his own private retinue of Cheshire men, dominate a parliament, and ultimately set him on a sound course to defeating his magnate adversaries (and their enablers) of 1386. Although it was not obvious at the time, Gaunt’s return to England full time after 1390 was to prove a permanent homecoming. In the service of his renewed domestic political focus, he greatly expanded what was already by some distance England’s largest private affinity, dwarfing those of his nearest contemporaries and even drawing the notice of the king.37 The royal affinity grew in size and scope as an outgrowth of the household, a conscious imitation

Philippe de Mézières, Letters to King Richard II, ed. and trans. G. W. Coopland (Liverpool, 1975). 36 J. L. Gillespie, ‘Richard II: Chivalry and Kingship’, in The Age of Richard II, ed. J. L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), pp. 115–38, at 124–25; L. Staley, Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II (College Park, PA, 2006), pp. 129–30. 37 S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1371–1399 (Oxford, 1990), Appendix I; the author notes that Gaunt’s affinity was never constructed like those of his contemporaries, and though certainly the largest of its day, it was also far more diffuse and wide-ranging, consistent with the wider interests of the duke; ibid., p. 248. 35

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS159

it would seem of its Lancastrian counterpart, which surely added to Richard’s sense that Lancaster might yet prove to be a royal stalking horse. The growing Lancastrian retinue was accompanied by something of a transformation of Gaunt’s public image, as the ruthless and ambitious young prince of memory was now being replaced in the public mind by the wise elder statesman of gravitas, maturity, and stature, a pillar of his mercurial nephew’s reign. His active embrace once again of the office of steward publicly reinforced that impression, as he presided over council and parliament.38 Indeed, during the January 1390 Parliament, the Commons even petitioned the king for changes to the royal council, asking especially that both Gaunt and Gloucester be added to its ranks. Perhaps sensing the possibility that Lancaster might add his considerable weight to a renewed effort to challenge his rule by the Appellants, and unable as ever to place a wedge between Gaunt and Gloucester, Richard assented. On the last day of the parliament, 2 March, he created Gaunt duke of Aquitaine for life, with the apparent blessings of council and Commons.39 Published that same day in a letter to the clergy of Aquitaine, for Richard this was either a bold stroke designed to remove Gaunt and his growing influence from English politics, or an initial step in alienating the province to the house of Lancaster permanently, thus achieving a permanent solution to the Lancastrian problem.40 Historians have traditionally tied the move to Richard’s foreign policy aspirations. For example, J. J. N. Palmer has argued persuasively that the success of the Anglo-French peace negotiations, which had been in progress for most of Richard’s reign, actually hinged on the status of Aquitaine: whether and to what extent its lordship could be legally or practically alienated from the English Crown, and whether such a grant might be made in tail male.41 For Richard, the calculation was promising: the prospect of a long-term, profitable peace with France, combined with Gaunt’s (and Henry’s) absence from England and the attendant prospects for extending the royal prerogative, could perhaps be achieved with a single act – alienating the Aquitaine to Gaunt, in the first instance for the term of his life. The duke was of royal blood, and the province could be said to have remained one of the Plantagenet family’s dominions, as Gaunt was himself a son of Edward III and a renowned prince of great wealth and skill. Some contemporary writers were understandably sceptical of the grant and questioned its value to the nation, pointing out quite correctly that, while Gaunt as duke would initially hold that title as a vassal of the English Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 14. PROME, Parliament of January 1390, item 21. 40 Foedera, vii, pp. 559–60. 41 J. J. N. Palmer, ‘The Anglo-French Peace Negotiations, 1390–1396: The Alexander Prize Essay’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Ser., 16 (1966), 81–94, at pp. 85–86; and England, France and Christendom, 1377–99 (London, 1972), esp. pp. 28–42. 38 39

160

MARK ARVANIGIAN

Crown, it was the direct lordship of the king himself as their duke that would in the long term be the key to the province’s independence from the French king.42 Perhaps most significantly, as Gerald Harriss points out, was that the affair signalled to all that Richard was now firmly opposed to any resumption of war with France and was willing to stake much on lasting peace.43 If the grant was important to Richard, it also suited Gaunt very well indeed, promising him if not his own long-desired kingdom, then a great Continental appanage.44 Edward III very much encouraged his sons to develop broader European interests, and supported it during his lifetime. Indeed, in spite of his brother’s legendary reputation, among Edward’s sons it was Gaunt who came closest to achieving these lofty goals. His marriage to Costanza promised the kingdom of Castile, and though unrealised despite several attempts, Gaunt (with his elder brother, Edward) was a chief architect of the war in France, serving often as the king’s lieutenant in Aquitaine during his father’s reign.45 His later aspirations there were therefore a twofold continuation of his father’s larger vision of his sons extending Plantagenet authority on the larger European stage, and extending further the English foothold in France. Ironically, it was Richard who came nearest to fulfilling those aspirations for him. Though Richard had occasionally benefitted from the duke’s stabilising influence, it was always grudging and with the certain knowledge that the Lancastrian patrimony represented an ongoing problem for the English Crown.46 The royal alienation of Aquitaine promised to distract Gaunt and his formidable retinue from English politics, providing at least a temporary solution. Indeed, as the Westminster chronicler makes clear, Gaunt was already viewed as a viable alternative to Richard in Aquitaine amongst the English. Yet as the prospect became more immediate, it also became a matter of keen interest

PROME, Parliament of January 1390, item 22; Chronique de la Traison et Mort Richard II Roi D’angleterre, ed. B. Williams (London, 1846), p. 163. 43 Harriss, Shaping the Nation, pp. 420–22. 44 Professor Goodman has argued convincingly that, for most of his life, Gaunt was far less concerned with county and regional politics than were other English magnates. His stage was a national and international one, aspiring to a European crown of his own – in the manner sought by Edward III for all of his sons; Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 372–73. 45 M. Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity? John of Gaunt, John Neville and the War with France, 1368–1388’, in Fourteenth Century England, III, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2004), 121–42; the best study to date of the storied career of the Black Prince is D. Green, Edward, the Black Prince: Power in Medieval Europe (Harlow, 2007). 46 Armitage-Smith is doubtful on this point, arguing instead that the king was happy to secure his return, and that the duchy was not a means of keeping Lancaster out of the country. More convincingly, Goodman views the grant as consistent with the duke’s political aspirations from 1388 onward. See S. Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt (London, 1904), pp. 342–43; and Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 194–95. 42

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS161

to the Gascon nobility, who understood this as the efforts of a disinterested king to detach their province permanently from the English Crown.47 As such, the Gascon revolt of 1394 should be seen as their rejection of the prospect, which undoubtedly meant to them a weakening of their independence, individually and collectively. Local sentiment strongly favoured the ancient attachment to the Crown of England, and the duchy’s commensurate independence from the French Crown. The nobility of Gascony thus rejected the prospect of a new duke for what it was: an attempted alienation of the province and the introduction of a new ruling dynasty from outside the main Plantagenet royal line. As a result, Gaunt’s status in Aquitaine remained uncertain for most of the early 1390s. While he exercised lordship and governance there at times, he did so by proxy, through lieutenants and retainers, devoting little personal attention to building local support for his rule. He must have been aware that his lordship there was unlikely ever to be ratified by the region's elite, who viewed this as a step on the way to French dominance. He must surely also have known that even had he been able to gain local support for his own rule, the much-coveted entail and the expansive status and prerogative that might accompany it – without which the project was far less appealing – would not be forthcoming. For locals, apparently, the absentee lordship of English kings retained much of its appeal. Rebuked strongly by the Gascon nobles in 1394 and having failed to find advantage in the Anglo-French peace negotiations after the death of his Duchess Constanza, Lancaster’s political life entered its final, English phase. His return to England in 1395 was to be a final homecoming, and a watershed moment for members of his affinity and circle; this represents the true start of the Lancastrian era. Whether as a result of his own advancing age, or the uncertain status of his children’s political futures, or as part of his own re-focusing on domestic politics, Gaunt returned to the English scene with clear intentions. Perhaps this can be best seen in the composition of his retinue, where significant alterations now took place.48 Based on the available evidence, Gaunt appears to have focused more closely than ever before on building a political machine in England. At its heart was the attraction of a great many new retainers, often members of the gentry in and around his areas of greatest influence, such as Lancashire, Yorkshire, Leicestershire, and Lincolnshire. Just as Richard II tried to emerge from beneath the shadow of his uncles by establishing his complete command of the kingdom, so too did Gaunt work to cement and improve his own family’s lofty place in the political community.49 In the service of their individual requirements, the two men seem to have come to a mutual Westminster Chronicle, pp. 484, 490. Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 34–38. 49 This is the beginning of his supposed tyranny: Bennett, Richard II, p. 109. In his definitive biography, Saul gives this chapter the provocative title ‘Majesty, Dominion and Might, 1397–1399’; Saul, Richard II, p. 366. 47 48

162

MARK ARVANIGIAN

accord, whereby the king avoided Lancastrian opposition to his revenge against the Appellants especially, while Gaunt gained a good deal of royal favour and preferment to foster his own dynastic interests, most particularly for the benefit of his children. This was especially noteworthy between the 1396 and September 1397 Parliaments, during which time the king organised and executed his planned revenge over the senior Appellants, and Lancaster reaped his rewards for acquiescing to the scheme: a degree of dynastic influence unseen in any magnate family in the course of the fourteenth century. No longer principally engaged in managing the French war, nor in prosecuting his own royal ambitions in Spain, Gaunt made a series of changes in the recruitment of personnel,50 among them retaining English esquires with little or no military experience into his affinity, in numbers far greater than in any prior period.51 Unaccustomed to campaigning, these men were trained in estate administration and the law – the very skills now required for domestic political operation in England. Talented administrators like William Gascoigne, Ralph Eure, John Conyers, and John Scarle therefore appeared more often in the duke’s service after the late 1380s. Additionally, old soldiers and long-time Lancastrian retainers, such as the lords Neville, Willoughby, and Roos, were largely retired from military concerns, their efforts re-focused on administration, both domestic and in Bordeaux. In 1382, Gaunt employed seventy-seven men described as knights; by the 1390s, that number had dwindled to just twenty-six, despite the fact that the retinue itself actually grew in size. In addition, Gaunt’s affinity began to once more show a stronger regional character, with the north of England especially well represented. While this was in part a holdover from his time as earl of Richmond two decades before, the catalyst for Gaunt’s renewed north-country bias arrived during a later spell as governor of the northern marches. As his campaigning in France and Spain gave way to other pursuits, such as policing the northern marches with Scotland, managing his own English estates, and maintaining the influence of a presence at court, the composition and character of Gaunt’s retinue came to reflect that. This final phase of Lancastrian political activity in Richard II’s reign coincided with Richard’s own revenge against his enemies of 1386, and this allowed Gaunt to seek royal support for his retainers and family. Mark Ormrod has argued that Edward III (like Henry II before him) understood royal government and kingship as utterly personal, familial, and dynastic – inseparable from the personal and Through his own personal interests and those of members of his retinue, Gaunt retained an interest in the Continent, particularly Aquitaine, for many years. John Beaufort continued his own service there while also looking after his father’s interests. See Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 35–36. 51 The retinue list of the duke of Lancaster is published in Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, Appendix 1, pp. 262–91. 50

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS163

collective interests of the royal family.52 By this thinking, the personal was political, and what was good for the royal family was good for the nation. Edward experienced no constitutional quandaries in using England’s national resources, even human ones, in pressing his own dynastic claims in France, employing statecraft to serve what was, at root, personal ambition. Equally, royal marriages were tools for extending the king’s influence and fortune; the question of their utility to the principals was therefore somewhat peripheral, in this framework. The marriage schemes of Edward III for his children, well underway on multiple fronts by the 1360s, were ample testimony to this ‘family firm’ approach to government. Richard underwrote this in his own way, arguing in several ways that his kinsmen, by virtue of their royal blood, should be seen as elevated above even the greatest of their noble counterparts.53 This emerging attitude toward the royal family and the regnal line became, by extension, a useful means of emphasising the monarch’s own special status, and that of the office he inhabited. Richard adhered to this principle in a variety of ways. Most visible was the promotion of extended family: Richard’s half-siblings, the Holands; and his first cousins, Bolingbroke and Rutland. Historians have generally argued that all of the grants and chivalric promotions of 1397 were essentially of a single piece. Their audacity, and the king’s profligacy, in promoting a group that Walsingham would pejoratively refer to as ‘duketti’ has been explained either as an attempt by Richard to assuage his insecurities via his friends and courtiers, or as an opening salvo announcing his autocratic intentions to the political classes.54 Yet they instead seem to have been something far more complex and interesting. There is little doubt that in 1397 Richard coveted the prospect of seeing off his old enemies from 1386, nor that he did indeed make a slew of grants to friends and courtiers. Yet as Alastair Dunn has shown, it was Richard’s closest relatives who fared very much better.55 This is wholly explicable, as he lacked the natural support kings generally expected to receive from close family members – and that his grandfather had in abundance. Richard conceived of a policy of promoting more than anyone else his closest kinsmen, making unusually generous grants Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, pp. 398–422. R. Griffiths, ‘The Crown and the Royal Family in Later Medieval England’, in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (Gloucester, 1986), pp. 15–46, at 22–23. 54 Two studies have stood out in this regard, for different reasons. The first modern treatment of the reign’s later years, of course, came nearly a half-century ago by C. Barron, who first laid out the terms of this debate. Other historians have occasionally revisited the topic, though most have come away with similarly broad conclusions; among the most illuminating and learned is M. Bennett, whose treatment of the subject, though more detailed, nonetheless strays very little from Barron’s most important conclusions. Barron, ‘Tyranny of Richard II’; Bennett, Richard II. 55 Dunn, Politics of Magnate Power, pp. 55–56. 52 53

164

MARK ARVANIGIAN

of land and office, while at the same time elevating them in status above the rest of the magnates. They – rather than his court favourites or characters like Bushy, Bagot, and Green – were to form the foundation of Richard’s ‘renewed’ reign, one reborn with a newly formed royal family at its core. It was they who were to comprise Richard’s ‘new’ royal family. Moreover, following their legitimation in the January 1397 Parliament, Gaunt’s children with his long-time mistress, Catherine Swinford, should properly be added to this list.56 The most proximate consequence of that legitimation was the grant of the earldom of Somerset upon their eldest son, Sir John Beaufort. The clerks of parliament, in preparing the rolls, were suspiciously specific in reporting the king’s stated reasoning for this promotion.57 Calling John his most noble cousin, the king justifies his elevation first of all by virtue of his royal blood – a clear sign that he would be joining the new royal family. On the occasion of the Beaufort legitimation, Richard even went so far as to publicly identify them as his own kin, emphasising always their royal blood ties, and calling them ‘our most dear kinsmen … sprung from royal stock’.58 He clearly felt that their close blood ties to the king was a perfectly adequate basis for such preferment.59 He also referred to the admirable service done by Sir John in campaigning abroad, calling it a positive reflection on the kingdom and especially the royal sceptre – yet another sign of his increasing preoccupation with royal power. That service, over a relatively short span of time, was indeed extensive. Beaufort had been Gaunt’s lieutenant in Aquitaine and had spent much time crusading and travelling to important tournaments with Bolingbroke, which had formed a sort of grand tour of Europe intermittently between 1390 and 1393.60 The king surely also had in mind Beaufort’s most recent military service – his first field command – crusading against the Turks at Nicopolis with an English contingent.61 His symbolic support also extended to the chivalric context: Richard gave the Beauforts use of such prized symbols of majesty as the royal arms, and allowed them to make use of other royal Plantagenet symbols in their own coats of arms. Henceforth, they were referred to regularly as the king’s cousins and close kinsmen, a consistent attempt by This occurred on 4 February; PROME, Parliament of January 1397, items 28–29. On 10 February; PROME, Parliament of January 1397, items 30–32. 58 On 10 February; PROME, Parliament of January 1397, item 30. 59 Griffiths, ‘The Crown and the Royal Family’, 19. It is suggested that there had been a prior agreement made privately between Richard and Gaunt to eventually legitimise the Beaufort children, though if it ever existed, it was indeed kept private and does not appear in the public records. 60 Given-Wilson, Henry IV, p. 63. 61 A. Bell, ‘England and the Crusade of Nicopolis, 1396’, Medieval Life, 4 (1996), 18–22; K. DeVries, ‘The Lack of a Western European Military Response to the Ottoman Invasions of Eastern Europe from Nicopolis (1396) to Mohacs (1526)’, Journal of Military History, 63 (1999), 539–59. 56 57

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS165

the king to confer upon them the full benefits of royal blood. In common with his predecessors, Richard regarded familial connection alone as sufficient foundation for royal patronage. Yet his family included very few boasting close blood ties; most of his royal family was to be comprised of members of a somewhat distant character. Though many modern historians have sided with Walsingham in calling Richard’s long list of chivalric promotions politically abnormal,62 the king’s actual pattern of patronage belies this somewhat in betraying instead a strong predilection for royal kinship.63 Blood ties to the king were the best predictor of who received royal favour, most obviously in the form of chivalric promotions but also in terms of the attendant grants that followed, so necessary in ensuring that these ‘duketti’ were nonetheless able to maintain their new estate. The inclusion of the Beauforts into the royal family served as a necessary prelude to Richard’s revenge play, and by the late autumn of 1397 he had achieved virtually a full realignment of England’s political elite. The senior Appellants of 1386 were replaced by a new group of younger magnates, the so-called Counter-Appellants, many of them Richard’s courtiers and confidants. With political fortunes owed almost entirely to the king, they supported his diplomatic ambitions fervently and were willing to attest openly to the treason of Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick in spite of the pardons granted them previously by Richard himself. High-born all, some of the newly promoted, like Thomas Despenser and Sir William Scrope, were Richard’s close friends and confidants, while others came into his service as courtiers and servants.64 Still others – Bolingbroke, Rutland, and the Holands – were promoted above even comital rank. This rather unusual step was justifiable by their high birth – all were Richard’s first cousins or closer – and their willingness to abet the king in his revenge.65 Ducal status had previously been rare in England and always reserved for close kinsmen of the king. Thus, Richard was actually Walsingham famously referred to the group of nobles promoted by Richard in 1397 as ‘duketti’; N. Saul, The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II and Richard III (London, 2005), p. 62. 63 Dunn, Politics of Magnate Power, pp. 58–59. 64 C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity, 1360–1413 (New Haven, 1986), pp. 160–74; Saul, Richard II, pp. 382–83. 65 The case of John Beaufort was an interesting one in this respect. Already made earl of Somerset in February, he was made marquis of Dorset in the September promotional round by the king. Greater than an earl but inferior to a duke, the title of marquis was a French import, and its grant to Beaufort marked what surely was the fastest social and political rise in fortune yet known, from bastard to legitimate son, to marquis and constable of England, all within the space of just a few months; M. K. Jones and M. G. Underwood, The King’s Mother: Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 19–24; H. G. C. Matthew, ed., Dictionary of National Biography on CD-ROM (Oxford, 1995), reference: ‘Beaufort, John de’. G. L. Harriss, 62

166

MARK ARVANIGIAN

using the ducal titles to advertise and affirm the royal blood of the recipients, as part of his larger project of founding a ‘second reign’ on a firmer and more secure foundation than the first. This is most clearly seen in the person of Edward earl of Rutland. A member of the so-called Counter-Appellants, he was made constable of England the day after the arrest of the holder of that office, the duke of Gloucester. He also profited by gaining several of the original Appellants’ estates on 29 September, the day after their parliamentary prosecutions and subsequent forfeitures. This was in support of Richard’s grant to him of the title duke of Aumale on that same day, one held by Gloucester from 1385 and now forfeit. This was perhaps the best symbolic evidence for generational replacement within the higher nobility, in the case of Rutland and Gloucester, a virtual one-for-one replacement. Consistent with his (frustrated) attempts at the alienation of the Aquitaine to Gaunt, and thus the latter’s continued presence in England, Richard’s defeat of his Appellant enemies and their replacement with his own friends – and more particularly, his kinsmen – was a similar grand attempt at re-making the political landscape, here through a crop of younger magnates and family. Ralph Griffiths has argued that both popular and elite views of royal kinship were very much in flux, toward one that made greater use of the ‘blood royal’ in political discourse, as part of a programme of differentiation of the king’s family as a group from the magnates, a policy very much in evidence during the latter stages of Richard’s reign.66 Though certainly not exceptional in holding these views, Richard went further by extrapolating from them a unique, working view of the royal prerogative and office. No simple noble was Richard, no princeps: as king, he was a prince of the royal blood, entrusted by God and his people to carry out his sacred office, requiring an expansive personal prerogative to do so effectively. Yet for all of this, at the heart of his project lay a great irony: in extending his rule, Richard planted the seeds of his own undoing by acting as the great benefactor to the Lancastrian dynasty in exchange for its support of his reforms. Doing so was consistent, of course, with his notions of family and the blood royal: Gaunt and Bolingbroke certainly qualified, and were among his closest relatives, in addition to being son and grandson to the lionised Edward III. Richard seems to have accepted their contrition over the Appellant affair and the lingering friction that likely remained between them over subsequent smaller issues. He had taken Henry especially into his bosom and had received both the young Henry of Monmouth and John Beaufort as courtiers. For some years after the failed settlement of Aquitaine upon Gaunt, Richard proceeded to lavish his uncle’s family with grants, promotions, and privileges in anticipation of their performance as his staunch ‘Beaufort, John, Marquess of Dorset and Marquess of Somerset (c. 1371–1410)’, in ODNB, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1861. 66 Griffiths, ‘The Crown and the Royal Family’, pp. 15–23.

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS167

supporters in the September 1397 Parliament.67 This seems to have convinced the king that they might yet be important members of his emerging royal familia; and indeed, in the months surrounding the Revenge Parliament, this certainly seemed promising, as members of Gaunt’s formal and Beaufort families assumed highprofile roles in the ‘re-foundation’ of Richard’s reign. Yet there is much still to consider here. Certainly, the king’s relationship with his uncle Lancaster and the broader place of the Lancastrian patrimony have been of interest to historians for many decades. Most have concluded that Richard acted with hostility toward Gaunt and his heir out of a belief that the Lancastrian inheritance posed a unique, existential threat to his rule.68 Yet in doing so they may have overestimated on the one hand the (admittedly significant) authority of Lancaster, and underestimated the unique problem posed by the person of John of Gaunt on the other. This point merits some elaboration. Though long formidable, of course, by the fourteenth century the earls of Lancaster had become the de facto leaders of the baronage, at times called upon to execute a unique, ‘stewardly’ function for the polity. Increasingly, this function took the form of formal office as steward of England, a parliamentary title now assumed to be Lancaster’s by right, as so many of the comital titles long associated with baronial leadership were held by him. The great midland earldoms of Derby, Leicester, and Lincoln – once the provinces of Edmund Crouchback, Simon de Montfort, and Henry de Lacy – had come into the house of Lancaster during the tenure of Henry of Grosmont before at length passing to Gaunt; and while the earldom of Lincoln died with Henry de Lacy, a great many of its lands, privileges, and associations did not. Yet this formidable chivalric and landed portfolio was further enhanced by Gaunt’s personal prestige as a royal prince, by 1376 the eldest surviving son of the increasingly lauded Edward III. Yet for all his power, prestige, and great good fortune – and in spite of the many rumours that he coveted the Crown for himself – Gaunt never truly manifested the existential threat to the reign Richard had long imagined until the early 1390s. At the Treaty of Bayonne in 1388, Gaunt finally was able to reach an agreement with Juan I of Castile, in which Lancaster permanently renounced his claim to that throne in favour of Juan’s heir, Enrique of Trastámara. The terms of the settlement were generous, yet three main elements lay at its core. In exchange for his quitclaim, Gaunt received the enormous sum of 600,000 gold francs (£100,000); the marriage of his daughter, Catherine, to Enrique; and a regular annuity of about £7,000 for the rest of his life. It is not at all likely that King John meant to consistently meet his full obligations under the treaty, most notably the annuity, yet in the PROME, Parliament of September 1397, items 28–32. Examples stretch back to Tout, with the general agreement of modern students of the reign; significant among these are Bennett, Richard II, pp. 143–45; Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II, Edward II’, passim. 67 68

168

MARK ARVANIGIAN

end he had little to say on the subject; he died in October of 1390 after falling from his horse.69 Undoubtedly at the new queen’s insistence – and with the support of her half-sister, Phillipa of Lancaster, queen of Portugal – after a short period of abeyance, payments were made regularly and promptly after 1393, helping to ensure that Gaunt would be one of the wealthiest men in Europe for the balance of his life.70 This also had the effect of elevating Gaunt’s political influence in England, raising the duke’s stature well above that of his predecessors, and making the Lancastrian court among the most prominent in Europe.71 For much of his adult life, his intentions toward the throne of England had engendered grave suspicions, particularly amongst the Commons, which declared that mistrust openly, most famously during the stresses of the Good Parliament of 1376.72 In reality, Gaunt’s political aspirations were more complicated and wider in scope than his English contemporaries and critics credited. Certainly, the accusations levied by the Commons that he represented an ominous threat to the kingdom were hyperbolic at times, and proved to be wide of the mark, even as his growing power and wealth continued to concern them. Though lofty, Gaunt’s ambitions in England were far less profound. He consistently supported the Plantagenet dynasty against its critics and adversaries – foreign and domestic – often at the expense of his own treasury and reputation. David Green has shown that in spite of Gaunt’s many Continental ambitions, he was unfailingly supportive of his elder brother’s efforts in France. Their relationship remained a good one up until the prince’s death in 1376, belying all expectations of sibling rivalry, or jealousy over Prince Edward’s great fame. In the fullness of time, this translated into Gaunt’s eventual support for the prince’s son as king, despite the unpleasant prospect of a long minority. That loyalty was not lost on the young king himself, especially during his uncle’s frequent long absences from England in subsequent years, which coincided with some of the reign’s most uncertain moments. Indeed, Anthony Goodman argues convincingly that his prestige and statesmanship were at times much missed in English politics, as during the 1386/87 Appellant crisis. Then, an ability to transcend faction

Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt, Appendix IV. DL 28/3/2; DL 28/4/1. 71 Goodman explores this throughout his political biography of the duke of Lancaster and shows particularly the European scope of Gaunt’s ambition. For his conclusions regarding the political ramifications of the marriage of these elements, see Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 371–75. 72 The Commons were a particular source of mistrust and criticism of Gaunt’s aspirations, expressed as early as the Good Parliament of 1376, in which the Commons expressed a mistrust of both Lancaster and his close associates in Edward III’s government. PROME, Parliament of April 1376, items 1–3; M. Bennett, ‘Edward III’s Entail and the Succession to the Crown, 1376–1471’, EHR, 113 (1998), 580–609, at pp. 585–94. 69 70

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS169

and provide some moderation and stability might well have been instrumental in quieting the protagonists ahead of Radcot Bridge.73 In this sense, Richard’s faith in Lancaster’s support was well founded, based as it was upon the assumption that his uncle would faithfully extend his long record of service to the Plantagenet family business, even one under the direction of his royal nephew. Gaunt had supported his brother’s rule and aspirations in Aquitaine, to the extent that he at times served as a partner to the Black Prince, lending him considerable support (military and otherwise) on several occasions.74 When Prince Edward began to succumb to the malady that would eventually kill him, he lobbied his father to appoint Gaunt as his replacement as royal lieutenant in Aquitaine, and he promptly did so.75 Even the duke of Gloucester had for years been a faithful supporter of Richard II, and continued to be so even after the resolution of the Appellant crisis. He had served on numerous commissions of peace and array in England, in support of his own territorial pretensions as the Bohun co-heir, but was far more prominent as an ambassador abroad. In the early 1390s, Gloucester was the principal negotiator with the French Crown and engaged in several rounds of negotiations on Richard’s behalf with the Flemish and the Bretons.76 Perhaps most spectacularly, he lent his stature to the negotiations over the making of the king’s second marriage, even though the foreign policy it ushered in ran counter to his own perceived self-interest.77 Gloucester’s status as a prince of the royal blood may have given him prestige abroad that was not forthcoming at home. Gaunt and Henry were also accorded this status abroad, very much in evidence during Henry’s ‘Grand Tour’ of 1390–93; he was feted in a style generally reserved for visiting monarchs at every court he visited, and travelled with the sort of entourage usually reserved for royalty.78 This was the tour that essentially made Henry’s reputation as a soldier and chivalric knight of the first order and cemented his reputation as one of the greatest nobles in Europe, and heir to perhaps the greatest uncrowned head in Europe. Two things about this are striking. The first is the degree to which his touring and crusading were underwritten by his father. Gaunt was by this time one of the wealthiest men in Europe and had received a very lucrative settlement from Juan of Castile

Goodman, Loyal Conspiracy, pp. 41–47, lays out the main issues at work in the Merciless Parliament; for Gaunt’s role, see Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity?’ 74 David Green has considered this question and concludes that far from being rivals, Gaunt and Edward were instead mutually supportive of each other’s interests both in England and on the Continent; Green, Black Prince, pp. 157–59. 75 Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity’, p. 138. 76 Saul, Richard II, pp. 137, 218–19, and 223. 77 Palmer, England, France and Christendom, pp. 91–97 and 122–25; Bennett, Richard II, pp. 78–82. 78 Given-Wilson, Henry IV, pp. 64–76. 73

170

MARK ARVANIGIAN

in recompense for the renunciation of his outstanding claim to the Castilian throne. That sum dwarfed his annual income from his English and Continental holdings, and the liquidity served to widen his horizons considerably. Indeed, he could well afford to build the prestige of his heir; and with this sort of money and paternal support, Henry could afford to travel in some considerable style.79 Yet the cessation of Gaunt’s interests in Spain and his subsequent failure to gain personal control over the duchy of Aquitaine never translated into a similar interest in pursuing the English throne. Instead, Lancaster preferred to continue in the stewardly role he had long inhabited, remaining the king’s most important supporter and a pillar of his nephew’s reign.80 Despite the mischief of Lords Latimer and Neville during their period of ascent within the royal household in the early 1370s (for which they were prosecuted by the Good Parliament), and despite the occasional rifts between nephew and uncle, Richard II was always in possession of Gaunt’s steadfast loyalty. Edward III had relied on him a great deal late in his reign for this kind of support, engendering perhaps in Gaunt a habit of mind favouring family loyalty and dynastic thinking.81 Richard’s minority (and indeed, his early majority) might well have met with greater uncertainty but for the efforts of his royal uncles, especially Lancaster. It was they who managed foreign policy and the French war in the latter days of Edward’s reign and the early days of Richard’s, and they who led so many important royal commissions domestically and who largely assumed oversight of the king’s continual council.82 Gaunt may well have angled for a leading role on the minority council, or even initially for a regency, and while the latter never materialised, for Richard, his uncle’s loyalty and service may have come to represent a kind of norm. Perhaps this partly explains the young king’s rather acute response of shock, and his lasting sense of betrayal, at Gloucester’s treasonous leadership of the Appellants in 1386. It simply stood outside of the Plantagenet norm that Richard had experienced. All of Edward III’s sons had at one time or another been in marriage negotiations on their father’s behalf, and all were active contestants in his campaign for the French Crown – a conflict that ultimately came to define the princes’ aspirations, as well.83 Those that survived their father’s reign were elevated to ducal status. Though great distinctions between them certainly existed – Gaunt was on a par with Europe’s wealthiest princes, while Langley and Woodstock Ibid., p. 62; Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 345; Palmer, England, France and Christendom, p. 162. 80 His most notable modern biographer agrees; Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 374. 81 The best study of this series of events remains G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975). For Gaunt’s perspective, see also Goodman, John of Gaunt, pp. 54–62. 82 N. B. Lewis, ‘The “Continual Council” in the Early Years of Richard II, 1377–80’, EHR, 41 (1926), 246–51. 83 Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, pp. 409–14. 79

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS171

were dependents of Lancaster and the Exchequer – that difference failed to open serious family rifts prior to Gaunt’s extended absence and the Appellant crisis. Little wonder that so many magnates, the younger princes included, opposed the rapprochement with France; personal shortfalls left the princes insufficiently endowed for the enjoyment of their estate, while the war offered the potential for new opportunities. This was likely the key animator of events; far from jealousy of Gaunt’s wealth, Gloucester was keenly aware of his lack of provision and amongst the royal princes was the most vulnerable to the closing off of the long-standing opportunities for chivalric advancement offered by the war. Until the final weeks of the reign, Edmund of Langley had also been very loyal, providing Richard with counsel as he would his successor, another royal nephew.84 Douglas Biggs has considered his rather enigmatic role in the king’s downfall and argues persuasively that he had long been a steadying force in government, perhaps at the head of a ‘moderate’ faction that sought to balance the ambitions of Gaunt on the one hand, and Gloucester on the other.85 Biggs also argues that his loyalties were firmly with Gaunt up until the latter’s death, loyalties that translated easily to Henry during the new reign. For all his loyalty to family, he seems to have viewed Richard’s excesses as beyond the pale, and he became a quiet member of the new opposition that coalesced behind Henry.86 In fact, only a split within the family could drive York away from his reflexive familial loyalty. The events of 1397 were, among other things, the negotiation of a separate peace by the house of Lancaster with the king over the events of 1386. This was the first crack in the family armour, in the form of the rift that now opened up between Gaunt and Gloucester. Occasioned by the everwidening gulf in the political and financial situations of the two men, they found themselves increasingly in discord over policy questions, most importantly those touching the French war. Gaunt’s settlement with Juan of Castile Langley’s motivations, despite the attention of at least one modern historian, remain cloudy, though conservatism and simple familial loyalty remain the most economic explanations for his dogged loyalty to the Crown and for his service to both its holders on either side of the 1399 revolution. D. Biggs, Three Armies in Britain: The Irish Campaign of Richard II and the Usurpation of Henry IV, 1397–99 (Leiden, 2006), Chapter 4, discusses Langley’s defence of the realm during Richard’s time in Ireland, while pp. 256–57 details the advice given to Henry of Lancaster by Langley in crafting Richard II’s deposition documents. See also Bennett, Richard II, pp. 75–92, 148–57, 218–20. 85 D. Biggs, ‘“A Wrong Whom Conscience and Kindred Bid Me to Right”: A Reassessment of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, and the Usurpation of Henry IV’, Albion, 26 (1994), 253–72. 86 Goodman has argued that the Lancastrian usurpation filled an existing leadership vacuum, first made apparent during the Appellant crisis and manifested again with Richard’s tyranny; Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 57. 84

172

MARK ARVANIGIAN

had made him both wealthier and less committed to England continuing its hawkishness toward the French. This change in attitude was best exemplified by his hasty negotiation of peace at Bruges – even as the English were turning the tide toward victory in Brittany and making other small gains on the Continent. Gloucester understood his own interests as best served by the contrary position: English belligerence toward the French king in particular.87 Gloucester’s relative poverty, and his lingering inability to achieve financial security on a par with his estate, only added to the precariousness of his position and the importance of leaving the avenue of war open. Yet Gloucester notwithstanding, Edward’s sons consistently exhibited a steadfast loyalty to the Crown, a trend that continued through the parliamentary trials of the senior Appellants in September 1397. Gaunt’s formal role in these proceedings as steward of England proved an important one, for it was in this capacity that he served as presiding judge over Arundel’s trial and was apparently a crucial voice in denouncing his old enemy, as told in both the rolls of parliament and the account of the monk of Evesham.88 So great were the expectations of Gaunt’s loyalty to family that it actually may have brought about an unintended consequence following the September Parliament. Loyalty to family was in fact so crucial to Gaunt that one scholar has suggested that Gloucester’s removal to Calais and subsequent assassination were done precisely because many (perhaps even the king himself) were uncertain as to whether Gaunt would prove willing to judge his youngest brother a traitor.89 Richard was, it seems, unwilling to take that chance. Gaunt’s participation in the show trials has generally been explained by historians in crass political terms. Yet by that date, a political and personal rift had set in between Gaunt and Woodstock of sufficient seriousness that Lancaster’s loyalties to Richard and the throne of England need not have been in question. Gaunt’s familial interests had by now shifted away from the Plantagenet throne and toward managing the prospects of his own offspring. By then, he was not simply a powerful member of the government and an uncle to the king, but also the leader of a powerful and growing family of his own. Long aggrieved at the loss to Bolingbroke of half of his wife’s Bohun inheritance when Gaunt arranged for Henry’s marriage to the other co-heiress, Gaunt’s and Gloucester’s paths had henceforth diverged. Froissart believed that Gloucester also harboured strong resentments over Palmer, England France and Christendom, pp. 82, 125–30. Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi, ed. G. Stow (Philadelphia, 1977), pp. 141–44. This is also reproduced (in translation) in Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 54–60; its general tenor is confirmed by the Lancastrian Usk in Chronicle of Adam Usk, ed. Given-Wilson, pp. 27–33. The context for these events is amply explored in Bennett, Richard II, pp. 102–03. 89 See A. E. Stamp, ‘Richard II and the Death of the Duke of Gloucester’, EHR, 38 (1923), 249–51; Saul, Richard II, p. 379 and note. 87

88

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS173

Gaunt’s most recent marriage to his long-time mistress, Catherine Swinford, and over the parliamentary legitimation of their fast-rising Beaufort children; they were among the chief objects of Gaunt’s attention around this time, and at his behest they were slowly gaining the king’s preferment.90 While Lancaster was reconciled with Edmund, he and Gloucester seem nonetheless to have remained estranged. Moreover, their rift was a fairly public one, well known amongst all at the highest levels of society. Indeed, Gloucester’s feelings may have been made known through the social scandal engineered perhaps by his wife, Eleanor de Bohun, who according to Froissart at least, made her displeasure known to all by publicly making plans to shun the new duchess of Lancaster.91 In view of the internecine split, the fact that Richard considered brotherly loyalty at all is testimony to the strength of their commitment to family. *** Yet it is precisely here that we find the root of Richard’s problem, and the most important political discontinuity of the reign. Gaunt’s aspirations in favour of his own progeny took precedence over his unquestioning loyalty to the Plantagenet throne. Like Edward III, Gaunt was a dynast at heart, and as such viewed the success of one loyal family member as furthering the interests of the family. From the time of his final return from France around Christmas of 1395, he therefore turned his considerable energies toward this single goal of advancing his clan’s future prospects.92 In the service of this long-term end, he lent his considerable authority and prestige to Richard’s revenge agenda from 1396 onward, and even threw his support behind the king’s plan to restructure the higher nobility, quid pro quo.93 In securing a newly entailed Lancastrian inheritance for Bolingbroke, and simultaneously arranging preferment for the Beauforts, Gaunt was building a strong, new Lancastrian faction within the Plantagenet dynasty, one that might act independently and in favour of its own interests, rather than the king’s.94 The first building block in this edifice was Gaunt’s marriage to Catherine, followed quickly by an appeal to the king for the legitimation of their Beaufort children. This process necessitated a relentless and fast-paced pursuit of lands, honours, and influence commensurate with their new status as children of a duke and royal prince. This process was so swift that it elicited comments from contemporaries who were uncertain of its propriety. Many, as reported by chroniclers, were unsympathetic to Gaunt generally and were especially scandalised by his third marriage, which undertook to elevate Froissart, Chronicles, pp. 419–20; Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 50. Jean Froissart, Oeuvres, ed. Kervyn de Lettenhove, 25 vols. (Brussels, 1867–77), vol. 15, p. 239. 92 Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, pp. 36–37. 93 Goodman, John of Gaunt, p. 159. 94 Arvanigian, ‘A Lancastrian Polity’, pp. 141–42. 90 91

174

MARK ARVANIGIAN

an illicit relationship to that of a union that existed at the very apex of political and social England – and was clearly undertaken specifically for the singular purpose of allowing for the provision of their bastard children – with union being the necessary predicate to legitimacy.95 Gaunt seemed impervious to these criticisms, and royal largesse directed to his family and livery followed on in quick succession. Some concessions were made to Gaunt personally, including royal licence for the marriage itself.96 Upon this foundation, he prepared the ground for his family’s prominent role in political society, first by resettling the Lancastrian estates on himself and his new wife in tail male, always taking due care to ensure the seigniorial rights of Bolingbroke as his heir general.97 This was formalised when the king re-granted (or confirmed) the duchy of Lancaster itself to Gaunt in February 1398, recognising Henry as his heir. Interestingly, this included for Gaunt a pardon for holding lands that, according to the wording of the grant, were once held by the traitorous Thomas of Lancaster but which might now be enjoyed by the king’s uncle anyway. The implied threat was surely plain enough: Richard had decided, by magnanimous gesture and after the ‘mature deliberations’ of his council, to allow Gaunt to retain that which the king clearly believed should long ago have been forfeited in perpetuity for its role in the events of Edward II’s deposition.98 And so, in what should have been pro forma, legal recognition of a long-time fait accompli was reimagined by the king as both an act of royal benevolence and simultaneously, an ominous threat to aristocratic property rights – a sober reminder of his views on that issue. This was unlikely to have been lost on Gaunt, who had long hoped for a status (and independence) on a rough par with his Continental peers, particularly those that ruled the great appanages of France. To that end, he arranged for the estates and titles associated with the duchy of Lancaster to be resettled upon himself and Henry as his heir general and went to the trouble of having these confirmed by the king. Likely the duke was concerned particularly with protecting those privileges that concerned the duchy of Lancaster, which he had amassed piecemeal over the course of his lifetime. These were significant and bear some detailing. Among them was Richard’s grant to Gaunt of the Once again, Gaunt’s most uncharitable commentator was Thomas Walsingham, though in this case his text has the ring of truth in expressing the likely views of the magnates, who apparently were scarcely able to hide their collective distaste at the union; he describes Gaunt’s final marriage as ‘tantae sublimitatis error’. Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, p. 219. 96 One chronicler wondered at the speed with which this was accomplished; Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, pp. 218–19. 97 CPR, 1396–1399, p. 76. 98 The unstated, but stark, ‘alternative’ (was it seriously considered?) seems to refer to the confiscation and retention of the duchy by the Crown in perpetuity; CPR, 1396–1399, p. 285. 95

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS175

right to entail his duchy in 1390, to the benefit of Henry as heir general. Yet Gaunt continued to press for ever-greater autonomy as duke right through the 1390s, and with his marriage to Catherine he sought the further expansion of his ducal jurisdiction. The jewel among these was the grant by Richard of palatine status to the duchy, which must have been painful for the king in that it promised Gaunt and his heirs far greater direct lordship absent the king’s direct rule – the royal writ would henceforth not run in the duchy, with the duke’s word final. Commensurate with his efforts to create a more independent and efficient duchy came the addition of administrators, lawyers, and clerks to the ranks of his affinity, which by the 1390s better reflected the rigors of domestic politics. Gaunt’s retinue boasted an ever-increasing number of politically talented operatives, many of them clerks and laymen of great influence, reflecting his own increasing number of domestic political interests.99 Gaunt’s steadfast and energetic promotion of his retainers bore fruit in the careers of such men as John Scarle, Thomas Langley, John Norbury – and even Gaunt’s second Beaufort son, Henry. Their abilities, and their number, speak to the great wealth of administrative talent available to him in these years.100 All of those above, of course, are already well known to historians in that they later emerged as significant national figures. Yet in the ranks perhaps just below them toiled a veritable army of administrators and servants who also rose in service, if perhaps at a humbler level. In all, they were a deeply formidable group whose presence proved to be of great interest and not a little irritation to Richard II. Whatever their differences, they shared an origin and a path to advancement, and began their rise in Lancastrian service around the 1390s before moving into positions of importance in national politics – be it via the episcopate, high offices of state, the council, or, sometimes, through all of these.101 With the exception of Henry Beaufort, they were distinguished almost For the composition of Gaunt’s retinue, see Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, Appendix 1. A. McHardy, ‘John Scarle: Ambition and Politics in the Late Medieval Church’, in Image, Text and Church, 1380–1600: Essays for Margaret Aston, ed. L. Clark, M. Jurkowski, and C. Richmond (Toronto, 2009), pp. 68–93; G. L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort (Oxford, 1988), pp. 2–13; J. L. Kirby, ‘Councils and Councillors of Henry IV, 1399–1413’, TRHS, 14 (1964), 35–65; M. Barber, ‘John Norbury (c. 1350–1414): An Esquire of Henry IV’, EHR, 68 (1953), 66–76. 101 If, as J. M. Grussenmeyer has suggested, Cardinal Kemp was the ‘last Lancastrian Statesman’, then Thomas Langley may just have been the first; J.M. Grussenmeyer, ‘Cardinal Kemp: The Last Lancastrian Statesman’ (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Kent, 2018). R. L. Storey, Thomas Langley and the Bishopric of Durham (London, 1961); M. Arvanigian, ‘A County Community or the Politics of the Nation? Border Service and Baronial Influence in the Palatinate of Durham, 1377–1413’, Historical Research, 82 (2009), 41–61; and ‘Landed Society and the Governance of the North in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of Sir Ralph Eure’, Medieval Prosopography, 22 (2001), 65–87. 99

100

176

MARK ARVANIGIAN

solely by their administrative talent, rather than high birth or connections. Many among the laymen were civil lawyers, like William Gascoigne, who would later author the famous legal device that through extensive employment of the conveyance-to-use device allowed for the wholesale resettling of the Lancastrian estates upon Gaunt and his heirs; thereafter, Gascoigne was employed to create a similar trust for the Beaufort branch of the Neville family, before it entered wider use amongst the landed elite. Gascoigne was a Yorkshireman of humble origins, whose talents allowed him to prosper first in service to Gaunt, then Bolingbroke. The change of dynasty was kind to him, and in 1399 he became Henry IV’s first Chief Justice of King’s Bench. Yet the duke’s many talented clerks began also to prosper in the early years of the 1390s, which witnessed the beginning of a number of important Lancastrian careers. Thomas Langley, for example, started out as just one among Gaunt’s many household clerks, before eventually gaining the duke’s trust and confidence, and joining his council. A university graduate, Langley gained the powerful deanery of York, where he surely thought himself to be on an eventual track to becoming archbishop. The fact that he was thrice nominated for episcopal appointments (York included) only to see his candidacy rejected each time by Rome, is itself evidence of a wider knowledge of his undoubted, exuberant Lancastrian partisanship. Already chancellor of England, in 1405 Langley finally was elevated successfully to the bishopric of Durham. Very much the north of England’s ‘second see’, Durham also offered its lord bishop unique authority drawn from its ancient palatine status, granted in aid of the Anglo-Norman kings to ensure a royalist outpost in the far north. It effectively meant that as count palatine, the bishop of Durham wielded both spiritual and secular overlordship of his palatinate, where the royal writ did not run. Because the far north had been the scene of much turmoil right through the fourteenth century, Durham, just to the south of the three border counties, had become strategically important to the defence of the realm. More recently, because Henry IV’s leading antagonists, like the Percys of Alnwick, were marcher lords, having Durham in the hands of someone as close to the king as Langley was of critical importance. Langley proved to be among the leading statesmen and administrators of Henry’s reign, serving not only as chancellor (an office he would hold on three occasions) but also in other offices of state and as a consistent member of Henry’s continual council. His career, along with those of other talented Lancastrian clerks who were likewise of humble origins, are evidence of the great potential for advancement that was often achieved via the trust of such a powerful patron, who was also well within the king’s favour – in this case, Gaunt and King Richard. While they were generally elevated to high offices of state following Henry’s rather sudden ascendancy, they nonetheless had received their training as a kind of shadow cabinet serving Gaunt as retainers and officers of the duchy of Lancaster.

