The Black Prince

by David Green

  The consequences of the battle were momentous. It immediately became apparent that the alliance would not last for long. Fractures began to appear over the question of prisoners, many of whom Pedro, being a political pragmatist, wished to execute and whom the Black Prince, in all but one case, being an impecunious knight, wished to ransom. The marshal Audrehem had been taken prisoner by the Black Prince at the battle of Poitiers, a ransom fixed and he swore to be a loyal prisoner and not to take up arms against the prince or his father until the ransom was paid unless he fought in the company of the king of France or one of the princes of the fleur de lys. The ransom had not been fully paid when in 1367 he fought in the company of du Guesclin and Trastamara and was again captured and charged with treason. Since the prince was personally involved he convened a court of twelve knights to hear the case. The laws of knighthood before this court bound the prince and Audrehem equally, but the judges had been chosen by the prince not to hear a case of arbitration but a criminal trial. Audrehem’s defence was that he had not armed himself against the prince but Pedro, and on the basis of this argument he was acquitted. Matters such as this provided legal precedence and this case was used as evidence in the Parlement of Paris twenty-three years later.71

  Around this time, the prince began to succumb to the illness, variously although uncertainly diagnosed as dropsy and amoebic dysentery, that would lay him low and eventually claim his life. His army was also suffering with dysentery and probably malaria and had limited supplies. As wage bills rose, attempts were made to ensure that Pedro kept his part of the bargain but he could do little until he established his regime. Relations worsened as Pedro attempted to renegotiate the stipulations of Libourne and refused to make the required territorial concessions. Eventually, the sums were reassessed and agreed at a ceremony in Burgos cathedral on 2 May and Pedro’s daughters remained as hostages in Gascony. Efforts were made to raise funds through loans and taxation as Pedro certainly wanted to be rid of the prince and the Companies who were becoming particularly restive and as time passed and supplies lessened some even considered the chance of continuing employment in Castile, communicating with Enrique with advice that he not begin another campaign while the prince was still in the country. The prince opened negotiatons with Pere of Aragon with a view to seizing Castile, the ambassadors being William Elmham and Hugh Calveley, now something of an expert in Iberian affairs. Events prevented such an attempt; Pedro advised the prince that it was impossible for him to raise the necessary money while the prince and his army were still present, and more significantly Edward learned of the likelihood of Enrique attacking Aquitaine. In the middle of August, the army began to withdraw and returned to Aquitaine, soon to fracture.72

  The prince’s interests in Castile did not end when he re-crossed the Pyrenees.

  … until his eventual return to England, the prince … was continuously engaged in intense diplomatic negotiations with various Iberian rulers, the aim of which was to mount another military invasion of Castile, in alliance with them. One of its chief purposes was to secure the Castilian crown for himself.73

  7

  The Reconquest of Aquitaine (1368–71)

  In 1368, the prince’s reputation was at its height, confirmed militarily by Nájera and founded on a glorious principality in Gascony alongside his English demesne. It was also founded on the close circles of the military retinue, the knights of the prince’s household and the administrators that governed his estates.1 The Black Prince’s retinue grew with his appointment as earl of Chester, duke of Cornwall and prince of Wales. It was tempered in the Crécy campaign and came into its own ten years later at the battle of Poitiers. It was, without doubt, one of the most significant groups in late medieval England and included some of the most fêted individuals from the years that marked the high point of England’s European reputation.

  Men were drawn to the prince’s service because of the potential financial rewards and his growing military reputation. Furthermore, he was the heir apparent and, as such, his influence at court was considerable and could be used to bring his servants and retainers to the attention of that greatest of patrons, the king, an office and dignity which would, in time, be held by Edward of Woodstock. This not only made the Black Prince an attractive employer but it dictated the make-up of his retinue and was evident in the manner by which he recruited and rewarded its members.

