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Medieval English society was headed by an oligarchy of great men who saw themselves as the natural companions and counsellors of the king. Despite the growing importance of lesser landholders and merchants, the magnates remained socially pre-eminent throughout the later Middle Ages, and to a large extent dictated the political fortunes of the crown. It is therefore of fundamental importance to establish how Edward III treated these men, and how they in turn responded to their king.
Historians use various terms to describe the highest levels of lay society in the Middle Ages. ‘Nobles’, ‘aristocrats’, ‘lords’, ‘barons’ and ‘peers’ all have slightly different connotations, but all tend to be used synonymously to describe the ‘magnates’ – literally the great men. Inevitably, there is some ambiguity about the membership of this group. The top ranks of the aristocracy were made up of those holding formal hereditary titles: the earls and (after 1337) the dukes. In the reign of Edward III, however, there were never more than about a dozen such men at any one time, and the greater proportion of the nobility was made up of the barons, who used the title ‘lord’ followed by a family name. In the thirteenth century, a baron had been defined as a tenant-in-chief of the crown who held sufficient land to warrant the payment of a relief (entry fine) of £100, later reduced to 100 marks (£66 13s 4d). By the fourteenth century, however, the magnates came to be identified not by tenure but by membership of the house of lords. From the time of Edward II there was a marked tendency for the same families to receive personal summonses to successive parliaments.1 As a result, the lords developed a keen sense of their own identity, claiming the right to consent to impositions charged on their number and to judge accusations made against their equals or ‘peers’. For this reason, most historians have taken membership of the lords as the criterion for defining the nobility of late medieval England; and such a definition will broadly be followed here.
Having established a means by which to test membership of the magnate class, it is relatively easy to assess its numerical strength. The average number of temporal peers receiving personal summonses to parliament between 1327 and 1377 was fifty-eight.2Inevitably, there was some fluctuation across this period. In 1346, for instance, when the king and the majority of the nobility were detained abroad at the siege of Calais, only twenty-seven lords were called to parliament; and as a result of a spate of deaths during the second outbreak of the Black Death, there were only thirty-eight magnates summoned to the assembly of 1362. Conversely, the number could rise quite dramatically as a result of a conscious decision to fill up depleted ranks. As many as seventy-eight lords received personal summonses to the parliament of March 1332; and sixty-six were called to an abortive session in 1349. Our average of fifty-eight does, however, provide a reasonably accurate impression of the size of the English nobility in this reign. Taking into account the immediate families of these men, the entire magnate class cannot have numbered much in excess of 500 people. Even in the period after the Black Death, this represented a mere fraction of 1 per cent of the entire population. Yet it was these families that comprised the most powerful group in the polity of late medieval England.
The wealth of the magnates varied greatly. The top end of the scale comprised members of the royal family. The Black Prince’s lands in England and Wales were said to yield about £10,000 per annum at the time of his death; and the Lancastrian inheritance, valued at some £8,400 a year under Henry of Grosmont, increased under John of Gaunt until it was worth approximately £12,500 in 1399.3 Few other members of the nobility had even a quarter of these resources. The landed estates of the younger Despenser, valued at over £7,000 in Edward II’s last years, were altogether exceptional, and were never fully reassembled after the revolution of 1326–7.4 In fact, £4,000 a year was probably enough to put a nobleman in the top income bracket. The lands and annuities bestowed by Edward III on his new earls in 1337 indicate that the minimum income commensurate with comital status was about £1,000.5 Still more modestly endowed were the bannerets. A banneret was a cavalry officer who was permitted to have a rectangular banner carried before him on the field of battle, as distinct from the triangular pennon of the knight. Certain of the bannerets associated with the royal household received personal summonses to parliament, and are therefore normally included in the ranks of the peerage. In economic terms, however, they were often indistinguishable from the wealthier knightly families, and could consider themselves fortunate if their annual income from land and fees reached about £500. The majority of the barons stood somewhere between this and the wealthier earls.
All the magnates shared a natural desire to increase their family holdings and thus improve their political standing. Some did so by purchase. Sir Thomas Berkeley of Berkeley (Gloucestershire) raised his annual income from £659 in 1335 to £1,150 in 1346 as a result of some judicious property speculation.6 Others benefited from marriage. In the course of the fourteenth century, four successive generations of the Zouche family of Harringworth (Northamptonshire) took wealthy heiresses as brides, and built up a formidable array of estates in the midlands and the north.7 The best way to enhance one’s prospects, however, was to win favour at court. The history of the lordship of Denbigh well illustrates the king’s power to raise or depress aristocratic fortunes.8 These valuable marcher lands, worth over £1,000 a year, were seized from Thomas of Lancaster in 1322 and granted to the younger Despenser, only to be lost to Roger Mortimer after the coup of 1327. On March’s fall in 1330, the estate reverted to the crown, and was granted to Edward III’s friend, William Montagu. But with Montagu’s death, and the rise to favour of March’s grandson, another Roger, the king decided to transfer Denbigh back into the hands of the Mortimers in 1354. Royal favour therefore did more than anything else to determine the relative standing of aristocratic families in fourteenth-century England.
The history of the later Middle Ages has often been portrayed as a continuous struggle for power between the king and the magnates. But the reign of Edward III witnessed a long period of political calm, and provides an obvious opportunity to pause and discuss how a king could reach a successful working compromise with his great men. The following analysis will indicate that Edward III took a lot longer than has sometimes been suggested to reach an accommodation with the nobility. But it will also show that he hit on a highly successful formula during his middle years, one which was equally advantageous to king and magnates, and which continued to function with some degree of success right through to the end of the reign.
THE LEGACY OF THE 1320S
The last years of Edward II and the minority of Edward III formed a particularly difficult period for the nobility. Between 1322 and 1330 a total of seven earls lost their lives and lands, and numerous barons were executed, imprisoned or hounded by the Despenser and Mortimer regimes. Edward II’s own brother-in-law, the Earl of Hereford, was slain at Boroughbridge in 1322, and his first cousin, Thomas of Lancaster, was summarily executed shortly after the battle.9 The coup of 1326–7 produced fewer sacrifices, mainly because most of the barons had already defected to Queen Isabella. Apart from the two Despensers, the only other leading nobleman to be executed was Edmund Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel. Isabella was also quick to restore the families of prominent barons who had fallen at Boroughbridge, such as the Badlesmeres, Cliffords and Mowbrays.10 But the rise of Roger Mortimer prevented any real sense of reconciliation, and the rebellion of Henry of Lancaster in 1328 and the execution of the Earl of Kent in 1330 revealed deep divisions within the top ranks of political society.
