The military careerist in fourteenth-century England

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to explain how it was that the careerist soldier became so prominent and ubiquitous a feature of the English military scene during the second half of the fourteenth century. Beginning with a characterisation of the military careerist in his various guises, the discussion proceeds with an investigation of how the pool of militarily employed manpower and the wider recruitment context changed during the fourteenth century owing to the impact of exogenous agencies of change on the dynamics of recruitment. The importance of expanded employment opportunities across Europe and the socio-economic consequences of the Black Death are noted, but particular attention is given to how the English crown’s management of war strategy and operations, as well as its influence on army structures and recruitment mechanisms, created a fertile soil within which military careerism could flourish. The roles played by ‘supersized’ mixed retinues and by opportunities for service in garrisons (especially at Calais) and at sea are considered in turn. The article concludes with an assessment of how the rise of the careerist affected the character of England’s military community and the social cohesion of its armies.

KEYWORDS:

• Careerism
• military service
• soldiers
• armies
• garrisons
• navies
• recruitment
• Calais
• Edward III of England
• Richard II of England

Acknowledgements

I should also like to acknowledge the kindness of the late Professor Linton S. Thorn, who made his research materials on English Calais available to me, and the collaboration of Dr Craig Lambert in developing the materials and ideas presented in the section on maritime recruitment. At several points my research for this article has benefitted from access to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC-funded) ‘The Soldier in Later Medieval England’ online database (www.medievalsoldier.org).

Note on contributor

Andrew Ayton is a specialist in late medieval military and social history. He has written extensively on England’s military communities and the organisation and conduct of the king’s wars in Scotland and France during the fourteenth century. He is currently Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Hull (having been a member of that department for 30 years until his retirement in 2015) and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Keele University.

Notes

¹ The following abbreviation is used in this paper: TNA: Kew, The National Archives.

A.R. Bell, A. Curry, A. King and D. Simpkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 266–70.

² A. Curry, ‘English Armies in the Fifteenth Century’, in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, eds. A. Curry and M. Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 39–68 (51).

³ ‘Professional’ in the adjectival sense: ‘having the qualities of’. D.J.B. Trim, ‘Introduction’, in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, ed. D.J.B. Trim (Boston: Brill, 2003), 1–38 (25).

⁴ Bell and others, Soldier, 266.

⁵ M. Mallett, ‘Condottieri and Captains in Renaissance Italy’, in Chivalric Ethos, ed. Trim, 67–88.

⁶ P. Engel, The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526, ed. A. Ayton (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 237–8.

⁷ M. Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668 (London: Routledge, 2005), 21.

⁸ S.H. Rigby, ‘The Knight’, in Historians on Chaucer: the ‘General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales, eds. S.H. Rigby and A.J. Minnis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 42–62.

⁹ E.M. Thompson, ed., Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1889), 116–19; Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward III, vol. 9, 1350–54 (London: H.M.S.O., 1907), 238, 242–4; TNA, E 101/170/16, ff. 19r–v.

¹⁰ E.L. Cox, The Green Count of Savoy. Amadeus VI and Transalpine Savoy in the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 183, 207, 228, 252–3, 262, 280, 298, 338.

¹¹ N.H. Nicolas, ed., The Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy. 2 vols. (London: Johnson & Co, 1832) 1: 124–5; A. Ayton, ‘From Brittany to the Black Sea: Nicholas Sabraham and English Military Experience in the Fourteenth Century’, in The Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty in Late Medieval Europe, eds. A. Musson and N. Ramsay (Woodbridge: Boydell, forthcoming, 2017).

¹² An alternative term, ‘freelance’, is not used because it implies socially unembedded, mercenary service, which, as we shall see, is not necessarily synonymous with military careerism.

¹³ Nicolas, ed., Scrope and Grosvenor, 1: 155–6; 2: 261–6.

¹⁴ Bell and others, Soldier, 20.

¹⁵ F.A. Page-Turner, ed., ‘The Bedfordshire Wills and Administrations Proved at Lambeth Palace, and in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon’, Bedfordshire Historical Record Society Publications 2 (1914): 3–59 (8).

¹⁶ A. Ayton, Knights and Warhorses: Military Service and the English Aristocracy under Edward III (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 236, nn. 190 and 191.

¹⁷ Bell and others, Soldier, 162–4.

