plantagenet – Page 2 – It's More Fun to Be Jack of All Trades than Master of One

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 11)

I’m about 3 chapters behind in writing up what I’ve read of this book – this summer has been rather busy! After the great lords Prestwich moves a step down the social scale to consider the lesser aristocracy.

The Knights and the Gentry

In contrast to the great lords (or the gentry) knights are easy to define – a knight has been through a formal process of being knighted. He gets to be addressed as “dominus” (lord), and was expected to be capable of bearing arms. Knighthood isn’t hereditary per se but the sons of knights were generally expected to become knights themselves. Generally a knight got paid more in war than a squire would (double the rate normally), he was also expected to undertake various legal and administrative duties in the country he lived in.

Despite the clear definition Prestwich says that “knights are not as easy to count as sheep”, which I found an amusing turn of phrase 🙂 Some knights are mentioned in some sources and not others, and there is no central record of who was a knight (nor even local records – when counties were asked to provide lists of knights these could vary substantially between years in ways that don’t make sense as actual changes).

The number of knights in England dropped over the first half of the 13th Century for reasons that are not entirely clear particularly as this is an era of rising population and economic prosperity (relatively speaking). There may’ve been some effect of the rising cost of military equipment, but Prestwich thinks this is not particularly significant – it correlates with rising wages for knights, but probably doesn’t cause the falling numbers of knights. As the number of knights fell the status and the duties of those left rose, as one might expect. The expectations of chivalric behaviour increased along with their role in local administration. Prestwich says there isn’t evidence of families who used to be knights resenting their loss of status – rather that there is a reluctance to take on the expense and hard work.

Later in the 13th Century life got easier for the knightly families. Prestwich associates this with the reduction in easy credit – with the Jews first less able to lend money and subsequently expelled in 1290. As well as this changes in the law meant it was harder for the Church to buy up land from knights. And other changes in the legal system meant that the duties of a knight in his county’s administration were shared with other people and so became less onerous. Prestwich also notes that a man who was knighted on the eve of battle didn’t have to pay for as elaborate a ceremony and there were several convenient battles during the later part of this period. The crown was generally concerned to ensure sufficient knights to perform the duties required of them, and at various points incentives and rewards were given to knights as part of the patronage system. There were also sometimes mass knighting ceremonies (which again would reduce costs for each individual knight).

Prestwich next moves on to the “gentry” or esquires. In the period covered by the book this social class was gradually becoming delineated, and the terms gentle born (gentiz) or gentlemen (gentis hommes) might be used. From the mid-14th Century esquire became more common as a term, too. These people can be roughly categorised as men who could be knights but weren’t – in terms of wealth and social standing it’s difficult to distinguish the groups, it’s the ceremony of knighthood that’s key. As numbers of knights dropped, and as numbers of knights who succeeded in getting exemptions from the legal & social duties rose, the numbers of esquires performing those duties increased. These include offices such as that of sheriff, coroner, forester and so on. And as well as this they served on assizes, in juries etc. At various points laws were issued to try and make sure that actual knights fulfilled the roles, but in practice it was the county elite regardless of whether or not they’d been knighted.

The county “communitas” or community can be seen as providing the essential horizontal links between the gentry & knights in society. The idea is that while ties to one’s lord or tenants provide the vertical links unifying the whole population of the country, the elite in a particular county have a sense of identity as the community of that county. Prestwich seems a bit sceptical about how important that actually was. He agrees that in terms of administration the county was very important. It was the building block for the taxation system and for the legal system. However he suggests that the way that the great lordships didn’t match up with the counties meant that the ties within the county communities were weaker than you might expect. Lists of knights for particular counties sometimes vary significantly from year to year as to whether a particular individual is part of this county or that. Knights might attend parliament as representatives of different counties in different years, rather than identifying themselves with one place & community.

Prestwich finishes the chapter by talking about how the knights and the gentry distinguished themselves as a social elite. He calls this section “Symbols of Knighthood” which seems a bit of misnomer as it covers rather more than that. But he does open with heraldic insignia – the coat of arms was increasingly a vital signal of one’s status. The earliest surviving heraldic rolls date from the mid-13th Century and they don’t list all that many coats of arms each (e.g. 211 in Glover’s Roll, 677 in St George’s Roll from the 1280s) but across them all there are 2100 people mentioned as having coats of arms during Edward I’s reign (1272-1307) which is likely to include most or all of the knightly families. People below the rank of knight were generally not listed on the rolls, but Prestwich notes that a law in 1292 requiring esquires to use their lord’s arms suggests that some esquires were using their own. Otherwise why make a law against it. And by the 1320s there is evidence of many esquires having seals with a personal coat of arms, so they probably used them in the various other ways on clothing and so on. This again indicates the way that esquires and knights had very similar standing in society, despite the clear line between the two.

As well as coats of arms Prestwich looks at other ways that knights and esquires indicated their status. Their houses were, obviously, much less impressive than those of the earls and barons. But even tho not many have survived records indicate they often had moats or impressive looking towers – but ones that seem more for show than for defensive use. Culturally speaking the knights and esquires weren’t all that much different from their aristocratic superiors – and again it’s difficult to say much about the group as a whole, because there were many differences between individuals. Generally they were literate, educated and at least as pious as any other level of society.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 10)

The last section of the book I’m reading about Plantagenet England is about the society and people of the era. Prestwich starts the first chapter in this section by noting that whilst society was very stratified in this period the boundaries weren’t rigid and well defined (or least not in ways that historians can be sure of now). However, you can divide the society at this time into four rough groups – the great lords (both lay & church), the knights, the peasants and the merchants. This chapter deals with the first of those groups.

The Great Lords

The great lords were the higher nobility and there are a variety of phrases used in official documents of the time that can define them to one extent or another. The “prelates, earls and barons” is one, the “magnates and nobles” is another, or “earls, barons and magnates”. Also “magnates” can be used on its own. It’s easy to work out who the earls and the bishops are from the surviving documents, and they are well defined – it’s a specific title generally relating to a place.

The earls were the elite of the nobility. There were 30 titles during this period (1225-1360) not all of which were in existence for the whole time, and some individuals could hold multiple earldoms. This means there were very few earls at any one time – for instance in 1300 there were 9. The title itself was mostly honourific – they had few special duties and not much extra income from earldom related sources. Because of their status they had to attend the king when required, and were always summoned to parliament whenever it met. Some earldoms came with ceremonial duties (like carrying a particular sword during the coronation), some had military ranks attached (i.e. the earls of Norfolk and Hereford held the office of Marshal and of Constable during this period). So being an earl was mostly about status – one of the things that so annoyed the earls about Gaveston was his habit of giving rude nicknames to (other) earls. So rather than talking about (the earl of) Lincoln he would refer to “Burstbelly”.

Earls were wealthy – newly created earls were generally granted lands worth around 1,000 marks/year, which gives a feel for the minimum appropriate wealth (1 mark is 2/3 of a £). The title of an earl (which he was referred to by) related to a specific county, but that wasn’t necessarily where the earl held most lands. They also had symbolic swords, granted along with the title. During the 14th Century they started to wear coronets, and they were permitted the most costly clothing (like cloth of gold trimmed in ermine). Generally they also made much of their heraldic symbols, and used them to decorate their possessions and clothing.

During this period there wasn’t much continuity in the various titles. If there was no direct male heir, the family name died out and the lands (and titles) would be divided amongst the female heirs. That wrinkle in how inheritance worked was something I’d not learnt before – primogeniture for sons, but divided for daughters. Prestwich looks at the statistics for earldoms being extinguished (no valid heirs) and comes to the conclusion that whilst there seems to be an unusually high number of sonless and childless families, that’s probably just by chance as it’s such a small sample group rather than due to any underlying cause. Prestwich also spends a couple of pages considering the royal attitude towards extinguishing and granting earldoms. Events in Henry III’s reign encouraged Edward I to be very conservative about creating new earldoms, and to be keen to control the power of those that existed. Edward II and Edward III had more need to create new earldoms, because they had family to provide for. It was also important for the King to have enough earls – being accompanied by several earls enhanced the prestige of the King’s court, particularly important on foreign trips. And there was a general policy of granting earldoms to those related by blood to the royal family, in the hope this would keep them loyal.

There’s not much in the sources about the countesses, but what there is tends to indicate that these high status & wealth women had some influence on the events of the day. Which is not surprising, but frustrating that we don’t know more about them. Prestwich talks about several notable women. Most of what is known about them revolves around their marriages, as you’d expect in chronicles from this era. But widows (of men with no heirs) could live out their lives as the landowner & head of their estates – and their power in this area was as much as any man’s, just they had much less power in politics.

Next down the social tree from earls were barons. Being a baron didn’t confer any rights or powers, rather it imposed some requirements on you (like paying a particular tax) so it wasn’t necessarily something people wanted. Barons did have a voice in parliament, which was formally recognised. For instance in the Ordinances of 1311 many matters were set down as requiring “the consent of the baronage”. Inconveniently for the later historian not all barons were summoned individually to parliament, so there aren’t complete lists surviving. The numbers who did get individual summons varied between a low point of around 30 to a high point of around 80. Generally Baron wasn’t used as a title, those who were barons tended to go by “Lord” and can be hard to distinguish from knights. As a result it’s difficult for the modern historian to be sure how many there were, or who exactly they were. Prestwich notes that one thorough survey (by a historian who published it in 1927) came up with 135 baronies, plus another 72 probables. So this is still a relatively small elite. Again the inheritance was by primogeniture for sons, but divided if there were only daughters – so sometimes baronies fractured into smaller pieces which may’ve all had the same baronial status. There was a reasonable amount of social mobility into the baronial class, with knights who distinguished themselves in battle or supported the right earl during a domestic conflict standing a chance of being granted lands that would confer that status.

