CHAPTER XI
1
EDWARD made no effort to capture Paris, although some of his advisers clamored for action to that end. The French powers of resistance had been so shaken at Crécy that he could have won the city, but it would have been no more than a temporary triumph. Instead he made the wise decision to establish a bridgehead on French soil for use in future operations and, for that purpose, marched to the siege of Calais.
In the meantime French aggression in Gascony had come to a standstill, thus vindicating the judgment of the Frenchman Godfrey de Harcourt. As soon as Edward landed on the Cotentin, Philip sent word to his son, John of Normandy, to come to his assistance. Six days before the battle of Crécy was fought the French forces in the south began their march north. They arrived to find the great French army destroyed and Philip himself at Amiens in a state of bitterness and gloom. So deep was the beaten monarch’s dudgeon that no one cared to go near him and no plans could be discussed with him for the relief of Calais. John did not hesitate to beard the defeated lion because he had a grievance to air. Before leaving for the north he had given a safe-conduct to Sir Walter Manny, who wanted to make an overland march to join the English royal forces. Philip had refused to honor his son’s promise. Manny and his party had been laid by the heels at Orleans and were still being held in rigorous confinement.
The prince gave his bitterly depressed father an ultimatum. If Manny was not released at once, he himself would not strike another blow in the French cause. Philip, still in a state of intense irritation, was reluctant to give in; but he finally yielded and even gave Sir Walter some jewelry to the value of a thousand florins for the ill treatment he had received. The English knight accepted on condition that his own king approved. As soon as he reached the English camp before Calais, Sir Walter informed the king of what had happened.
“Send them back!” commanded the English monarch. “You have no right to keep them. We have enough, the Lord be praised, for you and for ourselves.”
There was no exaggeration in this. The English camp was filled with the loot of northern France. For a long time thereafter the English people would luxuriate in the spoils which were carried home. Every mother or wife of a soldier who fought at Crécy had a bracelet on her arm or a silver cup for her table. Many of them had feather beds, which were regarded as among the very choicest of all the spoils of war. The castles of the nobility were filled with rare things and there were blooded horses in all their stables.
The siege of Calais took a long time. It was a strong position and could be reduced only by starvation. Edward built a town of small wooden huts around it and, to make his men comfortable, had a market place in the center which was open three days a week for the sale of food and clothing from England. Philip of France got an army together from what was left after Crécy and came up behind the English with the intention of compelling them to raise the siege. But back of the English camps were wide marshlands, and the phlegmatic and unimaginative Philip could not find any way to get across. He squatted down with his men beyond the marshlands and, no doubt, spent his time bemoaning the defeat at Crécy. Finally the townspeople, having eaten all the horses and dogs and every rat they could catch in the city, reached the stage where they must yield or starve to death. They had been watching the campfires of Philip’s army at night and hoping against hope that he would do something to help them.
There were only two ready-made approaches to the beleaguered city, and the French king did not propose to try either one. The first was a road along the coast where his troops would be under arrow fire from the English fleet (and they did not want any more of that violent medicine), and the other was a bridge across the marshes called Neuillet, and this was strongly guarded by the English. William the Conqueror had found ways of taking his army across the fens at Ely, a much more difficult feat, but there was no such resourcefulness in Philip. He sulked a little longer while his people in Calais starved, and then broke up camp and returned with all his troops to Amiens.
The governor of the besieged city, Sir Jean de Vienne, had to ask for terms. Edward would listen to nothing at first but unconditional surrender. Calais had been a hotbed of piracy in the past and had sent out ships to prey on English commerce. Now the citizens had cost the English monarch much in time and lives by the stubbornness of their defense. They must, he declared, be punished as befitted their crimes.
The king’s advisers were against too much severity and Edward finally compromised by demanding that six of the most notable men of Calais come out to him in their shirts and bare feet and with ropes around then-necks. They must bring the keys of the town and castle and place them in his hands.
“On them,” he declared, “I shall work my will. The rest I will receive to my mercy.”
Six of the most highly respected and richest burghers volunteered to be the victims, and they were sent out in their shirts as stipulated, all of them so weak from famine that they could barely walk. They were brought into the presence of the king, who had surrounded himself with the queen and her ladies and all of his captains and best soldiers. There the six old men knelt down before him.
“We bring you the keys,” said one of them, “and put ourselves at your mercy to save the rest of the people who have suffered so hardly.”
The king, whose handsome face was suffused with anger, had his headsman ready. He motioned to him to begin.
