There was a brief campaign in Wales in 1287, when the revolt of Rhys ap Maredudd was put down. The king, with the household, was abroad in Gascony at the time, so the knights of the household were not employed in Wales. But an important rôle was played by men who had considerable household experience, such as William Leyburn, John l’Estrange and John de Mohaut.[91] The one pay roll that survives in full for the war of 1294 is that of the subsidiary army commanded by Warwick, which won the battle of Maes Moydog.[92] There is no complete record of the household contribution to the campaigns of this war. Likewise, there are no accounts for the first of Edward’s campaigns in Scotland, the highly successful one of 1296. But for the years from 1297 until the end of the reign the evidence is both fuller and easier to analyse.
For the remarkably futile campaign in Flanders in 1297, which saw no action with the French enemy, but some with the Flemish allies, Edward set sail on 22 August with 670 cavalry. By the end of September reinforcements had brought numbers up to a maximum of 895. But of this total, only 527 were strictly speaking household troops, the others being termed ‘Forinsec’ troops, men not permanently retained by the crown, but paid wages by the household for the duration of the campaign only.[93] Numbers on the Falkirk campaign of 1298 were more impressive. The horse valuation rolls show a household strength of just under 800, with non-household contingents numbering 564.[94] Two years later, on the expedition glorified by the Song of Caerlaverock, a splendid heraldic poem, 522 men had their horses valued and enrolled on the household horse list, while there were in all about 850 cavalrymen paid by the Wardrobe.[95] The account book for the year makes no emphatic distinction between the true household troops and the ‘Forinsec’ element: for practical purposes there was no difference, and by the end of the reign the differentiation had been virtually abandoned in the accounts.
During the first years of the fourteenth century the household continued to put appreciable forces into the field, though never again on quite the scale of 1298. In 1301 there was an ambitious double campaign, a pincer movement with the king advancing from Berwick and his son from Carlisle. At one time there were nearly 1,000 cavalrymen in household pay in the two armies. Unfortunately there is no full account for the year 1303, which saw the next expedition to Scotland. But the wardrobe account for the next year begins on 20 November 1303, at which date there were 588 heavily armed cavalry in pay, ninety of them bannerets and knights.[96] Numbers had been higher in the summer, for the horse list for 1303 shows 542 men in the royal household and 182 in that of the prince of Wales,[97] who, following his failure as a military leader in 1301, had not again been given an independent command.[98] During 1304 the cavalry was maintained at roughly the same strength as it had been in the autumn of the previous year: in June there were 570 cavalrymen in royal pay.[99] The main military operation of 1304 was the siege of Stirling castle, which lasted some three months. At the end of this time, Edward cruelly refused to accept the unconditional surrender of the garrison until the castle had been bombarded by a newly completed engine, the Warwolf, for one day:[100] an incident which displayed a lack of chivalry and a degree of viciousness reminiscent of Matthew Paris’s stories of the king’s youth. The capture of Stirling marked the end of concerted and serious resistance in Scotland, and when William Wallace was caught and executed in the following year it must have seemed to Edward that success had been achieved at last.
News of the murder of John Comyn by Robert Bruce, the move which restarted war in Scotland, reached Edward by 24 February 1306, but not until the beginning of March were there any signs of the government taking any action, and then all that was done was to issue orders for the purveyance of supplies.[101] In the campaigns against Bruce in the last two years of the reign Edward I abandoned his earlier strategy of sending huge armies north to subdue the Scots by a show of strength. The hosts of 1300, 1301 and 1303 had been hard to manoeuvre, expensive, and above all, unsuccessful in engaging the enemy in battle. Faced by Bruce’s guerilla tactics, the English forces were split up into smaller, more mobile units, much as had been done in Wales in 1294-5. This, combined with the fact that full accounts were never properly drawn up, makes it hard to work out how large the forces put into the field by the household were in these campaigns.