Adjacent to the secular hierarchy was the clerical one. In the category of great lords we have the archbishops, the bishops and the greater abbots. Archbishops and bishops are well defined, but as with the barons the “greater abbots” are less clear. Not all of these men were of aristocratic birth, it was definitely possible to rise through the ranks as a clergyman. Bishoprics were often handed out as rewards to men who had held government posts. Some bishops were exceedingly wealthy, on a par with earls, others less so. The greater abbots were summoned to parliament, but otherwise their political role was relatively unimportant. Again they were often wealthy. The sources of the time judge abbots on their ability as manager of their monastic estates.

These great lords did not have a fixed address – the great lived in households which moved around between their various houses and court. The household comprised all the furnishing and so on that the lord moved with him, as well as his staff. Even a relatively low status member of the elite might have 25 staff in his household, spread throughout the various departments. This number doesn’t include any knights or men-at-arms who were retained, nor people like huntsmen or carters. A large household plus other employees for an important magnate might run to 200 or more. As well as the size of the household depending on the status of the lord, over the time period that this book covers there was a general increase in the size of the magnates’ households. Staff were generally provided with robes, and with food whilst at the household. They would also get wages, which might be paid by giving them the right to the rents from a particular estate.

Prestwich discusses in detail how this era had a mix of traditional feudalism and what’s known as “bastard feudalism”. In the first, the retainer holds lands from his lord and owes him service for them. In the latter, the retainer is rewarded for his service by cash (which may be rent from an estate). The two systems existed side by side during this period, and Prestwich is quite clear that he doesn’t see it as a transition from one system to another.

The castles and manor houses that these great lords built & lived in were overt expressions of their power. Although there weren’t any explicit restrictions on who could build a castle, it took wealth to do so. Generally the great lords built new fashionable residences when they could, but it wasn’t seen as necessary – more something to do when one could afford it. During this period residences were becoming more comfortable and less defensive, although it’s the military aspects that survive to the present day (being built from stone instead of wood).

The ceremonies surrounding death were another way for a magnate’s family to indicate their status. Elaborate funerals were important, as were ostentatious memorials (such as gravestones and monuments). Families tended to be buried in the same church for generations, although this could lead to arguments particularly in the case of women who had married more than once. Prestwich gives the example of Isabella (daughter of William Marshal) who married three times, and ended up with her body buried in Beaulieu, her heart in Tewkesbury and her entrails in Missenden. Other people worried about the anticipated bodily resurrection at the Last Judgement – sometimes a person was buried in multiple places, then later their body would be gathered back up by a relative to be reburied in one place. Also important for religious reasons was to provide money for services to be held after death, to ensure a short stay in Purgatory.

Prestwich ends the chapter by being a little scathing about anyone either contemporary or modern who tries to draw conclusions about “all the great lords”, because there’s too much variance between the individuals. The stereotype is of boneheaded brawlers, and some do fit this characterisation. Others don’t, in a variety of ways.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Interlude)

In terms of page count I’m about three fifths of the way through Michael Prestwich’s “Plantagenet England 1225-1360” and in terms of subject matter I’ve just finished one of the two sections that the book is divided into. So this seemed a good place to take a small pause and think about what I’ve spent the last several months reading.

This section of the book was “Politics and Wars” and contains exactly what it says it will – the politics and governance of England, plus the various internal and external wars. Prestwich hasn’t divided it up by the reigns of the kings, instead he’s drawn boundaries based on whether the country or regime could be thought of as in crisis/unrest or in recovery/good times. To some degree that does match with the change in monarch – the character & popularity of the King has an effect on how incipient crises are handled and whether they develop or smooth out. Edward I and Edward III both appear to’ve been charismatic and astute enough to sooth ruffled feathers when need be or to put down pending rebellion if that were necessary. Henry III and Edward II on the other hand were too keen to reward their closest friends or family, and didn’t pay enough attention to making sure everyone else liked them too.

Date
1216		Henry III takes throne
1225	Period of unrest begins
1227		Henry III reaches majority
1265	Simon de Montfort dies
1266	Period of recovery begins
1272		Edward I takes throne
1294	Period of crisis begins
1307		Edward II takes throne
1311	Period of Crisis gets worse
1312	Piers Gaveston dies
1327		Edward II deposed, Edward III crowned (but Isabella and Mortimer rule)
1330	Period of recovery begins	Edward III reaches his majority

The links in that table go to my posts about those chapters of the book. The other three subjects in this part were Anglo-Welsh relations (including the conquest of Wales), Anglo-Scottish relations (including a couple of attempted conquests of Scotland, and Bannockburn) and Anglo-French relations (including the initial phases of the Hundred Years War, which is an attempted conquest of France) – the external wars of the era. So there’s a fair bit of politcs and of wars to cover in this era!

One of the narratives that Prestwich doesn’t really dwell on is that this is a transitional era for the English monarchy. Before this, from William the Conquer to King John (and particularly from Henry II onwards), the English King also has large landholdings in France. And in some ways although the title of King of England was the most prestigious one the men in question were more concerned with their French lands and would’ve thought of themselves as part of French culture (as I understand it). King John loses almost all these French lands, and pretty nearly loses England too. And his successors turn away from France – putting more effort into rebuilding control of England and then trying to consolidate the whole of the island under their rule (with varying degrees of success). At the end of the period Edward III is looking back to France and this book ends with him holding large amounts of territory in France – but the centre of gravity has shifted. This is no longer a French nobleman who is on the English throne, instead it’s the English King who has conquered part of France (with an eye to conquering it all).

The two themes that Prestwich is highlighting are the development of the army during this period, and the increasing formalisation and growth of Parliament. As I said in my writeup of the last chapter I’m probably least interested in the nitty gritty details of army organisation. However I think the main point is that at the beginning of the period the army is organised on a primarily feudal basis, and by the time of the Hundred Years War most of the army is recruited and paid on a contractual basis. And there’s been a shift from a more patchwork assemblage of independent groups to a cohesive fighting force with a reasonable proportion of trained soldiers. Also towards the end of the period the leaders of the army are beginning to have a chance to learn from previous wars – some of the same men are in charge in Edward III’s Scottish campaigns as are in charge in the French wars.

In terms of the development of Parliament the main narrative is an increasing formalisation and codification of the relative powers of King and people (where people = nobility, but down to the level of Knights and representatives of counties not just the true elite). Magna Carta was signed in King John’s reign, just before the scope of this book, and it’s re-issued and re-iterated several times during this 135 year period normally at a point when the King has had to be forced into backing down on something. At the beginning of the period the people who have to agree to taxation are mostly the top elite, and larger parliaments are rarer. By the end of the period there’s a sense that even the Commons (not the peasants, but people like Knights in shires) must be asked before they are taxed – and Parliament is beginning to consist of the same larger cross-section of society every time. And because of the way taxation works at this period this means that this cross-section of society get some say in the political direction of the country. When the King requests a tax Parliament normally asks for some concession from him in return – and often during the reigns of Henry III and Edward II this was where disputes would start to topple over into crises.

The monarch at this time is interestingly balanced between being separate from his nobles and being first amongst equals. He’s anointed by God and this does still make him sacrosanct (not the case even a little after this period) – look at the way Edward II is deposed in favour of his legitimate heir. Or how after Simon de Montfort won a civil war he didn’t put himself in Henry III’s place, instead he set up an elaborate council to “help” Henry III rule. So the King is the King even when you think he’s screwing up, but if you’re one of the elite you feel entitled to input on the major decisions and to an opinion about whether or not the King is doing a good job. Hence the civil wars which were about getting the King to do the job properly in the interests of the realm and not just himself. This wasn’t an untouchable “I am the state” type ruler.

On other subjects – Prestwich has chosen to address the role and activities of the Church in each chapter as it becomes relevant. I can see why that choice makes sense, but it’s left me with no clear idea if there is a unifying story to the Church’s relations with the Crown during this period. Perhaps because I’ve read it too spread out, or perhaps there isn’t a cohesive narrative there. Notable by its almost complete lack of mention is the Black Death – I think because the political ramifications of the large drop in population only really start to show up outside the scope of this book. And there will be more discussion of the impact of the Black Death on society in the second half of the book.

The next part of the book will cover the social history of the era, starting with the elite – the great lords and ladies.

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The Plantagenets; Return of the Black Death: Secret History

The Plantagenets was a three part series about this dynasty of English monarchs presented by Robert Bartlett. He points out that this is the longest running dynasty of English kings, which I hadn’t realised – they stretch from Henry II (who takes the throne in 1154) right the way through to Richard III (who dies in battle in 1485). Bartlett covered them in chronological fashion, conveying some feel for the politics of the time and for the dysfunctional soap opera-like personalities and family relationships of the Plantagenets.

