Notes

INTRODUCTION

1    Foedera, II (ii). 683.

2    See especially the eye-witness account in Baker, pp. 26–8, discussed by A. Grandsen, Historical Writing in England II: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (London, 1982), pp. 37–42.

3    Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History, ed. T. Wright, RS (1859–61), i. 219–24.

4    Walsingham, i. 327–8, as translated in J. Bamie, War in Medieval Society: Social Values and the Hundred Years War (London, 1974), pp. 140–2.

5    Ibid.

6    The Brut, ed. F.W.D. Brie, Early English Text Soc. (1906–8), ii. 333 .

7    For further discussion and detailed references see pp. 237–40.

8    See the important article by J. R. Maddicott, ‘Magna Carta and the Local Community’, P&P, cii (1984), pp. 25–65.

9    M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), pp. 401–35, is the most recent survey.

10   M.V. Clarke, Medieval Representation and Consent (London, 1936), pp. 173–95; B. Wilkinson, ‘The Deposition of Richard II and the Accession of Henry IV’, HSEP, i. 337–44; M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), pp. 88–91.

11   For the evolution of this term see M. Powicke, The Community of the Realm (New York, 1973), esp. pp. 68–71.

CHAPTER 1: THE EARLY YEARS, 1327–41

1    For the coronation oath of 1308 see A.L. Brown, The Governance of Late Medieval England, 1272–1461 (London, 1988), pp. 12–13. For the official record of Edward III’s coronation see CCR, 1327–30, p. 100; and for the conditions attached, see H.G. Richardson, ‘The English Coronation Oath’, Speculum, xxiv (1949), 65.

2    N. Fryde, The Tyranny and Fall of Edward II, 1321–1326 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 207–27, provides a useful summary of this period.

3    GEC, vii. 399; RP, ii. 3–6.

4    Ibid., ii. 10, 12.

5    J.F. Baldwin, ‘The King’s Council’, EGW, i. 131–3.

6    RP, ii. 7, 11.

7    Ibid., ii. 7; Foedera, II (ii). 695, 707, 782, 814.

8    G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1957), pp. 13–14.

9    For what follows see idem, ‘The Rebellion of the Earl of Lancaster, 1328–9’, BIHR, xxviii (1955), 84–9.

10   R.M. Haines, The Church and Politics in Fourteenth-Century England:The Career of Adam Orleton (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 161–88; idem, Archbishop John Stratford (Toronto, 1986), pp. 191–214.

11   G.P. Cuttino and T.W. Lyman, ‘Where is Edward II?’, Speculum, liii (1978), 522–44.

12   RP, ii. 52; Baldwin, ‘King’s Council’, p. 136.

13   For what follows see C.G. Crump, ‘The Arrest of Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabel’, EHR, xxvi (1911), 331–2.

14   Foedera, II (ii). 799–800, as translated in CCR, 1330–3, pp. 158–9.

15   I. Kershaw, ‘The Great Famine and Agrarian Crisis in England, 1315–1322’, in R.H. Hilton, ed., Peasants, Knights and Heretics (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 85–132; J.R. Maddicott, ‘The English Peasantry and the Demands of the Crown, 1294–1341’, in T.H. Aston, ed., Landlords, Peasants and Politics in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 285–359.

16   J.G. Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), pp. 69–88.

17   G.L. Harriss, King, Parliament and Public Finance in Medieval England to 1369 (Oxford, 1975), p. 523 .

18   Foedera, II (i). 650.

19   The importance of the ‘Disinherited’ is highlighted by R.G. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 1327–1335 (Oxford, 1965), on which this account depends.

20   E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War, trans. W.B. Wells (London, 1951), pp. 83–5.

21   For the importance of this dispute see G.P. Cuttino, English Diplomatic Administration, 1259–1339, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1971), pp. 100–11.

22   C.J. Tyerman, ‘Philip VI and the Recovery of the Holy Land’, EHR, c (1985), 25–52.

23   J. Le Patourel, Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet (London, 1984), ch. XII, pp. 179–80.

24   For what follows see W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Crown and the English Economy, 1290–1348’, in B.M.S. Campbell, ed., Before the Black Death: Studies in the Crisis of the Early Fourteenth Century (Manchester, 1991), and the works cited there.

25   E.B. Fryde, Studies in Medieval Trade and Finance (London, 1983), ch. V, pp. 250–69; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 231–93; J.R. Maddicott, ‘Poems of Social Protest in Early Fourteenth-Century England’, in W.M. Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1985 Harlaxton Symposium (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1986), pp. 130–44.

26   T.F. Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England (Manchester, 1920–33), iii. 31–68.

27   A. Tuck, Crown and Nobility, 1272–1461 (London, 1985), pp. 103–4, provides a convenient summary.

28   K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of Later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), pp. 158–61.

29   The text of the ordinances is printed in Tout, Chapters, iii. 143–50.

30   Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, p. 115.

31   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 253–4.

32   Ibid., pp. 260–4.

33   Fryde, Studies, ch. XIII, p. 83.

34   Harriss, Public Finance, p. 285; K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant: Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London, 1969), p. 35.

35   The best account of the ensuing crisis is N.M. Fryde, ‘Edward III’s Removal of his Ministers and Judges, 1340–1’, BIHR, xlviii (1975), 149–61 .

36   Anglia Sacra, ed. H. Wharton (London, 1691), i. 21; R.M. Haines, ‘Some Sermons at Hereford Attributed to Archbishop John Stratford’, JEH, xxxiv (1983), 425–37.

37   Croniques de London, ed. G.J. Aungier, Camden Soc., orig. ser., xxviii (1844), p. 90, as translated in Tout, Chapters, iii. 131 .

38   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 298–301.

39   W.M. Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation, 1322–c.1340’, EHR, cv (1990), 1–33, and the sources cited there.

CHAPTER 2: THE MIDDLE YEARS, 1341–60

1   This chapter pursues ideas first discussed in W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III and the Recovery of Royal Authority in England, 1340–60’, History, lxxii (1987), 4–19.

2    Le Patourel, Feudal Empires, ch. XII, p. 186. See also ibid., ch. XV, pp. 155–83.

3    Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 304–8.

4    The most recent discussion is J. Vale, Edward III and Chivalry (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1982), pp. 76–94.

5    Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, pp. 13–17.

6    For details see J.R.L. Highfield, ‘The English Hierarchy in the Reign of Edward III’, TRHS, 5th ser., vi (1956), 115–38.

7    For what follows see Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 313–465, passim.

8    I follow the cautious orthodoxy of J. Hatcher, Plague, Population and the English Economy, 1348–1530 (London, 1977), p. 25. However, recent research suggests death rates of around 50 per cent in this first outbreak: R.A. Davies, ‘The Effect of the Black Death on the Parish Priests of the Medieval Diocese of Coventry and Lichfield’, Historical Research, lxii (1989), 85–90; R. Lomas, ‘The Black Death in County Durham’, JMH, xv (1989), 127–40. Specialized studies on particular estates are summarized in J.L. Bolton, The Medieval English Economy, 1150–1500 (London, 1980), pp. 207–45.

9    For the importance of the money supply in determining economic trends during this period see T.H. Lloyd, ‘Overseas Trade and the English Money Supply in the Fourteenth Century’, in N.J. Mayhew, ed., Edwardian Monetary Affairs (1279–1344), British Archaeological Reports, xxxvi (1977), 111–2, 121; M. Mate, ‘The Role of Gold Coinage in the English Economy, 1338–1400’, Numismatic Chronicle, 7th ser., xviii (1978), 141 .

10   The quotation comes from a painted inscription in Acle Church, Norfolk, commemorating the plague of 1348–9 (I owe this reference to Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig). An incised inscription on the same subject is found at Ashwell Church, Herts.

11   W.M. Ormrod, ‘The English Government and the Black Death of 1348–49’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 175–88.

12   A revealing phrase used in the preamble to the ensuing Statute of Labourers: SR, i. 311 .

13   SR, i. 319, 321, 322. For the importance of the concession regarding military assessments, see M. Powicke, Military Obligation in Medieval England (Oxford, 1962), pp. 194–9. Contrary to my statement in ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 10, this legislation did not allow parliament any actual control over purveyance.

14   The Eyre of Northamptonshire 3–4 Edward III A. D. 1329–1330, ed. D. W. Sutherland, SS, xcvii–iii (1983), i, pp. xxii–xxxvi.

15   B.A. Hanawalt, Crime and Conflict in English Communities, 1300–1348 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), pp. 229–38. Note particularly the comments in Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (1882–3), ii. 138.

16   SC8/208/10360.

17   The following two paragraphs depend on B.H. Putnam, ‘The Transformation of the Keepers of the Peace into the Justices of the Peace, 1327–1380’, TRHS, 4th ser., xii (1929), 19–48, supplemented by personal communications from Anthony Verduyn.

18   The 1341 Royal Inquest in Lincolnshire, ed. B.W. McLane, Lincoln Record Soc., lxxviii (1988), pp. ix–xv, provides a summary and full bibliography.

19   J.G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 61–74.

20   The following depends on Le Patourel, Feudal Empires, ch. XIII, pp. 19–39.

21   There is virtually no contemporary comment on the 1360 settlement. Anon. Chron., pp. 48–9, is critical, as is the commentary by John Erghome on the prophetic verses ascribed to John of Bridlington (Political Poems and Songs, i. 123–215). But the relevant section of the Anon. Chron., even if based on a contemporary lost chronicle, was only written up at a later stage, and the comments on the treaty may therefore reflect the disillusionment of the 1370s or 1380s. Erghome’s commentaries, usually ascribed toc.1362–4, could also be as late as 1369 (Barnie, War in Medieval Society, pp. 145–7). The parliament roll for 1361, when the treaties of Brétigny and Calais were confirmed, is lost; but it is worth noting the enthusiastic comments of the commons on the peace in the extant parliament roll of 1363: RP, ii. 276.

CHAPTER 3: THE LATER YEARS, 1360–77

1    Froissart, vii. 101, as translated by Tout, Chapters, iii. 239.

2    Ibid., iii. 245–51, 259; iv. 161–2.

3    CCR, 1360–4, pp. 18–2, 197–8; E159/137, Recorda, Pasch, m. 14; E368/133, Recorda, Pasch, mm. 14d-15; A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘The Pestilences of the Fourteenth Century in the Diocese of York’, Archaeological Journal, lxxi (1914), 114.

4    Ibid., p. 115. Note, however, the much higher replacement rate in the diocese of Exeter: J.F.D. Shrewbury, A History of Bubonic Plague in the British Isles (Cambridge, 1970), p. 129.

5    Sir William Beveridge, ‘Wages in the Winchester Manors’, EcHR, vii (1936–7), 27.

6    J.C. Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer, PRO List & Index Soc., special ser., xviii (1983), pp. 40, 59, 69, 78, 86.

7    VCH Berks., iii. 59.

8    Putnam, ‘Transformation’, pp. 45–7.

9    SR, i. 380–2; F.E. Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), pp. 51–5.

10   The following depends on E. Powell, ‘The Administration of Criminal Justice in Late-Medieval England: Peace Sessions and Assizes’, in R. Eales and D. Sullivan, eds., The Political Context of Law: Proceedings of the Seventh British Legal History Conference(London, 1987), pp. 53–4.

11   RP, ii. 276, as translated by McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 221 .

12   As suggested by J. Sherborne, ‘John of Gaunt, Edward III’s Retinue and the French Campaign of 1369’, in R.A. Griffiths and J. Sherborne, eds., Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: A Tribute to Charles Ross (Gloucester, 1986), p. 50.

13   J.W. Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues and English Expeditions to France, 1369–1380’, EHR, lxxix (1964), 725 .

14   The most detailed account of court politics in this period is C.J. Given-Wilson, ‘The Court and Household of Edward III, 1360–1377’, University of St Andrews Ph.D. thesis (1976), summarized in idem, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (London and New Haven, 1986), pp. 146–60.

15   G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), pp. 68–9, provides a summary of Alice’s early career. S. Harbison, ‘William of Windsor, the Court Party and the Administration of Ireland’, in J. Lydon, ed., England and Ireland in the Later Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Otway-Ruthven (Blackrock, Co. Dublin, 1981), pp. 154–5, shows that it is unlikely that Alice was married to William of Windsor until the early 1370s, and that she was therefore probably not responsible for the latter’s controversial appointment as lieutenant of Ireland in 1369.

16   J.W. Sherborne, ‘The Costs of English Warfare with France in the Later Fourteen Century’, BIHR, 1 (1977), 135–50. See also E.B. Fryde, ‘Introduction to the New Edition’, in C. Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1969), pp. xii-xxi.

17   Anon. Chron., p. 85, as translated by Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 102.

18   For the precedent of 1325 see p. 76.

19   S. Armitage-Smith, John of Gaunt (London, 1904), p. 137. The idea was discredited by J.C. Wedgwood, ‘John of Gaunt and the Packing of Parliament’, EHR, xlv (1930), 623–5; and H.G. Richardson, ‘John of Gaunt and the Parliamentary Representation of Lancashire’, BJRL, xxii (1938), 175–222.

20   Tout, Chapters, iii. 308.

21   RP, ii. 365 .

22   Froissart, viii. pp. 230–1; Froissart: Chronicles, trans. G. Brereton (Harmondsworth, 1978), pp. 195–6.

23   Political Poems and Songs, i. 215–8, also in Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, ed. R.H. Robbins (New York, 1959), pp. 102–6, and in Medieval English Verse, trans. B. Stone (Harmondsworth, 1964), pp. 114–17.

CHAPTER 4: THE KING

1    RP, ii. 7, 11 .

2    Ibid., ii. 330. Richard was finally granted the title in Nov. 1376: CChR, 1341–1417, p. 231; LRDP, v. 56.

3    M.A. Michael, ‘A Manuscript Wedding Gift from Philippa of Hainault to Edward III’, Burlington Magazine, cxxvii (1985), 582–600. For the tradition of miroirs in England, see J.P. Genet, ‘Political Theory and Local Communities in Later Medieval France and England’, in J.R.L. Highfield and R. Jeffs, eds., The Crown and Local Communities in England and France in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1981), p. 23; and for a list of tracts addressed to Edward III see J.P. Genet, ‘Ecclesiastics and Political Theory in Late Medieval England: The End of a Monopoly’, in B. Dobson, ed., The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 31–2. For a useful summary of some of the miroirs which might have been available to Edward III, see L.K. Born, ‘The Perfect Prince: A Study in Thirteenth – and Fourteenth-Century Ideals’, Speculum, iii (1928), 470–504.

4    The Treatise of Walter de Milemete, De Nobilitatibus, Sapientiis, et Prudentiis Regum, ed. M.R. James (Roxburghe Club, Oxford, 1913).

5    Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N. Denholm-Young (London, 1957), pp. 36–7.

6    J.G. Edwards, ‘Ranulph, Monk of Chester’, EHR, xlvii (1932), 94.

7    W.M.Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, JBS, xxvi (1987), 407–8; idem, ‘The Personal Religion of Edward III’, Speculum, lxiv (1989), 871–2.

8    Ibid., pp. 853–62.

9    M. Bloch, The Royal Touch: Sacred Monarchy and Scrofula in England and France, trans. J.E. Anderson (London, 1973).

10   Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion of Edward III’, p. 863 .

11   R.A. Brown, H.M. Colvin and A.J. Taylor, The History of the King’s Works: The Middle Ages (London, 1963), i. 162, gives an estimate of £90,000; the higher figure (including the cost of works at Westminster) is given by Given-Wilson, ‘Court and Household’, p. 279. In 1362 the building at Windsor was said to be a ‘business... near the king’s heart’ (CCR, 1360–4, p. 397).

12   Original Letters Illustrative of English History, ed. Sir Henry Ellis, 3rd ser., i (London, 1866), pp. 33–9.

13   The episode is widely reported in the chronicles: e.g. Baker, pp. 103–8; Reading, pp. 107–8; Avesbury, pp. 408–10; Anon. Chron., pp. 30–1; Walsingham, i. 273–4.

14   A.H. Burne, The Crécy War (London, 1955), pp. 340–1, points out that the march into Burgundy also had some tactical significance.

15   Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, passim, esp. pp. 2, 67–9, 93–4; J. Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987), pp. 44–5.

16   Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion of Edward III’, p. 860.

17   Edward was referred to as ‘king of the sea’ in 1372 (RP, ii. 311), and in the fifteenth century the Libelle of Englyshe Polycye extolled his exploits at sea:V.J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1971), pp. 46–7, 92.

18   The articles (Foedera, II (i). 650) are known only from their citation by Adam Orleton in a private dispute of 1333–4. See Haines, Stratford, pp. 183–4.

19   De Speculo Regis Edward III, ed. J. Moisant (Paris, 1891), esp. p. 116; L.E. Boyle, ‘William of Pagula and the Speculum Regis Edwardi III’, Mediaeval Studies, xxxii (1970), 331–2.

20   Haines, Orleton, pp. 189–90; idem, Stratford, pp. 289–90, 326–7.

21   The first obvious reference to Edward II’s deposition came in the political crisis of 1386–7: see M.H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1973), pp. 278–82.

22   For Henry IV’s title see K.B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), pp. 43–58.

23   Pace Cuttino and Lyman, ‘Where is Edward II?’, pp. 522–44, I accept the more orthodox view of Edward’s end. See also the valuable comments of Haines, Stratford, pp. 208–13.

24   RP, ii. 52.

25   Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion of Edward III’, pp. 869–71.

26   See p. 237.

27   The distinction is not an historical one, but I hope it reflects the political reality of the fourteenth century. Part of the problem in dealing with this subject is that there was no contemporary definition of the prerogative. The legal tract Praerogativa Regis (SR,i. 226–7, early Edward I) is preoccupied with the relationship between the king and his tenants-in-chief, and with the crown’s regalian rights over the Church. See F.W. Maitland, ‘Praerogativa Regis’, EHR, vi (1891), 367–72.

28   Foedera, II (ii). 1091 . This is not a piece of legislation, but an instruction to the king’s representatives in England in 1339 to bargain away prerogative rights in exchange for more profitable levies. The pardon eventually granted in 1340 was less specific, but was supposedly binding for the king’s life: SR, i. 290; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 412. See also H.M. Chew, ‘Scutage in the Fourteenth Century’, EHR, xxxviii (1923), 19–41; J.F. Hadwin, ‘The Last Royal Tallages’, EHR, xcvi (1981), 344–58.

29   SR, i. 322.

30   Hadwin, ‘Last Royal Tallages’, p. 354; Fryde, Studies, ch. V, pp. 260–1; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 245 .

31   In fact, the feudal aid of 1346 contravened the statute of 1340: Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 412–13.

32   T.F.T. Plucknett, ‘Parliament’, EGW, i. 117–19; Fryde, Studies, ch. V, pp. 258–9; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 376–83 .

33   See pp. 206–7.

34   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 261–3 .

35   Ibid., p. 263 and n. 3 .

36   RP, ii. 128, 130; SR, i. 296.

37   Ibid., i. 295, 297.

38   Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 65–6; Tuck, Crown and Nobility, pp. 197–8.

39   Bellamy, Law ofTreason, pp. 51, 55, 62–74, 80–5.

40   See pp. 202–8.

41   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 323–7, 335–40; W.M. Ormrod, ‘The English Crown and the Customs, 1349–63 ‘, EcHR, 2nd ser., xl (1987), 35–6.

42   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 320–3. Harriss’s statement (ibid., pp. 322–3) that the maltolt was remitted in 1350 is an error.

43   The grant was made in 1355 (RP, ii. 265; not 1356, as stated by Harriss, Public Finance, p. 430); but it was intended to dovetail with the current subsidy, due to expire at Michaelmas 1356. For details see J.G. Edwards, The Second Century of the English Parliament (Oxford, 1979), p. 21 .

44   Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 121–3. For the first such request, in 1371, see p. 67.

45   Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 123–30.

46   Tout, Chapters, iii. 266–82.

47   Edward made a total of six campaigns to Scotland between 1327 and 1336, and two more in 1341–2 and 1355–6. For details see J. Bain, The Edwards in Scotland, A. D. 1296– 1377 (Edinburgh, 1901); H.C. Maxwell–Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London, 1926), p. 409.

48   I have compiled a detailed itinerary for this period based on the place-dates in published chancery enrolments and unpublished chancery warrants, wardrobe accounts, and other miscellaneous documents. Many of Edward’s visits to the midlands and the west seem to have been hunting expeditions.

49   Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 28–34.

50   E.g. the meeting of the council at Langley in January 1349: CCR, 1349–54, p. 1 . The issue rolls furnish numerous examples of correspondence – much of it under the secret seal and signet – sent by the king to his chief advisers: e.g. The Issue Roll of Thomas of Brantingham, 44 Edward III, ed. F. Devon (London, 1835), pp. 385, 389, 456, 237, etc.

51   M.C. Hill, The King’s Messengers, 1199–1377 (London, 1961), passim, and esp. the statistics on pp. 141–2.

52   For example, a royal banquet was held at Westminster on 6 June 1353 to entertain a French deputation: E101/392/12, f. 13.

53   For what follows see B. Wilkinson, ‘The Authorisation of Chancery Writs under Edward III’, BJRL, viii (1924), 107–39; W.M. Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government of England, c. 1346–1356’, University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis (1984), pp. 61–98.