¹⁸ For example, A. Ayton, ‘William de Thweyt, Esquire: Deputy Constable of Corfe Castle in the 1340s’, Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries 32 (1989): 731–8.

¹⁹ Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1350–54, 220; TNA, E 101/170/16, f. 12v.

²⁰ Baker’s testimony is corroborated by Robert of Avesbury: E.M. Thompson, ed., Adae Murimuth, Continuatio chronicarum and Robertus de Avesbury, De gestis mirabilibus regis Edwardi tertii. Rolls Series 93 (London: H.M.S.O., 1889), 414.

²¹ K. Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries, vol. 1, The Great Companies (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 11–12.

²² Kervyn de Lettenhove, ed., Oeuvres de Froissart. Chroniques. 25 vols. (Brussels: Victor Devaux et Cie, 1867–77), 18: 339–43.

²³ S. Morillo, ‘Mercenaries, Mamluks and Militia: Towards a Cross-Cultural Typology of Military Service’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men: the Mercenary Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. J. France (Boston: Brill, 2008), 243–60.

²⁴ A notable example is Edward, prince of Wales’ military lordship, exercised in Cheshire during the 1350s and 1360s: P. Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 1277–1403. Chetham Society, 3rd series, 34 (Manchester: Manchester University Press for the Chetham Society, 1987), Chapters 3 and 4.

²⁵ Ayton, ‘From Brittany to the Black Sea’.

²⁶ As with crusading, much freelance soldiering was pursued during lulls in the king’s wars, but a predilection for mercenary service may be assumed with those Englishmen who stayed on in Italy after the resumption of the Anglo-French war in 1369.

²⁷ See, for example, J.R. Alban, ‘An East Anglian Knight’s Indenture for Military Service at Sea, 1388’, Norfolk Archaeology 47 (2014): 1–12 (9).

²⁸ D. Grummitt, The Calais Garrison. War and Military Service in England, 1436–1558 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 97–9.

²⁹ Calais: Bell and others, Soldier, 247–8.

³⁰ For what follows, see A. Ayton, ‘Military Service and the Dynamics of Recruitment in Fourteenth-Century England’, in The Soldier Experience in the Fourteenth Century, eds. A.R. Bell and others (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), 9–59.

³¹ M. Prestwich, ‘Cavalry Service in Early Fourteenth-Century England’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, eds. J. Gillingham and J.C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984), 147–58 (149).

³² D. Bachrach, ‘Edward I’s Centurions: Professional Soldiers in an Era of Militia Armies’, in Soldier Experience, eds. Bell and others, 109–28.

³³ For the armies raised, see R. Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), Appendices II–VIII; N.B. Lewis, ‘The Recruitment and Organisation of a Contract Army, May to November 1337’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 37 (1964): 1–19; A. King, ‘A Good Chance for the Scots? The Recruitment of English Armies for Scotland and the Marches, 1337–1347’, in England and Scotland at War, c.1296–c.1513, eds. A. King and D. Simpkin (Boston: Brill, 2012), 119–56; A. Ayton, ‘Edward III and the English Aristocracy at the Beginning of the Hundred Years War’, in Armies, Chivalry and Warfare in Medieval Britain and France, ed. M. Strickland (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1998), 173–206; K. Fowler, The King’s Lieutenant. Henry of Grosmont, First Duke of Lancaster, 1310–1361 (London: Elek, 1969), 222–4; A. Ayton, ‘The English Army at Crécy’, in The Battle of Crécy, 1346, eds. A. Ayton and P. Preston (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 159–251.

³⁴ ‘espessement a meruail … ieunes mesconuz’: Sir Thomas Gray, Scalacronica, 1272–1363, ed. A. King. Surtees Society, 209 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005), 152–3, 156–7.

³⁵ Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 37–49; Ayton, Knights and Warhorses, 12–18, M. Prestwich, Armies and Warfare in the Middle Ages. The English Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 125, 134–5.

³⁶ Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, Chapter 6.

³⁷ Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 245–7.

³⁸ Ayton, ‘English Army at Crécy’, 176. The cost to the captain depended primarily on whether the mounted archer provided his own equipment and horse (221); G. Baker, ‘Investigating the Socio-Economic Origins of English Archers in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Medieval Military History 12 (2014): 173–216, especially 200–12.