It would be natural to assume that the blatant mistreatment of the magnates during the 1320s produced a public reaction in their favour. But this was not so. Many of the lords were believed to have taken advantage of the disturbed state of politics to pursue their own selfish interests. Three matters in particular caused great concern around 1330. First, there was the general interference in the course of government by those holding power at court. The Despensers and Roger Mortimer had undoubtedly used their influence to cover up the widespread corruption and intimidation associated with their regimes in the provinces.11 Secondly, the civil wars of 1321–2 and 1326–7 had resulted in widespread and indiscriminate plundering, during which the peasantry inevitably suffered much.12The third and by far the most serious problem was ‘maintenance’ – the protection of criminals from prosecution in the king’s courts, and the bribery or harassment of judges and juries.13 None of these offences was peculiar to the magnates. But on a number of occasions in the 1320s and early 1330s when the commons in parliament complained about such matters, it is significant that they singled out the great men of the realm for particular criticism.14
Edward III was acute enough to realize that such behaviour reflected badly on the crown, and quickly tried to improve the reputation of his nobles. In the parliament of October 1331 he appealed directly to their better natures, and drew up a formal compact which was then proclaimed throughout the realm. 15 The lords promised that they would not protect criminals from legal proceedings; that they would assist royal agents in the task of government; that they would no longer disturb the law, but keep it; and that they would refrain from seizing provisions from the king’s poor subjects. Edward also took this opportunity to settle some outstanding baronial disputes. Lord Zouche of Ashby and Sir John Grey of Rotherfield, for instance, who had been quarrelling over the right to marry the younger Despenser’s widow Eleanor (a major landholder in her own right), were both committed to prison pending a proper investigation of the case.16 In the same parliament, the lords requested that Roger Mortimer’s son Edmund be restored to his family’s ancient inheritance in the marches; and although the king refused to compromise his prerogative, he acted on the suggestion shortly after parliament had disbanded.17 Edward III was evidently trying to persuade political society of his firm resolve to control the magnates, while at the same time offering the sons of former rebels the chance to prove their commitment and loyalty to the new regime.
All this, however, had little effect. In 1334 the commons complained once more about the magnates’ abuse of prises and maintenance, and special commissions had to be set up to investigate such matters.18 Even then, problems continued unabated. Sir Robert Clifford, who had failed to recover a piece of property by legal means, organized a band of thugs to beat up his rival and occupy the land in 1335 . 19 It was reported in 1337 that the Earl of Arundel’s steward Sir Roger Lestrange had caused such distress by his raids across the Welsh border that the people were about to rise against him. 20 And in 1338, when investigating a case concerning the Earls of Norfolk and Northampton, Lord Scales and Sir Gilbert Pecche, the sheriff of Norfolk reported that he could not find a single knight in his county who was not a relative, tenant or retainer of one or more of these men, and who would be capable of giving dispassionate evidence.21
In some respects, the government’s policies simply compounded these problems. Under Edward II the nobility had been allowed considerable influence over local justice through their appointment as supervisors of the keepers of the peace.22 This practice continued in various different guises during most of the first decade of Edward III’s personal rule, with the lords serving either as presidents of the county commissions of the peace (in 1332) or as overseers of the justices of the peace (in 1338).23 Either way, the magnates rapidly won a reputation for inefficiency and corruption.24 Meanwhile, the king also made free with the franchise of return of writs, a special privilege which allowed a private lord to take on a function normally fulfilled by the sheriff and to receive and answer all royal writs relating to his lands and tenants. Among those receiving this franchise were the Earl of Arundel and two of the king’s closest friends, William Montagu and John Molyns.25 The result, once again, was to interrupt or distort the course of justice. It seems no coincidence that another of Edward’s confidants, Thomas Breadstone, was accused of holding the whole of Gloucestershire to ransom as a result of his influence over local juries.26 In 1341, moreover, Molyns was to be exposed as a notorious bully and brigand, who for several years had terrorized the area around his native Stoke Poges (Buckinghamshire) with complete impunity.27 Edward’s frequent absence on campaigns made matters still worse, allowing corruption to spread through all levels of government and society. The men of Dunwich complained that while the king was out of the country, Sir John Clavering had manipulated juries in order to deprive them of control over some 200 acres of Suffolk marshland.28 By 1340 it was possible to assert that confederacies, conspiracies and lawlessness in the midland shires were worse than ever before.29 Clearly, it was not only the crown’s reputation that had suffered as a result of the breakdown of law and order. The selfishness of the lords had also come to be seen as a major impediment to the restoration of social and political harmony.
THE MAGNATES AND THE KING’S WARS, 1330–41
In the end, it was not domestic politics but foreign policy that transformed the reputation of the nobility. Medieval chroniclers and modern historians are all agreed that the magnates played a key role in the military adventures launched by Edward III against Scotland and France. Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, a northern knight writing in the mid-1350s at the very high point of Edward’s military fortunes, assumed that the brotherhood of arms then so apparent among the aristocracy had been carefully nurtured by the king from the very start of his personal rule.30 But this view accords ill with the official records of the 1330s. The military fiascos of Edward II and Roger Mortimer had created considerable resentment; and when the lords were consulted on how to proceed against France in 1331, they insisted on a diplomatic solution rather than risking the outbreak of war.31 Again, when Edward III decided to intervene in Scotland late in 1332, the magnates were at best indifferent and at worst positively hostile to the plan.32 Even the initial euphoria surrounding Edward’s claims in France in 1337 rapidly gave way to apathy and opposition, culminating in the political crisis of 1341. There is little to suggest that the majority of the English nobility relished the prospect of war in the 1330s.
Part of the problem was the magnates’ uncertainty over their role in the army.33 The decline of the feudal levy in the early fourteenth century and the development of volunteer forces paid directly by the crown had left the nobility in a rather anomalous position. Sometimes, particularly when Edward I and Edward II had been absent from expeditions, the great tenantsin-chief had accepted the new cash nexus and taken the top levels of pay offered by the crown. But when they were asked to fight alongside the king, they resented the subordinate status implied by wages, and made clear their preference for more traditional forms of service. This was an unrealistic position to adopt, for on the rare occasions that the crown chose to revert to feudal armies, as in 1327, the tenants-in-chief proved unable or unwilling to provide the necessary quotas of knights.34 Faced with such problems, it is not altogether surprising that the young Edward III attempted to do without the massed ranks of the English barons in the 1330s, and depended heavily on a group of self-interested northerners and personal friends to organize his campaigns in Scotland and the Low Countries.
Strategic reasons also necessitated a strong aristocratic presence at home. England was under constant threat of attack in the later 1330s, and an adequate system of defence was imperative. The lords were the natural choice for such a task. The great northern families – Wake, Neville, Percy, Umfraville, Clifford and Lucy – were always primarily concerned with guarding the Scottish march, and did not normally go on continental campaigns. Indeed, in 1339 the border communities requested that nothing, not even a summons to parliament, should distract Sir Thomas Lucy from his primary duty of defence.35 The French raids on the Channel ports, culminating in the sack of Southampton in 1338, encouraged a similar attitude in the southern shires. 36 In 1336 the king instructed the Earls of Arundel, Surrey and Devon to equip and man their castles in readiness for attack.37 In the following year many of the magnates were appointed to special commissions set up to defend the counties south of the Trent.38 Finally, in August 1338, ten regional committees were appointed, under the leadership of nine earls and a large number of eminent barons, to organize the array of troops and to oversee the keeping of the peace.39 There were indeed sound arguments why prominent figures such as the Earls of Arundel, Huntingdon and Warwick, and Lords Berkeley, Wake, Mowbray and Basset, were on this occasion omitted from the king’s foreign enterprise and associated in the defence and governance of the realm.
Where Edward went wrong was in failing to convince these and other members of the regency administration that his military schemes had any real chance of success. In this sense, the crisis of 1340–1 must be seen as the inevitable outcome of ten years of political mismanagement, during which an important section of the English nobility had been deprived of any real influence over military and diplomatic affairs. The opposition of 1341 represented a complete cross-section of the nobility, from political veterans such as John Warenne, Earl of Surrey, to some of the principal beneficiaries of Edward III’s regime, Arundel and Huntingdon.40 It was a major indictment of the king’s system of patronage, as well as his military policy, that he was unable to retain the support of such men at this vital moment.