The first episode pretty much covered the context and then the first two generations of Plantagenets. Henry II actually ruled over a fairly large empire including not just England but quite a lot of what’s now France, which he’d acquired via inheritance and marriage. This part of the family is one of the more soap opera like bits – Bartlett explained the various rebellions against Henry by his own sons and even his wife. It wasn’t all internal family bickering however – this is also the time of Thomas Beckett and his murder after he fell out with Henry. The bickering and power struggles don’t stop after Henry’s death either. Richard the Lionheart rules England mostly in absentia and via first his mother then his younger brother John, with varying degrees of success. John succeeds Richard in a somewhat dubious fashion (a nephew, Arthur of Brittany, had a better claim but eventually meets with an “accident” in custody). John is also notable for annoying most of the aristocracy (this is the time of the Magna Carta) and for losing the bulk of the dynasty’s French lands.

The second episode covered the same era that my current non-fiction book is covering – from Henry III through to Edward III. But definitely aimed at a different audience in that Prestwich’s book is fairly dry and focused on the details and nittygritty of the politics, but Bartlett is pitching the TV series more towards the broad picture end of the spectrum. The focus of this era is shifting from the very French focus of the first part of the dynasty to a more English identity. Largely out of necessity, as John had lost most of the French lands. Conflicts between King & nobles in this time lead to the formation of Parliament as a key player in government. And the English Kings also start to look to the rest of the British Isles to satisfy their empire building tendencies – Edward I’s conquest of Wales, and the repeated attempts to control Scotland.

The third episode Bartlett called “The Death of Kings” – this is the decline of the Plantagenet dynasty into particularly bloody disaster. We start with Richard II, who was a great believer in the divine right of Kings and rather predictably alienated the aristocracy with this belief. He was deposed by a cousin of his – and was starved to death in custody. Bartlett positioned this as the first precedent of the deposition and killing of an anointed King, and thus the beginning of the end for the dynasty. I’d quibble, in that I’d see the deposition of Edward II as the first time that had happened in the Plantagenet dynasty – prior to that (like when Henry III lost a civil war) the King always remained King just not powerful in practice. But J pointed out that Bartlett was maybe drawing a distinction between being deposed in the name of your heir (ie Edward II -> Edward III) and being deposed by a relative who wouldn’t otherwise inherit. It does, at first, seem to’ve been a successful gambit by Henry IV and his son Henry V leads the dynasty to a new highpoint. Henry reignited a hot phase of the war with France, and was sufficiently successful to get himself declared the heir. Sadly he dies young (of dysentry) and while his infant son Henry VI does get crowned King in both England and France it isn’t to last – Henry VI isn’t a warrior King, in fact he’s pretty useless as a King at all. Bartlett didn’t have much time left in this programme to cover the Wars of the Roses in detail, instead focusing on the human side of it and getting us quickly to Richard III and the end of the Plantagenets.

I enjoyed this series – we’ve seen a few series Bartlett has presented and they’re always both entertaining and informative. It was slightly odd watching it at a point where I’ve recently read a much more detailed account of part of it because I did find myself thinking “well, yes, but what about …” rather more often than I would normally.

Keeping with the same general historical era we also watched Return of the Black Death: Secret History this week. This was right on the edge between interesting and irritatingly shallow. The most irritating bit was that before each ad break they did a little sequence of empty streets of modern London with a sinister figure standing on a rooftop and whispering the names of the dead. Once would’ve been OK, but over and over just felt like padding on an already pretty shallow programme.

The jumping off point for the programme was the excavation of some victims of the 1349 Black Death epidemic in London during the construction of Crossrail. They then talked about the extent of the epidemic, why we now think so many people died and what lessons we can learn in the modern era from this disaster. The programme showcased one historian’s research into the Wills of London merchants and tradespeople of the time – he’d used these to extrapolate to get a figure for the number dead. As presented on the programme it seemed somewhat of a stretch, so I rather hope that this was simplified too far! One bit of gimmickry that was actually very effective was that they staged readings of some of these Wills by people who looked like modern versions of the beneficiary of the will – like a teenage girl whose parents had both died within a month of each other. It was tastefully done and did humanise the data. They did some other chronicles and texts in a similar style, which was also effective.

The estimate they used was that 60% of the London population at the time died, and they all died within a few months. Londoners at the time were likely to be particularly vulnerable to disease because there had been a period of poor weather and bad harvests. But from talking to modern disease experts this is too fast for normal bubonic plague to spread and kill even taking that into account, so at first it was assumed this was a particular mutant form of the disease. However the skeletons that were dug up still had the disease present in their teeth, which meant that it could be sequenced and compared to the modern form. Surprisingly they were identical. The explanation was illustrated using some cases of plague from the early 20th Century in Shotley (near Felixstowe) – this too spread quickly and killed fast, and it’s known that this was a pneumonic form of the plague. The standard infection is spread by rats and their fleas, but if an infected person develops the pneumonic form then it is easily transferred from person to person – same disease, just a different place of infection and mechanism of spread. So this is likely what devastated London in 1349.

As well as using a modern example to look for explanations for the rapid spread, they also talked about how Edward III’s government’s response was not that far off a modern idea of how to handle things. Apart from the lack of good medical knowledge, of course. The particular example was that a cemetery was set aside for victims and steps taken to ensure the dead were buried rapidly but with proper ceremony. The expert from Porton Down talked about how this is necessary to keep morale up in the survivors, and indicated there are similar sorts of plans drawn up in case of disaster today.

Overall, a bit shallow and gimmicky but presented some interesting perspectives.

Other TV watched this week:

Episode 2 of Monkey Planet – series about the biology and behaviour of primates.

Episode 7 of The First World War – a 10 part series covering the whole of the war.

Episode 5 of Pagans & Pilgrims – series about the sacred places of Britain, presented by Ifor ap Glyn.

Britpop at the BBC – nostaglia programme about Britpop, using footage filmed by the BBC, mostly for Top of the Pops.

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 5)

The next chapter of the history of Plantagenet England returns to the chronological discussion of the politics of the era, and Prestwich starts by reminding us that Edward I had presided over a 20 year span of peace and prosperity. This had now come to an end in part because Edward’s main advisers during that period had died, as had his first wife. The next couple of decades covering the end of Edward I’s reign and the start of Edward II’s were to be characterised by war and political crises.

Orientation Dates:

The Yuan dynasty ruled China from 1279 to 1378 (post).
Philip IV (the Fair) ruled France from 1285 to 1314.
Edward I died in 1307.
Edward II reigned from 1307 to 1327.
Edward III born 1312.

Political Crises, 1294-1311

The political problems at the end of Edward I’s reign stemmed from war – the financing thereof, and the rationale for them. Edward I had wanted to lead a Crusade, but this turned out to be infeasible – in part because of the breakout of wars nearer home. In the first four years of this period there were several conflicts: 1294 war broke out with France (meaning that Gascony needed defending), there was a significant Welsh rebellion in 1294/5, there was a campaign against the Scottish in 1296 and finally Edward lead troops to Flanders in 1297. Prestwich says that in total this cost £750,000 (in the money of the time), which is an astonishing large sum – for reference the total value of the Church’s wealth in England at this time had been assessed at £200,000.

So during these years the Crown was trying to raise money any way it could. Direct taxation (via grants of taxation by Parliament) were the least controversial of the measures taken. The Church was also taxed heavily, until this was forbidden by the Pope in 1297 (and even then it continued because the King threatened to remove royal protection from any cleric who didn’t pay a fine which matched the amount they would’ve been taxed). The Crown also did things like seize all coin held by churches to “check for clipped and counterfeit coin” – most of this didn’t make it back to the churches concerned. Twice attempts were made to seize all the wool in the country, and for the Crown to then sell this itself – cutting out the merchants and keeping all the profits for themselves. The first time this was abandoned and instead customs duties payable on wool were raised significantly (generating £110,000 over the 3 years till 1297). The second wasn’t officially abandoned, but wasn’t particularly well carried out and relatively few sacks of wool were actually seized.

In previous years Edward had also relied on an Italian banking family, the Ricciardi, for loans but they were bankrupted in 1294. In part this was because they were caught in the middle when the Anglo-French war broke out, with neither King happy with them – and Italian depositors started to worry and withdraw their funds, so the Ricciardi’s bank collapsed. This left Edward I with no co-operative bank to help fund his wars on the promise of future payment.

Taxes and Crown expenditure weren’t the only issues bubbling to the surface by 1297. There was also the issue of military service – the feudal lords were not feeling co-operative with the King, and were starting to refuse feudal summonses. In some cases they were bullied into providing troops (for instance to go to Gascony) by threats to call in their debts, in other cases there wasn’t anything to provide leverage. The subject of whether the King should be pursuing these wars was also controversial – the wars in France and Flanders were unpopular, because the Scottish were causing trouble in the north and the barons felt this was where military effort should be focused.