  The nature of the prince’s demesne also influenced the complement of his retinue. Wales, Cheshire and Cornwall were not areas rich in highly influential members of the aristocracy who could bring their own followings within a greater affinity. Therefore, although the prince did recruit heavily within his own demesne, the retinue was by no means exclusively made up of those from the west. Rather men were drawn to his service from throughout the country, and perhaps surprisingly, a significant number of prominent individuals came from or had close connections in East Anglia, particularly Norfolk. The prince’s only tenurial interests in the county were at Castle Rising and he also had rights to the tollbooth at Lynn. The region certainly did not have the martial, indeed the aggressive, reputation of Cheshire or Wales but it was there that the Black Prince found some of his most loyal and militarily active servants.2

  War was the primary purpose of the retinue and the strategic and tactical manner in which it operated in the field was critical to the prince’s military success. The prince benefited from the inclusion in his retinue of a number of skilled and experienced soldiers as well as others who were involved in his expeditions or assigned to him by the king. The 1355–6 campaigns provide the best example of the operation of the command ranks in the field. James Audley, Chandos, Baldwin Botetourt and, occasionally, Bartholomew Burghersh ‘were the prince’s handy men for field work, Richard Stafford was assigned to special tasks … Wingfield … [was] … “head of the office” and that these men who [knew] one another [well], formed a group bound by friendly relations to one another and by common loyalty to their chief; they were part of the “permanent staff ‘’.’3

  Such men as these were at the heart of the prince’s armies and the divisions he led in the royal campaigns of 1346 and 1359–60. Their importance, strategically and tactically, was emphasised on numerous occasions. This is particularly evident in the chevauchées of 1355–6 and at Poitiers where the earl of Warwick and Reginald Cobham led the vanguard with John Beauchamp, Roger Clifford and Thomas Hampton, the standard-bearer. The main body was under the command of the prince with Oxford, Burghersh, Willoughby d’Eresby, Roger de la Warre, Maurice Berkeley, John Bourchier, the captal de Buch, the sire de Caumont, Montferrand and Thomas Roos, mayor of Bordeaux. The rearguard was commanded by Suffolk and Salisbury with Guillaume de Pommiers.4 When Armagnac’s army came within nine miles of the English rearguard near Carbonne the prince wrote

  At this we marched towards them, sending on Bartholomew Burghersh, John Chandos, James Audley, Baldwin Botetourt and Thomas Felton and others … to get definite information about the enemy. They rode on towards the enemy until they came to a town where they found two hundred of the latter’s men at arms, with whom they fought and captured thirty-five of them. This made the enemy retreat in great fear.5

  All apart from Audley held posts in the household or administration in addition to their military offices and he later held office in Aquitaine. The retinue was thus composed of individuals with vested interests in the prince’s success in a number of areas, and were similarly driven by the need to finance the campaigns. What has been said of the victory at Poitiers can be said of the prince’s military career in its entirety and the reverse may be said of certain aspects of his political and diplomatic style: ‘[a]t the core of the English success was the good working relationship between the prince, his chief officers and their men, a relationship which … evolved during the … weeks of campaigning, but which hinged on the presence around the prince of a group of tried and trusted knights. To them, as a group, belongs credit for the victory; to the prince belongs credit
as primus inter pares.’6

  The purpose of the prince’s retinue was primarily military. It goes without saying that an army was expensive, that it needed supplies, food, horses, arms, armour and, during this period of increasing professionalism, it needed to be paid. The prince was supported in all his campaigns except the Spanish expedition by the royal exchequer, but a very considerable bill still had to be met from his own resources. Thus, his estates, rights and other sources of income needed to be exploited, collected and maximized. Such duties were also the tasks of the retinue. Household and administrative offices throughout the prince’s extensive demesnes provided additional employment for many members of the prince’s retinue. In some cases, such as John Chandos’ appointment as master-forester of Cheshire, the posts were simply sinecures to reward past and future military service, but others undertook important duties, which directly or indirectly sustained military operations and the grandeur of the prince’s household. Their efforts were not always adequate and this became particularly apparent in 1359 when, despite the ransoms and booty taken at Poitiers, in preparation for the Reims campaign, Edward had to take out loans of at least £21,350. His creditors included Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel,7 the Malabayala family,8 assorted members of the lay and episcopal aristocracy9 and members of the London merchant community.10 Of this sum, Sir John Wingfield, governor of the prince’s business, negotiated a loan of 20,000 marks.11 As a consequence violence or the capacity for violence – perhaps more correctly the prowess of the knight, the skill at arms of the infantryman or archer – was not the only criterion by which the prince recruited. Wingfield, for example, was a knight who fought with the prince in 1355 and at Poitiers, but his value was far greater as an administrator and financier than in the front line.

