Although the crown had a definite and well-established right to feudal service for forty days, the troops raised under the system were not particularly impressive or important. Nor was the use of the feudal summons of any considerable financial benefit to the crown. At this time the Exchequer was fighting a losing battle to collect scutage on the old assessment of fees, rather than on the new reduced quotas. No appreciable sums were raised, and it was more trouble than it was worth to try to collect scutage. Fines might be paid on the basis of the new quotas in lieu of service, and in 1300 these were collected at the high rate of £40, for each knight. The total revenue from fines in that year came to almost £2,000.[242] A feudal summons might be of substantial financial benefit to the tenants-in-chief, for they were entitled to collect a scutage on their own lands. Though they refused to pay scutage levied on the old assessment to the Exchequer, it was on this obsolete basis that they collected it for their own benefit. So the earl of Lincoln received from the honour of Pontefract, assessed at nearly sixty-three fees, £125 18s. 22d. for the scutage of the Caerlaverock campaign.[243] It seems that the magnates had a greater interest than did the crown in seeing that armies were recruited by means of a feudal summons, for the military burden was slight and the financial benefits worthwhile.
The obligation of all tenants-in-chief to produce knight service was consequent upon the act of homage. But the right of the crown to expect the rest of the cavalry, the paid troops of the household and the unpaid men who are revealed by the Falkirk Roll of Arms and the Song of Caerlaverock, to serve in the wars, and the means used to summon them should also be examined. Edward I could appeal to the general obligation to bear arms in defence of the realm, part of the fealty all his subject owed him. The duty of all free men to possess the arms and military equipment appropriate to their status and wealth had been set out by Henry II in the Assize of Arms. This legislation was brought up to date in 1242, when the unfree were included in the scheme, and it was re-enacted by Edward I in the Statute of Winchester.[244] Quite early in the reign Edward began to extend this principle, and to try to enforce an obligation to do military service on all those with sufficient wealth to afford the equipment needed. It made no difference whether or not they had taken up knighthood, nor whether they held their land in chief or as subtenants. In November 1282 all with at least twenty librates of land who were not serving in the Welsh war were summoned to appear at Northampton early in the next year, along with shire and borough representatives. The object was probably to make them pay monetary compensation in lieu of the service they were not doing, but it is doubtful that they would have accepted any claim that they did owe service. Certainly no such grant was forthcoming.[245] In 1285 Edward rewarded the class of twenty-librate men for their part in the Welsh wars by raising the qualification for compulsory knighthood to £100, and in the writ he conceded that their service had been freely bestowed. But the king’s benevolence did not last long, and in 1292 the level was brought down to forty librates.[246]
The period of almost constant war after 1294 naturally saw the crown attempting to take advantage of such precedents to persuade and even compel men to serve in the campaigns. In February 1295 the king ordered the Treasurer to make the sheriffs hold inquests into the number of men who held more than forty librates of land. Such men should be ready to set out on campaign at royal wages, equipped with horses and arms, at only three weeks’ notice. The inquisition was duly carried out in March, and seems to have been successful in providing Edward with much needed reinforcements in Wales.[247] That the magnates did not approve of this type of appeal is perhaps suggested by the method used later in the same year by the bishop of Durham and Earl Warenne for raising troops to defend the north of England. They were given power to compel all men to assist them, but chose not to use the forty-librate qualification for service, instead simply requesting the sheriffs of the northern counties to send all knights, together with two men from. each vill, to a muster at York on 2 November 1295.[248]
But the crown stuck to the new system. In 1296 the forty-librate landholders were still requested to be prepared to set out at three weeks’ notice, and in January the earl of Arundel was appointed to check on the organization of the scheme in Shropshire and Staffordshire. Presumably many of the troops who served in Scotland for pay in 1296 came as a result of this obligation though unfortunately no writ of summons to these men has survived. That sent to the magnates, however, was enrolled. It was not feudal in form, but politely requested them to come on account of the fealty and esteem they owed to the king, with as many horses as they felt was honourable and proper. Although the formula was very like that used in the demand for paid service in 1282, this time no promise of pay was made.[249]
As already shown, Edward I’s initial plan in 1297 was to demand feudal service for the campaign against Philip IV, but the strong opposition at the Salisbury parliament, led by Roger Bigod, forced him to abandon this idea.[250] Even so, the king persisted in his intention of taking an English army to Flanders, and after ordering the sheriffs on 5 May to draw up lists of all those holding twenty librates or more, he issued a summons ten days later ordering all such men to muster at London on 7 July. Ecclesiastics and women were to send their feudal quotas, while some 130 magnates received individual summonses. These writs did not take the usual form. Instead of making reference to the fealty and esteem the magnates owed to the king, as was normal in a non-feudal summons, they were ‘affectionately required and requested’ to attend the muster for the ‘salvation and general advantage of the realm’.[251] It looks as if the writ was deliberately vague, as there was no well-established obligation, based on either fealty or homage, that Edward could appeal to for service overseas.