JOHN OF GAUNT, RICHARD II, AND PLANTAGENET FAMILY POLITICS177

Gaunt’s interests in the events of 1397 were complex and should be seen from the perspective of Lancastrian, as well as Ricardian, politics. Gaunt was the true heir to his father’s thinking on matters of family, and as Griffiths has shown,102 the issue of the blood royal was starting to assume something of a mystical quality, something very much encouraged by the crowned heads of Europe. Consequently, those who enjoyed it were increasingly viewed in elevated terms, distinct from the rest of the political community. Moreover, Edward III’s long and increasingly revered reign provided his offspring with the special gift of his blood running through their veins, which Richard emphasised, using the glorious legend of father and grandfather as a vaccine for his own (perceived) reticence toward war and timidity in martial pursuits. Gaunt also understood well the power of the royal bloodline and, in common with his father, raised loyal children who mimicked his own loyal service to the family’s enhancement. In point of fact, Gaunt’s loyalty to the Plantagenet project abated only parallel with Richard’s revenge, when his own infirmity coincided with the opportunity to aggrandise his own Lancastrian dynasty. Perhaps as he experienced the effects of age and infirmity more often in the 1390s, Gaunt adopted more stridently the project of providing for his own family in the longer term. Read differently, Richard’s tyrannical behaviour, his growing authority, and his long-standing antipathy to the historical authority and role of the earls of Lancaster, may have convinced Gaunt his legacy was now in some doubt. With the filling of the royal coffers through the profits yielded by the peace settlement, the royal wedding, and the subsequent sale of Brest to the duke of Burgundy, Richard was financially a new man, with an energetic new belligerence toward his old enemies.103 It was here that Gaunt recognised an opportunity. He knew the uniqueness of his position and saw himself as holding a special constitutional responsibility as steward of the kingdom, charged with its special protection even against the worst royal excesses. Yet in the context of the moment, he was vulnerable to Richard’s prosecution. His rapprochement with the king in 1397 was therefore a tactical retreat to build in time a position of greater long-term security. The royal blood seems to have been critical in their renewed undertaking, and though it meant little enough in Richard’s dealings with Gloucester, his was a special case: Thomas was despised by the king personally and blamed by him for damage done to the royal office especially in the events of 1386. To secure for Henry an enlarged and enriched Lancastrian patrimony, with palatine rights and numerous other R. Griffiths, ‘The Crown and the Royal Family in Later Medieval England’, in Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages, ed. R. A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne (Gloucester, 1986), pp. 15–46, at pp. 15–23. 103 The ‘sale’ took place on 28 March, and William Scrope, earl of Wiltshire, was sent thereafter to collect the monies owed from the duke of Burgundy; he returned on 18 May 1397 with the considerable sum of 120,000 francs in tow. See Bennett, Richard II, p. 88. 102

178

MARK ARVANIGIAN

benefits and lands painstakingly added along the way, Gaunt adopted royal collaboration to pacify an arbitrary and belligerent king as his new policy. He duly set out to create a second ‘royal’ family and court within England – if not one to rival Richard’s, then at least to amass a group of kinsmen and friends with sufficient cohesive strength to protect their patron’s interests and their own livelihood – perhaps even against the Crown, should it come calling. This was consistent with the constitutional tradition that was adopted by Gaunt as steward, and that he also inherited through the earldoms of Leicester and Lancaster, which had served as the king’s most stalwart supporters and also as the leading barriers against his excesses. This was the final form and purpose of the Lancastrian affinity: to protect the interests of Gaunt and Henry as his heir, and support their undertaking of the ‘stewardly’ role bequeathed to them by tradition and endorsed by the political community.

9 Richard II’s Bishops: Fair Weather Friends?1 JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

U



nfortunately, Bishop Merke of Carlisle was all too prophetic when he denounced the deposition of Richard II and the accession of Henry IV in 1399. His bold and ringing denunciation, as shaped by Shakespeare in Richard II, is perhaps not too far from what he actually said in his bitter view of both what was taking place and its probable consequences: I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks Stirr’d up by God, thus boldly for his king. My lord of Hereford here, whom you call king, Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford’s king; And if you crown him, let me prophesy, The blood of English shall manure the ground And future ages groan for this foul act. (Richard II, iv, i)

That Merke was prophetic is not of issue here, as our writ ends long before the woes he envisioned.2 Rather, in looking at the deposition of Richard of This chapter is an obvious tribute to Nigel Saul, not only for his magisterial biography of Richard II but for his work on the gentry and on the artistic and physical monuments of late medieval England. In various reviews over the years, I have declared my admiration for his imaginative and thorough scholarship as he has bridged society at the very top with that of the county gentry (on whom so much of it really rested). In this chapter, I am also deeply indebted to the work of R. G. Davies, especially his ‘The Episcopate and the Political Crisis of 1386–88’, Speculum, 51 (1976), 659–93 and ‘Richard II and the Church in the Years of Tyranny’, Journal of Medieval History, 1 (1975), 329–62, in addition to his many ODNB entries. Personal thanks to Caroline M. Barron for comments on the penultimate version of this chapter. As per the usual disclaimer, errors of fact and judgement are solely those of the author. 2 For scepticism about the authenticity of Merke’s speech, Saul, Richard II, p. 422. However, there was ‘an undercurrent of unease in the assembly’ about the proceedings 1

180

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

Bordeaux in 1399, our concern is with the stance taken and the roles played by the bishops of the seventeen English and the four Welsh sees. And within the episcopate, the stance of that ring of courtier bishops who had been so close to the king and who owed their appointments to this special relationship is our real point of focus. From the perspective of on-stage drama, it would be quite satisfying to posit the head-on confrontation of the two parties, one led by Thomas Merke for the Ricardians and the other by Thomas Arundel for Henry Bolingbroke and the Lancastrians, with some poetic license by our later-day playwright helping bring matters to a head.3 This narrow interpretation or against the king, even if it stopped very well short of defending him. 3 Basic biographical information on Richard’s bishops has been taken from the ODNB, Emden, and A Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1963). Unattributed quotations are from the following ODNB entries: R. G. Davies, ‘Bottlesham [Bottisham], William (d. 1400), Bishop of Rochester’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2967; Davies, ‘Braybrooke [Braybroke], Robert (1336/7–1404), Bishop of London’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/3301; Davies, ‘Despenser, Henry (d. 1406), Bishop of Norwich’, available at https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/7551; Davies, ‘Fordham, John (c. 1340–1425), Administrator and Bishop of Ely’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37607; Davies, ‘Merk [Merke], Thomas (d. 1409/10), Bishop of Carlisle’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/18596; Davies, ‘Mohun [Mone], Guy (d. 1407), Administrator and Bishop of St David’s’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50150; Davies, ‘Peverel [Peverell], Thomas (d. 1419), Bishop of Worcester’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/22075; Davies, ‘Rede [Reade], Robert (d. 1415), Bishop of Chichester’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/23228; Davies, ‘Trefnant [Trevenant], John (d. 1404), Bishop of Hereford’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/41197; Davies, ‘Walden, Roger (d. 1406), Administrator, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bishop of London’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/28445; Davies, ‘Winchcombe, Tideman [Robert Tydman] (d. 1401), Courtier and Bishop of Worcester’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95189; Davies, ‘Young, Richard (d. 1418), Diplomat and Bishop of Rochester’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95172; J. Tait, revised by R. R. Davies, ‘John Trevor [Siôn Trefor] (d. 1410/1412), Bishop of St Asaph’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27726; R. B. Dobson, ‘Neville, Alexander (c. 1332–1392), Archbishop of York’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19922; B. Golding, ‘Medford [Mitford], Richard (d. 1407), Administrator and Bishop of Salisbury’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/95136; R. M. Haines, ‘Erghum, Ralph (c. 1338?–1400), Bishop of Bath and Wells’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/95047; G. L. Harriss, ‘Beaufort, Henry [Called the Cardinal of England] (1375?–1447), Bishop of Winchester and Cardinal’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/1859; J. Hughes, ‘Arundel [Fitzalan], Thomas (1353–1414), Administrator and Archbishop of Canterbury’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/713; A. McHardy, ‘Buckingham, John (c. 1320–1399), Administrator and Bishop of Lincoln’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/2786; P. McNiven, ‘Scrope, Richard (c. 1350–1405), Archbishop of York’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24964; P. Partner, ‘Wykeham, William (c. 1324–1404), Bishop of Winchester, Administrator, and Founder of Winchester College and New College, Oxford’, available at https://doi.

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?181

perspective allows us to offer the about-to-be restored Archbishop Arundel as the brains behind Henry’s evolving views of his claims and ambitions and that this scenario is too simple is not one we will be called upon to unravel.4 A little reflection about Richard’s bishops in a collective sense before we turn to a more individualised treatment. As indicated, our special attention will be on those courtier bishops who had risen to the episcopate through intimate friendship with the king. These were – or might well have been – those ‘fair weather friends’ of our title and of our investigation into the role – or the lack thereof – that they, other than Merke, played when Richard’s crown toppled and fell. For the most part, his circle of intimates was highly unpopular with both the nobles and the commoners in parliament, and therefore these men were already on dangerous ground before the king himself came under threat (and not for the first time). These men among Richard’s bishops – Robert Tideman of Worcester, John Burghill of Coventry and Lichfield, Roger Walden of Canterbury, Richard Mitford of Salisbury, Guy Mone of St David’s, and perhaps Robert Reade of Chichester – were now drawn into what was a virtually unprecedented political action, a coup d’état; what we now refer to as ‘regime change’. To simplify what may well have been a much more complex set of possibilities or alternatives, we can say that in 1399 each English and Welsh bishop had three possible lines of action or of response to the return of Henry Bolingbroke as he moved toward the throne. He could oppose Henry; he could support him; or he could do his best to keep out of the way, trimming or ducking his head. Even before Bolingbroke’s return, Richard had, on occasion, done his best to make it very hard to stand beside him. The extent to which he had been moving toward an unprecedented assertion of sacred kingship has been well treated and is not our concern here, though it would clearly have affected the variety of episcopal positions and responses open to these men. Richard’s view of autocratic kingship was made into a harsh reality by such moves as his appropriation of the Lancastrian inheritance, while in the realm of religious leadership org/10.1093/ref:odnb/30127; M. G. Snape, ‘Skirlawe [Skirlaw], Walter (c. 1330–1406), Diplomat and Bishop of Durham’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25695; R. N. Swanson, ‘Burghill [Burghull], John (c. 1330–1414), Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/50262; Swanson, ‘Courtenay, William (1341/2–1396), Archbishop of Canterbury’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/6457; A. Tuck, ‘Stafford, Edmund (1344–1419), Administrator and Bishop of Exeter’, available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/26201. 4 It is possible that Arundel thought he had more control over matters than was really the case. M. Aston suggests that Arundel ‘allowed a certain ingenuous confidence to blind him to the reality of royal opportunism and dissembling’, Thomas Arundel: A Study of Church Life in the Reign of Richard II (Oxford, 1967), p. 306. For a similar view, R. L. Storey, ‘Episcopal King-Makers in the Fifteenth Century’, in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. B. Dobson (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 82–98. Storey indicates that K. B. McFarlane shared this view of a ‘strangely gullible’ archbishop.

182

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

and cultural definition, there was his promotion of the cult of Edward the Confessor and his efforts to have Edward II canonised. Whatever its ambiguities and mysteries, we can read The Wilton Diptych as a symbol or a summary of the royal view of role and status. Much of the tone of Richard’s last decade can be summed up in Nigel Saul’s assessment: ‘The exalted notions which Richard articulated either in person or through the medium of his ministers were buttressed in the mid to late 1390s by measures to promote a grander and more exalted image of his monarchy.’5 Accordingly, our question is not about Richard’s kingship, as such, but rather about how his bishops acted or reacted when he fell. And while Richard may have been confident that his courtier bishops would stand by him, this proved to be but another part of his fantasy world.6 Those men, other than Merke with his brave moment of protest and a little unsuccessful sword rattling by Henry Despenser of Norwich, proved to be no more defenders of the king than were their fellows (or the peers of the realm including his uncle of York). Through all the drama, there was never any indication of what we might offer as an episcopal position, let alone of a unified one, let alone of one supportive of the anointed king. Rather, what we can offer is a tableau of twenty-one individual decisions (or of twenty, assuming Arundel as being pre-committed to the Lancastrians). There were too many other episcopal interests and considerations at stake – some explicable in terms of a diocesan focus or personal spirituality, some explicable in terms of regional and/or family loyalties, some explicable in terms of personal relationships, and some probably explicable in terms of disagreement with and reaction against Richard’s treatment of the Church – that cloud the picture and thwart any effort to hold fast to that simple, two-sided scenario posited at the start of this chapter. Nor, though of little solace to Richard had he looked to ‘history’ to lend him support, had there been anything like a single or unified episcopal

N. Saul, ‘Richard II’s Idea of Kingship’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. D. Gordon, L. Monnas, and C. Elam (London, 1997), pp. 27–32, at p. 30 for the quotation and p. 31 on the obsequious language of the courtiers. Saul, Richard II, pp. 300–15, 370, on Richard’s kingship and piety. The mere title of R. H. Jones’ study is indicative of many scholarly assessments: The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968). G. Mathew, The Court of Richard II (London, 1968), p. 17, states that ‘he conceived of himself increasingly as emperor rather than a king’. Also, for a terse position-statement: C. M. Barron, ‘The Tyranny of Richard II’, BIHR, 41 (1968), 1–18. 6 M. Bennett, Richard II and the Revolution of 1399 (Stroud, 1999), pp. 88–89, on the king’s confidence that the bishops would stand with him. A number of the courtier bishops were dead by 1399: Alexander Bache at St Asaph, 1390–94, and Robert Waldby at York, 1396–98 (and Dublin and then Chichester before that), though it does not seem likely that their presence would have tipped the scales for Richard’s cause. 5

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?183

position in 1327 when Edward II was deposed. Richard got no more effective help from the ‘parasitical bishops’ than he got from the rest of the bench.7 Before we turn to individual cases, some general observations about Richard’s bishops as a group (see Table 9.1). Demography does not by itself explain causation or motivation, but it may be a significant if unvoiced factor in interpersonal relations and interactions. In 1399, both Richard and Henry Bolingbroke were thirty-two years old, whereas, despite some uncertainty about birth dates, the English and Welsh bishops averaged in their early or mid-fifties, running from Beaufort at twenty-five to Burghill at seventy and William of Wykeham at seventy-five. Furthermore, it is of interest to note that those courtier bishops of Richard’s household circle, though newly appointed to the episcopacy, were not appreciably younger than their peers. This at least eliminates the idea of opposing cohorts on age-based grounds as a factor in their being appointed or in how they acted in 1399. We are not pitting a younger generation against an older one. Beyond age, we can consider years of episcopal experience, years in the see now occupied, and, for some men, years in a prior see (or sees) before that occupied in 1399 (see Table 9.1). A wide range existed here, as was probably common to episcopal careers no matter when examined. This experiential element ranged from Wykeham’s thirty-three years at Winchester and Despenser’s twenty-nine at Norwich to a very limited period for a fair number of newcomers. In 1399, thirteen of the twenty-one bishops had held their current see for five years or even less; two had been in place between six and ten years; and only six of the twenty-one could show a decade or more of episcopal experience. And when we look at total years of episcopal service from first appointment to 1399, we have eleven bishops with five years or less, two in between six and ten years, and eight with over a decade in some see or other. The average is seven years in the see now held and ten for overall experience, though the see itself may be a better guide to a bishop’s status than just his years in office. But however we tally numbers for men and careers – and without being dogmatic about how much importance to attach to career length – Richard had a fairly ‘green’ bench of bishops, with but few who went back to his minority, let alone to the time of his grandfather. This means that he had had a voice, albeit one of varying weight, in the selection of most of those in the episcopacy as the great drama unfolded. So whatever their relationship with the king, and wherever they stood in the drama of his deposition, and whether their inclination was to take an active role or to duck their heads, basically the bishops of 1399 were Richard’s bishops. Because we are interested in bishops ‘under fire’, memories of 1388 – when the Appellants had made the episcopal bench one of their targets – must have

A. K. McHardy, ‘Haxey’s Case’, in the Age of Richard II, ed. J. L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), pp. 93–114, quotations at pp. 107–08. 7

Richard Mitford 69

Norwich, 1370–1406 Rochester, Llandaff, 1385–89 1389–1400 Salisbury, Chichester 1395–1407 1390–95

60

John Fordham

Durham, 1388–1406 C&L, 1385–86, B&W, 1386–88 Ely, 1388–1425 Durham, 1382–88

68 65

70

John Skirlaw

C & L, 1398–1414

Lismore (1394–96), Carlisle, 1396 Llandaff, 1396–98

Lincoln, 1398–1447 London, 1381–1404

70

John Burghill

Chichester, 1396–1415

25 62

45(a)

Robert Reede

Carlisle, 1397–99

Henry Beaufort Robert Braybrooke Henry Despenser John Bottlesham

45

Thomas Merke

Salisbury, 1375–88

Previous diocese(s)

Exeter, 1395–1419 Hereford, 1389–1404

55

Roger Walden

Bath & Wells, 1388–1400 Canterbury, 1397–99

Years in diocese held in 1399

Edmund Stafford 55 John Trefnant 50

60

Age in 1399(a)

Ralph Erghum

Bishop

Table 9.1. Richard II’s Bishops

(Salmas, 1399–1409)

London, 1404–06

Subsequent diocese(s)

Diplomat-ambassador: suffragan bishop of Winchester, 1403–05 Trans. from Lismore and from Carlisle

Gaunt’s chancellor: advisor of young king: demoted from Salisbury, 1388 Royal clerk by 1371: treasurer Canterbury first episcopal seat

Miscellaneous (including major offices) (b)

Richard’s confessor: Trans. from Llandaff Trans. upwards from B&W by Appellants Kps for Richard: treasurer: translated down to Ely D.C.L. Aristocratic family: Chancellor, kps D.C.L. Auditor of causes and papal chaplain diplomat MA Royal family Lic C.L. Royal family link: Chancellor: Diplomat & king’s secretary Aristocratic family: Impeached, 1383 Dominican Titular bishop of Bethlehem, D.Th. 1380: suffragan for Wykeham At Cambridge Clerk of royal chapel: Keeper king’s signet: Arrested by Appellants

Dominican:

Benedictine D.Th. Dominican D.Th.

Orders & Academic Training D Cn& CL

St Asaph, 1394–1410 Bangor, 1399–1404

Canterbury, 1296–97, 1399–1414

York, 1373–88

Lincoln, 1363–98

C & L, 1386–98

Llandaff, 1394–95

Worcester, 1407–19

Rochester, 1404–18

Richard’s physician and/or confessor: Trans. from Llandaff Aristocratic family: Diplomat: Trans. from C&L: Executed, 1405

Aristocratic Family: Trans. to schismatic see of St Andrews by Appellants: Died abroad Trans. to schismatic see of St Andrews, restored to Canterbury

Aristocratic Family: Trans. from Hereford (1370–75) and London (1375–81) Pushed to retire or be pushed to C&L

D.Cn. & C.L. Diplomat: Effectively deprived, 1402 for support for Glyn Dŵr. D.Cn & CL. Papal chaplain & auditor of causes: Transl. to Rochester, 1404 Kps: treasurer Receiver of king’s chamber B.Th. Chancellor of Queen Isabella: Trans. Carmelite from Ossory: To Worcester, 1407

D. Cn & CL

Cistercian

Chancellor: Kps: King’s secretary

(a)Some ages are approximations, calculated by working backward from first datable appearance in the records.(b)Most major offices are listed but without regard for when were held provided it was prior to 1399.

Thomas Arundel

John Buckingham Alexander Neville

NO LONGER ON THE SCENE IN 1399 William Canterbury, Courtenay 1381–96

45-50 St David, 1397–1407 (a) Thomas Peverell 50+ (a) Llandaff, 1398–1419

50

Richard Young

Guy Mone

45

Winchester, 1366–1404 50+ (a) Worcester, 1395–1401 49 York, 1398–1405

75

WALES John Trevor

Richard Scrope

William of Wykeham Roert Tideman

186

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

been very real for the eight men whose episcopacies dated back that far, as it may well also have been for some who had not yet been bishops. At the behest of the Appellants, Ralph Erghum had been demoted from Salisbury (1375–88) to Bath and Wells (1388–1400). John Fordham, who had been the Black Prince’s secretary and keeper of the privy seal for the young Richard, had been pressured into stepping down from Durham to Ely, a lesser see in any national sense even if it was regarded as a ‘rich neo-sinecure’. Walter Skirlaw, Fordham’s successor at Durham, had been moved up to the richer and more important see after two years at Bath and Wells. And though Richard Mitford did not become a bishop until 1390 (Chichester), he had been fortunate, or lucky, to escape the wrath of the Appellants: arrested but released on the condition of good behaviour. Henry Despenser had been able to avoid the firestorm of 1388, but he had already undergone an impeachment in 1383 and was, no doubt, fortunate to be able to hold on to his diocese, especially in light of his general unpopularity. R. G. Davies paraphrases Thomas Walsingham on Despenser: ‘immature, unlearned, lacking in discretion, undisciplined, arrogant, unmindful of making or keeping friends’.8 With the useful caveat that ‘the same man may belong to more than one category’, how did the bishops of 1399 fit into the categories offered by W. A. Pantin in his survey of the fourteenth-century church: civil servants, scholars, religious, diocesan administrators, papal officials, and aristocrats?9 Some of the bracketing is fairly easy. Aristocratic bishops had become a regular aspect of the late medieval episcopacy, and Richard’s bishops held their own in this regard: Thomas Arundel, Edmund Stafford, Richard Scrope, Henry Beaufort, Robert Braybrooke, and Henry Despenser all qualifying, though with considerable variation in their claim to noble blood. None of the twenty-one were scholars of much note, though more had academic credentials than not.10 Their training had mostly been in canon and civil law (or in both), with a R. G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate and the Political Crisis’, p. 690: in the episcopal translations of 1388, there actually was ‘nothing inherently scandalous … the promotions were in fact conservative in character, placing the customary priority on administrative competence’. This speaks to the competence of the newly favoured bishops but not to the political process whereby they were chosen and installed. 9 W. A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Notre Dame, IN, 1962), pp. 9–26, quotation at p. 9; R. G. Davies, ‘The Episcopate’, in Profession, Vocation, and Culture in Later Medieval England, ed. C. H. Clough (Liverpool, 1982), pp. 51–89. 10 Pantin, The English Church, pp. 9–26. Over the course of the fourteenth century, aristocratic bishops were becoming more prominent, and those classified as ‘scholars’ were generally to be found in the lesser sees. While none of the Ricardian bishops were notable scholars, some had been significant patrons of Oxford, providing money, books, etc., and they were well represented in Emden’s two volumes. Merke had written De modern dictamine, ‘a guide to letters [and] written for apprentice estate managers’. It seems to have been a popular and well-regarded manual. 8

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?187

few theology degrees sprinkled in. Richard’s personal piety and probably an affinity for men under a rule explains the presence of the regulars: Dominicans, a Carmelite, a Cistercian, and a Benedictine. When we classify the civil servants, administrators, and diplomats, a majority of the bishops could qualify (and many in more than one category), some having a high office of state on their resume (keeper of the privy seal or treasurer) and diplomatic assignments often meant a stint at the papal or imperial court. The late medieval episcopate was usually (and mostly) a well-trained and experienced one, and Richard’s bishops were well within the accepted boundaries of this assessment. Even the king’s detractors acknowledged that his bishops were capable administrators, including those detested men who had risen from his courtier circle.11 We arrive at the summer of 1399, turning first to those courtier bishops, all of whom had held their present see since the days of the Appellants a decade before. Beyond Thomas Merke of Carlisle, who spoke up with memorable eloquence, though in vain and at some risk, what support for Richard was forthcoming from these men let alone from any of their fellows? Having been one of the king’s intimates had been a likely pathway to a bishopric. John Burghill, a Dominican and Richard’s confessor, had only been at Coventry and Lichfield for one year after two at Llandaff. He was close to the king, with him in Ireland in the summer of 1399, and then – in what may be a striking instance of personal loyalty unto the grave – the only bishop in attendance at Richard’s interment at King’s Langley in March 1400. However, he had wisely kept out of the abortive and foolish Epiphany Rising of 1400, designed to rescue the king.12 Displaying what has been termed ‘pragmatic loyalty’, Burghill avoided Henry’s parliaments and was never appointed to any offices of state after the deposition. He mostly stayed within his mid-level diocese of Coventry and Lichfield until his death in 1414. He had evidently made his peace with the events of 1399. Nor was he considered a threat or a man around whom the disaffected would gather. Robert Tideman of Winchcombe had been at Worcester since 1395, he too having been translated there from Llandaff. He had probably been the king’s physician and in this shadowy role had been accused by Adam of Usk of having dabbled in the arts of healing and of weaving spells (which seems

In his ODNB entry for Thomas Merke, R. G. Davies says, covering all the courtier bishops: ‘They were able men but their constant intimacy, presence, and advancement were unusual and attracted critical comments.’ 12 For the contemporary sources for the plot, Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400, ed. Given-Wilson (Manchester, 1993), pp. 224–39, drawing from Walsingham’s Annales Ricardi Secundi, Traison et Mort, Continuatio Eulogii, Litera Cantuariensis, Continuatio Eulogii, Litera Cantuariensis, D. Legge’s edition of Anglo-Norman Letters, and the Vita Ricardi Secundi; P. McNiven, ‘The Betrayal of Archbishop Scrope’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 54 (1971–72), 173–213. 11

188

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

reasonable for a physician). He had been ‘a detested intimate of Richard II in the king’s final years’, allegedly a participant in the midnight drinking that Richard supposedly indulged in with members of his inner circle.13 Whatever the truth of such rumours, we do know that Richard had appeared in person at Tideman’s episcopal enthronement. However, or despite these personal links, at (and after) the deposition Tideman was another Ricardian who was allowed to remain pretty much on the sidelines. He had not been with Richard in Ireland that fateful summer, nor did he go west to meet him on his return to England; their days of intimacy seem to have been a thing of the past, though of the recent past. Although Tideman was placed under surveillance – as was Despenser – he was neither charged with any offences nor threatened with demotion or impeachment. He lived out his remaining two years at Worcester. Like Burghill, he never made an appearance at Henry’s court nor at his parliaments. That his diocese was well away from the centre may have facilitated his policy of non-involvement. Robert Reade, a Dominican, a doctor of theology and coming from Richard’s favourite mendicant house at Langley, had been at Chichester for three years after short stints at Lismore (from September 1394 to January 1396) and Carlisle (January to October 1396), this latter see being about the least of the English sees. He had been translated from the Irish see to Carlisle at the king’s request, overriding the election of William Strickland (who would succeed Merke at Carlisle in December 1399), and was very much a courtier bishop, a member of the council of regency in England during Richard’s last trip to Ireland. That there was little animosity toward him argues that by the time of Richard’s deposition the powers-that-be – probably Arundel – had no worries about any lingering loyalties. After the deposition, Reade went on to be an ‘entirely residential diocesan’ for his remaining sixteen years, a long survivor among the bishops and perhaps pleased with the safe albeit lesser role into which fate (or events, or his peers) had thrust him. Roger Walden, archbishop since 1397 when Arundel had been forced out and sent to St Andrews (where he certainly had never put in an appearance), held Canterbury as his very first episcopal appointment. He had been an active and successful civil servant and administrator – treasurer of Calais, proctor at parliament in 1393–94, Richard’s secretary, among his offices (along with his many ecclesiastical holdings). He was a serious and successful pluralist who had been nominated for the see of Exeter in 1395, though he lost out to Edmund Stafford. And while his appointment as archbishop seems an anomaly, he had actually aroused little personal animosity and has been characterised R. G. Davies, in his ONDB entry on Tideman, quotes an Evesham writer: ‘the King’s favoured associates at court in dissolute nights featuring uncontrolled drinking’. But Davies says the writer did not know the bishop and his comments are but ‘calumny [that] does not meet the known facts’. 13

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?189

as a ‘modest, pious, and affable man, more versed in war in the world than in learning or the church’.14 After the deposition, he was placed under the friendly care of the abbot of Westminster in what probably amounted to casual house arrest. Even after he became entangled in the Epiphany Rising and was sent to the Tower for a short spell, a pardon with the full restitution of his goods was not only forthcoming, but he re-emerged an unsuccessful though quite legitimate candidate for the see of Rochester in 1404.15 The more important see of London actually came to him in 1405, over such rivals as Hallum (who became bishop of Salisbury, 1407–17) and Langley (Durham, 1406–37). He too had clearly made peace with the new regime, and the new regime was quite willing to make peace with him. Guy Mone had only been consecrated at St David’s in November 1397 (though he was to hold it for ten years). Richard had worked to get him – a man who had been the receiver of his chamber, keeper of the privy seal, and treasurer – an episcopal appointment, and the Welsh see was the best the king could do, though he had appeared in person at Mone’s installation, and Mone could certainly have counted on a translation-cum-promotion had Richard lived. He had stayed in England during Richard’s last expedition to Ireland, and though they were in touch during the king’s absence, Mone ‘seems to have accepted the king’s deposition “without demure”,’ quoting R. G. Davies’ ODNB entry, nor was he ‘personally discredited’ despite his ties to Richard. He was again appointed treasurer in 1402, and he seems to have had a good record as an administrator. Though he was never translated to a richer and more central diocese, it is unlikely that he was ever under any pressure to spend much time in Wales. He was perhaps a cross between a courtier bishop and an administrator-bishop, and he seems to have learned to swim with the tide. Richard Mitford, at Salisbury since 1395, had been a clerk in the royal household as far back as 1359. He was ‘at the centre of a small and powerful clique that aroused deep hostility’, and before the Appellants had taken power he had been on a ‘seemingly unstoppable rise’. In 1388, however, he had only secured his release from arrest on the stipulation that he answer to parliament for his actions. An election to Bath and Wells was put aside, as was one to St David’s, but he was ultimately provided to Chichester in 1390 and then to Salisbury in October 1395, where he was presiding at the time of the deposition. He has been characterised as a typical administrator ‘who experienced both J. H. Wylie, The History of England under Henry the Fourth (London, 1884), vol. 1, p. 20. Wylie continues: ‘his low birth and lay training are an offense in the eyes of monkish writers and his deprivation [in 1399] was regarded by friends of Arundel with huge delight’. 15 CPR, 1399–1401, p. 224 (23 February 1400): ‘Full restitution of manors, lands, rents, possessions, and goods from which he was expelled for certain crimes against the king’s majesty.’ 14

190

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

the risks and the rewards of such a career’, though his role at court and around the king worked against him. But like others of the courtier bishops, after 1399 he mostly confined himself to diocesan affairs and seems to have been on reasonable terms with the new king. Henry Despenser, at Norwich since 1370 and with a long and stormy career behind him, also belongs on this list of Ricardian partisans, though he was not a serious player in Westminster affairs by the time of the deposition (if he ever had been).16 He refused to accept the new regime and actually raised troops against Bolingbroke, though to little avail. This was the only armed opposition to Henry, and after it came to naught, Despenser was held under arrest for a short period at Berkeley castle. Stubborn to the end, he became entangled in the abortive Epiphany Rising in 1400. But he submitted to the friendly custody of Thomas Arundel and was pardoned in February 1401. He was probably too old and too remote to be a serious threat to Henry IV, though that he spent much of his remaining time in London, rather than in East Anglia, makes us wonder if it was judged best to keep an eye on him or if he himself was content to move toward semi-retirement, away from his episcopal responsibilities. Only Thomas Merke, last in our list but foremost among the Ricardians, went down fighting. He had only been at Carlisle for two years, but he quickly and rather easily became the voice of opposition to the regime change. Another of the unpopular figures who had surrounded the king, his earlier diplomatic assignments included negotiations in France for the king’s second marriage and assessing Continental support for what seems the unlikely chance of Richard’s election as emperor. He was with Richard on that last expedition to Ireland, as well as in his company upon his return. And whatever his exact words, he had protested ‘with great courage and loyalty that it was against the competence of the lords to judge the King’, especially in view of the king not being confronted in person: brave words indeed, though the charge of treason brought against him seems to have focused more on a possible role in the death of the duke of Gloucester in 1397 than for his later support of Richard. Now bishop of Salmas (in Asia Minor) thanks to a quick demotion and translation in 1399, he was found guilty of treason but was soon residing at Oxford – a welcome guest and a popular preacher – and despite all the drama and the rhetoric he made peace with reality and swore allegiance to Arundel. By 1403, he was holding a vicarage in Dorset, and when the aged Wykeham began to fail Merke became the suffragan bishop of Winchester. So even the most vocal of the opposition weathered the storm and lived to enjoy a modest post-Ricardian career. It is possible he was at the Council of Pisa in 1409 shortly before his unreported death, somewhere on the Continent.

16

M. Aston, ‘The Impeachment of Bishop Despenser’, BIHR, 38 (1965), 127–48.

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?191

This sums up the roles of the bishops who came from Richard’s personal circle, or, with Despenser, who had proclaimed some degree of loyalty to him in his final days. Though it is easy to say they failed him, it is hard to see what they could have done on his behalf. Even the most stalwart of them would have been moving against the consensus of the peers and of the commoners in parliament. That Henry IV had worked from the start to make good his promise of an almost-bloodless coup was, no doubt, a factor that would have encouraged the trimmers and the timid in the episcopal ranks. So much for the courtier bishops, both during the dramatic summer of 1399 and afterward. What about those other bishops, all lords of the realm and overseers of temporalities of considerable importance? Almost without exception, for these men the unwritten and unspoken policy during the deposition was ‘business as usual’, even though the ‘usual’ may have been most unusual. Thomas Arundel was welcomed back by his fellows and quickly re-installed as archbishop with almost no wrinkles in the system, no articulated opposition to his re-installation. As no one had fought for Arundel in 1397, no one on the bench fought against his return two years later. Some of the Ricardian bishops quickly accepted offices and assignments from the new dynasty, as the government looked for continuity and – in deference to their training and skills – to competent high-level administrators. Diocesan business – in so far as some published registers are a guide – do not reflect the great events at Westminster, and episcopal translations and promotions, whatever motives lay behind them, went much as they always did. No purges, no legions of new and loyal Lancastrians imposed from above. All in all, there is little indication when we look beyond the inner circles of the king’s government that momentous events had just taken place, let alone that they had much effect on the church’s daily routines and affairs.17 If we run through the bishops not singled out above, that is, the men who had not come from Richard’s circle of courtiers, or at least not in the last few years, there is not very much in their career patterns to indicate that a major revolution had just taken place. William Bottisham of Rochester had never been a great favourite of Richard; he was an aged non-partisan and he was the man chosen to preach the important sermon at the Canterbury convocation of October 1399.