Up to this point the story is a familiar one. Many kings in different countries and at divers times had butchered the common people of cities which had resisted too bravely and too long. Edward I had ordered the killing of all the men of Berwick, and the work of extermination was well under way before he relented. Casting ahead some years, Edward the Black Prince would provide a classic example of this kind of savage behavior. He would put all the common people of a captured town to the sword but would pardon the knights. The story of Calais is, therefore, one of many such. It would not have been selected for particular remembrance if all the people around the angry king had not urged that he show mercy, Sir Walter Manny acting as spokesman. The latter did not prevail over the vicious Plantagenet temper, and it remained for Queen Philippa to add her voice. Although she was close to her time with a tenth child, she went down on her knees before Edward and begged earnestly that he show mercy.
The king took a long time to make up his mind and once at least he raised his hand as though signaling to the headsman. Finally, however, and with obvious reluctance, he granted the queen’s request and allowed the hostages to go free.
That this became one of the favorite stories of the period was due, in all likelihood, to the intimate picture of the queen which emerges. Following so soon after the beautiful Eleanor of Castile, to whose memory the costly Eleanor Crosses dotted the great northern road as proof of the undying love of Edward I, and the spectacular and passionate Isabella of France, who was still living in seclusion at Castle Rising and of whom men in the taverns spoke in whispers as “the she-wolf of France,” Queen Philippa had seemed rather colorless. She was pretty, sweet, and domestic, a typical Dutch girl. But at Calais she showed herself to be brave as well as understanding and compassionate (it took courage to beard Edward in one of his Plantagenet tempers), and the people of England rolled the story over their tongues and kept it green in their memories.
Must a sequel be told, even if it takes much of the gloss from this picture of the fair (and rapidly becoming buxom) queen and shows that she had other qualities common to the hardheaded burghers of the Flanders cities? Edward, with a careless gesture, had given her the six old men to deal with as she pleased. This included their properties as well as their bodies, and she did not scruple to take advantage of the chance thus offered. It is on record that she took over the houses of one of the six, John Daire. As he chose not to become an English citizen and had to leave the city as a result, it is highly improbable that he ever got the property back.
2
The saga of the border warfare became in this reign a story of the struggle between the strong son of a weak father and the weak son of a strong father. David the Bruce had inherited little of the great quality of his father, Robert. He proceeded, however, to carry out Scotland’s treaty obligation to France when the word spread that Edward III had led an army of invasion into France. He got together a force of fifteen thousand men and led them across the Tyne above Newcastle and down into Durham. The northern barons, under the leadership of the Archbishop of York, assembled in force to meet him and on October 17, 1346, they came face to face at Neville’s Cross. It proved a repetition of a now familiar story. The English archers cut the charging Scots to pieces and scored a complete victory. Many of the nobles of Scotland were killed in the battle and David himself was made a prisoner by an English north-country squire by the name of John Copland.
Following the lead of Froissart, the historian of the Middle Ages, there has been a tendency to give the credit of this victory to Queen Philippa. Circumstantial stories are told of her bravery and coolness; how she rode out on a white charger and inspired the troops with a rousing speech, and how she returned to the battlefield afterward on the same charger. Hearing the story of David’s capture, she is supposed to have demanded of Copland that the royal prisoner be turned over to her. Copland refused and rode forthwith to Calais to explain himself to King Edward. “I hold my land of you and not of her,” he declared. The king is said to have told him to return to England forthwith and deliver the royal prisoner into the hands of the queen. With this command went a promise of lands to the value of five hundred pounds a year for the great service rendered the crown.
The reliability of this story has always been questioned because no mention is made of it in the English chronicles; and a gentle queen riding to battle on a white horse is not an episode that any monkish chronicler would overlook, or any kind of historian, in fact. It must be taken into consideration also that the battle of Neville’s Cross was fought on October 17 and that Edward did not land at Sandwich with his queen and family until October 12. The queen could not have been at Durham in time for the fighting.
The captive king was brought to London and paraded through the streets on a handsome black war horse and was then lodged in the Tower of London. He spent the next eleven years as a prisoner in England.