Nevertheless, there are reasons to question the strength and success of the baronial alliance. Once the crisis parliament was over, Edward was able to fall back on a number of leading nobles who had remained loyal or had been absent from England during the quarrel with Stratford. These included the Earls of Derby, Devon, Gloucester, Northampton, Oxford, Pembroke, Salisbury, Suffolk and Warwick.41 It was with their consent that Edward annulled the legislation of 1341 and mounted expeditions to Scotland and Brittany in 1341–3. Such men can hardly have been indifferent to the constitutional principles embodied in the discarded statute. But they probably interpreted the clause guaranteeing trial by peers as a specific reference to Stratford’s case. Once the king had dropped his charges against the archbishop and arranged a personal reconciliation, the majority of the magnates were loath to risk royal displeasure on an abstract principle. Far from being a resounding victory for baronial constitutionalism, then, the crisis of 1341 rapidly dissolved into a political compromise.
The eagerness of most magnates to patch up their differences with the crown can best be explained by what was happening in the shires. The nobles had good reason to worry about the special courts set up by Edward in the winter of 1340–1 to inquire into corruption and lawlessness. When first issued, these commissions included a number of earls and barons, representing all shades of political opinion: close friends of the king, such as Sir Nicholas Cantilupe of Ilkeston (Derbyshire); political neutrals like John de Vere, Earl of Oxford; and some who would shortly defect from the king’s party, including the Earl of Arundel.42 But a number of the magnates were subsequently relieved of their responsibilities, leaving the commissions under the control of royal judges and local gentry.43 The serious accusations of corruption, maintenance, robbery and murder brought against prominent knights and royal favourites, such as Sir Thomas Gurney (Somerset), Sir Edward Creting (Suffolk) and Sir John Molyns (Buckinghamshire), must have left many of the magnates wondering how long they could conceal their own criminal activities.44 The inquiries also begged comparison with the eyres of Edward I’s time, and seemed to herald a return to that king’s policy of curbing the privileges of the nobility. More ominous still was the removal of the magnates from participation in local peace-keeping. The supervisory committees were not renewed after 1340, and by 1344 only the Earls of Angus and Arundel and a handful of barons such as Sir Thomas Berkeley remained to represent their class on the commissions of the peace.45 In the mid-1340s many members of the nobility saw their private interests and political influence under attack, and must have been increasingly disillusioned by the consequences of their opposition during the Stratford crisis. With the commons still profoundly suspicious of baronial behaviour, there was little chance of political support from below. The net result of the 1341 crisis was to leave the magnates relatively weak and isolated, unnerved by Edward’s swift recovery and uncertain of their next move. The only real solution, in fact, was to seek an accommodation with the crown.
THE PROCESS OF RECONCILIATION: WAR AND CHIVALRY
This interpretation of the Stratford crisis does much to explain the speed and success of Edward III’s subsequent reconciliation with the nobility. Many historians have assumed that Edward bowed to pressure after 1341 and deliberately pandered to aristocratic interests. But this is to forget the magnates’ side of the bargain. Their abuse of power during the 1320s and 1330s had severely damaged their reputation as political and military leaders. The eagerness of the nobles to co-operate with the crown after 1341 stemmed not merely from the king’s change of heart, but from their own anxiety to regain credibility. The political system of the 1340s and 1350s, then, was a distinctly reciprocal affair.
The most obvious manifestation of this was to be found in the war. The great series of campaigns launched in Aquitaine, Brittany and Normandy after 1341 became a ‘joint-stock enterprise’,46 drawing together king and nobility in the common pursuit of glory. The English occupation of western France would indeed have been unthinkable without the active involvement of a whole series of aristocratic lieutenants: figures such as Henry of Grosmont, William Clinton, Ralph Stafford, William Bohun, William Montagu II, John de Vere, Roger Mortimer II and Thomas Beauchamp among the earls, and Thomas Holand, John Lisle of Rougemont, Guy Brian, Michael Poynings, Walter Mauny, Robert Morley, Thomas Breadstone and Thomas Dagworth among the barons and bannerets. Apart from the fame to be won on the battlefield, there were two very practical reasons why so many such men entered into military service in the 1340s. These were the indenture system and the profits of war.
After 1341 it became common for military commanders to draw up contracts or ‘indentures’ with the crown, promising to provide a specified number of soldiers for an agreed period of time, and receiving guarantees that all their resulting expenses would be met by the royal exchequer.47 Such contracts gave the nobles several distinct advantages. The employment of their own armies in the king’s service inevitably gave them a greater influence over strategy.48 The development of the indenture also put an end to the question of whether or not noblemen ought to receive payment for military service. Wages were now the norm for all ranks, and ranged from 13s 4d a day for a duke to 2d a day for an ordinary infantry soldier.49 Even more important were the arrangements laid down in indentures for the disposition of prisoners and plunder.50 Edward III managed to establish by the 1350s that important prisoners ought to be reserved to him, and that a third of all the profits of war should pass to the crown. In turn, however, military leaders expected rich rewards for surrendering their captives, and claimed a proportion of the booty and ransoms taken by their own soldiers. Consequently, many of Edward’s lieutenants made considerable fortunes out of the war. Sir Thomas Holand, who captured the Count of Eu at Caen in 1346, sold his prisoner to the king for the enormous sum of 20,000 marks (£13,333 6s 8d).51 After the battle of Poitiers, the Earl of Warwick ransomed the Archbishop of Sens for £8,000, and Sir Bartholomew Burghersh the younger secured 10,000 marks (£6,666 13s 4d) from Edward III for his captive, the Count of Ventadour.52 Extravagant building projects such as Henry of Grosmont’s palace of the Savoy, Lord Berkeley’s castle at Beverstone (Gloucestershire), Thomas Beauchamp’s extensions at Warwick Castle, Gilbert Umfraville’s tower house at South Kyme (Lincolnshire), and the Scropes’ great fortress at Bolton in Wensleydale (Yorkshire), all suggest a considerable accumulation of capital out of the French and Scottish wars.53 Nor did the victors of Neville’s Cross, Crécy and Poitiers forget their duty to the anglophile Almighty. Sir Walter Mauny founded a Carthusian monastery in London, and Sir Thomas Breadstone glazed the huge east window of Gloucester Abbey in memory of the local landholders who had fought alongside him on the battlefields of France.54 In the absence of noble archives, these and other monuments provide the most tangible evidence of the extraordinary financial benefits accruing to the English nobility from participation in Edward III’s wars.
Such were the advantages of service. But there was also a debit side. It was usual for the crown to pay advances to contractors on the sealing of indentures, but these only accounted for a proportion of the costs of a campaign. In 1345, Henry of Grosmont received an unusually generous £20,800 for his projected war in Aquitaine. But he still overspent to the tune of £17,700, for which he was not fully reimbursed until 1350.55 Personal resources, then, just as much as martial skills, counted for much in the choice of royal lieutenants. Indeed, financial contributions in themselves came to be seen as a form of service. The Earl of Lancaster advanced over £4,500 to the exchequer in the course of 1348;56 and between 1370 and 1374 the Earl of Arundel loaned the king at least £38,500 – an astonishing sum equivalent to one fifteenth and tenth levied on the whole kingdom.57 Most of Arundel’s loans were quickly repaid, and at good rates of interest.58 But other loans and war debts had to take their turn among the exchequer’s other commitments; and an immediate return was most unlikely. It has been suggested that Edward III’s indebtedness to so many of the magnates created a serious political weakness in his regime. 59 But until the 1370s there is no real evidence to suggest that the lords were angered by the crown’s inability or refusal to pay up. In 1344 the Earl of Salisbury left instructions in his will that all debts still unpaid by the crown at the time of his death (calculated at £6,734) should be cancelled – a welcome precedent much commended by the king.60 It is quite possible, therefore, that the wages and loans paid by the magnates out of their own pockets were not considered debts at all, but necessary investment in a profit-making war. Edward III himself made large advances out of his private treasure to subsidize military enterprises, and although some of these were listed as loans in the exchequer records, only a small proportion were ever paid back. 61 In a joint-stock enterprise, it was only reasonable that the nobility should act similarly, sharing the burdens, as well as the profits, of war.