54   Tout, Chapters, iii. 78.

55   Ibid., iii. 56–66.

56   HBC, p. 39; Tout, Chapters, vi, 378, s.v. ‘Regents’. The instructions for the abortive regency of 1372 (Foedera, III (ii). 962) survive in draft form in C49/47/9.

57   SC1/37/170.

58   See p. 79.

59   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 107–8.

60   C81/908/13, 29; C81/1330/20; C81/1334/19; SC1/61/53, etc.

61   C4712129, no. 1; CLBL, G. 297.

62   E368/124, m. 301; C81/1333/61. For the convoy system see M.K. James, Studies in the Medieval Wine Trade, ed. E. M.Veale (Oxford, 1971), pp. 24–6.

63   CCR, 1337–9, p. 291 .

64   Foedera, III(ii). 657; Tout, Chapters, v. 61. For the diplomatic significance see P. Chaplais, Essays in Medieval Diplomacy and Administration (London, 1981), ch. XXII, p. 181.

65   Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 81. The resulting treaty (BL Add. Ch. 59142) is printed in P. Chaplais, English Medieval Diplomatic Practice: Part I, Documents and Interpretation (London, 1982), ii. 507–10.

66   ‘Some Documents Regarding the Fulfilment and Interpretation of the Treaty of Bretigny (1361–1369)’, ed. P. Chaplais, Camden Miscellany XIX, Camden Soc., lxxx (1952), 7–8; G.P. Cuttino, English Medieval Diplomacy (Bloomington, Ind., 1985), p. 94.

67   Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, p.115; Harriss, Public Finance, pp.304, 324 and n. 3 .

68   Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, pp. 149–50; CLBL, F. 58.

69   CPR, 1340–3, pp. 111–13 . See also the king’s order for the payment of wages to the commissioners: C81/272/13682, printed in SCCKB, v, p. cxxxviii.

70   SC1/62/85, partly translated by J.R. Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies, 1272–1377’, in R.G. Davies and J.H. Denton, eds., The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (Manchester, 1981), p. 85.

71   C81/1560/4; SC1/42/177.

72   C81/1331/31, cited by Harriss, Public Finance, p. 182, n. 2; C81/1332/56.

73   SC8/246/12268: see Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, pp. 147–8;VH. Galbraith, The Literacy of the Medieval English Kings (Oxford, 1957), pl. opp. p. 24, and p. 38, n. 47.

74   E.g. CCR, 1346–9, p. 605; ibid., 1349–54, p. 275, etc. It was at the king’s discretion that charters of pardon requested by members of the nobility for their followers were sealed: Foedera, II (ii). 1194, 1236; III (i). 6, etc.

75   Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, p. 369.

76   C81/1335/17–23 .

77   Tout, Chapters, iii. 151; J.R. Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship: Royal Justices as Retainers in Thirteenth – and Fourteenth-Century England’, P&P Supplement, iv (1978), 48–51.

78   C81/1331/21; C81/338/20221 .

79   Tout, Chapters, iii. 245–51 .

80   C81/1331/57.

81   C81/1334/49; C81/1334/37. Earlier, in 1335, when he had granted the sheriffdom of Cambs. to John Kiryell, the king had been content to allow the chancellor and treasurer to decide whether the appointee was fit to take office: C81/224/8821.

82   The king’s bench, it may be noted, freely acknowledged the personal influence of the king in its proceedings: SCCKB, iii, pp. cxxxiii–iv.

83   E.L.G. Stones, ‘The Folvilles of Ashby–Folville, Leicestershire, and their Associates in Crime, 1326–1347’, TRHS, 5th ser., vii (1957), 125–7.

84   For what follows see H.J. Hewitt, The Organization of War under Edward III (Manchester, 1966), pp. 29–30, 174.

85   Plucknett, ‘Parliament’, pp. 119–20; SCCKB, iii, pp. cxviii–xix. Hewitt’s figures (Organization of War, p. 30) suggest that pardons decreased after 1340; but this is to forget that leaders of military retinues were entitled to ask for pardons for their men, and that many of these, when issued, were not enrolled. See A.E. Prince, ‘The Indenture System under Edward III’, in J.G. Edwards, V.H. Galbraith and E.F. Jacob, eds., Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait (Manchester, 1933), p. 296; Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, pp. 320–1.

86   SC1/39/27, printed in B. Wilkinson, The Chancery under Edward III (Manchester, 1929), p. 18, n. 7; SCCKB, vi. no. 44; CLBL, G. 2, 23; SC1/55/86.

87   CPR, 1340–3, pp. iii–13.

88   C49/46/13 . For Coggeshall see W.R. Jones, ‘Rex et Ministri: English Local Government and the Crisis of 1341 ‘, JBS, xiii, no. 1 (1973), 12–13.

89   Ancient Petitions Relating to Northumberland, ed. C.M. Fraser, Surtees Soc., clxxvi (1966), no. 194, with references.

90   C81/1331/40; C81/1336/54–5. For these sessions see B.H. Putnam, The Place in Legal History of Sir William Shareshull (Cambridge, 1950), pp. 64–5.

91   E368/121, m. 20; D. Crook, ‘The Later Eyres’, EHR, xcvii (1982), 265–6.

92   E122/189/35.

93   CCR, 1330–3, pp. 320–1; Munimenta Civitatis Oxonie, ed. H. E. Salter, Oxford Historical Soc., lxxi (1920), pp. 150–1. See in particular the king’s frequent interventions in the long-standing dispute between Queen Isabella and the Prior of Coventry: RPHI,pp. 240–66; C81/1331/56; C81/1333/58. Note also the case of Lady Wake (see p. 149).

94   SC8/192/9556 (Calendar of Ancient Petitions Relating to Wales, ed. W. Rees, University of Wales Board of Celtic Studies, History and Law Ser., xxviii (1975), p. 319), enclosed in C81/1336/62, and resulting in CCR, 1343–6, p. 582. Holmes, Estates, pp. 16, 39. For the Denbigh case see also the privy seal writ copied on to a schedule sewn to C66/246, m. 27. For the particular significance of Edward’s intervention in the marches see R.R. Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282–1400 (Oxford, 1978), pp. 257, 269–73 .

95   This dispute is discussed briefly in A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, 1344–1355’, Norfolk Archaeology, xxv (1935), 122–4. The Norwich temporalities were seized into the king’s hands as a result of the quarrel in Aug. 1346, and the cognizance of pleas in Lynn was specifically reserved when the rest of the temporalities were restored in Nov. 1347 (E372/192, m. 42d; CCR, 1346–9, p. 338). A commission set up in 1346 found that the bishop owed his privilege to a private agreement with the town in 1310, but had no formal rights to the franchises (CPR, 1345–8, p. 170; CIM, ii. no. 2001). Consequently, Bateman several times requested a final resolution (SC8/239/11920–1; SC8/246/ 12274, printed in SCCKB, ii, pp. cxxvii–viii); but the council continued to prevaricate (C49/7/21, printed in SCCKB, v, pp. clii–iii). In June 1348 the council was still divided on the issue (C81/1336/52; the year is uncertain). Consequently, the restoration of the Lynn franchises to the bishop in May 1350 was purely a matter of grace (SC8/246/12212, enclosed in C81/345/20991, and resulting in CPR, 1348–50, p. 551, warranted by the king and the privy seal; E372/195, m. 41 d). For the concurrent dispute between Bateman and the Abbot of Bury St Edmunds see p. 143.

96   RP, ii. 392. Evidently the request went unsatisfied: see the record of the Montagu holdings in Holmes, Estates, pp. 28–9.

97   SC8/243/12149–50; C81/1332/34. For the background to the latter case see K.C. Newton, Thaxted in the Fourteenth Century, Essex Record Office Publications, xxxiii (1960), p. 4.

98   For the problems experienced by suitors in trying to gain access to the aged king, see pp. 130.

99   Tout, Chapters, iii. 148.

100  Wilkinson, Chancery, pp. 30–1.

101  C81/1331/50.

102  For the situation in Edward’s last years see pp. 130.

103  I identify three categories of petitions which may be said to have gone directly before the king: (a) those for which an accompanying warrant survives under the secret seal or signet; (b) those which resulted in a chancery instrument warranted per ipsum regem;and (c) those which include responses denoting royal intervention.

104  SC8/227/11309 (Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, p. 145); SC8/227/11343 (CCR, 1349–54, p. 411); SC8/246/12284, enclosed in C81/1333/69; SC8/246/12293, enclosed in 105. C81/1334/2 (CPR, 1354–8, p. 92).

105  Foedera, III(i). 180. Conciliar replies to petitions often reserved as (?) matters of grace to the king: e.g. Northern Petitions, ed. C.M. Fraser, Surtees Soc., cxciv (1982), nos. 159, 160. It was also common for the special committees set up to receive and hear private petitions in parliament to qualify their decisions with the phrase ‘if it please the king’: e.g. RP, ii. 36, 38–9, 41, 85–6, 93, etc; RPHI, pp. 161–2, 183, 229, 284.

106  SC8/246/12269, enclosed in C81/1333/31 (N. Saul, Knights and Esquires: The Gloucestershire Gentry in the Fourteenth Century, [Oxford, 1981], p. 151); SC8/247/12303, enclosed in C81/1334/33 (CPR, 1354–8, pp. 369–70); SC8/226/11300 (CPR, 1370–4, p. 471); SC8/239/11918, enclosed in C81/1336/46 (CPR, 1343–5, p. 587).

107  SC8/246/12268 (CPR, 1348–50, p. 561). The bill of privy seal was developed in 1349–50 specifically to deal with such de cursu business: see Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 85–7.

108  C81/219/8362; SC8/241/12037; 253/ 12646; SC1/39/6, 7; etc.

109  RP, ii. 180.

110  SC8/247/12319, 12321; C81/1335/46, 47; CPR, 1361–4, p. 242.

111  SC8/185/9250 (Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, p. 108); SC8/226/11292 (CPR, 1374–7, p. 484); SC8/228/11354 (CPR, 1374–7, p. 462).

112  The following two paragraphs depend on B.P. Wolffe, The Royal Demesne in English History (London, 1971).

113  Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 156.

114  See the grants of such wardships contained in CFR, 1347–56, pp. 174–447, passim.

115  Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 66. See also CFR, 1369–77, pp. 171, 214.

116  RP, ii. 355–6.

117  B.P. Wolffe, ‘Acts of Resumption in the Lancastrian Parliaments, 1399–1456’, HSEP, ii. 62–8.

118  See pp. 127–32.

119  Parliamentary Texts of the Later Middle Ages, ed. N. Pronay and J. Taylor (Oxford, 1980), pp. 72, 85, etc.

120  RP, ii. 225, 309.

121  G.L. Harriss, ‘The Commons’ Petition of 1340’, EHR, lxxviii (1963), 637. A number of common petitions of 1346 received the reply that the king alone could provide answers: RP, ii. 161, 162.

122  Tout, Chapters, iii. 304, 318.

123  For a judicious and broad-ranging review, see J.S. Roskell, ‘Perspectives in English Parliamentary History’, HSEP, ii. 296–323.

124  I follow H.G. Richardson and G.O. Sayles, The English Parliament in the Middle Ages (London, 1981), ch. XXI. The views of these writers have been much criticized, but they seem to me to fit very well with the known facts. See Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 140–84.

125  F.W. Maitland, ‘Introduction to Memoranda de Parliamento, 1305’, HSEP, i. 107–24; Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’, pp. 61–9.

126  RP, ii. 127, 443; Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, pp. 149–50.

127  Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 73; RP, ii. 272.

128  Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 3, n. 6.

129  For what follows see D. Rayner, ‘The Forms and Machinery of the “Commune Petition” in the Fourteenth Century’, EHR, lvi (1941), 198–233, 549–70; Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, pp. 1–33 .

130  In 1341 the crown distinguished between petitions from the grantz and from the communes: RP, ii. 130. For the practice of ‘intercommuning’ between lords and commons, see J.G. Edwards, The Commons in Medieval English Parliaments (London, 1957), pp. 5–18; W.N. Bryant, ‘Some Earlier Examples of Intercommuning in Parliament, 1340–1348’, EHR, lxxxv (1970), 54–8.

131  The importance of this precedent is stressed (indeed, probably overstressed) by G.O. Sayles, The King’s Parliament of England (London, 1975), pp. 115–17.

132  In Richard II’s first parliament the commons asked that all those petitions presented in the Good Parliament which had received the reply ‘le roi le voet’ (the king wishes it) should be made up into statutes. The council’s reply was typically evasive, and its action notably selective. See RP, iii. 17; SR, ii. 1–5.

133  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 27–48.

134  This figure is based on the column of net yields in Ormrod, ‘English Economy’, Table 1. They differ from the tax assessments (i.e. gross yields) used by most historians: e.g. E. Miller, ‘War, Taxation and the English Economy in the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries’, in J.M. Winter, ed., War and Economic Development: Essays in Memory of David Joslin (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 11–31 .

135  J.F. Willard, Parliamentary Taxes on Personal Property, 1290 to 1334 (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 13–18.

136  For a fresh analysis of the terminology of these early assemblies, see Brown, Governance of Late Medieval England, pp. 169–73 .

137  That is, assemblies for which the writs of summons used consilium or tractatus rather than parliamentum. See Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 66.

138  E.g. Harriss, Public Finance, p. 234, assumes that the assembly of Sept. 1337 was a parliament; Fryde, Studies, ch. V, pp. 253, 260, recognizes that it was a great council, but minimizes the significance of this. The exceptional nature of this assembly is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the government, in addition to issuing the normal writs for election of the commons, also sent out writs summoning named representatives from each shire and elected representatives from certain towns: Return of MPs, i. 115, n. (a). I owe this point to Anthony Verduyn.

139  Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 76. It is worth noting that the common petition presented at Lincoln was not answered, but deferred elsewhere: SCCKB, v, pp. cxxxii–iii; G.O. Sayles, The Functions of the Medieval Parliament of England(London, 1988), p. 48. It is also significant that very few private petitions were presented in these assemblies. For instance, there are only two references on the close rolls to petitions entered at the time of the Westminster council of September 1337:CCR,1337–9, pp. 193, 200. Compare the record of parliaments in the same period: Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 3 and nn.

140  Tout, Chapters, iii. 92, 95, n. i; Fryde, Studies, ch. V, pp. 260–i.

141  They are, respectively, Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, pp. 31–3; RP, i. 430; ibid., ii. 7–11; RPHI, pp. 224–30, 232–9, 268–72. See also Rayner, ‘“Commune Petition”’, pp. 553–9. There is some doubt over the date of RPHI, pp. 268–72 (see Fryde, ‘Parliament and the French War’, p. 248, n. 34; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 248, n. 2), but this does not affect the argument put forward here.

142  See pp. 225–32.

143  RP, ii. 107; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 258.

144  Harriss, ‘Commons’ Petition of 1340’, pp. 625–54.

145  Richardson and Sayles referred to the ‘series of repetitive and ill-digested statutes that offer such a marked contrast to the legislation of the first Edward’ (Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 13). In fact, the process had been well under way since the last years of Edward I: G.L. Harriss, ‘The Formation of Parliament, 1272–1377’, in Davies and Denton, eds., English Parliament, pp. 45–7.

146  Ibid., p. 40. The Modus Tenendi Parliamentum states that the first function of parliament is to discuss war, though it does not actually require the king to call parliament for this reason (Parliamentary Texts, pp. 75, 88). A political poem of c. 1338–9 comments (sarcastically), ‘A king ought not to go forth from his kingdom in manner of war unless the community of his realm consent to it’: Anglo-Norman Political Songs, ed. I.S.T. Aspin, Anglo-Norman Texts, xi (1953), p. 111.

147  RP, ii. 67, 69.

148  For what follows see Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 314–20.

149  RP, ii. 103, 118.

150  Ibid., ii. 158–9; Avesbury, pp. 363–7.

151  E.g. RP, ii. 252, 262, 264, etc.

152  Reading, pp. 147–8; Walsingham, i. 294. There is no parliament roll for 1361, but note the statement by the king’s agent in 1369 that the peace of 1360 had been accepted ‘par l’avys et conseil de ses grantz et comunes’: RP, ii. 299.

153  Ibid., ii. 301 .

154  I follow Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 3–48, 314–20 (summarized in G.L. Harriss, ‘War and the Emergence of the English Parliament, 1297–1360’, JMH, ii, 1976, 35–56). Some of Harriss’s arguments have been challenged, most recently by Prestwich,Edward I, pp. 453–8; but these criticisms do not affect his interpretation of the period in question here.

155  W.M. Ormrod, ‘Political Theory in Practice: The Forced Loan on English Overseas Trade of 1317–18’, Historical Research, lxiv (1991), 204–15.

156  M.C. Buck, ‘The Reform of the Exchequer, 1316–1326’, EHR, xcviii (1983), 254.

157  On the management of parliament see also pp. 88–92.

158  Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. V, pp. 151–4; ch. XVI, pp. 85–8; ch. XXI, pp. 7882, summarized in Sayles, King’s Parliament, pp. 137–41 .

159  RP, ii. 225, 229, 237.

160  Ibid., ii. 271, 355; J.G. Edwards, ‘“Justice” in Early English Parliaments’, HSEP, i. 291–2.

161  For what follows see Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 356–75.

162  RP, ii. 311 .

163  Ibid., ii. 304; RPHI, pp. 279–80.

164  RP, ii. 140, 238, 313 .

165  E.g. RP, i. 285; ii. 265, 295, etc. See also T.F.T. Plucknett, Statutes and their Interpretation in the First Half of the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 134–6.

166  W. Holdsworth, A History of English Law, ii, 4th edn (London, 1936), p. 435.

167  RP, ii. 139–40, 203, 241; Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 11.

168  SR, i. 293; RP, ii. 244. For the interpretation of the 1340 statute see P.C. Saunders, ‘Royal Ecclesiastical Patronage in England, 1199–1351 ‘, University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis (1978), pp. 361–73. The so-called statute Pro Clero of 1352, although responding to clerical petitions entered on the parliament roll (RP, ii. 244–5) and itself written up on the dorse of the statute roll (SR, i. 324–6), was not in fact issued until some time after the parliament of Jan. 1352 (see p. 155). This legislation restricted retrospective action to vacancies within the king’s own reign. The king confirmed this point in 1353: Foedera, III (i). 256.

169  RP, ii. 368. For the abuse of the Statute of Purveyance in the 1370s see p. 124.

170  SR, i. 265, 374.

171  RP, ii. 295, 297. It is interesting to note the contrast with 1337, when the king had only entertained selected noble friends at the conclusion of a parliament: Tout, Chapters, iii. 63 and n. 1.

172  See G.L. Harriss, ‘The Management of Parliament’, in idem, ed., Henry V:The Practice of Kingship (Oxford, 1985), pp. 137–58.

CHAPTER 5: THE MINISTERS

1    The memoranda rolls of the exchequer, for instance, quadrupled in size between c. 1290 and 1307: see J.C. Davies, ‘The Memoranda Rolls of the Exchequer to 1307’, in idem, ed., Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson (London, 1957), pp. 97–154. For bureaucratic developments in general see M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (London, 1979).

2    CPR, 1327–77, passim; CCR, 1327–77, passim.

3    Statistics based on the tables in SCCKB, v, pp. c–ci; vi, pp. xlvi–l.

4    For the criteria used by the chancery in deciding whether or not to enroll documents issued under the great seal, see R.F. Hunnisett, ‘English Chancery Records: Rolls and Files’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, v, no. 3 (1975), 158–68.

5    E163/25, file of indentures for Trin. 16 Edw III.

6    Rolls from the Office of the Sheriff of Beds. and Bucks., 1332–1334, ed. G.H. Fowler, Quarto Memoirs of the Bedfordshire Historical Record Soc., iii (1929).

7    The amount of Yorks. business undertaken in Michaelmas 1348 can best be judged from the fact that the Panella file for this term, the file of bills and writs relating to possessory assizes, had to be split into two (the first and only time this was necessary before the sixteenth century), with one of the two large files being reserved solely for Yorks. cases: KB146/2/22/4/1–2. For further details see Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 189–93 .

8    J.L. Grassi, ‘Royal Clerks from the Archdiocese of York in the Fourteenth Century’, Northern History, v (1970), 12–33, provides a convenient summary.

9    Idem, ‘Clerical Dynasties from Howdenshire, Nottinghamshire and Lindsey in the Royal Administration, 1280–1340’, University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis (1960), pp. 177–8, 466–7, 469–70; Wilkinson, Chancery, pp. 162–4. One aspect of Sibthorpe’s career not previously noted is his regular inclusion on the eastern assize circuit: e.g. C66/203, m. 22d; C66/233, mm. 37d, 36d; etc. It was extremely unusual for a chancery clerk to be appointed as a justice of assize in the mid-fourteenth century.

10   A. Hamilton Thompson, The English Clergy and their Organization in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1947), pp. 247–51, 254–77.

11   F. Crooks, ‘John de Winwick and his Chantry in Huyton Church’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, lxxvii (1925), 26–38; VCH Wilts, iii. 320–4; The Edington Cartulary, ed. J. H. Stevenson, Wiltshire Record Soc., xlii (1987), pp. xiii–xxvi.