³⁹ Governmental planning documents reporting the manpower to be supplied by captains generally record decisions rather than how they were arrived at: see, for example, M. Prestwich, ‘English Armies in the Early Stages of the Hundred Years War: a Scheme in 1341’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 56 (1983): 102–13. For evidence of negotiation, as well as imposition from above, see Lewis, ‘Recruitment and Organisation of a Contract Army’, and King, ‘Good Chance for the Scots?’, 137, 148–53.

⁴⁰ A. Ayton, ‘Sir Thomas Ughtred and the Edwardian Military Revolution’, in The Age of Edward III, ed. J. Bothwell (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001), 107–32 (111–14); A. Ayton, ‘Armies and Military Communities in Fourteenth-Century England’, in Soldiers, Nobles and Gentlemen: Essays in Honour of Maurice Keen, eds. P. Coss and C. Tyerman (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009), 215–39 (221–6).

⁴¹ Ayton, ‘English Army at Crécy’, 204–15; Ayton, ‘Armies and Military Communities’, 233–5; Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 11–23. For retinue-level stability under Edward I and Edward II, see D. Simpkin, The English Aristocracy at War from the Welsh Wars of Edward I to the Battle of Bannockburn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008), 119–41; A. Spencer, ‘The Comital Military Retinue in the Reign of Edward I’, Historical Research 83 (2008): 46–59.

⁴² Ayton, ‘Armies and Military Communities’, 225–6 (TNA, SC 1/39/190). For further examples, see Morgan, War and Society in Medieval Cheshire, 75–6 (James Audley, 1345) and A.R. Bell, War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), 117–25 (earl of Arundel, 1387–8).

⁴³ On mixed companies within retinues, Ayton, ‘Armies and Military Communities’, 232–3.

⁴⁴ Ayton, ‘Armies and Military Communities’, 218–19.

⁴⁵ Retinues led by Edward, prince of Wales, the duke of Lancaster and the earl of March. Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 31–2, and the works cited there.

⁴⁶ J.W. Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues and English Expeditions to France, 1369–1380’, in idem, War, Politics and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England, ed. A. Tuck (London: Hambledon, 1994), 1–28.

⁴⁷ Ayton, ‘English Army at Crécy’, 245–51.

⁴⁸ Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues’, 3; TNA, E 101/31/27, m. 2.

⁴⁹ Protections for 1369: C 76/52, mm. 6–9, 10–13, 15–23.

⁵⁰ He had contracted to serve with 60 men-at-arms and 100 archers. E 101/31/15 (retinue roll); E 101/31/27, m. 1. For Hereford’s permanent retainers, see G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1957), 80 and n. 4.

⁵¹ TNA, E 101/32/20 (retinue roll, 1372).

⁵² Archer numbers also increased. E 101/68/4/92; E 101/31/27, m. 2.

⁵³ S. Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 14. Twenty-six non-Lancastrian indentures from the period 1369–89: M. Jones and S. Walker, eds, ‘Private Indentures for Life Service in Peace and War, 1278–1476’, Camden Miscellany XXXII. Camden 5th series, 3 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1994), nos. 53–78. Cf. Holmes, Estates, Chapter 3.

⁵⁴ R.R. Davies, Lords and Lordship in the British Isles in the Late Middle Ages, ed. B. Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 130; S. Walker, ‘Profit and Loss in the Hundred Years War: the Subcontracts of Sir John Strother’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 58 (1985): 100–6; Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 49–50.

⁵⁵ Bell and others, Soldier, 226–30.

⁵⁶ A. Goodman, ‘The Military Subcontracts of Sir Hugh Hastings, 1380’, English Historical Review 95 (1980): 114–20 (116–17). For Nowell’s career, see Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries, 20–1. See also Bell and others, Soldier, 130–1.

⁵⁷ Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues’, 12–15, 27–8. The corresponding figure for Arundel’s naval expeditions of 1387 and 1388 was 9%: Bell, War and the Soldier, 56, 64–5.

⁵⁸ Bell and others, Soldier, 56; Ayton, Knights and Warhorses, 228–9.

⁵⁹ One hundred men-at-arms and 60 archers. TNA, E 101/32/36, mm. 1 (account), 2 (indenture).

⁶⁰ E 101/32/36, mm. 4–5.

⁶¹ E 101/30/25; Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues’, 6–7. On this army, see G.P. Baker, ‘The English Way of War, 1360–1399’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Hull, 2011), 149–78.

