In 1301, since no service was requested from the Cinque Ports, Edward I had to make much more extensive demands on the naval capacity of the country to carry out his ambitious plan for a double campaign in Scotland. On 14 February orders were sent to various towns asking for a total of fifty-eight ships from England and ten from Ireland. In fact, more were provided. On the east coast over fifty were employed in carrying supplies, but these were small vessels, mostly with crews of ten men or less. There were only about ten ships equal in size to those that had been used to transport the royal expedition to Flanders. The fleet which assembled to support the operations of the prince’s army in the west had one major task, to transport the Irish troops across to Skinburness. Forty-seven ships in all were needed for this, of which over twenty were Irish. No details are given in the wardrobe book of the number of sailors employed, but the tonnage of the various ships is given. The largest was the Margaret of Shoreham, of 195 tons, while there were ten other vessels over 100 tons burthen. Payment to the shipmasters was based on the unusual system of a negotiated sum, in most cases seven shillings, paid for each ton of the ship.[510]
Although more ships were used by the government in 1301 than had originally been ordered from the seaports, Edward I was not pleased with the performance of twelve towns in the south, including Southampton, Portsmouth and Bridgwater, which had not supplied the ships that had been promised. On 10 August commissioners were appointed to punish them, with additional appointments being made at the end of the month. It was discovered that there were ships in Bridgwater and Weymouth which could have been sent north, but the men of Poole stated that the only vessels they had were both taken to Scotland by the earl of Lincoln, the lord of the town. In Portsmouth harbour there were no suitable ships, while the two Seaford vessels were in Gascony.[511]
Similar difficulties in collecting ships for Scotland continued in the next years. On 10 November 1302 orders were issued for twenty-five ships from various ports to appear together with the Cinque Ports fleet at Ayr by 15 August of the following year. Peter of Dunwich was responsible for negotiating with some of the towns. In Bristol the burgesses agreed to send two ships, but Dunwich found it impossible to obtain crews, and Nicholas Fermbaud, constable of Bristol Castle, had to be asked to use all possible means, including distraint, to persuade men to serve. The responsibility for selecting fifty ships from the coastal towns from Essex to Northumberland was given to Walter Bacon. He was ordered to adopt the exceptional step of taking security from the towns that did agree to send ships to ensure that they fulfilled their promises. The men of the liberty of Durham refused to send the ships that were selected, and Bacon had to obtain the assistance of Robert Clifford, guardian of the Palatinate, to force the ports of Hartlepool, Wearmouth and Jarrow to co-operate. The towns of York, Beverley, Lincoln, Ely, Norwich and Cambridge did consent to provide ships, and then found the burden too great: they had to apply for royal assistance to compel the men of the surrounding areas to help them.[512]
In May 1303 there was a fleet of sixteen substantial ships at Berwick, while sixty-five small transport vessels were used to take supplies north. Thirty-one ships were needed to act first as transports and then as pontoons for the elaborate prefabricated bridges which Edward I had constructed for the crossing of the Forth. As in 1301 a large fleet was needed in the west to bring the Irish contingents to Scotland. Thirty-seven English and Welsh ships, and twenty-three Irish ones, were employed. An account of the cost of preparing the ships to carry horses shows that one ship might take from ten to thirty animals. Fifty vessels carried 820 horses between them. The total cost of the year’s naval activities, including the transport of some Gascons who had served the king in England and Scotland back to their native land in six ships, came to £1,657. The contrast with the huge naval budgets of 1295 and 1296 is a striking one.[513] In 1304 naval activities were on a still smaller scale, with a fleet of some fifty small transport vessels being used to carry supplies and to perform such tasks as bringing the lead required for the counterweights of the great engines used in the siege of Stirling. Sailors’ wages came to only £307 16s. 8d.[514]