12   Putnam, Shareshull, pp. 22–6.

13   The Records of the City of Norwich, ed. W. Hudson and J.C. Tingey (Norwich, 1906–10), ii. 38, 39; Records of the Borough of Leicester, II, ed. M. Bateson (London, 1901), p. 77.

14   Eyre of Northamptonshire, i, p. xxiv.

15   Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship’, esp. pp. 25–40.

16   For the canons of St George’s see S.L. Ollard, Fasti Wyndesorienses (Windsor, 1950).

17   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 232–3; Brown, Colvin and Taylor, King’s Works, i. 173.

18   Fryde, Studies, ch. VIII, pp. 74–8.

19   E368/125, m. 126.

20   CCR, 1364–8, pp. 114–25; E159/141, m. 11; Tout, Chapters, iii. 243–51; ‘The Ransom of John II, 1360–70’, ed. D.M. Broome, Camden Miscellany XIV, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xxxvii (1926), pp. 1–5.

21   The link between the two events is not certain, but the timing is highly suggestive: Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 256–9.

22   A.L. Brown, The Early History of the Clerkship of the Council (Glasgow, 1960).

23   The following analysis is based on my own reading of the available primary evidence. See also Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 99–118.

24   See also Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXI, pp. 66–7.

25   C47/2/29, nos. 1–5; C47/2/31, nos. 4–6; C47/28/9, no. 8; C81/1538/20; M. Prestwich, ‘English Armies in the Early Stages of the Hundred Years War: A Scheme in 1341‘, BIHR, lvi (1983), 103–13 .

26   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, p. 113; C. Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the Late Middle Ages (London, 1987), p. 184 n. 12, p. 207 n. 51 .

27   C256/4/1, no. 18.

28   SCCKB, v, pp. clii–iii; Select Cases before the King’s Council, 1243–1482, ed. I.S. Leadam and J.F. Baldwin, SS, xxxv (1918), pp. 35–7; CCR, 1364–8, pp. 60–1, 404.

29   Ibid., 1349–54, pp. 28, 34.

30   Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, ed. W.P. Baildon (privately printed, 1894), pp. xliv–lv; J.F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England during the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1913), pp. 355–6.

31   Tout, Chapters, v. 30–4, 68–74; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 68–97, 132–8.

32   Unlike Tout, I am reluctant to assume that the keeper of the privy seal was ‘early in the reign of Edward III, definitely recognised as one of the three chief ministers of state’ (Chapters, v. 59). The keeper does not appear in the available records of the administrative council with any regularity until the 1360s, and it was not until 1372 that he began to be named in the witness lists to royal charters. See also Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, p. 133 and n. 3 .

33   Idem, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 14. For further references see E403/411, 26 July 1362; E403/413, 23 Jan. 1363; Issue Roll of Brantingham, p. 446; E403/ 461, 18 Nov. 1376; etc.

34   C81/357/22191, duplicated in E208/4, file 26–27 Edw III, no. 49. For further examples see the chancery warrants printed in Chronique de Jean le Bel, ed. J. Viard and E. Deprez, Société de l’Histoire de France (1904–5), ii. 337, 389, etc., although it should be appreciated that letters addressed to the chancellor and treasurer during periods when the king was away from England fall into rather a different category.

35   SC1/42/84; C81/1538/33 .

36   Compare the lists of those summoned to this assembly (LRDP, iv. 596) with the commissions of 10 July recorded on the roll of the staple (C67/22, m. 25).

37   C81/1538/53. The resulting commissions are in CPR, 1367–70, p. 460; CFR, 1369–77, pp. 91–2.

38   E.g. C49/6/26, printed in Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 475–6; C81/1538/35; etc.

39   C81/1538/36; Putnam, Shareshull, pp. 51–2, 68–72.

40   Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 262–306, passim. Baldwin argued that the council sprouted a number of specialized sub-committees to deal with the increased load of business in the mid-fourteenth century. See also Select Cases in the Exchequer Chamber, ed. M. Hemmant, SS, li, lxiv (1933–48), i, pp. xii–xx. However, M.H. Keen has recently questioned the assumption that the court of chivalry (and by extension the court of admiralty) emerged in this way (‘The Jurisdiction and Origins of the Constable’s Court’, in J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt, eds., War and Government in the Middle Ages, [Woodbridge, Suffolk], 1984, pp. 159–69).

41   CIM, iii. no. 50; C49/7/27. For the background, see R.E. Archer, ‘The Estates and Finances of Margaret of Brotherton, c. 1320–1399’, Historical Research, lx (1987), 266–7.

42   SC8/228/11397–8; Liber Assisarum, 26 Edw III, pl. 60 (printed in Les Reports del Cases en Ley, [London, 1678–80], v. 131); CCR, 1349–54, pp. 567–9; E159/130, Brev. Bar., Mich., m. 13; CChR, 1341–1417, p. 142. This is one of many similar cases revolving around the wording of royal charters.

43   For their qualifications and careers see DNB,ii. 922–3; xv. 352; xvii. 590–1.

44   See the cases cited in W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Origins of the Sub Pena Writ’, Historical Research, lxi (1988), 12–13 and n. 11.

45   Ibid., pp. 11–20. The chancery rolls suggest that specific money penalties were increasingly used as threats in administrative actions as well as in summonses before the council during the second half of Edward III’s reign (CCR, 1354–60, pp. 534–5; ibid., 1360–4, pp. 115, 116, 118, 120, 268, 397; ibid., 1374–7, pp. 432–3; etc). The most dramatic instance, however, is the sub pena writ issued under the great seal of the exchequer in July 1372 summoning William of Windsor before the treasurer and barons for unspecified business, and threatening a money penalty of £10,000 (sic) for default (E159/148, Brev. Retorn., Trin.). For the background to this summons see Harbison, ‘William of Windsor’, pp. 159–60.

46   For what follows see Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXII, pp. 377–97.

47   My statistics are based on the summonses printed in LRDP, iv. passim.

48   The influence of the chancery clerks over the business of parliament is discussed by G.P. Cuttino, ‘King’s Clerks and the Community of the Realm’, Speculum, xxix (1954), 404–6.

49   E.L.G. Stones, ‘Sir Geoffrey le Scrope (c. 1280 to 1340), Chief Justice of the King’s Bench’, EHR, lxix (1954), 3, 10–12.

50   RP, ii. 113. For Stonor see DNB, liv. 478–9.

51   Note esp. the abolition of presentment of Englishry (an antiquated Norman procedure for the identification of murder victims) and the new forms of action at nisi prius (the procedure whereby cases pending in the central courts could be adjourned before the justices of assize or other courts sitting in the localities): SR, i. 282, 286–7.

52   B.H. Putnam, ‘ChiefJustice Shareshull and the Economic and Legal Codes of 1351–1352’, University ofToronto Law Journal, v (1943–4), 251–83; idem, Shareshull, pp. 52–4.

53   SR, i. 292–4; and see pp. 154.

54   Ormrod, ‘Origins of the Sub Pena Writ’, p. 14, and references.

55   Reading, p. 113; Walsingham, i. 275–6. Putnam, Shareshull, p. 70, ascribed this scheme to Shareshull; but the detailed provisions for the collection of the subsidy of 1352 (SR, i. 327–8) suggest expert financial assistance.

56   It is also worth noting that Edington personally communicated news of the tax grant, and of the agreed form of collection, to the exchequer: E159/128, Communia, Hil., m. 9d; E368/124, m. 44.

57   Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, pp. 22–3 .

58   SR, i. 285; CPR, 1340–3, pp. 310, 363, 441, 446, 580–1, 587.

59   RP, ii. 149, 150; CLBL, F. 107.

60   RP, ii. 240; SR, i. 321; Putnam, Shareshull, pp. 72–3; Ormrod, ‘Customs’, pp. 30–1; idem, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 172–3, 204–5.

61   See pp. 36, 59.

62   H.L. Gray, The Influence of the Commons on Early Legislation (Cambridge, Mass., 1932), pp. 225–7, 248–9.

63   RP, ii. 113 .

64   For provisions see p. 120; for treasons see Bellamy, Law of Treason, pp. 86–70; for the staple see pp. 229–32. Compare Harriss, ‘Formation of Parliament’, pp. 47–8.

65   RP, ii. 285–7.

66   Ibid., ii. 286; SR, i. 383 .

67   RP, ii. 286; SR, i. 383; RP, ii. 287.

68   RP, ii. 287–8; SR, i. 384–7.

69   B.H. Putnam, The Enforcement of the Statute of Labourers (New York, 1908).

70   Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 108–11; Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 11 .

71   RP, ii. 285. This petition may echo the demand and the repealed statute of 1341 (ibid., ii. 128; SR, i. 296). It is interesting to note that the oath imposed on judges under the Ordinance of Justices of 1346 made only one vague reference to ‘la forme des estatutz’ (ibid., i. 305–6). The obligation to uphold the statutes is conspicuously absent from all the oaths of royal councillors known from this period: see Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 345–52.

72   M. Buck, Politics, Finance and the Church in the Reign of Edward II: Walter Stapeldon, Treasurer of England (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 219–23.

73   The attempt to place all politically active men in one or other of these camps led Tout (Chapters, iii. 1–142) into some highly contorted arguments. Haines, Stratford, pp. 429–31, argues that even Stratford, the supposed arch-Lancastrian, cannot be neatly categorized in this way.

74   Stones, ‘Sir Geoffrey le Scrope’, pp. 4–5; SCCKB, iv, pp. xiii, xv, xvii–xviii.

75   I rely on the lists in Tout, Chapters, vi. 7–13, 20–2.

76   A good account of the early stages of Stratford’s political career is to be found in N.M. Fryde, ‘John Stratford, Bishop of Winchester, and the Crown, 1323–30’, BIHR, xliv (1971), 153–61 . Otherwise, see Haines, Stratford, pp. 124–214.

77   Baker, p. 27.

78   Fryde, ‘John Stratford and the Crown’, p. 157.

79   Haines, Stratford, p. 230.

80   Ibid., p. 281; Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, p. 154.

81   Buck, Stapeldon, p. 163–96.

82   Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, pp. 17–18.

83   R.L. Baker, The English Customs Service., 1307–1343: A Study of Medieval Administration (Philadelphia, 1961), pp. 23–7, 30–1.

84   B.H. Putnam, ‘Shire Officials: Keepers of the Peace and Justices of the Peace’, EGW, iii. 185–217; M.H. Mills, ‘The Collectors of Customs’, ibid., ii. 189–91 .

85   S.T. Gibson, ‘The Escheatries, 1327–41’, EHR, xxxvi (1921), 218–25. The particular interpretation which Gibson attached to this evidence is no longer acceptable.

86   Tout, Chapters, iii. 121; Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, pp. 149, 156–8.

87   SCCKB, vi, pp. xvi–xvii; Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship’, pp. 43–4. The quotation comes from YB 14 Edw III, Mich. pl. 109 (Year Books of the Reign of King Edward III, Years XI-XX, ed. A.J. Horwood and L.O. Pike, RS (1883–1911), Years XIVand XV,p. 258).

88   SCCKB, vi, p. xvii.

89   C49/46/11, briefly discussed by D. Hughes, A Study of Social and ConstitutionalTendencies in the EarlyYears of Edward III (London, 1915), p. 101 .

90   See the important evidence discussed by Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, pp. 159–60.

91   The libellus famosus and Stratford’s reply are printed in Anglia Sacra, i. 23–36. Most historians have tended to concentrate on the supposed constitutional significance of the Stratford crisis. See Hughes, Early Years of Edward III, pp. 100–52; G.T. Lapsley,Crown, Community and Parliament in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1951), pp. 231–72; B. Wilkinson, ‘The Protest of the Earls of Arundel and Surrey in the Crisis of 1341’, EHR, xlvi (1931), 177–93 . More balanced accounts are to be found in Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, pp. 149–61; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 282–304.

92   E.B. Fryde, ‘Edward III’s War Finance, 1337–41: Transactions in Wool and Credit Operations’, University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis (1947), i. 523–7.

93   Haines, Stratford, pp. 285–7.

94   Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, p. 158.

95   Haines, Stratford, p. 313.

96   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 520–1.

97   C81/1394/53.

98   Wilkinson, Chancery, pp. 155–7; BRUO, iii. 1629–30; R. Frame, English Lordship in Ireland, 1318–1361 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 305–8.

99   Foedera, III (i). 50; LRDP, iv. 558.

100  Tout, Chapters, iii. 166, n. 5, cited examples from the chancery warrants to indicate that the king corresponded formally with the regency council by addressing letters to the archbishop, chancellor and treasurer. But this was more a matter of protocol than anything else. The king also corresponded with the chancellor alone on what might be called conciliar matters (e.g. SC1/39/198, printed in Wilkinson, Chancery, p. 118, n. 1). For a letter from the regency council to the king addressed in the names of the archbishop, treasurer and chancellor, see SC1/56/6. All three Stratfords appeared in the witness lists to royal charters in the 1340s, but it is noticeable that Robert and Ralph dropped out after the death of John in 1348: see C53/135–40, analysed in Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 109–11.

101  There is no full-scale biography of Edington. DNB, xvi. 386, and McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 212–18, provide a brief summary.

102  HBC, pp. 105–7.

103  SCCKB, vi, pp. liii–lv, lxvi–lxix.

104  Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer, pp. 35–6; Wilkinson, Chancery, p. 204.

105  Ormrod, ‘Black Death’, pp. 177–8.

106  Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer, pp. 8, 43, 53, 62.

107  J.C. Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II (Cambridge, 1918); T.F. Tout, The Place of Edward II in English History, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1936).

108  M. Prestwich, ‘Exchequer and Wardrobe in the Later Years of Edward I’, BIHR, xlvi (1973), 1–10; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 208–28; Buck, ‘Reform of Exchequer’, pp. 241–5.

109  For Kilsby see Tout, Chapters, iii. 84–5, 116–18, 120–6, 131–2. The fact that Kilsby remained keeper of the privy seal until June 1342 (when he left to take up a military career) is a striking instance of the king’s determination to withstand the political pressure of 1341 and not to yield control of his ministers to the barons or to parliament.

110  Ibid., iii. 170–1; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 74–8.

111  BRUO, ii. 1391–2; iii. 1863–4.

112  C81/317/18171 (Wilkinson, Chancery, pp. 31, 226); C81/908/5.

113  BRUO, ii. 1006–8, 1368–70.

114  Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 37–9, 74–84.

115  Chaplais, Essays, ch. XXII, pp. 173–4.

116  Tout, Chapters, iii. 109, 114–15, 161, 164; iv. 110–12.

117  E.B. Fryde, William de la Pole, Merchant and King’s Banker (London, 1988), pp. 87–169, provides the most recent detailed guide to the king’s credit dealings.

118  Tout, Chapters, iv. 118.

119  Fryde, Studies, ch. X, pp. 1–17.

120  For what follows see Tout, Chapters, iv. 110–35, 304–5; W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Protecolla Rolls and English Government Finance, 1353–1364’, EHR, cii (1987), 622–32; idem, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 222–327.

121  T.F Tout and D.M. Broome, ‘A National Balance Sheet for 1362–3’, EHR, xxxix (1924), 404–19; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 470–502. The only documents surviving from an earlier period and equating with this remarkable series are M.H. Mills, ‘Exchequer Agenda and Estimates of Revenue, Easter Term 1284’, EHR, xl (1925), 229–34; and the fragment of a schedule of 1324 printed in Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 523–4, and discussed and corrected by Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 97–8. The document discovered by H. Jenkinson and D.M. Broome, ‘An Exchequer Statement of Receipts and Issues, 1339–40’, EHR, lviii (1943), 210–16, is not of the same type, being merely a transcript of the notional totals of transactions given at the ends of the relevant receipt and issue rolls. The Walton Ordinances of 1338 did not require the compilation of estimates of receipts and issues, but merely the annual audit of warrants received in the lower exchequer and the drawing up of a statement of the king’s current obligations to his creditors (Tout, Chapters, iii. 144–6, 149). In any case, neither of these orders seems to have been implemented.

122  For the following paragraph see Ormrod, ‘Customs’, pp. 27–40.

123  Harriss, Public Finance, p. 345 .

124  Chronica Monasterii de Melsa Auctore Thoma de Burton, ed. E.A. Bond, RS (1866–8), iii. 127–42, esp. 135, 141. For the background see M.J.O. Kennedy, ‘Resourceful Villeins: The Cellarer Family of Wawne in Holderness’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal,xlviii (1976), 107–17.

125  Reading, p. 113 .

126  See p. 44. There is no shortage of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century biographies of Wykeham, but these inevitably concentrate on his educational and artistic patronage. This side of his career is now usefully summarized in J. Alexander and P. Binski, eds.,Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England (London, 1987), pp. 468–75.

127  Brown, Colvin and Taylor, King’s Works, i. 170–1, 184–5; D. Knoop and G.P. Jones, ‘The Impressment of Masons for Windsor Castle, 1360–1363 ‘, Economic Journal, iii (1934–7), 350–61 .

128  Tout, Chapters, iii. 237.

129  Ibid., iii. 238–9. It is extremely rare to find petitions addressed to the keeper of the privy seal, but Wykeham was quite clearly seen as a channel through which royal favour might flow: CPML, 1323–64, pp. 279–80.

130  C81/1335/47; SC1/56/125.

131  J.R.L. Highfield, ‘The Promotion of William of Wickham to the See of Winchester’, JEH, iv (1953), 37–54.

132  E.g. Reading, pp. 177–8.

133  BRUO, i. 112; ii. 1095–7; iii. 1683, provides summaries of their ecclesiastical careers and their principal government offices. Sheppey had earlier worked as a diplomat for Edward III (Highfield, ‘English Hierarchy’, p. 118), and served on the regency council of 1345 (Foedera, III (i). 50). Barnet’s first recorded diplomatic missions were in 1361–2, but his summonses to great councils and parliaments in the previous decade suggest that he may well have been involved in diplomacy for some time (LRDP, iv. 594, 605, 612, 616, 626; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, p. 143) .

134  SC8/46/2284.

135  Anon. Chron., p. 97.

136  C. Given-Wilson, ‘The Merger of Edward III’s and Queen Philippa’s Households, 1360–9’, BIHR, li (1978), 183–7; Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 82–3, 324, using evidence derived from Wilkinson, ‘Authorisation of Chancery Writs’, pp. 134–5; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 470–502.

137  List of Plea Rolls, PRO Lists and Indexes, iv (repr. 1963), p. 36 and nn; A. Steel, The Receipt of the Exchequer, 1377–1485 (Cambridge, 1954), p. 405.

138  CCR, 1364–8, p.116.

139  CLBL, G. 162–3 . For another interesting example see C.G. Crump, ‘What Became of Robert Rag, or Some Chancery Blunders’, in A.G. Little and F.M. Powicke, eds., Essays in Medieval History Presented to T.F. Tout (Manchester, 1925), pp. 335–47.

140  Anon. Chron., pp. 98, 184. For Kirkton see The 1341 Royal Inquest in Lincolnshire, p. xix.

141  For Brantingham’s career see Tout, Chapters, iii. 225, 233, 261–2.

142  Sherborne, ‘Costs of English Warfare’, pp. 143–4. For further details see pp. 150.

143  RP, ii. 304.

144  Tout, Chapters, iii. 270–1; Tuck, Crown and Nobility, p. 166.

145  W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, 4th edn (Oxford, 1906), ii. 440–3; V.H. Galbraith, ‘Articles Laid Before the Parliament of 1371 ‘, EHR, xxxiv (1919), 57982; K.B. McFarlane, John Wycliffe and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity(London, 1952), pp. 45–6, 59–60; M. Aston, “‘Caim’s Castles”: Poverty, Politics and Patronage’, in Dobson, ed., Church, Politics and Patronage, pp. 49–52.

146  Anon. Chron., p. 63 .

147  Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 102–3 .

148  E101/509/14 is a list of discharged tallies relating to entries on the receipt rolls between 1369 and 1372, and presumably drawn up as part of an attempt to quantify unpaid assignments issued over the same period. I hope to discuss this more fully elsewhere.

149  W.M. Ormrod, ‘An Experiment in Taxation: The English Parish Subsidy of 1371’, Speculum, lxiii (1988), 59, 80; A. Steel, ‘The Practice of Assignment in the Later Fourteenth Century’, EHR, xliii (1928), 172–80.

150  A.E. Prince, ‘The Payment of Army Wages in Edward III’s Reign’, Speculum, xix (1944), 158; Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 122–3 .

151  Note the comments of Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 64–5.

152  Anon. Chron., p. 93; Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 158.

153  There is no official record of the trial, but Anon. Chron., pp. 96–100 provides a detailed account. See also the list of charges given in an inspeximus of Wykeham’s subsequent pardon issued in December 1377: RP, iii. 387–8. For comment on the accusations see V.H. Galbraith’s notes in Anon. Chron., p. 184.

154  ‘Ransom ofJohn II’, pp. 4, 11–12.