So in 1297 matters came to a head. Whilst those who lead the opposition among the nobility and the clergy had personal grievances as well they were almost entirely acting in what they believed the country’s interests to be rather than their own interests. The key difference between this crisis and that of 1258 (discussed a couple of chapters ago, post) was that the conflict was based not on deep seated grievances with the way the country was being run but was instead almost entirely about the current wars. The terms King and nobility (and King and Church) agreed to in the end were not radical, and didn’t inhibit the King from ruling the country himself (unlike in 1258). The grievances that were not related to the wars were related to the King’s enforcement of Forest Law – at times in places where it was not traditional – so one of the things he promised was to carry out an inquiry into this. Another promise was a reiteration that taxation should only be imposed by assent, and that in addition it should be for the common profit (rather than the King’s gain). The documents didn’t really go into details of how this was to be ensured.

The aftermath of this crisis wasn’t peace and tranquillity. Conflict rumbled on until 1301, with Edward trying to wriggle out of the promises he’d made about Forest Law and the nobility refusing (although not always successfully) to grant taxes till this was done. From 1301 to the end of Edward I’s reign in 1307 things calmed down. In part this was due to the opposition leaders dying, or marrying into the royal family, or in the case of the leading churchman (Winchelsey) being summoned by the new Pope (an ally of Edward’s) to answer charges against him. The Scottish war also provided political peace in England – it was a popular war being in defence of the realm rather than a foreign adventure. So taxation for this war was less objectionable than for the Flanders campaign in 1297.

Edward I’s personality was also an important factor in both the relative small size of the 1297 crisis and the increasing stability after 1301. He was a formidable man, and Prestwich recounts a couple of stories of the time of men dropping down dead when confronting the King or the like. He wasn’t loved by his subjects, and common criticisms were about his stubbornness and his wilfulness. Prestwich says that in Edward’s youth he had been compared to a leopard – fierce and brave like the lion (leo) and unreliable and deceitful like the pard. But he was a feared and respected monarch, and this held the country together.

Edward II was to be a very different sort of King. Prestwich very quickly dismisses the speculative idea that better training might’ve made Edward II a better King with the point that Edward II had been given opportunities (like the 1301 Scottish campaign) to prove himself and learn to be King. But he hadn’t demonstrated any capability (or desire to do more). Prestwich says the most politically significant facet of Edward II’s life before taking the throne was his developing friendship with Piers Gaveston. Edward I disapproved, probably because Edward II was asking for too many favours for Gaveston, and had sent Gaveston into exile in early 1307. One of Edward II’s first acts on taking the throne was to reverse this.

The reaction of the country at start of Edward II’s reign was guardedly optimistic – a generous tax was granted despite the failure of the invasion of Scotland (not quite started when Edward I died, and abandoned shortly after). But even in early 1308 there are signs of political argument taking place within the nobility. A group of magnates signed an agreement that “things” had been done that were contrary to the King’s honour and they should work to rectify them. It’s unclear now whether this is magnates loyal to Edward II protecting his interests from more radical magnates, or whether it’s a veiled attack on Gaveston and these are magnates loyal to the memory of the old King. But either way there was clearly some dissension within the nobility. Edward II married Isabella of France (the 12 year old daughter of the King of France) in January 1308, and was crowned in February of that year. There was some attempt to demand the delaying of the coronation until Gaveston was exiled again, but it didn’t succeed. However Edward II’s coronation oath added a clause to “maintain and preserve the laws and rightful customs which the community of the realm shall have chosen”. The precise meaning of this is debated by historians, Prestwich says it probably meant different things to different people at the time too. The clause was very shortly afterwards used to bully the King into exiling Gaveston again.

Prestwich spends a bit of time talking about the hostility towards Gaveston and the nature of the relationship between Edward & his favourite. He comes down on the side of this not being a homosexual relationship – although admits that no-one will ever know. On the “yes” side for this are some insinuations at the time about how Edward loved Gaveston more than his new Queen. But on the “no” side are that this wasn’t as widespread a rumour as it would surely have been if it were true. Prestwich also cites Edward’s children with (and early affection for) Isabella and an illegitimate son, and Gaveston’s own daughter, as evidence there was no sexual relationship between the two men – but I don’t see that that rules anything in or out. Edward did after all have an incentive to produce an heir which might overcome a distaste for sex with women, and he could also have been bisexual.

But modern desire to know what was really going on aside, the nobility of the time had other reasons to dislike Gaveston whether or not he was sleeping with the King. He was extravagant and arrogant, so he spent the King’s money and rubbed everyone else’s noses in the fact. He mocked the other members of the court, and was known for a waspish tongue. Gaveston caused no problems during his exile, but on his return in 1309 he was back to irritating the nobility at large.

Matters came to a head in 1310, and this crisis is more like that of 1258 than that of 1297. The King was deemed to’ve frittered away his treasure and was forced to agree to a council of Ordainers who had full power to reform the realm and the royal household. In exchange all the King got was a promise that this was not to form a precedent. The Ordinances mostly looked back to previous Articles and precedent from the earlier crises of Edward I’s reign (and his father’s before) – even back to the Magna Carta. However it wasn’t particularly radical, and didn’t try to impose the sorts of restrictions on royal power that were tried in the 1250s and 1260s. It was more a purge of corrupt advisers or officials and a drawing up of more explicit rules for how consent for taxation and other issues (like the King leaving the realm) should be obtained. One significant difference between the Ordinances and earlier documents about obtaining consent is that it moved this from being from “the community of the realm” to being more explicitly via representation in Parliament.

The publication of the Ordinances didn’t solve the crisis. Edward II saw the renewed demand for Gaveston’s exile and the restrictions on his ability to exercise royal patronage (to avoid future Gaveston-esque situations) as completely unacceptable. So this wasn’t the dawn of an age of peace & prosperity like the authors would’ve hoped, it just kicked off more trouble – which is the subject of the next chapter.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 4)

Wales

In this chapter Prestwich takes a digression from his chronological trot through the Plantagenet era to look at the situation in Wales during this period. It’s very much Wales from the perspective of its interactions with England, and fits in here because Edward I conquered Wales.

He begins by setting the scene in terms of the political situation in Wales during Henry III & Edward I’s reigns in England. A key difference between the two cultures is that in England inheritance is by primogeniture, but in Wales it is not that clear cut. Which means that when there were multiple heirs (as there were in Gwynedd in 1246, for instance) the territory might be shared out between the heirs, or they might fight amongst themselves for who got the inheritance. Obviously England isn’t immune to civil war or inheritance disputes – but in Wales the tendency is for lands to fragment and be reunited only to fragment again. The early 13th Century had seen Llywelyn ap Iowerth reunite Gwynedd into a strong principality, only for it to fragment again after his heir’s death. His great-grandsons fought amongst themselves, and eventually Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was effectively in charge – with one of his brothers imprisoned, one paid off and one still free and at times plotting against him.

Another important facet of Welsh politics at the time is the Marcher Lords. These are the descendents of Norman nobility who hold lands along the border between England and Wales. I’ve always thought of them as a part of England, but this chapter made it clear that’s far too simple a picture. From the perspective of the English crown the Marcher Lords were their vassals, albeit with greater traditional liberties than other English nobles. From the perspective of the Welsh the Marcher Lords were also seen as part of the English invaders, but nonetheless there was a degree of integration between the Marcher Lords and the Welsh. More in the south than in Gwynedd to the north, but even there Llywelyn ap Iowerth married his daughters into Marcher families. However from the perspective of the Marcher Lords themselves they weren’t as firmly English as all that. Prestwich says that they saw themselves as potentially independent – that at the moment their interests aligned with the English crown (useful backup against the Welsh…) but this wouldn’t necessarily always be the case.

Prestwich says that conquest wouldn’t’ve felt inevitable to the people of the 13th Century. It would’ve seemed more plausible that the Welsh and the Marcher Lords would continue to integrate, and the sense of Wales & the Welsh as a separate entity would attenuate over time. But what actually happened was a growing sense of Welsh nationhood, which lead to a desire for recognition as independent. There were often skirmishes between the Welsh and the Marcher Lords, and whenever the English crown was having difficulties (see the bulk of Henry III’s reign) the Welsh would take advantage of it. So from the English perspective it became ever more important to get the matter of English power over Wales settled.

During Henry III’s reign raids by the Welsh on the Marches were met with shows of power by the English. A substantial English army would move some way into Wales, and a castle would be built (or planned) where they had pushed forward to. These gains stopped well short of full conquest, but they did give the English the upper hand. In 1247 the Welsh princes (including Llywelyn ap Gruffudd) acknowledged Henry III’s dominance, and submitted to the jurisdiction of the English crown. This wasn’t a long lasting situation, though – as Henry’s political difficulties increased the Welsh situation also deteriorated. He had left Edward in charge, but this appears to’ve been a mistake. And Llywelyn ap Gruffudd took full advantage of the civil war that developed after 1258, starting to call himself Prince of Wales in this year. But the English civil war also caused Llywelyn difficulties – the uncertainties of the English political situation meant he couldn’t come to a final settlement with them. A settlement was arrived at in 1267, with Llywelyn acknowledge as Prince of Wales by the English, but owing fealty to Henry III – so pseudo-independent.

After Edward succeeded to the English throne Llywelyn should’ve come to pay homage to him – but he failed to do so. This provided a formal reason for the outbreak of war, but Prestwich says that Llywelyn’s marriage to Simon de Montfort’s daughter was also a factor. The prospect of a Welsh prince who was also a de Montfort was unthinkable to Edward. The first Welsh war of his reign followed the pattern of his father’s campaigns – march an army in as a show of force, build a castle. But Edward miscalculated – the show of force wasn’t impressive enough. And the subsequent political situation was mismanaged, to a degree that united the Welsh, even Llywelyn and his brothers. The rhetoric of the dispute was focussed on the law – the Welsh wanted their own traditional Welsh laws, not the ones harshly imposed by Edward I.