A Calendar of the Register of Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York, 1398–1405, ed. R. N. Swanson (York, Borthwick Papers, 11, 1985), Part 2: on the routine nature of material in a register, it being ‘concerned with routine diocesan administration … hardly surprising there are few references to contemporary political developments’. On episcopal translation as a norm at the higher levels of church life, J. T. Rosenthal, ‘Even Money That Your Bishop Has Come and Gone: Episcopal Appointment and Translations in 14th- and 15th-Century England’, in The Ties that Bind: Essays in Honor of Barbara Hanawalt, ed. L. E. Mitchell, K. L. French, and D. L. Biggs (Farnham, 2011), pp. 71–85. 17

192

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

This public commitment to the new regime was probably his last public action as he died within a year. Robert Braybrooke had had a long run at London, but by 1399 he was another of those who ‘adjusted smoothly to the deposition’, celebrating the mass at Henry’s coronation but holding no further offices.18 He had been Richard’s secretary and a member of the embassy that had negotiated his first marriage, though that belonged to a long-ago past, perhaps one that was best forgotten. Ralph Erghum of Bath and Wells – once very much part of the inner circle and John of Gaunt’s chancellor way back in the 1370s – had suffered demotion at the hands of the Appellants in 1388 and by 1399 was pretty removed from political matters. He had been excused from parliament – aged and infirm – and he too had but another year to live.19 John Fordham, another who had been demoted in 1388 in that ‘unprecedented political reshuffle of the episcopate’, was also among those mostly content to stay within their diocese – Ely, in his case, where he lived until 1425, his stubborn longevity frustrating a long string of what has been characterised as a series of exasperated contenders for the see. Wales was about to burst into the flame of rebellion by 1399, and Thomas Peverell, a Carmelite and at one time a strong Ricardian, was not able to steer clear of trouble. The outbreak of war in Wales forced him to flee from his see of Llandaff in 1402. His reconciliation with the new dynasty sufficed to get him the see of Worcester in 1407, where he was judged to be ‘conventionally conscientious’.20 Richard Scrope, who had only gone from Coventry and Lichfield to York in 1398, had been an active player in the deposition, having walked beside Arundel as they led Henry to the throne in the dubious ceremonies that surrounded the new king’s accession. That he had spoken for Richard at the papal court on behalf of the canonisation of Edward II did not seem to leave him with lasting ties to either the would-be saint or to the would-be saint’s royal sponsor. Walter Skirlaw ‘concurred in the revolution of 1399’ and was quickly put to work as a diplomat for the marriage negotiations of the new dynasty, a role he had performed some years before – as one well experienced in international negotiations – for Richard’s marriage to Anne of Bohemia. Expertise, again, was adjudged to be more important than partisanship. Edmund Stafford, despite his high birth, made diocesan matters his main focus once he reached the episcopal bench, though he had been an active office holder before that. Tout said of him, ‘though a defender of his master’s acts, It has been suggested by R. G. Davies in his ODNB entry that after the death of Joan of Kent in 1385 his personal ties to the royal family were not as strong as they had been. 19 Jones, Royal Policy, pp. 141–42. Erghum had written a prophetic poem, around 1370, in which he predicted that the Black Prince, when he ascended the throne, would restore the kingdom’s glories that had been sullied by Edward III. 20 Peverell drew an unusually mixed set of assessments. Davies quotes Bale, who said of him: ‘Scholar of long standing and an admired preacher.’ This is set against another ODNB quotation from an adversary at the papal court: ‘of evil life and bad character … a simple-minded man, ignorant of law and insufficient of learning’. 18

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?193

he later proved as zealous for Henry IV as for Richard II’.21 He was in the early stages of an episcopal career of twenty-four years during which he became a major benefactor of Exeter College, Oxford. He had preached a strong pro-monarchical sermon at the Parliament of 1397, working from the text, ‘rex unus erit omnibus’ (‘one king shall be king to them all’). However, it seems likely that the king’s policies in the intervening two years had alienated him, and there was certainly no lasting bond between them. John Trefnant of Hereford was one of the outstanding lawyers on the episcopal bench, and he, working together with Scrope, wrote what became the accepted version of the decisive interview with Richard in the Tower on 29 and 30 September. He was to be Henry’s choice as the bishop-diplomat sent to the papal court to explain (or justify) Richard’s deposition, as earlier in his career he had been an auditor of causes and then a chaplain at the papal court. He was a member of the party that returned Richard’s young queen to France. He had probably been chosen to play an active role in legitimating and defending the deposition because he and Scrope were known to be ‘the two most substantial lawyers on the episcopal bench’. Nor is there any reason to think he was unhappy to play this role. John Trevor of St Asaph has been characterised as ‘one of the first’ to desert Richard.22 He read the sentence of deposition in parliament and was subsequently appointed to a number of important offices, some as early in the drama as in August 1399. His warnings about pushing Glyn Dŵr into open rebellion went unheeded, and eventually he wound up siding with the Welsh rebels, leading to a de facto deprivation of his see, though he nominally retained it until his death in 1410. William of Wykeham, most senior of all the bishops and a source of well-seasoned advice to the Lancastrians, was not much of an active player by 1399. After Henry’s accession, he did stipulate that prayers for Richard and Anne were to be said at his colleges, a nod in the direction of old loyalties to the family. Richard Young of Bangor, another who had been an auditor of causes and a chaplain for the papacy, was quickly given diplomatic assignments by Henry and in 1404 was translated from his backwater Welsh see to Rochester (1404–18), as Welsh sees had been devastated and impoverished by years of rebellion and warfare. *** The conclusions to be drawn from this quick run-through are, rather obviously, that none of the bishops (except Merke and Despenser) showed open opposition to the revolution of 1399 and that only Merke and Walden suffered any real consequences. We can say that the current sweeping the realm toward the The ODNB entry by Tuck is built on the old Dictionary of National Biography entry by T. F. Tout. 22 For more on Trevor as the possible author of part of the Continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum, see the chapter by G. Stow in this volume. 21

194

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

deposition of its king was too swift, and seemingly too popular, for the bishops even to consider standing against it, whatever their private and individual inclinations might have been. Nor, as we can judge from their subsequent behaviour, were many of them particularly inclined to be labelled as standing in opposition (or, by hindsight, as having stood in opposition). Some of the Ricardian bishops would go on to play an active part in the new regime, as noted above.23 Others more or less retired to the safety of their diocese – making no trouble and being allowed to remain in the shade. Episcopal behaviour, taken as a whole, gives little hint of the seriousness of what was happening in England in the summer and autumn of 1399. The records of parliamentary attendance, or conversely the records of excused absence, offer no hint of the revolutionary changes taking place at the top. At the ‘assembly’ of 27 and 30 September 1399, only Erghum is known to have been absent, and this was with permission. For the parliament of 6 October (to 19 November) of that year, nineteen bishops were present: again, Erghum was exempt (‘weakness and age’ but now instructed to send a proctor in his place) and by now the see of Bangor just happened to be vacant.24 So with but very few exceptions the bishops were neither hiding in the provinces nor flooding Westminster with claims of illness that were sent from afar, nor bemoaning the problems and expenses of travel, nor making much of diocesan issues that required them to remain at home.25 If we look at the use of a proctor to avoid having to appear in person, the results are thin; another aspect of ‘business as usual’. At the parliament (assembly) of 6 October 1399, only four men sent a proctor, and none of the four was a bishop. At the parliament of 30 January 1401, seventeen men or institutions sent proctors, and now we have three bishops: Burghill of Coventry and Lichfield, already excused from most of his duties; the aged and probably failing William of Wykeham; and Fordham of Ely, another old man and a survivor of the days of the Appellants now taking For the Ricardian bishops who sat on Henry’s council: D. Biggs, ‘The Reign of Henry IV: The Revolution of 1399 and the Establishments of the Lancastrian Regime’, in Fourteenth Century England, I, ed. N. Saul (Woodbridge, 2000), 195–210, especially pp. 202–04. 24 The situation of the bishops of Bangor was rather tangled. John Swaffham had been translated there from Cloyne in 1376, and he held the see until his death, 24 June 1398. Then Lewis Aber was elected, 21 August 1398, but the see became vacant ‘soon after’, with no ODNB entry on Aber to help out. Then Richard Young was provided, on 2 December 1398, but the temporalities were not restored until 20 May 1400. Moreover, Young was absent from the diocese after 1401, and he was ultimately translated to Rochester in July 1404. Thus, no one was in a position to represent this minor diocese. 25 At the September assembly, there were eight bishops whose attendance cannot be verified, an unusually large but inconclusive number: R. G. Davies, ‘The Attendance of the Episcopate in English Parliaments, 1376–1461’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 129 (1985), 30–81, see p. 59 for these parliaments. 23

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?195

advantage of a two-year exemption from attendance in person. Skirlaw had been given an exemption for life back in October 1397, to take effect after the next parliament, it being granted ‘because of long royal service, great age, with licence to appoint a proctor’.26 Neither was there the sort of shake-up of the personnel of the episcopal bench, as in 1388. Walden’s fate – a quick fall from the metropolitan see – seemingly was accepted by all, including Walden himself, while Merke was succeeded in his minor see by the reputable William Strickland, provided on 6 December 1399 and holding Carlisle until August 1419, and installed with no great shockwaves among the other bishops or rippling through the staff and clergy of the diocese. And though this too is wisdom by hindsight, and reflective of the good fortune that befell the new king, death was soon to give Henry IV a fairly sweeping hand for reshaping the episcopate without a need to resort to translations or demotions or quasi-exile, even had he been so inclined. The cast list of Richard’s bishops was soon to be diminished, and by the time of Scrope’s execution in June 1405, death had already opened six vacancies: Erghum at Bath and Wells and Bottlesham at Rochester, both leaving the scene in 1400, Tideman at Worcester, in 1401, and Braybrooke at London, William of Wykeham at Winchester, and Trefnant at Hereford, all in 1404. Waiting things out was very much the style or policy of Henry IV in his early days, and this tale of episcopal vacancies and turnover by the force of nature rather than politics turns out to have been but another aspect of the king’s general approach to the problems of the realm.27 The various lines of approach we have followed above argue that, as the episcopal bench is put under the light, the great revolution or coup of 1399 did not leave much of a mark. While there may be little reason to question May McKisack’s judgement about Richard and the deposition, it seems safe to say that the political and constitutional ramifications of the deposition stopped short of altering the career path of most of the bishops, and for those for whom it did, it was mostly a case of being allowed to step out of the bright light and fall back on diocesan duties. McKisack’s summation is that ‘He rode roughshod Proctors for Parliament: Clergy, Community, and Politics, c. 1248–1539. Vol. II: 1377–1539, ed. P. Bradford and A. K. McHardy, Canterbury and York Society, 108 (2018), pp. 316–17; J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, in Politics in Late Medieval England (London, 1981), II, 2 (pp. 153–203 in original pagination). 27 On Henry IV and episcopal replacement: R. G. Davies, ‘A Contested Appointment to the Bishopric of Bath, 1400–01’, Somerset Archaeological and Natural History, 121 (1977), 69–76, and J. W. Dahmus, ‘Henry IV of England: An Example of Royal Control of the Church in the Fifteenth Century’, Journal of Church and State, 23 (1981), 35–46. C. Given-Wilson, Henry IV (New Haven, 2016), pp. 353–57, on the turnover in the episcopacy, and with (p. 353) a comment about Henry’s awareness of the need for self-restraint. 26

196

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

over common rights and the nation at last repudiated him for the tyrant that he was [and] whatever may be thought of the manner of his removal … it is certain that Richard II had to be removed.’28 In the articles of deposition, Article 22 points to Richard’s demand for money and goods from the clergy, ‘whereby they were greatly impoverished and oppressed to the manifest prejudice of the liberties of the church …’29 This was obviously a serious charge, a genuine grievance, and it indicates that Richard’s view of his close ties to the Church – defender of orthodoxy, patron of national saints, pillar of personal piety, etc. – was neither shared with nor appreciated by many of his bishops. On the other hand, to assert that the king squeezed his bishops for money for his own causes and projects ‘in such a threatening manner as to ensure that these churchmen complied with his demands’, as Article 22 goes on to say, hardly takes us to compelling grounds for deposition. Here too we can say that what we are seeing is business as usual, even if it was contentious and nasty business. Let us return to the bishops. In offering a judgement of their behaviour during (and after) the deposition, the influence of two great historians hovers over us. One is T. F. Tout, the other Lord Acton. From the great work of Tout comes an emphasis on civil service, and in trying to assess episcopal contributions to the state and to the variety of episcopal positions and roles in 1399, the force of each of the two words, civil and service, should be taken into account at face value. Bishops may have stood on the sidelines of the deposition because they saw themselves – both as spiritual and secular peers – as servants of a civil polity, rather than, or in contrast to, being servants of its ruler, no matter how closely the king himself saw his ties to the Church. In 1327, the bishops had indicated a loyalty to the monarchy rather than to the monarch, and this seems to have been a guiding, if not an articulated policy, some seventy years later. Nor are we in the thirteenth century, when great ecclesiastical figures had a heavy hand in shaping the crises of the realm. This lack of a tradition of an episcopal policy may well explain some of the bishops’ behaviour – individually and collectively – in the crisis we are looking at. Their obligations were not to a beleaguered king but rather to his realm, especially to the state of the Church in his realm – even when or despite the fact that he had been instrumental in raising these men to the high office they now occupied. They could step aside at the moment of climax of the political crisis and still be free to return, if called 28 M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), p. 496. A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1978), pp. 224–25, saw ‘little sign of any widespread opposition either to the removal of Richard or to his replacement by Henry’. For a recent assessment of Richard II, M. Bennett, ‘Richard II in the Mirror of Christendom’, in Ruling Fourteenth-Century England: Essays in Honour of Christopher Given-Wilson, ed. R. Ambühl, J. Bothwell, and L. Tompkins (Woodbridge, 2019), pp. 263–88, with a comment on the issues discussed in this chapter at pp. 273 ff. 29 Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, p. 179.

RICHARD II’S BISHOPS: FAIR WEATHER FRIENDS?197

upon (as some were) to serve a new master – or they could be left to their own clerical devices.30 The influence of Acton is more problematic. It points us in the direction of making moral judgements about behaviour in the past. Were Richard’s bishops in deep agreement with the articles of deposition? Or were they afraid to speak out, men who just chose acquiescence and thought it best to just stand by and remain silent? Perhaps they took refuge in the pragmatic idea that making and unmaking kings was not a bishop’s business, anyway, and if it was the business of the peers of the realm it behoved the bishops to stay well out of such doings; they always had other fields to plough, other legitimate pastimes to keep them busy, other commitments and obligations they had sworn to honour. One further consideration in assessing episcopal behaviour, this one being what we also offer as a ‘lesson learned from history’. The history here is the tale of bishops who had fallen out of favour in 1388; the lesson is that they paid a price. Looking back from 1399, there were some glaring examples of bishops who had been caught on the losing side of a political crisis and who had paid a heavy price for their partisanship. Working backwards from 1399, we can begin with the intertwined fates of Thomas Arundel and Roger Walden, Arundel being deposed and Walden imposed, and in each case solely for political reasons. Moreover, the same can be said for the reversal of their fortunes in 1399, though Arundel had more agency in this than he had had in 1397. But hovering over the affairs of the 1390s was the memory of the harsh lessons of 1388; a bishop could be reduced to the level of a pawn in a crisis of the state and no one, or at the best very few of either church or state were going to go against the prevailing current to fight for him. We saw that Fordham had been demoted from Durham to Ely as the Appellants reshaped the state and the episcopal bench. Alexander Neville, the venerable archbishop of York, was found guilty of treason and was perhaps lucky to keep his head, saved perhaps by his high birth, the primacy of York, and possibly some respects for clerical status. But he did go into exile after being translated from York to St Andrews (‘a purely titular see’) in April 1388, and he never returned to England, dying on the Continent a few years later.31 Thomas Rushook, Richard’s one-time For Ricardian bishops who served on Henry’s council, G. Dodd, ‘Henry IV’s Council, 1399–1405’, in Henry IV: The Establishment of the Regime, 1399–1406, ed. G. Dodd and D. Biggs (York, 2003), pp. 95–115, see 102–03 for the list of bishops summoned and serving. 31 Chronicles of the Revolution, ed. Given-Wilson, an excerpt from the Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 67–68: Neville was assured that he would be recalled. On this extreme case of punitive action, a few years before Scrope’s execution: R. G. Davies, ‘Alexander Neville, Archbishop of York, 1373–88’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 47 (1975), 87–101; R. B. Dobson, ‘The Authority of the Bishop in Late Medieval England: The Case of Archbishop Alexander Neville of York, 1373–88’, in Church and Society in the Medieval North of England, ed. R. B. Dobson (London, 1996), pp. 185–99. 30

198

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

confessor and another Dominican, had been bishop of Chichester (1386–89) but, after being found guilty of treason in 1388, was translated to Cork, then to Kilmore. He died in 1393 and can be remembered without much nostalgia by the rather unsympathetic words of John Gower: ‘a fawning confessor and a professor of evil who lay hidden under the wings of the king, a friar black within and without’. John Gilbert had been shifted in 1389 from Hereford to St David’s (1389–97) in ‘what may be seen as a sideways move, if not an actual demotion’, though papal as well as English politics were involved in this. What Walsingham said of him, a man ‘more given to talking than to telling the truth’, is hardly a ringing endorsement of a mendicant bishop who, in his lifetime, had held three different sees. We have noted how Erghum’s career suffered a serious setback in 1388, though he did end his life and career at Bath and Wells, and John Buckingham’s refusal to leave Lincoln for Coventry and Lichfield in order to open up the see for Henry Beaufort carried its own lesson (and it was a threatening one). Had Buckingham not conveniently died while this translation was still in dispute, he too would no doubt have been forced to accept it or perhaps to be confronted with something even less benign, despite his age and years of service. Despenser had been impeached in parliament back in 1383 and had had his temporalities sequestrated as a result of his ‘mishandling of the campaign in Flanders’, so he was another who knew the sharp edge of hostility and the price it might demand. And, farther back, William of Wykeham – most senior of them all by 1399 – had been charged in the 1370s with mismanagement of royal policy and administrative abuse, and he was another fortunate to keep his high position amidst the confusion of a new and too-young king’s accession. These cautionary tales might well have influenced how these men, as well as some of our other bishops, responded or reacted in 1399. They would all have noted that the decision to send a man to St Andrews or Salmas was not made by one’s fellows on the episcopal bench, but rather in response to political decisions made by men not of the cloth. Recent history did not offer many tales of awards that had been handed out for intransigence or for those who had chosen a path of personal loyalty rather than that of expediency, service, and survival. Time for a farewell wave to the late king’s ‘fair weather friends’, along with their fellows on the episcopal bench. In doing this, we reiterate the idea that the coup of 1399 should be seen as a civil and a secular affair. In fairness to those who were mostly content to stay on the sidelines – and who were mostly allowed to stay there, which is also a point worth emphasising – we can hardly say that other bishops showed much active support for the king. The main actors among the bishops in the various acts and scenes of the constitutional drama were Thomas Arundel and Richard Scrope, both men with family reasons, beyond their own clerical identities and roles, to stand with the Lancastrians (and the Percies). Furthermore, for Scrope, but newly installed at York, there may have been ecclesiastical pressure from the northern church not to allow his fellow

60

55

45

45(a)

70

70

60

55

50

25

Roger Walden

Thomas Merke

Robert Reede

John Burghill

John Skirlaw

John Fordham

Edmund Stafford

John Trefnant

Henry Beaufort

Age in 1399 (a)

Ralph Erghum

Bishop

Lincoln, 1398–1447

Hereford, 1389–1404

Exeter, 1395–1419

Ely, 1388–1425

Durham, 1388–1406

C & L, 1398–1414

Chichester, 1396–1415

Carlisle, 1397–99

Canterbury, 1397–99

Bath & Wells, 1388–1400

Years in diocese held in 1399

Table 9.2. Richard II’s Bishops in 1399

Durham, 1382–88

C&L, 1385–86, B&W, 1386–88

Llandaff, 1396–98

Lismore (1394– 96), Carlisle, 1396

Salisbury, 1375–88

Previous diocese(s)

(Salmas, 1399–1409)

London, 1404–06

Subsequent diocese(s)

MA

D.C.L.

D.C.L.

Dominican:

Dominican D.Th.

Benedictine D.Th.

D Cn& CL

Orders & academic training

Royal family

Auditor of causes and papal chaplain diplomat

Aristocratic family: Chancellor, kps

Kps for Richard: treasurer: translated down to Ely

Trans. upwards from B&W by Appellants

Richard’s confessor: Trans. from Llandaff

Trans. from Lismore and from Carlisle

Diplomat-ambassador: suffragan bishop of Winchester, 1403–05

Royal clerk by 1371: treasurer Canterbury first episcopal seat

Gaunt’s chancellor: advisor of young king: demoted from Salisbury, 1388

Miscellaneous (including major offices) (b)

65

69

75

50+ (a)

49

John Bottlesham

Richard Mitford

William of Wykeham

Roert Tideman

Richard Scrope

St David, 1397–1407

45–50 (a)

50+ (a)

Guy Mone

Thomas Peverell

Llandaff, 1398–1419

Bangor, 1399–1404

St Asaph, 1394–1410

York, 1398–1405

Worcester, 1395–1401

Winchester, 1366–1404

Salisbury, 1395–1407

Rochester, 1389–1400

Norwich, 1370–1406

London, 1381–1404

Richard Young 50

John Trevor

45

68

Henry Despenser

WALES

62

Robert Braybrooke

C & L, 1386–98

Llandaff, 1394–95

Chichester, 1390–95

Llandaff, 1385–89

Worcester, 1407–19

Rochester, 1404–18

B.Th. Carmelite

D.Cn & CL.

D.Cn. & C.L.

D. Cn & CL

Cistercian

At Cambridge

Dominican D.Th.

Lic C.L.

Chancellor of Queen Isabella: trans. from Ossory: to Worcester, 1407

Kps: treasurer, receiver of king’s chamber

Papal chaplain & auditor of causes: trans. to Rochester, 1404

Diplomat: effectively deprived, 1402 for support for Glyn Dŵr

Aristocratic family: diplomat: trans. from C&L, executed, 1405

Richard’s physician and/or confessor: trans. from Llandaff

Chancellor: Kps: king’s secretary

Clerk of royal chapel: keeper king’s signet: arrested by Appellants

Titular bishop of Bethlehem, 1380: suffragan for Wykeham

Aristocratic family: impeached, 1383

Royal family link: chancellor: diplomat & king’s secretary

Lincoln, 1363–98

York, 1373–88

Canterbury, 1396–97, 1399–1414

John Buckingham

Alexander Neville

Thomas Arundel

Trans. to schismatic see of St Andrews, restored to Canterbury

Aristocratic family: trans. to schismatic see of St Andrews by Appellants: died abroad

Pushed to retire or be Pushed to C&L

Aristocratic family: trans. from Hereford (1370–75) and London (1375–81)

(b) Most major offices are listed but without regard for when they were held provided it was prior to 1399.

(a) Some ages are approximations, calculated by working backward from first datable appearance in the records.

Canterbury, 1381–96

William Courtenay

NO LONGER ON THE SCENE IN 1399

202

JOEL T. ROSENTHAL

archbishop down south to have the stage all to himself. If Canterbury had the leading role, York at least could have a good (and visible) supporting one. The other bishop who played an active role in the events of that fateful summer was Trefnant of Hereford, and he may just have welcomed an occasion to show off his highly regarded legal expertise. As Shakespeare had the first word (or Merke by way of Shakespeare), we turn again to the poet for the last word, though now without the eloquence of those ringing lines. To support our assertion that Richard’s deposition was not really bishops’ business, we can note that in the cast list for Richard II – that great depiction and analysis of failed kingship – there are only two clerics (Merke and the abbot of Westminster) as against twenty-three laymen and three laywomen. And, to follow up by turning to Henry IV, part I, it is now even more secular; Archbishop Scrope as the only churchman against eighteen laymen and three laywomen. The whole affair was not ecclesiastical. From a Ricardian perspective, we see that almost all the clerics of the realm turned out to be fair weather friends – civil servants, perhaps, rather than political figures and certainly not among the ‘shakers and makers’ who had brought about a deep tear in the constitutional fabric of the realm. A grim tale perhaps, but one to remember when we turn to the sad tales of kings.

10 Power, Piety, and Presence: The Cult of Corpus Christi and the 1389 Guild Enquiry in Lincolnshire CLAIRE KENNAN

‘I



n the year of our Lord 1318 the feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated by the whole English Church.’1 This extract from documents relating to the Abbey of St Peter in Gloucestershire records the earliest known celebration of the feast of Corpus Christi in England. Just eight years later, in 1326, Louth in Lincolnshire became home to one of the earliest known Corpus Christi guild foundations in the country, and just two years after that, the Tailors’ Guild in Lincoln also decided to dedicate themselves to the cult.2 Lincolnshire continued to lead the way in Corpus Christi guild dedications in the late Middle Ages; the evidence for this can be seen clearly in the 1389 guild enquiry ordered by Richard II’s government. For Lincolnshire, the surviving documents point to a particularly strong connection in the county with the cult of Corpus Christi from a very early stage in its transmission. This chapter is not concerned with the wealthy and prominent Corpus Christi guilds of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as those seen at York, Coventry, and Norwich, and about which there is already much scholarship.3 Rather, it explores the earlier associations within the first few generaHistoria Monasterii Sancti Petri Gloucestriae, ed. W. H. Hart, 3 vols (London, 1863–67), vol. 1, p. 44. 2 C47/41/161, C47/41/159; M. Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Late Medieval Piety’, Studies in Church History, 23 (1986), 97–109, at p. 100. 3 See A. F. Johnston, ‘The Procession and Play of Corpus Christi in York after 1426’, Leeds Studies in English, 7 (1974), 55–62; A. F. Johnston, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’, Mediaeval Studies, 38 (1976), 372–84; R. H. Skaife, The Register of the Guild of Corpus Christi in the City of York (Durham, 1872); C. Davidson, ‘York Guilds and the Corpus Christi Plays: Unwilling Participants’, Early Theatre, 9 (2006), 11–33; M. Lohmann, ‘“On the Pavement, Thinking about the 1

204

CLAIRE KENNAN

tions of the feast being celebrated in England. This chapter investigates the emergence of Corpus Christi as a popular guild dedication in Lincolnshire, reflecting on the form and function of these early Corpus Christi guilds, their links to processional modes and early pageantry, and the European influences that helped to form their identities. The feast of Corpus Christi is a celebration of the Eucharist, honouring the process of the wafer and wine transforming into the blood and body of Christ.4 On the feast day itself, the mass was heard first and then followed by a procession in which the consecrated host was carried through the town; after this, there would be a ceremonial feast.5 The reception of the feast and its institution across the diocese and parishes of Europe had halted with the death of Pope Urban IV in October 1264. It took another half a century before its cause was taken up again by Pope John XXII, when the feast was incorporated into the Clementines in 1317; it was after the publication of the Clementines that the feast was fully integrated into the Church.6 Some sixty years later, when Richard II’s government ordered a nationwide enquiry into the activities of guilds and fraternities, Corpus Christi emerged as one of the preeminent guild dedications, suggesting a remarkable rate of endorsement from and uptake by ordinary people. The guild enquiry was the result of a petition at the Cambridge Parliament held between 9 September and 17 October 1388.7 Within this list of petitions presented by the Commons were two of particular importance. The first of these called for the abolition of any livery hoods or badges that had been distributed by the nobility since the first year of King Edward III’s reign, which would have included Richard’s own use of the white hart livery badge.8 The Commons’ second petition followed on from this but related directly to guilds and fraternities. The Commons requested that all guilds and fraternities, with

Government”: The Corpus Christi Cycle and the Emergence of Municipal Merchant Power in York’, Mediaevalia, 32 (2011), 123–54; M. James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body in the Late Medieval English Town’, Past and Present, 98 (1983), 3–29; A. Higgins, ‘Work and Plays: Guild Casting in the Corpus Christi Drama’, Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, 7 (1995), 76–97; C. Pythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen: The Communal Year at Coventry 1450–1550’, in Crisis and Order in English Towns, ed. P. Clark and P. Slack (London, 2006), pp. 27–42. 4 James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body’, p. 5. 5 Ibid.; G. W. Bernard, The Late Medieval English Church: Vitality and Vulnerability before the Break with Rome (London, 2012), p. 102. 6 M. Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Late Medieval Piety’, Studies in Church History, 23 (1986), 97–109, at p. 100. 7 C. Barron, ‘The London Middle English Guild Certificates of 1388–9’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 39 (1995), 108–46, at p. 108. 8 Saul, Richard II, p. 200.

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY205

the sole exception of the chantries, be abolished.9 The petition presented by the Commons set in motion a nationwide enquiry, which generated the first substantial surviving collection of evidence we have for parish guilds. The guilds, fraternities, or brotherhoods that the 1389 guild enquiry were concerned with were those groups of men and women who came together voluntarily under the patronage of a particular saint, or holy symbol, in order to support traditional religious ceremonies.10 The central purpose of parish guilds was to provide their members with a proper funeral and intercessory prayers; they also held regular meetings and staged an annual feast to honour their patron saint.11 However, their activities and responsibilities extended much further into the lives of their communities, and this is where the government became concerned with their undertakings. Not only did guilds and fraternities often carry out repairs to their parish churches and provide charity for destitute members, but many also played a very active role in the political and social life of their communities, sometimes even acting effectively as a shadow government.12 Derek Keene has noted how parish guilds could act as ‘shell organisations’, with their flexibility and the variety of forms they took allowing them to support the local parish in whatever way they were needed. Within a single guild, therefore, a group of individuals could pursue a variety of aims, all of which was often done informally.13 In order to do all of this,

Barron, ‘London Middle English Guild Certificates’, p. 108; J. A. Tuck, ‘The Cambridge Parliament, 1388’, EHR, 84 (1969), 225–43, at p. 227; Westminster Chronicle, pp. 509–27; Knighton’s Chronicle, p. 357. 10 W. R. Jones, ‘English Religious Brotherhoods and Medieval Lay Piety: The Inquiry of 1388–89’, The Historian, 36 (1974), 646–59, at p. 646; B. A. Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds’, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 14 (1984), 21–38, at p. 21; B. Kümin, The Shaping of a Community: The Rise and Reformation of the English Parish c. 1400–1560 (Aldershot, 1996), p. 149. 11 E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1440–1580 (New Haven, 1992), p. 143; Kümin, Shaping of a Community, p. 149; G. Rosser, ‘Communities of Parish and Guild in the Late Middle Ages’, in Parish, Church and People: Local Studies in Lay Religion 1350–1750, ed. S. Wright (London, 1988), pp. 9–55, at pp. 32–33; G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 2005), p. 293; G. Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast: Commensality and Social Relations in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 430–46. 12 See B. R. McRee, ‘Religious Guilds and Regulation of Behaviour’, in People, Politics and Community in the Late Middle Ages, ed. J. Rosenthal and C. Richmond (Gloucester, 1987), pp. 108–22. 13 D. Keene, ‘English Urban Guilds c. 900–1300: The Purposes and Politics of Association’, in Guilds and Association in Europe, 900–1900, ed. I. A. Gadd and P. Wallis (London, 2006), pp. 3–26, at pp. 3, 9–10. 9

206

CLAIRE KENNAN

parish guilds required economic capital, which came primarily from the rents accrued from guild-owned property and land.14 It is possible that the Commons had a financial motive for considering the guilds’ activities in 1388–89. They may have seen the wealth of these organisations as a way of aiding the king’s own finances, which had been drained by his personal extravagance and the cost of his wars.15 There was a parliamentary precedent for the urging of this kind of enquiry in the petition submitted three years earlier for some of the Church’s property to be confiscated.16 The guilds may have been seen as evading the laws against illegal property acquisition by religious bodies.17 The Commons may have also seen these societies and their visible marks of loyalty as socially divisive. Such marks would have been particularly threatening following the Great Revolt of 1381.18 All members of guilds and fraternities had to swear an entry oath, and it was this entry oath that concerned the upper echelons of English society as it encouraged horizontal ties of loyalty, rather than the traditional vertical ties of authority that often characterise the Middle Ages.19 Therefore, the emergence of these voluntary organisations, often with considerable assets and a certain level of secrecy within the existing parochial framework, may have caused the authorities some alarm.20 It is possible that the Commons hoped that they could gain a substantial profit for the Crown and regain their own peace of mind after the recent social upheaval in a single stroke.21 Nothing was ever directly done with the information the enquiry generated, and guilds and fraternities were not abolished until their Dissolution under Edward VI, nearly a century and a half later.22 However, it is possible that the enquiry influenced the longer-term management of these organisations. For example, the 1391 statute brought all guilds and fraternities within ‘the scope of mortmain legislation’, and in 1437 a statute was passed that stated that all urban guilds had to register their ordinances.23 See J. Dambruyne, ‘Representation and Investment Strategies in the Early Modern Guild World: A Comparison between the South and the North of the Low Countries’, in Guilds and Association, ed. Gadd and Wallis, pp. 103–23. 15 Saul, Richard II, pp. 205–06; H. F. Westlake, The Parish Gilds of Medieval England (London, 1919), p. 36. 16 Tuck, ‘Cambridge Parliament’, p. 237. 17 W. R. Jones, ‘English Religious Brotherhoods and Medieval Lay Piety: The Inquiry of 1388–9’, The Historian, 36 (1974), 646–59, at p. 650. 18 Westlake, Parish Gilds, p. 36. 19 V. Bainbridge, Gilds in the Medieval Countryside: Social and Religious Change in Cambridgeshire c. 1350–1558 (Woodbridge, 1996), p. 18. 20 Kümin, Shaping of a Community, p. 153. 21 Tuck, ‘Cambridge Parliament’, p. 237. 22 Ibid., pp. 236–37. 23 Ibid., p. 238; Harriss, Shaping the Nation, p. 289. 14

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY207

At The National Archives in London, there are just over 500 surviving returns from the 1389 enquiry. However, if we consider that there were approximately 9,000 parishes across England at this time, this number seems small, particularly when most parish churches had more than one guild attached to them at any one time.24 The geographical distribution of the evidence from the 1389 enquiry is also very uneven. Counties such as Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire are well represented, while no returns survive at all for the counties of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Devon, and Cornwall.25 Despite the limitations of the 1389 guild returns in regards to geographical coverage, they can afford an insight into guild activity at the end of the fourteenth century. With the exception of a small clutch of Anglo-Saxon records and a judicial enquiry in 1179–80, the 1389 enquiry ordered by Richard II’s government constitutes the first substantial body of evidence for the existence of parish guilds in England.26 The returns are documents of exceptional value, coming from a time when groups of men and women formalised their identities in these organisations, many for the first time. The enquiry also represents the first time that the government and ruling elite took an active interest in the undertakings of these associations en masse. Without these documents, we would be almost entirely ignorant of guild and fraternity activity before the fifteenth century.27 The surviving evidence from the enquiry shows that within a couple of generations of 1318, the cult of Corpus Christi was firmly embedded in popular culture across the country, but most notably in Lincolnshire. This is noteworthy because the choice of guild dedication was important to the founding members and reveals those saints to which communities felt an especial attachment. Parish guilds adopted a saint or holy object at their foundation on the assumption that, in return for their devotion, they would be protected and assisted by the

Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 22. Gervase Rosser has estimated that there were approximately 30,000 parish guilds in the late Middle Ages, see Rosser, The Art of Solidarity in the Middle Ages: Guilds in England 1250–1550 (Oxford, 2015), p. 50. Given the damaged state of some of the returns, it has been hypothesised that the evidence for some areas has simply been destroyed or lost in the intervening centuries, see D. J. F. Crouch, Piety, Fraternity and Power: Religious Guilds in Late Medieval Yorkshire 1389–1547 (York, 2000), p. 28. 25 S. Badham, Seeking Salvation: Commemorating the Dead in the Late Medieval English Parish (Donington, 2015), p. 165; C. Kennan, ‘On the Threshold? The Role of Women in Lincolnshire’s Late Medieval Parish Guilds’, in Gender in Medieval Spaces, Places and Thresholds, ed. V. Blud, D. Heath, and E. Klafter (London, 2019), pp. 61–74, at p. 62; J. Mattingly, ‘The Medieval Parish Guilds of Cornwall’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 10 (1989), 290–329, at p. 307. 26 Keene, ‘English Urban Guilds’, p. 9. 27 A. Prescott, ‘Men and Women in the Guild Returns’, in Gender and Fraternal Orders in Europe 1300–2000, ed. M. F. Cross (London, 1993), pp. 30–51, at p. 38; Keene, ‘English Urban Guilds’, p. 9. 24

208

CLAIRE KENNAN

saint during life and after death.28 A total of thirty-six different saints’ cults were represented in the 124 surviving Lincolnshire guild returns. The cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary had the most dedications (thirty-one), followed by Corpus Christi (eighteen) and the Holy Trinity (fifteen). This broadly follows the national pattern in 1389 for favoured guild dedications, with the Blessed Virgin Mary having the most dedications numbered at 127, followed by the Holy Trinity (fifty-five) and then Corpus Christi (forty-four).29 It is interesting to note that as one of the newer saints’ cults, Corpus Christi emerges as a dominant dedication, with nearly half of these located in Lincolnshire, giving a localised concentration of the cult.30 Mervyn James, in his article on the Corpus Christi procession and plays, states that while Corpus Christi was never ‘exclusively an urban feast, it was in towns and cities that we see the most elaborate celebrations’.31 While this may be true, the evidence from the Lincolnshire returns also suggests that many provincial towns and small villages were celebrating the Corpus Christi feast with all the sophistication and splendour that their funds would allow. If the term ‘provincial’ is taken to mean a small town or village outside of the county’s main urban centre, in this case Lincoln, three of the eighteen Corpus Christi guilds were located in distinctly provincial market centres – Grantham, Louth, and Stamford, while a further ten were in rural locations – Alvingham, Binbrook, Caistor, Coningsby, Crowland, Falstow, Holbeach, Holbeach Fen, Huttoft, and Yarborough. This leaves only five of the eighteen Lincolnshire Corpus Christi guilds in the distinctly urban setting of Lincoln and another Corpus Christi guild at Boston, which acted as Lincoln’s main port.32 This pattern would suggest that the popularity of the cult extended beyond urban centres into the immediately surrounding provincial market towns and the countryside beyond. The foundation dates of the Corpus Christi guilds give a further insight into how quickly the popularity of the cult spread through these areas. Nationally, thirty-one of the Corpus Christi guilds provided foundation dates with their returns, and there appears to be a significant cluster of foundations occurring

K. L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval Diocese (Philadelphia, 2001), p. 194. 29 Please note that all dedications have been included in this figure, even those with joint or multiple saints’ dedications. 30 M. Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge, 1991), p. 234. 31 James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body’, pp. 4–5. 32 G. A. G. Hodgett, Tudor Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1975), p. 80; S. H. Rigby, ‘Late Medieval Urban Prosperity: The Evidence of the Lay Subsidies’, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), 411–16; Graham Platts, Land and People in Medieval Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1985), pp. 190, 194. 28

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY209

during the plague years of 1349–60.33 Although the cult of Corpus Christi was growing in popularity across the fourteenth century in England, these early guild dedications should be considered as ‘innovative devotional practices’, particularly in cases such as the Corpus Christi guilds of Louth and the Tailors of Lincoln.34 The city of Lincoln clearly had an early interest in the feast, with a further three of its Corpus Christi guilds providing foundation dates in their 1389 returns (1335, 1346, 1350).35 Similarly, in the county’s provincial market towns there appears to have been a high degree of early interest in the cult. Along with the 1326 foundation in Louth, the Corpus Christi guild at Stamford simply states that it was founded in ‘old times’, and the Corpus Christi guild at Boston states that it was renewed in 1349, suggesting that its foundation was at an earlier date.36 While there is a clear focus on the cult of Corpus Christi from the first half of the fourteenth century in the county, even when compared with later estimates from elsewhere, the number of Corpus Christi guild dedications in Lincolnshire seems unusually high. Ken Farnhill has looked at guild dedications during the period c. 1470–1550 from across the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Cornwall, London, and Cambridgeshire.37 Even during this later period, dedications to Corpus Christi were relatively low, usually only represented by between one and four per cent of each county’s overall known guild dedications. The exception here was Cambridgeshire, where Corpus Christi was represented by 13.42 per cent of all guild dedications in this period.38 In the preceding century, Lincolnshire’s Corpus Christi guilds represented an estimated 14.52 per cent of the county’s known guild dedications. It would seem, therefore, that Lincolnshire’s early popular adoption of the cult marked it apart from other counties, even when compared with later centuries. In many ways, Corpus Christi guilds exhibited traits that were in common with all other fraternities: they provided funerary services, relief to members and their dependants, and organised feasts and dinners.39 Of the guilds that responded to the 1389 enquiry, seventy-four per cent of guilds nationally stated that they provided some sort of burial service for their members.40 In Lincolnshire, seventyseven per cent of the Corpus Christi guilds included some sort of funerary Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 234 Alan Kissane, Civic Community in Late Medieval Lincoln: Urban Society and Economy in the Age of the Black Death, 1289–1409 (Woodbridge, 2017), p. 184; Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities and Lay Piety’, pp. 100–02. 35 Kissane, Civic Community, p. 184; C 47/41/136, C 47/41/157–58. 36 C 47/41/161; C 47/41/172; C 47/39/83. 37 K. Farnhill, Guilds and the Parish Community in Late Medieval East Anglia c. 1470–1550 (York, 2001), p. 38. 38 Ibid. 39 Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 234. 40 Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 31. 33

34

210

CLAIRE KENNAN

provision in their 1389 returns, and some of the returns even provide details of the type of funeral arrangements that members could expect. For example, the guild at St Michael-on-the-Hill in Lincoln had a guild banner that was borne to the house of the deceased member and hung there so that all could see, and the Corpus Christi guild for the tailors in Lincoln offered the same funerary provisions to members who died outside of the city.41 Another popular activity to which the guild returns allude in the 1389 enquiry was the lighting of candles in honour of their patron saints. A total of seventy-four per cent of guilds partook in this activity.42 Out of the eighteen Lincolnshire Corpus Christi guilds in 1389, nine explicitly stated that they provided lights either perpetually or around the Host on feast days and Sundays. For example, in Caistor, the guild concentrated its efforts on providing lights in the period between Holy Week and Corpus Christi.43 Therefore, at the core of their identity the Corpus Christi guilds do not look too dissimilar to the other parish guilds across the country. Where the Corpus Christi guilds do differ, however, is in their provisions for additional chaplains, their charitable endeavours, and their involvement in early forms of pageantry and processional modes. In 1389, only twenty-one per cent of guilds nationally reported having a chaplain.44 The employment of a chaplain could be an expensive undertaking and required a substantial amount of income from the guild’s land and properties in order to sustain this. Of the eighteen Corpus Christi guilds in Lincolnshire, fourteen stated in their returns that they did have a chaplain in their employ or were planning to in the near future.45 The Lincolnshire guild returns also provide an insight into how the Corpus Christi guilds were paying for their chaplains. For example, the guild at Binbrook had been collecting money so that they could afford the six marks needed to have a chaplain in their regular employ and the Coningsby guild had been saving to employ a chaplain but noted that they would only do so when all the members agreed – which rarely happened.46 The Corpus Christi guild at Grantham was able to employ a chaplain to celebrate for the guild and its members on a daily basis at the guild altar in the parish church.47 In Boston, the Corpus Christi guild was able to employ not one but six chaplains to sing daily for the souls of the guild members past and present, along with the souls of the king, queen, and prince of Wales.48 Other Corpus Christi guilds in the county employed chaplains on an ad hoc basis. For example, at Holbeach the guild could only afford to

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

C 47/40/135. Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 28. C 47/39/92; Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities’, pp. 104–05. Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 34. C47/39/94. C 47/39/79, C 47/39/94. C 4740/109. C 47/39/83.