155  CPR, 1361–4, pp. 126, 144, 186; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 502.

156  Highfield, ‘Promotion ofWilliam ofWickham’, p. 40 and n. 8.

157  The dates of the confiscation and release of the temporalities are given in Alexander and Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry, p. 468. On 6 November the Bishops of Bath and Wells and Salisbury, the Earls of Warwick and Salisbury, the chancellor, treasurer and keeper of the privy seal, and ‘other officers of the king’ had met at Westminster to discuss ‘secret business’: E403/461, 18 Nov. 1376. Whether this was the council which actually authorized the seizure of the temporalities is uncertain, but it may be worth noting that Ralph Erghum, the Bishop of Salisbury, was very closely associated with Gaunt (R.G. Davies, ‘The Episcopal Appointments in England and Wales of 1375’, Mediaeval Studies, xliv, 1982, 329–30).

158  RP, ii. 373 . See also John Lydford’s Book, ed. D.M. Owen, Devon and Cornwall Record Soc., xix, and HMC Joint Publication, xxii (1974), nos. 178–9.

159  Tout, Chapters, iii. 343–5, 352, 380 (n. 2), 396 (nn. 2, 4), 415; vi. 23.

CHAPTER 6: THE MAGNATES

1    J.E. Powell and K. Wallis, The House of Lords in the Middle Ages (London, 1968), pp. 282–346.

2    My statistics depend on the lists of summonses in LRDP, iv. passim. See also the discussion in Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, pp. 310–79.

3    P.H.W. Booth, The Financial Administration of the Lordship and County of Chester, 1272–1377, Chetham Soc., 3rd ser., xxviii (1981), pp. 173–5; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, pp. 225–6; Holmes, Estates, p. 5.

4    Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, p. 107; GEC, iv. 270–2.

5    Given-Wilson, English Nobility, pp. 35–40, provides the most detailed review of these creations.

6    Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 68.

7    J.T. Rosenthal, Nobles and the Noble Life, 1295–1500 (London, 1976), pp. 59–61.

8    Holmes, Estates, pp. 93–4, 97.

9    A full list of those peers who fought for Lancaster in 1322, and details of their fates, may be found in GEC, ii. App. C.

10   Ibid., i. 372; iii. 291; ix. 380.

11   N. Saul, ‘The Despensers and the Downfall of Edward II’, EHR, xcix (1984), 1–33; S.L. Waugh, ‘For King, Country and Patron: The Despensers and Local Administration, 1321–1322’, JBS, xxii, no. 2 (1983), 23–45.

12   J.C. Davies, ‘The Despenser War in Glamorgan’, TRHS, 3rd ser., ix (1915), 55–7; L. Fox, ‘Ministers’ Accounts of the Honor of Leicester (1322 to 1324)’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Soc., xix (1935–7), 209–11; South Lancashire in the Reign of Edward II, ed. G.H. Tupling, Chetham Soc., 3 rd ser., i (1949), introduction, passim; S.L. Waugh, ‘The Profits ofViolence: The Minor Gentry in the Rebellion of 1321–1322 in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire’, Speculum, lii (1977), 843–69, esp. pp. 849–52, 863–5.

13   J.M.W. Bean, From Lord to Patron: Lordship in Late Medieval England (Manchester, 1989), pp. 200–1. See in particular the charges of maintenance involving Chancellor Baldock and Sir Eble Lestrange in Eyre of Northamptonshire, i. 221, 237. For an accusation of maintenance made against Sir Saier Rochford, acting as deputy justice for Lestrange in Lincs. in the early 1330s, see SC8/53/2621 .

14   Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, pp. 19–22.

15   RP, ii. 62, 446.

16   Ibid., ii. 62, 65; GEC, iv. 270, n. (f).

17   RP, ii. 62; GEC, ix. 284.

18   RPHI, pp. 232–3, 237; CPR, 1330–4, p. 573; Baldwin, ‘The Council’, p. 152.

19   CIM, ii. no. 1469.

20   CCR, 1337–9, p. 136.

21   Holmes, Estates, pp. 82–3 .

22   B.H. Putnam, ‘Records of the Keepers of the Peace and their Supervisors’, EHR, xlv (1930), 435–6.

23   Idem, ‘Shire Officials: Keepers of the Peace and Justices of the Peace’, p. 193; idem, ‘Transformation’, pp. 34–5, 38.

24   Ibid., pp. 30, 38; RPHI, pp. 232–3.

25   CChR, 1327–41, pp. 348–9, 387, 399, 402; Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 6.

26   SC8/97/4826, printed in Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 266–7.

27   N. Fryde,’A Medieval Robber Baron: Sir John Molyns of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire’, in R.F. Hunnisett and J.B. Posts, eds., Medieval Legal Records (London, 1978), pp. 198–221 . It is interesting to notice that the crown had earlier ordered a general inquiry into the actions of the king’s ministers in Beds. and Bucks. as a result of allegations brought, probably by Molyns, against the sub-escheator: C81/181/4520–1; CPR, 1330–4, p. 140.

28   SC8/158/7891 . For the background see RP, ii. 44; CPR,1330–4, p. 199; CCR, 1330–3, pp. 360–1.

29   CPR, 1340–3, pp. 105–6.

30   Scalacronica by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, ed. J. Stevenson (Edinburgh, 1836), p. 158. This passage has had considerable influence on historical writing: see McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 154, Tuck, Crown and Nobility, pp. 105–6.

31   RP, ii. 60–1.

32   Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, pp. 99–102, 107.

33   For an interesting alternative interpretation to what follows, see M. Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service in Early Fourteenth Century England’, in Gillingham and Holt, eds., War and Government, pp. 147–58.

34   N.B. Lewis, ‘The Summons of the English Feudal Levy, 5 April 1327’, in T.A. Sandquist and M.R. Powicke, eds., Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson (Toronto, 1969), pp. 236–49.

35   Northern Petitions, no. III.

36   C. Platt, Medieval Southampton (London, 1973), pp. 107–18; E. Searle and R. Burghart, ‘The Defense of England and the Peasants’ Revolt’, Viator, iii (1972), 366–75.

37   CCR, 1333–7, pp. 679, 701, 723.

38   Ibid., 1337–9, p. 255; Foedera, II (ii). 994.

39   CPR, 1338–40, pp. 141–2. These amplified an earlier set of commissions of 7 July (ibid., 1338–40, p. 134).

40   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 270–302, provides the best statement of the political alignment of the magnates during the Stratford crisis.

41   Ibid., pp. 305–8.

42   CPR, 1340–3, pp. III–13 . For Cantilupe, see The 1341 Royal Inquest in Lincolnshire, pp. xv–xvii.

43   Foedera, II (ii). 1142.

44   Hughes, Early Years of Edward III, pp. 216, 222; Fryde, ‘Medieval Robber Baron’, pp. 202–6. For further examples see Jones, ‘Rex et Ministri’, pp. 9–14; W.R. Jones, ‘Keeping the Peace: English Society, Local Government, and the Commissions of 1341–44’,American Journal of Legal History, xviii (1974), 310–19; Hughes, Early Years of Edward III, pp. 212–36.

45   CPR, 1343–5, pp. 393–6.

46   McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 219.

47   Prince, ‘Indenture System’, pp. 283–97; K.B. McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, BIHR, xx (1945), 163–4; N.B. Lewis, ‘The Recruitment and Organization of a Contract Army, May to November 1337’, BIHR, xxxvii (1964), 1–19; Prestwich, ‘English Armies in the Early Stages of the Hundred Years War’, pp. 106–7.

48   Henry of Grosmont, for example, refused to raise the siege of Rennes in 1358, despite several royal mandates to this effect: Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 163 .

49   Prince, ‘Payment of Army Wages’, pp. 137–60.

50   D. Hay, ‘The Division of the Spoils of War in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., iv (1954), 91–109; McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 247–8; McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 27–31 .

51   Ibid., p. 30.

52   Ibid.; E403/387, 26 July, 4 Sept. 1357; E403/388, 4 Oct. 1357, 5 Mar. 1358.

53   See respectively: McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 254; McFarlane, Nobility, p. 22 and n. 1; R.K. Morris, ‘The Architecture of the Earls of Warwick in the Fourteenth Century’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 161–74, esp. 172–4; N. Pevsner and J. Harris, Lincolnshire (Harmondsworth, 1964), p. 641; McFarlane, Nobility, p. 22. Given-Wilson, English Nobility, p. 157 suggests that Bolton Castle may have owed as much to the profits of public office as to the spoils of war. I hope to discuss Umfraville’s work at South Kyme in more detail elsewhere.

54   D. Knowles and W.F. Grimes, Charterhouse (London, 1954), pp. 5–8; J. Kerr, ‘The East Window at Gloucester Cathedral’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Gloucester and Tewkesbury, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, vii (1985), pp. 116–29.

55   Prince, ‘Payment of Army Wages’, pp. 152–3; E401/393, 5 July 1348, recording a ‘loan’ of £16,015 14s 3d from the earl, repaid in two instalments on 26 and 28 Oct. 1350. I assume that these are in fact debts left over from the campaign in Aquitaine.

56   E401/391, 17 Jan. 1348; E401/393, 2 Aug. 1348. The exact total, of £4,633 13s 4d, was repaid in two instalments on 28 Oct. 1349 and 12 Oct. 1353 . I am indebted to Roger Axworthy for this information, and for the references in the preceding note.

57   The list of Arundel’s loans in McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 89–90 contains a number of inaccuracies. The evidence of the chancery rolls is difficult to interpret, and my own calculations depend solely on the receipt rolls. The entries are as follows: E401/501, 24 May 1370: £6,000 (not 1 July as stated in McFarlane, Nobility, p. 89, n. 5); E401/501, 28 June 1370: £13,333 6s 8d (McFarlane, Nobility, p. 89, n. 5; Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 76); E401/501, 4 Sept. 1370: £666 13s 4d (McFarlane, Nobility, p. 89, n. 5); E401/505, 15 Apr. 1371: £5,333 6s 8d (not 2,000 marks, as stated by McFarlane, Nobility, p. 90, n. 1); E401/508, 16 Aug. 1372: £3,333 6s 8d (McFarlane, Nobility, p. 90, n. 1); E401/515, 18 Sept. 1374: £10,000 (McFarlane, Nobility, p. 90, n. 1). The sum total of these entries is £38,666 6s 8d.

58   From Tournai on 30 Aug. 1340, Edward III had written to the chancellor and treasurer ordering the swift repayment of debts to the earl: C81/1330/56. For repayment of Arundel’s loans in the 1370s, see Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 76–7.

59   M. Prestwich, The Three Edwards (London, 1980), pp. 152–4.

60   CPR, 1345–8, p. 473 .

61   Tout, Chapters, iv. 327–8; Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 88.

62   Haines, Stratford, pp. 296, 303–4.

63   GEC, viii. 442–5 .

64   CPR, 1348–50, p. 145; CCR, 1349–54, p. 556; McFarlane, Nobility, p. 194 and n. 5, p. 202 and n. 1.

65   The membership of the order, worked out by G.F. Beltz, Memorials of the Order of the Garter (London, 1841), is summarized in GEC, ii, App. B.

66   Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, pp. 89–91.

67   For what follows see J.S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, BIHR, xxix (1956), 153–204, esp. 165–9.

68   RP, ii. 224, 226–7, 256–7.

69   Ibid., ii. 139. For the background see R.A. Griffiths, ‘The English Realm and Dominions and the King’s Subjects in the Later Middle Ages’, in J.G. Rowe, ed., Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society: Essays Presented to J. R. Lander (Toronto, 1986), pp. 83–105, esp. 92–6.

70   SR, i. 310; CPR, 1350–4, p. 63; GEC, ii. 61; iv. 97–8.

71   RP, ii. 269, 294–5.

72   For outlines of Montagu’s career see GEC, xi. 385–8; R. Douch, ‘The Career, Lands and Family ofWilliam Montague, Earl of Salisbury, 1301–44’, BIHR, xxiv (1951), 85–8.

73   CCR, 1330–3, p. 166; ibid., 1333–7, pp. 129–30; ibid., 1337–9, pp. 117, 519; etc.

74   C81/1330/11, 24.

75   C81/1538/22; SCi/42/84.

76   SC1/36/105, 139.

77   Fasti, iv. 13; GEC, ix. 84–5. A Master William Montagu occurs in the wardrobe accounts of the 1330s (Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion of Edward III’, p. 868, n. 109). Another of Montagu’s kinsmen, William Northwood, was in the service of Queen Philippa, and was personally recommended by the king for membership of the Order of St John of Jerusalem (CCR, 1343–6, p. 107; Calendar of Papal Registers: Letters, 1342–62 [London, 1897], p. 9). For Edward III’s involvement in Montagu’s foundation of Bisham Abbey (Berks.), see Alexander and Binski, eds., Age of Chivalry, no. 679.

78   BL MS Cotton Nero C. VIII, ff. 223–4; The Wardrobe Book of William de Norwell, ed. M. Lyon, B. Lyon, H.S. Lucas and J. de Sturler (Brussels, 1983), p. 301 .

79   C49/7/7 (printed in Baldwin, King’s Council, pp. 477–8); Hughes, Early Years of Edward III, pp. 68–9; Fryde, Studies, ch. V, pp. 261–2; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 242, n. 6.

80   See the evidence of the estallment rolls, E101/120/20; BL Add. Rolls 26588–26593, identified and discussed by Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 238–9.

81   Fryde, Studies, ch. V, p. 262. In fact, it would seem that respites had continued to be granted between Aug. 1338 and Sept. 1339: see CCR, 1337–9, pp. 525, 614, 619; ibid., 1339–41, pp. 87, 90, 93, 94, 101, 104, 110, 116, 125, 218, 248.

82   For Darcy’s role in the crisis of 1340–1 see Tout, Chapters, iii. 98, 120 and n. 2, 125, 129 n. 4, 131–2, 135.

83   Ibid., iv. 338–9.

84   For the earl’s deputies see ibid., vi. 47. Given-Wilson, English Nobility, p. 184, n. 12, suggests on the basis of the witness lists to royal charters that de Vere was regularly at court in the 1360s; but it was common form to include the chamberlain’s name in such lists, and I am therefore somewhat doubtful that this evidence proves Oxford to have been in attendance. Note the rarity of his appearances in the memoranda in the dorses of the close rolls in the 1360s (CCR, 1360–4, pp. 250–1, 551; ibid., 1369–74, pp. 93, 108–9).

85   Given-Wilson, English Nobility, pp. 184, 207.

86   LLRDP, iv. 537–9; Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, pp. 348–9.

87   LLRDP, iv. 562–3.

88   See p. 227.

89   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 136–7. A number of privy seal summonses to the council sent to the Abbot ofWestminster survive in WAM 12208, 12220, 12222–3.

90   LRDP, iv. 618–19; WAM 12214; Issue Roll of Brantingham, pp. 128–30, 239. I do not share the confidence of Brown, Governance of Late Medieval England, p. 35, that after 1350 ‘an average of two or three Great Councils were summoned each year’. On the other hand, it should be noted that great councils were often very shadowy occasions: see, e.g. J. I. Catto, ‘An Alleged Great Council of 1374’, EHR, lxxxii (1967), 764–71 .

91   CCR, 1349–54, pp. 594–5.

92   Issues of the Exchequer, Henry III – Henry VI, ed. F. Devon (London, 1847), p. 166; E403/392, 19 May 1358.

93   SC1/41/49 (Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 287, n. 115); SC1/41/105 (Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 79, 160); SC8/297/14836 (CFR, 1347–56, p. 423) .

94   List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, PRO Lists and Indexes, ix (repr. 1963), pp. 12, 21, 72, 112, 117–18, 127, 157. For the five hereditary sheriffdoms see WA. Morris, ‘The Sheriff’, EGW, ii. 44–5. It should be noted that Edward III’s new grants were not hereditary. Furthermore, John Lisle of Rougemont only enjoyed tenure of the sheriffdom of Cambs. and Hunts. for one year (1351–2), after which it reverted to royal control.

95   CPR, 1348–50, pp. 526–7; ibid., 1350–4, pp. 85–91 .

96   Ibid., 1367–70, pp. 191–5; A. Goodman, ‘John of Gaunt: Paradigm of the Late Fourteenth-Century Crisis’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxxvii (1987), 140–3.

97   RP, ii. 250.

98   For nomination of undersheriffs see SC1/43/170 (Wilkinson, Chancery, p. 35, n. 5); SCi/50/173–4; Morris, ‘The Sheriff’, p. 45. For the practice of appointing deputy JPs see Proceedings Before the Justices of the Peace in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, ed. B.H. Putnam (London, 1938), p. lxxix. For further discussion of this matter see pp. 194.

99   Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship’, pp. 46–51; SR, i. 365, 366; R.W. Kaeuper, ‘Law and Order in Fourteenth-Century England: The Evidence of Special Commissions of Oyer and Terminer’, Speculum, liv (1979), 757–64.

100  SC1/40/4, resulting in the commission in CPR, 1348–50, p. 71.

101  Essex Sessions of the Peace, 1351, 1377–1379, ed. E.C. Furber, Essex Archaeological Soc. Occasional Publications, iii (1953), pp. 61–5.

102  Tout, Chapters, iii. 123, n. 3; iv. 296, n. 2. I owe this and the previous reference to Anthony Verduyn.

103  See pp. 65, 222.

104  The common petitions on prises between 1343 and 1362 are preoccupied with regulations concerning royal purveyors (RP, ii. 140, 149, 150, 151, 161, 167, 171, 203, 227, 228, 229, 238, 240, 241, 258, 260). In 1362, however, the commons specifically demanded that lords should not take prises, and asked that penalties be provided against the agents of those magnates who infringed the law (ibid., ii. 269, 270). These suggestions were incorporated in the new Statute of Purveyors (SR, i. 371, 373).

105  Ibid., i. 304–5; RP, ii. 165 . See also B.A. Hanawalt, ‘Fur Collar Crime: The Pattern of Crime Among the Fourteenth-Century English Nobility’, Journal of Social History, viii (1975), 8.

106  Complaints about maintenance in the 1350s and 1360s were few, and general: RP, ii. 259, 265, 266.

107  Ibid., ii. 238.

108  Ibid., ii. 141, 166; H.M. Cam, Liberties and Communities in Medieval England (London, 1963), pp. 240–2.

109  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 354–5, 516–17.

110  RP, ii. 329, 330, 333, 334, 342, 352.The same assembly witnessed the revival of complaints about maintenance by the king’s ministers, not heard since 1348 (ibid., ii. 166, 179, 368).

111  SC8/139/6920.

112  RP, ii. 334.

113  Ormrod, ‘Experiment in Taxation’, p. 79; RP, ii. 352, 354.

114  R.L. Storey, ‘Liveries and Commissions of the Peace, 1388–90’, in F.R.H. Du Boulay and C.M. Barron, eds., The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack (London, 1971), pp. 131–52; Bean, From Lord to Patron, pp. 202–5.

115  The following depends on J.M.W. Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism, 1215–1540 (Manchester, 1968), pp. 104–234, 310–18; McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 61–82.

116  McFarlane (ibid., p. 69) stated that ‘feoffees were bound in equity to obey his [the lord’s] wishes and were answerable in Chancery for any default’. But this has yet to be proved for the period before c. 1380. See J.L. Barton, ‘The Medieval Use’, Law Quarterly Review, lxxxi (1965), 562–77; C.J. Given-Wilson, ‘Richard II and his Grandfather’s Will’, EHR, xciii (1978), 320–37; idem, English Nobility, p. 148.

117  This previously unnoticed case can be pieced together from the references in CPR, 1348–50, p. 535; ibid., 1350–4, p. 207; CIM, iii. nos. 28, 78; CCR, 1349–54, p. 550. The fact that it had to be brought before parliament suggests that the chancery alone lacked the authority to deal with such problems.

118  E401/383, 13 March 1346 (which actually records the remission of the fine offered by Warwick); CFR, 1347–56, p. 208. In 1353 the Despenser estates were transferred to the dowager Lady Despenser: ibid., 1347–56, pp. 378–9.

119  RP, ii. 104; C49/8/ii; Bean, Decline of English Feudalism, p. 195.

120  Ibid., pp. 221–34. As McFarlane also pointed out (Nobility, pp. 217–19), it was the nobility who really suffered from the development of enfeoffments to use among their own mesne tenants in the mid-fourteenth century. In this respect see also N. Saul,Scenes from Provincial Life: Knightly Families in Sussex, 1280–1400 (Oxford, 1986), pp. 23–4.

121  For respites of debts see p. 116. For immunity from assizes see CCR, 1333–7, p. 725; CCR, 1337–9, pp. 135, 281, 283, 389, 401, 513, 516, 625; CCR, 1369–74, p. 466; etc.

122  See, e.g. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, p. 164.

123  See p. 59. For a full discussion of the importance of these feudal rights before Edward III’s reign see S.L. Waugh, The Lordship of England: Royal Wardships and Marriages in English Society and Politics, 1217–1327 (Princeton, NJ, 1988).

124  Bellamy, Law ofTreason, pp. 191–5.

125  Note especially Edward I’s policy in this respect. McFarlane, Nobility, pp. 259–62.

126  126 CPR, 1367–70, p. 223; Catalogue of Ancient Deeds, iii. nos. A 4888–9; GEC, x. 396, n. (h). B.P. Wolffe, The Crown Lands 1461 to 1536 (London, 1970), p. 32, states that the remainder of the lordship of Pembroke was granted to Edward III and his heirs on the marriage of John Hastings with Princess Margaret in 1359, but I can find no record of this.