The last conflict started in 1282, kicked off by one of Llywelyn’s brothers. Prestwich suggests that Llywelyn would’ve preferred not to start anything at this point, but the choice he now had was to fight with the English against his brother (unthinkable) or fight alongside his brother. Neither side was interested in compromise. Edward wanted the Welsh to submit to his authority unconditionally, and Llywelyn wanted to be recognised as an independent Prince of Wales. The turning point of the war came in late 1282 when Llywelyn was lured out of Snowdonia, perhaps by false suggestions of an alliance with the Mortimers (or by betrayal by some of his own men). His force met the English in battle at the river Irfon, and Llywelyn was killed. His brother Dafydd, now Prince of Wales as Llyweln had no male children, continued the war but Edward pushed on and it was all over but the mopping up. In June 1283 Dafydd was captured and the conquest was over.

There were still rebellions after this, and in particular the rebellion of 1294-5 required significant effort by the English to put down. But what was notable after this was that not all the Welsh were against the English crown. The country didn’t fully integrate into England, and the Welsh retained their own culture. The law codes of the two countries remained different in some respects, but criminal law was brought into line with England and the shire system of England was extended into Wales.

Prestwich also looks at what happened to the English army during these campaigns. One of the reasons for Edward’s success was that he brought a lot of resources to bear on the problem. He recruited sufficient men – not just via the feudal system, but also paid soldiers. And he provisioned and armed them properly, allowing him to keep the army in the field for longer. But Prestwich is keen not to overstate the innovations that Edward brought to the army – he says that the changes were quantitative rather than qualitative, and there’s no particular indication of novel tactics or organisation. Rather it’s that Edward’s logistics were what made the difference – his army was well fed, and supported, even when deep in Welsh territory.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 3)

After the turbulence of the bulk of Henry III’s reign up to the death of Simon de Montfort & the conclusion of the civil war in 1266, the next 30 years were a period of both stability & recovery. The transition between the reigns of Henry III and Edward I was smooth, even tho Edward wasn’t in the country when his father died. And even tho the royal side had won the war, many of the reforms that de Montfort and his associates had been calling for were instituted.

Orientation Dates:

The Mamluks took power in Cairo in 1250 ruling for the next 3 centuries (post)
Kublai Khan ruled the Mongol Empire (in practice mostly Mongolia & China) 1260-1294 (post)
Edward I on Crusade 1270-1274
Marco Polo (if he existed) travelled from Venice to China 1271-1295
Henry III dies 1272
Edward II born 1284

Reconstruction and Reform, 1266-1294

The start of this period was a bit shaky – initially the Crown was keen to press its advantage from having won the war – but things quickly settled down. Early legislation (in 1267) actually incorporated a lot of the reforms of 1259 (which weren’t originally proposed by the Crown). Once the situation was calmer Henry III’s big project was the translation of Edward the Confessor’s remains into the new church he was building at Westminster – this was achieved with much ceremony in 1269. Edward I wasn’t really involved with domestic politics at this time – his project was his crusade, and there were a series of parliaments called by Henry III between 1268 & 1270 to negotiate for taxes to pay for this. Prestwich doesn’t discuss Edward’s crusade (this is a history of England after all), just mentions that Edward was out of the country for four years between 1270 & 1274. The regime clearly put thought into ensuring an orderly transition of power in case Henry III died during this time (as indeed he did). Several castles were transferred into the hands of men loyal to Edward before he left the country, and his chancellor (Robert Burnell) was left behind to look after Edward’s lands. After Henry’s death it seems that these key figures held the country together and governed in Edward’s name. Burnell was to be chancellor from then until he died in 1292.

Edward’s regime was a reforming one. His goals weren’t entirely the same as de Monfort & his associates in the 1250s, he was also aiming to recover & maintain royal rights. And to run his estates & his country efficiently and cost-effectively. It was a regime that ran on information – many inquiries were held over the next 25 years, and the results fed into legislation designed to address grievances discovered etc. At the time the traditional source of income for the King was the land that he held – and reforms were attempted to the management of these estates. These failed, and taxation became a more important part of the funding of the Crown. Rather than direct taxes, which needed to be negotiated, customs duties became an important source of income. And an important way to pay back the Italian bankers that Edward’s regime borrowed money from – rather than pay them in actual money instead they were granted the customs duties on particular commodities, which gave them a stake in the wider English economy. Also on the subject of finance – the currency was in a poor state & was recoined using a new technique (measured silver droplets rather than punched out of a flat sheet) starting from 1279, with the old coins forbidden.

This increasing important of taxation meant that Parliament continued to be important, even tho it had been used to their advantage by the barons in the civil war. A key development of Edward’s reign was that petitions could be presented to the King at a parliament – a formal route for people to complain about royal officials, and to raise grievances. Who was summoned to each parliament wasn’t yet formalised, let alone being a hereditary right, with not even every Baron at every parliament.

Another source of funding for Edward’s regime, and a way to gain political credit with the Barons, were the Jews. First legislation was passed that aimed to stop them lending money at interest (and conveniently meant that debts already owed no longer earnt interest), and they were “encouraged” to move into other trades. They were also increasingly restricted in where they could live, had to wear a distinctive badge & had the status of the king’s serfs. Later in 1290 they were expelled from the country entirely. Prestwich takes pains to point out that there’s no evidence that Edward was himself anti-Semitic (beyond the background level common to European society at the time) – in contrast to his mother, and to Simon de Montfort, both of whom have left evidence of anti-Semitic feelings. But the Jews had been taxed into the ground already, and the political capital to be gained by expelling them was worth a lot more to Edward than the Jews themselves were. In particular Prestwich thinks that the expulsion itself may’ve been the unwritten quid pro quo for a particularly generous grant of taxation by Parliament in that year. I don’t imagine it made any difference to the Jews that Edward was just being pragmatic.

Edward’s Queens were covered in about a paragraph in this chapter (which is, after all, about the politics rather than the personal) – his first wife, Eleanor of Castille, died in 1290 and he subsequently married Margaret of France. Edward’s mother also died in 1291, as did a couple of Edward’s senior courtiers (including the man who’d been his chancellor since 1272). The period of stability & political peace was drawing to an end. Prestwich notes that Edward had had an easier job than Henry III in terms of patronage – Henry III had all those half-brothers & in-laws he needed to keep sweet, Edward had only a few in-laws and close associates to provide for. But he also managed to do so in ways that prevented general dissatisfaction.

Tangents to follow up on: The life of Eleanor of Castille, also of Edward I himself.

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“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 2)

After the introductory chapters the first half of the book proper is a chronological look at the politics & wars of the time period. This chapter covers 40 years of Henry III’s reign, from when he started to exert his own authority in 1225 through to the final end of the rebellion against him with the death of Simon de Montfort in battle in 1265.

Orientation Dates:

Henry III reigns 1216-1272.
Saint Louis IX (builder of Sainte-Chapelle) ruled France 1226-1270.
Genghis Khan died in 1227.
Edward I born 1239.

Politics Under Henry III

The thread that ties this chapter together is that the politics of the day was very much grounded in the personalities of the players. The interactions between & the fallings out of the aristocracy shaped the government of the country. And Henry III was not a strong enough king to pull it all together – Prestwich describes Henry III as a man who could talk the talk, but not walk the walk. He had strong ideas about the authority & power that king should command, but when faced with opposition he tended to back off. He successively fell under the influence of different groups at court – often foreign relatives of himself or his wife – which didn’t help relations with other factions, particularly English ones. So his reign was a turbulent time politically speaking, even before the conflict with de Montfort.

He’d become king at the age of 9 (in 1216) while England was in the middle of a civil war, with the eldest son of the King of France (Louis, son of Philip II) in control of the south-east of the country. His initial regents(? Prestwich doesn’t use the term, so perhaps that’s an anachronism on my part) got the country back under control and over the rest of Henry III’s minority Plantagenet authority was restored. But factionalism was still rife. The next twenty or so years after Henry started to exert authority on his own behalf (in 1227) were characterised by a stumbling from crisis to crisis, with the king failing to prevent the bickering & factional infighting. At times it veered close to civil war but mostly the situation pulled back from the brink before armies met (with an exception being the Welsh Marches in 1234, where battles were fought).

Finance & taxation began to become an issue. At this time to raise a tax the king had to have the consent of the aristocracy. During this period Parliament came to prominence as the way to gain this consent, and it’s in Henry’s reign that the term “parliament” was first used. The king had to persuade them that he was going to spend the money in a useful & profitable fashion for the country. Parliament could and did say no to requests for taxes, or could agree only after imposing conditions on the king (for instance to re-affirm the Magna Carta). In 1244 Henry III tried to negotiate a tax, but failed to come to an agreement with Parliament. He wasn’t to succeed in any further requests either, so had to resort to other ways to raise money. These included increasing the amounts that sheriffs paid for their counties, and tax on Jews (this could be done without an agreement) – these sorts of measures weren’t sustainable in the long term.