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY211

employ a chaplain to celebrate for the guild members annually.49 This suggests that because Corpus Christi guilds were more likely to have a chaplain in their employ, they already had a substantial amount of wealth from an early stage in their development. The provision of guild charity was often closely linked with wealth and prominence in the local community. In Ben McRee’s study, he found that guilds promising charitable assistance to their members were more likely to be engaged in broader social and religious activities and therefore more conscious of their public profile.50 For the later, well-known examples of Corpus Christi guilds in York and Coventry, the link here is clear. However, the evidence from the 1389 enquiry also indicates that Corpus Christi guilds were engaging in charitable acts early on, which suggests that they were already relatively prominent in their local communities by 1389. Interestingly, Alan Kissane has found that the Lincoln guilds tended to offer more charitable aid than the national average, with sixty-nine per cent of all of Lincoln’s guilds promising aid to members compared with a national average of thirty per cent in 1389.51 More than a third of Lincolnshire’s Corpus Christi guilds offered some type of charitable aid according to their returns.52 Charitable provisions were partly motivated by members’ concerns for their own souls, but the assistance appears to have been practical too.53 Some guilds offered charitable aid as and when it was required, including the Boston Corpus Christi guild, which pledged 12d. a week to destitute members.54 Others, however, kept their charitable offerings strictly to the feast day celebrations. The Crowland guild stated that their alderman would give ½ d. to any poor man who asks for it on the feast of the Pentecost; a similar provision was in place at Holbeach Fen.55 At Lincoln, the Corpus Christi Sailors’ Guild gave ½ d. worth of bread to the poor as part of the annual feast celebrations.56 While the majority of the Lincolnshire Corpus Christi guilds’ charitable acts revolve around the usual monetary donations from members and provision of bread for the poor on feast days, there were certain aspects of their charitable activities that set the Corpus Christi guilds apart. For example, Corpus Christi guilds often combined charity and eucharistic work such as taking the viaticum to the sick and dying. The Corpus Christi guild at Lincoln provided a torch

C 47/40/118. B. R. McRee, ‘Charity and Gild Solidarity in Late Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, 32 (1993), 195–225, at pp. 201–03; Kissane, Civic Community, p. 187. 51 Kissane, Civic Community, p. 189. 52 C47/39/83, C47/39/92, C 47/39/95, C 47/39/100, C 47/40/119, C 47/41/159. 53 Rosser, Art of Solidarity, pp. 78–86. 54 C 47/39/83. 55 C 47/39/95, C 47/40/119. 56 C 47/41/158. 49 50

212

CLAIRE KENNAN

‘which otherwise burnt at elevation’ that was used when visiting the sick.57 Other Corpus Christi guilds took a particular interest in the development of the Easter Sepulchre. In 1389, three Corpus Christi guilds specifically mentioned this in their returns to Westminster, two of which came from Lincolnshire. The guild at Caistor provided illumination on the procession to the tomb on the ‘day of preparation’ or Good Friday in the form of thirteen lights and fourteen candles that were positioned around the shrine into which the Eucharist was placed.58 The Corpus Christi guild at Lincoln also provided thirteen square candles that were to be placed around the sepulchre and left to burn throughout the octave, as well as three round candles that were to be lit between the ‘preparation’ and the resurrection.59 The charitable activities of Lincolnshire’s Corpus Christi guilds in 1389 again indicate that from an early stage in their development they were potentially wealthier and more prominent in their communities than their counterparts. The activities that later Corpus Christi guilds are most closely associated with include feasts, processions, and plays, and the 1389 returns highlight that this connection was developing early on. The annual patronal feast was the highlight of the liturgical year for parish guilds, but in 1389 only twelve per cent of the surviving guild returns mention this activity.60 Although the feast itself was used to promote love and charity among the guild’s members, the presence of rules and regulations in the Lincolnshire guild returns shows that these were occasions for social interaction that could lead to conflict and disorderly behaviour.61 The guild feast also had a formal function of maintaining the structure and hierarchy of the association through the election of new officers, something that features in several of Lincolnshire’s guild returns.62 From the Lincolnshire Corpus Christi guild returns, we get some details regarding the celebrations of the feast. At Caistor, for example, the brothers and sisters of the guild ate and drank at the guild feast at their own expense, and the Huttoft guild held its annual feast at the house of a guild member, rather than in a communal space.63 Corpus Christi was explicitly perceived as a joyous celebration focusing on the institution of the Eucharist and the salvation of the world. As Maundy Thursday, the true celebration of the Eucharist, was characterised by commemorating the crucifixion, which was carried out in a ‘mournful mood’, the key propagators of the Corpus Christi feast wanted it to be clearly separate and the salvific aspect of the feast to be focused

57 58 59 60 61 62 63

C 47/40/135; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 235–36. C 47/39/92; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 236–37. C 47/40/135; Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 236–37. Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 29. Rosser, ‘Going to the Fraternity Feast’, p. 441. C 47/39/75, C 47/39/99, C 47/40/103, C 47/40/141. C 47/40/128.

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY213

upon.64 It would appear that the celebratory mood of the feast had an effect on the number of Corpus Christi guilds who engaged with activities such as feasting and processional modes. As Corpus Christi was a summer feast, part of the celebrations had the potential to be performed outside. Although the original papal decree did not require any form of procession, it only insisted on a mass and an office, within a few decades of the feast’s establishment most parishes had some form of procession.65 Processional routes varied from place to place, but in general terms parochial processions would begin at the parish church and then stop at places of local significance. In smaller villages, the procession would usually follow the village boundaries.66 In her work on small group identities, Miri Rubin argues that the processional ritual of Corpus Christi is not evidence in itself of a sense of community. Rather, she argues that this was an occasion for ‘heightened and self-conscious imparting of information; a delineation of battle positions’.67 While this may be true of the later processional modes, which became imbued with political meanings and hierarchies, the earlier processions that can be found in the 1389 returns do not seem to follow this pattern. Processions, plays, and pageantry were activities with which guilds became more strongly associated in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, particularly through the performance of play cycles. While at the end of the fourteenth century there is very little mention of any pageantry on this scale, pageantry of a lesser order was certainly taking place in the form of processions to and from the parish church on patronal feast days. This pattern of ceremonies and observances throughout the liturgical year lay at the heart of late medieval popular culture, and while only seven per cent of the guild returns for 1389 mention any form of procession, it is more likely than not that more guilds were involved in such activities.68 It is clear that the Corpus Christi guilds had some of the most elaborate processions, and processional modes are something that these guilds would later become even more closely associated with. Out of the forty-four Corpus Christi guilds recorded in 1389, seventeen explicitly mentioned participation in a procession. A further ten of these provided lights that were to be carried by members during the procession or used to decorate the tabernacle.69 In Lincolnshire, ten of the eighteen Corpus

Rubin, ‘Corpus Christi Fraternities’, pp. 99–100. Rubin, Corpus Christi, pp. 243–44. 66 Ibid. 67 M. Rubin, ‘Small Groups: Identity and Solidarity in the Late Middle Ages’, in Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. J. Kermode (Stroud, 1991), pp. 132–50, at pp. 142–43. 68 Phythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen’, p. 57; Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 29. 69 Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 237. 64 65

214

CLAIRE KENNAN

Christi guilds explicitly mention participating in a procession, and details of these processions can be discerned from some of the guild returns. For example, the Lincoln Corpus Christi Fraternity of Tailors declared that ‘all brethren and sisters of the fraternity should attend the solemn procession once a year leading with a decent light’.70 The fraternity at Caistor had forty candles carried by six guild members at the procession. At Grantham, the provision was even more elaborate: the fraternity assembled at the parish church before the procession where two priests wearing vestments carried the Eucharist, and two boys in albs carried candles before them and the brethren and sisters followed them up to the altar where they left some of their lights before joining the procession.71 These processions were often preceded by the ringing of the church bells and children throwing flowers.72 In some cases, children took on an even more active role in the procession: in Grantham, as early as c. 1339 two boys in albs led the Corpus Christi procession.73 The Crowland Corpus Christi guild utilised rich cloth and clothing as part of their procession, stating that their alderman appointed two men to hang cloths about the statue of St Guthlac and prepare a hearse with lights.74 In none of these early processions, however, do we have any evidence suggesting that they were being used as a means of displaying the town or village’s hierarchy. Although undoubtedly these processions did become secularised, this appears to have been a later development. It was during the fifteenth century that we see guild contingents present at these highly secularised processions in their liveries and members of the community processing according to their economic groupings or hierarchical status in the urban administration.75 At the centre of these processions, however, was always the Eucharist, placed in a tabernacle and carried on staves, covered with a canopy. The Eucharist was always carried by a priest and surrounded by those who held the highest positions in the town, including the mayor and alderman.76 However, in these earlier processions, many of which took place in towns and villages that were much smaller and did not have their own governing structures, this level of sophistication and visual hierarchy would not have been played out to such an extent. It is clear that these processions started off as something else entirely and that it was only later in major urban centres, such as at Coventry or York, that these processions began to display the additional political meanings that they C 47/41/159. C 47/40/109; Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 237. 72 Rubin, Corpus Christi, p. 249. 73 Ibid., p. 259. 74 C 47/39/95; Hanawalt, ‘Keepers of the Lights’, p. 29. 75 James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body’, p. 5; Pythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen’, p. 285; Rubin, ‘Small Groups’, p. 143. 76 Rubin, ‘Small Groups’, p. 143. 70 71

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY215

have become so synonymous with.77 Another later development of the Corpus Christi feast celebration was the inclusion of play cycles that were performed on wagons, stopping at predetermined places along the processional route.78 None of the Corpus Christi guild returns from 1389 mention any form of play or play cycle; this is again a much later development and, as A. F. Johnston has shown, often had little to do with the Corpus Christi guilds themselves.79 Following an examination of the number, form, and function of Lincolnshire’s Corpus Christi guilds, this chapter now turns to the question of why there was such a concentration of associations dedicated to this cult in the county as early as 1389. It is possible that the prevalence of early Corpus Christi guild dedications in Lincolnshire can be linked to the county’s trade with the Low Countries. Johnston has commented on the close connection between the popular drama of England and the popular drama of the Low Countries, stating that the main reason for this is to be found in the close trading links between the Low Countries and the eastern coastal ports of England; it would appear that the same is also true for the popularity of guild dedications to the cult.80 The work of Anne-Laure Van Bruaene and others has highlighted the importance of the cult of Corpus Christi in the Low Countries and the strong connections felt to it by lay confraternities, craft guilds, and Chambers of Rhetoric.81 Corpus Christi processions were an important feature of religious and civic life and were held in large trading towns including Antwerp, Leuven, and Ghent.82 The formula of these processions seems to have also been successful, perhaps even more so, in smaller towns including Kortrijk, Lo, See Pythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen’; James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body’; Johnston, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’; and Rubin, Corpus Christi for full discussions of this. 78 James, ‘Ritual Drama and the Social Body’, p. 5; Pythian-Adams, ‘Ceremony and the Citizen’, p. 285. 79 Johnston, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi and the Procession of Corpus Christi in York’, pp. 373–74. 80 A. F. Johnston, ‘Traders and Playmakers: English Guildsmen and the Low Countries’, in England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages, ed. C. Barron and N. Saul (Stroud, 1995), pp. 99–114, at p. 99. 81 See A.-L. Van Bruaene, ‘“A wonderfull trymfe, for the wynnyng of a pryse”: Guilds, Ritual, Theater, and the Urban Network in the Southern Low Countries, ca. 1450–1650’, Renaissance Quarterly, 59 (2006), 374–405; P. Stabel, ‘Guilds in Late Medieval Flanders: Myths and Realities of Guild Life in an Export-Oriented Environment’, Journal of Medieval History, 30 (2004), 187–212. 82 A. Brown, Civic Ceremony and Religion in Medieval Bruges c. 1300–1520 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 128; G. Marnef and A.-L. Van Bruaene, ‘Civic Religion: Community, Identity and Religious Transformation’, in City and Society in the Low Countries, 1100–1600, ed. B. Blondé, M. Boone, and A.-L. Van Bruaene (Cambridge, 2018), pp. 128–61, at p. 145; J. Dambruyne, ‘Corporative Capital and Social Representation in the Southern and Northern Netherlands, 1500–1800’, in Craft Guilds in the Early Modern Low 77

216

CLAIRE KENNAN

Diksmuide, Oudenburg, and Tielt (all in the county of Flanders). The major regional Corpus Christi processions in Oudenaarde and Nieuwpoort radiated appeal and would have attracted spectators from across the Low Countries, including perhaps the merchants who had come to trade.83 We can therefore infer that Lincolnshire’s trade with the Low Countries could indeed have provided the impetus for prevalence of Corpus Christi guilds in the county, with the merchants of Lincolnshire acting as the conduit for the transmission of this new cult and its associated celebrations and dedications. The importance of the mercantile community in the transmission of the cult of Corpus Christi can be found in their prevalence among the office holders of Lincolnshire’s parish guilds. Merchants usually had the disposable income required to join a guild and contribute to its activities; they were already influential members of the local community and therefore ideal candidates for office holding. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was often the elite, wealthy fraternities that took the dedication of Corpus Christi, as can be seen in the examples from Leicester, Coventry, Norwich, Beverley, and Cambridge amongst others.84 In the late fourteenth century, the link between mercantile wealth and Corpus Christi guilds was already evident, and by 1389 some of the early Corpus Christi guilds already had considerable property holdings. For example, the Corpus Christi guild at Boston, which had a strong mercantile membership, received a licence in 1349 to hold property to the value of £20 a year in order to support six chaplains.85 As Clive Burgess has noted, merchants frequently travelled throughout England and across western and northern Europe on business, which meant that they often came into contact with new and exciting ideas. Developments in liturgical practice from across north-western Europe may have influenced how these merchants wished to practice their religion at home, and they had both the means and motivation to emulate such practices.86 Trade between the east Countries: Work, Power and Representation, ed. M. Prak, C. Lis, J. Lucassen, and H. Soly (Aldershot, 2006), pp. 194–223, at p. 215. 83 Marnef and Van Bruaene, ‘Civic Religion’, p. 145. 84 Rubin, ‘Small Groups’, pp. 138–39. 85 C 47/39/83; H. Fenning, ‘The Guild of Corpus Christi’, in The Guilds in Boston, ed. M. Ormrod (Lincolnshire, 1993), pp. 35–45, at pp. 36, 39; S. Badham, ‘Mercantile Involvement in Religious Guilds’, in The Medieval Merchant, ed. C. M. Barron and A. F. Sutton, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 24 (Donington, 2014), pp. 221–41; S. Badham ‘He Loved the Guild: The Religious Guilds Associated with St Botolph’s Church, Boston’, in ‘The Beste and Fayrest of al Lincolnshire’: The Church of St Botolph, Boston, Lincolnshire and Its Medieval Monuments, ed. S. Badham and P. Cockerham (Oxford, 2012), pp. 49–73. 86 C. Burgess, ‘Making Mammon Serve God: Merchant Piety in Later Medieval England’, in The Medieval Merchant, ed. Barron and Sutton, pp. 183–207, at pp. 190, 195.

THE CULT OF CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE 1389 GUILD ENQUIRY217

coast of England and north-western Europe had already been well established by the fourteenth century; as early as the eleventh century, the coastline curving north from Calais, which was easily navigable by smaller vessels as a result of the many seaports and rivers, had become a centre of commerce for English traders.87 By the fifteenth century, the Flemish, Dutch, and Brabant fairs had become central to the trade of English merchants; it was at these fairs where Lincolnshire traders engaged with their European counterparts at occasions that were not only ‘great commercial gatherings’ but also important centres for ‘celebrations, entertainments and the exchange of news and ideas’ on the Continent.88 Exposure to these new ideas undoubtedly would have included the Corpus Christi feast itself. Johnston notes that ‘it is no coincidence that the provincial towns and districts represented annually at the fairs in the Low Countries are just those towns and districts from which the great bulk of surviving English drama comes’.89 Boston, in particular, provides strong evidence for trading links between the Low Countries, Lincolnshire, and the town’s Corpus Christi guild during the reign of Richard II. Between 1377 and 1390, the men appointed as customs collectors in Boston were Boston merchants, or merchants from Boston’s hinterlands; interestingly, all of the collectors from Boston itself were the leading members of the town’s Corpus Christi guild.90 While the accounts for Boston’s overseas trade do not always specify where ships were coming from or going to, there are several occasions when this information is given. We know, for example, that between 1377 and 1399 ships coming into Boston were from Bruges, Hamburg, Lubeck, Vlaardingen, and Zierikzee.91 Later evidence from the mid-fifteenth-century alien subsidy returns and letters of denization show that there were still workers and merchants from Flanders, Holland, Brabant, and Germany settling and working in Lincolnshire. However, the way in which individuals from the Low Countries were recorded in the alien subsidies is problematic and must be treated with caution.92 There was a significant clustering of individuals from these nations based in Boston, which acted as the main port for Lincoln and the rest of the county; as early as the 1330s, cloth workers from the Low Countries were settling in England, and Johnston, ‘Traders and Playmakers’, p. 99; W. M. Ormrod, B. Lambert, and J. Mackman, Immigrant England, 1300–1550 (Manchester, 2019), p. 106. 88 Johnston, ‘Traders and Playmakers’, pp. 99–100; Ormrod, Lambert, and Mackman, Immigrant England, p. 106. 89 Johnston, ‘Traders and Playmakers’, pp. 99–100. 90 The Overseas Trade of Boston in the Reign of Richard II, ed. S. H. Rigby (Lincoln Record Society, vol. 93, 2005), p. xxv. 91 Ibid., pp. 14, 16, 17, 25, 26, 39. 92 For example, John Browne of Bourne was recorded without a nationality in 1449, then in 1455 as a Zeelander, in 1456 as a Fleming, and then in 1458 as Dutch, see Ormrod, Lambert, and Mackman, Immigrant England, p. 75. 87

218

CLAIRE KENNAN

throughout the 1440s Boston was home to fifteen alien weavers; unfortunately, however, their nationality was unspecified.93 All of this evidence seems to suggest that in Boston, which acted as a gateway for trade in and out of the county, there were clear links between the merchants who held office in the Corpus Christi guild and trade with the Low Countries. It would seem logical, therefore, that this was the mechanism through which the popularity of the cult of Corpus Christi on the Continent and its associated activities were transmitted throughout the rest of the county.94 In conclusion, it is clear that Lincolnshire had an earlier interest in and affinity with the cult of Corpus Christi than elsewhere in England and that this pattern of devotion and dedication to the cult was the result of the county’s close trading links with the Low Countries. It is interesting to note that Lincolnshire’s parish guilds’ interest in Corpus Christi in 1389 was higher than elsewhere and remained so even when compared with guild dedications from elsewhere in later centuries. The parish guilds’ early adoption of the cult in Lincolnshire, in particular, further emphasises the important role that the mercantile community had in transmitting new ideas in relation to saints’ cults and liturgical practice to the rest of their communities. It also emphasises the leading role of merchants in these associations that characterised popular piety in the fourteenth century and beyond.

Ibid., p. 149. Rigby, Boston’s Overseas Trade, p. xxv; Badham, ‘Mercantile Involvement in Religious Guilds’, pp. 49–73. 93

94

PART III • COMMEMORATION

11 Edward, the Black Prince, and Bertrand du Guesclin, Constable of France: Chivalry and Rivalry in Life and Death CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

D



uring the first two phases of the Hundred Years War, between the 1330s and the 1380s, two men above all personified the chivalric culture with which the nobility of that age identified: Edward, prince of Wales, the victor of the battles of Poitiers (1356) and Nájera (1367), and Bertrand du Guesclin, the spearhead of France’s recovery in the 1370s. Their origins could hardly have been more different. The Black Prince had greatness thrust upon him from the moment of his birth in 1330; du Guesclin, some ten years older, was the son of a minor nobleman from north-eastern Brittany and made his name as the captain of one of the many bands of routiers who terrorised the duchy during the Breton civil war of the 1340s and 1350s. This chapter examines the making of these two legends, and in particular the element of rivalry that helped to drive it. Evidence for this rivalry comes from their relationship in life, their posthumous biographies, and their funeral ceremonies. In considering their personal relationship, it needs to be remembered that their military careers only partly overlapped. The Black Prince’s active career spanned the quarter-century from 1346, when he fought at Crécy, to 1371, when he returned to England, too sick to go on ruling his principality of Guyenne. Du Guesclin was also militarily active during the 1340s, but he only came to national prominence following the siege of Rennes in 1357, and what he is chiefly remembered for is what he achieved as constable of France between 1370 and 1380. *** The first time the two men are known to have met was in 1365, when du Guesclin was planning to lead the Great Company out of France into Spain. Ostensibly, this was in order to crusade against the Moors in Granada, but

222

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

his true objectives were rather different: first, to rid France of the troublesome routiers (the poacher now doubling as gamekeeper), and secondly to help Enrique of Trastámara, the bastard half-brother of King Pedro of Castile, to seize the throne and break off the Anglo-Castilian alliance.1 Thus Pope Urban V, based at Avignon, and King Charles V of France both supported the enterprise. However, several of the routiers whom du Guesclin most wished to recruit were Englishmen such as Hugh Calveley and Matthew Gournay, and he needed English permission to recruit them.2 Thus, in June 1365 he went to Bordeaux to see the Black Prince, who sanctioned their departure.3 Whether the prince was fooled by du Guesclin’s claim to be going on crusade, or was simply acting in a spirit of chivalric generosity, this was a political miscalculation on his part. When Edward III heard about it, he told his son to recall the English routiers, but it was too late. It did not take long for the king’s fears to be realised: by the spring of 1366, du Guesclin and his companies had driven Pedro out of Castile and installed the Francophile Enrique as king. Subsequent meetings between the Black Prince and du Guesclin followed directly from this. Hoping to rectify his mistake, the prince agreed in the winter of 1366–67 to help Pedro regain his throne. Froissart reported that the prince was driven to this by ‘pride and presumption’, because he was ‘angry at the honour which Sir Bertrand had won’. True or not, the remark highlights the perceived rivalry between the two men, which was soon to intensify.4 At the It is, however, worth noting that when du Guesclin arrived in Castile in late 1365 he briefly served King Pedro, before turning against him and helping to supplant him: C. Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France during the Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 2013), p. 119. For the background to these events and the campaign and battle of Nájera, see A. Villalon, ‘Spanish Involvement in the Hundred Years War and the Battle of Nájera’, in Hundred Years War: A Wider Focus, ed. A. Villalon and D. Kagay (Leiden, 2005), pp. 3–74. 2 Another potential snag was that du Guesclin had been captured by Sir John Chandos at the battle of Auray in 1364 and had still not fully paid his ransom; R. Vernier, The Flower of Chivalry: Bertrand du Guesclin and the Hundred Years War (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 77–78; J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War II: Trial by Fire (London, 1999), p. 519. 3 His visit to Bordeaux in 1365 is omitted by Cuvelier, but see R. Delachenal, Histoire de Charles V, 5 vols (Paris, 1909–31), vol. 3, p. 223. 4 ‘Les aucuns disoient que le prince entreprenit ce voyage par orgeuil et presomption, et etoit courrouce de l’honneur que messire Bertran avoit eu de conquerir tout le roialme de Castille au nom de roi Henry, et de le faire roi’ (Froissart, Chroniques, ed. J. A. Buchon (Paris, 1834), Book I, Part II, Chapter 210). That the prince wished to lead a campaign into Spain seems very likely, although it has also been suggested that Edward III may have been the driving force behind the expedition, perhaps even overcoming his son’s initial reluctance. Princess Joan and some members of the prince’s council advised him not to go (R. Barber, Edward Prince of Wales and Aquitaine (London, 1976), pp. 188–90; M. Jones, The Black Prince (London, 2017), pp. 286–96). 1

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN223

battle of Nájera, on 3 April 1367, the Anglo-Gascon–Castilian army routed the Franco-Breton–Castilian army. Pedro regained his throne, Enrique fled, thereby surviving to fight another day, and du Guesclin was captured. It was the fourth time that du Guesclin had been made prisoner by the English, and it gave rise to a story that has become almost a parable for the value that medieval noblemen placed on their honour. As the prince’s prisoner, du Guesclin was taken back to Bordeaux, where he remained in captivity for about six months.5 Initially, the prince was reluctant to ransom him, because he was too dangerous an enemy, but after a while du Guesclin began taunting his captor: ‘I am more honoured than any knight in the world’, he told the prince, ‘because throughout the kingdom of France people are saying that you are so afraid of me that you don’t dare to release me.’ Hearing this, Hugh Calveley, Lord Albret, and Olivier de Clisson joined in, telling the prince that it was true that people were accusing him of dishonouring himself by not putting du Guesclin to ransom. This struck home, for the prince did not like having his honour impugned. He declared that he was not the least bit afraid of du Guesclin, and to prove it he invited him to name his own price for his ransom. Was the prince acting foolishly (because this offer could have cost him a lot of money), or honourably (by adhering to the law of arms even with an enemy as formidable as du Guesclin)? Or was he being rather clever, by putting du Guesclin in a position where he had either to dishonour himself, by setting too paltry a price on his worth, or to maintain his honour but ruin himself financially by setting an exorbitant price? In the event, he chose the latter, and the sum agreed was 100,000 Castilian doblas (about £19,200).6 He was released in January 1368, and within another six months, with considerable help from Charles V and his friends, the sum was fully paid. The story of du Guesclin’s ransom in 1367 is about personal rivalry – not for money, not really even for liberty, but for honour. That, at any rate, is how it was told, and it must have been told quite widely, because Ayala, Cuvelier, and Froissart all recounted it at some length. Ayala reckoned it to be one of the ‘great and noble deeds that good men perform’, something that should ‘always remain in the memory and not be forgotten’, and since he was captured along with du Guesclin at Nájera it is tempting to identify him as the original source of the story. However, the fact that Cuvelier and Froissart differ in important details suggests that they were relying not on a written source but on oral accounts – further evidence of the popular interest the story aroused.7 He may have been held at Condat castle, near Libourne: Vernier, Flower of Chivalry, pp. 118–24. 6 Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 556. 7 La Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin de Cuvelier, ed. J.-C. Faucon, 3 vols (Toulouse, 1990–91), vol. 1, pp. 285–302, verses 483–514; Froissart, Chroniques, ed. Buchon, Book I, Part II, c. 247. Ayala expressed wonderment at the two men’s pride. He says that 5

224

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

From the moment of his release, du Guesclin’s career went from triumph to triumph. He returned to Castile in 1369, where, having either connived or assisted in the murder of King Pedro, he restored Enrique to the throne. Only now did the magnitude of the prince’s miscalculation become clear, and there was nothing he could do about it, for by this time he was a sick man. He returned to England in 1371, took no further part in the war, and died in 1376. Meanwhile, in 1370, du Guesclin was recalled from Spain and made constable of France, an office normally (though not always) reserved for princes of the blood or great magnates. For the next ten years, backed by Charles V and Duke Louis of Anjou, he masterminded the French recovery; what marked him out to contemporaries was his relentless energy, his forced marches, his surprise attacks, his ruthless discipline, and his grasp of the attritional strategy, based on lightning raids and small-scale sieges and the fomenting of discontent, required to expel the English from France. By the time he died of a fever in July 1380, the English in Guyenne controlled only one fifth of what the Black Prince had ruled in the 1360s, and Ponthieu and most of Brittany were also back in French hands. Du Guesclin was a national hero, as he remains to this day.8 *** The 1380s – the decade or so following the deaths of the Black Prince and du Guesclin – was a period of military stalemate and recrimination, with heroes in short supply. One consequence of this was that it was also a period of chivalric nostalgia, and it is with this in mind that we need to read their biographies. Both were begun around 1380–81 and are written in French verse, the traditional

the prince asked du Guesclin to name his price (against his council’s advice), whereas Froissart says that the prince named the price, but du Guesclin willingly agreed. Cuvelier followed Ayala in stating that du Guesclin set the price of his own ransom, at which the prince and his councillors were amazed. Delachenal, Charles V, vol. 3, pp. 451–56, provides a useful summary and quotes extensively from Don Pedro López de Ayala, Crónicas de los reyes de Castilla, éditions de Llaguno (Madrid, 1679), vol. 1 (Don Pedro), pp. 467–70, which I have not been able to consult. K. Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries I: The Great Companies (Oxford, 2001), p. 241, says that in releasing du Guesclin, the prince’s ‘need for money overruled his political judgment’, because Pedro could not pay what he owed him. Other chroniclers picked up on the story, e.g. Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois, ed. S. Luce (Paris, 1862), p. 181, where it is said that John Chandos and the Captal de Buch were also present at the discussion between the prince and du Guesclin. 8 Although there have always been those who have doubted whether he deserved such praise: see for example E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War (London, 1951), pp. 148–49, who calls him ‘a mediocre captain, incapable of winning a battle or being successful in a siege of any scope’. Many Bretons have always regarded him as a traitor. Some have also suggested that Clisson was the real hero of the French recovery.

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN225

medium for elevating heroic literature to the status of the epic.9 Roughly half of each poem deals with the Spanish campaigns of 1365–67, widely seen as a theatre for chivalric deeds, and both authors made it clear that, although this was nominally a contest between Pedro and Enrique for the Crown of Castile, it was the prince and du Guesclin who acted as puppeteers. Cuvelier’s Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin is very long, 24,345 lines of (in Édouard Perroy’s words) ‘unrelieved mediocrity’. Chandos Herald’s Vie du Prince Noir is mercifully shorter, just 4,280 lines.10 Both poems were almost certainly commissioned. The most plausible patron of the Vie was the Black Prince’s brother, John of Gaunt, whose prominence in the poem, especially at Nájera, is rather greater than the truth might have warranted, whereas other possible candidates, such as Princess Joan and Richard II, are conspicuous mainly by their absence from the narrative.11 As to the author, his personal name is unknown, but he was almost certainly (like Froissart) a Hainaulter and, as his title suggests, the herald of the prince’s great favourite Sir John Chandos (d. 1370). He became English king of arms in 1377 and was still alive in 1383, but his date of death is unknown.12 Cuvelier is more obscure: he was probably a clerk and perhaps a minstrel. He was almost certainly attached to the court of Charles V and probably wrote at the king’s behest, in which case he must have begun within a few weeks of du Guesclin’s death in July 1380, since Charles himself died two months later.13 He finished by 1385 at the latest, and by 1387 his poem had been recast in prose. In summary, the Vie and the Chanson were written contemporaneously, if not for the king, then certainly for the court. The tone adopted by each author was significantly different. Chandos Herald remained true to the spirit of chivalric literature, the spirit of Le Bel, of Froissart, and of fictional romance. His Black Prince was a stylised, one-dimensional hero,

Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, pp. 27, 99; E. Gaucher, La Biographie Chevaleresque (Paris, 1994), pp. 109–13, 573. 10 Perroy, Hundred Years War, p. 148. For the dating of the Vie du Prince Noir to 1380–81, rather than the long-accepted mid-1380s, see G. Croenen, ‘La guerre en Normandie au XIVe siècle et le problème de l’évolution textuelle des Chroniques de Jean Froissart’, in La Guerre en Normandie (XIe-XVe siècle): Actes du colloque international de Cerisy, 30 septembre–3 octobre 2015, ed. A. Curry and V. Gazeau (Caen, 2018), pp. 111–47. I am grateful to Dr Croenen for his advice on this question. 11 For the text, see La Vie du Prince Noir by Chandos Herald, ed. D. Tyson (Tubingen, 1975). Palmer makes the case for Gaunt as patron of the Vie, suggesting that its focus on the Spanish campaign of 1366–67 was a way of drumming up support for Gaunt’s proposed Iberian campaign in the 1380s, but that might be pushing the evidence too far: J. J. N. Palmer, ‘Froissart et le Héraut Chandos’, Le Moyen Age, 88 (1982), 271–92. 12 Tyson, Vie, pp. 14–18. 13 For Cuvelier, whose first name was perhaps Jean or Jacquemart, see Gaucher, Biographie Chevaleresque, pp. 222–23. The Chanson might, however, have been commissioned by Louis of Anjou (d. 1384), a great supporter of du Guesclin. 9

226

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

a cardboard cut-out of the idealised knight on to which he simply pasted the traditional virtues of prowess, loyalty, piety, and generosity. Veering towards hagiography, the herald depicted the prince as acting honourably at all times, as did those who fought with or against him, with one or two exceptions (such as the slippery King Pedro). This is characteristic of chivalric literature: no matter which side they fought on, knights who ‘did their duty’ (as Froissart habitually put it) were fulsomely praised and rarely criticised, even if they were defeated. And, in the herald’s eyes, this was also true of du Guesclin: his motives were noble, for he was a crusader; he offered wise and loyal advice to Enrique, and served him faithfully; and it was he and his Breton companions who remained on the field of Nájera to the bitter end, even after most of the Castilians had fled – which, naturally, is why he was captured, whereas Enrique escaped.14 He was a worthy foe, and Chandos Herald breathes not a word of criticism of him.15 Cuvelier’s Chanson is a more politically tendentious work. What really drives the story is national destiny, du Guesclin’s role in the recovery of France. There is, naturally, emphasis throughout the poem on personal valour and the quest for honour, as is the case with all chivalric biography, but du Guesclin himself is an unlikely chivalric hero: he is of low birth, physically ugly, bad-tempered, and immoral; he is mercenary and rapacious, massacres prisoners without compunction, breaks his word, and uses dishonourable and underhand tactics. Indeed, there is a certain incongruity between the extravagant chivalric vocabulary employed by Cuvelier and the often sordid details of the story he tells.16 What matters, however, is that what du Guesclin does, works. This is chivalry in the service of the state, and as a soldier, a leader, and a military contractor, he is unsurpassed in his age; all of which, declared Cuvelier, meant that he deserved to be counted as the Tenth Worthy, the ultimate accolade for the chivalric hero. Several of those who fought on the English side, such as John Chandos and Hugh Calveley, were also praised in the Chanson, but when it came to the Black Prince, Cuvelier was more equivocal. The prince, he says, ‘had the heart of a lion’, but he ruled Guyenne with an iron fist and treated even the greatest of his subjects with disdain; it was on account of this overweening pride that he lost his duchy, his honour, and his life, tumbling like Lucifer from heaven.17 Villalon, ‘Spanish Involvement in the Hundred Years War’, pp. 44–47. Tyson, Vie, pp. 95–96, 136–38. 16 D. Tyson, ‘The Vocabulary of Chivalric Description in Late Fourteenth-Century Biography’, in Barbour’s Bruce and Its Cultural Contexts: Politics, Chivalry and Literature in Late Medieval Scotland, ed. S. Boardman and S. Foran (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 119–36. 17 Chanson, vol. 1, p. 150 (lines 7435–50); ‘He cared not a fig for a knight or an earl / … And it was through his great pride, which had bewitched him / That he lost his life, his honour, and his noble duchy / Like the false angel cast out of Heaven’ (vol. 1, p. 231, 14 15

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN227

He also made disastrous political mistakes. When he agreed in the spring of 1366 to take an army to Castile to help Pedro regain his throne, his ‘wise and beautiful’ wife, Princess Joan, declared that it was wrong to help a murderer and a blasphemer such as Pedro: ‘Oh God, said the princess, what evil shall befall us! Cursed be the hour that he [Pedro] came here!’ The prince, hungry for glory, brushed her objections aside, but it was she who was right, says Cuvelier, because ultimately his intervention in Spain ended in failure; moreover, it was during his Spanish campaign that the prince contracted the illness that killed him – divine retribution for his presumption.18 This unflattering portrait of the prince was not simply French bias. The author of the Anonimalle Chronicle, an Englishman through and through, condemned him strongly for the extravagance, rapacity, and arrogance he displayed while governing Guyenne, which, so he claimed, contributed significantly to the loss of most of the duchy.19 Froissart, who often comes across as one of the prince’s greatest admirers, also treated him more equivocally as he went on, especially after the infamous sack of Limoges in 1370, when his uncontrolled rage was said to have led to a massacre of the citizens.20 With Cuvelier, however, this view of the prince goes a lot further, and is clearly driven by the personal and national rivalry underlying the Chanson. After all, the prince was the man who had defeated and captured du Guesclin.21 To the English, this made him a national hero, but to many Frenchmen he was the personification of an occupying power that had inflicted misery on millions of French people and humiliation on France’s monarchy. In the end, though, as Cuvelier was at pains to demonstrate, while the prince may have enjoyed military success, and of course fame, he was a political failure. His hubris is the hubris of the English, which now, at last – at the time Cuvelier was writing – had reaped its whirlwind.

lines 11607–20). See also pp. 234–36, verses 404–05, and lines 13737–38. The words repeatedly used by Cuvelier about the prince are ‘fier’ and ‘orgueilleux’. 18 Chanson, vol. 1, p. 232, lines 11657–95. His insistence on sparing most of the Castilian prisoners after Nájera was also a mistake, for it left a faction of the nobility to support Enrique in 1368–69 (Tyson, Vie, p. 38). Tyson, ‘The vocabulary of Chivalric Description’, pp. 127–30, overlooked Cuvelier’s negative remarks about the prince. 19 Anonimalle Chronicle 1333–1381, ed. V. Galbraith (Manchester, 1927), pp. 53–56. 20 What was shocking about Limoges was that it fell so far below the standards that the prince was reputed to have set for himself; had this been du Guesclin, it would doubtless have been seen as characteristic behaviour. Yet Froissart’s figure of 3,000 massacred at Limoges seems to have been greatly exaggerated, the more likely figure being about a tenth of that: Barber, Edward Prince of Wales, p. 223; D. Green, Edward the Black Prince (Harlow, 2007), p. 92. 21 In fact, he was captured by Thomas Cheyne at Nájera and then purchased by the prince, but this is yet another example of the element of direct rivalry between the two men that Cuvelier likes to stress.

228

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

Yet there is no crowing over the prince’s withdrawal from the war – in fact, the prince is not mentioned again by Cuvelier after 1368. When Chandos died in 1370, Cuvelier tells us what a great knight he had been,22 but the prince’s death passed unnoticed. By then, the story was all about du Guesclin and the national struggle against the English, the slow but ineluctable triumph of Good over Evil. And when du Guesclin died in 1380, his last words were not for himself, but for France, and for Charles V: ‘Ah, sweet France, I shall shortly be leaving you’, he declared, admonishing all the barons to hold fast with one another ‘and serve loyally our crowned king’. The closing couplet is not about du Guesclin but about France: ‘May God the Father grant us peace and paradise / And may he punish all our enemies.’23 The Vie, in contrast, closes with the words, ‘Here ends the story / Of the most noble Prince Edward / Who never had the heart of a coward. / This was told by the Chandos Herald / Who willingly recorded these words.’24 Perroy, who had a low opinion of both poems, described the Chanson as ‘the French retort to the dithyrambs with which the Chandos Herald puffed up the glory of the Black Prince’.25 If he meant to imply that Cuvelier had read the Vie, he was surely wrong. Cuvelier certainly knew of Chandos Herald, and recorded a long and frank conversation between him and du Guesclin just before Nájera.26 However, there is nothing to suggest that he had either read or was aware of the Vie, or that Chandos Herald knew of Cuvelier or of the Chanson. Cuvelier was not reacting to the herald’s poem, but to the great reputation that the prince enjoyed, which he believed to be unmerited when compared to the achievements of France’s great hero. *** In the case of the two men’s funerals, the case for direct rivalry, or at least imitation, is stronger. The Black Prince died on 8 June 1376 and was buried four months later, on 5 October. In his will, dated the day before he died at Chanson, verse 681. Chanson, vol. 1, pp. 475–76, lines 24252, 24315–16. Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois, ed. Luce, p. 285, similarly records that du Guesclin’s thoughts on his deathbed were for the nation, the king, and the royal family, and that his death was greeted with great lamentation. 24 Vie, p. 164. 25 Perroy, Hundred Years War, pp. 148–49. He also called it ‘a long rhapsody stuffed with artless anecdotes and incredible fictions’. 26 Chanson, vol. 1, pp. 249–50, lines 12550–610. Tyson, Vie, appears not to have noticed this passage. It has been plausibly suggested that Cuvelier barely knew du Guesclin and compiled his poem from stories circulating at court. Du Guesclin’s fame is also attested by, for example, the several poems dedicated to him by Eustace Deschamps and Christine de Pisan: Gaucher, Biographie Chevaleresque, p. 27; Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, p. 118; Sumption, Trial by Fire, p. 725. 22 23

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN229

Westminster, he had set out quite precise instructions for his burial. He was to be interred in Canterbury Cathedral, in the crypt Chapel of Our Lady Undercroft, directly below the shrine of Thomas Becket, no more than 10 feet from the altar. In fact, his tomb was placed in a more accessible location, not in the crypt but within the Trinity Chapel itself, just a few feet to the south of Becket’s body. It was probably the monks who made this decision, hoping to capitalise on the prince’s fame to attract additional pilgrims to St Thomas’s shrine.27 For his funeral procession through the city of Canterbury to the cathedral, the prince specified that his coffin was to be preceded by two knights on horseback, with both the horses’ trappings and the knights’ armour covered in his arms: one was to bear his arms of war (the quartered royal arms of lions and fleurs-de-lys), the other his arms of peace (the three ostrich feathers, the arms he used in tournaments). Behind them walked eight more armed men wearing hats and bearing banners or pennons also embellished with the prince’s arms. The likelihood is that the two horsemen rode up the nave during the requiem mass, before presenting their shields and arms to the sacrist, who received them on behalf of the cathedral. We know at any rate that the prince’s arms and chief weapons, along with the shields, were presented to the cathedral, since they continued to hang above his tomb for several centuries after his death.28 Members of the nobility had been requesting chivalric rituals of this kind at their funerals for at least a hundred years, but this was the first time that such rituals are said to have been performed at the funeral of a member of the English royal family. A year later, in 1377, similar chivalric offerings were also made at the funeral of Edward III. What was being celebrated at these two funerals was, above all, fellowship-in-arms, the astonishing triumphs of a generation of English soldiery, led by a royal father and son the like of whom had rarely been seen in England before. The French also honoured the prince: when Charles V heard of his death, he held a special requiem mass for him at the Sainte-Chapelle, attended by a large gathering of prelates and nobles. There is no suggestion that chivalric rituals were performed there. It was, as R. Delachenal remarked, ‘an act of pure chivalric courtesy’, recognition of

Offerings did indeed rise steeply in the following year (C. Wilson, ‘The Medieval Monuments’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. P. Collinson, N. Ramsay, and M. Sparks (Oxford, 1995), pp. 494–98). 28 For his will, see A Collection of Wills of all the Kings and Queens of England, ed. J. Nichols (London, 1780), pp. 66–77. For the bishop of Rochester’s sermon lamenting the prince’s passing, given at Rochester shortly after his death, see The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester (1373–1389), ed. M. A. Devlin, 2 vols., Camden Society, Third Series, 85–86 (London, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 354–57. The bishop praised the prince not merely for his military triumphs but also for his wisdom, morality, generosity, and piety, declaring that it was because such virtues were now neglected (especially morality, which had been replaced by carnal pleasure) that the English were losing the war. 27

230

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

the prince’s lineage and renown. However, the prince was the only English war-leader in the later Middle Ages to be honoured by the French in this way.29 Four years later, when du Guesclin died, his burial plans were also upgraded, and rather more significantly than the prince’s. He had asked in his will to be buried amongst his ancestors at Dinan (Brittany), but Charles V intercepted the cortège bearing him there and ordered his body to be brought to SaintDenis, where it was buried in the Chapel of St John the Baptist next to the spot that Charles had chosen for his own burial. This unprecedented honour was naturally accompanied by several requiem masses, but not by chivalric rituals, although there were apparently some who thought it should have been. Among them were the king’s son, the future Charles VI, and his brother Louis of Orléans, to whom du Guesclin had stood as godfather.30 The fact that Charles VI’s mental illness began in 1392, little more than three years after he assumed power, has understandably dominated accounts of his kingship. Yet it is clear from those first three years that he was a very different man from his father. Charles V, ‘the lawyer-king’, was a cautious man, a bibliophile, a clear-headed strategist who ran the war from his study and had little time for chivalric bravado. Charles VI, on the other hand, was, as the chronicler of Saint-Denis put it, ‘passionate about war’ and ‘zealous for glory’.31 Thirty years on from the catastrophe of Poitiers, chivalry was à la mode once again at the French court, and the king lost no time in advertising the fact. In May 1389, six months after reaching his majority, he held a week of chivalric festivities at Saint-Denis, with jousts, investitures, masses, banquets, masked balls, gift-giving ceremonies, and much more, climaxing on Sunday, 9 May with a lavish memorial service for du Guesclin. Never before, said the

C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Exequies of Edward III and the Royal Funeral Ceremony in Late Medieval England’, EHR, 124 (2009), 257–82. Charles V ‘ordered that [the prince’s] obsequies be held most reverently in the Sainte-Chapelle of the Palace, and his three brothers and a great crowd of prelates, barons and knights of the kingdom of France were present, and the king declared and affirmed that the Prince of Wales had ruled powerfully and courageously’ (Froissart, Chroniques, Book I, Part II, Chapter 388; Delachenal, Charles V, vol 1, p. 9; Chronique des Quatre Premiers Valois, ed. Luce, p. 257, also noted the requiem service in Paris, since the prince was ‘one of the best knights in this world; he was renowned above all in his time’). Charles may also have remembered the solemn exequies that Edward III had performed at St Paul’s when King John II, Charles’s father, died in London in 1364 (W. M. Ormrod, Edward III (New Haven, 2012), pp. 468–69). 30 Vernier, Flower of Chivalry, pp. 195–96; Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, p. 47; Delachenal, Charles V, vol. 5, pp. 361–62. Circumstances were difficult in the summer of 1380: there were revolts against taxation, Buckingham’s army had just landed in France, and Charles V died in September. 31 Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis 1380–1422, ed. M. Bellaguet, 6 vols (Paris, 1842), vol. 1, pp. 220–22, 565. 29

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN231

chronicler, had military rituals of this sort been held in the abbey, even if they were common among the French nobility.32 All the princes and nobles of France were ordered to attend. The focal point of the service was a shrine draped in silk and enclosed within an enormous iron framework bearing hundreds of candles – a herce or chapelle ardente, as they were called. Four knights dressed in du Guesclin’s armour processed down the choir, followed by four more on horseback, covered in his arms and carrying his banner, the black double-headed eagle on a silver field. The constable and marshals of France approached the altar, bearing shields of du Guesclin’s arms with the points facing downwards. After them came the princes of the blood, holding their unsheathed swords by the point. All these – horses, armour, weapons, banners, and shields – were offered to Our Lord (that is, to the abbey), ‘in recognition of all the victories He had granted to [du Guesclin]’. This was clearly a more elaborate chivalric ceremony than the Black Prince’s, but according to the chronicler no one doubted that du Guesclin deserved such honour, ‘for none could compare with him, no one was capable of bearing with so much courage and glory these military insignia offered up, or to serve as worthily as he for the welfare of the realm and the defeat of the English’.33 This is what chivalric funerals were about: the celebration of a great warrior, and the rendering to God of thanks for the victories that He had granted. But Charles VI also used the occasion to make another point. The sermon that followed these offerings, which was delivered by the bishop of Auxerre, began by praising du Guesclin but focused especially on the theme of unity and loyalty as exemplified by the Romans (despite being posthumous, the ceremony as a whole had something of the aspect of a Roman triumph). Knighthood, said the bishop, had been instituted for the good of all, to defend the state, and it must only be practised on the orders of the king; there must be a legitimate cause to defend, Good against Evil. And this, the bishop concluded, was how du Guesclin had behaved: his chivalry had been performed in the service of the king and the realm, to which he had always been faithful and to which he had subordinated his personal ambitions – which, of course, is what Cuvelier had emphasised too. This was how the French wanted to remember du Guesclin, as the loyal servant of the state, the man who restored pride in the French monarchy – and this is indeed how he was remembered.34 What a tragedy it was that, largely because of Charles VI’s madness, the next forty years saw his achievements almost entirely undone, and France plunged into one of its darkest hours.

Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 585–605, for a detailed account. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 603. 34 C. Raynaud, ‘Portrait d’une carrière extraordinaire: Bertrand du Guesclin, chef de guerre modèle, dans la “Chronique anonyme dite des Cordeliers” (c. 1432)’, Fifteenth Century Studies, 32 (2007), 100–17. 32 33

232

CHRIS GIVEN-WILSON

*** If the Vie du Prince Noir mirrors Froissart’s idealised picture of chivalry as a celebration of the international knightly fraternity, the Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin indicates that the quest for honour and renown could also be lethally competitive, fuelled by personal, professional, and national pride. Unsurprisingly, these complementary views of chivalry also reflect the differing experiences of England and France during the Hundred Years War. The great majority of English people did not really feel the sharp end of the war. English armies crossed the Channel, wreaked destruction, humiliated French kings and their nobles, and sailed home again loaded with booty and ransoms. That, at any rate, was their ideal, and not infrequently it was realised. Nor was England’s integrity as a nation ever seriously threatened. For the French, the experience of war was quite different. Time and again, their land, their towns, and their people were terrorised, laid waste, and impoverished. Their kings were disentitled and humiliated, their country dismembered. For the English, therefore, chivalry could afford to be more individualised, more idealised, driven by that historic obsession with foreign conquest epitomised by heroes such as King Arthur, Richard the Lionheart, Edward I, and – by the 1380s – Edward III and the Black Prince.35 For the French, on the other hand, chivalry evolved into a national enterprise focused on the defence of La France, La Patrie, a grittier though no less heroic ideal in which what mattered was what benefitted the monarchy and the state. This more pragmatic approach is also found in Christine de Pisan’s biography of Charles V and in chivalric texts written in late medieval Italy, another land torn apart by both native and foreign soldiers.36 The more that late medieval chivalric texts are analysed, the more La Vie du Prince Noir appears rather outdated. One reason for this is because the lived experience of war stimulated a more thoroughgoing and evolving debate about chivalry and knighthood in France than in England, in treatises, in chronicles, in biographies, and even in romantic fiction. What these texts reveal is an increasing emphasis upon the importance of discipline, prudence, and service to the state, rather than on individual prowess and the quest for personal renown. The hubristic examples of traditional chivalric heroes such as Alexander, Arthur, and Roland, and indeed of generations of French aristocrats, were eschewed, and honour increasingly linked to the advancement of the public good. This shift of emphasis reflected not only French experience during the Hundred Years M. Keen, ‘Chivalry and English Kingship in the Later Middle Ages’, in War, Government and Aristocracy in the British Isles c. 1150–1500: Essays in Honour of Michael Prestwich, ed. C. Given-Wilson, A. Kettle, and L. Scales (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 250–66. 36 Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, pp. 276–77; C. Given-Wilson, ‘Chivalric Biography and Medieval Life-Writing’, in Barbour’s Bruce and Its Cultural Contexts, ed. Boardman and Foran, pp. 101–17. 35

EDWARD, THE BLACK PRINCE, AND BERTRAND DU GUESCLIN233

War but also the practical changes in tactics and military reforms introduced by kings such as Charles V and Charles VII. Moreover, this public debate was self-consciously didactic and propagandist. Texts sought not only to record, celebrate, or lament, but also to influence. However clumsy Cuvelier was as a poet, he reflected, and may even have influenced, the reality of warfare in the late fourteenth century.37 Whether the same is true of Chandos Herald is debatable. Yet the Vie du Prince Noir was in other respects also a poem for its time, ‘very much a political work, designed to encourage his son Richard II to live up to a romanticized ideal of his father’.38 The early 1380s, after all, was a time when almost every aspect of England’s military policy was being bitterly fought over in a succession of angry parliaments, while nobles and knights eager for the chance to emulate their forefathers waited to see which way the impressionable young king would turn. In the event, while Richard undoubtedly understood the need, and had the desire, to project an image of chivalric ardour, he showed little inclination to pursue an aggressive foreign policy in Continental Europe. As Nigel Saul and others have shown, Richard disliked war. He had ‘a genuine abhorrence of the shedding of blood between Christians’; he also understood that for as long as the war lasted, he would forever be having to ask his parliaments for subsidies, affording them the opportunity to criticise and bargain for concessions.39 And once this disinclination began to reveal itself, around 1383–84, it set him on a collision course with some of England’s greatest men, including the prince’s brothers, the royal uncles John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock. For Gaunt and Woodstock, as for other leading aristocrats such as the earls of Arundel and Warwick, men who were descended from the Black Prince’s comrades-inarms, the dream of foreign glory and the example of the prince, burnished by the Herald, remained a lodestar. Whoever commissioned the Vie, and whether or not they had a specific purpose in doing so, it was clearly conceived within an aristocratic milieu that advocated the belligerent pursuit of England’s rights abroad under the leadership of kings and princes of prowess and renown. To be portrayed as the heir to a heroic tradition was something that another king, another person, might have turned to advantage, but in Richard’s case the exemplary knight of the Vie du Prince Noir was simply not an image he could live up to.

Taylor, Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood, pp. 11, 17, 19, 44, 54, 65–66, 144, 206–07, and passim. 38 C. Taylor, ‘Chivalry’, in Geoffrey Chaucer in Context, ed. I. Johnson (Cambridge, 2019), p. 334. 39 Saul, Richard II, pp. 206–07; see also C. Fletcher, Richard II: Manhood, Youth and Politics, 1377–99 (Oxford, 2008), Chapters 6 and 7. 37

12 ‘Suche scripture … shewyng what I was’: The Brass of Margaret of Cieszyn and Associated Monuments KELCEY WILSON-LEE

T



he church of St Margaret, Felbrigg, near Cromer on the Norfolk coast, sits at the end of a lane in the middle of parkland facing on to Felbrigg Hall, a Jacobean country house now in the care of the National Trust. Lift up the carpets that cover the narrow aisle between the Georgian pews and you will discover the c. 1417 brass monument commemorating Sir Simon Felbrigg, son of Sir Roger Felbrigg and Elizabeth Scales, and his first wife, Margaret (Małgorzata), daughter of Przemysław I, duke of Cieszyn, a region near the present-day Polish–Czech border that by the fourteenth century was a fiefdom of the Kingdom of Bohemia. Simon and Margaret each held senior positions at the court of Richard II – he was by 1395 the royal standard bearer and knight of the king’s chamber, and she had been the most senior lady to accompany Richard’s first wife, Anne of Bohemia, to England from her childhood home near Prague. When the brass that he commissioned shortly after her death in 1416 is mentioned by scholars, it is generally to comment upon the multitude of symbols that recall the couple’s royal connections. Of five surviving heraldic shields that surmount the brass, the two most prominent show the heraldic arms favoured by Richard II (which impale the arms attributed to Edward the Confessor with those of England quartering France) and those of Anne of Bohemia (per pale of three, with the third showing the quartered arms of Bohemia with the imperial eagle, in recognition of Anne’s father’s status as Holy Roman Emperor). Simon is depicted wearing the garter that confirms him as one of England’s most elite knights and is also resting a diminutive royal standard in the crook of his arm; a miniscule hart (Richard’s personal badge)

236

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

reclines at the base of the central canopy.1 The inscription avoids the chance that any detail might be overlooked, explicitly stating that Simon was ‘standard bearer to the most illustrious lord, King Richard II’ and that Margaret was ‘companion to the most noble lady, Lady Anne, sometime Queen of England’.2 Beneath the side-by-side arms of king and queen on the tomb are the impaled arms of Simon and Margaret, and underneath those the two individuals appear within a canopied frame: two pieces of brass set into one stone. The form of a double effigy – by which I mean the figural representation of a married couple, side-by-side, on a funerary monument – is a rather perfect analogy for marriage. Intuitively, it presents not only both members of the couple, but the indissoluble union itself. Peter Coss, in his classic study of medieval aristocratic women, considered that the increase in popularity of double effigies during the fourteenth century may be linked to the increased prevalence of jointure agreements (in which estates are settled jointly on both members of a couple, to hold for their term of life independent of dower agreements) within marriage contracts. Nigel Saul, in his 2009 study of medieval English church monuments, instead favoured an explanation focused on the contemporary spread of chantry chapels, arguing that to benefit from the increased prayers, both chantry commissioners needed to be sure of being remembered.3 My own survey of 376 surviving medieval funerary monuments in the Midlands noted that double effigies to married couples were generally more richly decorated with markers of social display and lineage than contemporary effigies to individual men or women, even within the same class of aristocrats, and I have argued that those who commissioned such monuments may have desired not only to remember the individuals commemorated but also to explicitly record the (legal) relationship between them, to the benefit of heirs.4 The most recent Nigel Saul has considered the monument among other brasses depicting banners in ‘Insignia and Status: Banners on Brasses in England in the Late Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 20 (2019), 1–31, pp. 17–18. The brass also appears within Sally Badham’s forthcoming paper, ‘Women’s Status and Identity as Shown on Medieval Brasses’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society (forthcoming). 2 The full text of the inscription reads: ‘Hic jacent Symon Felbrygge miles quondam vexillare Illustrissimi domini Regis Ricardi Secundi qui obit … die mensis … anno domini MCCCC … et domina Margareta quondam consors sua natione et generoso sanguine Boema et olim domicella noblissime domine Domine Anne quondam Anglie Regine qui obit xxvii die mensis Junij anno domini MCCCCxvi, quorum animabus propicietur deus Amen.’ Several references to Margaret give her year of death as 1413, which appears to be a misreading of the small letters ‘vi’ as ‘iii’. 3 P. Coss, The Lady in Medieval England 1000–1500 (Stroud, 1998), pp. 85–87; N. Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2011), pp. 145–47. 4 K. Lee, ‘“Their Final Blazon”: Burial and Commemoration among the North Midland Nobility and Gentry, c. 1200–1536’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of London, 2009), pp. 149–50, 157–59, 169. 1

Figure 12.1. The Felbrigg Brass. Rubbing © The Monumental Brasses of Norfolk by William Lack, H. Martin Stuchfield, and Philip Whittemore (forthcoming). The author is grateful to H. Martin Stuchfield for his generosity in supplying an image of the Felbrigg brass in advance of the publication of his forthcoming work on the monumental brasses of Norfolk

238

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

contribution to this topic is Jessica Barker’s 2020 monograph on the theme of double effigies, which collocates the rise of the form with a late medieval growing interest in the particularity of the individual [beyond his or her membership within a social class or family] … and the character of their affective relationships, suggesting that the double effigy in essence claimed the virtue of spousal love as an attribute of the deceased’s character.5

Most often, however, when double effigies are considered, scholarly energy has rapidly diverted on to the intriguing if relatively uncommon phenomenon of hand-holding on effigies, and the question of what, if anything, that particular form can tell us about the affective relationship between married couples.6 Oliver Harris, while allowing for the possibility of other interpretations, has instead proposed that hand-holding may represent ‘the handfast of the marriage covenant’ – the formal legal bond of marital union – rather than particular affection.7 The Felbrigg brass, like the majority of double effigies, does not include handholding – the figures are wholly autonomous. Indeed, it is the independence of the female figure in particular, and the references to her relationship with a powerful female patron, that are most striking about the monument. Saul has described the brass as a rare tomb ‘in which justice is done to the male and female identities in equal measure’, noting that on only a ‘minority of monuments an attempt was made to honour both partners equally’.8 In other words, the Felbrigg brass demonstrates the full extent to which parity of interest in both the man and woman commemorated could be displayed by a double effigy monument. As such, the brass offers an opportunity to explore the form. This chapter will examine the Felbrigg brass alongside three linked

J. Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 86. Due to closure of libraries during lockdown, I was only able to review this work just before the present volume entered the production process. 6 See Coss, The Lady, pp. 93–105; Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 302–7; Barker, Stone Fidelity, Chapter 4; S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk, ‘C’est Endenture Fair Parentre’: English Tomb Contracts of the Long Fourteenth Century’, in Monumental Industry: The Production of Tomb Monuments in England and Wales in the Long Fourteenth Century, ed. S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk (Donington, 2010), pp. 187–236, at pp. 207–08. 7 O. Harris, ‘“Une tresriche sepulture”: The Tomb and Chantry of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster in Old St Paul’s Cathedral, London’, Church Monuments, 25 (2010), 7–35, esp. pp. 24–29. Barker also considers hand-holding probably intended to represent marriage vows: Stone Fidelity, pp. 236–41, 254–61. 8 Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 293–94. 5

THE BRASS OF MARGARET OF CIESZYN AND ASSOCIATED MONUMENTS239

monuments that depict husbands and wives side-by-side with a view to better understanding the unusual presentation of gender equality at Felbrigg as well as the potential for such representations inherent within the form of the double effigy. The linked monuments are the gilded Westminster tomb of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia; the alabaster double effigy commissioned at Lowick by Katherine Clifton, who would become Simon’s second wife; and an early sixteenth-century brass commissioned by an aged Felbrigg cousin, Katherine Scales, at East Grinstead, Sussex. Aside from the brass surviving at Felbrigg church, little detail is known regarding Simon and Margaret’s marriage. Her father must have been responsible for her journey to England within Anne’s bridal entourage: he had acted as chief Bohemian negotiator for Anne’s marriage and received in May 1381 an annuity of 500 marks from the English Crown for his role in arranging the match.9 By this date, Przemysław already knew the Felbrigg family through George Felbrigg, esq., cousin to Simon and head of a cadet branch of the Felbrigg family based in Suffolk. George had been among Edward III’s household esquires and served on multiple embassies pertaining to Richard’s marriage, including a journey to Prague.10 It is possible that the idea of Simon and Margaret’s marriage was conceived by George Felbrigg as early as the date of the king’s own marriage – when Simon at least would have been about fifteen years of age and heir apparent of the senior branch of his family – though it seems unlikely that a man of Przemysław’s status would have pursued a union for his daughter with the heir of a mere East Anglian knight.11 Once in England, Margaret remained with her lady at court, where indications survive of potential influence with the queen: from the 1380s, offices were granted to men from Margaret’s home duchy of Cieszyn at Anne’s specific request.12 Simon is untraceable at court during this period. Instead, by the time he had proved his age in 1387, he was already serving abroad in France and Spain among the retinue of the duke of Lancaster.13 In February 1390, now knighted, Simon was granted licence to travel overseas to fulfil a desire ‘to visit and see

Saul, Richard II, pp. 88, 92; CPR, 1381–1385, p. 4. F. Blomefield, ‘North Erpingham Hundred: Felbrigg’, in An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 8 (London, 1808), pp. 107–19. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-histnorfolk/vol8/pp107-119; Saul, Richard II, p. 88. 11 For Simon’s age, see J. Milner, ‘Sir Simon Felbrigg, K.G.: The Lancastrian Revolution and Personal Fortune’, Norfolk Archaeology, 37 (1978), 84–91, p. 84. 12 For Margaret’s influence on Anne’s patronage, see CPR, 1381–1385, p. 365. 13 H. Castor, The King, the Crown and the Duchy of Lancaster: Public Authority and Private Power 1399–1466 (Oxford, 2000), p. 67. Simon also had connections with the duke of Gloucester: Saul, Richard II, p. 267. 9

10

240

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

the world in diverse places’.14 Only in February 1393 does he appear within the king’s household, and it is possible that Margaret may have met Simon only at this stage, although some genealogical researchers have suggested the two were already married and it was Margaret’s influence with Anne that won Simon his place at court.15 In either case, Margaret appears to have enjoyed an independent career at court for roughly a decade before her mistress’s unanticipated death in the summer of 1394 would have left her without an official position. Certainly, she was married to Simon by the late 1390s, when the eldest of their children, Alana, was likely born and Simon was at the peak of his career, having been appointed royal standard bearer in 1395 and Knight of the Garter sometime in the years immediately following.16 The name Alana is unusual among English girls’ names of the late medieval period; by contrast, the name Alena continues to enjoy popularity within the Czech Republic even today, as a diminutive of Magdalena. Margaret, it seems, maintained a strong Bohemian identity more than a decade after her arrival in England. Further evidence of her continuing connection to the land of her birth can be found in her Book of Hours, which survives (known as the Felbrygg Hours) within the collection of the Huntingdon Library: the manuscript contains a Czech prayer written by a Bohemian scribe in a book of otherwise English provenance.17 The manuscript has been dated to the period 1390–1410 and includes personal touches such as an image of St Margaret of Antioch in the opening decorated initial, as well as an unusual ‘suffrage’, or prayer, to St Anne, which may indicate the manuscript postdates the 1394 death of Margaret’s beloved mistress, Anne of Bohemia. CPR, 1389–1392, p. 188. John Anstis, in his short biography of Simon Felbrigg, considered it likely the young knight was bound for Santiago de Compostela: Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter … Called the Black Book (London, 1724), vol. 2, pp. 169–70. 15 Milner, ‘Sir Simon Felbrigg’, p. 84; D. Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 2nd edn (Salt Lake City, 2011), pp. 146–48. Cf. Saul, who dates the marriage to after Simon was an intimate of Richard, and suggests the king arranged the union with the duke’s daughter as a favour to his close friend: Richard II, p. 335. 16 The Felbriggs had at least two daughters: Alana, who was old enough in 1431 to have been married twice and be the mother to several children; and Elizabeth, who was probably born around or after 1408, the likely birth year of her husband, Sir Miles Stapleton. Simon had a third daughter, Anne, who was a nun at the House of the Poor Clares in Bruisyard, Suffolk, to whom he left money in his will of 1442; she may have been daughter to Margaret or Katherine, Simon’s second wife. See Milner, ‘Sir Simon Felbrigg’, pp. 85, 90; Anstis, Order of the Garter, p. 172; Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, p. 148. 17 A. Thomas, ‘Margaret of Teschen’s Czech Prayer: Transnationalism and Female Literacy in the Later Middle Ages’, Huntingdon Library Quarterly, 74 (2011), 309–23; H. Hill, ‘Textual Inheritance: A Theory for Agency of Women in English Books of Hours’, NC State Graduate History Journal, 4 (2016), 28–44, pp. 36–37. 14

THE BRASS OF MARGARET OF CIESZYN AND ASSOCIATED MONUMENTS241

Holding Margaret’s independent life in mind, the unusually equal representation of female and male interests on the Felbrigg brass can be more clearly understood. Saul has commented of the Felbrigg brass that its ‘design was prompted not so much by any appreciation of personal status and lineage as by a recollection of times past’, of the lives Simon and Margaret lived.18 While Simon commissioned the monument, Margaret’s career at court early in her life was not left out of this recollection, even though by 1416 they couple had been living in the East Anglian countryside – a world away from the bustle of Westminster – for nearly two decades. Indeed, the choice to commemorate Simon alongside mentions of Margaret’s independent career lends further credibility to the idea that it was his wife’s prior association with Queen Anne that won Simon his initial connection to Richard II. In any event, Margaret’s unusual prominence on the brass may have been mutually agreed by the couple prior to her death: evidence survives of instances in which testators communicated their desires for memorialisation to their executors while yet alive; and certainly, as many commentators have noted, the memorial appears very purposefully conceived.19 In its uncommon attention to Margaret’s life beyond simply her parentage or marriage, the brass also gestures toward the memorial of her patron – the gilded latten effigy of Anne that rests alongside her husband Richard in the westernmost bay of the royal mausoleum at Westminster.20 The first royal tomb to feature husband and wife side-by-side, Richard and Anne’s monument has been much studied and long recognised for showcasing the king’s special devotion to the memory of his beloved first wife. Particular attention has focused on the (now-lost) feature of hand-holding, and scholars have commented upon how the tomb echoes the lost monument to Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt, and his first wife Blanche of Lancaster at Old St Paul’s.21 Paul Binski and Philip Lindley have both suggested the creation of this first royal

Saul, ‘Insignia and Status’, p. 18. For individuals discussing the form of their monuments with executors before their deaths, see Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 96. 20 For the material make-up of the Westminster effigies, see S. Badham, ‘Cast CopperAlloy Tombs and London Series B Brass Production in the Late Fourteenth Century’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 17 (2004), 105–27, p. 105. 21 The Westminster tomb is among the most widely discussed examples of the handholding phenomenon. Its contract specified that the figures should hold each other’s right hands, endorsing Harris’ thesis that the gesture symbolised the legal bond of marriage: Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, pp. 200, 202. See also: Harris, ‘Une tresriche sepultre’, p. 25; Paul Binski has commented that the hand-holding may reference Richard and Anne’s wedding inside the same church they were buried (Westminster Abbey) in his Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400 (New Haven, 1995), p. 201. 18 19

242

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

double effigy may have been influenced by French royal antecedents.22 Lindley also offers an additional convincing rationale: only one burial space remained within the Confessor’s chapel at Westminster, and if the precedent set by the tombs of Eleanor of Castile and Philippa of Hainault was accepted and queens as well as kings were to be commemorated within the royal mausoleum, a double effigy was the only way to also accommodate Richard’s own burial so close to the shrine of his hero, Edward the Confessor. Jessica Barker argues that Richard chose this form for its projected indissolubility, intending this to represent the couple’s emotional bond as an essential feature of their royal character.23 Remarkably, the contracts commissioning the effigies and the tomb chest on which they recline have survived, and, alongside the Westminster monument, these have also offered a wealth of information regarding the process by which funerary monuments were commissioned and created.24 The copious decorative iconography and unusual inscription have enabled Lindley, Saul, and Barker to delve deeply into Richard’s personal style of kingship and self-image.25 Comparatively under-studied is the portrayal of Anne, who like her husband is depicted in robes sprinkled with personal and familial badges – the collared ostrich that was her personal symbol and the knot associated with her brother, Wenceslas IV, then king of the Romans; copious initials ‘A’ for Anne (and ‘R’ for Richard) surmounted by a crown. The canopy above her depicts her Bohemian arms impaling those of the English crown, supported by the imperial eagle, and these same heraldic figures of eagle and lion (referenced in the contract as a ‘leopard’) were ordered in the contract to diaper the table on which her effigy lay and to crouch at her feet.26 The tomb’s inscription features a close his-and-her mirroring. While he was ‘tall in body’ and ‘prudent in mind’, she was ‘beautiful in body, gentle and fair in expression’; he ‘favoured the Church’, she ‘was devoted to Christ’; he ‘overthrew the proud’, she ‘was prone to give gifts to the poor … aid to widows, and medicine to the sick’. While the qualities attributed to Anne are more conventionally associated with queenship than those describing Richard are with kingship, the epitaph nevertheless demonstrates roughly equal concern to depict both husband and wife through their Binski, Westminster Abbey, p. 202; P. Lindley, ‘Absolutism and Regal Image in Ricardian Sculpture’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. D. Gordon, L. Monnas, and C. Elan (London, 1997), pp. 61–84, esp. p. 62. 23 See Barker, Stone Fidelity, esp. pp. 130–31. 24 See especially Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, pp. 200–16; Lindley, ‘Regal Image’, pp. 62–69; Saul, English Church Monuments, pp. 106, 108–09. 25 Saul, Richard II, pp. 464–65; Lindley, ‘Regal Image’, pp. 69–74; Barker, Stone Fidelity, pp. 112–31. See also Badham, ‘Cast Copper-Alloy Tombs’, p. 109, where Badham has described Richard’s epitaph as ‘intensely personal and essentially justificatory’. 26 Barker comments on the appearance of both initials on both tombs, a rare feature, and how this ‘inextricably links’ the effigies: Stone Fidelity, p. 120. For the contract, see Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, pp. 200–03. 22

THE BRASS OF MARGARET OF CIESZYN AND ASSOCIATED MONUMENTS243

personalities and deeds in life, rather than recalling Anne exclusively as consort to the king or conduit of the imperial bloodline. Neither her parentage nor his was mentioned within the epitaph, but given the prevalence of Bohemian heraldic insignia referenced within the contract, it is likely that at least some of the (now-lost) escutcheons that were engraved, enamelled, gilded, and affixed to the tomb chest pertained to Anne’s natal family. Of the detail that survives or is mentioned explicitly in the tomb contract, an interest is discernible in the balanced representation of both parties. It seems possible, therefore, that the Felbrigg brass, with its conspicuous remembrances of Richard’s court, may owe its gender equality in part to the influence of their patrons’ Westminster memorial. An even more intriguing possibility is that Margaret and Anne may have influenced their tombs’ design based on expectations of their own commemoration brought from Bohemia. No effigies survive of either woman’s mother, but the busts of Bohemian queens including Anne’s mother still appear surrounded by heraldry within the triforium at St Vitus’ Cathedral in Prague. These images of royal women, which correspond to burials within the royal crypt and appear to have served as sepulchral memorials, were incorporated into the fabric of the coronation church at the direction of Anne’s father, Emperor Charles IV, alongside the emperor himself and other male members of the royal family, leading clerics, and advisors.27 Among the most celebrated double effigies outside of London is the c. 1419 alabaster depicting Ralph Green and his wife Katherine Clifton at Lowick in Northamptonshire. Katherine commissioned the costly monument early in 1418 and completion was expected within two years – by which point it is possible that she was already remarried to Simon Felbrigg and a regular viewer of the brass commemorating Margaret of Cieszyn in Norfolk.28 Katherine had been married to Ralph for only three years when he died in France on campaign.29 Ralph’s father, Sir Henry, was well known to Simon Felbrigg – Sir Henry was among Richard II’s most trusted advisors, executed on the order of Henry of Bolingbroke following the duke’s return from exile in 1399. Ralph was just coming of age at his father’s death and, evidently a pragmatic man, realigned the family’s loyalties, reclaimed his forfeit estate, and faithfully served the Lancastrian dynasty until his death. His bride, Katherine, was daughter of John, lord Clifton of Buckenham castle, Norfolk. Her brother Constantine had married into the Scales family, and

See M. C. Malíková, ‘Tombstones in St Vitus cathedral in Prague’ (Unpublished M.A. thesis, San Jose State University, 1994), Chapter 2, esp. pp. 41–43. DOI: https:// doi.org/10.31979/etd.2egx-cmsa. 28 The precise date of Katherine and Simon’s marriage is unknown, but dates before 1421: Richardson, Magna Carta Ancestry, p. 147. 29 Barker, Stone Fidelity, pp. 260–66. 27

244

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

given the lapse of years since Sir Henry Green’s death, it is likely through the Scales connection that Katherine met Simon Felbrigg.30 While yet a young widow, Katherine hired the acclaimed Derbyshire alabasters Thomas Prentys and Robert Sutton ‘to make and carve well’ a double-effigy tomb for herself and Ralph, holding hands. The contract that commissioned this memorial is another of the few that survive, and like that pertaining to the Westminster tomb has provided scholars an opportunity to examine the surviving monument alongside its commissioning document.31 Katherine appears, as per the contract, richly clad in a ceremonial surcote ouverte, alongside Ralph, who is depicted as ‘an esquire armed at all points’. The figures were to be ‘gilded, painted and arrayed with colours’, which would formerly have picked out the heraldic insignia of the Green family that are also carved into Ralph’s coat (the carving was not explicitly requested in the contract); likely Katherine’s mantle was formerly painted with the Clifton arms and her family’s device would certainly have been among those formerly painted on the tomb chest’s shields.32 The monument lacks any inscription or obvious gap where one might formerly have been.33 Exquisitely carved, the Lowick tomb provides relatively little biographical detail about either Katherine or Ralph, beyond conveying parentage and the appearance of great wealth. Coss surveyed it closely when undertaking his study of the meaning of hand-holding on effigies and found the figures ‘detached’, stiff, and distant, concluding that the monument ‘illustrated the sheer difficulty of depicting intimate details in this medium’.34 Yet the Lowick example offers further evidence for his argument about the rise in popularity of hand-holding double effigies corresponding to the increased prevalence of jointure agreements in marriage settlements. While Ralph and Katherine were married for only three years before his death, she held a jointure that left her in control of a large estate centred on Lowick after his early death abroad – an estate that Ralph’s younger brother and heir sought

F. Blomefield, ‘Hundred of Shropham: Old-Bukenham’, in An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk: Volume 1 (London, 1805), pp. 369–94. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/topographical-hist-norfolk/ vol1/pp369-394. 31 See the contract, Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, pp. 217–24. 32 The arms of women’s families appear most often on tombs women commissioned, as Barbara Harris has demonstrated, with roughly half of tombs commissioned by women including heraldry or badges associated with the woman’s natal family (compared to less than one-quarter of male commissions): B. J. Harris, English Aristocratic Women and the Fabric of Piety, 1450–1550 (Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 44–45. 33 On whether a detached inscription may formerly have accompanied the tomb, see Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, p. 220. 34 Coss, The Lady, p. 95. Barker uses the same word, ‘detached’, to describe the pair of effigies, concluding that ‘the overall effect is to render the joined hands as an independent motif, connected to bur separable from the two sculpted figures, similar to the use of heraldry, costume, and other symbolic attributes’: Stone Fidelity, p. 231. 30

THE BRASS OF MARGARET OF CIESZYN AND ASSOCIATED MONUMENTS245

to recover by means of a lawsuit.35 The hand-holding explicitly requested in her contract with Prentys and Sutton can be readily accommodated with the detachment Coss and others have perceived if it is recognised not as a means of recording deep affection but instead designed to strengthen her position with regard to the Greene estate by bolstering local perception of the childless widow Katherine as Ralph’s natural heir.36 In the event, neither Katherine nor Simon were buried beneath the monuments they commissioned to commemorate their first spouses. Instead, we know from her 1459 will that Simon was interred in the choir at Blackfriars in Norwich, where Katherine also requested to be buried.37 The church itself survives but since the Dissolution has been used primarily as a civic space, and any monument that once marked Katherine and Simon’s graves is lost, depriving scholars of the opportunity to learn if the Felbrigg brass’s representation of Margaret of Cieszyn might have inspired Katherine Clifton to commission a more individual memorial the second time she had the responsibility to provide one. There is, however, a tantalising possibility that the Felbrigg monument may have directly inspired an unusual early sixteenth-century brass to another female courtier that survives in fragments at St Swithun’s Church, in East Grinstead, Sussex. In that church, plucked from the rubble of a tower that fell in the eighteenth century, is a brass inscription plate that formerly accompanied three figures with heraldic shields described by antiquary Sir William Barrell.38 The (lost) central figure of a lady commemorated Dame Katherine (d.1505), daughter of Thomas, lord Scales, alongside her two husbands, Sir Thomas Grey and Richard Lewkenor, esq. While the contract for this posthumous memorial has been lost, Katherine’s will that provided her instruction for it survives; in the will, she bequeaths her body for burial in the north aisle at East Grinstead church, where she was patron, and requests her executors to make a tomb over me, a stone … with pictures of my two husbands … and my picture … between them … with escutcheons of their arms and mine enjoined together … and a plate to be set in the wall over my tomb and therein my arms and such scripture as my executors and friends seem best … to be made showing what I was …39 See Barker, Stone Fidelity, pp. 260–61. Barker agrees, commenting that through the tomb Katherine Clifton was able to ‘persistently present her claims to Ralph’s lands’: Stone Fidelity, p. 261. Unlike Richard II’s contract for the Westminster tomb, Katherine does not specify which hands are held: Badham and Oosterwijk, ‘English Tomb Contracts’, p. 219. 37 Blomefield, ‘North Erpingham’. 38 Barrell recorded a lady and two men in armour, plus shields showing the arms of Scales, Grey, and Lewkenor: C. Metcalfe, ‘Fragments from Dame Kateryne Grey’s Monument, St. Swithun’s, East Grinstead, Sussex’, Monumental Brass Society Bulletin, 131 (2016), 612–13. 39 PROB 11/14/634 (1505). 35 36

246

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

Katherine must have conveyed separately to the three men she named her executors what she meant by ‘showing what I was’: the surviving (English) inscription details her parentage and marriages before giving over two lines to describing her career as ‘one of the ladies to queen Elizabeth, wife of blessed memory of Edward IV, and afterwards to queen Elizabeth, wife unto our sovereign lord Henry VIIth’.40 By contrast, so little detail is offered about Katherine’s husbands that the first – named as Sir Thomas Grey – has yet to be definitively identified.41 The lady buried at East Grinstead was likely the same ‘Katherine, daughter of Thomas Scales’ named in a will dated 1436, which would have made her an adult in 1460 when her Lancastrian-sympathising father was killed at the Tower of London by a besieging Yorkist force.42 She appears to have been an illegitimate child: Thomas Scales’ only surviving legitimate child was his heiress, Elizabeth, whose estate was sufficiently enticing that she married as her second husband Anthony Woodville, heir of the Earl Rivers and brother of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen. Katherine Scales, therefore, appears to have won her place within the queen’s household through her wealthy sister Elizabeth’s connections to the Woodville family. Her own first marriage into the Grey family may in turn have come through Elizabeth Woodville’s relations with that family – helping to explain the lasting connection Katherine Scales had with the Yorkist queen’s family and also, perhaps, Katherine’s continued use of the Grey name even after her remarriage to Richard Lewkenor, the marriage that brought her ultimately to East Grinstead. A ‘Dame Katherine Grey’ is both named among mourners affiliated with Elizabeth Woodville’s family at that queen’s funeral and mentioned in association with such intimate tasks as procuring a wet nurse for Elizabeth of York’s royal babies.43 While she lacked the status that Margaret of Cieszyn brought from Bohemia, Katherine Scales The full inscription reads: ‘Here under this marbile stone lyeth dame kateryne Grey dawghter of Thomas sumtyme lorde Scales wyff to Sir Thomas Grey knyght and banneret and after wyff to honourable esqwyer Richard lewkenor the elder of Brambilletey and one of the ladys to quene Elizabeth wyff of blessid memory Edward the iiiith and afterwerde to qwene Elizabeth wyff unto oure soffereyne lorde Kyng henry the viith the wyche passid owte of this transsitory worlde the ixth day of June the yere of owre lorde god M CCCCC V and the same dame kateryne and Richard her husbonde fowndyd indoed and inorned thys present church of Estgrenstede to the lawde and honour of god with dyverse ornamentis and a almeshowse of iii parsons on whose sowlis Jesus for thy bitter passion gyve them thy mercyfulle compassion. Amen.’ 41 Metcalfe, ‘Fragments’, p. 613. 42 The bequest included a bed with its furniture, a primer, and a goblet and cover made of silver and gilt; the latter items may be the ‘mass book’ and chalice she bequeathed to Doctor Thomas Brent, clerk, one of her executors: PROB 11/14/634 (1505). For the 1436 bequest, see Metcalfe, ‘Fragments’, p. 612. 43 Metcalfe, ‘Fragments’, p. 612. 40

THE BRASS OF MARGARET OF CIESZYN AND ASSOCIATED MONUMENTS247

enjoyed a similar, independent career as a lady in the household of an English queen and wanted her position recorded for posterity on her epitaph. While it is impossible to prove that the brass to Margaret of Cieszyn directly inspired that commissioned by Katherine Scales, the two can be plausibly linked. East Grinstead is a long way from Felbrigg, Norfolk, but Felbrigg would have been known to Katherine: her father Thomas, Lord Scales, was cousin to Simon Felbrigg, a fellow Knight of the Garter, and one of the trustees named in Simon’s 1442 will. Nor did Thomas’s connection to Felbrigg end at Simon’s death: he purchased Felbrigg manor following Katherine Clifton’s death in 1459, and, at this point if not earlier, his daughter Katherine would have had opportunity to know intimately the tomb within the church where ‘her arms’ of Scales appeared in the windows impaled with those of Felbrigg.44 The unusually gender-balanced representation on the Felbrigg brass did not emerge spontaneously but appears to have been modelled on the balance of interest shown to Anne of Bohemia and Richard II on their tomb at Westminster. In both cases, the most notable innovation is the inclusion within the inscription of information about the women’s lives beyond their parentage or marriage – especially noteworthy when recalling that both of the tombs were commissioned by the women’s husbands. The Felbrigg brass may have been seen and appreciated by Katherine Scales, who commissioned a monument with a similarly structured inscription at East Grinstead, where her own words survive describing the ‘scripture’ that accompanies her monument as one that ‘shows what [she] was’. At Felbrigg, the brass also depicted the arms of Margaret’s patron; the depiction of heraldry illustrating ties of association was a fairly common occurrence on the tombs of knights but is exceptional as a means of recording relationships between women.45 The brass is intriguing because it hints at the potential for double effigies to present women’s life stories alongside – as equal to, as well as intrinsically linked to – those of men. From our present vantage point, it is much harder to consider Katherine Clifton’s tomb at Lowick as successfully representing its female commissioner, who was relegated (as most medieval women were) to being identified solely through the heraldic insignia she inherited from her father. While the double effigy as a commemorative form therefore offered an opportunity for a balanced representation – showing both men and women ‘as they were’ – the form itself was insufficient on its own, and it is hard to see the parity of interest at Felbrigg simply as an extension of the large class of Simon Felbrigg’s mother, Elizabeth, was daughter of Roger, 3rd Lord Scales; the same Roger was great-grandfather to Thomas Scales. For Elizabeth’s parentage, details of Simon’s will, and the history of Felbrigg manor, see Blomefield, ‘North Erpingham’. 45 See, for example, the shields of associates that appear on the tomb chest of Reginald, Lord Cobham, at Lingfield: N. Saul, Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and their Monuments, 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), pp. 153–55. 44

248

KELCEY WILSON-LEE

double effigies, most of which lack such informative inscriptions and exceptional uses of women’s heraldry. Nor can we be certain that medieval viewers would have recognised all the elements of special interest we see in Margaret’s story at Felbrigg: a Latin inscription would simply not have been legible to most parishioners. More apparent would have been the arms of Anne of Bohemia, linked with the royal arms, and these probably were enough to bolster the memory of Margaret’s courtly connections. One final observation is that the monuments considered here represent unions that failed to produce a male heir; most of these couples were childless, and Margaret produced only daughters through whose marriage the Felbrigg estate transferred to another Norfolk family. Her monument, and the other double effigies here, were therefore not designed to preserve the memory of a dynastic union for the benefit of progeny. Perhaps more was recorded about the lives of Margaret of Cieszyn, Anne of Bohemia, and Katherine Scales precisely because no one needed to remember them principally as a link in a dynastic chain; they were not required to be depicted as what Saul has referred to as ‘the bearer of a patrilineal discourse’, the normal lot for women when it comes to commemoration.46 What would have been seen, therefore, as a failure in their roles as wives may have meant that, ultimately, they were able to be remembered more individually as women.

46

Saul, English Church Monuments, p. 292.