127  See esp. J.A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), pp. 1–32.

128  Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, pp. 410–13 .

129  The younger of the two Bohun sisters was originally destined for a nunnery: see Holmes, Estates, p. 24.

130  GEC,ii. App. B. For Pembridge, Brian and Buxhull see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 143, 156–7, 160–1, 208, 280–1.

131  Both appear reasonably regularly in witness lists to royal charters during the periods 1369–72 and 1375–6 (C53/152, 154). For Warwick’s links with the chamber see Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 160, 280–1.

132  For what follows see Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, pp. 416–20.

133  Stubbs, Constitutional History, ii. 439–53; Tout, Chapters, iii. 266–307; Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility, pp. 1–32.

134  C.C. Bayley, ‘The Campaign of 1375 and the Good Parliament’, EHR, lv (1940), 372.

135  Prince, ‘Indenture System’, pp. 293–4, 295; Sherborne, ‘Costs of English Warfare’, p. 143.

136  See, e.g. A. Goodman, ‘John of Gaunt’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 78–9.

137  C81/1336/32–33 .

138  C53/154.

139  GEC, ii. App. B.

140  R.I. Jack, ‘Entail and Descent: The Hastings Inheritance, 1370 to 1436’, BIHR, xxxviii (1965), 6.

141  A. McHardy, ‘The Effects of War on the Church: The Case of the Alien Priories in the Fourteenth Century’, in M. Jones and M. Vale, eds., England and her Neighbours 1066–1453: Essays in Honour of Pierre Chaplais (London, 1989), pp. 289–90.

142  SC8/227/11346, 11349. I suggest that the phrase ‘le Roi le grande’ (or ‘le Roy la grantde’) used in these petitions is in Latimer’s handwriting. This is supported by the endorsement to SC8/227/11349: ‘Au chanseler. Fiat carta inde nunc. Willielmo domino de Latyme’ (resulting in CPR, 1374–7, pp. 72–3). This evidence pre-dates the signed warrants by the chamberlains of Richard II, noted by Maxwell-Lyte, Great Seal, pp. 145, 152, and McFarlane, Nobility, p. 232.

143  See p. 71 .

144  The best introduction to this complicated subject is H.M. Cam, The Hundred and the Hundred Rolls, new edn (London, 1963), pp. 137–45. The Adventus Vicecomitum sections of the memoranda rolls provide an indication of how many royal hundreds were in private hands. See, e.g. Calendar of Memoranda Rolls (Exchequer), Michaelmas 1326-Michaelmas 1327 (London, 1968), pp. 1–6, 8–14.

145  SR, i. 259; H.M. Cam, Law-Finders and Law-Makers in Medieval England (London, 1962), p. 153 .

146  RP, ii. 305–6, 314, 333, 348, 349, 357.

147  The fine rolls record a fairly steady trickle of leases in the middle years of the reign, a lull between 1363 and 1370, and then a slight increase in the 1370s, though not sufficient to be politically controversial (CFR, 1347–56, pp. 40, 101, 106–7, 145, 259, 342, 393–4; ibid., 1357–68, pp. 2, 9, 35, 143, 21i, 270; ibid., 1369–77, pp. 64, 68, 93, 108, 155, 162, 184–5, 219, 248, 357, 369).

148  Ibid., 1369–77, p. 248; see also Wolffe, Royal Demesne, p. 64.

149  CFR, 1369–77, pp. 64, 108, 357.

150  Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 151, 201–2; A. Saul, ‘Local Politics and the Good Parliament’, in A. Pollard, ed., Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History (Gloucester, 1984), pp. 156–71 .

151  Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 183 .

152  Ibid., pp. 156–7.

153  A. Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appellant under Richard II (London, 1971), pp. 4–6.

154  Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 186.

155  Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, pp. 418–19 and n. 72.

156  Issues of the Exchequer, p. 204.

157  GEC, ii. App. B. The statement in Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, p. 419, that Thomas ofWoodstock was also made a member of the order on this occasion, is wrong.

158  Tout, Chapters, iii. 326.

CHAPTER 7: THE CLERGY

1    J.C. Russell, ‘The Clerical Population of Medieval England’, Traditio, ii (1944), 177–212. Revised figures for 1381 are found in Oman, Great Revolt, pp. 163–4.

2    D. Knowles, The Religious Orders in England (Cambridge, 1948–59), ii. 255–62.

3    Hatcher, Plague, Population, p. 22; A. Hamilton Thompson, ‘Registers of John Gynewell, Bishop of Lincoln, for theYears 1347–1350’, Archaeological Journal, lxviii (1911), 325.

4    B.H. Putnam, ‘Maximum Wage–Laws for Priests after the Black Death, 1348–1381 ‘, American Historical Review, xxi (1915–16), 12–32.

5    J.H. Denton, ‘The “Communitas Cleri” in the Early Fourteenth Century’, BIHR, li (1978), 72–8.

6    See especially the allusions in the poems commemorating the victories of 1346–7: Political Poems and Songs, i. 30, 31, 43, 56.

7    Barnie, War in Medieval Society, p. 141 .

8    For what follows see K. Edwards, ‘The Political Importance of the English Bishops during the Reign of Edward II’, EHR, lix (1944), 311–47; Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 176–277; Tout, Chapters, iii. 1–68.

9    Ibid., iii. 116–18. See also John Stratford’s quarrel with Adam Orleton in 1333–4, discussed on p. 94.

10   G. Lambrick, ‘Abingdon and the Riots of 1327’, Oxoniensia, xxix/xxx (1964–5), 129–41; VCH Herts., ii. 478–9; M.D. Lobel, ‘A Detailed Account of the 1327 Rising at Bury St. Edmund’s and the Subsequent Trial’, Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and Natural History, xxi (1933), 215–31 .

11   The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, ed. R.B. Dobson, 2nd edn (London, 1983), pp. 80–3.

12   The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter, ed. F.C. Hingeston-Randolph (London, 1894–9), i. 172–3; The Register of William Melton, Archbishop of York, 1317–1340, ed. R.M.T. Hill, CYS, lxx, lxxi (1977–8), i. 95.

13   Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship’, pp. 25–40; J.G. Bellamy, ‘The Coterel Gang: An Anatomy of Fourteenth-Century Criminals’, EHR, lxxix (1964), 699.

14   Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, p. 20.

15   Haines, Stratford, p. 200.

16   M. Mate, ‘The Estates of Canterbury Priory before the Black Death, 1315–1348’, SMRH, new ser., viii (1986), 14, 20.

17   Haines, Stratford, p. 289.

18   For the rest of this paragraph see A. Deeley, ‘Papal Provision and Royal Rights of Ecclesiastical Patronage in the Early Fourteenth Century’, EHR, xliii (1928), 497–527; Saunders, ‘Royal Ecclesiastical Patronage’, passim.

19   For detailed studies of procedure under the writ quare impedit see F. Cheyette, ‘Kings, Courts, Cures and Sinecures: The Statute of Provisors and the Common Law’, Traditio, xix (1963), 295–349; W.R. Jones, ‘Relations of the Two Jurisdictions: Conflict and Cooperation in England during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, SMRH, orig. ser., vii (1970), 102–32.

20   YB 17 Edw III, Trin. pl. 17 (Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third, Year XVII, p. 538), cited by Cheyette, ‘Kings, Courts, Cures and Sinecures’, p. 322, n. 82.

21   My figures are based on WE. Lunt, Financial Relations of the Papacy with England (Cambridge, Mass., 1939–62), ii. 326–7.

22   These figures derive from J.R.L. Highfield, ‘The Relations between the Church and the English Crown from the Death of Archbishop Stratford to the Opening of the Great Schism (1349–78)’, University of Oxford D. Phil. thesis (1951), p. 407. They differ from those of Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 327, 338, although the annual averages for pontificates work out much the same. See also J.R. Wright, The Church and the English Crown, 1305–1334 (Toronto, 1980), pp. 27–30.

23   My conclusions are based on a careful reading of the lists of bishops in Fasti, passim, and Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 724–60.

24   Bangor 1357, 1366, 1375–6; Bath and Wells 1363; Canterbury 1348, 1349, 1374–5; Carlisle 1352–3; Durham 1333; Exeter 1327; Ely 1337, 1345, 1361–2, 1373; Hereford 1360–1, 1369; Llandaff 1347; Norwich 1336–7; Rochester 1372–3; St Asaph 1345–6, 1357; St Davids 1347; Salisbury 1375; Winchester 1345; Worcester 1327, 1349, 1373–5.

25   Carlisle 1352–3; Ely 1373; Exeter 1327; Llandaff 1341; St Davids 1347; Salisbury 1375; Worcester 1327, 1373–5.

26   Canterbury 1374–5; Durham 1333; Ely 1373; St Asaph 1345–6; Winchester 1345.

27   A.K. McHardy, ‘The Promotion of John Buckingham to the See of Lincoln’, JEH, xxvi (1975), 127–35; Highfield, ‘Promotion of William of Wickham’, pp.37–54. Two other notable rebuffs to royal candidates occurred at Hereford (1369) and St Asaph (1345):Fasti, ii. 1; xi. 37.

28   For the increase in royal recoveries see Cheyette, ‘Kings, Courts, Cures and Sinecures’, pp. 298–318. The number of appeals can best be judged from the commissions and prohibitions issued against those challenging royal recoveries, as recorded on the dorses of the patent rolls. Between 1327 and 1339 there are no such entries; but between 1340 and 1352 there are a total of seventy-five separate cases. See Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Govemment’, p.171 .

29   C. Davies, ‘The Statute of Provisors of 1351’, History, xxxviii (1953), 116–33, is somewhat untrustworthy, but provides a good summary of the parliamentary debates. Another analysis is provided by Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 327–47.

30   SR, i. 316–18; RP, ii. 232–3 .

31   SR, i. 329; E.B. Graves, ‘The Legal Significance of the Statute of Praemunire of 1353’, in C.H. Taylor, ed., Anniversary Essays Presented to C.H.Haskins (New York, 1929), pp. 57–80. It may be of some significance that the earliest surviving writ of praemunire facias returned into chancery dealing with a contested benefice dates from 1344: C256/2/2, no. 12.

32   RP, ii. 244–5 .

33   SR, i. 325. For the significance of this statute see p. 208, n. 168.

34   CPR, 1350–4, pp. 227, 430; ibid., 1354–8, pp. 188, 410; ibid., 1358–61, pp. 65, 87.

35   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, p.171; Highfield, ‘Relations’, pp. 412–18.

36   For presentations until 1352 see Saunders, ‘Royal Ecclesiastical Patronage’, App. I. The figures for 1352–9 are my own, taken from the patent rolls.

37   Figures based on CPR, 1361–4, pp. 456–525; CPR, 1364–7, pp. 1–63 .

38   Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 348–51; J.J.N. Palmer and A.P. Wells, ‘Ecclesiastical Reform and the Politics of the Hundred Years War during the Pontificate of Urban V (1362–70)’, in C.T. Allmand, ed., War, Literature and Politics in the Late Middle Ages(Liverpool, 1976), pp. 169–89.

39   C.J. Godfrey, ‘Pluralists in the Province of Canterbury in 1366’, JEH, xi (1960), 23–40.

40   SR, i. 385–7. For the implementation of this legislation see the file of writs C255/10/5, discussed in List of Chancery Files, PRO List & Index Soc., cxxx (1976), p. 131.

41   Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 351–5; Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 46–7; R.G. Davies, ‘The Anglo-Papal Concordat of Bruges, 1375: A Reconsideration’, Archivum Historiae Pontificiae, xix (1981), 99–146.

42   H.M. Jewell, English Local Administration in the Middle Ages (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 61–8, provides a convenient summary.

43   J. Scammell, ‘The Origins and Limitations of the Liberty of Durham’, EHR, lxxxi (1966), 473, n. 1; Tout, Chapters, iii. 12; J.W.F. Hill, Medieval Lincoln (Cambridge, 1948), pp. 121–3 .

44   CChR, 1327–41, pp. 345–8, arising out of the archbishop’s request in SC1/38/142.

45   Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, pp. 7–8; idem, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 205–13.

46   Treaty Rolls II: 1337–9 (London, 1972), no. 541; G.T. Lapsley, The County Palatine of Durham (Cambridge, Mass.,1924), pp. 272–4; J. Campbell, ‘England, Scotland and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century’, in J.R. Hale, J.R.L. Highfield and B. Smalley, eds., Europe in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1965), p. 192; Ormrod, ‘Experiment in Taxation’, pp. 77–8. For 1371 note also the new evidence cited in Appendix 1 .

47   Knowles, Religious Orders, i. 39–48, 185–6.

48   CCR, 1341–3, pp. 353–4.

49   This dispute is summarized by Hamilton Thompson, ‘William Bateman’, pp. 118–21. See also SCCKB, vi, no. 26; YB 20 Edw III, Pasch pl. 27 (Year Books of the Reign of King Edward the Third, Year XX (i), pp. 214–32); SC8/246A2274 (printed inSCCKB,ii, pp. cxxvii–viii).

50   The remainder of this paragraph is based on three main sources: (a) summonses to great councils recorded in LRDP, iv, passim and in the issue rolls; (b) the conciliar memoranda on the dorses of the close rolls; and (c) the witness lists to royal charters.

51   For Houghton’s career as royal diplomat see BRUO, ii. 972–3.

52   See respectively G. Williams, ‘Henry de Gower (?1278–1347): Bishop and Builder’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, cxxx (1981), 1–19; Highfield, ‘English Hierarchy’, p. 120; BRUO,iii. 1698–9; Hamilton Thompson, ‘William Bateman’, pp. 102–37; Tout,Chapters, vi. 455, s.v. Wyvill.

53   J.H. Denton and J.P. Dooley, Representatives of the Lower Clergy in Parliament, 1295– 1340 (Woodbridge, 1987); A.K. McHardy, ‘The Representation of the English Lower Clergy in Parliament during the Later Fourteenth Century’, SCH, x (1973), 97–107; J.H. Denton, ‘The Clergy and Parliament in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Davies and Denton, eds., English Parliament, pp. 88–108.

54   Powell and Wallis, House of Lords, pp. 344–6.

55   Roskell, ‘Problem of Attendance’, pp.165, 166–7.

56   Durham, Prior’s Kitchen, Register of Richard Bury, f. vii. For Bradwardine and his connection with Bury see BRUO, i. 244–6.

57   SC10/25/1245. For Northborough see BRUO, ii. 1368–70.

58   E.g. Registrum Hamonis de Hethe Diocesis Roffensis, ed. C. Johnson, CYS, xlviii, xlix (1948), ii. 644–5; Registrum Johannis de Trillek Episcopi Herefordensis, ed. J.H. Parry, CYS, viii (1912), pp. 282–3; Cumbria Record Office, DRC/1/2, p.163.

59   Foedera, III (i). 275.

60   Tout, Chapters, iii. 261, n. 5; iv. 163–4; M. Jones, ‘Edward III’s Captains in Brittany’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, p. 118.

61   Chaplais, Essays, ch. VIII, pp. 85–6.

62   For Edward III’s patronage of civil and canon law at both Oxford and Cambridge see T.H. Aston ed., The History of the University of Oxford I: The Early Schools (Oxford, 1984), pp. 237, 239, 572, 586.

63   Mirot and Déprez, ‘Les Ambassades Anglaises’, passim. See also H.S. Lucas, ‘The Machinery of Diplomatic Intercourse’, EGW, i. 312–13, 318–19.

64   Carlton: BRUO, i. 355–6. Loughborough: ibid., ii. 1164; Foedera, III (i). 284. Chaddesden: Tout, Chapters, v. 25 and n. 3; Foedera, II (ii). 1228; Calendar of Papal Registers: Letters, 1342–62, p. 2; Calendar of Papal Letters: Petitions, 1342–1419(London, 1896), pp. 190, 232. Lecche: BRUO, ii. 1118–19. Offord: Baldwin, King’s Council, p. 82. Branketre, Welwick and Tirrington: Chaplais, ‘Master John de Branketre’, pp. 169–99.

65   BRUO, i. 138–9.

66   E.g. Historical Papers and Letters from the Northern Registers, ed. J. Raine, RS (1873), pp. 406–8; Cumbria Record Office, DRC/1/2, pp. 155–6. The bishop was also called upon to supervise the maintenance of Carlisle Castle: HMC, Ninth Report, Part i (London, 1883, repr. 1979), p. 192.

67   Foedera, II (ii). 994. In the following year the Bishop of Durham was ordered to set up commissions to provide for arrays, defence and the maintenance of the peace in his palatinate: Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, ed. T.D. Hardy, RS (1873–8), iii. 258–60. This was clearly linked to the commissions of Aug. 1338 discussed on p. 97.

68   Searle and Burghart, ‘Defense of England’, p. 371 .

69   B. McNab, ‘Obligations of the Clergy in English Society: Military Arrays of the Clergy, 1369–1418’, in W.C. Jordan, B. McNab and T.F. Ruiz, eds., Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of J.R. Strayer (Princeton, NJ, 1976), pp. 294, 296. In fact, it should be noted that the clergy’s immunity from array had frequently been disregarded by the crown and its local agents before this date: e.g. Hemingby’s Register, ed. H.M. Chew, Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Soc. Records Branch, xviii (1963), nos. 80, 258 (1336–9); HMC, Ninth Report, Part 1, p. 189 (1344); WAM 3787 (1347); The Coucher Book of Selby, ed. J.T. Fowler, Yorkshire Archaeological and Topographical Association, x, xiii (1891–3), ii. 397 (1355–6).

70   Hewitt, Organization of War, pp. 160–5; WR. Jones, ‘The English Church and Royal Propaganda during the Hundred Years War’, JBS, xix, no. i (1979), 18–30.

71   A.K. McHardy, ‘Liturgy and Propaganda in the Diocese of Lincoln during the Hundred Years War’, SCH, xviii (1981), 215–27.

72   J. Coleman, English Literature in History, 1350–1400: Medieval Readers and Writers (London, 1981), p. 266.

73   A. Gwynn, ‘The Sermon-Diary of Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, xliv (section C) (1937–8), 24, 50.

74   Maddicott, ‘Poems of Social Protest’, pp. 130–44.

75   K. Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate:Richard FitzRalph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford, 1981), pp. 227–9.

76   P. Heath, Church and Realm, 1272–1461 (London, 1988), pp. 115–16; Cambridge University Library, Ely Diocesan Records, G/1/1 (Register of Thomas Lisle), ff. 82–82v.

77   W.A. Pantin, The English Church in the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge, 1955), pp. 182–5, provides a summary.

78   McKisack, Fourteenth Century, p. 250; C. Allmand, The Hundred Years War (Cambridge, 1988), p. 153 .

79   79 R. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (London, 1973), pp. 207–13 .

80   The extent of the clergy’s holdings was a matter of some controversy, but by the 1370s it was widely believed that they controlled a third of the wealth of the country: see, e.g. E.C. Tatnall, ‘John Wycliff and Ecclesia Anglicana’, JEH, xx (1969), 24.

81   The definitive study is M. Howell, Regalian Right in Medieval England (London, 1962).

82   Information derived from Fasti, passim. The only notable exceptions were atYork (Apr. 1340–Sept. 1342) and Lichfield (Nov. 1358–Sept. 1360).

83   SR, i. 294. This has an obvious parallel in the promise concerning wardships made to lay tenants-in-chief during the same parliament (ibid., i. 285–6). Note that some monastic and cathedral chapters had won the right to farm temporalities before 1340: e.g.CFR, 1327–37, pp. 120–1 (Ely); E.R. Stevenson, ‘The Escheator’, EGW, ii. 138 (Glastonbury).

84   E.g. Concilia, ii. 712; CPR, 1354–8, pp. 215–16.

85   Fryde, Tyranny and Fall, pp. 117–18; Buck, Stapeldon, p. 144.

86   SR, i. 294.

87   RP, ii. 245; SR, i. 326.

88   B. Wilkinson, ‘A Letter of Edward III to his Chancellor and Treasurer’, EHR, xlii (1927), 248–51 .

89   C49/67/5, printed in Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXV, p. 32, n. 73; and in SCCKB, iii, p. cxxi.

90   KB27/385, Rex, mm. 26–30; KB29/14, m. 3; E403/382, 21 Oct. 1356; E368/129, Brev. Retorn., Pasch, m. 3d. I owe thanks to John Aberth for discussing this case with me.

91   SCCKB, vi. no. 98; CPR, 1364–7, pp.159, 420.

92   See pp. 104–5.

93   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 247–59.

94   E.B. Fryde, ‘The Tenants of the Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield and of Worcester after the Plague of 1348–9’, in Hunnisett and Post, eds., Medieval Legal Records, pp. 223–66.

95   Fryde, Studies, ch. IV, pp. 198–211.

96   L.H. Butler, ‘Archbishop Melton, his Neighbours, and his Kinsmen, 1317- 1340’, JEH, ii (1951), 61–2.

97   Foedera, II (ii). 1039–40; CPR, 1338–40, p. 122; Wardrobe Book of Norwell, p. 75.

98   CChR, 1327–41, pp. 447, 454–5.

99   The Canterbury province in fact granted an extra tenth on the understanding that it would not be required to contribute to the wool grants: CFR, 1337–47, pp. 98–9; CCR, 1337–9, p. 584; ibid., 1339–41, pp. 56, 80, 94. Ibid., 1337–9, p. 592, draws a clear distinction between the parliamentary prelates, paying wool, and the rest of the clergy, paying the tenth.