Foreigners at court were a perennial complaint, but became a more significant issue from the 1240s onwards. Prestwich notes that most of the information here comes from a single chronicler who was rather xenophobic, but there are indications it was a wider spread issue than just one man’s prejudices. One group of foreigners were Henry’s wife Eleanor of Provence’s relatives, the Savoyards – when he married her in 1236 she brought members of her family & various retainers to court. Henry was generous to them & gave them jobs, lands, marriages & so on. Some like Eleanor’s uncle William of Savoy were particularly useful to him & helped reform government of the country, but that didn’t help make them any more popular. Another group of foreigners to get patronage were the Poitevins, related to Henry via his mother’s second marriage – this included his four half-brothers. The numbers of foreigners in these groups were not small. There were approximately 170 men with Savoyard connections to get patronage from Henry, and about 100 Poitevins. Adding to the turbulent politics was the fact that the Savoyards & Poitevins saw each other as rivals.

The third “group” of foreigners is a single man – Simon de Montfort. Not part of either the Savoyard or Poitevins, he came from the Ile de France and his family had a claim via marriage to the earldom of Leicester which he came to England to claim in 1230. He soon charmed his way into the inner circle of the court, he even married the king’s sister in 1238 (clandestinely, and this sparked a political crisis with him & the king on the same side for now). Henry & Simon started to fall out over money as early as 1239, but reconciled. In the early 1250s Simon’s rule over Gascony (as Henry’s lieutenant) had started to attract protest over its harshness. He was even brought back to England and put on trial in 1252 (a case that Prestwich says he “did not lose”). Even after this he & Henry reconciled once more.

Prestwich takes a short digression at this point in the story of the period to discuss the Church & how it played into the political situation in the late 1250s. During approximately the same time that Henry had been on the throne of England there was a gathering enthusiasm for reform within the Church. The new emphasis was on pastoral care & included measures such as clerics only holding one benefice each and not behaving in unseemly ways. The various orders of friars start up in this period – the Dominicans and Franciscans both reach England in the 1220s. And this enthusiasm for reform spilled over into the secular politics of the day – that the king should be subject to the law, that he should choose his councillors wisely, that his officials had an obligation to act fairly.

And now we’re at the build up to the civil war that ended with Simon de Montfort’s death. By 1258 Henry’s government was seen as incompetent & the Parliament that met in Oxford that year took steps to Do Something About It. They set out a complex scheme for picking a fair council of 15 that would evenly represent both king & barons, and this council would be where the final authority rested rather than with the king. At first it worked, and investigations were set up into all areas of administration with an aim to reforming them to make the rule of the country more fair and just (notably this extended significantly down the social strata, including grievances to be righted that would favour ordinary freemen). But progress was too slow for many on the baronial side, and personalities were still important – Prestwich says that de Montfort was not good at collaboration, or compromise, which meant that rifts opened in the baronial ranks. The initiative started to move to the king’s side, and by 1261 he’d managed to regain control to the extent that he could dismiss the council & put his own men in positions of power. Some of the barons had come over to his side, and Henry started to try & patch up his private quarrels with Simon de Montfort in hopes of neutralising him (which didn’t work).

But finance was still a problem – Henry still could not gather taxes. He also failed again to establish any sort of stable regime. Simon de Montfort returned to England in 1263 determined to force the king to accept the reforms propsed in 1258. There was some violence in early 1263 that lead to a series of negotiations in the second half of the year, under the arbitration of the King of France. At first Louis favoured de Montfort – Louis approved the Provisions of Oxford that had been laid out in 1258 & demanded the restitution of property to those who’d suffered in the violence in 1263. The opposition of the future Edward I was a particular problem for this negotiated peace, and a further round of negotiations was required. Louis had now changed his mind – Prestwich says that Queen Eleanor’s influence was a major factor in this – and he was firmly on the royalist side. These negotiations got nowhere & proper civil war broke out in spring 1264.

The advantage at first lay with the king. Henry had summoned a traditional feudal army, ostensibly to fight the Welsh but everyone knew de Montfort & his supporters were the true target. De Montfort’s support was centred on the Midlands (which he ruled a lot of as the Earl of Leicester) and in towns (including London). Henry’s army won the first few battles, including a triumph at Northampton that included the capture of one of de Montfort’s sons. But de Montfort’s supporters felt themselves to be cursaders and went into battle wearing crosses, feeling that God was on their side. This moral zeal and a combination of poor tactics from Edward & good tactics from de Montfort lead to a decisive victory for the baronial cause at Lewes. Victory wasn’t total – they didn’t capture the king or his son, but they did pen them up in Lewes priory from where they negotiated a peace settlement that included Edward remaining in custody as a hostage.

Simon de Montfort was now in charge of the government of the country, and although the king was still king he had no say in anything that happened. The council that was set up was a lot less complex than the previous experiment in 1258, and this let de Montfort exert a great deal of control over who was on it & the decisions it made. Prestwich says that actual reform was thin on the ground, de Montfort spent more time pursuing his personal gain. Despite this he had widespread support. Unfortunately where he started losing support was in the upper echelons of society & that was crucial. The escape of Edward from custody in May 1265, and his subsequent joining of forces with barons who were disaffected with de Montfort lead to the outbreak of further civil war. This time the baronial cause didn’t feel so much that God was on their side – and the royalist cause wore crosses too. Edward & his allies were the winners of the battles, and on 4 August 1265 Simon de Montfort was slain on the field of battle. Some resistance to the royalists rumbled on for another year or so, but the back was broken of the rebellion.

Prestwich rounds off the chapter by concluding that even though the royalist cause were the winners the attempts to reform the government of England were not ignored. The civil war had been short but bitter, and the government of the country needed rebuilt afterwards. There was no longer any talk of restricting the king’s authority, but the reforms were not all tossed out. The next chapter of the book will cover the next 30 years, including the rebuilding process.

A thought I had while reading this was to wonder if there’s ever been a successful English king who took the throne as a minor. The ones that spring to my mind are Henry III (not terribly competent, as discussed here), Richard II (overly autocratic once he came to power, subsequently deposed), Henry VI (turned out to be very incompetent and had mental health issues, deposed twice during Wars of the Roses). Edward VI died too young to know how he’d’ve turned out if he’d reached his majority. Have I forgotten someone?

Another thought is that it’s interesting that Henry III was never deposed, nor even in danger of it. He might’ve had his authority restricted to the point where he wasn’t really ruling any more, but de Montfort didn’t set himself up as king or try & put anyone else on the throne. Particularly interesting in light of Edward II being deposed, as that’s only two generations later.

Tangents to follow up on: The obvious ones really – biography of Simon de Montfort & of Henry III.

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She Wolves: England’s Early Queens; Secrets of the Arabian Nights; The Secrets of Stonehenge: A Time Team Special

The second episode of Helen Castor’s She Wolves: England’s Early Queens was about Isabella of France & Margaret of Anjou. Neither of these women ruled England in their own right, but both ruled in the name of a man (son & husband respectively) and neither have been remembered kindly by history. Rather unfairly, I think (although Isabella brought it on herself to some degree).

Isabella was the daughter of the King of France & was married to Edward II when she was only 12 years old. The marriage didn’t get off to an auspicious start when Edward sat his favourite, Piers Gaveston, closer to Edward at the feast than Isabella was and they ignored her to concentrate on each other. Even at this young age Isabella was very aware of the respect due to herself as a daughter of a King and a Queen herself. However, despite the fact that Edward was besotted with his favourite, Isabella set out to behave like the perfect Queen & wife.

Gaveston’s behaviour and indulgence by the King wasn’t just annoying & insulting to Isabella, it also wasn’t going down well with the nobles at court. Eventually the situation deteriorated to the point where the barons took up arms against Edward & his favourite, and they had to flee – with Isabella in tow. The situation was only resolved with the capture & execution of Gaveston. Relations between Isabella & Edward must’ve got better after this – if nothing else they started having children including the future Edward III. Isabella had therefore performed one of the critical duties of a Queen in ensuring the succession, she also played the Queenly role of peacemaker in mediating between Edward & the rebel barons.

However she was to play a critical role in the re-emergence of hostilities. She was travelling with her household when they were caught in a storm, and sought shelter at Leeds Castle (in Kent). The Lord of the castle had been one of the rebels but he was away, and his wife refused Isabella entry. Isabella was furious and ordered her men to force their way in, at which point the soldiers in Leeds Castle fought back (as you would) and six of Isabella’s men died. Edward called this insult to his Queen treason & used it as an excuse to beseige the castle, eventually capturing it & imprisoning the lady & her children. The lady’s husband was executed. I’ve got chronology muddled a bit here (I don’t think Castor did tho) and by this stage Edward II had already taken up with his next poor idea for a favourite – Hugh Despenser. Castor characterised Despenser as a political predator (and we got nice visuals of a raptor of some sort flying about and tearing at some sort of prey). She also said that she believes that relationship to’ve been platonic, unlike the one with Gaveston.