The summonses to the muster at London naturally aroused suspicion. According to the chronicler Langtoft, many barons were inclined to refuse to come as they suspected that the king was trying to create a new form of military service, and ‘to do new service without condition would be disinheritance by custom’.[252] In the petition presented to the king known as the Monstraunces, the opposition put their case over the summons cautiously, pointing out that it was not stated where the service was to be done, and that if it was to be Flanders, as was rumoured, there was no precedent for it.[253] Edward then conceded that no one was bound to go to Flanders with him, save at royal wages. But the earls of Norfolk and Hereford and their followers were not content with this, and refused to have anything to do with the campaign. The two earls were asked by the king to draw up lists of the horses of those who attended the muster at London, in accordance with their duties as Marshal and Constable. They refused, and were accordingly replaced in their offices by Geoffrey de Geneville and Thomas de Berkeley.[254] On 28 July writs were sent out under the privy seal requesting the sheriffs to ask all those who had agreed to go to Flanders to prepare themselves and make their way to Winchelsea as soon as they could. The sheriff of Lancashire reported that he could find none who agreed to go with Edward, and his Devonshire colleague could only produce one name, that of Miles Pychard. Other returns do not survive, but these two are indicative of the mood of the country in the summer of 1297.[255] Edward was able to persuade very few men who were not of his own household to cross the Channel with him.
The quarrel over service was a very important element in the crisis of 1297, but it was an issue over which the opposition were not very sure of their rights. The final settlement, the Confirmatio Cartarum, made no mention of the question, but simply dealt with such matters as prises and customs duties.[256] The pardon granted on 5 November, guaranteed in advance by letters of the king’s son Edward and his council on 10 October, forgave the members of the opposition their failure to answer the summons, but there was no statement won from the crown that the demand for service had been unconstitutional. And very little attention seems to have been paid to the question of the twenty-librate landholders. The only document that mentions them is the De Tallagio non Concedendo, of questionable a
uthenticity, but most probably representing the baronial demands as they stood in the autumn of 1297. Even this makes no challenge to the royal claim to the service of this class of men, but simply promises them pardon for not responding to the summons.[257] That few of them had done so is shown by the fact that of the 713 men named in the surviving returns, which cover thirteen counties, only seventy-six appear in the roll of those who received protections to go on the Flanders campaign.[258]
The threat of civil war in the autumn of 1297 saw a new expedient adopted to recruit cavalry, with commissions being set up to select loyal knights and squires to come to a muster at London.[259] but for the Scotch wars Edward reverted to more normal methods. Writs issued on 21 October to 180 individuals to serve in Scotland used a formula akin to that used to ask the magnates to come to the London muster on 7 July, without the usual appeal to fealty.[260] However, the next summons, sent out on 26 October, asking for reinforcements for the army in Flanders, went back to the old formula, with an appeal to fealty and the esteem owed to the king.[261] Variations in the phraseology of military summonses cannot be regarded as insignificant. The writs sent out on 15 May 1297 demanding attendance at London on 7 July had been hotly resented, and it was not the royal concession that wages would be paid in Flanders, but the full reversion to the old style of summons at the end of October that marked the baronial victory on the question of military service.
Edward I made no attempt to introduce innovations in the method of summoning the cavalry for the Falkirk campaign of 1298. The formula used was almost identical to that of a non-feudal summons issued in 1287, stressing fealty and esteem.[262] There was no demand for the service of the twenty-or forty-librate class, and no mention was made of whether the troops were to be paid royal wages. For this campaign the horse lists and the Falkirk Roll of Arms provide a means of discovering whether all those who were summoned did in fact appear, and also whether all the more important men in the army were sent individual writs. Of the 110 bannerets in the heraldic roll, only twenty-nine had received direct summonses for the expedition, while a further twelve had been asked to muster for the winter campaign that immediately preceded the Falkirk one, which made any further summons unnecessary. Taking a list of sixty-eight men summoned on 30 March 1298, there is no evidence in thirty-two cases to show that they appeared at the muster on 25 May. Seventeen men appear on the horse lists, and eleven on the roll of arms, while eight more obtained protections to go on the campaign, though this cannot be taken as definite evidence that they in fact went.[263]
A new list of magnates was used for summonses sent out at the end of September 1298, requesting service in Scotland the following year: a campaign which never took place.[264] But although this army never mustered, the list was not abandoned. It provided an authoritative record of the hundred or so most important and reliable military leaders, whose status also entitled them to a leading part in the deliberations of the nation, and it was accordingly the basis of all the military and parliamentary summonses of the rest of the reign of Edward I.[265] For the Caerlaverock campaign the summons took strict feudal form, the tenants-in-chief being asked to provide their quotas. But in addition they were asked to bring with them as many men-at-arms as they felt they could provide.[266] It was this second half of the writ of summons that produced the non-feudal unpaid troops who formed the majority of the cavalry present on the campaign. The response to the summonses was better in 1300 than it had been in 1298: sixty out of the eighty-seven bannerets named in the Song of Caerlaverock received individual demands for their service.