100  Ibid., 1346–9, pp. 262, 268; Foedera, III (i). 116; Reg. Trillek, pp. 298–9; A Calendar of the Register of Wolstan de Bransford, Bishop of Worcester, 1339–49, ed. R.M. Haines, HMC Joint Publication ix, for Worcester Historical Soc., new ser., iv (1966), no. 1290.

101  Reg. Trillek, pp. 308–9; Reg. Lisle, f. 227.

102  RP, ii. 453–4.

103  CPR, 1345–8, pp. 337–42. I am indebted to Roger Axworthy for providing figures from the receipt rolls to confirm my arguments.

104  Concilia, iii. 87–8; Original Charters Relating to the City of Worcester, ed. J.H. Bloom (Oxford, 1909), pp. 185–6.

105  My own calculations from E401/500, 501, 503, 504, 505.

106  E401/501, 18 July 1370 (£2,000), 15 Sept. 1370 (£333 6s 8d); E401/503, 7 Dec. 1370 (£666 13s 4d). These loans were repaid between 9 Nov. 1370 and 15 Mar. 1371.

107  Northern Petitions, no. 162.

108  Treatise of Walter de Milemete, p. xix; C.J. Nederman, ‘Royal Taxation and the English Church: The Origins of William of Ockham’s An princeps’, JEH, xxxvii (1986), 377–88; Tatnall, ‘Wyclif and Ecclesia Anglicana’, pp. 21, 25.

109  CFR, 1337–47, pp. 28–36; CCR, 1337–9, pp. 333–7, etc.

110  For instances of tax reductions as a result of the plague of 1348–9 see Taxatio Ecclesiastica Angliae et Walliae Auctoritate Papae Nicholai IV (London, 1802), pp. 57, 59, 75; Ormrod, ‘Black Death’, p. 183 and n. 74.

111  For the background see D.B. Weske, Convocation of the Clergy (London, 1937), pp. 158–62. For the conditions see SC1/38/82; SC1/56/4. For requests for relief see SC1/38/81; SC1/55/113; SC1/64/24; etc. The same specification was made in 1360 (SC8/235/11706), as a result of which further requests for relief were entered: e.g. SC1/38/144; SC1/40/151; SC1/40/159; SC1/56/33 .

112  Harriss, Public Finance, p. 525; Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 70.

113  The definitive study is J.H. Denton, Robert Winchelsey and the Crown, 1294–1313 (Cambridge, 1980). My own statistics differ somewhat from those given by Denton.

114  Ormrod, ‘English Economy’, Tables 2, 3 (slightly amended), with the addition of rough estimates for the clerical taxes of 1279, 1280, 1283 and 1286 based on Prestwich, Edward I, p. 569. For the figures for Edward II’s reign see W.E. Lunt, ‘Clerical Tenths Levied in England by Papal Authority During the Reign of Edward II’, in Taylor, ed., Essays Presented to Haskins, pp. 178–9, 182.

115  Lunt, Financial Relations, ii. 75–114.

116  The notable exceptions are Clarke, Representation and Consent, pp. 15–32; and Weske, Convocation, pp. 147–79. E.W. Kemp, Counsel and Consent (London, 1961), pp. 89–112, also touches on the importance of ecclesiastical taxation.

117  The following is based on a careful reading of the sources cited by Weske, Convocation, pp. 244–59, 280–7, supplemented by additional unpublished material on clerical gravamina in the PRO.

118  Concilia, ii. 622–4.

119  Denton, Winchelsey, p. 55 and passim.

120  Weske, Convocation, pp. 155, 259; W.E. Lunt, ‘The Collectors of Clerical Subsidies Granted to the King by the English Clergy’, EGW, ii. 228–9; Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 147–9.

121  Concilia, ii. 625–6; W. Wake, The State of the Church and Clergy of England in their Councils (London, 1703), pp. 287, 288. In Dec. 1339 the northern province reiterated its opposition to additional taxes: C270/14, no. 2.

122  For the conditions attached to the tenth of 1327 see Lunt, ‘Collectors of Clerical Subsidies’, pp. 227–8. In 1334 there is no evidence that the Canterbury clergy made conditions, but the northern province reiterated those of 1327: ibid., pp. 229–30. The conditions attached to the tenth granted in Sept./Oct. 1336 were retrospectively applied to that of Mar./May 1336 (ibid., pp. 230–1).

123  Ibid., pp. 227–8. In Dec. 1327 Archbishop Melton complained that the conditions were not being observed (SC1/38/103); but in Dec. 1327–Feb. 1328 the new evaluation was carried out (Lunt, ‘Collectors of Clerical Subsidies’, pp. 241–2).

124  Northern Petitions, no. 109.

125  Lunt, ‘Collectors of Clerical Subsidies’, pp. 227–8 (1327); ibid., pp. 230–1 (1336); C270/14, no. 3 (1347); C270/14, no. 5 (1351).

126  C270/14, no. 3 .

127  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 348–54, 356–75.

128  For what follows see W.R. Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics and the Two Laws: The Gravamina of the English Clergy, 1237–1399’, Speculum, xli (1966), 209–42.

129  See, e.g. the comments of Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 252–3, on the gravamina of 1280. Contrast the situation with demands concerning the form of collection, which had been linked directly to the payment of taxes since at least 1294 (Denton, Winchelsey, p. 71).

130  See pp. 74–5.

131  SC8/46/2281 .

132  SR, i. 292–4.

133  Concilia, ii. 712.

134  See the judgements of Haines (Stratford, pp. 48–101), who regards Stratford as the architect of the ecclesiastical legislation of 1340 (ibid., pp. 264–5), and points out that the archbishop himself communicated this ‘charter of liberties’ to all the bishops of his province (ibid., p. 266 and n. 309).

135  Jones, ‘Gravamina’, pp. 227–33 .

136  C270/14, no. 3. See also SC1/42/140.

137  Weske, Convocation, p. 253; C270/13, no. 1; C270/14, no. 5. It is worth noting that the unspecified petitions of the Canterbury clergy were referred to a special commission set up on 1 Sept. 1351, and it was only at this point that writs were issued for the appointment of collectors of the first year of the tax: Foedera, III (i). 230; CCR, 1349–54, p. 322.

138  The gravamina were included on the parliament roll (RP, ii. 244–5), but the king suspended a decision on some of them (Concilia, iii. 28–9), and the archbishop’s letters communicating the so-called statute Pro Clero were only issued in July (ibid., iii. 235). The confirmation of the second year of the subsidy is recorded on the memoranda roll in Trinity term 1352 (E159/128, Recorda, Trin. m. 2).

139  Concilia, iii. 38–9.

140  SC1/56/4.

141  Concilia, iii. 39, translated in Weske, Convocation, pp. 160–1 .

142  Ibid., pp. 255, 285; SC1/38/80; SC1/40/181 .

143  Jones, ‘Gravamina’, pp. 233–4.

144  SR, i. 390–8.

145  See p. 103 .

146  Ormrod, ‘Experiment in Taxation’, pp. 64–6.

147  W.L. Warren, ‘A Reappraisal of Simon Sudbury, Bishop of London (1361–75) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1375–81)’, JEH, x (1959), 139–52; Davies, ‘Episcopal Appointments of 1375’, pp.306–32.

148  C270/14, no. 6.

149  Weske, Convocation, pp. 133–5.

150  Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 18–19; J.H. Dahmus, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1381–1396 (University Park, PA, 1966), p. 12.

151  Weske, Convocation, p. 259; Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 147–9.

152  RP, ii. 357–8; Jones, ‘Gravamina’, pp. 233–4.

153  RP, ii. 368.

154  Jones, ‘Gravamina’, p. 234.

155  Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 187–8.

CHAPTER 8: PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT AND THE GENTRY

1    For what follows see Maddicott, ‘English Peasantry’; R.H. Hilton, ‘Peasant Movement in England before 1381’, EcHR, 2nd ser., ii (1949), 117–36; idem, Bond Men Made Free, pp. 144–85; E.B. Fryde, The Great Revolt of 1381, Historical Association Pamphlet, c (1981).

2    E.g. Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, pp. 78–80.

3    RP, ii. 25, 208.

4    Ibid., ii. 175–6, 177, 182, 184, 187, 189, 212.

5    For this matter see M.K. McIntosh, ‘The Privileged Villeins of the English Ancient Demesne’, Viator, vii (1976), 295–328; R. Faith, ‘The “Great Rumour” of 1377 and Peasant Ideology’, in R.H. Hilton and T.H. Aston, eds., The English Rising of 1381(Cambridge, 1984), pp. 43–52; E.M. Hallam, Domesday Book through Nine Centuries (London, 1986), pp.99–105.

6    RP, ii. 94.

7    Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, pp. 80–3 .

8    C49/45/26. For other aspects of this case see Maddicott, ‘Law and Lordship’, pp. 37–9.

9    Faith, “‘Great Rumour”’, p. 45.

10   Hilton, ‘Peasant Movements’, pp. 125–30; Hallam, Domesday Book, pp. 99–105, 199–209.

11   C81/129/7119.

12   RP, ii. 180; R.H. Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 29–30. It is possible that this debate was sparked off by the dispute between the Bishop of Ely and Richard Spink, which came up in the same parliament (RP, ii. 192). SC8/134/6668 contains a petition from the ‘prelates, lords and peers of the realm and others having villeins in obedience’ on the same subject as RP, ii. 180.

13   RP, ii. 242; SR, i. 323; P.R. Hyams, ‘The Action of Naifty in the Early Common Law’, Law Quarterly Review, xc (1974), 331.

14   Faith, ‘“Great Rumour”’, pp. 71–3 .

15   Powicke, Military Obligation, pp. 174–5 .

16   Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 6–29; D.A.L. Morgan, ‘The Individual Style of the English Gentleman’, in M. Jones, ed., Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe (Gloucester, 1986), pp. 15–35, esp. p. 16.

17   Thus in the abortive attempts of 1344 to assess landholders for providing troops: Powicke, Military Obligation, pp. 195–9.

18   Figures based on J. Quick, ‘The Number and Distribution of Knights in Thirteenth Century England: The Evidence of the Grand Assize Lists’, in P.R. Coss and S.D. Lloyd, eds., Thirteenth Century England I (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 114–23, esp. p. 119; and J.A.F. Thomson, The Transformation of Medieval England, 1370–1529 (London, 1983), p. 113.

19   T.B. Pugh, ‘The Magnates, Knights and Gentry’, in S.B. Chrimes, C.D. Ross and R.A. Griffiths, eds., Fifteenth-Century England, 1399–1509: Studies in Politics and Society (Manchester, 1972), p. 97.

20   Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 34–5.

21   C. Given-Wilson, ‘The King and the Gentry in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxxvii 1987), 99–100, estimates ‘a figure of about 2,300 to 2,500 “county families” throughout England in the late middle ages’.

22   J.C. Bridge, ‘Two Cheshire Soldiers of Fortune of the Fourteenth Century: Sir Hugh Calveley and Sir Robert Knollys’, Journal of the Chester Archaeological Society, xiv (1908), 112–231; M. Jones, ‘La Mort de Walter Huet (1373)’, Bulletin de la Société d’Etudes et de Recherches Historiques du Pays de Retz, iv (1984), 28–34; P. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire,, 1277–1403, Chetham Soc., 3rd ser., xxxiv 1987), pp. 149–84.

23   Unless otherwise stated, the following statistics are based on A.E. Prince, ‘The Strength of English Armies in the Reign of Edward III’, EHR, xlvi (1931), 357; and Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues’, pp. 718–46.

24   Prestwich, ‘English Armies in the Early Stages of the Hundred Years War’, p. 112.

25   The lists in Crécy and Calais from the Public Records, ed. G. Wrottesley, William Salt Archaeological Soc., xviii (2) (1897), pp. 193–203, yield a total of 927 knights. For conscription, see Powicke, Military Obligation, pp. 197–8.

26   Wardrobe Book of Norwell, pp. xcvi–vii.

27   S. Walker, ‘Profit and Loss in the Hundred Years War: The Subcontracts of Sir John Strother, 1374’, BIHR, lviii (1985), 100–6.

28   McFarlane, Nobility, p. 30; CPR, 1345–8, p. 226; List of Sheriffs, p. 97; CPR, 1350–4, p. 89, etc; Rotuli Scotiae (London, 1814–19), i. 772, 795, 807, 841, 843, 857.

29   CIM, iii. no. 531 . It is interesting to notice that, despite his honorary status of banneret, Coupland apparently never took up knighthood. His name appears in the list of nonknights in Westmorland compiled during the distraint of 1356 (C47/1/15).

30   S.E. Rigold, Nunney Castle (London, 1957), p. 4; D.J. Turner, ‘Bodiam, Sussex: True Castle or Old Soldier’s Dream House?’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, pp. 267–77, esp. 273–4.

31   CPR, 1345–8, pp. 306, 535.

32   See p. 116 .

33   SC8/227/11328; CPR, 1374–7, pp. 68–9.

34   Powicke, Military Obligation, pp. 198, 200–1. For the extensive fines collected in 1347 see CFR, 1337–47, pp. 497–524, and E401/387, 8 March 1347 (entries totalling £3,115 14s 7d).

35   SC1/41/23.

36   SC1/40/191. In the mid–1340s it was necessary to find men ‘out of retinue’ to serve as commissioners of array in Lincs.: SC1/39/170.

37   Tout, Chapters, iii. 95. Wake was a knight of the royal household: BL MS Cotton Nero C. VIII, ff. 223, 224; Wardrobe Book of Norwell, pp. 301, 302; E36/204, f. 86. It was this that no doubt helped him retain the sheriffdom during the purge of 1340–1: see Fryde, ‘Removal of Ministers’, p. 157, n. i .

38   Jones, ‘Edward III’s Captains in Brittany’, pp. 109–15. For further discussion see Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 54–9.

39   G.G. Astill, ‘The Medieval Gentry: A Study in Leicestershire Society, 1350–1399’, University of Birmingham Ph.D. thesis (1977), pp. 258–9.

40   For what follows, see Bean, From Lord to Patron, which provides full bibliographical references.

41   See p. 124.

42   Prince, ‘Strength of English Armies’, p. 366.

43   I follow Bean, From Lord to Patron, pp.155–9, 245–6, which revises figures given by J.R. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster (Oxford, 1970), pp. 44–5, and McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, p. 165.

44   For estimates of the size of peacetime retinues in the mid-and later fourteenth century see Holmes, Estates, pp. 58–84, passim; M. Cherry, ‘The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Formation and Disintegration of a Late Medieval Aristocratic Affinity’, Southern History, i (1979), 72–6; Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp.84–5; Given-Wilson, English Nobility, p. 79. K. Mertes, The English Noble Household, 1250–1600 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 183–93, judges that in 1350–80 the average earl’s household (including domestic staff) numbered only about eighty, and notes a considerable increase in size in the fifteenth century.

45   S.K. Walker, ‘Lordship and Lawlessness in the Palatinate of Lancaster, 1370–1400’, JBS, xxviii (1989), 325–48, esp.332–3 .

46   K.S. Naughton, The Gentry of Bedfordshire in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, University of Leicester Department of English Local History Occasional papers, 3rd ser., ii (1976), pp. ii, 27–8, 51; B. McLane, ‘Changes in the Court of King’s Bench, 1291–1430:The Preliminary View from Lincolnshire’, in Ormrod, ed., England in the Fourteenth Century, p. 158; Astill, ‘Medieval Gentry’, ch. 5; S.M. Wright, The Derbyshire Gentry in the Fifteenth Century, Dugdale Record Soc., viii (1983), 60–2, 144–5. Note also the timely comments on gentry independence in the fourteenth century by P.R. Coss, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revised’, P&P, cxxv 1989), 57–62.

47   Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, pp. 59, 62, 295–7, 315. Astill, ‘Medieval Gentry’, p. 226, notes a permanent reduction in the number of Leics. families associated with the house of Lancaster after the 1320s. For the instability of the Despenser affinity in the same period see Waugh, ‘For King, Country and Patron’, pp. 23–45.

47   Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 255–8.

48   S. Walker, ‘Lancaster v. Dallingridge: A Franchisal Dispute in Fourteenth Century Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, cxxi (1983), 87–94.

49   R. Somerville, History of the Duchy of Lancaster, I: 1265–1603 (London, 1953), pp. 360, 367, 382; Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, p. 178 and p. 284, nn. 40, 43 . Cokayn was knight of the shire for Derbs. on at least eight occasions 1338–62, and for Lancs. in 1348:Return of MPs, i. 121–69, passim. He was also appointed keeper of certain Lancastrian estates after the death of Henry of Grosmont: CIPM, xi. no. 118 (p. 101); John of Gaunt’s Register, 1372–6, ed. S. Armitage-Smith, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., xx-xxi (1911), ii. no. 1799. For his descendants see DNB, iv. 682.

50   List of Sheriffs, p. 157. For Shakenhurst’s links with the earl see CPR, 1343–5, p. 517; CCR, 1369–74, p. 108. He was MP for Worcs. on at least four occasions (1339, 1351, 1354, 1360).

51   C49/7/4. For other aspects of Bocking’s career see N. Denholm-Young, The Country Gentry in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1969), p. 70.

52   Given-Wilson, Royal Household, pp. 212–16; idem, ‘The King and the Gentry’, pp. 98–9, 100–1.

53   Figures based on BL MS Cotton Nero C. VIII,ff. 225v, 228, 229v, 231; Wardrobe Book of Norwell, p. 305; E36/204, f. 87; and Given-Wilson, Royal Household, p. 278. Given-Wilson makes little of the political significance of the esquires.

54   BL MS Cotton Nero C. VIII, f. 225v, etc; Wardrobe Book of Norwell, p. 305.

55   E101/392/12, f. 41 .

56   Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 119.

57   Issue Roll of Brantingham, p. 416. This may be an earlier form of the procedure adopted by the 1440s, whereby lists of three nominees for each sheriffdom were compiled by the council and sent to the king to be ‘pricked’: see J.S. Wilson, ‘Sheriffs’ Rolls of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, EHR, xlvii (1932), 31–45, esp. p. 44.

58   For what follows see Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 106–67, passim. For a specific example of the confusion which sometimes arose over the supposed qualifications of officials, see R.F. Hunnisett, The Medieval Coroner (Cambridge, 1961), p. 125.

59   SC1/51/11 .

60   SC1/41/49; R.H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), p. 218 .

61   SC1/40/43 (Wilkinson, Chancery, p. 35 and n. 6).

62   C81/312/17617.

63   SR, i. 388; RP, ii.308; Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 110.

64   Ibid., pp. 110–11 .

65   Putnam, ‘Transformation’, pp. 43–4.

66   Putnam, Enforcement, pp. 93–4; SC1/40/161; SC1/42/25.

67   E13/80, m. 7d.

68   Crécy and Calais from the Public Records, pp. 31, 93; List of Sheriffs, p. 92; List of Escheators,

69   p. 94; CCR, 1349–54, pp. 413, 625; CPR, 1350–4, p. 526.

70   E.g. Saul, Knights and Esquires, p. 151 .

71   Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, p. 204; Putnam, Enforcement, pp. 44–9.

72   List of Sheriffs, p. 12; Return of MPs, i. 159, 161, 164, 170, 172, 177, 179, 184. It should be noted, however, that some knights of the shire experienced difficulties in obtaining their wages. See, e.g. the writs de expensis sicut alias collected in C219/330, nos. 12–19, and scattered through other files in the same class. Some of the reasons for this problem are explained by L.C. Latham, ‘Collection of the Wages of the Knights of the Shire in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries’, EHR, xlviii (1933), 455–64; and Cam,Liberties and Communities, pp. 236–47.

73   Note, however, the exceptions of Beds. and Bucks. and of Lincs.: Morris, ‘The Sheriff’, p. 78.

74   Munimenta Civitatis Oxonie, pp. 264–5, 271, 273; Cambridge Borough Documents, I, ed. W.M. Palmer (Cambridge, 1931), p. 36.

75   The Knights Hospitallers in England, ed. L.B. Larking, Camden Soc., old ser., lxv (1857), 205. For further details of Trussell’s eventful career see McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings, pp. 227–9.

76   Select Cases Before the King’s Council, pp. 54–60.

77   SC8/32/1555.

78   Ancient Petitions Relating to Northumberland, pp. 121–2.

79   SC8/65/3215; CPR, 1367–70, p. 202.

80   RP, ii. 189; CPR, 1361–4, p. 293 .

81   SC8/238/11888.

82   JUST 1/639/1, m. 7.

83   SC8/209/10415; SC1/41/148.

84   RP, ii. 352. Note also the evidence of the wardrobe accounts: C. J. Given-Wilson, ‘Purveyance for the Royal Household, 1362–1413 ‘, BIHR, lvi (1983), 148–9.

85   RP, ii. 352, 354; SC8/14/655. See also SC8/119/5914. C49/8/5, discussed by Rayner, “‘Commune Petition”’, p. 231, n. 3, provides further evidence of the unpopularity of purveyors in the later 1370s.