⁶² J. Magee, ‘Sir Henry Elmham and the Recruitment for Henry Despenser’s Crusade of 1383’, Medieval Prosopography 20 (1999): 181–90.

⁶³ TNA, C 76/52, mm. 8, 10; C 76/55, m. 40.

⁶⁴ C 47/2/49/2.

⁶⁵ Ayton, Knights and Warhorses, 120–37.

⁶⁶ TNA, E 101/68/4/92; E 101/31/27, m. 2.

⁶⁷ e.g. the earl of March in 1374–5 (Davies, Lords and Lordship, 129); the duke of Lancaster in 1369 and 1372 (Walker, Lancastrian Affinity, 60); Ralph Ferrers in 1377–8 (TNA, E 101/36/26).

⁶⁸ TNA, E 101/32/36, m. 1.

⁶⁹ e.g. the army that the earl of Derby led to Aquitaine in 1345, for which he provided an usually large retinue (250 men-at-arms and 250 mounted archers): Fowler, King’s Lieutenant, 222–4, 230–2.

⁷⁰ D.J. Cornell, ‘Northern Castles and Garrisons in the Later Middle Ages’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Durham, 2006), 11.

⁷¹ Berwick, Roxburgh and Lochmaban (until 1384), plus Carlisle.

⁷² S.J. Burley, ‘The Victualling of Calais, 1347–65’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 31 (1958), 49–57 (51).

⁷³ E. Perroy, ed., Compte de William Gunthorp, trésorier de Calais, 1371–1372. Mémoires de la Commission Départementale des Monuments Historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 10, fasc. 1 (Arras: Commission départementale des monuments historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 1959), 6–7, 11, 20–5.

⁷⁴ TNA, E 101/31/18. Saint-Sauveur was lost to the French in 1375.

⁷⁵ M. Jones, Ducal Brittany, 1364–1399 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 152–3; J. Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. 3, Divided Houses (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), 310, 330; Bell and others, Soldier, 100.

⁷⁶ J.W. Sherborne, ‘The Cost of English Warfare with France in the Later Fourteenth Century’, in idem, War, Politics and Culture, 55–70 (67–9).

⁷⁷ Cf., for the fifteenth century, Grummitt, Calais Garrison, 76.

⁷⁸ Cornell, ‘Northern Castles and Garrisons’, Chapter 5: ‘Garrison Service’.

⁷⁹ Nicolas, ed., Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy, 1: 124–5; TNA, C 71/50, m. 4.

⁸⁰ As in 1371–2 when Sir Nicholas Tamworth, captain of the town and castle of Calais, led a retinue of nearly 500 men (Perroy, ed., Compte de William Gunthorp, 11, 21–2), whereas the personal retinue of his counterpart in early 1356, Sir John Beauchamp, provided merely the core (100 men) of what was an organisationally more fragmented military establishment (TNA, E 101/173/7, f. 5r).

⁸¹ For example: Sir Robert Salle (TNA, E 101/180/4, f. 6v), Sir Hugh Calveley (Lambeth Palace Library, MS 284, f. 3v) and Sir Matthew Gournay (TNA, E 101/40/26).

⁸² Guînes: TNA, E 101/173/7, f. 16v. Calais: E 101/174/7, f. 3r. Ardres: E 101/178/14.

⁸³ E 101/173/7, f. 6r; E 101/174/7, f. 3v; E 101/179/12, f. 5r; E 101/180/4, f. 7v; Perroy, ed., Compte de William Gunthorp, 23–4.

⁸⁴ Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1350–54, 244; TNA, E 101/170/16, f. 14r; E 101/171/1, f. 8r; E 101/171/3, f. 6v; E 101/173/7, f. 9r; E 101/174/7, f. 6r.

⁸⁵ E 101/171/1, f. 13r; E 101/171/3, f. 22r; E 101/27/6, m. 16; E 101/174/7, f. 10v.

⁸⁶ J.W. Sherborne, ‘The English Navy: Shipping and Manpower, 1369–89’, in idem, War, Politics and Culture, 29–39 (35–9).

⁸⁷ TNA, E 101/30/13.

⁸⁸ Ships and armed crews: TNA, E 101/31/23; E 101/31/10 and 14; E 101/31/12, m. 1, and E 364/5, rot. 31d (a); E 101/30/13, m. 5, and E 101/30/15, m. 3. Retinues: E 101/31/11 (Brian); E 101/31/12 (Neville); E 101/31/15 and E 101/31/27 (Hereford).