So now relations between Edward & the country are deteriorating & so are those between Edward & Isabella. Tensions are rising between England & France, too. Isabella seizes her chance when her brother (now King of France) wants to negotiate a peace – she volunteers to go to France to negotiate on England’s behalf. Once in Paris she organises for her son Edward to join her, and instead of returning to England as a dutiful wife she returns at the head of an army, fighting to depose Edward II & set Edward III in his place. She’s practically welcomed in, Edward II’s reign had become tyrannical and unpopular. Once Edward II was captured Edward III was crowned & Isabella ruled as his regent. Edward II subsequently died, almost certainly at Isabella’s orders (but not via the red hot poker of later myth). Isabella was widely regarded as the saviour of England at the time.

But she’d already sown the seeds of her downfall. Whilst in Paris she’d also taken up with a knight called Roger Mortimer (Castor made a lot of use of chess metaphors in this programme, in particular referring to the Queen making her move with her Knight & Pawn (Edward III)). So when she started to rule as regent she had her own favourite by her side, not quite what the nobles wanted to see. And she had always been very aware of her own majesty, and this only got worse when she was running the country – she and Mortimer enriched themselves at the Crown’s expense. So in the end Isabella was overthrown in her turn, by her son. Mortimer was executed, but Isabella was allowed to live on.

(Isabella is one of the viewpoint characters in “Iron King” by Maurice Druon that I read earlier this year, it’s set around the time of Edward III’s birth. Druon has her & Mortimer (very much pre any relationship) conspiring to catch her sisters in the act of adultery, oh the irony.)

The second half of the programme was devoted to Margaret of Anjou – the French bride of Henry VI. Henry had been King since he was 9 months old, when his father Henry V died. Unfortunately at the time Margaret of Anjou married him he still wasn’t showing much signs of capability to rule – he was 23 by then. And it got worse – Margaret became pregnant, but shortly before the baby was born Henry slipped into a catatonic state. The court was already divided into factions – one centred round the Duke of York (who had his own claim to the throne), one centred round the Duke of Somerset (who was pro-Henry). Castor was telling us that Margaret would’ve prefered that she was named regent – she felt she had the right as the King’s wife & that she was a more neutral choice than the other two. However it was the Duke of York who got the job. This is where the Wars of the Roses begin to properly kick off.

Henry did recover his wits (such as they ever had been), so the Duke of York was no longer regent. However relations between the Yorkist & Lancastrians had deteriorated to the point where civil war broke out. Margaret was firmly in the Lancastrian camp, keen to protect her husband & son’s right to the throne. Henry was fought over & captured/released and generally passed around like pass the parcel. Castor told us of the king sitting in the centre of St Albans, guarded by soldiers, while the fighting raged through the town – not participating, just bewildered as he was fought over. In the end York won, not to control the king but to rule in his own name. (By this stage it’s not the original Duke of York, it’s his son Edward who ruled as Edward IV.) Margaret & her son (and husband? I can’t remember where Castor said Henry was) fled the country. Whilst in France she worked tirelessly to drum up support for her husband’s cause, but not very successfully.

Eventually the chance she’d been waiting for arrived – one of the major Yorkists, the Earl of Warwick, became dissatisfied with the King he’d put on the throne. Warwick regarded himself as “Kingmaker” and felt that if this one wasn’t working out, why all he needed to do was put a new one on the throne. So he switched sides, and promised Margaret that he’d work to return her husband to his rightful throne. Margaret was quite canny about this, she accepted his aid and then waited with her son in France until Warwick had delivered on his promise. Only then did she set out for England.

Sadly for Margaret just as she and her son were landing in England the Yorkists re-grouped and retook the crown. Margaret & her forces were forced into a battle in which her son took part for the first time. He died and as he was Henry VI’s only heir, with him died the hopes of Margaret for keeping her husband’s line on the throne. Henry VI was a Yorkist captive again, and died shortly afterwards in the Tower of London. Margaret lived the rest of her life in France.

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Secrets of the Arabian Nights was a standalone programme presented by Richard E. Grant all about the stories of the Arabian Nights. He traced their origins in the Middle East & beyond, and how they got to the West. He also talked to several critics & others about the impact they still have in both East & West today. And we also got treated to some retellings of some of the stories.

The stories come from a thriving oral tradition originating with merchants travelling the Silk Road & other trade routes across Asia. The prominence of merchants in many of the stories is a legacy of that. These stories were subsequently fitted within the Scheherazade frame story, and written down as The 1000 Stories. They came to the West via a Frenchman called Antoine Galland in the 18th Century – he was fluent in Arabic & Persian & other Middle Eastern languages, and he translated an Arabic form of the stories into French & published it. The book was a great success – partly because it was exotic and new, with sorts of stories & magic that aren’t the common tropes of Western literature (flying carpets were an example Grant mentioned repeatedly). And partly because it was the right thing at the right time – there was already a fashion for fairytales, and these stories fitted into that niche. Due to the success of the stories Galland was pressured to provide more, and he did – he said he’d heard the stories from contacts in the Middle East, but Grant pointed out that this was pretty dubious. It’s more likely that Galland invented them or significantly embellished them. I knew already that what we have in the West isn’t quite the same as the original, but I hadn’t realised that Aladdin & Ali Baba were among the extras.

Galland’s book was translated into English where again it was a success and helped establish the craze for “oriental” fashions in Britain. It was also disapproved of by the more strait-laced – Grant quote one lord who felt that it was encouraging the “Desdemona complex” (which is every bit as racist as you might imagine). And then in Victorian times the Arabian Nights stories were significantly bowdlerised & re-purposed as children’s stories. Which is really the form that most of us English speakers run into them first today.

Grant spent some time talking to a variety of critics both European & not. They were mostly in agreement that one of the themes of the book as a whole (in the original) is female sexuality & desire. They also drew out a feminist theme to the collection of stories. The framing story of Scheherazade is about a king whose wife betrays him, so after killing her he goes on to marry & then execute a woman every night. As revenge. Scheherazade uses her wits & her storytelling abilities to not just save herself but to slowly change the King’s attitudes. They were saying at the beginning the stories she tells fit with the King’s misogynistic & vengeful ideas, but over the course of the stories she emphasises wisdom & reflection over vengeance, and seeing women as people.

In the Middle East today (well, 2011 or 2010 when this was filmed) the book is controversial. It’s regarded by some as immoral – too much drinking, too much sex, people aren’t rewarded for being good they’re rewarded for being lucky, and so on. Grant talked to an Egyptian author & publisher (Gamal al Ghitani) who has published a new edition of the stories – he has received death threats & there was pressure on the government to ban the book because it was indecent & not Islamic enough. Gamal al Ghitani was clear that he felt this was rubbish, that the extremely conservative Islamist groups weren’t right about the only way to be a Muslim. And that these stories are an important part of Arabic heritage & should be read & learnt about by modern people.

It was a good programme, interesting & the dramatic re-tellings of stories were fun 🙂

Secrets of Stonehenge was a Time Team special we’d recorded several years ago, about a team excavating at and near Stonehenge. It felt very padded, in what I think of as “Discovery channel style” – i.e. the sequence went: cliff-hanger, ad break, re-cap, small bit of something else, next cliff-hanger etc. And while it did belabour the point about theories only lasting so long as there’s evidence to support them, it also made a lot of use of “and now they’ve proved” language *rolls eyes*. However. It was fun to watch, as Time Team generally is. A particularly amusing moment was when Robinson said “to help the archaeologist Time Team has built a life size replica of the henge at Durrington” … well, no, I think you did it so you had something cool to show on the telly 🙂

The excavations were led by a chap called Mike Parker Pearson, and his pet theory (which evolved over the 6 years of excavations) was that Stonehenge fit into a ritual landscape involving a progression from life to death. The henge at Durrington, built of wood, was a place where people came to feast each midwinter. They then travelled down the river Avon and along the avenue to Stonehenge, which was the place of the dead. There they buried some of their ancestors (mostly adult males, who were relatively fit – Pearson speculated this was a royal line). Some of this left me hoping it was based on better evidence than they showed us (i.e. that the people would process along the river scattering ashes?), some of it was more compelling (i.e. evidence of feasting on pigs of a particular age at the Durrington site implies feasting at a particular time of year).

Another strand of the programme talked about the previous excavations at the site – it was a minor enough theme I wouldn’t’ve mentioned it except that I wanted to make a note of one rather appalling part. One of the modern excavators, back in the 50s, was a man called Richard Atkinson. Although he did a lot of work on the site none was recorded and none was published – so effectively he dug it up & disturbed it all for no gain. Not what you expect from the modern era! Wikipedia is somewhat kinder to the man citing overwork & illness, so perhaps that too was hammed up to make “good telly”.

Overall I’d say it was fun but not necessarily accurate (or nuanced).

“Plantagenet England 1225-1360” Michael Prestwich (Part 1b)

This post covers the second half of the introductory section of the book. Having discussed the environment Prestwich moves on to an overview of the legal & political institutions of the country during the period.

The Crown and Kingship

Kings of England during this time weren’t just Kings of some isolated country, they were part of an international world. The King had titles to lands on the other side of the channel (more at some times than others …) and marriages (both their own & their family members) linked them to yet more. So they were part of a network of ruling families in Europe, not just in the contemporary time but in their history as well. They could trace their descent back through the Anglo-Saxon Kings of England (via marriages) as well as more fanciful genealogies (Edward I wanted to link himself to King Arthur, for instance).