13 The Patronage of Queen Isabella (d. 1358): Monuments of the Royal Household at Friars Minor London1 CHRISTIAN STEER

N



igel Saul was the first to note Richard II’s obsession with burying favoured courtiers close to his tomb at Westminster Abbey.2 What is less well known is that the king was in fact copying a practice established some fifty years before by his great-grandmother, Isabella of France, in the great Franciscan church by Newgate in the city of London. It was here where the magnificent – but now lost – alabaster effigy of the Queen Mother was placed above her grave in the choir and close to the memorial slabs for members of her own household. She was buried with the heart of her murdered consort and – so it is alleged – near to the original resting place of her lover Mortimer.3 It is the purpose of this essay to examine the commemorative programme of Queen Isabella and to consider this as a precedent for the subsequent popularity of courtly burials and monuments at Grey Friars church. Their tombs are long gone, but the fortunate survival of a register of tombs, compiled in the 1520s, reveals a landscape of the dead that

I am grateful to Caroline Barron, Paul Cockerham, and David Lepine for their comments on an earlier version of this chapter; to the late Jerome Bertram for advice on the Waltham brass; to Caroline Dunn for information from her database of Queen Isabella’s household; to Luke Giraudet for his comments on the queen’s anniversary held at Grey Friars; and to Anne Rudloff Stanton for kindly sharing copies of difficultto-find references with me. 2 Saul, Richard II, pp. 461–62. See also: N. Saul, ‘Richard II and Westminster Abbey’, in The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey, eds J. Blair and B. Golding (Oxford, 1996), pp. 196–218, at pp. 210–12, and N. Saul, ‘The Fragments of the Golafre Brass in Westminster Abbey’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 15:1 (1992), pp. 19–32. 3 The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334 from Brotherton Collection MS 29, ed. W. R. Childs and J. Taylor, Yorkshire Archaeological Society 147 (1991), pp. 144–45. 1

Figure 13.1. Friars Minor London

Figure 13.2. Choir of Friars Minor London

252

CHRISTIAN STEER

commemorated the great, the good, and the ordinary, and which served as a mausoleum for loyal Ricardians. It will be argued that it was this royal precedent that influenced King Richard’s commemorative masterplan when he set out to surround his own tomb at Westminster with the remains of favoured liegemen, so that he would be flanked by them in death, as he had been in life. *** Queen Isabella, widow of Edward II and daughter of Philip IV of France, died at Hertford castle on 22 August 1358. She was buried in the choir of the Franciscan church in London (Fig. 13.2) close to the tomb of her aunt and predecessor as queen consort, Margaret of France, who had died in 1318. Both queens were enthusiastic benefactors of the Friars Minor: around 1300, Queen Margaret paid for the construction of a chapel dedicated to her grandfather St Louis at the east end of the nave.4 This generosity was surpassed by her gift of some 2,000 marks towards the rebuilding of the great nave in the years that followed.5 She was considered as the ‘first foundress of our new church’ and was interred immediately before the high altar at the east end of the choir.6 It is notable that she was buried in Grey Friars and not in the Confessor’s chapel at Westminster Abbey near the remains of Edward I and his first wife, Eleanor of Castile. This suggests that Grey Friars church was the queen’s choice and that arrangements for her tomb had been made during her lifetime. In her devotion to the followers of St Francis, she was following a tradition established by earlier queens and princesses in her native France.7 Queen Isabella carried on this tradition and was herself a notable benefactor of the Franciscan order. In September 1311, for instance, she gave a cloth of gold for the high altar of their London church.8 She also provided

H. Johnstone, ‘The Chapel of St Louis, Greyfriars, London’, EHR, 56 (1941), 447–50. On the architectural development of this church: N. Holder, The Friaries of Medieval London: From Foundation to Dissolution (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 66–96. 5 C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London (Aberdeen, 1915), pp. 35–36. 6 Ibid., pp. 71–72. 7 M. Robson, ‘Queen Isabella (c. 1295/1358) and the Greyfriars: An Example of Royal Patronage Based on Her Accounts for 1357/1358’, Franciscan Studies, 65 (2007), 325–48, at pp. 346–47; cf. L. Slater, ‘Defining Queenship at Greyfriars London, c. 1300–58’, Gender and History, 27 (2015), 53–76. The heart of Eleanor of Provence (d. 1291), consort of Henry III, was also interred in London Grey Friars together with the remains of their daughter, Beatrice, countess of Richmond – styled duchess of Brittany in the register – who died in 1275: Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 71 and discussed in C. Steer, ‘Royal and Noble Commemoration in the Mendicant Houses of Medieval London, c. 1240–1540’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2008 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. M. Barron and C. Burgess, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 20 (Donington, 2010), pp. 117–42, at pp. 127–28. 8 The Household Book of Queen Isabella of England, ed. F. D. Brackley and G. Hermansen (Edmonton, 1971), pp. 234–35. 4

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON253

the friars with property with which to enlarge their precinct, a further £70 in ready money towards the construction programme, contributed to the glazing of the east windows, and, in 1357, paid 14s. to Ralph, a member of the community, for repairs to one of the windows in the Lady chapel.9 The household accounts for Queen Isabella suggest that she fell ill in February 1358 when messengers were sent three times from her residence at Hertford castle to London for medicine or to fetch her physician, master Laurence.10 She was evidently well enough to travel to London in April, where she stayed for a month, before returning to Hertford. She died on 22 August. An esquire of her household, John de Romsey, rode to the king with news of the queen’s death. Isabella’s corpse was prepared for burial, dressed in her wedding gown of red samite lined with yellow sindon, and placed in a lead casket. In the queen’s inventory, this gown was recorded amongst her precious objects and not with her other gowns, which suggests that her wedding dress had been carefully preserved with the express intention of clothing her mortal remains.11 The lead casket was in turn enclosed in a wooden coffin that was placed in the chapel at Hertford castle on 25 August. Here it remained for three months – which suggests she had been embalmed – attended by fourteen paupers who kept vigil until 23 November when a Mass was celebrated at Hertford for the queen’s soul. The funeral cortege set out for London on 24 November with forty torch bearers and with alms distributed to the poor along the route. It arrived in the city the following day, and was met by the king and his household at the home of John Galeys in Mile End before the cortege entered the city at Aldgate, making its way along Aldgate Street, which had been cleared especially for the occasion, into Cornhill and CPR, 1350–54, p. 195; Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, pp. 157, 165; A Survey of London by John Stow, ed. C. L. Kingsford, 2 vols (Oxford, 1908) vol. 1, p. 317; BL, MS Cotton Galba, E xiv, f. 42v. 10 E. A. Bond, ‘Notices of the Last Days of Isabella, Queen of Edward the Second, Drawn from an Account of the Expenses of Her Household’, Archaeologia, 35 (1854), 453–69, at pp. 462–63. On renewed interest in Queen Isabella, see for example: A. R. Stanton, ‘The Personal Geography of a Dowager Queen: Isabella of France and Her Inventory’, in Moving Women Moving Objects (400–1500), ed. T. C. Hamilton and M. Proctor-Tiffany (Leiden, 2019), pp. 205–27; C. Dunn, ‘Serving Isabella of France: From Queen Consort to Dowager Queen’, in Royal and Elite Households in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. T. Earenfight (Leiden, 2018), pp. 169–201, at pp.181–82; A. R. Stanton, ‘What the Queen Saw: Imagery in the Household of Isabella of France’, in The Elite Household in England, 1100–1550: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. C. M. Woolgar, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 28 (Donington, 2018), pp. 393–411; and L. Benz St John, Three Medieval Queens: Queenship and the Crown in Fourteenth-Century England (New York, 2012), passim. 11 J. Barker, Stone Fidelity: Marriage and Emotion in Medieval Tomb Sculpture (Woodbridge, 2020), pp. 75–77, 91–95. On the wedding robe, see also Slater, ‘Defining Queenship’, at pp. 66–67. 9

254

CHRISTIAN STEER

then Cheapside and proceeding west through Bladder Street and along the Shambles before reaching Grey Friars church.12 Here the coffin was covered with two cloths of a fine white material called camaca, a type of Lucchese silk. The queen’s funeral, attended by Edward III, nobility, clergy, and her household, was officiated by Simon Islip, archbishop of Canterbury, on 27 November and her remains interred in the choir of the Friars Minor. Her accounts record that four great candles burned upon her tomb in the days after her funeral.13 The Grey Friars register records that Isabella was commemorated by a tumba elevata de alabastro and that et sub pectore imaginis eius jacet cor Regis Edwardi, marti sui.14 It seems incredible that under the carved breast of her effigy lay the heart of the man in whose murder she was complicit. The description is ambiguous, and it is unclear whether King Edward’s embalmed heart was buried with her or if it was contained within a casket that she held in her hands. It is, however, striking that Queen Isabella exercised remarkable forethought at the death of her husband in 1327 and evidently made arrangements to preserve his heart so that it could join with her own remains when the time came.15 It is equally surprising to read in the Anonimalle Chronicle that the London Grey Friars also housed the remains of Isabella’s lover, Roger

CCR, 1354–1360, p. 484. The order to clean the streets of Bishopsgate and Aldgate of refuse and filth was made on 20 November before the cortege had left Hertford and – presumably – before it was known at which gate the procession would enter the city. On 4 February 1359, Galeys was paid £10 for accommodating the funeral cortege at his property in Mile End, Issues of the Exchequer from King Henry III to King Henry VI, ed. F. Devon (London, 1837), p. 172. 13 F. D. Brackley, ‘Isabella of France, Queen of England 1308–1358, and the Late Medieval Cult of the Dead’, Canadian Journal of History, 15 (1980), 23–47, at pp. 24–32. See also: W. M. Ormrod, ‘Queenship, Death and Agency: The Commemoration of Isabella of France and Philippa of Hainault’, in Memory and Commemoration in Medieval England, ed. Barron and Burgess, pp. 87–103, at pp. 91–96. 14 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 74. 15 Prof. Ormrod has suggested that the heart was preserved at the London Grey Friars from the time of King Edward’s death and that Isabella planned her own burial within this friary church from as early as 1327: Ormrod, ‘Queenship, Death and Agency’, pp. 89–90. On heart burials, see: D. Westerhof, Death and the Noble Body in Medieval England (Woodbridge, 2008), pp. 51–54, 82–86. King Edward was buried in St Peter’s Abbey, Gloucester (today the cathedral), where a magnificent alabaster monument marks his grave: J. Barlow, R. Bryant, C. Heighway, C. Jeens, and D. Smith, Edward II: His Last Months and His Monument, The Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Monographs 2 (2015); A. McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England (University Park, PA, 2000), pp. 82–91 and D. Welander, The History, Art and Architecture of Gloucester Cathedral (Stroud, 1991), pp. 144–50. 12

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON255

Mortimer, earl of March, executed at Tyburn in November 1330.16 It was not unusual for the Franciscans to care for the remains of noble prisoners who had been executed: earlier in the same year, Edmund, earl of Kent, was beheaded at Winchester, and his remains were buried in the city’s Grey Friars church.17 Nonetheless, it is remarkable that a queen of England was buried near the grave of her lover but entombed with the heart of her murdered husband. An entry in the queen’s household accounts in February 1359 reveals that construction of her tomb at Grey Friars had begun during her lifetime. A payment of £96 18s. 11d. was paid to Agnes de Ramsay in addition to a further sum of £10 ‘for a variety of work concerning the queen’s tomb’.18 Other craftsmen were employed on the tomb including Andrew Faber, who was paid £110 for the iron railings – presumably with prickets for wax lights to be placed during her exequies – and £5 to Robert de Burton, mason, ‘for certain needs placed about the tomb of the said queen’.19 It is possible these were the four archangels that were noted in the Grey Friars register. These payments were made by the late queen’s receiver and administrator of her estate, Richard Ravenser, who continued to oversee the arrangements for her tomb until 1364, when a payment of 13s. 4d. was made to the friars for a wooden canopy (a tester), together with a further 13s. 4d. for painting it.20 Queen Isabella’s tomb was of considerable splendour and craftsmanship, and there can be little doubt that it served as a conspicuous centre-piece in the anniversary services celebrated at Grey Friars organised by Ravenser in the years immediately after the queen’s death. The celebrations in 1359 were lavish: torches weighing 825lbs were carried by paupers, who were paid 4d. each and provided with a black gown, accompanied by Marshals Thomas de Canterbury and John de Hulcote.

The Anonimalle Chronicle 1307 to 1334, ed. Childs and Taylor, pp. 144–45, and also A Survey of London, ed. Kingsford, vol. 1, p. 320. Mortimer’s tomb was not recorded in the Grey Friars register, and he had evidently been exhumed and his remains either transplanted to their Coventry house (although there is no evidence of this in the list of tombs for their church made c. 1400: BL, Harley MS 6033, ff. 17–19), or taken directly to Wigmore Abbey (Herefordshire). On Mortimer’s reburial, see CPR, 1330–33, p. 403 and R. R. Davies, ‘Mortimer, Roger, First Earl of March (1287–1330), Regent, Soldier, and Magnate’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/19354. 17 S. L. Waugh, ‘Edmund [Edmund of Woodstock], First Earl of Kent (1301–1330), Magnate’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/8506. 18 On Agnes de Ramsay, see C. M. Barron, ‘Women Traders and Artisans in London (act. c. 1200–c. 1500’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/52233. 19 Brackley, ‘Isabella of France, Queen of England 1308–1358’, pp. 28–29; F. D. Blackley, ‘The Tomb of Isabella of France, Wife of Edward II of England’, International Society for the Study of Church Monuments Bulletin, 8 (1983), 161–64; Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 170. 20 Brackley, ‘Tomb of Isabella of France’, p. 161: cf. to the surviving tester for the Black Prince at Canterbury. 16

256

CHRISTIAN STEER

As well as these torches, there were four mortars (or mortar-lights) provided, each of which was filled with oil or wax with a wick and placed on stands. Three cloths of gold were placed over the tomb. Amongst those in attendance were the chancellor, William Edington, bishop of Winchester; the treasurer, John Sheppey, bishop of Rochester; and Henry, duke of Lancaster, together with friars from the four orders. Simon Langham, abbot of Westminster, was also present: de p(ar) le roy. Tresch(er) en Dieu. Come l’anniu(er)saire n(ot)re t(re)sche(r) dame (et) miere qi dieux assoill(e) soit a celebrer en l’eglise des freres mesneurs a londres le vint (et) second iour de cest p(re)sent moys d’augst, vous prions t(re)sche(re)ment de cuer q(ue) toutes autres choses lessees soiez p(ar) celle encheson a londres a la dite eglise le vint (et) primier iour du dit moys a heure de vespres au dirige (et) lendemeyn a la messe ouesq(ue)z les autres Prelatz qi y serront lors assemblez p(ur) la cause susdite, Et ce ne veuilliez en nulle man(ier)e lesser pur amour de nous (et) sicome nous no(us) fions de vous, don(ne) souz n(ot)re prim(i)e(r) seal a n(ot)re manoir de hau(er)yng, le ix iour d’augst.21 [From the king. Beloved by God. As the anniversary of our dear lady and mother, may God absolve her, is to be celebrated in the church of the Friars Minor in London on the twenty-second day of this present month of August, we very dearly request of you, from our heart, that for this occasion all other things be left at the said church in London on the twenty-first day of the said month, from the hour of vespers until the dirige and the next day at the mass, with the other prelates who will be assembled there for the aforesaid reason, and you should not wish to leave this in any way, for love of us, just as we trust in you. Given under our first seal at our manor of Havering, the ninth day of August].

The occasion was, unsurprisingly, one of great magnificence with an impressive list of mourners from the royal court and ecclesiastical dignitaries. It is unclear what role, if any, Queen Isabella played in the burial of Roger Mortimer in the London Grey Friars. Her own commemorative intentions are, however, clear, and the role of her receiver and administer, Richard Ravenser, was crucial in carrying out her intentions. It is striking that at least seven monuments for members of her household were located in close proximity to the queen’s monument. This suggests that the Queen Mother was just as attentive to the tombs of her servants in Grey Friars church as she was her own monument. ***

21

Westminster Abbey Muniments, MS 12215.

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON257

The Grey Friars register is careful to record the tombs of important patrons and benefactors of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries who had contributed to the construction of the friary church. Queens Margaret and Isabella were joined by other members of the royal family whose enthusiasm for the friars encouraged the aristocracy, knights, and the merchant princes of London to follow suit.22 Their devotion to the Franciscan order is best observed through the memorials that marked their graves throughout the church: in the nave, before the altars at the east end, the ambulatory, choir, and four chapels dedicated to Our Lady, All Hallows, the Apostles, and St Francis. Others were buried in the two cloisters and in the cemetery. A change in this tombscape occurs around 1320 when a lady called Typhania, described as magistra (‘governess’) to Queen Isabella, was interred in the ambulatory – also known as the walking-place – at the southern entrance to the church. She has been identified as the queen’s former nurse Theophania de St Pierre, lady of Buignicourt in Hainault, and wife of Sir John de Morviller.23 She was dead by December 1317 and was buried sub lapide insculpta imagine mulieris (‘under a slab incised with the image of a woman’).24 Her status as a member of the queen’s household was evidently taken from the epitaph engraved on the slab: this also recorded her royal mistress as ‘the noble lady Isabella Queen of England’. Theophania de St Pierre is one of the earliest examples of a tomb patron outside the super-rich circles of former benefactors to be accorded burial in this friary church. She is thought to have died around the same time as another of the queen’s retainers, Joan Purle, who was also buried in the ambulatory, near the entrance to the choir. Her grave was marked by a lapide, without further description, where her position as valens domicella Regine Isabelle, a ‘worthy Lady in Waiting to Queen Isabella’, was noted on her epitaph.25 The patronage of the friars by the former queen consort suggests that it was through her influence that two close members of her household were laid to rest within the convent walls of her church. It was not only the queen’s female servants who were buried and commemorated at Grey Friars. Robert Lambourne was the queen’s confessor from about Steer, ‘Royal and Noble Commemoration’, pp. 129–30, 137–42 and C. Steer, ‘The Order of St Francis in Medieval London: Urban Benefactors and Their Tombs’, in Saints and Their Cults in Medieval England: Proceedings of the 2015 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. S. Powell, Harlaxton Medieval Studies 27 (Donington, 2017), pp. 172–98. 23 Dunn, ‘Serving Isabella of France’, pp. 181–82. On the queen’s household, more generally, see H. Johnstone, ‘The Lesser Households’, in Tout, Chapters, vol. 5, pp. 231–89, at pp. 241–51. 24 CPR, 1317–1321, p. 66; Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 100. It was unusual for monuments to contain a date of death before the middle of the fourteenth century, and this was the case for London. On this: N. Saul, English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009), p. 343. 25 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 104. 22

Figure 13.3. Graves and Memorials in Friars Minor London

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON259

1325 until 1341. In 1321, he was guardian of the London house and later served as custodian. In 1343, Brother Robert was ill and nearly blind, and it was through Isabella’s petition to Clement VI that Lambourne was licensed to remain in London with a friar as his secretary, one clerk, and two other servants. He was allowed to keep the books given to him by the queen.26 He was probably dead by the late 1340s or early 1350s and was buried in at the west end of the choir stalls, on the north side, and under the lamp, where his grave was marked by ‘a long slab’. His epitaph recorded that he was confessor to Queen Isabella and also the son of Lord Lambourne and the last heir of the barony.27 The queen’s earlier intervention to the papal court on his behalf reveals her affection and concern for his welfare. This was also expressed after his death when she paid 13s. 8d. as a pittance on 1 March 1358 on his anniversary.28 There is no record of the Queen Mother ordering the construction of a memorial for Friar Lambourne, but her interest in his well-being makes this likely. This concern of Queen Isabella to provide for the burials of her household at Grey Friars was evidently selective and a consequence, perhaps, of their deaths in royal service when visiting the city either with the queen, or on her behalf. A trusted member of Isabella’s household was William Galeys, who was described as valens armiger in the inscription on his tomb.29 There were a number of men of this name – and of Waleys and Walshman, variants of the surname – during the 1330s and ’40s, amongst whom was the imposter claiming to be Edward II, and another, a girdler of the city of London.30 Galeys, servant of Isabella, was evidently a trusted confidant and acted on her behalf in the foundation of a collegiate church at Cheylesmore, near Coventry, in the autumn of 1347 that was to be dedicated to Our Lady. Property belonging to Isabella and to her son, King Edward, was given to maintain a community of twelve chaplains and their warden who in return were to celebrate daily for the benefit of Edward III, his mother Queen Isabella, Edward, the prince of Wales, and for the king’s late Calendar of Entries in the Papal Registers Relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 1342–62 (London, 1897), vol. 3, p. 88; Robson, ‘Queen Isabella (c. 1295/1358) and the Greyfriars’, pp. 337–38. 27 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 75. This is a mistake as there was no barony of Lambourne. 28 BL, MS Cotton Galba, E xiv, f. 33v. 29 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 100. 30 On William Galeys, who appeared in Cologne, Germany, in September 1338 claiming to be Edward II, see, for example, S. Phillips, ‘“Edward II” in Italy: English and Welsh Political Exiles and Fugitives in Continental Europe, 1322–1364’, in Thirteenth Century England X: Proceedings of the Durham Conference 2003, ed. M. Prestwich, R. Britnell, and R. Frame (Woodbridge, 2005), pp. 209–26. William Waleys, girdler of London, was appointed guardian of Henry Wynter in 1363: Calendar of the Letter-Books of the City of London: Letter-Book G 1352–74, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1905), p. 157. 26

260

CHRISTIAN STEER

father, Edward II, and brother, John, earl of Cornwall. Galeys too was included in the named beneficiaries of this royal college, which suggests the level of trust he enjoyed with the royal family.31 He acted on behalf of Isabella in Coventry and as her agent for her manor at Cheylesmore, which she held for life following the deaths of Robert de Montalt and his wife Emma in 1329 and 1330 respectively.32 Galeys was perhaps her bailiff, and in 1347–48 he appointed attorneys to act on his behalf when he was away from Coventry. During this particular absence, he was in London, where he acted on the Queen Mother’s behalf in a property transaction in the parish of St Thomas the Apostle in the city of London in December 1347.33 He evidently died shortly afterwards – perhaps an early victim of the Black Death – and in 1350 his estate was pursuing a debt of £100 owed to Galeys by Thomas le Chaloner of Coventry. His will has not been found, but we know from the action taken against Chaloner that the executors were Master William Galeys and William Walshman, who were probably a son and kinsman.34 The foundation of the queen’s college at Cheylesmore evidently foundered after the death of Galeys. The materials of the incomplete church were used in 1357 during the final construction of a second collegiate church established by the Guild of St John the Baptist on land given by the Queen Mother at Bablake under the direction of Walshman, now Isabella’s bailiff in Coventry.35 His kinsman William Galeys the elder was interred at Grey Friars, where a ‘slab’ marked a double grave for him and for his son Robert, a little north of that for Theophania and at the entrance to the chapel of St Francis. His loyal service to the queen earned him the epithet of ‘valiant esquire’.36 This arrangement for the remains of the queen’s household, and for members of their families to be entombed at Grey Friars, may also be seen in the case of Margery Romsey. She died between 1347 and 1354 and received a pension of £10 for her service to the queen.37 This annuity suggests a close regard between Isabella and her attendant, which accounts for Margery’s interment in the prestigious chapel of All Hallows.38 Her tomb was not described, but from its location in the centre of the chapel it could be nothing other than flat and a product of CPR, 1345–1348, p. 428. Warwickshire Feet of Fines, vol. 2: 1284–1345, ed. E. Stokes and L. Drucker, Dugdale Society 11 (London, 1939), p. 133. On Isabella and Coventry, see R. Goddard, Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation: Coventry 1043–1355 (Woodbridge, 2004), passim. 33 E 40/4349; Calendar of the Letter-Books of the City of London: Letter-Book F 1337–1352, ed. R. R. Sharpe (London, 1905), p. 173. Galeys evidently held property in the parish that was later acquired by the mercer Henry de Causton whose will was proved in 1350: London Metropolitan Archives, CLA/023/DW/01/078 (210). 34 C 241/128/61 and C 241/128/143. The estate pursued other debts and in 1352 sought £40 from John de Skarning also of Coventry: C 241/130/147. 35 VCH, Warwickshire ii, pp. 120–21. 36 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 100. 37 CPR, 1345–1348, p. 254; CPR 1354–1358, p. 99. 38 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 78. 31

32

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON261

one of the London workshops. Her epitaph noted her as ‘noble’, which – once again – suggests the guiding hand of her royal patron in the commissioning this memorial. The register also records another grave, to the right of Margery’s slab, for her son John, who was almost certainly the same John de Romsey who rode to the king with the news of Isabella’s death in August 1358.39 The entry for John describes his grave ‘in the floor’ and, therefore, either an incised slab or a brass.40 For the Romseys, mother and son, to be accorded burial in All Hallows chapel, at the Dextera Domini at Grey Friars church, suggests the esteem with which Margery and her son were held by the queen. The seventh and final tomb for a member of Isabella’s household was that for another of her Franciscan confessors, John Vye, who died sometime before 1358. His grave was at the west end of the chapel of All Hallows. The inscription on his memorial described him as a valens pater and confessor to Queen Isabella. His is the only known example, from all the tombs for members of the Queen Mother’s household, to contain a representation of the queen’s heraldic arms.41 His trusted status is suggested further in January 1358 when the queen gave 13s. 4d. pittance on the anniversary of his death. Ten days later, she provided John de Brockhampton, Vye’s successor as her confessor, and his socius, with 5s. 6d. for going to London to attend the obit of friar Vye.42 The descriptions of these tombs are brief and yet they all suggest that they were commemorated as loyal and highly respected members of Queen Isabella’s household. The use of ‘worthy’, ‘valiant’, and ‘noble’ also suggests a particular regard for these men and women, as does the care that the queen took in remembering the anniversaries of her former confessors. The location of the tombs of her familia is notable: three to be found in the ambulatory (de St Pierre, Purle, and Gayles), another in the choir (Lambourne), and three (both Romseys and Vye) in the chapel of All Hallows. All except John de Romsey died in Isabella’s lifetime, and it can hardly be a coincidence that these six household retainers were interred in the very church of which she was a special benefactor and where she intended her own tomb monument – with the heart of her husband – and close to the grave (whether empty or not) of her former lover. One important consequence of Queen Isabella’s tomb programme encouraged other servants, retainers, and officials of the royal family to seek burial and commemoration in this increasingly popular friary church. *** It was during the tumultuous summer of 1381 that one unfortunate royal attendant came to be interred in Grey Friars. William Appleton, physician and surgeon to the duke of Lancaster, who had entered the Franciscan order 39 40 41 42

Brackley, ‘Isabella of France, Queen of England 1308–1358’, p. 24. Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 78. Ibid., p. 79; Slater, ‘Defining Queenship’, at pp. 68–69. BL, MS Cotton Galba, E.xiv, ff. 33v, 37v.

262

CHRISTIAN STEER

in the late 1370s, was killed during the Peasants’ Revolt.43 It was because of his association with Gaunt that he earned the enmity of the mob, which caused him to flee from Newgate to the Tower of London, where he sought sanctuary. Neither this, nor his habit, were enough to protect him, and he was dragged out to Tower Hill and beheaded with the chancellor Simon Sudbury, archbishop of Canterbury, and Robert Hales, prior of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, and treasurer of England. Their heads were then exhibited on stakes and marched through the city to Westminster Abbey before they were set up on London Bridge. It is not known what became of Appleton’s head, but whatever was left of him was laid to rest before the Lady altar at the east end of her chapel at Grey Friars.44 In the years that followed, members of Queen Anne’s entourage, who died in more peaceful circumstances, were also buried and commemorated in the friary church. Her ladies in waiting, Katherine and Margaret, about whom nothing further is known, were marked by memorial slabs at the west end of the Lady chapel.45 It was during the turmoil of the Merciless Parliament of 1388 that household knights, advisors, and royal supporters were targeted, subjected to a sham trial, found guilty of treason, and either exiled – in some cases they had already fled – or condemned to death. Sir Nicholas Brembre, a former mayor of London and a partisan of King Richard, was hanged at Tyburn in February 1388. The Westminster chronicler commented favourably on how Brembre prepared for death. He was accompanied by friars with whom he devoutly recited the placebo and dirige on the route to Tyburn: his contrition and piety are said to have moved the crowds to tears.46 He was hanged and then finished off by having his throat cut.47 His remains were brought to Grey Friars and buried in the Appleton was retained by the duke at 40 marks per annum for life: S. ArmytageSmith, John of Gaunt (London, 1904), p. 248. 44 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 82 and R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (London, 1983), pp. 162–63, 210. Sudbury’s head was returned to his parish church of St Gregory, Sudbury (Suff.), where it is today stored in the church safe. 45 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 87. Other ladies in waiting to Queen Anne were buried and commemorated elsewhere. One noted example is Margaret of Silesia (Cieszyn), the first wife of Sir Simon Felbrigg, who died in 1416. Their brass survives in the parish church of St Margaret in Felbrigg (Norf.). On this brass, see the contribution by Kelcey Wilson-Lee in this volume 46 Westminster Chronicle, p. 314. 47 Historia siue narracio de modo et forma mirabilis parliamenti apud Westmonasterium anno domini millesimo CCCLXXXVI, Regni vero Regis Ricardi Secundi post conquestum anno decimo, per Thomam Favent clericum indictata, ed. M. McKisack, Camden Miscellany, 14 (1926), pp. 16–18, at p. 18. Favent’s account is translated in A. Galloway, ‘Appendix: History or Narration Concerning the Manner and Form of the Miraculous Parliament at Westminster in the Year 1386, in the Tenth Year of the Reign of King Richard the Second after the Conquest, Declared by Thomas Favent, Clerk’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in 43

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON263

Apostles chapel, south of the choir, where he was commemorated by a magno lapide.48 Brembre was recorded as a valens miles and then as mayor of London. He was buried next to Sir John Philipot, another former mayor, which suggests the influence of Brembre’s widow Idonia, and sister-in-law to Philipot.49 She went on to marry Sir Bartholomew Raddington, comptroller of the king’s wardrobe, who served as warden of London during the king’s quarrel with the city in 1391–92. Her remarriage to another Ricardian perhaps accounts for the description of Sir Nicholas as a ‘worthy knight’ in the inscription on his tomb. It was left to another widow to arrange the interment of her executed husband’s remains. The much-hated Sir Robert Tresilian, justice of the King’s Bench, was dragged out of sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, tried, and sentenced to death at Tyburn. According to Henry Knighton, he put up some resistance and was forced on to the scaffold, where he was stripped naked and hung from the gibbet before his throat was slit.50 His widow Emmaline (Emma) petitioned for his remains to be buried in Grey Friars, where they were laid to rest in the chapel of St Francis. His memorial was set within the paving of the chapel and was probably a monumental brass depicting him as a royal justice.51 Both men were loyal to the Crown, and it is of no surprise that they were buried close to other royal liegemen in Grey Friars church. During King Richard’s annus horribilis of 1388, other friends were executed for their loyalty to him and buried elsewhere. His former tutor and confidant Sir Simon Burley was taken to Tower Hill and beheaded on 5 May, and a week later three chamber knights, Sir John Beauchamp, Sir James Berners, and Sir John Salisbury, were found guilty of treason and executed. Burley was buried in the abbey of St Mary Graces (also known as Eastminster) near the Tower, Medieval England, ed. E. Steiner and C. Barrington (Ithaca, 2002), pp. 231–52, at p. 247. See also: C. Oliver, ‘A Political Pamphleteer in Late Medieval England: Thomas Fovent, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Usk, and the Merciless Parliament of 1388’, New Medieval Literatures, 6 (2003), 167–98, and G. Dodd, ‘Was Thomas Favent a Political Pamphleteer? Faction and Politics in Later Fourteenth-Century London’, Journal of Medieval History, 30 (2011), 1–22. 48 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 91. See A. Prescott, ‘Brembre, Sir Nicholas (d. 1388), Merchant and Mayor of London’, in ODNB, available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/ ref:odnb/3312. 49 On Idonia and the Stodeye heiresses, see: C. Rawcliffe, ‘Margaret Stodeye, Lady Philipot (d. 1431)’, in Medieval London Widows, 1300–1500, ed. C. M. Barron and A. F. Sutton (London, 1994), pp. 85–98. 50 Knighton’s Chronicle, pp. 498–99. Tresilian’s execution was vividly recorded by Thomas Favent, Historia, pp. 16–18; see also Galloway, ‘Appendix’, p. 247. Favent (as he is better known), coincidentally, was also buried in the chapel of St Francis; his grave was immediately to the north of Sir Robert’s own remains: Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 96. 51 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 96. See J. L. Leland, ‘Tresilian, Sir Robert (d. 1388), Justice’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/27715.

264

CHRISTIAN STEER

and the remains of Beauchamp were taken to Worcester. It was through the king’s intervention that Berners and Salisbury were taken to Westminster Abbey, where they were laid to rest in the chapel of St John the Baptist at the north of the Confessor’s chapel.52 It was perhaps grief – and shock – at the sudden loss of his friends that influenced Richard II to order the monks of Westminster to accept their remains. King Richard, like his great-grandmother Queen Isabella, took the commemoration of loyal members of his household seriously, and as well as burying two of his chamber knights in the royal mausoleum he also arranged four anniversary services to be celebrated at the abbey of St Mary Graces for Burley, Berners, Salisbury, and the king’s beloved Anne of Bohemia.53 At Grey Friars, the graves of Brembre and Tresilian were not the only ones for those who had died in the service of the Crown or of the royal dukes. One noted example was Sir John Deyncourt, steward of the household of John of Gaunt, who died in 1393. He was buried between the altar of the Holy Cross and the Jesus altar at the east end of the nave.54 His widow Elizabeth, who died about 1399, was not buried with him but was laid to rest with her second husband Sir John Gyldysburgh in the Apostles chapel, where she was described as venerabilis domina.55 Deyncourt and his widow were commemorated by marble slabs that – given their status – were likely to have figure brasses with a marginal (and perhaps foot) inscription set beneath a canopied arch with side shafts, typical of high-status brasses of the 1390s, and comparable to those arranged by King Richard at Westminster Abbey. It is notable that at the head of Deyncourt’s monument was the grave for another member of the duke’s household: Nicholas Usk, treasurer of John of Gaunt and later treasurer of Calais.56 His nuncupative will was declared by Richard Comber, otherwise Lodelow, the rector of Usk’s parish church of St Mary Somerset, on 1 February 1402.57 In his will, Usk asked to be buried in Grey Friars but gave no further directions about his obsequies or memorial. It was at the east end of the nave, and immediately north of the altar of St Michael (also known as the common altar), that John, Lord Devereux, K.G., seneschal of Limousin (1369–71), of La Rochelle (1372), and afterwards of the

Westminster Chronicle, pp. 292, 332. In c. 1500, their tombs were recorded in a heraldic manuscript under the sub-heading ‘Chapterhouse and Cloister’: London, College of Arms, MS CGY 647, f. 3v. The remains of these knights had evidently been exhumed and reinterred within the abbey during the century or so after their execution. 53 CPR 1396–1399, p. 348. On Burley and his tomb: I. Grainger and C. Phillpotts, The Cistercian Abbey of St Mary Graces, East Smithfield, London (London, 2011), pp. 107–08. 54 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 106. 55 Ibid., p. 90. 56 Ibid., p. 109. 57 PROB 11/2A/26. 52

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON265

household to King Richard, was buried in 1393.58 He was commemorated with his wife Margaret, who died six years later, by a tumba elevata. It is notable that the epitaph referred to Margaret’s status as daughter of John de Vere, earl of Oxford, and as widow of Henry, Lord Beaumont (her first husband) and of Lord Devereux (her third) but did not refer to her as the widow of Sir Nicholas Loveyne (her second).59 This text also referred to Devereux as valens miles, quondam senescallus domus Regie, which was copied into the register. In his will, Lord Devereux requested burial in the Grey Friars although without referring to the form of his tomb.60 The location of this monument suggests that it was recessed between the chapels of St Michael and Jesus at the east end of the nave. It is likely that the tomb chest contained effigies commemorating Lord and Lady Devereux with their heraldic arms. Sir John Devereux fought with Edward, prince of Wales, at Nájera in 1367. Other associates of the Black Prince also chose to be buried at Grey Friars, amongst whom were Richard Fylongley, an esquire to the prince and also to Richard II. The register records a magno lapide in the Lady chapel for Fylongley and his wife Margaret (also known as Margery), but their dates of death were not noted.61 She was dead by March 1401, and their tomb was probably set up shortly after her death.62 Richard Fylongley was a surveyor of the king’s possessions and served on a number of commissions between 1378 and 1392.63 His service to the Crown seems to have come to a sudden end, although he was involved in a number of law suits in subsequent years.64 He lived on for some time and died between May 1415 and February 1416 pursuing debts owed to him (almost) until the very end.65 The ‘great stone’, either incised or of brass, was set over the Fylongley grave in the centre of the Lady chapel, which accounts for its worn nature by the time the text was copied down a century or so later. The register of the Grey Friars of London suggests that royal liegemen, courtiers, officials, and servants continued to choose the Franciscan church for their burials. In part, this was practical, for the sheer size of the church, On his career, see: GEC, IV, 296–9 and C. Rawcliffe, ‘Devereux, John, Baron Devereux (d. 1393), Soldier and Royal Councillor’, in ODNB: available at https://doi. org/10.1093/ref:odnb/7564. 59 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, pp. 105–06. Lady Devereux was aunt to King Richard’s favourite Robert de Vere, duke of Ireland, who died in 1392. 60 PROB 11/1/45 and printed (in summary) in N. H. Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, 2 vols (London, 1826), vol. 1, p. 134. 61 Kingsford, Grey Friars of London, p. 84. 62 Ibid., p. 237. 63 CPR, 1377–1381, pp. 109, 122, 253, 260, 341, 436; CPR, 1381–1385, pp. 7, 82; CPR 1385–1389, pp. 269, 318, 320, 326, 411, 427, 469, 548, 551, 554; CPR, 1388–1392, pp. 141, 348, 403. 405, 445; CPR, 1391–1396, p. 86. 64 C 131/227/13A. 65 CPR, 1413–1415, pp. 311, 396. His will has not been found. 58

266

CHRISTIAN STEER

its chapels, choir, ambulatory, cloister, and cemeteries provided enough grave space to meet the needs of many generations. But the royal connection also fed this enthusiasm, and it can be no coincidence that the high-status patronage that the friars enjoyed, combined with the arrangements made by Isabella a generation or so earlier, made this a popular and sought-after place of burial for members of the royal and ducal households in the later fourteenth century. *** The commemorative programme set up by Queen Isabella brought together members of her familia in death and who were commemorated close to her own tomb in Grey Friars church. This created a tradition whereby members of other royal households would come to choose this particular friary church for their own grave in the decades that followed. But the queen’s actions also created a model that Richard II would follow and adapt during the 1390s. He had intervened as early as 1388 when he ordered graves for two of his knights in Westminster Abbey, but at the death of Queen Anne in 1394, and the construction of their joint tomb, the king seems to have adopted a passionate desire for the graves of his closest courtiers to be arranged near to his own royal tomb.66 The first of these was John Waltham, bishop of Salisbury, and treasurer to Richard II, who died on 18 September 1395. In his will, drawn up only a few weeks before his death, Waltham asked to be buried in Salisbury cathedral ‘in a fitting and convenient place’, which was to be agreed between his executors and the chapter.67 This was not to be, and the king sent Sir William le Scrope to claim the bishop’s body, which was taken to Westminster and interred in the north-west corner of the chapel of St Edward the Confessor. The remains of a badly mutilated monumental brass from the London ‘B’ workshop – much favoured by courtiers – shows the bishop mitred and wearing pontifical vestments with his right hand raised in blessing.68 Only two days after the death of Bishop Waltham, another courtier, Sir Bernard Brocas, an associate of the Black Prince, and chamberlain to Queen Anne, died. His remains were taken to the chapel of St Thomas at Westminster (today dedicated to St Edmund and St Thomas the Martyr), where his grave is marked by a much-restored canopied On the monument of Richard II and Queen Anne, S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk, ‘“Cest Endenture Fait Parentre”: English Tomb Contracts of the Long Fourteenth Century’, in Monumental Industry: The Production of Tomb Monuments in England and Wales in the Long Fourteenth Century, ed. S. Badham and S. Oosterwijk (Donington, 2010), pp. 187–236, at pp. 200–16. 67 PROB 11/1/84 and printed in Testamentary Records of the English and Welsh Episcopate 1200–1413: Wills, Executors’ Accounts and Inventories, and the Probate Process, ed. C. Woolgar, Canterbury and York Society 102 (2011), pp. 271–76. 68 J. Bertram, ‘The Brass of Bishop John Waltham (d. 1395)’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 21 (2020), 2–9, and Saul, ‘Richard II and Westminster Abbey’, pp. 210–11. 66

MONUMENTS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD AT FRIARS MINOR LONDON267

tomb and effigy of Sir Bernard, who lies recumbent, and in plated armour, with his head resting on a helm and his feet set on a lion.69 It is doubtful that Brocas had intended to be buried in Westminster Abbey: brasses survive for his family in the church of St Andrew in Sherborne St John (Hants.), which served as the mausoleum for the Brocas family until the eighteenth century.70 Royal intervention continued: Sir John Golafre (d. 1395) and Robert Waldeby (d. 1398), archbishop of York, were entombed close to the Confessor’s chapel. The circumstances for Golafre are striking, for Sir John had originally intended to be buried next to his father, also Sir John, in the Grey Friars church at Oxford. On his deathbed, the younger Sir John agreed to the king’s request that his corpse would instead be taken to Westminster for interment.71 A heraldic account of c. 1500 records the tomb of ‘Sir John golefer knyght by Kyng Ric[hard] the iind lieth’ in the south ambulatory at the south-west of the king’s tomb.72 He too was commemorated by a monumental brass of which only fragments survive. But from the outline of the indent the figure of an armoured knight is revealed beneath a single canopy around which was a marginal inscription. This too was a product of the high-status ‘B’ workshop that was also responsible for the production of Archbishop Waldeby’s figure brass in the chapel of St Thomas. He died on 6 January 1398 (although the marginal inscription incorrectly recorded this as 4 of the Kalens of January, i.e. 29 December 1397), and his memorial shows the archbishop in mass vestments holding a staff in the form of a cross in his left hand and his right raised in benediction. The figure is set under a single quatrefoil canopy with crocketed ogee that leads to the arms of Edward the Confessor impaling France and England quarterly for Richard II. The king’s influence could not be clearer. These are the earliest examples of favoured attendants, who had served the Crown in peace and in war, and who were accorded burial within the royal necropolis of Westminster Abbey. Their tombs were to flank the magnificent copper-alloy effigies commissioned by Richard II in 1395 to commemorate his wife Queen Anne and himself. The graves of royal liegemen close to the king’s own tomb not only afforded prestige and status to them in death but in effect provided an innovative form of pleurant mourning the king in death as others – hopefully – would in life.