Alongside the feudal summons in 1300, Edward I revived the conception of a wealth qualification for service. He established commissions to draw up lists of all men holding at least forty librates of land, and to summon them to serve at royal wages in Scotland.[267] This was reminiscent of 1297, and naturally provoked opposition. In a statement of grievances it was requested that the summons be withdrawn on the grounds that most of these men were not tenants-in-chief and so did not owe service, while those who were tenants-in-chief were already obliged to provide men in response to the demand for feudal service. In other words, the only form of service that the opposition was prepared to recognize was the strictly feudal one. They did not accept any more general obligation to serve.[268] The king was unwilling to accede to these arguments, and the opposition was not strong enough to force him to revoke his claims in the Articuli super Cartas issued on 6 March 1300.[269] The lists of forty-librate landholders were drawn up, but there is no evidence to show that pressure was brought on those named in the lists to force them to go on the campaign. The absence of complete lists of all those present in Scotland makes it impossible to estimate the efficacy of the measure; however, the success of the opposition is amply demonstrated by the fact that Edward did not dare repeat the summons of men of specified landed wealth. The next similar summons was in 1316, when the qualification was set at fifty librates.[270]
But Edward did not admit complete defeat. In 1301 the magnates were asked to muster for the new campaign in Scotland with a style of writ similar to that used in 1297, making no reference to fealty and allegiance.[271] In place of a summons of forty-librate landholders, inexpedient in view of the previous year’s row, some 935 men were sent individual summonses. Unlike the writs to the magnates, these promised pay, but like them made no reference to fealty.[272] Once again, there is no way of finding out how many of the men who were summoned actually came to Scotland.
The precedents of 1301 were not followed up in the rest of the reign. The summonses issued for 1303 and 1306 were feudal in form, that for 1306 not even including the clause that had featured in 1298, asking for more men-at-arms than the strict quotas provided for.[273] In 1304 and 1307 there was no need for general summonses, as in both cases the army was already in Scotland, having wintered there. These last years of the reign saw only one request for non-feudal service, with the formula of fealty and esteem being used once more. This was in January 1303, and the summons was only sent to twenty-seven northern magnates.[274] An unusual arrangement was negotiated with the men of Northumberland by the Treasurer, Walter Langton, late in 1302, by which they were to serve for eight days at their own expense. This was an entirely exceptional case, though, resulting from the particular responsibilities of the northern counties to protect the Border.[275]
By the end of his reign, therefore, Edward I had virtually given up non-feudal summonses and requests for the service of the twenty-or forty-librate class. The evidence for the composition of the armies that fought in the Scotch wars suggests that the army in the field was much the same, no matter how it was summoned, and it may be that the king had found that there was little point in experimenting with novel methods of recruiting. But it seems much more probable that political opposition forced Edward to abandon the methods he had been developing and to revert to straightforward feudal summonses. Innovations in the forms of the summonses were objected to for fear that acceptance might establish a precedent, enabling the crown to demand additional service as of right in the future. The final baronial victory on this point must have been won at some time between the 1301 campaign and the issue of the feudal summons for 1303, and it is tempting to assume that the king abandoned his claim to non-feudal service at the October parliament in 1302. According to a little-known chronicle, that of Hagnaby in Lincolnshire, there was then a major crisis, with a committee of thirty-five being set up under the leadership of Archbishop Winchelsey to discuss the affairs of the church and of the realm.[276] No other chronicler records anything of the sort, but the story is given plausibility by the fact that there was a precedent for the setting up of such a committee; at the Lincoln parliament in the previous year the complaints of the opposition were placed before a commission of twenty-six.[277] Although it has been argued by Rothwell that during the latter years of his reign Edward I was generally successful in going back on the concessions formally granted in 1297,[278] and although the opposition never obtained a
written condemnation of the attempt to enforce a wider, more general military obligation from the king, yet on this issue they won a clear victory. No later medieval monarch was able to enforce any general obligation to cavalry service in England. There were some abortive attempts under Edward II, and in the early years of Edward III; in general, however, reliance was placed on a limited number of magnates to provide adequate cavalry forces under a contract system.
There is no simple way of describing the cavalry forces in the armies of Edward I’s reign: they cannot with justice be termed either mercenary, feudal or contractual. As many men served at their own expense, it is not possible to produce accurate estimates of numbers, though it is probable that there were some 3,000 heavily armed cavalrymen on the Falkirk campaign, perhaps the largest concentration that Edward ever assembled. The royal household provided a very substantial and important paid element in the armies, but in the major campaigns this was outnumbered by the contingents of the magnates who refused to accept pay for themselves or their men. Whether novel techniques of summons, based on wealth rather than on traditional obligations, or obsolete feudal methods forced on the crown by the opposition, were used, the armies as they assembled in the field were similar. The majority of the cavalry were organized in retinues, built up by means of formal agreements and indentures, yet in general the crown scarcely recognized the existence of this system in its methods of recruiting. In none of the summer campaigns in Scotland did the crown enter into contracts with the army captains. Although it would be false to state that Edward I created a national army to fight national wars, he succeeded in welding together the miscellaneous cavalry forces available to him into a coherent and well-organized military weapon.
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