On 5 April 1306 Aymer de Valence, Henry Percy and Robert Clifford were commissioned to levy troops in the north of England to lead against Bruce.[102] All that is known of Percy and Clifford’s men is that the former had a troop of thirty cavalry with him,[103] and that both commanders received prests as an advance on wages.[104] Valence’s men can hardly be described as household troops. Numbering by July almost 300 horse and 1,500 foot, they were paid wages by the Chamberlain of Scotland, John Sandale. Of the eight bannerets in the force, only two, Gilbert Pecche and Matthew de Mont Martin, were retained by the household.[105] On 3 March Clifford recaptured Dumfries castle from the Scots, while Valence’s force was strikingly successful, winning what appeared to be a decisive battle against Bruce at Methven, outside Perth. A new element of brutality seems to have been introduced into the war, with the killing of prisoners and the burning of the lands and houses of traitors, as the Scotch patriots were termed.[106]
The king’s original intention had been to lead an army in person against the Scots. However, by 24 May he had decided to send his son with the main force, and follow on later himself.[107] True to his oath made at the Feast of the Swans which followed his knighting, when he swore not to sleep two nights in one place until he reached Scotland,[108] the prince set out. No account rolls survive for his army, but it cannot have been large, for Walter Reynolds, Keeper of the prince’s Wardrobe, paid out only £629 2s. 0d. to the knights and bannerets, and £296 2s. 4d. to the squires and sergeants.[109] A list of liveries of food made at Perth and Aberdeen includes the names of only about twenty bannerets and knights, of whom three were members of the royal household.[110] Those of the household knights not already engaged in the war came north with Edward I later in the year, though this was no large army either: a horse list shows a total strength of eighty-eight cavalry.[111]
In the military operations of the next year, 1307, the household knights did not serve in one unit; they were divided between the various forces sent against the Scots. Valence was serving under contract with 100 horse until Easter, but he had additional men serving under him for pay, bringing the total strength up to 160 in mid-March.[112] In February John Botetourt, a very important household banneret, led a small force of some fifty-five horse against Bruce, and towards the end of March he made a raid, lasting a month, up the Nith valley with seventy-seven cavalry. Another small force was sent into Glentrool in mid-April.[113] No accounts survive for the armies commanded by Gloucester and Percy, although the latter was almost certainly paid wages, as he had been in the previous year. Late in May a new force was organized under John St. John with William de Rue as paymaster. It was intended that it should consist of forty men-at-arms in pay, along with 1,000 infantry,[114] but the account shows that it was in fact composed of forty hobelars, or light cavalry, eight constables of foot and 826 infantrymen, the number of these rising to roughly 1,700 in mid-June.[115] Clearly the heavy cavalry were all fully engaged in the other armies. The earl of Hereford was also on campaign, but only one payment, of about £70 in June,[116] to men under his command is recorded. It seems likely that he was serving at his own expense with a mounted retinue, only accepting wages for the infantry accompanying him.
Although the royal household was present in Scotland during the campaigns of the last two years of the reign, and its knights took a prominent part in much of the fighting, it was no longer the impressive body that had been capable of forming a whole battalion at Falkirk and at Caerlaverock. Reduced in size, split up under separate commands, the army at the end of the reign could not be described as virtually ‘the household in arms’. The obvious explanation for the small size of the English forces in Scotland during these years is financial stringency, combined wit
h a failure to realize the scale of the opposition to English rule. The result was that the English simply did not have enough troops to contain Bruce. The Glentrool raid was ambushed and driven back with heavy losses. Only three days after Valence was defeated at Loudoun Hill, Gloucester was also vanquished.[117] It is hardly surprising that on is May 1307 an ally of the English wrote from Forfar a well-known letter informing the administration of the general support that Bruce was receiving, and stating that ‘Men say openly that … victory will go to Bruce.’[118]
The way the household was organized to fight, in those campaigns when it did serve as one body, should be examined. One interesting document, probably dating from 1301, lists the household cavalry divided into constabularia, each of which consisted as far as was possible of ten men. Over sixty men, headed by John Botetourt, are designated as being of the king’s Chamber. This does not mean that they were paid their wages by the Chamber: the very fact of their inclusion in what is obviously a wardrobe document shows this. But it does suggest that these men had some special status in the household, and were probably more closely associated with the king than the other household knights and squires. They do not appear to have been under the control of the steward of the household, Walter Beauchamp, for his is the first name of the 280 men that the document proceeds to list. Where a retinue numbered more than ten men, such as that of William de Cantilupe with fourteen, it was not split up but served as one unit. The sergeants-at-arms were not divided up between the various constabularia; they formed distinct sections of their own. They were not even given knights to command their units.[119]
But although the household knights generally served together, forming a coherent military unit, some of them might be detached from the main body and be given individual responsibilities. Several were made constables of castles, both in Wales and in Scotland. The raids or chevauchées used to harry the Scots were very frequently commanded by household knights. In addition to his raid up the Nith in 1307, John Botetourt led a force of about 130 horse and 1,770 foot from Annandale into Nithsdale early in 1304,[120] and at about the same time John Segrave was joined by two household bannerets, Clifford and Latimer, in a similar expedition into Selkirk Forest. The composition of this force was strictly laid down by indenture, and instructions given that no one not included in the document was to be allowed to accompany the raid, as a precaution against infiltration by enemy spies.[121]