Royal patronage also worked by the same principles. In 1341 Edward III accused Stratford of advocating a policy of largesse that had seriously impoverished the crown.62 By throwing responsibility for his early generosity onto the shoulders of a disgraced minister, Edward was clearly advertising a change of policy. Thereafter, only conspicuous and continuous service could expect to be rewarded. Roger Mortimer II is a case in point.63 After distinguishing himself at Crécy, Mortimer was made a founder member of the Garter and was raised to the ranks of the parliamentary peerage. But it was not until 1354, when he was a seasoned campaigner, that he received back the earldom of March lost by his grandfather in 1330. Appropriately enough, the new earl died while on active service in France in 1360. The strong sense of commitment bred into the magnates during this period is also demonstrated by the annuities of 1,000 marks (£666 13s 4d) promised by Edward to the Earls of Warwick and Stafford in 1348 and 1353.64 In both cases, payment was conditional upon the earls holding themselves in constant readiness to serve the king, each with a minimum of a hundred men-at-arms. In effect, Warwick and Stafford had become permanent retainers of the crown, just like the household bannerets and knights. The political distinctions between the high nobility and the courtiers had therefore broken down into a common bond of service.
This new sense of unity and camaraderie was most perfectly manifested, of course, in the Order of the Garter. Those admitted to the fraternity in the 1350s and 1360s included household servants like Richard la Vache, prominent soldiers of fortune such as Reginald Cobham and Walter Mauny, loyal barons like Edward Despenser, Thomas Ughtred and Ralph Basset of Drayton, and great aristocrats such as Humphrey Bohun and the Princes Lionel, John and Edmund.65 The omissions, too, were of some significance. It is particularly noticeable that the two surviving opposition leaders of 1341, Arundel and Huntingdon, never became knights of the Garter.66 Commercial considerations apart, it is just possible that Arundel’s large loans to the crown in the 1350s and 1370s were an attempt to wipe clean the stain of revolt and win this final and elusive honour. That he failed says something about the animosities aroused during the Stratford crisis. But the fact that he remained one of Edward’s most active generals, diplomats and councillors throughout the middle years of the reign seems more significant still. Service was no longer an imposition for the nobility; it had become a matter of political necessity and personal honour.
THE MAGNATES IN PARLIAMENTS AND COUNCILS
One of the principal reasons for Edward III’s rapid political recovery after 1341 was his greater willingness to act on the recommendations of the barons. The two principal channels through which such advice was conveyed were parliament and the council. The records of these assemblies are sparse and formal, and give a strong impression that matters proceeded in much the same way throughout the fourteenth century and long beyond. But this is to forget important changes of attitude. The political transformation of the 1340s and 1350s arose not from some fundamental reform of institutions, but from the magnates’ belief that Edward was now observing their own preferred policies.
This can best be demonstrated by the record of baronial attendance at parliament. Given the political importance of this institution, it is somewhat disarming to discover that so few members of the aristocracy actually responded to parliamentary summonses and turned up in person.67 In one assembly after another the story is the same: proceedings delayed and business abandoned as a result of the non-arrival of the peers. So far as we can tell, there was no major departure from this norm at any point in Edward III’s reign. But it is possible to argue that the motives for absenteeism varied across the period. Throughout the 1320s, there had been real risks involved in attending parliament. Henry of Lancaster, for instance, had refused to attend an assembly at Salisbury in 1328 because he feared arrest and trial by Roger Mortimer. Edward III’s aggressive policy towards Scotland, coupled with the inconvenience of winter journeys to York, had been the chief reason for abstentions during the 1330s. In the 1340s and 1350s, however, we may detect a change of heart. It was the very involvement of the nobility in the king’s wars, rather than any negative political feeling, that now prevented men from attending. Even during the years of peace in the 1360s, the barons’ failure to get to parliament on time was probably a result of their general satisfaction with the diplomatic and domestic settlement rather than any sense of political disillusionment. In statistical terms, then, there was no demonstrable increase in the level of baronial participation in parliament during Edward III’s middle years. What really changed was the degree of confidence in the king and the assumption that his policies now stemmed from the wiser counsels of the nobility.
The barons’ influence over the workings of parliament in the middle decades of the fourteenth century was therefore considerably greater than mere numbers might suggest. The peers always tended to look upon parliament as a court where they could advance their private interests, and the new political conditions prevailing after 1341 gave them a much greater chance of success. In 1348 and 1351, for instance, the Earl of Arundel petitioned for full enjoyment of his father’s former lands and titles, and he achieved his aim in 1354 when the sentence passed against Edmund Fitzalan in 1327 was finally and formally annulled.68 The peers could also act in concert. In 1343 a debate had arisen in parliament over the inheritance rights of children born to English parents serving on the continent.69 This matter was of considerable importance to the nobility, and in 1351 the claims of Henry Beaumont, Giles Daubeney and Elizabeth Brian were submitted to the council for special consideration. As a result, a statute was issued confirming the rights of those born overseas.70 Undoubtedly the most important of the barons’ responsibilities, however, was to act as advisers on war and diplomacy. Edward III may have called upon the commons to give formal approval for his campaigns and treaties; but when more detailed matters were under discussion, like the proposals for an Anglo-Scottish peace in 1362 and 1368, it was to the lords that he naturally turned for advice.71 In many and diverse respects, then, parliament provided a natural forum of debate between crown and nobility in the mid-fourteenth century.
When we turn to the work of the council, we need to distinguish three broad groupings among the magnates. First, there were the knights and bannerets of the royal household who were in regular attendance on the monarch and formed an inner phalanx of councillors. Secondly, there were the earls and barons who did not spend all of their time at court, but were in frequent attendance on the king and took an active part in central politics. Finally, there was the larger body of magnates who had little personal contact with Edward but were summoned on selected occasions to treat with him in afforced or great councils. The crown’s reputation with the aristocracy largely depended on the power accorded to these various groups; and by comparing their influence at different points in the reign we can do much to explain the radical shifts in the king’s political reputation.
Enough has already been said to indicate that it was household men who really dominated Edward III’s council during his early years. That several members of this inner clique were raised to earldoms in 1337 did little to disguise the considerable social and political gulf between favourites like William Montagu, Robert Ufford and William Clinton, and the established aristocracy led by the royal Earls of Norfolk and Lancaster. Montagu in particular exercised an influence quite out of proportion to his station.72 He accompanied the king on all military and diplomatic expeditions, and was always in attendance at court when the great seal changed hands or new ministers were admitted to office.73 His own seal was occasionally used to validate royal letters;74 and he sometimes claimed to act as a spokesman for the council in communicating its decisions to the chancery.75 He even took it upon himself to authorize official business, ordering the appointment of a commission to deliver Colchester gaol, and postponing the settlement of the sheriff of Hampshire’s account at the exchequer.76 Not surprisingly, other members of the Montagu family benefited directly from the court connection. One of William’s brothers, Simon, ended up as Bishop of Ely; another, Edward, became a knight in the royal household, married the king’s cousin Alice of Brotherton, and was eventually raised to the peerage.77 The unenviable reputation earned by Salisbury and others during the campaigns of 1338–40 is better understood when we appreciate the extraordinary influence that these men had exerted over the king throughout the first decade of his effective rule.