The campaigns against Robert Bruce at the end of the reign saw, as far as can be determined from the incomplete accounts, a smaller transport fleet than ever. None of the usual commissions to collect ships from the ports was employed, and there were no large Irish contingents to be ferried across to Scotland. In 1306 the Cinque Ports’ fleet was in Scotland, but otherwise only some twenty-five English ships appear to have been used in these final years of the reign. Early in 1307 Edward asked Hugh Bisset, lord of Antrim, to whom he had granted the Isle of Arran in 1298, to provide ships to pursue Bruce and his allies in the Isles, where they were thought to be hiding. Later, in June, Hugh Bisset’s cousin John agreed to guard the coast near Kintyre with four barges manned by 100 men in return for fifty marks.[515]
The one exceptional feature of the naval efforts of Edward I’s reign was the attempt during the period of the French war to build up a fleet of royal galleys. In contrast, there was nothing particularly impressive about the fleets created by requisitioning merchant vessels. Richard I had formed a large navy to take him on crusade. In 1230 Henry III crossed to France with 288 ships, while 161 others were allowed to return from Portsmouth to their home ports as they were not required.[516] One of the largest fleets ever collected in the middle ages was that which took Edward III’s army to France for the siege of Calais in 1347. The army was roughly 32,000 strong, and 738 ships were needed, with some 15,000 sailors to man them.[517]
Even though greater demands on the naval resources of England may have been made at other times, nevertheless Edward I’s reign saw a considerable burden imposed on the seaports. Although the crews of the ships were paid reasonable wages, in the case of the Scotch campaigns the ports had to bear the cost of the voyage to the north and home again. While the crown would normally pay the cost of converting ships to carry horses, the rest of the expense of preparing them for the campaigns was the responsibility of the towns. Unfortunately no urban accounts giving details of such costs survive, but they were sufficient for the Cinque Ports and Yarmouth to need crown assistance to ensure that nonresidents owning lands inside the towns made their contributions.[518] Seaports might also suffer from the loss of ships which had been commandeered to serve in the navy. But naval battles were rare, and such losses few, save in the internecine fight between the Cinque Ports and Yarmouth in 1297, which could hardly be blamed on the government. The only ships lost in action in Scotland were three vessels which entered the harbour of Berwick in 1296 during the initial attack on the town.[519] In 1305 the men of Dunwich petitioned in parliament for compensation for the loss in war of ten ships, whose value they put at £1,000.[520] But the accounts reveal few such losses, and the townsmen were probably exaggerating.
The demands of war on the shipping of the nation must have affected trade and the fishing industry, though it is impossible to calculate the extent of dislocation. The effect of the great fleets that sailed for Gascony between 1294 and 1297 was probably not considerable. They were following a normal trade route, and the fact that they were transporting grain purveyed by the crown rather than grain purchased by merchants can have made little difference to the shipowners. In 1297 the sailors going to Gascony were not paid wages, but instead were paid freightage rates, in most cases a tun of flour costing 5s. 6d. and a quarter of wheat a shilling to transport.[521] This was presumably the normal commercial system of charging. The ships, having taken men and victuals to Gascony, were able, as usual, to carry wine on the return journey to England. The call for ships to take the army to Flanders must have disrupted normal shipping patterns far more than had the Gascon fleets. It is very doubtful, however, that such demands for ships can have done as much to limit trade in the Channel and the North Sea as did the embargo on Anglo-French trade and the high customs duties of the years from 1294 to 1297. There seem to have been few objections to Edward’s commandeeri
ng of ships until 1301. By that time trade with the continent had revived after the French war, and the long voyage north to Scotland for which they were not paid was resented, especially by the men of the south coast ports. But the number of ships involved in the Scotch wars was not so large that their commandeering placed any considerable strain on the economy.