He was not kept in close confinement all the time. His wife, who was Edward’s sister, Joanna (Little Joan Makepeace), was allowed to join him. They lived in various places close to London, always under guard, of course, and at Odiham in Hampshire. As negotiations over the amount of the ransom took an endless time, he was permitted on one occasion to return to Scotland to talk the estates into agreement. All this time there were secret understandings between the two kings about which the estates knew nothing, although they suspected much. David, in fact, was willing to sacrifice Scotland as a condition to his release, and several of the Scottish leaders were partners with him in what was called “the business.” Finally, on July 13, 1354, the ransom was fixed at ninety thousand marks, to be paid in nine yearly installments. Now Scotland was not a rich country and ten thousand marks was a great deal of money to be raised and paid out each year, particularly for a king who was not regarded highly. David ruled for fourteen years after his return and was in debt all the time, sometimes paying nothing, sometimes as little as four thousand marks. Finally he and Edward reached an understanding by which the balance of the ransom could be liquidated without further payments. David was to agree to the transfer of the Scottish crown at his death to an English prince, the one chosen being Edward’s very tall son, Lionel. The Scottish Parliament refused to accept this arrangement, so the two royal conspirators put their heads together on a still more drastic agreement. David promised to settle the succession on Edward himself, with certain precautionary provisions to maintain the independence of Scotland. In consideration of this the balance of the ransom was written off, although David continued to keep up a desultory correspondence with the English chancellery in order to conceal the truth from the dour Scottish parliamentarians, who would have raised the roof of Edinburgh Castle in their wrath had they known.
In the meantime David’s gentle English queen had died. He married a second time rather promptly, choosing the fascinating widow of a knight of comparatively low degree. Her name was Margaret Logie, and the estates were as little pleased with this choice as they would have been about the secret pact between the two kings. The new queen caused considerable trouble by persuading the king to put her relatives in important posts, and it did not take long for the coterie about the king to get rid of her. They found some basis for a divorce and snipped the marriage bond with legal scissors.
David died in Edinburgh Castle on February 22, 1370, leaving no children.
The secret transaction between the two kings did not play any part in the succession. The Scottish estates promptly chose Robert the Steward, a man of mature years, who was the son of David’s sister, Marjorie. The new king had shown rare promise as a youth and had been widely popular. He was described as “beautiful beyond the sons of men,” in spite of having red eyes (the color of sandalwood, according to Froissart) owing to a caesarian birth after his mother’s death from the fall of a horse; or such was the accepted explanation.
Robert II did not have much chance to display great powers during the nineteen years of his reign. He is chiefly remembered as the founder of the Stuart dynasty which reigned in Scotland for centuries.
David II was forty-seven years old when he died and had been king for forty-one of them; in name, at least.
3
Edward came back to England after his triumphs at Crécy and Calais in a jubilant mood and was welcomed enthusiastically by the people. Thinking himself entitled, perhaps, to some recreation after the years of strain and struggle, and convinced no doubt that in no other way could his reputation be more widely and permanently enhanced, he proceeded to turn a pet dream into an actuality. He established the Order of the Garter.
On the first day of January in 1344, and in advance of the great venture of the landing in France, Edward had announced a series of tournaments at Windsor Castle to which knights from all parts of Europe were to be invited. In order to provide proper facilities for these spectacular events, he planned some building developments at Windsor, a meeting place to be called the Round Table. As early as February of that year carpenters and masons were at work at Windsor and vehicles were bringing in loads of stone and timber from adjoining points. When the international pot began to boil and Edward found it necessary at last to take decisive steps in France, the work at the royal castle had to be suspended.
Then the king and the Black Prince returned to England to the thunderous applause of the whole populace. Their heads were now filled with plans for this great and somewhat mysterious order which was to be a successor to Arthur’s Round Table. The exact date when the first steps were taken cannot be established. The official register of the Order of the Garter, which is called the Black Book because it is bound in black velvet, was not compiled until the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. It is vague as to the facts and clearly has drawn on hearsay.
This much is now accepted as more nearly correct than any other theory: that Edward on returning announced his intention of establishing the order, which was to be called the Knights of the Blue Garter, a title once used by Richard Coeur-de-Lion. Froissart says that all the original members were at the feast where this statement was made, forty in number, and that all of the king’s sons were included. It is now accepted that the original enrollment was twenty-five and that of the king’s sons only the Black Prince was there.
A wider vision began to occupy the royal mind. Windsor consisted of the Round Tower and some small and not too substantial dwellings which Henry I and Henry III had erected. This far from imposing residence must now be converted into one worthy of a great king and suitable for this universal order.