It would be a mistake, of course, to push the distinction between courtiers and magnates too far. Some of the bannerets and knights who served in the king’s household during the 1330s were themselves the scions of baronial houses: John Beaumont, Thomas Lucy, John Faucomberg, Maurice Berkeley, the two Beauchamp brothers, John and Giles, and their distant and more famous cousin Roger.78 Nevertheless, the king’s failure to secure the confidence of the earls and barons became ominously apparent within weeks of his departure for the continent in 1338. In a great council held at Northampton in August, the magnates objected to proposals set out in the Walton Ordinances for the ending of estallments and respites.79 These were licences allowing debts owed to the crown to be paid off by instalment or to be excused for a specified period. The ruling on estallments seems to have remained in effect;80 but by September 1339 the king had been forced to raise the ban on respites.81 This example is of relatively little significance on its own. But when set against the growing opposition of parliaments and councils in the period 1338–40, it suggests an ambivalent attitude on the part of many noblemen from the very start of the French war. Edward’s failure to convince the magnates left in England that he would act on their recommendations simply reinforced the prejudice against his inner circle of advisers. The crisis of 1341 was the direct result of a serious rift within the ranks of the king’s council.
By the end of the 1340s, however, that conflict was over. Any political distinction between the courtiers and the aristocracy was now largely irrelevant. Edward’s choice of household officials undoubtedly helped in this respect. The much-despised John Darcy, who had served first as steward (1337–40) and then as chamberlain (1342–6),82 was now replaced by less controversial figures like Sir Bartholomew Burghersh the elder (chamberlain, 1347–55), Richard Talbot (steward, 1345–9) and John Grey of Rotherfield (steward, 1350–9). Significantly, these men were drawn from prominent baronial families, and were well qualified to represent the interests of their class even in the most secret and select meetings of the council. This attempt to draw the nobility back into regular contact with the court reached its climax in 1362, when Thomas de Vere, Earl of Oxford, successfully asserted an ancient family claim to act as hereditary chamberlain.83 De Vere did not actually fulfil his office in person.84 But at least one other earl, Richard Fitzalan, seems to have taken up more or less permanent residence at court during the years of peace in the 1360s.85 This was a powerful symbol of baronial influence at the very centre of politics, the king’s household.
Such developments had a profound effect on the wider group of magnates who normally only attended great councils. In 1342 Edward III called an extraordinary assembly of prelates and peers to discuss the defence of the realm, the state of the war in Scotland and the proposed campaign in Brittany.86 A total of ten earls and ninety-six lay magnates were invited: more than twice the number that had been summoned to attend the parliament held in the previous year. There is no way of telling how many of these actually attended; and we may well suppose that the real influence rested, as always, with the king’s closest friends. But by deliberately broadening the base of aristocratic council, Edward III was clearly attempting to make good the mistakes of the 1330s. This policy paid rich dividends. In March 1347, when the great majority of the magnates were occupied in the north or detained at the siege of Calais, a great council was summoned to meet at Westminster under the formal presidency of the king’s infant son, Prince Lionel.87 The secular peers summoned were the Earls of Lancaster, Surrey, Hereford, Pembroke, Devon, Oxford, Arundel and Huntingdon, and Lords Wake, Segrave, Despenser, Berkeley, and Grey of Ruthin. It is a vivid indication of the new political climate that this council was prepared to grant the king a forced loan of wool, a new duty on the export of cloth, and a temporary subsidy for the protection of shipping.88 By authorizing levies which should arguably have been sanctioned by representatives of the community, the lords were laying themselves open to considerable political criticism. That they were prepared to accept this situation surely says much for their new-found confidence in the king and his cause.
Unfortunately, it becomes more difficult after 1347 to ascertain the frequency and composition of such extraordinary councils. From about 1350, summonses tended to be issued under the privy and secret seals and no record of such writs was kept in the central administration.89 What evidence we have suggests that great councils were still only called on rare occasions, to discuss the problems of defence in 1359–60 and 1369–70, or the king’s proposals for the government of Ireland in 1361–2.90 On the other hand, not a year went by without some members of the nobility being called to attend on Edward and his innermost circle of advisers. In April 1353, for instance, a legal agreement made at Westminster between Sir James Audley and the king was witnessed by the Duke of Lancaster and the Earls of Northampton, Arundel, Warwick and Stafford, together with Roger Mortimer, Henry Percy, Bartholomew Burghersh, John Beauchamp and John Grey.91 Later, in 1356, Richard Fitzalan, Guy Brian and Walter Mauny were among the lords assembled in council when news of the capture of John II reached England. And in May 1358 the exchequer met the expenses of the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, Suffolk and Stafford, dwelling at Westminster for two days on business probably associated with the negotiation of the French king’s ransom.92 These high-ranking noblemen provided just the sort of political influence which had been so lacking in the 1330s, and their active involvement in the business of state probably convinced most of the barons that the king was now receptive to their ideas. That this was done without any formal statutory guarantee, and with no real change in the actual process of consultation, says much about the pragmatic nature of Edward’s regime.
THE MAGNATES AND THE LOCALITIES
The primary concern of any medieval nobleman lay with his family, his estates, and his ‘country’ – the region where he enjoyed political and social pre-eminence. Affairs of state might occupy a proportion of his time; but it was on his record as a husband, father, landholder and lord that he was most likely to be judged. Any medieval king wishing to create a successful and workable polity was therefore forced to acknowledge the lords’ power in the provinces. Without a professional civil service in the shires, the crown inevitably depended on the magnates and their followers to ensure that administration and justice operated effectively. What distinguished the strong rulers of the later Middle Ages was their ability to restrain the more corrupt elements in the aristocracy and to ensure that the crown, rather than the magnates, derived the principal benefit from this system. Edward III’s early record on such matters, as we have already seen, was hardly impressive. But the political conditions prevailing during the central period of the reign were much more encouraging, and allowed the king to establish a system of local government advantageous both to him and to his aristocratic supporters.
The authority wielded by the magnates after 1341 was indeed considerable. Throughout the later Middle Ages, the crown inevitably referred to the magnates when filling administrative posts in the shires. It was only natural, for instance, that the government should have followed up the Earl of Lancaster’s suggestions for the replacement of a tax collector in Staffordshire in 1337, John Talbot’s request for the removal of a commissioner of array in Gloucestershire in 1352, and John Beauchamp’s recommendations for the replacement of searchers at the port of Southampton in 1355.93 During his middle years, however, Edward III went notably further than this. Between 1344 and 1351 he granted several sheriffdoms as life interests to members of the nobility, temporarily increasing the total number of counties under such aristocratic control from five to eleven (Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, Cornwall, Lancashire, Rutland, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire, Westmorland, and Worcestershire).94After 1350, Edward also allowed the peers to regain their place on the commissions of the peace.95 By 1368, indeed, John of Gaunt was president of no fewer than nine such commissions (Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, the three Parts of Lincolnshire, and the three Ridings of Yorkshire), and the Earl of Hereford of three (Essex, Huntingdonshire and Rutland).96 In 1353 it was also agreed that a local lord be appointed to help keep the peace within each of the new provincial staples.97 The regional authority temporarily jeopardized during the early 1340s was now being restored to the nobility, and with handsome interest.