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, vol. 1: Westminster Abbey (London, 1924), p. 43. The lengthy English inscription on the rear panel of the central bay is an eighteenth-century addition. I am grateful to Tobias Capwell for his comments on the dating of this tomb to the 1390s. 70 M. Burrows, The Family of Brocas of Beaurepaire and Roche Court, 2 vols (London, 1886), vol. 1, p. 129 and also VCH, Hampshire iv pp. 158–71, at p. 169. 71 Saul, ‘Fragments of the Golafre Brass’, p. 24. 72 London, College of Arms, MS CGY 647, f. 2v. 69

268

CHRISTIAN STEER

Richard II had a passion for organising the tombs of his most loyal liegemen at Westminster Abbey. In 1388, a sense of grief may have provoked this, but in the years immediately following the death of Queen Anne – and the construction of their joint tomb – the king set out to gather the remains of his friends within the shadows of his own tomb. This essay has suggested that the king was, in fact, copying a similar practice initiated by his ancestor, Queen Isabella, at the nearby Franciscan convent in the city of London. It was here that the Queen Mother not only influenced the burial sites of favoured members of her household but, in at least one case, arranged for her royal arms to be engraved on his marble slab. These loyal, noble, and valiant members of her household were entombed near to her own memorial set as a commemorative centre-piece within the choir, and before the high altar. The tombs of royal servants were gathered around their royal mistress at Grey Friars, and their master at Westminster, to serve them in death as well as in life. Successive royal courtiers continued to choose the Franciscan church for their own burial, which suggests that when Westminster Abbey was unavailable, the second-best place to be seen dead was at the Grey Friars church.

14 The ‘Dreadful Draytons’ of Dorchester and their Brasses † JEROME BERTRAM1

T



he abbey church of Dorchester on Thames (or more properly on Thame, the tributary river) remains almost complete as a parish church.2 The brasses there, on the other hand, have nearly all been destroyed. There are still many indents, some in exceptionally good condition, but from the Middle Ages only a few plates survive. They had more or less been reduced to their present state by 1644, when Richard Symonds drew several of them, except for the figures of the Idley brass, which only disappeared between 1780 and 1792.3 Many of the indents clearly belonged to canons of the abbey. Indeed, the only monastic brass to survive was that of the uncle of the town’s great benefactor, Richard Bewforest II, whose own brass survives in part though it has suffered much. The other surviving brass fragments mostly belong to members of the Drayton family, and these deserve particular attention. This essay will examine the careers and brasses of this minor gentry family from Oxfordshire, and consider how brasses link them together in life and also in death. ***

The editors wish to thank Dr Christian Steer and Fr Nicholas Edmonds-Smith for their help in completing this chapter following the death of Fr Jerome in October 2019. 2 The church has been comprehensively surveyed: W. Rodwell, Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire (Oxford, 2009). 3 Richard Symonds’ notes, taken 1644–65, are in BL, Harley MS 965, ff. 17v–19. An impression of the Idley brass was taken by Craven Ord in about 1780 (BL, Add. MS 32479 K2 and K3), but when John Carter came to draw the monuments he did not include it (Bodl., MS Gough Maps 227, ff. 26–48). On the Idley brass, see J. Bertram, ‘Fragments from Oxfordshire’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 16:4 (2000–01), 378–86. 1

270

Jerome Bertram

Figure 14.1. Effigy of Sir Hugh Segrave (d. 1387), showing differenced arms, Dorchester Abbey (Oxon). Photograph: Jerome Bertram

The family of Drayton had slightly dubious origins and uncertain claims to distinction. Much work was done by Eric St John Brooks, in dialogue with Edmund Greening Lamborn, to disentangle the family, and more information is given in the Victoria County History.4 The original family name seems to have been Napper, in descent from the Nappers of Pishill, who held Pishill by serjeantry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as naperer to the king (that is, one who looked after his napkins). The first to claim the name of Drayton was Nicholas. He acquired the estate and took the name of Drayton St Leonard, which is within the peculiar of Dorchester, having been one of the chapelries served from the abbey since the days when it was a cathedral; Pishill, over the ridge of the Chilterns, is also part of the peculiar of Dorchester. This Nicholas de Drayton ‘was either the same as or a close connection of Nicholas le Naper of Drayton who in 1362 acquired the estate of John Sheepwash in Drayton,

E. St John Brooks, ‘Naperers at the King’s Coronation’, Notes & Queries, 158 (1930), 201, 350; Notes & Queries, 181 (1941), 156–57, 206; Notes & Queries, 183 (1942), 190, 350; VCH, Oxfordshire vii, 19, 61, 66, 73–74, 118, 176, 187. 4

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES271

Baldon, and Clifton’.5 All these were part of the Dorchester peculiar. In 1382, he released his rights in Clifton and Burcot manors and property there to William of Wykeham, who was planning to endow a new college in Oxford. Sir Hugh de Segrave, former Lord Treasurer of England, also granted his Clifton and Burcot lands to Wykeham in 1380, but about ten years later Wykeham disposed of his Clifton and Burcot properties to Segrave’s kinsman Sir John Drayton, the eldest of Nicholas Drayton’s four sons (see Fig. 14.11). Sir Hugh, whose mother was the sister of Nicholas Drayton, seems to be from a cadet branch of the important Leicestershire family of Segrave – his arms are differenced by a baston. He has an alabaster effigy (Fig. 14.1), formerly in the choir, now in the south chapel of Dorchester Abbey, on which these differenced arms are clearly visible on his jupon; on the ends of the tomb can still be made out the arms of Segrave and Bottetort, since he married Isabel Bottetort, who afterwards married Sir Thomas Blount.6 Gilbert de Segrave, prebendary, acquired property in Great Milton in 1318: it is not known how he fits in to the family, but he may Figure 14.2. Indent for cross be the one commemorated by the indent for a brass, possibly for Gilbert cross-brass in the south chapel at Dorchester Segrave, Dorchester Abbey (Fig. 14.2).7 (Oxon). Drawing: Jerome John Leland tells us there were three brasses Bertram side-by-side in the south chapel or aisle of Dorchester Abbey, ‘They ly in south isle of the quier 3. of the Draitons, gentilmen, one hard by another, under plaine marble stones. Mr. Barentine hath part of these Draitons landes.’8 ‘Gentilmen’ is perhaps inappropriate except in the technical sense that they were entitled to bear arms – indeed two of them were knights – and their behaviour was not VCH, Oxfordshire vii, 71–81 (at 73). J. L. Leland, ‘Seagrave [Segrave], Sir Hugh (d. 1387) Administrator and Courtier’, in ODNB: available at https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25037. 7 The Itinerary of John Leland in or about the Years 1535–1543, ed. L. T. Smith, 5 vols (London, 1964), vol. 1, p. 117. 8 Leland’s Itinerary, 1, 117. 5 6

Figure 14.3. Brass of Sir William Drayton (d. 1398), Dorchester Abbey (Oxon). Dabbing: Jerome Bertram

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES273

always gentle and perfect. The slabs, and fragments of the brasses remain for two of them, Sir William (d. 1398) and his elder brother Sir John (d. 1417), the third, for Richard (d. 1468), the heir of Sir William, is lost or covered, but there is enough antiquarian information about them to piece together an account. Other monuments in Dorchester belong to those with connections of the Drayton family. *** The first of the three brasses is to Sir William Drayton, murdered in 1398 (Fig. 14.3). He was a younger brother of Sir John Drayton, also buried and commemorated with a brass at Dorchester, and like him was an adventurer and soldier of fortune.9 Both brothers served the court of Richard II and were granted knighthood. Both held properties in Oxfordshire: Sir William held lands in Hardwick, just north of Bicester, in 1384, and one third of Whitchurch, in the south of the county, in 1386, for the life of Joan, Princess of Wales. The inquest on his brother Sir John in 1417 reveals that the two brothers had acquired a third part of the manor of Kempston (Beds.) from their cousin, Sir Hugh Segrave, and were licenced to enfeoff. The Drayton brothers were well known for being quarrelsome. On 31 May 1392, for example, Sir William was dismissed from the office of coroner for Berkshire ‘for particular causes the King has removed’. He was later governor of Rhuddlan castle in North Wales. He died before 7 October 1398, when William Faukner was his executor, and Maud, late the wife of William Drayton, knight, ‘is the King’s widow’.10 It appears he was murdered in early October 1398, leaving a widow Maud and infant son Richard as his heir. Sir Roger de Clarendon was indicted of the death of Sir William Drayton and outlawed (he claimed he was not guilty), but on 19 November 1399 he was pardoned and granted the kings peace.11 Leland was the first to note the brass lying side-by-side with those of Sir William’s brother, Sir John, and of his son Richard, in the south aisle. It was presumably in reasonable condition at the time, but most of it was lost a century later. The indent was drawn by Richard Symonds, the royalist soldier, on 28 March 1644, when nothing but the three shields survived, the lower dexter lost.12 He described it as being in the south chancel aisle, in other words where it is now. Anthony Wood thirteen years later described it as another ‘stone of the Draytons defaced; his arms notwithstanding do appeare on his monument,

John, the elder son, died in 1417 and is discussed below. CIPM, XV, no. 278; CIPM, XVI, no. 112–13; CIPM, XX, no. 152–53; CCR, 1389–1392, p. 471; CCR, 1396–1399, p. 381; CCR, 1399–1402, p. 414; CPR, 1396–1399, pp. 301, 418. 11 CPR, 1399–1401, p. 98. 12 BL, Harley MS 965, 17v. 9

10

274

Jerome Bertram

Figure 14.4. Shield from brass of Sir William Drayton, Dorchester Abbey (Oxon). Photograph: Jerome Bertram

and his crest which is a Saracen’s head is under his head’.13 John Carter drew it in 1792, showing it as it is now except for the third shield,14 which means that Henry Hinton’s drawing of 1806 showing four shields is his imagination.15 The slab was reused for an eighteenth-century inscription, since chiselled away, the date may be 1714. The slab is of grainy yellow brown Purbeck marble, as one would expect. It retains very clear indents for an armed figure with his head on a helmet with crest, the dagger and sword hanging straight down beside him, his feet on a lion, within a marginal inscription fillet, and flanked by four shields, of which two survive (a third is shown on a rubbing in the antiquaries’ library). The heraldry on all four shields was identical: Azure, a bend between six crosslets fitchee or, for Mar, quartering Gules, two bars argent, in chief a demi-lion rampant, for Drayton (Fig. 14.4). The crest can be seen on the indent as a Saracen’s Head. The arms of Mar quartering Drayton are shown on William Drayton’s brass, which must therefore have been engraved soon after John Drayton’s assumption of these arms in 1399 (see below). The figure measured 145 x 53 cm; the shields 13 14 15

Bodl., MS Wood B 15, f. 34v; MS Wood E 1, f. 296v. Bodl., MS Gough Maps 227, f. 37. Bodl., MS Don c. 90, f. 481v.

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES275

18 x 16 cm; the inscription 240 x 88 cm, and the slab 2.57 x 1.00 m. There can be no doubt about the attribution. It is very obviously a London ‘C’ product of about 1400, although it has been attributed in the past – incorrectly – to Richard Drayton of 1468.16 It was Richard who requested to be buried ‘between the tomb of Sir William Drayton and the wall of the said church on the south’, and there is just enough room south of this slab to fit in another one where the effigy of John Stonor is now. Although little remains of Sir William’s brass, the indent gives a clue to its lost magnificence. Perhaps it was for this reason that his elder brother set out to ensure he too would be remembered by something just as big, bold, and brassy. *** Sir John Drayton and his second wife Isabel, Lady Scrope, are commemorated by the second of the three brasses that Leland mentions (Fig. 14.5). Much more is known about John, who was probably born in the late 1350s and the elder son of Nicholas Drayton. He is likely to be the same man as the esquire in the service of Richard II’s half-brother Thomas Holand, earl of Kent, who, in 1380, was appointed serjeant-marshal and clerk-marshal of the king’s household.17 Drayton served the Crown overseas and fought in the disastrous campaign led by Bishop Despenser in Flanders in 1383. He was captain of Guînes from 1383 to 1388, during which time he was knighted. He began to acquire property, and as well as his estates at Clifton and Burcot in Oxfordshire, Sir John inherited the manors of Kempston (Beds.) and Burghfield Regis (Berks.) from his cousin Sir Hugh Segrave in 1387. He is later described as of Nuneham Courtenay, which is just north of Dorchester. During the troubled years of Richard II, he was arrested by the Lords Appellant, pardoned for treasons on 13 March 1388, but committed to the Tower on 26 October, where he remained for the winter. Pardoned again in December 1389 when King Richard regained power, he was granted lands in Kildare bringing in £100 a year. He accompanied the king to Ireland in 1394–95 and was preparing to do so again when Bolingbroke seized power. It did not take Drayton long to accommodate himself to the new regime, and he was elected to parliament for Oxfordshire in 1404, and for Gloucestershire in 1410.

J. C. Smith, ‘Brass of Sir John Drayton, Dorchester, Oxon.’, Oxford Journal of Monumental Brasses, 2 (1900), 47–48. On the workshop that made London ‘C’ brasses, see: S. Badham, ‘The London C Workshop’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 17:3 (2005), 223–50. The Drayton brass is mentioned at p. 238. 17 For a full biography of Sir John, see the entry by L. S. Woodger in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell, L. Clark, and C. Rawcliffe, 4 vols (Stroud, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 794–97. 16

Figure 14.5. Brass of Sir John Drayton (d. 1417) and his wife Isabel, Lady Scrope (d. 1437). Dabbing: Jerome Bertram

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES277

Sir John, like his brother William, was not an easy man to get on with, and throughout his life he was involved in conflicts and lawsuits, especially with religious houses. He had another stay in the Tower in 1393 because of ‘one of the frequent local broils in which he indulged from his home in Nuneham’.18 The abbot of Dorchester complained that Drayton’s men had broken into the abbey and assaulted the inmates. In November of the same year, Sir John was bound over to do no harm to one of the canons of Dorchester, and four years later, in April 1397, he was sued for trespass by St Helen’s nunnery in London. Later, in 1399, Sir John challenged the Hastings family for right of napering, because William I had given that right to John de Mar, son of the king of Scots by the countess of Mar, the direct ancestor of Drayton.19 The truth behind this may be that John Drayton’s great grandfather Lucas le Napper, alias Lucas de Mar, occurs in Clifton in 1278, and that it is the Napper claim of serjeantry that is being revived. The arms assumed by John Drayton are simply those of the ancient earls of Mar, Azure, a bend between six crosslets fitchee or, which he quartered with Gules, two bars argent, in chief a demi-lion rampant, for Drayton (Fig. 14.4) and used on the brass of his brother. A shield, possibly of Hastings, was also incorporated in his brass. Sir John’s greatest conflict was with Abingdon abbey. Abbot John Dorset petitioned the chancellor in 1416 because Sir John Drayton was obstructing the vicar of Culham and his parishioners on their Rogation Day procession around the parish boundaries, and that he had erected a fortalice on Culham territory and filled it with armed men, equipped with bows and cannons. These had shot at the abbot’s cattle, saying as they did so, cest keyn est labbe de Abendon … cest keyn est le vicair de Culneham. Moreover, the birds had fled the wood because of le hidous noise des ditz canons et autres instruments.20 Sir John Drayton was married twice. His first wife was Margery, probably a Barentyne, who died in 1407. Lady Drayton made her will on 20 January 1406 and requested burial not at Dorchester, but before the altar of St Margaret in the parish church of Burghfield in Berkshire. She left bequests to three chaplains, John Horlok, John Mondy, and William Mondy, to pray for her soul and for all the faithful dead. Many of her gowns and kirtles were left to womenfolk, including her servants, but her expensive items of clothing, and her pearls, were to be sold by her executor, John Horlok, and used to pay off her debts. Her husband Sir John was the residual legatee and was to dispose of her remaining estate for the good of her soul. Probate was granted four weeks later on 23 February 1406.21 By February 1409, her widower had remarried Isabel, daughter of Sir Maurice Russell of Dyrham (Glos.). She was the widow first of William le Scrope, earl of Wiltshire (ex. 1399), and secondly of Sir Thomas de la River. Sir John and Isabel had two daughters, Joan and Elizabeth. 18 19 20 21

History of Parliament, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 2, pp. 794–97, at p. 795. C. Given-Wilson, Henry IV (London, 2016), pp. 152–53, n. 60. History of Parliament, ed. Roskell, Clark, and Rawcliffe, vol. 2, pp. 794–97, at p. 796. PROB 11/2A, ff. 95–95v.

278

Jerome Bertram

Figure 14.6. Head and crest of Sir John Drayton. Photograph: Jerome Bertram

Drayton died on 4 October 1417, leaving his two daughters as co-heiresses, Joan aged eight, and Elizabeth, aged five.22 His will, made the day of his death, directed that he be buried in Dorchester church, and he left generous legacies to the monastic houses he had so challenged, and also for repairing the bridge at Dorchester. He left Isabel some bedcovers of red cloth, and a cup that had been given to her by Walter Metford, dean of Wells (Som.). The executors were his widow Isabel Drayton, Walter Metford, David Bradwell, his brother Richard Drayton, John Dawerd, clerk, and Robert Quainton.23 Isabel had considerable estates in her own right, and before February 1423 she was married for the fourth time, to Stephen Hatfield, when she sold the Nuneham estate to Thomas Chaucer, whose well-known brass is at nearby Ewelme (Oxon). After Lady Scrope’s death in 1437, her Gloucestershire estates went to Sir Maurice de la River, her son by her second marriage. ***

CIPM, XX, no. 152–53, 243. Lincolnshire Archives Office, DIOC/REG/15, ff. 179v–180 and printed in A. Gibbons, Early Lincoln Wills: An Abstract of All the Wills and Administrations Recorded in the Episcopal Registers of the Old Diocese of Lincoln … 1280–1547 (Lincoln, 1888), p. 119. 22 23

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES279

The brass for Sir John and Isabel Drayton is adjacent to that for his brother Sir William, on the floor of the south chapel (Fig. 14.5). It is of the prestigious London ‘B’ workshop. The slab is of grainy grey Purbeck marble, retaining clear indents for the lost portions. What remains is most of the recumbent figure of a knight in full plate armour, with his head on a crested helm, and the collar of SS around his neck (Fig. 14.6). There is a pattern of ivy leaves on the baldric, and a monogram (IS) on the sword hilt, intended for the Holy Name I(ESV)S, an earlier abbreviation of the more familiar IHS (Fig. 14.7).24 The scabbard, dagger, legs, and lion are all missing. The companion figure of his wife in a mantle is also lost, as is the double canopy (save three tiny fragments of the pinnacle tips), four shields, and a foot inscription, which was recorded by Anthony à Wood in 1657:

Figure 14.7. Sword-hilt of Sir John Drayton. Photograph: Jerome Bertram

Praeclari titulis hec Drayton tumba Johannis Bina tenet loculis corpora juncta suis. Miles habet dextram, capit altera pars Isabellam Conjugio pactam, nunc tumulo sociam. Miles erat celebris, fortis, famosus in armis, Omnibus equalis, compatiens miseris. C super M quadris bis septem connumera tres;25 His annis miles decidit in cineres. Terna dies mensis Octobris clauserat ejus Vitam quem precibus queso juvate piis. [This is the tomb of John Drayton of famous name, and contains in its recesses two bodies. The knight takes the right side, the other side holds Isabella, who was joined to him in marriage and now shares his grave. He was a famous soldier, strong and distinguished in arms, equal to anyone, but compassionate to the wretched. Add three to twice seven, four hundreds and a thousand [1417] and that is the year on which that knight fell into dust. The third day of the month of October closed his life; I beg you help him with your prayers]. See discussion of forms of the sacred monogramme in J. Blatchly, ‘The Much-Attributed Military Brass at Barsham, Suffolk’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 14:1 (1986), 39–44, at pp. 41–43. 25 I have corrected Wood’s comminue to connumera to give the right year, although the date of death is wrong given Sir John made his will on 4 October. 24

280

Jerome Bertram

Wood also recorded three of the shields, top dexter: Gules, two bars argent, in chief a demi-lion rampant, for Drayton, quartering Azure, a bend between six crosslets fitchee or, for Mar; central pinnacle: Mar, quartering Drayton, impaling Argent on a chief gules, three bezants, for Russell;26 central pendentive: a bull, which could be either Or a bull rampant vert, for Kidwelly, or per pale vert and or, a bull counterchanged, for Hastings. The crest is the Saracen’s Head. The figures measured 151 x 38 cm, and 146 x 40 cm; the canopy 2.55 x 1.05 m; the inscription plate 22 x 105 cm; the shields 17 x 14 cm; and the slab 290 x 125 cm. The bull shield was noticed in 1610 by Henry St George, Lancaster Herald.27 It was still there on 28 March 1644 when Richard Symonds drew the slab, with two surviving shields, the central one bearing Drayton impaling Russell, and the one on the pendentive with the bull rampant.28 Wood saw all three shields.29 The armoured figure was complete then, all the rest gone, and Wood confirms it was then in the south chancel aisle. When drawn by Carter in 1792 and Hinton in 1806, it was in its present condition, save for the shield on the pinnacle, drawn by Carter.30 The Drayton heiresses were Sir John’s only surviving children by Isabel, their daughters Joan and Elizabeth born in 1409 and 1412 respectively. Joan was the first wife of Drew Barantyne of Chalgrove (Oxon) and died on 10 April 1437.31 She appears on a brass at Chalgrove alongside her husband together with his second wife (of three), and a shield of Drayton quartering Mar (not the other way round as on the Dorchester brasses) (Fig. 14.8). That is why, as Leland comments, the Barentynes held some of the former Drayton lands.32 Her younger sister, Elizabeth, first married Christopher Preston of Slapton (Northants.), by whom she had a son, Richard, who inherited the manor of Clifton from his mother.33 He died ‘an idiot’ in 1489, and in turn left the estate

Gough notes this one was ‘gone when I took it’, though it is shown on the drawing Carter made for Gough in 1792. 27 BL, Lansdowne MS 874, f. 143. 28 BL, Harley MS 965, f. 18. 29 Bodl., MS Wood E 1, f. 296v. 30 Bodl., MS Gough Maps 227, f. 37 (Carter), MS Don c. 90, f. 495 (Hinton). 31 On Barantyne, see the entry by Charles Moreton in The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1422–1461, ed. L. Clark, 7 vols (Cambridge, 2020), vol. 3, pp. 177–79. 32 Described and illustrated in A Series of Monumental Brasses, Indents and Incised Slabs from the 13th to the 20th Century, ed. W. Lack, H. M. Stuchfield, and P. Whittemore (privately published, 2017), p. 59, Pl. XLIII. 33 After Preston’s death, Elizabeth remarried and took as her husband John Wenlock of Wenlock (Shropshire), who was created Baron Wenlock in 1461. She had acquired Clifton as a result of the division of the Drayton lands in 1432. The Wenlocks granted Clifton for life to John Delabere, clerk, later bishop of St David’s (1447–60), but on his death it had reverted to Elizabeth just before her death. Elizabeth, Lady Wenlock, was 26

Figure 14.8. Brass of Drew Barentyne and wives Joan and Beatrix, Chalgrove (Oxon). Rubbing: Jerome Bertram

282

Jerome Bertram

to his daughter Elizabeth, ‘said to have been feeble-minded since birth’. Despite that, she was thrice married, to Richard Danvers, Edward Hampden, and Nicholas Lovett, who retained the manor on her death in 1521. It was after his death that Miles Hampden inherited the manor of Clifton, called thenceforth Clifton Hampden.34 The burial and brass of Sir John Drayton in the south aisle close to that of his brother provided a mini mausoleum for the family. Although his daughters were buried elsewhere with their husbands, a third member of the Drayton family continued this tradition when Richard chose to be buried near the remains of his father and uncle in Dorchester abbey. *** Richard Drayton, esquire, was born in the late 1390s the only son of Sir William. He was commemorated by the third brass that Leland saw at Dorchester. It is thought that Drayton spent much of his youth in France and was the same Richard Drayton who in 1418 received a grant of the fortalice and lordship of Colombières in Normandy.35 He served in the retinues of Henry V and his brother John, duke of Bedford, and also Thomas Montague, earl of Salisbury, and John Holand, earl of Huntingdon. His marriage to Alice, widow of Thomas Stonor, in 1432 greatly improved his prospects, and he soon became escheator for Oxfordshire and Berkshire and served both counties as JP. In 1437 and 1453, he was MP for Oxfordshire and by the late 1430s was a member of the king’s household. He later joined the household of Queen Margaret but managed to transition into the new Yorkist regime after 1461. By now, he and Alice were residing on her Kent estates at Horton Kirby, and it was here, on 27 April 1464, where Drayton drew up his will. The couple died within two days of each other in October 1468.36 Alice died on 1 October 1468 and has a brass of her own in Horton Kirby, with shields showing the arms of Stonor and of Drayton, without those of Mar, both impaled by Kirby (Fig. 14.9).37 Richard died on 3 October. In his will of 1464, Richard Drayton desired to be buried in the monastery of St Peter, Dorchester, before the image of the Blessed Virgin of Gravening, which

dead before March 1465 and is thought to have been buried in the Wenlock Chapel at St Mary’s, Luton (Beds.), GEC, XII, 479–85. 34 VCH, Oxfordshire vii 16–27, at p. 19. 35 The following is drawn from Drayton’s biography by Charles Moreton in The House of Commons 1422–1461, ed. Clark, vol. 3, pp. 177–79. 36 Kingsford’s Stonor Letters and Papers 1290–1483, ed. C. Carpenter (Cambridge, 1996), p. 185. 37 On her brass, see: P. J. Tester, ‘The Brass to Alice Drayton in St Mary’s Church, Horton Kirby’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 96 (1980), 386–90, ill. at p. 389. The editors thank Derrick Chivers for this reference.

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES283

Figure 14.9 (a, b). Shields from the brass of Alice Drayton (d. 1468), Horton Kirby (Kent). Rubbing: Society of Antiquaries, London. Photographed by Derrick Chivers

was between the tomb of Sir William Drayton and the wall of the said church on the south.38 He left bequests to each of the orders of friars in London and Oxford who were to celebrate requiem masses immediately after his death. Mass was also to be celebrated in the chapels at New College and at All Souls College in Oxford, and also at the Grey Friars in Reading. The abbot of Dorchester and each of the canons were to receive bequests, and the debts owed to Drayton by his stepson, Thomas Stonor, were to be used for repairs to the abbey church. Drayton also bequeathed six marks to establish his anniversary, which was to last for as long as there were sufficient funds. He appointed two priests who were to celebrate a trental of masses for Drayton’s soul for one year after his death. Alice was appointed an executor alongside Thomas Mull (Thomas Stonor’s factotum), and the chaplains John Fython and Andrew Brown. Probate was granted to the surviving executors on 25 November 1468. His will is short, a single folio in fact, and concerned with his burial, repairs to Dorchester abbey, and the health of his soul. There is, like so many other wills, nothing about his brass, and if it were not for the antiquarian record, we would know little (if anything) about it. It was first seen, with the other Drayton brasses, by Leland during his perambulations in the late 1530s and early 1540s. He says their marble stones were ‘hard by another’, so if Richard’s 38

PROB 11/5, f. 199v.

284

Jerome Bertram

lay immediately to the south of the brass to Sir William Drayton, it must now be under the Stonor effigy. Only one rough sketch is known, that by Henry Hinton made in 1806 (Fig. 14.10).39 This shows that there were figures of a man in armour with his wife in ‘horned’ headdress, over a foot inscription, under a double canopy within a marginal inscription, and with four shields in the canopy. In fact, the composition was very similar to that of Sir John and Isabel Drayton nearby, and obviously inspired by that. It was clearly of London work, probably style ‘D’. The inscription has not been recorded, but three of the shields were recorded by Richard Lee in 1574: I, Gules, two bars argent, in chief a demi-lion rampant, Drayton, impaling Or, three roses gules, Harnhull; II, Drayton quartering Azure, a bend between six crosslets fitchee or, Mar; and III, Azure, six lioncels rampant Figure 14.10. Indent of Richard or, on a canton or a mullet gules, Drayton (d. 1468) and his wife Alice (d. 1468). Drawing: Jerome Bertram. Kyrkeby.40 Wood himself saw all three Based on the 1806 illustration made shields in 1657, though the rest of the by Henry Hinton brass was all gone by his time; the indent was drawn by Hinton in 1806.41 It is noticeable that in Dorchester the Draytons continued to display the arms of Mar, whereas the brass to the same Alice Drayton at Horton does not. Richard Drayton was – unusually – commemorated by a second brass at Dorchester. This was to mark an act of benefaction to the town with a brass inscription placed on the cross next to the bridge over the Thame, with shields of arms. It recorded that Richard Drayton was responsible, jointly with John Delabere (whom we remember as tenant of Clifton), for rebuilding or repairing

39 40 41

Bodl., MS Don. 90, f. 482. Bodl., MS Wood D 14, f. 114. Bodl., MS Wood E 1, f. 296v.

THE ‘DREADFUL DRAYTONS’ OF DORCHESTER AND THEIR BRASSES285

the bridge of Dorchester in about 1455.42 It read ‘Mr John Dalabere byshop of St Davis & Ric. Drayton, Esqr., speciall benefactors of thys bridge.’ 43 The heraldry was Azure, a bend between six crosslets fitchee or, Mar, and gules, two bars argent, in chief a demi-lion rampant, Drayton. Godwin, in his life of John Delabere, bishop of St David’s 1447–60, recorded, Hic ponte Tamesim conjunxit Dorcestriae. Id quod aeneae lamine cruci prope adstanti infixae, incisum memini me adolescentem legisse (‘He spanned the Thame with a bridge at Dorchester, as I remember reading when I was a teenager on an inscription on a plate of brass attached to the cross that stood nearby’). That would have been about 1540.44 The cross remained in Camden’s time but was removed about 1780. There is an engraving of the bridge, taken shortly before its demolition in 1818, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, but not showing any trace of the cross or inscription.45 Three generations of the Draytons of Dorchester were commemorated by London-made brasses in the south aisle of the abbey church. They marked their graves with the best that money could buy. Sir John seems to have wanted to match the quality and sophistication of the ‘C’ made brass of his younger brother, Sir William, while the latter’s son Richard set out to have one just like uncle John’s. The men of the family were not alone in the way they chose to be remembered, and the solitary brass of Alice Drayton, without an effigy of either husband, at Horton Kirby reminds us that women, especially heiresses, can sometimes be found alone in their natal church. The remains of her in-laws, however, were clustered together in their own monastic church in south-east Oxfordshire, where they leave us with one important conclusion. In spite of their somewhat lawless careers, the graves of the Draytons were marked by respectable brasses in a significant abbey church. In this, they were typical of other gentry families, many of whom have been the focus of so much of Nigel Saul’s work.

Some Account of the Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul at Dorchester, Oxfordshire, ed. H. Addington (Oxford, 1845), p. 102: ‘At the foot of the old bridge on the Henley Road was a small cross which formerly bore an inscription stating that John Delabere, bishop of St. David’s, and Richard Drayton, esq. were special benefactors to the bridge, together with the arms of Drayton. It was standing in Camden’s time, but was removed about 1780.’ 43 Bodl., MS Wood D 14, 115. 44 F. Godwin, De Præsulibus Angliæ Commentaries (London, 1616), p. 584. 45 Gentleman’s Magazine, 88 (1818), opp. p. 105. 42

Figure 14.11. The Draytons of Dorchester

Nigel Saul as a Teacher: An Appreciation DAVID CARPENTER

I



remember vividly when I first saw Nigel Saul. It was during the days of the old Public Record Office in Chancery Lane (now, of course, the Library of King’s College). As many will remember, readers, having climbed the steps of the grand doorway and entered the hall, had to stand at a high desk and sign their names into a book, before proceeding to the Round Room where the documents were produced. One day, on arrival, I saw a few places before me in the queue, a tall, spare young man, conventionally dressed (as was I) in collar and tie and wearing, I think, a sport’s jacket. ‘Who is that?’, I wondered, and when my turn came, I looked a few signatures up and saw the name ‘Nigel Saul’. ‘Ah, so that is the author of the book on the Gloucestershire Gentry’, I said to myself. It had just appeared, so this must have been in 1981 or 1982. I had, I should say, no difficulty deciphering Nigel’s signature because it was the reverse of some indecipherable scrawl. Indeed, one of the pleasures of working with Nigel over the years was to see his beautifully elegant handwriting in letters and in comments on essays and exam scripts. One curious feature of his hand is that he does his Greek ‘e’ in two different ways without, as far as I can see, any consistent pattern as to when one or the other appears. Given all we know about Nigel’s well-balanced personality, this is a warning against reading too much into such quirks of handwriting! Just when I made actual contact with Nigel after this initial sighting I cannot recall, but by 1988 I certainly knew him well enough to suggest we join forces in the way I will describe. Perhaps our friendship was cemented during a very enjoyable walk with our wives (both Janes) around Berkhamsted castle, an event recorded by a photograph in one of our albums. In 1988, I was appointed to a lectureship at King’s College and had to decide what specialist courses to put on. The third-year special subject was easy. It would focus on the reign of Henry III. But what of the ‘optional’ subject for second years? I wondered about something on the medieval nobility and gentry, but here encountered a problem.

288

DAVID CARPENTER

There was already a well-established optional on the topic run by Nigel at Royal Holloway. Since this was still in the days of the old federal degree, the course could be taken by students from across the university, including those from King’s. There was no chance of the Federal Board sanctioning some kind of rival paper. I decided therefore to approach Nigel and see whether he would like to join forces. I suppose I must have written or phoned, this being before the days of emails. The approach was slightly presumptuous because my expertise in the area was nothing like Nigel’s. I had, it is true, published an article in English Historical Review on the supposed crisis of the knightly class in the thirteenth century (there wasn’t one), but by 1988 Nigel had already brought out a second book, Scenes from Provincial Life, his delightful study of knightly families in Sussex between 1280 and 1400. Someone with less generosity and less confidence might well have reacted by saying ‘keep off my patch’. Instead, Nigel welcomed my suggestion, and that began twenty very happy years in which we ran nobility and gentry together. We had no difficulty agreeing a programme. Nigel and I appeared together in introductory sessions at the start and in revision classes at the end. For the rest, we divided the period up, with me giving the sessions on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and Nigel concentrating on the later Middle Ages. In the early years, before the demise of the federal degree, we had students from across the university. Later we were nearly always fully subscribed just with students from King’s and Royal Holloway. Occasionally, we used classrooms at King’s, but the venue I remember best is the Royal Holloway house by Bedford square, where we met sometimes in a room off the basement, sometimes in the grander rooms on the ground floor. Nigel’s arrival would always lighten up the mood, even on the wettest days, for he would bustle into the basement, where we always met before the class, and get the kettle on so the students could have a cup of tea. Nigel was a natural engaging with students, as good at encouraging the shy as he was, where necessary, in diverting the over talkative. Another of Nigel’s strengths I came to admire (in part because I lacked it) was efficiency. It was he who took responsibility for drawing up the course programme. I just fed my bits into his overall framework. He would thus arrive at the start of every year carrying a great pile of hard-copy programmes (I can see them now) for distribution to the students. (This, of course, was long before everything went online.) Examining the course together, I can’t remember us ever disagreeing by more than say the difference between a B+ and B+?+. There were also many amusements. One ingenious student wrote about Sir Peter Coss and Sir Colin Richmond. Was he pulling our legs or just confused? We could not decide. Whichever, it was clearly a tribute to those two distinguished historians. Another paper ended with the drawing of a heart with an arrow through it, accompanied by the message ‘And three big kisses from me to the two nicest medievalists in the University.’ I hasten to add this had no effect whatsoever on the mark!

NIGEL SAUL AS A TEACHER: AN APPRECIATION289

Nigel and I also acted together as examiners of the British Medieval paper in the old federal degree, and this led to an extraordinary incident, alarming for a few excruciating moments, though ultimately ending well. Given that the paper was taken by students from all the colleges of the university, there could be around 250 scripts. The usual drill was for these to be divided up at the Senate House, with half going to each examiner. The examiners would then swap the papers round when they had finished them. So, one year, Nigel picked up his supply and back at Waterloo, heaved the heavy package up on to the rack above his seat in the train. It was only as he was getting into his car back at Egham that he realised he had left the package in the train, a train, as he saw to his horror, now disappearing from the station! There followed a Thomas the Tank Engine episode with Nigel in his car chasing the train all the way back to Reading, where (was it in a siding?) he finally recovered the scripts. As I said to him, the relief must have been so great it was almost worth going through the terrible experience! It was with considerable regret that in 2012 I gave up the nobility and gentry paper, leaving Nigel to continue for a few years on his own. Fortunately, we joined forces again in 2015 for the celebrations of Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary year. Indeed, there is a photograph of us together at Runnymede on the anniversary day itself. Nigel contributed a fascinating paper on Magna Carta in the reign of Richard II to the features of the month on the Magna Carta project’s website, and, in numerous talks and articles, did a huge amount of work to convey the significance of the charter to the general public. Looking back on the years we taught together, my overriding impression is of the tremendous enthusiasm Nigel put into his teaching. But, of course, enthusiasm is nothing without knowledge and authority, and that too, of course, Nigel possessed in abundance. Indeed, during the lifetime of our joint course, his books on the Gloucestershire and Sussex gentry were followed by those on chivalry, church monuments, and death and memory. The students knew they were being taught by the great authority in the field. One unfortunate consequence for me, although my own fault for not keeping track, was that if one lent students Nigel’s books one sometimes never got them back. Fortunately, I was able to replace my lost Gloucestershire gentry with a copy that had belonged to the late Sir Rees Davis. It is covered in Rees’s pencilled comments, a few quizzical, many appreciative. I feel the book as annotated is a fitting tribute from one great historian to another.

Bibliography of Prof. N. E. Saul’s Work

 Books (Sole Author) Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1981; reissued 2002), xiii + 316 pp. The Batsford Companion to Medieval England (London, 1983), 283 pp. Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex 1280–1400 (Oxford, 1986), xiv + 204 pp. Richard II (New Haven and London, 1997), xiv + 514 pp. Companion to Medieval England (Stroud, 2000), 224 pp. (revised and completely rewritten version of the earlier Batsford Companion). Death, Art and Memory in Medieval England: The Cobham Family and Their Monuments 1300–1500 (Oxford, 2001), xv + 287 pp. The Three Richards: Richard I, Richard II and Richard III (London, 2005), xi + 287 pp. English Church Monuments in the Middle Ages: History and Representation (Oxford, 2009), xvii + 413 pp. Paperback edition, 2013. For Honour and Fame: Chivalry in England, 1066–1500 (London, 2011), xiv + 416 pp. This book is co-published in the United States by the Harvard University Press as Chivalry in England, 1066–1500. Paperback edition published under Random House’s Pimlico imprint, 2012. Lordship and Faith: The English Gentry and the Parish Church in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 2017), xiii + 360 pp.

Books (Editor and Contributor) Age of Chivalry: Art and Society in Late Medieval England (London, 1992), 180 pp. England in Europe 1066–1453 (London, 1994), 180 pp. National Trust Historical Atlas of Britain: Prehistoric and Medieval (Stroud, 1994), x + 214 pp.

292

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROF. N. E. SAUL’S WORK

(with C. M. Barron) England and the Low Countries in the Late Middle Ages (Stroud, 1995), 186 pp. Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England (Oxford, 1997), xii + 308 pp. Fourteenth Century England, I (Woodbridge, 2000), xii + 210 pp. St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge, 2005), xvii + 241 pp. Fourteenth Century England, V (Woodbridge, 2008), xii + 190 pp. (with Tim Tatton-Brown) St George’s Chapel, Windsor: History and Heritage (Wimborne Minster, 2010), 264 pp.

Articles and Chapters in Books ‘Two Fifteenth-Century Brasses at Dodford, Northants.’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, XII, iii (1977), 210–14. ‘Identifying the Fourteenth-Century Knight at Cliffe Pypard, Wilts.’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, XII, iv (1978), 314–18. ‘The Religious Sympathies of the Gentry in Gloucestershire, 1200–1500’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, xcviii (1981), 99–112. ‘The Social Status of Chaucer’s Franklin: A Reconsideration’, Medium Aevum, iii (1983), 10–26. ‘The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II’, EHR, xciv (1984), 1–33. ‘Elias de Hertford, Founder or Speculator?’, in Seven Hundred Years of an Oxford College (Hertford College, 1284–1984), ed. A. S. Goudie (Oxford, 1984). ‘Murder and Justice, Medieval Style: The Pashley Case, 1327–8’, History Today (August 1984), 30–35. ‘The Tracys and the Berkeleys: A Study in Bastard Feudalism’, The Sudeleys, Lords of Toddington (Manorial Society of Great Britain, 1987), pp. 114–20. ‘A Rising Lord and a Declining Esquire: Sir Thomas de Berkeley III and Geoffrey Gascelyn of Sheldon’, Historical Research, 61 (1988), 345–56. ‘The Pre-History of an Oxford College: Hart Hall and Its Neighbours in the Middle Ages’, Oxoniensia, liv (1989), 327–43. ‘The Commons and the Abolition of Badges’, Parliamentary History, 9 (1990), 302–15. ‘Conflict and Consensus in English Local Society’, in Politics and Crisis in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. J. Taylor and W. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 38–58. ‘Chaucer and Gentility’, in Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. B. Hanawalt (Minneapolis, 1992), pp. 41–55.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROF. N. E. SAUL’S WORK293

‘The Fragments of the Golafre Brass in Westminster Abbey’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, XV, i (1992), 19–32. ‘The Brass of Sir Thomas Le Strange at Wellesbourne, Warwickshire: Its Dating and Its Place in the “E” Series’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, XV, iii (1994), 236–48. ‘Bodiam Castle’, History Today, 45 (January 1995), 16–21. ‘Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship’, EHR, cx (1995), 854–77. ‘Richard II and Westminster Abbey’, The Cloister and the World: Essays in Medieval History in Honour of Barbara Harvey (Oxford, 1996), pp. 196–218. ‘Late Medieval Crusading’, History Today, 47 (June 1997), reprinted in Past Masters: The Best of History Today, ed. D. Snowman (Stroud, 2001), chapter 56. ‘Richard II’s Ideas on Kingship’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. D. Gordon, L. Monnas, and C. Elam (London, 1997), pp. 27–32. ‘Richard II and York’, in The Government of Medieval York, ed. S. Rees-Jones, Borthwick Studies in History, 3 (York, 1997), pp. 1–13. ‘Richard II, York, and the Evidence of the King’s Itinerary’, in The Age of Richard II, ed. J. L. Gillespie (Stroud, 1997), pp. 71–92. ‘The Sussex Community and the Oath to Uphold the Acts of the Merciless Parliament’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 135 (1997), 221–40. ‘The Rise of the Dallingridge Family’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 136 (1998), 123–32. ‘The Brockworth Poll Tax Return, 1377’, Historical Research, 72 (1999), 112–25. ‘The Kingship of Richard II’, in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. L. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 37–57. ‘Britain 1400’, History Today, 50 (July 2000), 38–46. ‘John Gower and the Preservation of Family Memory’, John Gower Newsletter, XIX, 2 (September 2000), 2–8. ‘Bold as Brass: Secular Display on English Medieval Brasses’, in Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. P. Coss and M. Keen (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 169–94. ‘A Farewell to Arms? Criticism of Warfare in Late Fourteenth-Century England’, in Fourteenth Century England, II, ed. C. Given-Wilson (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 131–46. ‘Shottesbrooke Church: A Study in Knightly Patronage’, in Windsor: Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture of the Thames Valley, ed. L. Keen and E. Scarff (British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, xxv, 2002), pp. 264–81. ‘Richard the Lionheart and English Kingship’, BBC History Magazine, 5, 12 (December 2004), 36–39. ‘Piety and Chivalry: St George’s Chapel, Windsor’, History Today, 55, 4 (April 2005), 19–23.