This brings to the fore a man known as William of Wykeham, who was later to play a quite remarkable part in the history of the day, chiefly as a builder of castles and the founder of Winchester College. He was a clerk on the staff of Nicholas Uvedale, governor of Winchester. There was a rumor current at the time that this promising young man was in reality a son of Queen Isabella and her paramour Mortimer. Ever since the execution of Mortimer and the placing of the queen in seclusion, the rumor had persisted that a son had been born as a result of their illicit relationship; but why Master Wykeham should have been selected for this doubtful honor has never been traced.
He was, in plain fact, of very plain parentage, born in 1323 in the village of Wickham in Hampshire. His father was John Long (or perhaps Long John), a carpenter and a freeman, and his mother was Sybil Bowate, of gentle birth. There is no hint of mystery about his birth and there was nothing in his personality to suggest a parental link with the two principals in that great scandal.
While still quite young he became private secretary to his patron, and it is said he occupied a room in one of the high turrets of Winchester Castle, from which he could look down at all the magnificent buildings about and so acquired a burning admiration for Gothic architecture. He studied the structure of cathedrals and castles in all parts of the country. This hobby, for it could have been nothing else at this stage of his career, was noticed by Uvedale, who mentioned it to King Edward. The king sent for the young clerk and was much impressed with his manners and his well-expressed enthusiasm for fine buildings. The result was Wykeham’s early appointment as clerk of the royal manors of Henle and Yelhampstead and later as surveyor of the king’s works in the castle and park of Windsor. The king’s readiness to employ him in such a post, when he had no education and no actual knowledge of building, may have roused suspicions which in turn led to the rumors about the young clerk’s parentage.
William of Wykeham was in the royal service for many years, during which time the bald and forbidding walls of Windsor were converted into a place of graciousness as well as strength. It was assumed at the time that he had designed the plans and was entitled to the credit for the splendid changes which were wrought. Later and more careful consideration of the available facts has resulted in limiting his part to the administrative control. The architectural inspiration at Windsor was supplied by a highly skilled worker named William of Wynford. It is certain, at any rate, that Wynford was always with him as the “appareller,” which meant the master mason, among other things. He was with Wykeham at Wells, at Abingdon Abbey, at Winchester Cathedral, and Winchester College. The royal accounts do not indicate, however, that this man of genius was well paid for his labors. At Wells he received forty shillings a year and sixpence a day. For the work he did at Abingdon he received a yearly wage of three pounds six shillings and threepence and a fur robe. Wykeham received a shilling a day in addition to the yearly salary which went with the post.
The once humble clerk did not underestimate his own part in these quite monumental efforts. He wanted to be remembered and so had the words This Made Wicham carved over a small tower in the middle bailey. He was discreet enough to want this piece of self-glorification to go unnoticed at the time, for the words were inscribed in small letters. Not small enough, however; immediately jealous sharp eyes detected what he had done and the story was carried to the king. Edward visited the tower in a fine rage and would have dealt summarily with Master Wykeham if the latter had not been quick to explain that the words were meant to convey a quite different meaning. It did not mean, explained Wykeham, that he had made the building but that the building had made him. The king accepted this somewhat flimsy excuse, but the slab seems to have disappeared at once. It was copied later when the first tower was remodeled and named Winchester Tower.
Wykeham became later one of the greatest “pluraliste” of English history. That term was applied to anyone in any stage of holy orders who managed, through favor in high places, to have various benefices conferred on him, canonries here, prebendaries there, livings everywhere. Such benefices did not entail any work or responsibilities on the holder. A grubby curate or a half-starved clerk could always be found to do the work and to accept a small, an exceedingly small, part of the stipend. The greatest pluralist of all time, perhaps, was John Mansel, jack-of-all-trades and Man Friday to Henry III. He fell into the habit of putting his own name on most of the appointment papers which passed across the long marble table at the upper end of the Cage Chamber in the palace at Westminster, where all official documents were signed and sealed. The offices he held were variously estimated at between three hundred and seven hundred and he was called “the richest clerk in the world.” The famous Cardinal Wolsey was ranked second in this competition in simony and Wykeham third.
The latter moved up rapidly in the royal service and finally became chancellor. After taking holy orders in 1366 he was appointed Bishop of Winchester. This was one of the richest plums in the kingdom. Refusing to become Archbishop of Canterbury, he was said to have remarked that the rack of Canterbury was higher but the manger of Winchester was larger. William of Wykeham did very well indeed there. In addition to the many profitable appointments made for him by the king, he found the Black Death a great aid in his march to preferment and wealth. The plague was no respecter of persons, and fat-waisted churchmen seemed particularly vulnerable. Wykeham was an assiduous gleaner on the very heels of the Grim Reaper, making himself the successor to all the ecclesiastical victims.