86   CPR, 1354–8, p. 237.

87   Stones, ‘Folvilles’, pp. 117–36; Bellamy, ‘Coterel Gang’, pp. 698

88   Among Alberd’s more spectacular crimes see CPR, 1334–8, pp. 146, 200; ibid., 1354–8, p. 120; ibid., 1367–70, p. 51 . His administrative career can be pieced together from the printed chancery rolls and the Return of MPs.

89   See pp. 37, 67.

90   See p. 111 .

91   Lestrange was a king’s yeoman, who held over £40 of land as Lord of Myddle (E198/3/18). He was much in favour at court during the first decade of Edward III’s reign (CChR, 1327–41, pp. 94, 136, 137, 292), and secured a life interest in the post of bailiff errant of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1338 (CPR, 1338–40, p. 108). His actions may have provoked disquiet as early as 1335 (RP, ii. 93, discussed by Cam, Hundred and Hundred Rolls, p. 136). He had in fact already been removed from office in the summer of 1340 (CPR, 1340–3, p. 88), but it was not until the commissioners of trailbaston arrived in Norfolk in 1341 that he apparently received a trial, the details of which are in CPR, 1340–3, p. 355. Lestrange was in fact subsequently pardoned and readmitted to his old office: CPR, 1340–3, p. 383; CCR, 1341–3, p. 67L For further complaints about bailiffs errant see RPHI, pp. 189–90; H.M. Cam, ‘Shire Officials: Coroners, Constables, and Bailiffs’, in EGW, iii.172, 173.

92   Hughes, Early Years of Edward III, pp. 209–11; W.N. Bryant, ‘The Financial Dealings of Edward III with the County Communities’, EHR, lxxxiii (1968), 762–3 . Of the 4,000 marks offered by Northants., at least £337 16s had still not been paid in 1348: E368/121, m. 7, and see also RP, ii. 178–9.

93   C81/147/3811; SC8/64/3156; SC8/327/E832. Similar petitions were made by the commons in parliament: e.g. SCCKB, v, p. cxliii; E175/2/27. This evidence calls into question some of the assumptions of M.M. Taylor, ‘The Justices of Assize’, in EGW, iii. 235–6.

94   RP, ii. 194, 371; SC8/158/7866.

95   Harriss, ‘Formation of Parliament’, p. 51, n. 53.

96   See in particular the comments of J.B. Post, ‘Some Limitations of the Medieval Peace Rolls’, Journal of the Society of Archivists, iv, no. 8 (1973), 635–8.

97   Putnam, Proceedings, p. xcvi.

98   SC8/119/5916; ‘Rolls of the Gloucestershire Sessions of the Peace, 1361–1398’, ed. E.G. Kimball, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, lxii (1940), 32–4. Note, however, the more regular sessions inYorks., at least during the early 1360s: Yorkshire Sessions of the Peace, 1361–1364, ed. B.H. Putnam, Yorkshire Archaeological Soc. Record Ser., c (1939), pp. xx–xxi.

99   RP, ii. 333 .

100  For the procedure for payment of JPs adopted in 1388 see Putnam, Proceedings, pp. lxxx-viii-xci. J.R. Maddicott, ‘The Birth and Setting of the Ballads of Robin Hood’, EHR, xciii (1978), 279, considers the JPs to have been ‘relatively inconspicuous figures’ before the last quarter of the fourteenth century.

101  The following pursues ideas discussed by E. Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society: Criminal Justice in the Reign of Henry V (Oxford, 1989), pp. 9–20.

102  The phrase is that of A.B. White, Self-Government at the King’s Command (Minneapolis, Minn., 1933).

103  See p. 46.

104  Though note the comments of Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society, p. 20.

105  The two crucial studies are W.A. Morris, The Early English County Court (Berkeley, Cal., 1926); and R.C. Palmer, The County Courts of Medieval England (Princeton, NJ, 1982).

106  C49/7/20.

107  J.R. Maddicott, ‘The County Community and the Making of Public Opinion in Fourteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxviii (1978), 30.

108  Ibid.

109  E.g. in 1344–5 the inquiry into persons failing to take up knighthood in Beds.and Bucks. was taken in full county court: C47/2/58, no. 5.

110  J.F. Willard, ‘Edward III’s Negotiations for a Grant in 1337’, EHR, xxi (1906), 727–31; Hilton, English Peasantry, pp.215–18.

111  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 396–400.

112  SC1/39/111–20.

113  SC1/42/156.

114  Maddicott, ‘County Community’, pp.33–6; idem, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’, p. 81; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 365 .

115  Maddicott, ‘County Community’, pp. 36–7; Ormrod, ‘Recovery of Royal Authority’, p. 11, n. 40. For further examples from this period see RP, ii.177; SC8/71/3509; SC8/73/3611; SC8/321/E488.

116  The following is based on an analysis of the petitions (printed and unprinted) collected under county headings in Index of Ancient Petitions, PRO Lists and Indexes, i, rev. edn (1966). It needs to be pointed out that not all the petitions addressed in the name of the shire communities were necessarily drawn up in the county courts. In 1390–1, for instance, Simon Elvington petitioned ‘for himself and for the profit of the people of Yorkshire’ (SC8/110/5473).

117  E.g. RP, ii. 40, 177, 380; C81/195/5970; SC8/53/2621 .

118  E.g. RP, ii. 345; Northern Petitions, nos. 67, 113; SC8/141/7039; SC8/164/8175; SC8/207/10318; SC1/42/19, 21 .

119  E.g. RP, ii. 176, 194, 401, 417; Northern Petitions, no. 169; Ancient Petitions Relating to Northumberland, nos. 188, 189, 197; SC8/163/8143 (CCR, 1327–30, p. 72).

120  Notts. and Derbs.: SC8/218/10855 (CPR, 1348–50, pp. 62–3); SC8/261/13031; SC8/258/12866. Surrey and Sussex: SC8/75/3707; RP, ii. 352. See also the cases of Devon (ibid., ii. 190) and Northumberland (Ancient Petitions Relating to Northumberland,pp.104–5; RP, ii. 349). It is worth noting that from the 1360s the exchequer seems to have begun to preserve more systematically the petitions for allowance put forward by the sheriffs: see Exchequer (K.R.) Sheriffs’ Accounts (E. 199): Class List, PRO List & Index Soc., cxxvii (1976), passim.

121  RP, ii. 349, 370; SC8/109/5405; SC8/342/16132. See also the sheriffs’ requests for remissions in E199/10/36, 39, 40, etc. This problem was to become a matter of general concern in the fifteenth century: see R. Virgoe, ‘The Crown, Magnates, and Local Government in Fifteenth-Century East Anglia’, in Highfield and Jeffs, eds., The Crown and Local Communities, pp.73–4.

122  C49/46/5; RP, ii. 348.

123  Maddicott, ‘Parliament and the Constituencies’, p. 83; idem, ‘County Community’, p. 39.

124  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 405–8.

125  SC8/64/3190.

126  Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, p. 16.

127  Lancs., although raised to palatine status in 1351, continued to send representatives to parliament, and therefore to pay royal taxes. See J.W. Alexander, ‘The English Palatinates and Edward I’,JBS, 22, no. 2 1983), 11–12.

128  E.g. C219/5, Part 1, file 1 (Cornwall); file 8 (Rutland); C219/5, Part 2, file 19 (Middx); etc. The classic study remains L. Reiss, The History of the English Electoral Law in the Middle Ages, trans. K.L. Wood-Legh (Cambridge, 1940).

129  M.M. Taylor, ‘Parliamentary Elections in Cambridgeshire, 1332–38’, BIHR, viii (1940–1), 21–6; K.L. Wood-Legh, ‘Sheriffs, Lawyers and Belted Knights in the Parliaments of Edward III’, EHR, xlvi (1931), 373.

130  Richardson, ‘Parliamentary Representation of Lancashire’, pp. 178–9, 182.

131  CLBL, G. 20. twenty-two of the thirty-three knights known to have sat in the great council were actually returned to this parliament: see K.L. Wood-Legh, ‘The Knights’ Attendance in the Parliaments of Edward III’, EHR, xlvii (1932), 406.

132  C219/7, Part 1, file 11 (privy seal writ attached to Glos. return).

133  CLBL, G. 182.

134  J.G. Edwards, ‘The Plena Potestas of English Parliamentary Representatives’, HSEP, i. 136–49.

135  Harriss, Public Finance, p. 357.

136  Ibid., p. 256.

137  For what follows see J.F. Willard, ‘The Taxes Upon Movables of the Reign of Edward III’, EHR, xxx (1915), 69–74; idem, Parliamentary Taxes; C. Johnson, ‘The Collectors of LayTaxes’, in EGW, ii. 210–26; The Lay Subsidy of 1334, ed. R. Glasscock (London, 1975); Fryde, ‘Edward III’s War Finance’, ch. 4, 7; Ormrod, ‘English Economy’; idem, ‘Black Death’, pp. 182–5; idem, ‘Experiment in Taxation’, pp. 68–81; Fryde,’Introduction to the New Edition’, pp. xii-xvii.

138  See pp. 71–6.

139  The last instalment of this tax was due in Feb. 1340: Fryde, ‘Edward III’s War Finance’, ii. 3–4.

140  The parliament roll explains the refusal in terms of poverty, but it is noticeable that the commons expressed themselves willing to aid the king ‘pur aucunes chargeantes bosoi-gnes’, meaning, presumably, war. For the truce see ‘The Anglo-French Negotiations at Bruges, 1374–1377’, ed. E. Perroy, Camden Miscellany XIX, Camden Soc., 3rd ser., lxxx (1952), 37.

141  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 365–6.

142  Return of MPs, i. 98–159, passim; GEC, vi. 62–6.

143  Harriss, ‘Formation of Parliament’, p. 38; Brown, Governance of Late Medieval England, pp. 209–11. In fact, the knights long continued to take formal precedence over the burgesses: Richardson and Sayles, Parliament, ch. XXIV, p. 38 and n. 2.

144  See p. 110.

145  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 516–17.

146  RP, ii. 296, discussed by M.M. Postan, The Medieval Economy and Society (Harmondsworth, 1975), p. 170. It was this petition which led to the confirmation of the Ordinance and Statute of Labourers (SR, i. 388). J.A. Tuck, ‘Nobles, Commons and the Great Revolt of 1381 ‘in Hilton and Aston, eds., English Rising, pp. 194–212, shows that there was a marked difference in the reactions of the lords and the commons to the events of 1381 .

147  For some statistics see Gray, Influence of the Commons, pp. 248–9. The following is based on an analysis of the statutes of Edward III.

148  RP, ii. 62, 105, 113, 127. On the money supply, see N.J. Mayhew, ‘Numismatic Evidence and Falling Prices in the Fourteenth Century’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxvii (1974), 1–15; J.H.A. Munro, Wool, Cloth and Gold: The Struggle for Bullion in Anglo-Burgundian Trade, 1340–1478 (Toronto, 1972), pp. 11–41; and M. Prestwich, ‘Currency and the Economy of Early Fourteenth Century England’, in N.J. Mayhew, ed., Edwardian Monetary Affairs (1279–1344), British Archaeological Reports, xxxvi (1977), 45–58.

149  Fryde, Studies, ch.V, pp. 263–5.

150  RP, ii. 137–8. For the subsequent reduction in sterling weights and its consequences, see A.E. Feavearyear, The Pound Sterling, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1963), pp. 17–18; M. Prestwich, ‘Early Fourteenth Century Exchange Rates’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxxii (1979), 480–1.

151  RP, ii. 160, 167, 228, 230, 240, 253, 260; P. Spufford, ‘Assemblies of Estates, Taxation and Control of Coinage in Medieval Europe’, Studies Presented to the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions, xxxi (1966), 125.

152  Feavearyear, Pound Sterling, pp. 17–20.

153  RP, ii. 240.

154  Little more was heard on this matter until the late 1370s: see W.M. Ormrod, ‘The Peasants’ Revolt and the Government of England’, JBS, xxix (1990), 27–8.

155  C81/248/11261, printed in E. Deprez, Les Preliminaires de la Guerre de Cent Ans (Paris, 1902), pp. 418–19.

156  RP, ii. 136, 165, 262.

157  Ibid., ii. 299.

158  Ibid., ii. 316–20.

159  Ibid., ii. 322.

160  Note, however, that several of the issues first raised by the commons in the Good Parliament were successfully enacted in the first parliament of Richard II: N.B.Lewis, ‘Re-election to Parliament in the Reign of Richard II’, EHR, xlviii (1933), 380–5.

161  M.J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism: Cheshire and Lancashire Society in the Age of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, 1983), argues for a strong sense of regional identity in the fourteenth century; but other studies have failed to distinguished much sense of an exclusive ‘county society’: see Astill, ‘Medieval Gentry’, ch. 3; Wright, Derbyshire Gentry, p. 146; Saul, Scenes from Provincial Life, pp. 57–8.

CHAPTER 9: URBAN SOCIETY AND THE MERCHANTS

1    The best survey of this problem is S. Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), pp. 52–65.

2    See esp. M.D. Lobel, The Borough of Bury St. Edmund’s (Oxford, 1935); S.H. Rigby, ‘Boston and Grimsby in the Middle Ages: An Administrative Contrast’, JMH, x (1984), 51–66; and A.G. Rosser, ‘The Essence of Medieval Urban Communities: The Vill of Westminster 1200–1540’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxxiv (1984), 91–112.

3    Hilton, English Peasantry, pp. 76–94; R. Hilton, ‘Towns in Societies: Medieval England’, Urban HistoryYearbook 1982, pp. 7–13.

4    W.G. Hoskins, Local History in England, 2nd edn (London, 1972), p. 238; Peasants’ Revoltof 1381, pp. 54–7.

5    D. Keene, ‘Medieval London and its Region’, London Journal, xiv (1989), 101, and the sources cited there.

6    The York evidence is somewhat ambiguous: compare J.N. Bartlett, ‘The Expansion and Decline of York in the Later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xii (1959–60), 17–33, and R.B. Dobson, ‘Admissions to the Freedom of the City of York in the Later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxvi (1973), 1–21 . For Colchester, however, the matter seems clear: see R.H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1520 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 86–97.

7    R.B. Dobson, ‘Urban Decline in Late Medieval England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xxvii (1977), 7–10; J.C. Lancaster, ‘Coventry’, AHT, ii. 8; J. Campbell, ‘Norwich’, AHT, ii. 17; M.D. Lobel and E.M. Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’, AHT, ii.ii; Britnell, Colchester, pp. 120–2.

8    DNB, xlvii. 25–6; J. NeW. Man, West Kent and the Weald, 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1976), pp. 454–5, 457.

9    M. McKisack, ‘London and the Succession to the Crown during the Middle Ages’, in R.W. Hunt, W.A. Pantin and R.W. Southern, eds., Studies in Medieval History Presented to F.M. Powicke (Oxford, 1948), pp. 81–3 .

10   G.A. Williams, Medieval London: From Commune to Capital (London, 1963), pp. 298–9. See also H.M. Chew, ‘The Office of Escheator in the City of London during the Middle Ages’, EHR, lviii (1943), 324–5. The city eventually paid for its charter:CLBL, E. 216–17.

11   Williams, Medieval London, pp. 301–2; CPML, 1323–64, pp. 68–9.

12   SR, i. 270–1 . There is a good summary of this dispute in E. Lipson, The Economic History of England I: The Middle Ages, 12th edn (London, 1959), pp. 519–23.

13   SC8/120/5981; CPR, 1334–8, p. 460.

14   SR, i. 314–15; CLBL, F. 229; ibid., G.14–15, 52, 185, 206–7. See also Foedera, III (ii). 734.

15   Lipson, Economic History, i. 522; CLBL, G. 231; RP, ii. 347. CLBL, H. 53 suggests that the 1376 concession was only temporary.

16   CLBL, F. 45–9. See also CPML, 1323–64, p. 120.

17   CPML, 1323–64, pp. 199–201; CLBL, F. 143–52; G. 263, 266. In 1346 the sum of i,000 marks was also levied by way of a gift to the king: CCR, 1346–9, p. 77.

18   CLBL, G. 85.

19   Ibid., F. 235, 236–7; Calendar of Letters from the Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, c. 1350–1370, ed. R.R. Sharpe (London, 1885), no. I. 29; Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 72–4, 77–9.

20   Crook, ‘The Later Eyres’, pp. 259–60, 263 .

21   For details see R. Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (London, 1949). London’s internal politics in this period has recently been reinterpreted by P. Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change in Late Fourteenth-Century London’,P&P,cxxiv (1989), 3–35.

22   CChR, 1327–41, passim; ibid., 1341–1417, pp. 1–233, passim.

23   Of these, some twenty-seven (42 per cent) were simple confirmations with or without the nonuser clause.

24   SCCKB, v, pp. cxxxiii-iv.

25   C49/6/18; CChR, 1327–41, pp. 201–2, 231–2.

26   Of these thirty-one, some eleven (35per cent) were simple confirmations.

27   For what follows see E.G. Kimball, ‘Commissions of the Peace for Urban Jurisdictions in England, 1327–1485’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, cxxi (1977), 44874. I owe this reference to AnthonyVerduyn.

28   RP, ii. 258–9; SR, i. 346–7. For the later use of this statute by the crown see C.M. Barron, ‘The Quarrel of Richard II with London’, in Du Boulay and Barron, eds., The Reign of Richard II, pp. 185–6.

29   Kimball, ‘Urban Jurisdictions’, pp.471–4. See also Putnam, Enforcement, App. p. 139; Rolls of the Warwickshire and Coventry Sessions of the Peace, 1377–1397, ed. E.G. Kimball, Dugdale Soc., xvi (1939), pp. lxxxiv–xviii; Records of Some Sessions of the Peace in the City of Lincoln 1351–1354 and the Borough of Stamford 1351, ed. E.G. Kimball, Lincoln Record Soc., lxv (1971), pp. x, xii, 52.

30   E.g. CChR, 1341–1417, p. 179 (Huntingdon); VCH Cambs., iii. 35 (Cambridge); Ormrod, ‘Black Death’, p. 181 (Newcastle). In 1381 it was stated, in reference to Lincoln, that sessions of the peace held before city authorities were likely to benefit the cities, not the crown: SC8/60/2957.

31   Warwickshire Sessions, pp. xxix, lxxxiv. Bristol won the status of a shire specifically because jurisdictional problems had arisen from the town’s position partly in Glos. and partly in Somerset. See The Little Red Book of Bristol, ed. F.B. Blickley (Bristol, 1900), i. 115–26 .

32   VCH Warwicks., viii. 256–9.

33   In addition to the sources cited in VCHYorks: City of York, pp. 68–9, see SC8/162/8089; SC8/176/8780; C49/7/25; and BL Harl. Ch. 43; D.46.

34   VCH Herts., ii. 478–9.

35   VCH Hants., v. 35. For a similar case at Wells see HMC Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Dean and Chapter of Wells (London, 1907–14), pp. 111–12.

36   VCH Oxon., iv. 53–7.

37   In addition to the sources cited on p. 284, n. 10, see McKisack, ‘London and the Succession to the Crown’, pp. 81–2; VCH Northants., iii. 8 and n. 80; and Hilton, Bond Men Made Free, pp. 186–207.

38   T. Wright, ‘The Municipal Archives of Exeter’, Journal of the Archaeological Association, xxviii (1862), 313–14; R. Horrox, ‘Urban Patronage and Patrons in the Fifteenth Century’, in R.A. Griffiths, ed., Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), p. 154.

39   H. Harrod, Report on the Deeds and Records of the Borough of King’s Lynn (King’s Lynn, 1874), pp. 75, 77, 83; The Making of King’s Lynn: A Documentary Survey, ed. D.M. Owen (London, 1984), pp. 386–7; B. Wilkinson, The Mediaeval Council of Exeter(Manchester, 1931), p. 36; J.S. Furley, City Government of Winchester from the Records of the XIV and XV Centuries (Oxford, 1923),pp. 88–9; CLBL, F. 55.

40   Ibid., E. 216–17, 231, 270–1; F. 5–8, 143–52; G. 171–2, 173, 275; H. 63; CPML, 1323–64, pp. 116–18, 131, 133–4, 153–4, 154–5.

41   Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries, ed. H.T. Riley (London, 1868), pp. 198–9.

42   Records of the City of Norwich, ii. 39; Cambridge Borough Documents, i. 36.

43   In addition to the sources cited on p. 270, n. 13, see Furley, Government of Winchester, p. 116; Munimenta Civitatis Oxonie, pp. 264–5, 273; Wright, ‘Municipal Archives of Exeter’, pp. 311–12, 313; The Making of King’s Lynn, pp. 386–7.

44   CChR, 1327–41, pp. 219–21 .

45   Harrod, King’s Lynn, pp. 83, 84.

46   For proclamations see Maddicott, ‘County Community’, pp. 33–6. Towns sometimes acquired special copies of the statutes for preservation in their archives: M. McKisack, The Parliamentary Representation of the English Boroughs during the Middle Ages(Oxford, 1932), pp. 144–5. One illuminating case is provided by the statute of 1340 requiring clerks of recognizances under the statute of merchants to hold property in the county where they acted (SR, i. 285). At least two cities reacted quickly to this, reporting that their own clerks were not so qualified: SC1/41/58 (Lincoln); SC8/211/10501 (Hereford).