294

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROF. N. E. SAUL’S WORK

‘Servants of God and Crown: The Canons of St George’s Chapel, 1348–1420’, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Fourteenth Century, ed. N. E. Saul (Woodbridge, 2005). ‘The Worldly Wealth of Sir John Beauchamp of Holt’, in Much Heaving and Shoving: Late Medieval Gentry and Their Concerns: Essays for Colin Richmond, ed. M. Aston and R. Horrox (Lavenham, 2005), pp. 5–16. ‘The Brass of Thomas Stokes and His Wife’, in The Catesby Family and Their Brasses at Ashby St Ledgers, ed. J. Bertram (London, 2006), pp. 76–82. (with S. Badham) ‘The Catesbys’ Taste in Brasses’, The Catesby Family and Their Brasses at Ashby St Ledgers, ed. J. Bertram (London, 2006), pp. 36–75. ‘The Contract for the Brass of Richard Willoughby (d. 1471) at Wollaton (Notts.)’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 50 (2006), 166–93. ‘The Gentry and the Parish’, in The Parish in Medieval England, ed. C. Burgess and E. Duffy Harlaxton Medieval Studies, XIV (Donington, 2006), pp. 243–60. ‘The Medieval Monuments of Rochester Cathedral’, in Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rochester, ed. T. Ayers and T. TattonBrown (British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, XXVIII, 2006), pp. 164–80. ‘Why Monarchy?’, BBC History Magazine, 7, 5 (May 2006), 14–17. ‘The Growth of a Mausoleum: The Pre-1600 Tombs and Brasses of St George’s Chapel, Windsor’, Antiquaries Journal, 87 (2007), 220–58. ‘Creation of a Masterpiece: The Building of Salisbury Cathedral’, History Today, 58, 3 (March 2008), 14–20. ‘The Medieval Monuments of St Mary’s, Barton on Humber’, in London and the Kingdom: Essays in Honour of Caroline M. Barron, ed. M. Davies and A. Prescott (Donington, 2008), pp. 265–71. ‘The Wool Merchants and Their Brasses’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 17, 4 (2008 for 2006), 315–35. ‘The Brass of Sir William d’Audley at Horseheath, Cambridgeshire’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, 18 (2009), 43–52. ‘Chivalry and Art: The Camoys Family and the Wall Paintings in Trotton Church’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen. Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, ed. P. Coss and C. Tyerman (Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 97–111. ‘The Cuckoo in the Nest: A Dallingridge Tomb in the FitzAlan Chapel at Arundel’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 147 (2009), pp. 125–33. ‘The Lovekyn Chapel, Kingston-upon-Thames, London’, Country Life, 25 November 2009. ‘John Gower; Prophet or Turncoat?’, in John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation and Tradition, ed. E. Dutton with J. Hines and R. F. Yeager (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 85–97. ‘St George’s Chapel and the Foundation of the Order of the Garter’, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor: History and Heritage, ed. N. E. Saul and T. Tatton-Brown (Wimborne Minster, 2010), pp. 45–51.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROF. N. E. SAUL’S WORK295

‘Chivalry and the Birth of Celebrity’, History Today, 61 (June 2011), 20–25. (with J. Mackman and C. Whittick), ‘Grave Stuff: Litigation with a London Tombmaker in 1421’, Historical Research, 84 (2011), 572–85. ‘The Lovekyns and the Lovekyn Chapel at Kingston-upon-Thames’, Surrey Archaeological Collections, 96 (2011), 85–108. ‘The Early Fifteenth-Century Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law in Flamstead Church (Hertfordshire)’, Church Monuments, 27 (2012), 7–21. ‘Language, Lordship and Architecture: The Brass of Sir Thomas and Lady Walsh at Wanlip, Leicestershire, and Its Context’, Midland History, 37 (2012), 1–16. ‘Patronage and Design in the Production of English Medieval Tomb Monuments’, in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, ed. P. Binski and E. A. New (Donington, 2012), pp. 316–32. ‘Terry Jones’s Richard II’, in The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones, ed. R. F. Yeager and T. Takamiya (Basingstoke and New York, 2012), pp. 39–54. ‘An Early Indenture of Retainer: The Agreement between Hugh Despenser the Younger and Sir Robert Shirland’, EHR, 128 (June 2013), 519–34. ‘Fotheringhay Church’, in The Yorkist Age, ed. H. Kleineke and C. Steer (Donington, 2013), pp. 367–79. (with T. Tatton-Brown and D. Lepine), ‘“Incomparabilissime Fabrice”: The Architectural History of Salisbury Cathedral, c. 1297–1548’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 166 (2013), 51–98. (with Dennis Turner), ‘The Lost Chantry College of Lingfield’, Surrey Archaeological Collections, 98 (2014), 153–74. ‘The Sculptor of the Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law at Flamstead (Hertfordshire): A Sequel’, Church Monuments, 29 (2014), 7–21. ‘Simon de Montfort and the Origins of Parliament’, History Today, January 2014. (with C. Delano-Smith and others), ‘New Light on the Medieval Gough Map of Britain’, Imago Mundi, 69, i (2016), 1–36. ‘The Early 14th Century Semi-Effigial Tomb Slab at Bredon (Worcestershire): Its Character, Affinities and Attribution’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 170 (2017), 61–81. ‘The Medieval Wooden Tomb Effigies at Little Baddow (Essex)’, Church Monuments, 32 (2017), 11–27. ‘A Tale of Two Head-Stops: The Military and Marital Career of Sir Edmund de Duresme of Ashdon’, Essex Archaeology and History, 8 (2017), 85–95. Chapter 9, ‘Chivalry and St George, 1327–1357’, and Chapter 13, ‘The College of St George and the Lower Ward, 1399–1485’ (the latter co-authored with T. Tatton-Brown), in Windsor Castle: A Thousand Years of a Royal Palace, ed. S. Brindle (London, 2018), pp. 82–93 and 130–45. ‘Commemoration of the War Dead in Late Medieval England’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, xix, 5 (2018), 383–415.

296

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PROF. N. E. SAUL’S WORK

‘Foreword’ to Military Communities in Late Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Andrew Ayton, ed. G. P. Baker, C. L. Lambert and D. Simpkin (Woodbridge, 2018), pp. xiii–xv. ‘Insignia and Status: Banners on Brasses in England in the Late Middle Ages’, Transactions of the Monumental Brass Society, xx (2019), 1–31. ‘The Sculptor of the Monument of a Serjeant-at-Law at Flamstead (Hertfordshire): A Further Sequel’, Church Monuments, 34 (2019), 105–24. ‘Why Are There So Few Pre-Reformation Monuments in Cornwall?’, in The Monuments Man: Essays in Honour of Jerome Bertram, ed. C. Steer (Donington, 2020), 150–70. Decorated in Glory: Church Building in Herefordshire in the Fourteenth Century (Eardisley, 2020).

Forthcoming Publications ‘Magna Carta in the late Middle Ages’, in Magna Carta: New Interpretations, ed. N. Vincent and S. Ambler (forthcoming). ‘The Carminows and Their Arms: History, Heraldry and Myth in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cornwall’, EHR, late 2021. An edition of the list of oath-takers in Lincolnshire, 1388 (TNA, C255/20/1) for the Lincoln Record Society, expected 2025.

Index Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg, Lord 196–97 Albret, Arnaud-Amanieu, lord of  223 Albret, Bernard Ezi II, lord of  26 Albret, Sir Perducas d’  22, 26, 34 Alvingham (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild 208 Angres, Andrew de  138 Anjou, Louis, duke of  110, 224, 225 n.13 Anne of Bohemia, queen of England  7, 50, 82, 192–93, 235–36, 239–43, 247–48, 262 n.45, 264, 266–68 Anonimalle Chronicle  1, 12, 15–17, 20–24, 31, 227, 254 Appleton, Friar William  261–62 Antwerp, Lionel, duke of Clarence  13 Aquitaine, duchy of  5, 26, 103, 159–62, 164, 166, 169–70, 222 n.4 Archambeau, Nicole  110–11 Ardres (Pas-de-Calais)  19 Arundel, earls of  see Fitzalan Arundel, Thomas, bishop of Ely, archbishop of Canterbury, chancellor  39–40, 47, 50–51, 63, 180–82, 185–86, 188, 189 n.14, 190–92, 197–98, 201 Asthorpe, Sir William  136–45, 147 Astor Hours and Psalter  3, 88 Auray, battle of (1364)  3, 103, 222 n.2 Ayala, Don Pedro Lopez de, chronicler  223 n.5, n.7 Bagot, Sir William  164 Ball, John  33–34 Bamme, Adam  19 Bangor, bishop of  see Young, Richard Barentyne family  277, 281 Barker, Jessica  242, 244 n.34, 245 n.36 Barr, Helen  99 Barrell, Sir William  245

Barron, Caroline  1, 85 n.34, 163 n.54, 179 n.1, 249 n.1 Basset of Drayton, Ralph, baron  36, 45 Bath and Wells, bishop of  see Erghum, Ralph Beauchamp family estates  154 Beauchamp, Sir John  44–45, 263–64 Beauchamp, Sir John of Somerset, baron  37, 45 Beauchamp, Sir Thomas  138 Beauchamp, Thomas, 12th earl of Warwick  15–16, 23, 35, 41–42, 44, 47, 49–50, 250, 153, 165, 233 Beaufort family, children of John of Gaunt  5, 164 n.59, 167, 173, 176 Beaufort, Henry, bishop of Lincoln  175, 183–84, 186, 198–99 Beaufort, Sir John, earl of Somerset  162 n.50, 164, 165 n.65, 166 Benedict XIII, Pope  70 Benet, Alan, rector of Moreleigh (Devon) 144 Berners, Sir James  8 Bertram, Jerome  249 n. 1 Bewforest, Richard II  269 Biggs, Douglas  171 Binbroke (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 210 Binski, Paul  241 Blackheath  15, 21–22, 33–34 Blanche of Bourbon, queen of Castile  76, 82 n.28 Blanche of Lancaster, duchess of Lancaster 241 Blessed Virgin Mary, cult of  208, 282 Blois, Charles of, duke of Brittany  103 Blois, Guy, count of  13 Boffey, Julia  89 n.50 Bohun, Eleanor de, duchess of Gloucester  83, 88–89, 173

298INDEX Bohun, Elizabeth de, countess of  88 Bohun, Mary de  88 Bohun, William de, 1st earl of Northampton 88 Bonville, Sir William  88 Boston (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208–11, 216–18 Bottetort, Isabel  271 Bottisham, William, bishop of Rochester 191 Bouchier, John, Lord Berners  11 Bousies, Eustace de, lord of Vertaing  11, 16, 20, 24 Bradwell, David  278 Bradwell, Robert  278 Bray, Alan  113 Bray, Jake  92, 95 Braybrooke, Robert, bishop of London  184, 186, 192, 195, 200 Brembre, Idonia  263 Brembre, Sir Nicholas, mayor of London  8, 23 n.53, 28, 42–45, 262–64 Brétigny, treaty of  156 Brocas, Sir Bernard  266–67 Brockhampton, John de  261 Brooks, Eric St John  270 Browe, Sir Hugh  110 Bryan, Guy, Lord  4, 139 n.19, 141–43, 146–47 Buckingham, earl of  see Thomas of Woodstock Bukyngham, Sir Edmond  85, 92 Burgess, Clive  216 Burghill, John, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield  5, 181, 183–84, 187–88, 194, 199 Burley, Sir Simon  2, 37, 41, 44–45, 152, 263–64 Burton, Robert de, mason  255 Bushy, Sir John  164 Butler, Sarah M.  124–25 Buxhall, Sir Alan  106 Caistor (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 210, 212, 214 Calveley, Sir Hugh  104, 222–23, 226 Canterbury, archbishops of  see Arundel, Thomas; Courtenay, William; Islip, Simon; Sudbury, Simon; Walden, Roger Canterbury Cathedral  6, 21, 229 Canterbury, Thomas de  255

Carlisle, bishops of  see Merke, Thomas; Strickland, William Carpenter, Christine  154 Carter, John  269 n.3, 274, 280 Cassilies, Sir Bertrand de  104 Catto, Jeremy  55 Chalon, Jean de  103 Chaloner, Thomas le  260 Champe, Perrot de  92 Chandos Herald  6, 225–26, 228, 233 Chandos, Sir John  3, 101, 10–14, 222 n.2, 223 n.7, 225–26, 228 Chanson de Bertrand du Guesclin  6, 104 n.40, 225–28, 232 Charles V, king of France  6, 18, 158, 222–30, 232–33 Charles VI, king of France  6, 70, 158, 230–31 Charre, Cok de la  92 Charre, Johan de la  92 Chaucer, Geoffrey  89, 91, 97–98, 101 n.27, 102 Complaint of Mars  2–3, 75, 89–90 Chaucer, Thomas  278 Cheylesmore collegiate church (Warks) 259–60 Chichester, bishops of  see Reade, Robert; Rushook, Thomas Chudleigh, Sir James, sheriff of Devon  4, 146 Cieszyn, Margaret of  7, 235, 239, 243, 245–48, 262 n.45 Clanvow, Sir John  3, 97–98, 100–10, 112–14, 118–19 The Two Ways  3, 97, 99, 118–19 The Boke of Cupide  99 Clarence, duke of  see Antwerp Clarendon, Sir Roger de  8, 273 Clement VI, Pope  259 Clement VII, Pope  78–79 Clementines (1317)  204 Clifford, Sir Edward  103 Clifford, Sir Lewis  3, 85–88, 106 n.56, 108, 112 Clifford, Stephen  55, 58, 61 n.33, 62 n.40 Clifton (Oxon)  270–71, 275, 278, 280, 282, 284 Clifton, Constantine  243 Clifton, Joan, Lady Clifton of Bukenham Castle (Norf)  88 Clifton, John, lord Clifton of Bukenham Castle (Norf)  88, 243

INDEX299 Clifton, Katherine  7, 239, 243–45 Clisson, Olivier de  105, 110, 223, 224 n.8 Cobham, John, third Lord Cobham  2, 36–46, 48–50, 52 Cockerham, Paul  249 n.1 Cok, John  138, 139 n.18 Coningsby (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 210 Constanza of Castile  2, 75 n.2, 76–78, 161 Continuatio (continuation of the Eulogium Historiarum)  2, 53–61, 63–66, 71–72 Conyers, John  162 Cook, John  19 Coss, Peter  236, 244–45, 288 Counter-Appellants  155 n.26, 165–66 Courtenay earls of Devon  4, 136, 139, 141,144, 147 Courtenay, Charles, 19th earl of Devon  145 n.52 Courtenay, Hugh, 1st earl of Devon  144 Courtenay, Sir Philip of Powderham  145 n.52 Courtenay, Sir Thomas  144 Courtenay, Thomas  4, 136, 139, 141, 147 Courtney, William, bishop of London, Archbishop of Canterbury  16, 38–40, 43, 185, 201 Coventry and Lichfield, bishop of  see Burghill, John Cox, Rory  116 Crowland (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 211, 214 Cuvelier, Jean (?)  6, 223,28, 231, 233 David II, king of Scotland  13 Davies, R. G.  179 n.1, 186–89, 192 n.18 Davies, R. R.  69–70 Davies’ English Chronicle  64 Dawerd, John  278 Delabere, John, bishop of St David’s  280 n.33, 284–85 Delphine de Puimichel, countess of Ariano 111 Derval castle (Brittany)  110 Derwentwater, Sir John  108 Despenser, Constance, Lady Despenser  79, 83, 87, 91, 94

Despenser, Henry, bishop of Norwich  5, 182, 184, 186, 188, 190–91, 193, 198, 200 Bishop Despenser’s Crusade (1383)  118, 198, 275 Despenser, Thomas, Lord  79, 142, 165 Devereux, John, Lord  264–65 Devereaux, Margaret  265 Devon, earls of  see Courtenay Deyncourt, Elizabeth  264 Deyncourt, Sir John  264 Dobson, R. B. (Barrie)  12, 33 Dorchester Abbey (Oxon)  8, 269–74, 277–78, 282–84 Drayton family  270–85 Drayton, Elizabeth  278, 280 Drayton, Isabel  275, 278, 284 Drayton, Joan  278, 280 Drayton, Margery  277 Drayton, Nicholas de  270–71, 275 Drayton, Richard  8, 275, 278, 282, 284 Drayton, Sir John  8, 271, 273–79, 282, 284 Drayton, Sir William  8, 272–75, 283–84 Dryburgh, Paul  122 n.3 Du Guesclin, Bertrand, constable of France  3, 6, 103–04, 221–32 Funeral 230–31 Dunkeswell abbey (Devon)  140 Dunn, Alastair  163 Duraunt, John  85, 92, 95 Durham, bishops of  see Langley, Thomas; Skirlaw, Richard Dynham, Margaret  4, 139 Dynham, Sir John  142 Dynham, Sir John the younger  142–44 Dynham, Sir Oliver of Hemyock (1325–51)  4, 139 Edlington, William, bishop of Winchester 256 Edmund Crouchback, earl of Lancaster 156 Edward III, king of England  8, 13, 18–19, 26, 77, 98, 138, 153, 156, 159–60, 162–63, 166–67, 169–70, 173, 192 n.19, 222, 229, 230 n.29, 232, 254, 259 Edward IV, king of England  7 Edward the Confessor, king of England  182, 235, 242, 266–67

300INDEX Edward, earl of Rutland, 2nd duke of York  5, 78, 80, 82, 86–87, 90–91, 163, 165–66 Edward, the Black Prince   6, 13, 21, 76–77, 85, 103, 156, 169, 192 n.19, 221–28, 232–33, 265–66 Funeral 228–29 Eleanor of Castile, queen of England  242, 252 Elizabeth of Lancaster  88, 89 n.51, 90 Eltham  39, 48 Ely, bishops of  see Arundel, Thomas; Fordham, John Enrique II (of Trastámara), king of Castile  6, 68, 76–77, 167, 222–36, 227 n.18 Epiphany Rising  64, 79, 187, 189–90 Erghum, bishop of Bath and Wells  184, 186, 192, 194–95, 199 Eulogium Historiarum  13, 71 Eure, Ralph  162 Exeter, bishop of  see Stafford, Edmund Faber, Andrew  255 Falstow (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild 208 Farnhill, Ken  209 Faucon, Margerie  84, 92, 96 Favent, Thomas  46–47 Felbrigg (Norf)  7, 235, 239, 247–48, 262 n.45 Felbrigg Brass  7, 237–38, 241, 243, 245, 247, 262 n.45 Felbrigg, George  239 Felbrigg, Sir Roger  235 Felbrigg, Sir Simon  7, 235, 239, 241, 243–44, 247m, 262 n.45 Felbrygg Hours  240 Felip, Pier  92 Felton, Sir Thomas  26 Fernando I, king of Portugal  78–79 FitzAlan, Richard, 4th earl of Arundel  15, 17, 35, 38–42, 44, 47, 49–50, 108, 150, 153–55, 165, 233 FitzWalter, Walter  104–05 Fletcher, Christopher  149–50, 156 Foix, Gaston de, count of Béarn  13 Fordham, John, bishop of Ely  184, 186, 192, 194, 197, 199 Forster, Marie  84, 92, 95 Franciscan Order  252, 257, 261

Freedman, Paul  32 Froissart, Jean, chronicler Fylongley, Margaret  265 Fylongley, Richard  265 Galandre, William  86 Galeys, John  253, 254 n.12 Galeys, William  259–60 Garderobe, John de la  92 Garlond, Thomas  144 Gascoigne, William  5, 162, 176 Gascon revolt of 1394  161 Gascony  see Aquitaine Gaunt, John of, duke of Lancaster  2–5, 14, 20, 24, 26, 28, 43, 47, 51, 67, 76–78, 80–84, 88–91, 106–08, 135–36, 147–49, 151, 155, 158–62, 164, 166–78, 184, 192, 199, 225, 233, 241, 262, 264 Ghent  1, 18, 215 Gilbert, John, bishop of Hereford  198 Gillespie, James  158 Giraudet, Luke  249 n.1 Given-Wilson, Chris  2, 6, 54 n.3, 55, 58 n.26, 59–63, 135 n.2, 152 n.14 Glyn Dŵr, Owain  2, 65, 69–70, 72, 185, 193, 200 Goch, Iolo  66, 72 Golafre, Sir John  267 Goodman, Anthony  21, 107, 160 nn. 44 and 46, 168, 171 n.86 Gournay, Matthew  222 Gower, John  2, 36–38, 40, 44–46, 48–52, 98, 198 Confessio Amantis  48–49, 97 Cronica Tripertita  2, 37, 44 Vox Clamantis  37, 97 Epistolam ad Regem  40 Grandisson, Otto de  37, 40 Gransden, Antonia  53 n. 2, 55 Grantham (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 210, 214 Great Revolt  see Peasants’ Revolt Green, David  168, 169 n.74 Green, Ralph  7, 243 Green, Sir Henry  164 Green, Thomas A.  125–26, 133 n.46 Grey Friars Church, London  7–8, 249, 252, 254–57, 259–68 Grey Henry  147 n.58 Grey, Dame Katherine  see Scales

INDEX301 Grey, Sir Thomas  7 Griffiths, Ralph  166, 177 Grosmont, Henry de, duke of Lancaster  167, 256 Guyenne  221, 224, 226–27, see also Gascony, Aquitaine Hainault, Jean de, seigneur de Beaumont 13 Hales, Robert, treasurer of England  15–16, 22, 262 Hallum, Robert, bishop of Salisbury  189 Harris, Barbara  244 n.32 Harris, Oliver  238, 241 n.21 Harriss, Gerald  160 Haydon, F. S.  2, 53, 56 Hemyock (Devon)  139, 140 n.23 Henry II, king of England  162 Henry III, king of England  51, 287 Henry IV, king of England  2, 5, 24, 43–45, 49, 51–53, 58, 62–65, 67–71, 79, 81, 88, 91, 145, 150–52, 155, 163–66, 169–81, 183, 190–93, 195, 243, 256, 275 Henry V, king of England  8, 75, 79–80, 166, 282 Henry VII, king of England  246 Hereford, bishops of  see Gilbert, John; Trefnant, John Hewet  see Huet Hinton, Henry  280, 284 Holand, John, 1st earl of Huntingdon  2, 22, 24, 76, 79, 83, 89 n.51, 90–91, 144 Holand, Edmund, 7th earl of Kent  91 Holand, Thomas, 2nd earl of Kent  8, 15–17, 22, 24, 275, 282 Holbeach (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 210 Holbeach Fen (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  208, 211 Holy Trinity, cult of  208 Horlok, John  277 Horton Kirby (Kent)  282–83, 285 Hudson, Ann  115 n.107, 111 Huet (Hewet), Sir Walter  103, 106 n.56, 137 Huizinga, Johan  11 Hulcote, John de  255 Hungerford, Sir Thomas  135, 145–46 Hunt, Nigel  111–12 Hurnard, Naomi  122, 123 n.6, 129

Huttoft (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild 212 Idley brass  270 Isabel of Castile, 1st duchess of York  2–3, 75–89, 91, 93 Isabella of France, queen of England  7, 185, 200, 249, 252–54, 256–57, 259–61, 264, 266, 268 Isabella of Valois, queen of England  14 Islip, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury 254 James, Mervyn  208 Janche, John, lord of Gommegnies  16–20, 24–25, 29, 34 Jean II, king of France  13 Joan of Kent, princess  13, 16, 21, 24–25, 38, 76, 85, 192 n.18, 222 n.4, 225, 227, 273 Joan, duchess of Brittany  24 John XXII, Pope  204 Johnston, A. F.  215 Jones, Evan J.  2, 54–56, 60, 62 n.40, 66 n.66, 67 n.69 Juan I, king of Castile  79 n.13, 167, 170–71 Keen, Maurice  113 Keene, Derek  205 Kent, earl of  see Holand Kerlouet, Jean de  103 Kingsford, C. L.  53 nn. 1–2, 56–58, 91 n.54, 136 n.2 Kissane, Alan  211 Klerman, Daniel  126 Knighton, Henry, chronicler  13, 24, 28 nn.77–78,34, 98, 263 Knives, used in attack or self-defense  4, 128–30 Knolles, Sir Robert  16, 22 n.51, 23, 26–29, 103–05, 110 Kriehn, George  11 Lacy, Henry de, earl of Lincoln  167 Lamborn, Edmund Greening  270 Lambourne, Robert  8, 257, 259, 261 Langham, Simon, abbot of Westminster 256 Langley, Edmund of, earl of Cambridge, 1st duke of York  2, 77–81, 86, 155, 170–71, 182

302INDEX Langley, Edward, earl of Rutland, 2nd duke of York  5, 78, 80, 82, 86–87, 90, 91, 163, 165–66 Langley, Thomas, bishop of Durham  175–76, 189 Latimer, Sir Thomas  99 n.14, 106 n.56 Latimer, William, 4th Baron Latimer  170 Launde, Robert  28 n.78, 84 Lee, Christina  111 Leland, John  271, 273, 275, 280, 282–83 Leland, John L.  3–4 Leo, king of Armenia  82, 84, 91 Lepine, David  249 n.1 Lettenhove, Kervyn de  14 Lewkenor, Richard  7, 245–46 Limoges, sack of (1370)  227 Lincoln, bishop of  see Beaufort, Henry Lincoln, earl of  see Lacy Lindley, Philip  241–42 Llandaff, bishop of  see Peverell, Thomas Lollard knights  3, 85, 98–99, 102–03, 109, 111–12, 117–18 Lollardy  3, 85, 97–119 London, bishops of  see Braybrooke, Robert; Courtenay, William London, mayors of  16–17, 22–23, 27–29, 31 n.88, 35, 42, 44, 45, 262–63, see also Brembre; Northampton; Philipot; Walworth London Bridge  30, 262 Lopes, Ferñao, chronicler  78 Lords Appellant  2, 4–5, 38–40, 46, 151–57, 159, 162, 165–66, 170, 172, 183–87, 189, 192, 194, 197, 199–201 Louis, duke of Anjou (d. 1384)  110, 224, 225 n.13 Louth (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild  203, 208–09 Lydgate, John  90 Lyt, Synkyn des  92

Margaret of Anjou, queen of England 282 Margaret of France, queen of England  252, 257 McFarlane, K. B.  102 n.32, 103, 106 n.56, 112, 181 n.4 Merke, Thomas, bishop of Carlisle  5, 179–82, 184, 187–88, 190, 193, 195, 199, 202 Metford, Walter  278 Mézières, Phillippe de  157 Mildenhall, Peter  35 Mildenhall, William  35 Mile End  1, 15–17, 20, 23–25, 31–32, 34, 253, 254 n.12 Minsterworth, Sir John  104–05 Mitford, Richard, bishop of Salisbury  5, 181, 184, 186, 189, 200 Mohun, Joan, Lady  36 Mone, Guy, bishop of St David’s  5, 181, 185, 189, 200 Mone, Simon  85, 92, 95 Monge, Agnes  84 Monge, Henry  84, 92, 95 Montagu, William, 2nd earl of Salisbury  1, 16, 18, 22, 24, 34 Montalt, Emma de  260 Montalt, Robert de  260 Montfort, Simon de, earl of Leicester  167 Montorgeuil (Jersey)  138 Mortimer, Sir Edmund, d. 1331  88 Mortimer, Sir Edmund, 5th earl of March 70 Mortimer, Roger, 1st earl of March  249, 255–56 Morviller, Sir John de  257 Mowbray, Thomas, 1st earl of Nottingham, 1st duke of Norfolk, earl Marshal  43, 45, 51, 150, 155 Musson, Anthony  126

Macaulay, G. C.  11 Maiden Bradley Priory (Wilts.)  50 Maitland, F. W.  126 Makeseye, Richard  92 Mâle, Louis de  1, 18 Manner of King Richard’s Renunciation  63 Mar, earls of, arms of  274, 277, 280 Mare, Sir John de la, sheriff of Somerset 146

Nájera, battle of (1367)  6, 26, 77, 221, 223, 225–28, 265 Namur, Robert of, lord of Beaufort  1, 12–13, 16–20, 24, 34 Namur, William, count of  18 Neville, Alexander, archbishop of York  41, 43, 185, 197 Neville, Sir William  3, 103–08, 110, 112–14, 162, 170 Newton, Sir John  21–22

INDEX303 Nicopolis 164 Norbury, John  175 Norfolk, earl of  see Mowbray North, J. D.  89 Northampton, earl of  see Bohun Northampton, John of, mayor of London  23 n.53 Northumberland, earl of  see Percy Norwich, bishop of  see Despenser, Henry Ormrod, Mark  152, 162, 254 n.15 Padilla, Maria de  76, 88 Painter, Sidney  11 Paleologus, Michael, Byzantine emperor 151 Palfreyman, Roger  92 Palmer, J. J. N.  12, 159 Pantin, W. A.  186 Parliament April 1376, Westminster, ‘Good Parliament’  29, 135–36, 147–48, 168, 170 January 1397, Westminster, ‘Bad Parliament’  4, 135, 145–46 October 1377, Westminster  19, 25 October 1379, Gloucester  37, 146 January 1380, Westminster  140 n.24 October 1383, Westminster  198 April 1384, Salisbury  38 October 1385, Westminster  38 October 1386, Westminster  36, 39 February 1388, Westminster, ‘Merciless Parliament’  8, 35, 43–47, 50, 150, 152 September 1388, Cambridge  128, 204 January 1390 Westminster  47, 159–60 January 1397, Westminster  149, 157, 164 September 1397, Westminster, Revenge Parliament  44, 63, 151, 153–55, 167, 172, 193, 262 February 1398, Shrewsbury  50 August 1399 Westminster  62, 68, 193–94 September 1400, Westminster  69, 71 January 1401, Westminster  65, 194 October 1404, Coventry, ‘Unlearned Parliament’ 82 Patterson, Lee  100 n.16, 109, 110 n.79 Peasants’ Revolt  1, 12–34, 38, 40, 206, 262, see also Great Revolt Causes 28–34

Peck, Russell  49 Pedro I, king of Castile  76–77, 83 n.28, 222–27 Percy, Sir Henry  64, 71 Percy, Sir Thomas  16, 23 Perroy, Édouard  224 n.8, 228 Pevereech, John  92 Peverel, Thomas of Sampford Peverell 144 Peverell, Thomas, bishop of Llandaff  185, 192, 200 Pfau, Aleksandra  100–11 Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy  60, 177 Philip van Arteveldt  18 Philipot, Sir John, mayor of London  263 Philippa of Hainault, queen of England  13, 18, 242 Philippa of Lancaster, queen of Portugal 168 Pole, Michael de la, 1st earl of Suffolk, chancellor  39, 41, 43 Pollock, Sir Frederic  126 Pomeray, Sir Nicholas, sheriff of Devon 146 Pontvallain, battle of (1370)  3, 105 Prentys, Thomas  244 Preston, Christopher of Slapton  280 Przemyslaw I, duke of Cieszyn  7, 235, 239 Purle, Joan  8, 257, 261 Radcot Bridge, battle of (1387)  43, 152, 156, 169 Raddington, Sir Baldwin  48 Raddington, Sir Bartholomew  263 Ralegh, Sir John, sheriff of Devon  4, 146–47 Ramsay, Agnes de  255 Ravenser, Richard  255–56 Reade (Rede), Robert, bishop of Chichester  5, 81, 86, 89, 95, 188 Record and Process  63 Richard II, king of England  1–8, 35–53, 58–59, 61–64, 67–68, 72, 80–82, 86, 91, 98, 102, 118, 121, 123–26, 129, 136–37, 141, 144, 146, 149, 151–67, 169–78, 179–83, 186–93, 195–96, 199, 202–04, 207, 217, 225, 233, 235–36, 239, 241–43, 247, 249, 262, 264–68, 273, 275, 289 Baptism 13 Character  37–38, 58–59 Continual Council  40–42, 50, 170, 176

304INDEX Deposition  43, 51, 53, 62–63, 68, 71, 144, 149, 174, 179–80, 183, 187–97, 202 Favourites  35–36, 38–41, 164, 265 n.59, see also Mohun, Joan; Vere, Robert de London  35, 42, 47, 49 Marriage to Isabella of Valois  14–15 Peasants Revolt  12, 14–18, 20–25, 27–28, 31 Tomb  7, 241–42, 247, 266–67 Richard, earl of Cambridge  2, 79, 82 Richardson, H. G.  136 Richmond, Colin  288 Rigby, Stephen  11 n.1, 49 River, Sir Maurice de la  278 Rochester, bishops of  see Bottisham, William; Sheppey, John Romsey, John de  8, 253, 261 Romsey, Margery  8, 260 Roos, Thomas, lord  162 Rotherhithe 22 Routiers  6, 221–22 Rubin, Miri  213 Rushook, Thomas, bishop of Chichester 197 Ryecraft, Peter  77 n.10 Saint-Hillere, Marie  83, 94 Salisbury, bishops of  see Hallum, Robert; Mitford, Richard; Waltham, John Salisbury, earl of  see Montagu Salisbury, Sir John  8, 263–64 Salle, Sir Robert  14, 25 Sampford Peverell (Devon)  139, 140 n.23 Saul, Nigel  1, 3, 6, 8, 12, 34, 37, 53 n.2, 97–98, 101, 118, 121, 151, 179 n.1, 233, 236, 238, 242–42, 248–49, 287–89 Sawtry, William  60 Scales, Elizabeth  235 Scales, Katherine  7, 339, 244–48 Scales, Thomas, lord Scales  7, 245–47 Scarle, John  5, 162, 175 Scheplake, Robert  35, 92, 95 Scrope vs. Grosvenor  108, 111–12 Scrope, Isabel, Lady Scrope  275–76 Scrope, Sir Richard, 1st Baron Scrope of Bolton, chancellor  38, 40 (143) Scrope, Richard, archbishop of York  185–86, 192–93, 198, 200, 202 Scrope, Sir William le  266

Scrope, William le, earl of Wiltshire  177 n.103, 277 Segrave, Gilbert de  271 Segrave, Sir Hugh de  271, 273, 275 Seint-Martin, Richard de  138 Senzeille, Sir Henry [Thierri] of  1, 16–17, 20, 24 Serfdom 31–33 Serle, John (William)  64 Shay, Jonathan  112, 114 Sheepwash, John  270 Sheppey, John, bishop of Rochester  256 Shirley, John  2, 75 89–91 Skeat, W. W.  82 n.27, 90 Skirlaw, Richard, bishop of Durham  184, 186, 192, 195, 199 Smith, Carrie  122–23, 125, 132, 133 n.46 Smithfield  14, 17, 21, 26–27, 28 n.78, 31–32, 34 Somme le Roi  87 Sonnyng, Cok  92 Southampton Plot  79–80 Southern Chronicle  56–59 St Asaph, bishop of  see Trevor, John St David’s, bishops of  see Delabere, John; Mone, Guy St George, Henry, Lancaster Herald  280 St Michael-on-the-Hill parish, Lincoln 210 St Pierre, Theophania de, Lady of Buignicourt (Hainault)  8, 257, 260 St Swithun’s Church, East Grinstead (Sussex) 245 St Vitus’s Cathedral, Prague  243 Stafford, Edmund, bishop of Exeter  184, 186, 188, 192, 199 Staffs, used in attack or self-defense  4, 123, 124 n.6, 129–32 Staley, Lynn  158 Stamford (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild 208–09 Stancebe, Agnes  84 Stanceby, Edmond  84, 92, 95 Stanceby, Robert  84, 86, 92, 95 Standish, John (recte Ralph)  28 Stanton, Anne Rudloff  249 n.1 Stonor, John  275 Stonor, Thomas  8, 282 Stonor, Thomas junior  283

INDEX305 Strecche, Sir John  140, 146 Strickland, William, bishop of Carlisle  188, 195 Stubbs, Bishop William  151 Stuchfield, H. Martin  237 Stury, Sir Richard, c. 1327–95  3, 85–86, 89, 95–96 Sudbury, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury  15–17, 22, 262 Sumption, Jonathan  103, 105, 108, 118 Suffolk, earls of  see Pole, Ufford Sumpterman, Robert  92 Sutton, Robert  244–45 Swinford, Catherine  164, 173 Sybyle, Walter, alderman of London  30, 31 n.88 Symonds, Richard  269, 273, 280 Tailor’s Guild, Lincoln  203, 209–10, 214 Tanner, Norman  117 Taunton priory  140 Taylor, John  12 Thomas, John  92 Ticle (Tycle), John, armourer  27 Tideman of Winchcombe, Robert, bishop of Worcester  5, 181, 185, 187–88, 195, 200 Tonge, William, alderman of London  30, 31 n.88 Tout, T. F.  167 n.68, 192, 196 Tower of London  1, 12, 14–17, 19–25, 27, 34, 62, 138, 189, 193, 246, 262–63, 275, 277 Traveys, John  140 Treaty of Bayonne (1388)  167 Trefnant, John, bishop of Hereford  184, 193, 195, 199, 202 Trembinski, Donna  109 Tresilian, Emmeline  263 Tresilian, Sir Robert, chief justice  8, 17 n.18, 43–44, 263–64 Trevor, John, bishop of St Asaph  2, 55–56, 66–72, 185, 193, 200 Tripartite Indenture  70 Trybel, Robert  140 Turner, Wendy  106 Twelve Conclusions  116 Twyford, Nicholas, goldsmith  28 n.78, 78 Tyburn  44, 255, 262–63 Tyler, Wat  21, 27–28, 31

Tyrel, Henry  140, 142 Ufford, William, 2nd earl of Suffolk  15, 17 Urban IV, Pope  204 Urban V, Pope  222 Urban VI, Pope  67, 78–79 Usk, Adam, chronicler  67–69, 187 Usk, Nicholas  264 Van Bruaene, Anne-Laure  215 Vere, Sir Aubrey  16, 23–24 Vere, John, 7th earl of Oxford  265 Vere, Robert de, 9th earl of Oxford, Marquise of Dublin, duke of Ireland  16, 36, 40–43, 48, 265 n.59 Vie du Prince Noir  6, 110, 225, 228, 232–33 Visconti, Lucia  91 n.54 Visconti, Violante  13 Vye, John  8, 261 Waldeby, Robert, archbishop of York 267 Walden, Roger, archbishop of Canterbury  5, 58, 181, 184, 188, 193, 195, 197, 199 Walsingham, Thomas, chronicler  2, 13, 21, 22 n.46, 24–25, 33–34, 50, 69 n.82, 75, 98, 104 n.40, 107–08, 135, 147, 149, 154, 163, 165, 174 n.95, 186, 198 Waltham, John, keeper of the privy seal, bishop of Salisbury  46–47, 266 Walworth, William, mayor of London  1–17, 22–23, 27–31 Warwick, earls of  see Beauchamp Waugh, W. T.  99, 103 n.33 Wenceslas IV, king of the Romans  242 Westminster Abbey  7–8, 47, 61, 108, 249, 252, 262–64, 266–68 Westminster Hall  42, 62 Whitfield, Derek W.  64 Willoughby, Robert, lord  162 Wilton Diptych  82, 182 Wiltshire, earl of  see Scrope Winchester, bishops of  see Edlington, William; Wykeham, William Windsor Castle  41–42 Wood, Anthony  273, 279–80, 284

306INDEX Woodstock, Thomas of, 1st duke of Gloucester  35, 39–42, 44, 47–50, 87, 89, 150, 152–56, 159, 165–66, 171–73, 177, 190, 239 n.13 Woodville, Anthony  246 Woodville, Elizabeth, queen of England  7, 246 Worcester, bishop of  see Tideman of Winchcombe, Robert Worston, John  84, 92 Worston, Marie  83–84, 95 Worston, Thomas  86 Worston, William junior  84, 86, 95, 96 Wyclif, John  56, 98, 116–17 De Cruciata 117 Opus Arduum  117

Wyclifites, Wyclifism  see Lollards, Lollardy Wykeham, William of, bishop of Winchester  47, 183–85, 190, 193–95, 198, 200, 271 Wyntred, John (alias Champion)  139 Yarborough (Lincs.), Corpus Christi Guild 208 York, archbishops of  see Neville, Alexander; Scrope, Richard; Waldeby, Robert York, duke of  see Langley Young, Richard, bishop of Bangor  185, 193, 194 n.24

Tabula Gratulatoria Mark Arvanigian Andrew Ayton Jessica Barker Caroline Barron Michael Bennett † Jerome Bertram James Bothwell Clive Burgess John Burgess David Carpenter Celia Charlton John Cherry Derrick Chivers Paul Cockerham Peter Coss Gwilym Dodd Ben Elliott Jessica Freeman Stephen Freeth Louise Gardiner Chris Given-Wilson David Green Ralph A. Griffiths Anthony Gross J.S. Hamilton Ewan Hamilton-Short Isla Hamilton-Short Jonathan Harris Jill C. Havens Michael Hicks Michael Jones Maureen Jurkowski Claire Kennan Robert Kinsey

Hannes Kleineke Philip J. Lankester John L. Leland David Lepine David Lewis Ian Lonsdale Jessica A. Lutkin Richard Marks John Maddicott Joanna Mattingly Sean McGlynn A. K. McHardy David Meara Shelagh Mitchell Philip Morgan Simon J. Payling Ted Powell Nigel Ramsay Stephen Rigby Joel T. Rosenthal James Ross Christopher Starr Christian Steer George B. Stow Jenny Stratford H. Martin Stuchfield Christopher Tilley John E. Titterton Dirk Visser Rupert Webber Philip Whittemore Kelcey Wilson-Lee R.F. Yeager Francis Robinson