It must be admitted that powers of this sort created many valuable opportunities for the more ambitious and unscrupulous members of the aristocracy. By appointing members of their own affinities as undersheriffs and deputy justices, they could exert a powerful, and not altogether beneficial, influence over administration and justice in the shires.98 Edward III, moreover, was apparently happy to accept these implications. The ordinance of 1346 against the giving of fees to royal judges remained virtually a dead letter; and there is no indication that the government took steps to enforce the statutes of 1361 against the bribing of jurors and the nomination of judicial commissioners by interested parties.99 Queen Isabella nicely articulated the prevailing attitude in 1348, when she stated that her stewards should be put on judicial commissions ‘to save and maintain our right and that which pertains to us’.100 A whole series of formal and informal privileges, deliberately designed to build up the magnates’ influence in the localities, had apparently become the necessary price paid by the crown for political peace.
This interpretation, however, is singularly one-sided. Given the nature of politics after the crisis of 1341, it seems highly unlikely that the king would have been prepared to increase the authority enjoyed by his great men without imposing some conditions on them. In particular, Edward expected his beneficiaries to observe standards of behaviour more acceptable to him and to the political community. If they failed in this duty, then they were publicly discredited. Thus, in 1351 John, Lord Fitzwalter was condemned to gaol by the court of king’s bench for an alarming series of crimes committed in Essex during the previous decade. Although he subsequently secured a pardon, Fitzwalter had to pay the king nearly £850 to recover his lost estates.101 Even John Molyns, whose restoration to favour after the inquiries of 1341 is so often taken as an example of Edward III’s poor record on law and order, was eventually disgraced in 1357 and spent the last three years of his life in prison.102 Such cases, like the trials of Chief Justice Thorp and Sir William de la Pole,103 obviously harked back to the events of 1340–1 and left the magnates with a timely reminder of their responsibilities to the king and his subjects.
From the commons’ point of view at least, this policy evidently proved successful. The period after 1341 witnessed a marked decline in the number of common petitions directed specifically against the nobles. Despite continued complaints about royal purveyance, for instance, there was no further mention of the magnates’ abuse of prise between 1341 and the great Statute of Purveyance in 1362.104 The lords also ceased to be singled out for criticism in the petitions on maintenance. The Ordinance of Justices of 1346 asserted that the magnates were still maintaining quarrels, and in 1348 the commons requested that the nobility be charged not to conceal and protect criminal gangs.105 But for the next two decades such complaints were conspicuously lacking.106 Nor was there any real disquiet about the influence of the magnates on the bench. Indeed, in 1352 the commons actively encouraged the king to involve the nobility in local justice by requesting that ‘the great men of the realm, earls and barons, each in his own region’ be associated with other loyal subjects in the commissions of the peace.107 It is true that there were continued misgivings over the large number of franchises created in the 1330s, particularly since the king allowed the lords and tenants of liberties exemption from local levies to pay the wages of members of parliament.108 But after the long and acrimonious debates over the abuse of privilege by the aristocracy during the 1320s and 1330s, the virtual silence of the commons during the mid-fourteenth century is indeed striking.
That silence is inevitably somewhat ambiguous. After the Black Death, the common petitions were dominated by the class interests of the gentry and the merchants, and had very little to say about the grievances of the lower classes.109 The ending of complaints about the lords’ abuse of prise and maintenance may simply suggest that the petty landholders in the commons were concealing practices in which they also indulged. This, however, is to ignore the revival of public hostility towards the magnates during the 1370s. In the Good Parliament, the knights and burgesses claimed that the great men of the realm were seizing crops and foodstuffs; that maintenance was rife among the king’s courtiers and the justices of the peace; and that the lords were failing in their duty to defend the kingdom.110 On the death of Richard Fitzalan in 1376, the people of Shropshire appealed to the king not to renew the life shrievalty of the county, complaining that they had suffered many injustices during the earl’s regime.111 The Good Parliament extended this into a general request for the cessation of all life sheriffdom. 112 There was also growing unease over the actions and influence of those who served in contract armies. In 1371 it was decided in parliament that no retainer of a great lord should be appointed as a tax collector, and in 1376 the military contingents of several leading noblemen were accused of oppressing the people of southern England.113 By 1377 the granting of liveries (gifts of robes, caps or badges by great lords to their followers) was being perceived as a form of maintenance, and throughout the 1380s and 1390s attacks were to be made on the government of Richard II for its failure to constrain aristocratic influence in the courts.114 It would obviously be naive to suggest that the magnates had been totally blameless during the middle decades of Edward III’s reign. But this evidence does imply that they had exercised their powers altogether more discreetly. In the generation after 1341, the barons once more became responsible and respected members of the political community.
THE JOINTURE, THE USE AND THE ENTAIL
To suggest that the magnates ousted the king from control in the provinces, then, is to misinterpret the consequences of the Stratford crisis and to ignore the traditions of honour and service successfully revived by Edward III during his middle years. This bond of trust must also be kept in mind when examining the management of noble estates.115 From the late thirteenth century the tenurial relationship between the crown and its tenants-in-chief had been undergoing major changes, and already by 1327 the nobility enjoyed much greater control over the disposition of their lands. It was becoming increasingly common, for instance, for tenants-in-chief to make ‘jointures’, settling their lands on themselves and their wives in joint tenure and thus preventing the king’s agents from seizing the lands on the death of one or other partner. During Edward’s middle years, the barons went one step further and began to adopt the device known as ‘enfeoffment to use’. Under this arrangement, trustees were appointed to take charge of the family estate (or part of it), managing the lands on the lord’s behalf and paying the profits to his receivers. The great advantage of the use was that when a tenant-in-chief died, his feoffees remained in control, and the king had no right to claim wardship of the estates during the period of vacancy before the heir rendered homage. Not surprisingly, therefore, the use has often been seen as a wily attempt to deprive a complacent king of his rights as feudal overlord. But to impute such sinister motives to the baronage is seriously to distort the context and the purpose of this development.
The earliest enfeoffments – such as those made by the Earls of Suffolk (1342), Warwick (1345), Lancaster (1349) and March (1359) – were ad hoc affairs designed to protect estates while the lords were away from England fighting for the king. If they returned safely, the uses were terminated. Indeed, it was not in the magnates’ interests to allow trustees to take permanent control of their estates, for the use was a legal fiction and there was no proper judicial process for removing unscrupulous feoffees.116 Such were the complications arising from the illegal seizure of the manor of Speen (Berkshire) by two former feoffees of William Hastings in 1349, for instance, that the case ended up coming before the council in parliament.117 Such considerations presumably explain why the use took off only very slowly among the peerage, and why a good proportion of baronial estates were never subject to enfeoffment during Edward III’s reign.