⁸⁹ For the low level of repeat service in the retinues raised by Brian for naval expeditions in 1370, 1371, 1372 and 1378, see Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 24.

⁹⁰ TNA, E 101/31/28. Cf. 1377–8, when he contracted to provide 100 men: E 101/36/26.

⁹¹ e.g. William Biset: Bell and others, Soldier, 119.

⁹² Both Nowell and William Biset were at sea with Ralph Ferrers in 1371–2. TNA, E 101/31/28, mm. 1, 3.

⁹³ Brian: Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office. Edward III, vol. 15: 1370–74 (London: H.M.S.O., 1914), 88; Calendar of the Close Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office. Edward III, vol. 13, 1369–74 (London: H.M.S.O., 1911), 229; TNA, E 101/31/11, m. 7. J.R. Alban, ‘English Coastal Defence: Some Fourteenth-Century Modifications with the System’, in Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England, ed. R.A. Griffiths (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1981), 57–78 (69–70).

⁹⁴ Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1370–74, 24; TNA, E 101/31/13; E 101/31/17.

⁹⁵ Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem and Other Analogous Documents Preserved in the Public Record Office, vol. 16, 7‒15 Richard II (London: H.M.S.O., 1974), 380–2 (nos. 959–62). R.G.F. Stanes, ‘Sir Guy de Brian, K.G.’, Devonshire Association: Transactions 92 (1960): 248–78.

⁹⁶ Crew list: TNA, E 101/32/29, m. 2. Ipswich return for mariner survey: C 47/2/46/12.

⁹⁷ Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 36–9.

⁹⁸ N.B. Lewis, ‘The Last Medieval Summons of the English Feudal Levy, 13 June 1385’, English Historical Review 73 (1958): 1–26 (5–6).

⁹⁹ Nicholson, Edward III and the Scots, 198–200, 248–55; Ayton, ‘English Army at Crécy’, 181–9.

¹⁰⁰ For details of the hundreds of English soldiers employed in Italy at this time, see G.B. Parks, The English Traveller to Italy. The Middle Ages (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1954), 383–95, 419–22.

¹⁰¹ Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 37, drawing on Bell, War and the Soldier, 56, 64–5, 98; 133, n. 109; 221.

¹⁰² Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 41–59; Bell and others, Soldier, 73–84.

¹⁰³ Ayton, ‘Military Service’, 41; Bell and others, Soldier, 69, 114, 162–4.

¹⁰⁴ V.H. Galbraith, ed., The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1927), 63; L.C. Hector and B.F. Harvey, eds., The Westminster Chronicle, 1381–1394 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 45; J. Taylor, W.R. Childs and L. Watkiss, eds., The St Albans Chronicle. The Chronica maiora of Thomas Walsingham, vol. 1, 1376–1394 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 809–11. Cf. Bell and others, Soldier, 206–7.

¹⁰⁵ Fowler, Medieval Mercenaries, 292–7.

¹⁰⁶ P.E. Russell, The English Intervention in Spain and Portugal in the Time of Edward III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 331; M. Keen, ‘Richard II’s Ordinances of War of 1385’, in Rulers and Ruled in Late Medieval England. Essays Presented to Gerald Harriss, eds. R.F. Archer and S. Walker (London: Hambledon, 1995), 33–48 (40‒1).

¹⁰⁷ Walker, The Lancastrian Affinity, 52–3.

¹⁰⁸ Ayton, Knights and Warhorses, 158–9; Russell, English Intervention in Spain and Portugal, 371–2; Bell and others, Soldier, 5–7, 83.

¹⁰⁹ TNA, C 81/1735/33–6. Enrolled protection revocations: Magee, ‘Sir Henry Elmham’, 190, n. 51.

¹¹⁰ Calendar of the Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office. Edward III, vol. 14, 1367–70 (London: H.M.S.O., 1913), 457–8; Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1370–74, 27. Hewitt’s retinue: 200 men-at-arms and 300 archers (Sherborne, ‘Indentured Retinues’, 16).

¹¹¹ Keen, ‘Richard II’s Ordinances of War’; A. Curry, ‘Disciplinary Ordinances for English and Franco-Scottish Armies in 1385: an International Code?’, Journal of Medieval History 37 (2011): 269–94.