If the defence of the coasts during the period of the war with France was never tested severely, had it not been for the existence of the fleets Philip IV might well have made more of his plans to invade England. While it is hard to assess the effect of English naval activity in the war with Scotland, there can be little doubt that Scotch trade must have been adversely affected. The Scots would have found it far easier to obtain money, arms and assistance had it not been for English naval supremacy.[522] But the most important function of the navy was to provide transport. It was by careful attention to the problems of supply that Edward’s government was able to achieve its military successes, rather than by any brilliant feats of arms, and it was only by sea that the huge quantities of victuals could be carried to the armies. Much credit is due to the officials whose organizing ability ensured that sufficient vessels were available, though the last word of praise must go to the ships themselves, the Blithes, Garlaundes, Godales and Marioles, and even more to the men who sailed them, sometimes in the depths of winter, in support of the war effort.
VII. The Administration and Costs of War
The administrative problems posed by Edward I’s wars in Wales, Gascony, Flanders and Scotland were immense. The military effort had to be co-ordinated, the men supplied with pay and victuals, records and accounts kept. The king’s successes did not depend on brilliant strokes of generalship, but on efficient organization. England at this time was provided with an elaborate, efficient and well-tried civil service, and full use was made of the regular departments of Exchequer and Chancery. However, the scale of Edward’s wars was such that a degree of flexibility was required which could not easily be provided by these departments. The rigorous, accurate but cumbersome accounting methods of the Exchequer were not suited to the inevitable confusion of a campaign.
It was through the Wardrobe that the Welsh wars were organized, and the system was continued in most of the later campaigns of the reign, with paymasters and victuallers acting under the direction of the wardrobe staff. The expansion of this branch of the royal household was first pointed out by Tout, but, understandably, administrative historians have been more concerned to unravel the office routines and the details of accounting practice than to examine the ways in which troops were actually paid and fed.[523]
The men who headed Edward’s Wardrobe were among the most important civil servants in the whole royal service, and their part in the organization of war was absolutely vital. Unfortunately their activities were scarcely noticed by the chroniclers, and as a result little can be discovered about their personalities. If the voluminous records of the department contain a great deal of information which throws light on the day-to-day travels of these men, they are rarely of assistance in revealing the way in which decisions were made and political difficulties resolved.
The first Keeper of the Wardrobe in the reign was Antony Bek, later to gain great prominence and wealth as bishop of Durham. It was merely a temporary appointment, and from 1274 to 1280 the post was held by his brother Thomas, who appears to have run the department with efficiency but did not leave any mark of note. Although the Bek brothers were of aristocratic origin, the wardrobe staff during the rest of the reign were nearly all men of no great social standing. William of Louth, Thomas Bek’s chief clerk, was initially employed by him personally rather than by the crown, but when Bek was appointed to the bishopric of St. Davids Louth became Keeper of the Wardrobe.[524] Well spoken of by the chroniclers,[525] it was very possibly due to his initiative that the department began to make up its records in the form of books rather than rolls: the earliest such document dates from 1286.[526] Louth was succeeded in 1290 by Walter Langton, who had served in the department since 1282 and was a former clerk of Robert Burnell’s. He had been responsible for drawing up the special account for the Welsh war of 1282, and had served as cofferer when the Wardrobe accompanied the king to Gascony in 1286. Langton was later accused of strangling his mistress’s husband with her assistance, and though this charge was not proved, his private conduct was certainly questionable. There is no doubt that he used his official position for his personal advancement, building up an impressive fortune in land by the techniques of maintenance and champerty.[527] When he was arrested on the orders of Edward II in 1307, valuables worth almost £5,000 were found in his manors, and the value of his lands was estimated at some £1,300 a year.[528] But if not remarkable for his integrity, he was a man of ability and energy, and his five-year tenure of the Keepership of the Wardrobe was influential. During this period the arrangement of the account books was changed from a rather incoherent chronological form to a well-organized analytical system, in which the accounts of the various wardrobe offices were clearly distinguished.[529] Another side of Langton’s activity is revealed by a letter written later by the king to Boniface VIII in defence of his minister in which Edward attributed his unpopularity in part to his action in reforming the royal household by dismissing useless personnel.[530]