Naval command often went to household knights. In 1294 William Leyburn was captain of the fleet, and in 1297 he was titled admiral. Edward Charles, who held this office in 1306, had been a household knight until 1300, and Simon de Montague, captain and governor of the whole fleet in 1307, had also served in the household.[122] Another household man who served at sea was John Botetourt, Leyburn’s second in command in 1294, and commander of a fleet of ninety-four vessels with a total complement of 3,578 men drawn from the ports between Harwich and Lynn, in 1296.[123] Botetourt was one of the most important of the household bannerets in the later years of the reign, being the only one to become a member of the council on a reasonably permanent basis, and summoned to parliament in that capacity in 1305.[124] A curious genealogical table in a chronicle suggests that he was an illegitimate son of Edward I. However, this evidence is suspect and there is nothing to support it in any other source.[125] He first appears as a squire of the household in the course of the second Welsh war, and by Christmas 1284 had been knighted. In 1298 he was promoted to the rank of a banneret.[126] Besides his loyal service in Edward’s wars, he was employed as a justice, being on a commission of gaol delivery in 1293 and serving on the Trailbaston enquiry of 1305.[127] Not a rich man in his own right, probably a younger son, he became lord of Mendlesham in Suffolk by marriage,[128] but plainly owed his prestige and power to the appointments he received from the crown. His loyalty was to Edward I, and not to the crown: his hostility to Edward II was indicated as early as 1308, and he was one of those involved in the capture and death of the unsavoury Piers Gaveston.[129]
During the Welsh wars the household knights were often used to assist in the task of recruiting troops and organizing the preparatory stages of campaigns. Richard du Bois, Hugh Turberville and Grimbald Pauncefoot were employed in this way in 1282, as were Roger l’Estrange and Bogo de Knoville.[130] In the closing stages of the second Welsh war Philip d’Arcy and Gilbert de Briddeshale each commanded small contingents convoying food supplies being brought from Chester and Flint to Rhuddlan castle.[131] In 1300 William Felton bought the lances from which five banners of the army were to be flown: two with the arms of England, one with the cross of St. George, one with the arms of St. Edmund and one with those of St. Edward. Before the campaign began that year, Thomas de Bikenore was sent to Berwick in advance of the main army to make preparations for the arrival of the household.[132] Both in 1304 and in 1306 household knights were employed in escorting Scotch prisoners to England.[133]
Household knights might be used on matters of state quite unconnected with the business of campaigning. When the king returned from his extended stay in Gascony in the summer of 1289 loud complaints of the corruption and incompetence of the judicial administration reached him. The commission appointed to enquire into them included among its members John St. John and William Latimer, both household knights,[134] and in October John de Mold was employed in arresting the sheriff of Surrey and Sussex together with various other malefactors, and then in holding inquisitions into administrative failures. Elias de Hauville was sent to Norfolk to inquire into a murder committed by the servants of the most notorious of the evil judges, Thomas de Weyland.[135] The conduct of negotiations with foreign powers was usually the preserve of such experts as Amadeus of Savoy, Otto de Grandson, or John of Berwick, though late in 1300 Arnold de Cavapenna was sent to his native Gascony to discuss various matters with members of Philip IV’s council,[136] and in 1304 another household knight, John de Bokland, was sent to negotiate with Philip.[137] But such tasks as these, examples of which could be multiplied, were not part of the normal rôle of the household knights, and appointments of this type owed at least as much to the qualities and abilities of the individuals as to their status in the household.
The military household provided Edward I with a solid and generally reliable corps of men, whose main duties were military, but who could be useful in other ways. Thomas Turberville, who went over to the French following his capture in Gascony was a notable exception to the general loyalty of the group;[138] more excusable was the behaviour of the Scot Simon Fraser, who rejoined his own countrymen in 1300 or early 1301.[139] But such cases were exceptional. The loyalty of the household knights perhaps provided an element of political stability in the regime of Edward I. One former member, John Lovel, was involved in the opposition during the crisis of 1297; however, he was alone in this.
The household knights did not take any large part in the affairs of state conducted in parliament. The only ones to sit as county members were Bartholemew Badlesmere and Thomas Chaucecombe for Kent and Hampshire respectively in the Carlisle parliament of 1307.[140] Some of the more important and wealthy of the bannerets of the household received summonses to the upper house, but Walter Beauchamp, who attained the position of steward of the household, never had one. Nevertheless, it is probably true that it was only through the royal household that a man such as Eustace de l’Hacche could rise from the rank of a serviens to that of a lord of parliament. Few household knights were members of the royal council: in the later years of the reign the only one was John Botetourt, summoned to parliament as a councillor in 1305,[141] and it seems likely that this distinction was more a result of his services as a judge than of those on the field of battle. A list of councillors in 1276 suggests that the lay councillors were in general men of a wealth and standing that made it unlikely that they would seek paid employment in Edward’s household, even though they might be closely associated with the king.[142]
Important as they were in war, even here the rôle of the hou
sehold knights should not be exaggerated. The major military commands were rarely entrusted to them. In 1282 Edward’s intention was that Tiptoft should be commander-in-chief in South Wales, but after protests the position was given to the earl of Gloucester, whose status rendered him more suitable for the task.[143] During the last campaigns of the reign Valence, Gloucester and Percy all led more important forces than did John Botetourt. The household provided the armies of 1298 and 1300 with one battalion, but played no real part in the leadership or organization of the others.
Just as the king had his permanent following of knights, which might be expanded for the needs of war, so the magnates maintained their own households and retinues. The volume of material available to show how the forces brought by the magnates to fight in Edward’s wars were organized is of course very limited in extent when compared with the evidence that survives for the royal household. Private records are scanty, while the royal sources only provide some incidental information.
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