In fact, the earliest enfeoffments by tenants-in-chief seem to have been intended not so much to deprive the king of his rights of escheat as to prevent the government from granting custody of lands to other members of the nobility. We must remember that it was common practice for the crown to sell wardships to the highest bidders. The Earl of Warwick, for instance, offered £800 for Lord Clifford’s lands in 1346; and in 1349 Sir Bartholomew Burghersh the elder secured temporary control of the valuable Despenser lands at a farm of £1,000 a year.118 Bereaved families were naturally concerned about the exactions which such men might make on their estates and tenants, and on at least two occasions (in 1339 and 1376) the lords asked the king for a guarantee that wardships should always be granted to the next of kin.119 It is possible, then, that the wider adoption of the use after the 1340s may have been precipitated by Edward’s refusal to co-operate on this matter. 120 However, the crucial point about the whole system was that enfeoffments of lands held in chief required formal royal consent. And although there is little to suggest that Edward III adopted a very selective approach to requests for such licences, the fact remains that the majority of uses licensed by the crown before 1377 continued to be made by members of the nobility setting off for the king’s wars. Quite simply, the use became another of those incentives – like respites of debts and immunity from assizes – offered to the aristocracy in return for military service.121
In the long term, of course, the use was bound to reduce the king’s store of patronage and to restrict his control over the great estates. Indeed, Edward’s apparent willingness to accommodate this new procedure is often seen as one of the most ominous political concessions of his reign.122 It must be admitted that the king took the development somewhat lightly: no doubt his popular policy of compromising on feudal rights, already discussed, made him too eager to give up potentially important rights of wardship and escheat.123 On the other hand, it would be a mistake to assume that the king was blind to the wider implications of his actions. The use certainly seems to have protected estates from being forfeited for acts of treason; but in 1361 Edward made it quite clear that no such immunity would exist in the (highly unlikely) event of full-scale rebellion against the crown.124 Nor should we conclude that all the legal developments of this period automatically worked against the king’s interests. The increasing tendency of the magnates in the fourteenth century to ‘entail’ their estates – that is, to specify the exact line of succession to the family holdings (normally through the male line only) – once again meant that the crown was deprived of its rights of wardship. But on some occasions it actually allowed the king to take over noble estates when the direct line failed.125 Thus, when John Hastings enfeoffed and entailed a portion of the earldom of Pembroke in 1369, he granted the reversion of the property to the king; so that when the Hastings line eventually died out in 1389, the valuable lordship of Pembroke fell directly into the hands of Richard II.126 This example may be atypical, but it does demonstrate that the legal developments of the fourteenth century still allowed the crown some room for manoeuvre. The most important point of all, however, is the apparent absence of any deliberate malice towards Edward III on the part of the nobility. It was only when Richard II began to abuse his seigneurial rights that the use became an important instrument of political opposition. If the barons felt greater security of tenure in the middle decades of the fourteenth century, it was not because they had radically altered the law of property, but simply because they had a king who could be trusted. Edward III was well aware that the easiest route to a nobleman’s heart was via his land. It was the crown’s great misfortune that Richard II failed to appreciate that maxim.
COURTIERS AND THE MAGNATES IN THE 1370S
A whole range of political factors therefore came together in the mid-fourteenth century to create one of the most productive alliances between crown and nobility known in the later Middle Ages. Inevitably, these happy conditions could not last for ever. The stability of this period depended on the personal relationships built up between the king and a small group of like-minded contemporaries. When Edward’s friends died off in the 1360s and 1370s, the weaknesses in the system were bound to become evident. The campaigns of 1359–60 and the plague of 1361 –2 took a heavy toll on the aristocracy, and several of Edward’s leading supporters, including Robert Morley, John Beauchamp, Thomas Breadstone, Reginald Cobham, the Earls of March and Northampton and the Duke of Lancaster, died during this period. Subsequently, a number of leading magnates became disaffected with the regime and threw in their lot with the opposition during the Good Parliament. It is not surprising, therefore, that some historians have traced Richard II’s political problems with the nobility back to the last years of Edward III.127 But while there were undeniable deficiencies in the old king’s policies, it seems highly unlikely that Richard was merely the innocent victim of his grandfather’s mismanagement. This chapter will end with a fresh assessment of Edward’s last years, and an attempt to re-evaluate the state of baronial politics at the time of his death in 1377.
One of the most striking features of the 1360s and 1370s was Edward III’s reluctance to create new earldoms and baronies outside the royal family. Instead, he concentrated on integrating as many noble titles as possible into the Plantagenet line. There was a great spate of weddings between 1358 and 1362 which brought the young Earls of March and Pembroke and the heiresses to the duchy of Lancaster and the earldom of Kent into the royal family.128 Lionel of Antwerp and John of Gaunt were raised to the rank of duke in 1362, and Edmund of Langley became Earl of Cambridge in the same year. Princess Isabella’s husband Enguerrand de Coucy was made Earl of Bedford in 1366; and in 1374 the king’s youngest son Thomas of Woodstock married the co-heiress to the Bohun estates, with the apparent expectation that he would become Earl of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.129 These moves obviously beg comparison with Edward I’s attempts to graft some of the greatest baronial dynasties on to his own family tree. Like his grandfather, Edward III was simply responding to a very obvious need to provide titles and inheritances for his younger children, and there was no real suggestion of a deliberate anti-baronial policy. But the tendency to view domestic and foreign policy primarily as a means of dynastic advancement meant that Edward neglected the younger generation of non-royal noblemen who came into their father’s titles during the 1360s and 1370s. Until 1375, for instance, vacancies in the Order of the Garter were filled either by the king’s sons and sons-in-law or by prominent members of the household, such as Richard Pembridge, Guy Brian and Alan Buxhull.130 Edward maintained reasonably close contact with the Earl of Salisbury, and also with the new Earl of Warwick, Thomas Beauchamp II, who had earlier been a knight of the chamber.131 But the new Earls of Devon, Stafford, Oxford and Suffolk seem to have had few links with the court. The only non-royal earl who kept up regular contact with the king in these years was Richard Fitzalan, whose death on the eve of the Good Parliament deprived Edward III of the last of his close contemporaries and advisers.
The king’s dynastic plans were finally ruined by the series of mortalities and misfortunes that befell his children.132 Lionel of Clarence died in 1368; the Earl of Pembroke spent the last three years of his life a prisoner of war, dying in 1375; and the Black Prince’s illness removed him from effective military and political command after 1371. Edmund of Langley was in regular attendance at court in the 1370s, but his more able brother John of Gaunt spent most of his time on campaign in Scotland and on the continent. Thomas of Woodstock and the Earl of March were only in their teens and early twenties, and hardly provided an adequate royal following. The royal family also fell prey to faction. Historians have often seen the politics of the 1370s in terms of two rival aristocratic groupings: a ‘court party’, led by Pembroke and John of Gaunt, and a ‘popular party’ represented by the Black Prince and supported by his brothers Edmund and Thomas, together with their niece’s husband the Earl of March.133 It would be a mistake to see the divisions within the royal family in such stark terms, or to assume that all the aristocracy lined up conveniently under one or other party label. But the friction within the court was undeniable. There were indications, for instance, of a clash between March and John of Gaunt after the latter’s inconclusive and expensive foray through France in 1373.134 When the commons also became disillusioned by the war and the corruption of the court, it was inevitable that they would try to make political capital out of these tensions at the very highest levels of society.
This is not to say that Edward III totally neglected the magnates during his last years. Until about 1373, the war still united king and nobility in a common purpose. Although it became increasingly unlikely that they would be able to emulate the achievements of their fathers, the lords continued to give active support to Edward’s military enterprise. They were encouraged to do so by the advantageous terms offered in their indentures: the right to castles, towns and lands captured in the king’s name, and anything up to double the wage paid during the years of victory. 135 These incentives helped to offset the mounting war debts owed by the crown to leading members of the nobility.136 The king’s projected campaign of 1372, although called off, also served as an opportunity to reaffirm older solidarities. When aboard the Grace Dieu preparing this expedition, Edward personally received the homage of the new Earl of Stafford,137 and no doubt expressed his hope that this newest recruit to the peerage would serve as loyally as his esteemed father. After the cessation of hostilities in 1375, moreover, the Earls of Warwick, Stafford and Suffolk reappeared at court.138 Finally, the Garter also opened its ranks to the high nobility again: the new knights elected in 1375–6 included Suffolk and Stafford, as well as Sir Thomas Holand and Sir Thomas Percy.139 Gestures of this sort compensated to some extent for the unpopularity of the courtiers, and probably made many of the nobility somewhat ambivalent about the prospect of an all-out attack on the crown.