When Langton was promoted from the Wardrobe in 1295 and as Treasurer came to play what was virtually the rôle of prime minister in the last ten years of Edward I’s reign, the Keepership of the Wardrobe was entrusted to John Droxford. A man of importance, though not of Langton’s calibre, surprisingly little is known of him personally. He first came into royal service when the king was in Gascony, and rose rapidly in the hierarchy to become Controller of the Wardrobe by 1290.[531] As Keeper, he was a regular member of the council, one of the small group of men playing an important part in the determination of royal policy, and on occasion replacing Langton when the Treasurer was abroad defending his dubious personal character. Although Droxford’s activities were too multifarious for it to be possible to provide a comprehensive sketch, a good indication of his rôle is provided by the account of a journey he undertook in the summer of 1304. Leaving the court at Stirling on 17 June he went first to York, where the Exchequer was, to hasten the despatch of money for the army. Supplies were also needed, so he then rode to Boston in Lincolnshire to hurry up the purveyors there. Next he toured southern England collecting funds from papal taxation, going to such monastic houses as Oseney, Reading and Hyde, ending up at Canterbury. Then he went to Amesbury to see the king’s daughter Mary, who was a nun there, and escorted her to Windsor. Moving to London, Droxford met Langton and discussed affairs of state with him. By September he was back at court in the neighbourhood of Newcastle.[532] Such energy was typical of the man.
Though he was not as blatantly corrupt as Langton, Droxford was not above using his official position to try to obtain what he wanted, as the Cofferer of the Wardrobe, Walter Bedwin, discovered in 1307. His superior was trying ‘par force de sa seigneurie’ to obtain a prebend for his brother Roger which Bedwin claimed as an appurtenance of his office as treasurer of St. Peter’s, York. However, Bedwin was assured by a correspondent that he was in the stronger position, as Langton supported him, and therefore he had nothing to fear from Droxford’s intrigues.[533] The incident is a fascinating revelation of the private relationships between men who appear from the official records to be cogs meshing in perfect alignment.
Some of the other wardrobe officials were of great significance. One of the Controllers, William March, who held the office from 1283 to 1290, subsequently became Treasurer, and despite the unpopularity of the seizure of private treasure that had been deposited in churches which took place in 1294 and for which he was held responsible, was later, though unsuccessfully, put up as a candidate for canonization.[534] John Benstead, Controller from 1295 until 1305, was virtually the king’s secretary, and was on one occasion termed by Edward ‘our clerk who stays continually by our side’.
His most important duty was custody of the privy seal, but he was also employed as a diplomat. Not long after the king’s death Benstead resigned his clerical orders, married, and became a royal justice.[535]
The main concern of the Controllers of the Wardrobe was with the privy seal and the clerical business of the department. More important on the financial side was the office of Cofferer. Louth, March, Langton and Droxford all served a term as Cofferer.[536] The most important of the cofferers in the later years of the reign was Ralph Manton, who held the post from 1297 until 1303. It was he, if any one man can be singled out, who was the chief army paymaster. He also often acted as Droxford’s deputy, in particular taking over the chore of accounting from the Keeper. Early in 1303 he was surprised by the enemy when in the company of John de Segrave at Roslin, south of Edinburgh. According to the chronicler Langtoft he tried to buy his safety from his captor, the former household knight Simon Fraser. But Fraser rebuked him, saying that he had betrayed the king who had appointed him paymaster, and had cheated Fraser and many others, giving them tallies and bills in lieu of cash, which they had still not succeeded in exchanging for coin. He also pointed out that Manton’s military garb was hardly suitable for a cleric.[537] Fraser’s accusation was not without point. As the administration frequently did not have the cash to pay wages, the Wardrobe had to issue creditors with bills or debentures, and Manton’s seal appears very frequently on these. Fraser himself had been issued with one to a value of £20, which evidently he had had great difficulty in cashing, as a special mandate was issued ordering payment to be made to him.[538] And Manton certainly had a retinue more fitting for a knight than for a clerk, consisting in 1300 of five squires.[539] His successor in the Wardrobe was Walter Bedwin, one of his subordinates.
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