47   Foedera, III (i). 89–90.

48   CLBL, F. 53–4, 87, 161; G. 71, 108.

49   Furley, Government of Winchester, p. 144; Records of the Borough of Leicester, ii. 68, 77.

50   Vale, Edward III and Chivalry, pp. 62–3, 67.

51   C.L. Kingsford, ‘The Feast of the Nine Kings’, Archaeologia, lxvii (1915–16), 119–26.

52   SR, i. 381 .

53   S.M. Newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1980), pp. 6–13 .

54   J.F. Hadwin, ‘The Medieval Lay Subsidies and Economic History’, EcHR, 2nd ser., xxxvi (1983), 200–17, esp. 210–11 .

55   Willard, Parliamentary Taxes, p. 177. In the 1370s there was an interesting attempt to tax those trading, but not living in the town of Colchester: The Red Paper Book of Colchester, ed. W.G. Benham (Colchester, 1902), p. 7.

56   For what follows see Ormrod, ‘English Economy’.

57   CLBL, F. 68.

58   I work from the list in Hoskins, Local History, p. 238, but use the precise assessments set out in The Lay Subsidy of 1334.

59   Fryde, ‘Edward III’s War Finance’, i. 506–7. The contribution made by the towns to this levy was complex. Merchants living only by their merchandise paid a fifteenth of their movable property, but other urban dwellers were supposed to pay a ninth, again assessed on movables. See RP, ii. 112–13; Calendar of the Records of the Corporation of Gloucester, ed. W.H. Stevenson (Gloucester, 1893), p. 53, no. 43 .

60   Records of the City of Norwich, i. 207; Ormrod, ‘Experiment in Taxation’, pp. 75, 80.

61   Ibid., p. 74.

62   RP, ii. 185–6, 189, 190, 213 .

63   S.L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor, 1948), p. 87, n. 138.

64   CChR, 1327–41, pp. 12–13 .

65   E.g. the case of Cambridge cited on p. 167.

66   Foedera, III (i). 71 .

67   The quotas were reduced (in most cases by a half) and converted to cash on a scale of 5 marks per armed man (CFR, 1337–47, pp. 497, 500–4). A few towns still chose to send troops (Foedera, III (i). 96–7; SC1/40/8, 35, 37). The letters commuting the charge were preserved in a number of borough archives, no doubt to be produced in the event of another such levy: HMC Fifteenth Report, Appendix, Part X: Manuscripts of Shrewsbury and Coventry Corporations... (London, 1899), p. 113 (Coventry); A Schedule of the Ancient Charters and Muniments of the Borough of Bedford (Bedford, 1895), p. 6. In fact, no other demand of this type was attempted for the rest of Edward III’s reign. On the other hand, it should be noted that townsmen were made liable to the distraints to knighthood ordered in 1356 and 1366: Saul, Knights and Esquires, pp. 41–2.

68   See especially J.W. Sherbome, ‘The English Navy: Shipping and Manpower, 1369–1389’, P&P, xxxvii (1967), 163–75.

69   Harrod, King’s Lynn, pp. 74, 75; C81/267/13147.

70   SC1/40/96; RP, ii. 274.

71   Sherbome, ‘English Navy’, pp. 168–9. For opposition to the levying of sailors for these barges, see Hill, Medieval Lincoln, p. 256.

72   RP, ii. 319–20, 345–6.

73   A. Saul, ‘Great Yarmouth and the Hundred Years War in the Fourteenth Century’, BIHR, lii (1979), 105–15.For details of what follows see Ormrod, ‘English Economy’.

75   T.H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), p. 155. The rates of duty set out in E.M. Carus-Wilson and O. Coleman, England’s Export Trade, 1275– 1547 (Oxford, 1963), pp. 194–6, include such additional levies, but are not always fully accurate.

76   Fryde, Studies, ch. X, pp. 1–17.

77   Ibid., ch. IX, p. 9.

78   T.H. Lloyd, ‘The Movement of Wool Prices in Medieval England’, EcHR Supplement, vi (1973), 10, 18–20, 66.

79   E.M. Carus-Wilson, English Merchant Adventurers (London, 1954), p. 243 . For the pattern of English cloth exports before 1347 see P. Chorley, ‘English Cloth Exports during the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries: The Continental Evidence’,Historical Research, lxi (1988), 1–10.

80   Harriss, Public Finance, p. 457.

81   Ormrod, ‘Customs’, p. 33 .

82   Fryde, William de la Pole, pp. 44, 46.

83   CFR, 1327–37, pp. 54–5; E356/8, m. 1 .

84   Fryde, William de la Pole, pp. 46–9, 51, 72–3, 75, 83, 87–90, 99, 101, 107, 120, 124–6, 136, 139–40, 142–4, 153–4, 182, 210, 223 .

85   Ibid., passim, provides the most detailed study of Pole’s credit dealings, on which the following is based. For the rest of this paragraph see also idem, Studies, ch.VI, pp. 8–24.

86   Idem, William de la Pole, p. 122, sets the known total at £111,156.

87   Pole’s involvement in the syndicate was first established by G.O. Sayles, ‘The English Company" of 1343 and a Merchant’s Oath’, Speculum, vi (1931), 177–205. For what follows see Fryde, Studies, ch. X, pp. 1–17.

88   See the evidence of the merchant assembly of Apr. 1347 discussed by F.R. Barnes, ‘The Taxation of Wool 1327–1348’, in G. Unwin, ed., Finance and Trade under Edward III (Manchester, 1918), p. 169.

89   My own calculations based on E401/388, excluding the sums loaned by active members of the farming syndicate, but including the £1,333 6s 8d advanced by William de la Pole.

90   The estimate of £5,000 made from the chancery rolls by G. Unwin, ‘The Estate of Merchants’, in idem, ed., Finance and Trade, p. 225, is too conservative; my own figures derive from the receipt rolls, E401/407, 410.

91   C81/1710/53 (?1347/1351) states that Robert Bumpstead, Jr, was refusing to contribute to a loan being raised by the city of Norwich. Bumpstead’s reluctance presumably arose from his earlier involvement in the king’s wool dealings, which had left him out of pocket: see CPR, 1338–40, p. 293; CCR, 1339–41, p. 168; ibid., 1343–6, p. 145.

92   See pp. 228–9.

93   Ormrod, ‘Customs’, pp. 35–6 and n. 50; the names of the creditors are recorded on the receipt rolls, E401/443, 446. For outline careers of Not, Aubrey, Bury and Pecche, see A.B. Beaven, The Aldermen Of the City of London (London, 1908–13), i. 387, 388, 389.

94   Sherborne, ‘Costs of English Warfare’, p. 144.

95   E401/500, 501. VCHYorks: City of York, p. 67, gives a lower figure of £300.

96   E401/501; CLBL, G. 275–6.

97   E401/501, 28 June 1370.

98   Lloyd, Wool Trade, p. 217.

99   For later complaints about non-payment of the loans raised in this period see RP, ii. 347; C49/43/10; RP, iii. 64, 96; SC8/123/6117.

100  SC1/55/84.

101  For what follows see Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 65–7, 71–4, 78–9, 89, 101–4, 108–26.

102  McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, pp. 134–5.

103  Thus Unwin, ‘Estate of Merchants’, pp. 227–32, followed by E. Power, The Wool Trade in English Medieval History (Oxford, 1941), pp. 98–101; Fryde, Studies, ch. X, p. 17; and Harriss, Public Finance, p. 447.For a contrary viewpoint see Lloyd, Wool Trade,pp. 203–7; Ormrod, ‘Customs’, pp. 27–9.

104  HBC, p. 558, nn. 1, 3 .

105  The essential study is McKisack, Parliamentary Representation.

106  VCH Warwicks, viii. 248.

107  CPR, 1348–50, p. 306; Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 266–7, 407.

108  Register of the Freemen of the City of York I: 1272–1558, ed. F. Collins, Surtees Soc., xcvi (1897), 42; Return of MPs, i. 149, 158; CPR, 1343–5, p. 107; ibid., 1348–50, p. 470; CCR, 1354–60, p. 4.

109  McKisack, Parliamentary Representation, pp. 83–6, 87, 89. It is only fair to add that some burgesses had problems in securing payment of their wages. The MPs for Chipping Torrington in 1351, for instance, were still involved in a legal dispute three years later over non-payment of wages: KB27/377, Rex, m. 2.

110  See p. 219. For what follows see Barnes, ‘Taxation of Wool’, pp. 137–77; Power, Wool Trade, pp. 63–85; B. Wilkinson, Studies in the Constitutional History of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 2nd edn (Manchester, 1952), pp. 55–81; Harriss,Public Finance, pp. 420–49; Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 144–224.

111  HBC, p. 557; Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 428–9.

112  Fryde, William de la Pole, pp. 142–3; SR, i. 291–2; Wilkinson, Studies, pp. 71–2.

113  Unwin, ‘Estate of Merchants’, pp. 209–10.

114  RP, ii. 138;Barnes, ‘Taxation ofWool’, p. 166.

115  Fryde, Studies, ch. X, pp. 3, 7–8.

116  LRDP, iv. 556–7. The subsequent debate in parliament suggests that merchants may have been present in this meeting (Barnes, ‘Taxation ofWool’, p. 168; Fryde, William de la Pole, p. 201), but there is no evidence to prove this (HBC, p. 561).

117  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 431, 457, 460.

118  It is possible that merchants may have consented to the subsidy on wine and merchandise (otherwise known as tunnage and poundage), since this was not announced until 15 Mar. (Unwin, ‘Estate of Merchants’, p. 218), and a group of merchants had been summoned to meet with the council on 7 Mar. (HBC, p. 561, n. 2). According to the enrolled account of this subsidy, it was granted ‘by the prelates, magnates [and] other men of the sea (homines de marina) of the kingdom of England’ (E356/5, m. 10). Compare the cloth custom, officially granted on 3 Mar. and authorized, according to the enrolled account, ‘by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, magnates and others’ (E356/7, m. 7). It is just possible that merchants were consulted on the grant of the maltolt, but the debate in parliament in Jan. 1348 suggests not (RP, ii. 168; Harriss, Public Finance, p. 431)

119  119. RP, ii. 200–1 .

120  Harriss, Public Finance, p. 429, n. 6, pp. 450–5.

121  Edwards, Second Century, pp. 19–22. Edwards and others tend to treat the great council of Sept. 1353 as a parliament.

122  RP, ii. 271; SR, i. 374;Wilkinson, Studies, pp. 77–8.

123  See pp. 222–3 .

124  Ormrod, ‘Edward III’s Government’, pp. 178–9.

125  RP, ii. 252–3 .

126  SR, i. 329–31 . The Ordinance of the Staple was treated quite differently, being written up on the new roll of the staple (C67/22) and on the roll of proceedings of the great council. The distinction was maintained when it came to proclamation in the shires, for while the staple ordinance was advertised in the usual way (C255/3/3, nos. 62–66), the legislation recorded on the statute roll was apparently not proclaimed at all (see the case printed in R. Steele, A Bibliography of Royal Proclamations of the Tudor and Stuart Sovereigns I: England and Wales [Oxford, 1910], p. ix, n. 2). Ironically enough, parliament never queried the validity of the statutes of 1353, whereas it was extremely anxious to ensure proper status for the Ordinance of the Staple: see p. 231 .

127  RP, ii. 168, 169, 171–2.

128  There are petitions from the merchants on the dorse of the parliament roll for 1343, but this is to be explained by the fact that a merchant assembly was meeting at the same time (RP, ii. 143; Lloyd, Wool Trade, p. 193).

129  R.L. Baker, ‘The Establishment of the English Wool Staple in 1313’, Speculum, xxxi (1956), 444–53; Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 115–18.

130  Ibid., p. 118; Mills, ‘Collectors of Customs’, pp. 190–1 . It was apparently on this occasion that the county communities of Hants., Wilts., Berks., Dorset, Glos., and the Isle of Wight, together with the towns of Southampton, Portsmouth and Romsey, all complained about the inconvenience of the Winchester staple and asked that it be transferred to Southampton (SC8/73/3618–19; SC8/78/3900; SC8/146/ 7291; SC8/155/7725; SC8/160/7979; SC8/164/8170). These petitions are all very similar, and indicate a concerted campaign. All, however, received a negative response.

131  SC8/64/3196 (Norwich); CLBL, F. 52–3 (London).

132  Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 121, 193–4, 202–3 .

133  C67/22, m. 25d. The fact that the first draft of this ordinance was already complete by 6 June 1353 was noted long ago by Richardson and Sayles (Parliament, ch. XXI, p. 13, n. 4) but has been almost completely missed by historians until Lloyd, Wool Trade,pp. 205–7. For evidence of the staples functioning before Michaelmas 1353 see Reading, pp. 298–9; Avesbury, p. 419; C67/22, mm. 25, 23; C255/4/13, no. i D. The council called on i July (LRDP, iv. 596–7) was clearly associated with the implementation of the staples.

134  RP, ii. 246–51 .

135  Ormrod, ‘Agenda for Legislation’, pp.10-ii; Lipson, Economic History, i. 455, n. 6; Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 116, 121 .

136  RP, ii. 85–6; VCH Northants., iii. 24.

137  SR, i. 280–1; A.R. Bridbury, Medieval English Clothmaking (London, 1982), p. 108.

138  RP, ii. 28, 409; SC8/268/13364, 13369; CPR, 1327–30, pp. 297–8; Records of the City of Norwich, ii, pp. lxv-xvi; Chorley; ‘English Cloth Exports’, p. 10.

139  Foedera, III (i). 58; C16/26, m. 16d. This staple was abandoned by Apr. 1349: C81/333/19733; D. Greaves, ‘Calais under Edward III’, in Unwin, ed., Finance and Trade, p. 340.

140  RP, ii. 231; SR, i. 314; CLBL, F. 229–30; A.H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (London, 1914–22), i. 81–5, 93.

141  Harriss, Public Finance, pp. 458–9. In 1376 there was a brief attempt to make worsted exports subject to the Calais staple, but this was abandoned after 1377: Foedera, III (ii). 1057–8; SC8/85/4243; CPR, 1377–81, p. 75; ibid., 1388–92, p. 248.

142  H.L. Gray, ‘The Production and Exportation of English Woollens in the Fourteenth Century’, EHR, xxxix (1924), 13–35; Bridbury, Clothmaking, pp. 47–59, 88–9.

143  Fryde, Studies, ch. XII, pp. 17–30.

144  I have examined the personnel of the commissions in C67/22, m. 25, and find that the case of London, cited by Lloyd, Wool Trade, p. 206, is exceptional.

145  Ibid., pp. 203–7.

146  RP, ii. 253, 254.

147  SR, i. 348–9. Note that the ordinance was not copied out in full on the statute roll, and that the definitive text remained that on the roll of the staple. This helps to explain why the government later found it so easy to override the legislation.

148  Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 208–9.

149  For the election of the governor of this new staple by the mayors of the existing English staples see SC1/42/130; and note also SC1/62/68.

150  Lloyd, Wool Trade, p. 210.

151  R.L. Baker, ‘The Government of Calais in 1363 ‘, in Jordan, McNab and Ruiz, eds., Order and Innovation, pp. 205–14.

152  A.L. Jenckes, The Origin, the Organization and the Location of the Staple of England (Philadelphia, 1908), p. 27. Returns to elections of staple officials survive in C47/33, passim. For lists of mayors of particular staples see E.E. Rich, ‘The Mayors of the Staples’, Cambridge Historical Journal, iv (1932–4), 192–3 (Westminster); Hill, Medieval Lincoln, pp. 249–51 (Lincoln and Boston).

153  The exceptions were Southampton and London. In fact, it was later agreed that merchants of these ports should not be required to take wool to the staples at Winchester and Westminster (Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 217–18 and n. 77, where the reference should be SC1/41/200). For the resulting decline in rents at the Westminster staple see the references cited in Ormrod, ‘Personal Religion of Edward III’, p. 875, n. 149.

154  Some time after the resumption of the Calais staple, the merchants of York complained of the illegal levy of 4d per sack in the staple at Newcastle upon Tyne: SC8/216/10774.

155  RP, ii. 332–3 . There was also a successful campaign to restore the port and staple of Lynn: RP, ii. 396; C67/22, m. 2.

156  Lloyd, Wool Trade, pp. 220–2.

157  Holmes, Good Parliament, p. 110.

158  For the status of the legislation see p. 303, n. 126.

159  This may in fact be an illusion caused by the change to privy seal summonses (see p. 86), but I have found virtually nothing in the issue rolls to suggest that merchants were summoned by such means in the second half of Edward III’s reign.

160  HBC, p. 562, n. 2; Unwin, ‘Estate of Merchants’, p. 242.

161  Foedera, III (ii). 617–18; C49/47/5; Lloyd, Wool Trade, p. 210.

162  E.g. Foedera, III (ii). 88-i; CLBL, G. 256. Note that the writ of summons to the parliament of Nov. 1373 also asked for representatives of towns to be experienced in naval affairs: LRDP, iv. 661; CLBL, G. 312–13.

163  RPHI, p. 281 .

164  RP, ii. 230, 241–2, 372; RPHI, p. 281 . See also SC8/127/6305, an un datable petition addressed in the name of the merchants, and, judging from its endorsement, presented in parliament. It complains of a new levy of i d per cloth taken by the alnagers on foreign cloth imported into England.

165  Ormrod, ‘Customs’, p. 31 and n. 24; RP, ii. 262.

166  Ibid., ii. 364. Events in the parliament of 1382 suggest that the term ‘merchants’ was applied not to some other group present in the assembly, but to a subsection of the burgesses in the commons. See M. McKisack, ‘Borough Representation in Richard II’s Reign’, EHR, xxxix (1924), 516.

167  Idem, Parliamentary Representation, p. 40.

168  Statistics derived from ibid., pp. 11, 22, 26–8.

169  SR, i. 315–16, 353–5, 368.

170  RP, ii. 231, 232, 249, 261, 270, 276, 279, 282, etc.

171  Ibid., ii. 366.

172  Records of the City of Norwich, ii. 44. In 1372 the burgesses had been asked to stay on after parliament was dismissed (see Appendix 5, n. 5). It is interesting to notice that in this case they presented a separate list of petitions: RP, ii. 314–15.

CONCLUSION

1      Stubbs, Constitutional History, ii. 393 .

2    See, e.g. T.F. Tout, The History of England from the Accession of Henry III to the Death of Edward III, 1216–1377 (London, 1905), p. 441

3    G. Holmes, The Later Middle Ages, 1272–1485 (London, 1962), p. 117.

4    McKisack, Fourteenth Century, pp. 270–1 . See also idem, ‘Edward III and the Historians’, pp. 1–15.

5    McFarlane, Nobility, esp. pp. 156–61; Harriss, Public Finance, esp. pp. 313–75.

6    Prestwich, Three Edwards, p. 244.

7    B. Wilkinson, The Later Middle Ages in England, 1216 1485 (London, 1969), pp. 155–6: Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 163–5.

8    R.W. Kaeuper, War, Justice, and Public Order: England and France in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1988), pp. 290–1 .

9    See, e.g. Harriss, ‘Formation of Parliament’, pp. 45–6.

10   Powell, ‘Administration of Criminal Justice’, pp. 53–7; Storey, ‘Liveries and Commissions of the Peace’, pp. 131–52; Ormrod, ‘Peasants’ Revolt’, pp. 25–6.

11   Powell, Kingship, Law, and Society, pp.168–228; C. Ross, Edward IV (London, 1974), pp. 395–404.

12   The anti-war literature of the late fourteenth century, discussed by Coleman, English Literature in History, pp. 84–92, does not seem to have had much lasting impact on Edward’s reputation, judging from the references in M. Aston, ‘Richard II and the Wars of the Roses’, in Du Boulay and Barron, eds., The Reign of Richard II, pp.280- 317, and Scattergood, Politics and Poetry, pp. 46–7, 49–50, 92, 309. I owe some of the ideas in this paragraph to D.A.L. Morgan.

13   S.H. Thomson, ‘Walter Burley’s Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle’, in Melanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain, 1947), pp. 577–8. For the popularity of Burley’s work see J.-P. Genet, ‘The Dissemination of Manuscripts Relating to English Political Thought in the Fourteenth Century’, in Jones and Vale, eds., England and her Neighbours, pp. 218–19, 232.

14   Political Poems and Songs, i. 211; Piers Plowman: the B Version, ed. G. Kane and E.T. Donaldson (London, 1975), p. 233, l. 113. Note the significant change made to this line in the C-text, possibly as a result of the Peasants’ Revolt: Piers Plowman by William Langland: An Edition of the C-Text, ed. D. Pearsall (London, 1978), p. 37, n. to l. 140.

15   Barnes, The History of that Most Victorious Monarch Edward III. (Cambridge, 1688).

16   Dialogus de Scaccario by Richard, Fitz Nigel, ed. C. Johnson, F.E.L. Carter and D.E. Greenaway (Oxford, 1983), p. 1 .

17   Ormrod, ‘Edward III and his Family’, p. 398, and the references cited there.

18   Froissart, i. 214.