What finally alienated the magnates, of course, was the ascendancy of Latimer, Neville and Perrers, and the control which they and other members of the household came to enjoy over royal patronage. Indeed, the real problem of Edward III’s last years was not the supposed division of the aristocracy into two rival camps, but the frustration aroused in the vast majority of the baronage by a small group of royal favourites. The political conditions of the 1370s were in many ways similar to those of the 1330s, except that Edward’s declining health allowed his courtiers even greater influence. Lord Latimer now virtually dictated who might have access to the monarch. In 1371, for instance, when the Earl of Pembroke tried to see the king at Marlborough on business arising from his dispute with Lord Grey of Ruthin, he was told that he would have to present his case through Latimer.140 And when the monks of the alien priory at Takeley (Essex) wished to complain about Latimer’s actions as custodian of their lands, they found it inadvisable to appeal to the king alone, and begged the assistance of Latimer’s father-in-law, the elderly Earl of Arundel.141 By 1375, in fact, certain petitions received at court were even being endorsed with notes in Latimer’s own hand purporting to represent the king’s wishes. Significantly enough, the two earliest such petitions were made by the keeper of the privy seal, Nicholas Carew.142 Certain officials were evidently taking advantage of Edward’s infirmity to manipulate the machinery of patronage for their own advantage. This was certainly the view taken by the commons in 1376. We have already noted the attack which the Good Parliament made on the disposition of royal escheats and other feudal prerogatives.143 The parallel debate over the leasing of hundreds provides further evidence of the intense suspicion aroused by the courtiers during these last years of the reign.
Throughout the fourteenth century it was common for certain hundreds and wapentakes (subdivisions of shires) to be leased out to the king’s family or friends.144 Those lucky enough to receive such grants paid an agreed rent to the exchequer, and took all the extra profits of the hundreds for themselves. At the start of Edward III’s reign there had been complaints about this practice, and in the Statute of Northampton (1328) it had been stated that all hundreds should be rejoined to their counties. 145 But little had been done, and after the 1330s the issue had largely been forgotten. It was only after 1371 that fresh demands were made for the enforcement of the Statute of Northampton, culminating in an all-out attack on the leasing of hundreds in 1376.146 Since the number of leases had not notably increased,147 public concern must have been sparked off by other considerations. The chancery records provide the clue. The death of Queen Philippa in 1369 had brought a large number of manors and hundreds back into the king’s hands. Rather than using these to strengthen the royal demesne or to endow high-ranking noblemen, the king simply assigned them to favoured soldiers and courtiers, who often paid very little for the privilege. Thus, the household knight Sir John Ipre received the manor and hundred of Isleworth (Middlesex) in 1374, at a farm of £123; but he was allowed to take £100 of this sum as his fee.148 In 1370 an esquire of the royal household, George Felbridge, obtained the farm of North and South Erpingham (Norfolk); and in July 1376 he was granted the hundred of Rochford (Essex) for an indefinite period, and free of all payments to the exchequer.149 Felbridge was one of many who narrowly escaped the wrath of the commons in 1376, for he was also involved in the controversial farm of the customs at Great Yarmouth and had close links with Hugh Fastolf and William Ellis, two Yarmouth merchants impeached in the course of the Good Parliament.150 The commons’ criticisms of hundred farmers in 1376 are better understood when they are seen as part of a general unease about the distribution of royal patronage and a particular suspicion of certain members of the royal household. Patronage, which had been exercised so effectively and successfully in the middle years of the reign, had once more become a pressing issue not only with the nobility but among the whole political community.
The deficiencies in Edward III’s later policy towards the nobility are therefore undeniable. The political alienation of a large proportion of the peerage ensured a sympathetic hearing for the commons’ programme in 1376 and sealed the fate of the courtiers. But whether the crisis of 1376 left a deep and permanent division in the ranks of the English nobility is another matter. The counter-attack launched by John of Gaunt in the winter of 1376–7 certainly antagonized some. In particular, the Earl of March resented losing the title of marshal to one of Gaunt’s closest allies, Henry Percy.151 But it is noticeable that most of the other leading opponents of the court had already been won over by the time Lord Latimer and Alice Perrers received their royal pardons in October 1376. Edmund of Langley and Thomas of Woodstock were both partly compensated for their rather meagre endowments by receiving offices, profits and property formerly held by Latimer and Richard Lyons.152 Thomas, the more active and influential of the two, also seems to have made peace with his brother Gaunt.153 By the time parliament and convocation met again in January 1377, even March was prepared to co-operate with the government in putting forward its urgent request for taxation.154 The Good Parliament may well have produced a larger number of defections among the peerage than the crisis of 1341, but the outcome was much the same. A widespread reluctance to perpetuate the conflict and a general desire to re-establish friendly relations ensured that the intricate and rather tenuous alignments of 1376 rapidly broke down.
The general move towards reconciliation was undoubtedly spurred on by a growing concern over the king’s health and the question of the succession. Edward III left no formal instructions for a regency in 1377. This apparent dereliction of duty has been variously explained as a result of his incapacitating illness, the bureaucratic inconvenience of ruling by committee, or the vaunting ambition of John of Gaunt.155 However, it is quite possible that an informal consensus had actually been reached on this matter before the king’s death. Edward rallied a little during the early months of 1377, and on 17 April he summoned a great council, including Salisbury, Warwick, Stafford, March, Suffolk and the new Earl of Arundel, Lords Percy, Basset and Fitzwalter, Sir Roger Beauchamp, and several other prominent laymen and clerics.156 The king then moved on to the St George’s Day celebrations at Windsor, where a large number of young noblemen and royals were knighted. Prince Richard and his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, were also admitted to the Order of the Garter.157 The discussions which took place in these assemblies are unknown to us; but it is at least possible that the king and the barons used the occasions to make arrangements for the impending succession. Certainly, we know that some sort of regency administration was functioning in the weeks between Edward’s death and the formal appointment of a continual council after Richard’s coronation.158 The old king had evidently appealed to that residue of respect which he could still command from his barons, asking them to unite in loyal support of his young grandson. This may have been naive, but it worked. The exile of Alice Perrers and a rush of new creations after Richard’s succession appeased the majority of the nobility, and even allowed former rivals such as William Latimer and the Earl of March to work together on the various regency councils appointed between 1377 and 1381 . Consequently, there is very little to suggest that the political issues of 1376–7 divided the baronage into opposing camps and created long-term factions that survived the minority of Richard II. Richard’s problems with the nobility in the 1380s and 1390s were an indictment of his own style of monarchy, not that of his grandfather.
Edward III came as near as any medieval king to reconciling the interests of crown and nobility. At the start of his reign the magnates were an unruly and unco-operative group, suspicious of the government and resentful at their loss of public esteem. The crisis of 1341 taught them not only about political opposition, but also about the absolute necessity of reaching an understanding with the king. The reconciliation of the 1340s and 1350s was successful precisely because it was bilateral. Generosity may have been the hallmark of Edward’s regime, but it was generosity with a purpose. Even in his last years, the king never resorted to the indiscriminate patronage lavished by Edward II on the Despensers or by Richard II on Robert de Vere. Edward III’s aim – and one of his greatest achievements – was to revive the tradition of aristocratic service destroyed in the civil wars and political conflicts of the 1320s. That a vestige of unity and loyalty still remained in 1377 says much about the enduring qualities of the new alliance. Edward III may have avoided the strong-armed tactics of his grandfather. He may even have lacked something of Henry V’s charismatic appeal. But his reign proved that there was nothing inherently incompatible between a powerful monarchy and a satisfied nobility. His rapprochement with the magnates made him one of the foremost exponents of the art of political management in the whole of the later Middle Ages.