Prestwich then divides Kingship into two facets – sacred & secular. Kingship of the time is sacred via the anointing of the King during the coronation ceremony. This endowed the King with spiritual authority, and the King could use this to bolster his authority if necessary. As well as special ceremonies (like Henry III’s transfer of Edward the Confessor’s bones to the new shrine in a rebuilt Westminster Abbey) there was a routine calendar of religious ceremonies in which the King played a significant part. For instance the giving of alms on a regular basis, and touching to cure the king’s evil which was a rite introduced by either Henry III or Edward I.

The King was also the secular & feudal lord of the country, which granted him specific rights over his nobles. For instance military service, or the paying of an aid on the occasion of the marriage of the King’s eldest daughter. This side of Kingship was emphasised particularly when getting support for war – the feudal right to soldiers & money being very important. Another secular aspect of the King’s rule derived from Roman law. Prestwich talks here about the concept of “necessity”, and how the King was entitled to taxes without his nobles having right of refusal if he could show there was a necessity (i.e. for a war he was fighting to defend the realm).

At first there wasn’t a distinction drawn between the King & the crown, but over this period the two concepts began to separate. Most notably in legal or land-ownership contexts – for instance the King might give lands to his heir with the caveat that they were not to be separated from the crown (i.e. he couldn’t give them to someone else, he should still have them on his ‘inevitable’ accession to the throne). It also played a role during & at the end of Edward II’s reign – at the end the person of the King had been deposed but the crown had not.

Queenship was a distinct thing, that had an important part to play in royal politics. The Queen could intercede for people, and then the King could show mercy or generosity without looking weak. There was an expectation that the Queen would act as a peacemaker. Obviously personal relationships play into how that actually played out, and Isabella of France shows that a Queen could influence politics beyond that under some circumstances.

Symbols & ceremonies were important for impressing the country with the power of the monarchy. The physical crown (of which there were several) and other royal regalia weren’t worn daily, but were worn at ceremonial occasions to enhance the grandeur of the monarchy. The throne, likewise, was possibly not used often but was an important symbol. Not many of the King’s subjects would’ve seen him in his regalia & sat on his throne, but most if not all would’ve seen an image of him. The English currency was unique at the time in having an image of the King’s head on all legal currency. Even private mints (of Bishops, say) had to use the same image on their coins. A better image of the King could be found on the royal seals that sealed all royal documents, and the incidental symbolism in these representations was important. For instance Edward III’s use of the French royal arms as well as the English after 1340 when he claimed the French throne. Prestwich discussed religious ceremonies in the section on sacred Kingship, here he turns to the secular ceremonies that promoted the King’s power. For instance feasts & tournaments.

The King’s possessions & clothes were used to enhance his authority – always made from the best & most splendid materials. And buildings were also used to promote the image of the King. Henry III had Westminster Abbey rebuilt in magnificent style, and it became used as the royal mausoleum in a further display of royal splendour. In this Henry & his heirs were trying to equal or better the Capetian Kings of France – Saint Louis IX had built Sainte-Chapelle at the start of this period which gives an example of the sort of magnificence the English Kings were trying to live up to. Very much keeping up with the Joneses on an epic scale. As well as religious buildings, secular buildings were important. There were several royal castles, and although many were poorly maintained others were refurbished & enhanced – like the Tower of London and Windsor Castle as examples of luxurious royal residences & Edward I’s castle at Caernarfon as an example of a fortress.

Prestwich finishes this chapter by talking about the King’s court and the King’s household. The two terms mean different but overlapping things, and weren’t always used consistently by contemporary sources (which Prestwich expresses some scholarly frustration with!). Roughly speaking the “court” was a broader term that could be used about everyone around the King, whereas the household was more concretely defined & was used about people retained in the King’s service.

A large part of the household’s role was domestic – the provision of food for the King & all these people, the stabling & care of the King’s horses, falcons, dogs and those of the rest of the household. Also the means of transporting the household were provided internally – carts & horses or boats, and people to drive them or crew them. The main department of the household that looked after these various sections was the wardrobe, and it also played a key role in government of the country. The keeper of the wardrobe & other clerical officials were some of the King’s most important ministers. Government is the subject of the next chapter, so Prestwich moves on to some examples of details of the court or household’s expenditure on food & clothing or on the sorts of entertainment that the court had.

There’s not much evidence for particular manners for court, no guides to etiquette or whatever, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t niceties to be observed. Certainly the King seems to’ve lead a pampered existence with bevies of servants to do everything for him – like one to supervise the meat he was given, one to carve it and a third to actually serve it to him. The court’s influence on the culture of the rest of the country is debatable – there is some hint of an influence in architecture & in patronage of painters. But definitely not literature.

Government

This chapter demonstrates that running the country via a large bureaucracy with lots of red tape is not a modern invention. Prestwich says scholarly opinion is divided between the idea that England of this period “enjoyed a remarkably sophisticated bureaucratic system” or was suffering from “a surfeit of government, with quite unnecessarily complex administrative procedures that achieved little”. At the end of this chapter he concludes that it’s a bit of both – it could’ve done to be more streamlined, but it actually worked most of the time.

Much of what we know about the bureaucracy of the time comes from the complication – multiple copies of records were kept, and writs could be issued in as many as three documents (under the king’s secret seal to be sent to the privy seal office, which would instruct the chancery, which would issue the final writ). So this could cause delays, although when the matter was urgent the machinery seems to’ve moved swiftly. The language of government documents was Latin, so the majority of the population wouldn’t understand it. A lot of the surviving rolls are in very good condition, testament to how few people had need to read them.

The structure of the government was already established by the early 13th Century. Top was the King & his council. Council was defined in various ways – it could be a great council with lots of the magnate present, or a more ordinary one with a smaller handful of magnates & some judges & clerical officials etc. Sometimes this council was imposed on the King by his nobles, some were chosen by the King. But generally it was a working body with a bias towards officials, that provided expert advice & assistance to the King. In some periods the chief financial body of the government was the wardrobe, the financial arm of the King’s household. The household also provided the privy seal, which was used to issue orders to the chancery & the exchequer and came into being as a separate government body (rather than part of the wardrobe) over this period. The chancery & the exchequer were the two main state departments, which gradually became more independent over this period. The exchequer looked after the financial side of government and in some periods had control over wardrobe expenditure & sometimes not. The chancery did the issuing of writs, and was the centre of the governmental machinery. Law courts were another important part of the government. The two central ones were the King’s Bench (which heard cases appealed from lower courts, and increasingly concerned itself with criminal cases) and the court of Common Pleas (which mostly heard property cases).

If that summary sounds a little confused, that’s because I’m not sure I completely followed that section – it had the feeling of a high level & technical summary of a complicated subject. And I just got the flavour from it.

Prestwich next moves to the sort of people that were senior officials in the government. Generally these were churchmen, although sometimes laymen held offices. But it was harder to reward laymen as you couldn’t just give them a juicy bishopric, so they had to be paid more by the King. Many notable figures rose to prominence due to their administrative skills & are given their bishoprics afterwards for service rather than for piety. But there are records of bishops who became high officials with no prior government experience (and subsequently did good jobs even, the Bishop of Exeter, Walter Stapledon, was one such man in the 1320s when he was made Treasurer). Most officials were trained in their posts, but they also endowed university colleges to train clerics – Merton College & Oriel College (both Oxford) are the examples that Prestwich gives. (Exeter College (founded by the Bishop of Exeter I mention above) was founded pre-government job so it doesn’t quite fit the theme).

Moving on to local government Prestwich notes that there isn’t a clear distinction between central & local government, drawing one is a convenience for the historian not a contemporary idea. The main unit of local government was the county, with a sheriff in charge with assorted officials under him. At the beginning of this period the sheriffs were appointed (by the King or other nobles), later they were elected although sometimes this was a technicality. The sheriffs had jurisdiction over some financial matters, and presided over the county court to settle legal matters. He also visited the hundred courts (hundreds are the sub-divisions of counties) in rotation. Not all of the country was actually under the central government – the state was still more feudal than not. For instance Durham was practically independent although the perspective of the crown was that as the Bishop held the liberty in the King’s name he was acting on behalf of the King when ruling it. And the Welsh marches were even more close to independence. There were also more minor liberties where the local ruler was more firmly subordinate to the King’s central government whilst still being technically separate.

And that was another section where it feels like there’s a whole book of complexity beneath the summary in this book and I don’t quite grasp it well enough to summarise well in my turn!

Prestwich next discusses the Church which was technically run by a separate & parallel system of government to the state. Many offices & functions are duplicated in this different sphere, with a broad emphasis on spiritual matters (like organisation & governance of monasteries). And of course the Church also had a need to collect money & manage its finances. As a lot of government high officials were given bishoprics there was a high degree of cross-fertilisation despite the separation. And there were areas of co-operation as well as competition between the two systems.

And the chapter finishes with a discussion of corruption in government. Prestwich stresses that the government was fundamentally sound – he says that it was less corrupt than the time of Henry I or than it would be in 16th & 17th Century England. However there was a level of corruption present. Officials were caught taking bribes, and some lords paid judges retainers so that court cases would be resolved in their favour. This was frowned upon, however, and punished when caught.

So now Prestwich has set us up for the meat of the book – next chapter starts the chronological examination of the politics of the period.

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