  Certain members of the retinue also played a role on the domestic political stage. A survey of parliamentary members in the retinue throughout the prince’s adult life reveals 36 or 37 individuals who sat in the Commons of which three represented two different constituencies. This is a very considerable number but does not necessarily indicate that there was a deliberate ‘Westminster’ policy.12 The presence of individuals in the Commons may not have been the consequence of a calculated strategy. The prince recruited widely and among men of high calibre, it is no surprise that a number of these sat in parliament. In accordance with the extended geographical character of the retinue, the prince retained or had links to men who sat in constituencies throughout the country. He does not appear to have ‘swamped’ any particular regions with his familiars, although Norfolk, Herefordshire and Cornwall tended to return members who can be associated with the prince on a fairly regular basis. The majority, although by no means all the appointments were dated to the last decade of the prince’s life. This may indicate an increasing interest in domestic politics but there is little evidence to corroborate this. More probably, these years marked a period in which the members in question were older, more respected in county society, less militarily active and thus more likely to take up seats in the Commons.

  The means of recruitment to the prince’s retinue are something of a ‘grey area’. It is uncertain how or if individuals were approached or if they directly sought the prince’s patronage. It can be supposed that ‘word of mouth’, local influence, family ties, nepotism and military and administrative experience all had a part to play. The prince’s retinue formed something of a core and model among the great bastard feudal associations of the day and the opportunities for overlapping military and administrative service among the great affinities and retinues of the day were very great. The inter-relation of the royal households of Edward III and Richard II, the Lancastrian affinity of both Grosmont and Gaunt, and the Black Prince’s retinue shows the fluidity of service between these institutions. This is in no way surprising, especially if the prince is viewed as the future Edward IV and his retinue as the king’s household in waiting. It must be remembered that the knightly community was small and closely connected on a number of levels and through a variety of vertical and horizontal associations.

  As there were only four major campaigns to speak of in twenty-one years, the role of the retinue was governed by extended periods of peace and truce even as it was shaped by the hostilities. In the ‘close season’, some of the retinue fought elsewhere, with Chandos and the captal de Buch in Brittany, some with du Guesclin in Spain. Others sat on commissions of array, of oyer and terminer, as members of Parliament, and as such, they cared for their master’s interests and those of fellow members of his retinue. Others saw diplomatic service further abroad. Political, household, diplomatic and military service in the retinue of Edward the Black Prince were within the broad range of national policy and also reflected trends and practices evident among other contemporary ‘bastard feudal’ associations. However, the retinue itself was different, being in some aspects anachronistic, particularly in its structure, and yet in other ways, highly innovative. It combined facets of innovative bastard feudal practices by its ‘artificiality’, its distance from its tenurial roots, with the practices and traditions of earlier times.13

  While the ‘synthetic’ nature of the retinue contributed to its success, the same could not be said of the principality of Aquitaine – an almost fictional political entity. A typical account of the failure of the principality attributes it to the poor relations between the prince and his nobles, the financial exactions demanded of them and their vassals and the arrogance displayed by the English officials who governed as if they were in occupied territory. But of course they were, and for the most part this was not a Gascon revolt but an Aquitainian one.