He was different from the other great simonical beneficiaries, however, in that he did not keep the benefits to himself. He was one of the most charitable of men, which may have been one of the reasons for the wide popularity he enjoyed.
There are many explanations given for the selection of the name of the new order, the most favored being the story of the Countess of Salisbury and the king. She was the wife of his great friend and early companion, Montacute, whose part in the capture of Mortimer will be remembered. The daughter of a handsome Burgundian knight and Sibyl, the heiress of Tregose, Katherine de Grandison had inherited wealth from her mother and beauty from her father. When David of Scotland laid siege to Wark Castle, the seat of the family, it happened that her husband was a prisoner in France and so the conduct of the defense had fallen on her slender shoulders. The fair Katherine showed a rare fighting spirit and held the invaders at bay with a small garrison consisting of the constable, a few knights, and not more than twoscore archers and servants.
However, the wail of the pipes around the walls day and night had begun to weigh on her, together with the frequent sound in the distance of Hey, Tuttie Tatie which meant that more of the wild Scots were arriving. When she saw an English army approaching with the royal standard carried in the lead, she was delighted beyond measure. It is quite understandable that she lost no time in discarding the chain-mail jacket and the steel helmet in which she had subsisted for so long and arraying herself in her very best raiment to welcome the king.
The fashion in clothes for ladies of rank had been changing, at the dictate of France. No longer were they content to appear in the loose flowing robes which afforded such slim chances of displaying their charms. When she went down to the drawbridge to greet the king, the fair Katherine wore a tight inner jacket of a tawny shade, buttoned straight down in front, and over this a very gay surcoat of lustrous brown and gold, with the hanging sleeves which were the very latest thing in feminine attire, and a very fetching device indeed. The surcoat was elaborately embroidered with the heraldic quarterings of the family and with a great many garters in a variety of shades. To borrow a modern word, there had been a “run” on the garter as a symbol for decoration. It was used for the men quite as much as for the ladies, and the royal accounts refer to a blue taffeta bedcover “powdered” with garters for the king himself. Another item is found of a jupon “for the king’s body,” with garters and buckles and pendants of silver gilt.
The king had a roving eye and a plausible tongue, but he was silent as he followed the chatelaine to the best chamber in the castle. Wark was one of the very earliest Norman castles and so was little more than an empty shell, the great hall extending clear to the beamed roof and the personal apartments being mere cubicles along the outer walls. The king was to have the lady’s own chamber, which was little larger than any of the others but warmly furnished, no doubt, with rugs and hangings. It was reached by a steep and dark staircase opening off from the entrance.
The story runs that when they reached the entrance to the tiny room the king seemed disposed to take advantage of her husband’s absence. Much to his surprise, he was rebuffed, gently but firmly.
She returned sometime later to summon him to the evening meal, which was spread out on the long table in full view below, and was somewhat disconcerted to find that he had not arrayed himself in his full finery but apparently had spent the interval in thought. He paused in the doorway and regarded her with somber eyes. She began to regret then that she had gone to such pains with her own attire, fearing that he had misconstrued her motives.
“I pray you will think well of what I have said,” stated the king, “and so have the kindness to give me a different answer.”
“I hoped, gracious liege,” she replied, “that the good Lord in heaven would drive from your noble heart such villainous designs.” Then she paused before going on. “I am, and ever shall be, ready to serve you, but only in what is consistent with my honor, and with yours.”
The king was silent all through the meal and he left at an early hour the next morning. He had quite apparently given the situation much earnest thought and had arrived at a decision in line with the principles of the new order. The first thing he did on reaching his camp was to give instructions that the Earl of Salisbury, her husband, was to be ransomed and brought home at once.
This was how things stood between the king and the virtuous lady of Salisbury, if the story is to be believed, when a great ball was held at Windsor Castle to inaugurate the order. The earl had been brought back in the meantime and Edward, according to Froissart, “expressly ordered the Earl of Salisbury to bring the lady, his wife.… All the ladies and damsels who assisted at this first convocation of the Order of the Garter came superbly dressed, excepting the Countess of Salisbury, who attended the festival dressed as plainly as possible.” It may be taken for granted that she was, nonetheless, one of the most beautiful in all that brilliant company.
It happened that the good lady had the misfortune to lose a garter during the dancing. This was quite a common occurrence, for elastic materials were still a matter of the distant future. Although she was plainly attired on the surface, the fair Katherine had seen to it that the accessories she wore were of the best. The garter certainly was a handsome little trifle, of fine silk and most neatly jeweled. Knowing to whom it belonged and being “in full knowledge of their lord’s feeling,” everyone smiled when he paused to survey it as it lay on the floor at his feet. Observing this, he stooped and picked it up and then fitted it on his own sleeve.
“Honi soit qui mal y pense [Evil to him who evil thinks],” said the king in the hearing of all.
The best that historians have to say for this legend is that the title and motto of the order may have been acquired in some such way but that the lady in question could not have been the fair Katherine, wife of William de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. The chief evidence against it is the fact that the king’s old friend and confederate died in 1344—before the idea for the order had entered the royal head—from injuries incurred in a hastilude at Windsor, a form of tournament in which the contestants used spears. It is significant also that Froissart, who delights in all such tales and had moreover a great gift for inventing them, tells the story of Edward’s passion for the virtuous chatelaine of Wark but makes no allusion at all to the incident of the garter. It came into circulation at least a century later and was the work of one Polydore Vergil.
Other writers accepted the incident but disagreed as to the identity of the lady. Some said it was Queen Philippa who lost the garter, which obviously was wrong, for the king would not have made his classic remark if it had been her property; no one could think ill of a husband who wore his wife’s garter on his sleeve. Still others contended that the lady of the story was none other than the Fair Maid of Kent, who later married the Black Prince. This theory seems to be based on slightly better ground. The Fair Maid, a great beauty but a far from amiable lady, was first contracted to marry the second Earl of Salisbury, the son of the fair Katherine, but allowed herself to be swept into a marriage with Lord Holland. This reigning beauty would most certainly be at the ball and, from what is known of her character, she might even have been capable of loosening her garter to attract the king’s attention. Edward may not have been in love with the wife of his old friend (the fact that Froissart tells that story in such detail inclines one to believe there was some degree of truth in it), but there does not seem to be any doubt at all that the king entertained a secret liking for his beautiful madcap niece; secret only in the sense that it was never openly avowed even though it was the cause of much sly gossip about the court.
There is no way of getting closer to the truth, so it seems safe enough to assume that there was a lady who lost her garter and so provoked a much-whispered-about anecdote and led in due course to the finding of a title for the king’s order. No other explanation has been provided, at any rate, for the appearance of the words Honi soit qui mal y pense on the regalia of the order.
It is impossible to find the exact date when the order was finally established. The chapel of St. George was finished, as far as Edward was to continue with it, on August 22, 1348. It was even at that stage one of the finest examples of Perpendicular architecture in England. It was built, said the letters of patent, “for motives of piety, to the honor of God, the Virgin Mary, St. George and St. Edward the Confessor.” There is no mention of the order. Nevertheless, it must have been in the king’s mind. There is an item in the accounts, “For making three harnesses for the king, two of white velvet worked with blue garters and diapered throughout the field with wild men.” There was in September 1351 a mention of mantles to be delivered to the knights, a receipt of payment for twenty-four robes covered with garters.
The original Companions of the order were: two princes of the blood, Edward and the Earl of Lancaster; the earls of Warwick and Salisbury; five barons, Stafford, Mortimer, Lisle, Grey, Mohun; fifteen knights, all of whom had served at Crécy, and one among them whose name stands out for valor and knightly achievement, Sir John Chandos; and the Captal de Buch, a Gascon nobleman of great intrepidity and stainless reputation.
It is more interesting and significant to note those who were not included. No relatives of the queen had been invited, none of the younger princes nor the Earl of Kent, a first cousin. Men of inferior station had been preferred to such powerful members of the aristocracy as the Bohuns, Clintons, and de Veres, the earls of Hereford, Essex, and Northampton, the lords Cobham, Bourchier, and Dogworth, and Sir Walter Manny. The exclusion of so many of the aristocracy may have been due to their lack of military reputation and as such is to be commended, for if the order was to have any excuse for existence it was to pay honor to valor and chivalry. The exclusion of Sir Walter Manny is hard to understand, for no knight had been performing with greater bravery, and he had, moreover, been in charge of the siege of Calais. He was included in the second list of members.
The selection of the first Companions seems to point to a purpose on the king’s part to link the order with the victory at Crécy, for none of the leaders at Neville’s Cross were included.