  The economic foundations of the principality of Aquitaine had always been, at best, shaky. The years in which Gascon revenues were accounted as being as valuable if not more so than all English Crown lands were long gone. The principal wealth of the duchy was based on viticulture and by the 1360s wine exports were at less than half pre-war levels. Furthermore, and somewhat ironically, peace may not have been a beneficial economic state. The ‘war dividend’ had taken a number of forms. First, the spoils of war had been considerable, certainly for a number of Gascon captains who in their turn contributed a considerable, if unquantifiable, amount to the local Gascon economy. Secondly, the duchy had been and remained the focus of the quarrel that led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War, and the consequent military activity had encouraged a variety of ‘secondary industries’ to develop in support of the war effort. These included the Bordeaux armourers, the iron-founders of Bayonne and the financiers that dealt in loot and ransoms. For those involved in such activities, the end of hostilities brought limited benefits.

  Alongside the economic decline of the duchy, the new principality could not depend on support from the Crown. After a large subsidy prior to Edward’s departure for the principality, there were no payments to the Gascon exchequer until the reopening of hostilities. The principality was to be self-sufficient, but the effects of war, plague and administrative confusion during the period of the handover meant that the estimated value, could never be realised. The Grand Custom (grande coutume) on wine, traditionally the major source of revenue, was at a low point and the governmental ‘perks’ of war, in terms of confiscations of land and property from ‘traitors’ and the defeated, that had previously covered the shortfall were no longer available. In addition, expenditure, with the arrival of the prince, ballooned.

  Sumption estimates that the prince’s household expenditure averaged about £10,000 per annum.14 It is difficult to be certain about this due to the nature of the composite account enrolled by Richard Fillongley in 1370–1, the only evidence for principality finances. Fillongley’s account notes the prince’s household expenses during the time of office of Hugh Berton and Alan Stokes (treasurers of the wardrobe) as being 211,773 l.g. (approx. £41,800) which was nearly half the income of the principality (445,849 l.g., approx. £88,070).

  On this basis the prince’s household expenses were generally in lin
e with those expected of a great magnate, about half his annual income. However, the figures recorded in Fillongley’s account only deal with the period of Berton’s and Stokes’ treasurerships (at most from c.1359–c.1365). If the account deals with a period of approximately five years, then average annual household expenditure in Bordeaux was nearly £8,400 but judging by the tenure of the treasurers, it seems that the prince was only resident in Aquitaine for two of them. Details are not included of the treasurership of John Carleton, from c.1365. Fillongley’s figures only allow him about £8,000 before going into ‘the red’, less than one year’s expenditure at average levels over the last five years. There can be little doubt that this average was much lower than the true amount the prince spent and that Carleton had to fund annual expenditure on the court at a much higher level. It is possible, although unlikely that the account only covers the period from c.1363–6 and consequently annual household expenditure could have been somewhere in the region of £20,000.15

  The reason (or excuse) for the rebellion that was to lead to the resumption of the war and the collapse of the principality was taxation, specifically the fouage levied in 1368. Taxation had always been a thorny problem in Gascony; even in the 1340s, the English had never been able to institute a regular system. However, the hearth tax was by no means a new imposition in southern France and had been exacted by Armagnac as lieutenant of Languedoc on a number of occasions and often at a higher rate. Additional taxes were also demanded for the ransom of King Jean after Poitiers as well as the gabelle, the salt tax.16 Under the prince’s regime direct taxation accounted for 36 per cent of income and, until 1368, it generated comparatively little opposition. In June 1364, the prince had levied a fouage, with the approval of the Estates of Aquitaine as a rate of 3s. 4d. In September of the following year it was again imposed, at half that rate (1s. 10d.). Following the (financial) debacle of the Nájera campaign, the Estates voted for an annual tax of 2s. for an indeterminate period in return for certain concessions.17 The nominal yield on a 2s. tax was £5,400. Pedro’s recalculated debt to the prince was about £385,000 (2,720,000 florins) which would require this level of imposition to continue for something over 71 years if that was the only outlet for the taxation. Froissart attributed the plan to John Harewell, chancellor of Aquitaine.18