by Charles Ross
This is not to suggest that he did not still rely in many important respects on the goodwill and cooperation of the baronage. Yet the function of the aristocracy was seen as essentially the upholding of royal authority and the maintenance of order in the provinces. The drivingforce of government came from the king at the centre, and it was the men of the royal household (among them some of the ‘new Yorkist’ peers like Hastings and Howard) who could best implement policies expressive of the king’s prerogative and directly produced by his own decisions. In constant contact with the king personally, and enjoying his confidence and favour, they became the chief agents of the king’s personal rule.
The royal household entourage (excluding the domestic departments ‘below stairs’) was never very large, numbering some 250–300 at the beginning of the reign, with a modest increase later. The inner ring of knights and esquires of the body, who were politically employed, expanded more noticeably. In 1468 there were ten knights of the body, in 1471 about twenty, and probably thirty by 1483, and there was a similar increase in the numbers of esquires, who totalled between thirty and forty at the end of the reign.1 Above them in rank and importance were the senior officers of the household. Its official head was the steward, normally a nobleman. The first two stewards, William Nevill, earl of Kent, and John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester, were often absent from court on other duties, but their successors, the earl of Essex (1467–71) and Lord Stanley (1471–83), were probably much less involved in outside activities. In any event all were much in the royal confidence and prominent in the council. The office of chamberlain was held throughout the reign by Lord Hastings. The effective head of the household was its treasurer, whose official standing is illustrated by the fact that when the steward was absent he was to have the rank of an earl, and when he himself was away from court, he had a daily subsistence allowance of 20s, the same as the keeper of the privy seal. The treasurer, like the controller of the household, was normally a knight, like Sir John Fogge, treasurer from 1461 to 1467, and Sir John Scott, controller 1461–70.1 With the development of the household as revenue-collecting and spending department, the offices of cofferer and treasurer of the chamber became increasingly influential. These again were held by gentry or men of humble origin, such as Sir John Elrington, cofferer from 1471 to 1474, and Sir Thomas Vaughan, treasurer of the chamber from 1465 to the end of the reign. The ways in which these men served the king other than in their household duties varied considerably, but most were active outside the household, and their role may best be illustrated by example.
One of the most energetic, successful and well rewarded of the Yorkist administrator-politicians was Sir John Howard, of Stoke-by-Nayland in Suffolk. In his range of interests and versatility of talents he foreshadows the Renaissance courtiers of Tudor England. Knighted after the battle of Towton, he became the first Yorkist sheriff of Norfolk on 6 March 1461, and in July was appointed to the privileged position of king’s carver, with a salary of £40 a year, as well as being made constable of Norwich and Colchester Castles (offices which doubled his slender income from land). In 1463 he took part in the northern campaign at the siege of Alnwick and then held a naval command as deputy to the earl of Kent over the English fleet which raided the French coast. In 1467–8 he sat in parliament as M.P. for Suffolk. From 1467–71 he was treasurer of the royal household, combining this position with diplomatic work in connection with Lady Margaret’s Burgundian marriage and membership of the king’s council from February 1468. In 1470 he commanded a fleet at sea against the Hansards and later against Warwick and the Bastard of Fauconbeig. After lying low during Edward’s exile, he emerged to join him in London in April 1471, and probably fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Soon after, he was Lord Hastings’s deputy at Calais and went there with him to subdue the rebellious garrison. He played a leading part in the negotiations with Louis of France during the campaign of 1475, remained behind as a hostage, and thereafter became Edward’s agent in the intensive diplomatic negotiations with Louis (with whom he was clearly in high esteem) right up to the final despairing attempts to stave off the Treaty of Arras in the autumn of 1482. In the previous year he had commanded the English fleet which ravaged the Firth of Forth.
All this was combined with a good deal of activity in East Anglia, where he frequently acted on commissions of array, commissions to arrest rebels and rioters, to bring men before the king and council, to seize men and ships for the king’s fleets, and to investigate the evasion of statutes, and a number of major commissions of oyer and terminer; and in 1480 he was one of the six royal councillors deputed to investigate a major clash between the abbey and townsmen of Bury St Edmunds. Royal favour greatly increased his local influence, and in southern East Anglia, and especially along the Essex seaboard, he became a great power in the land. His local standing was of considerable military value to the king. Probably long before he inherited his share of the estates of the Mowbray dukedom of Norfolk, he could turn out a force approaching the thousand men he supplied in 1483 to Richard III. That king obviously thought his support worth buying at a very high price. Like Edward himself, Howard also owned and managed a considerable fleet of ships – at least fourteen can be identified as his during the reign – some of which were later sold to the king for service in the royal navy.
His loyal and active service to King Edward brought him rich rewards. The lands granted to him in East Anglia could scarcely have been worth less than £300 a year, and as early as 1464 his influence at court was earning him another £81 a year in fees paid to him by private persons, which were greatly augmented after 1475 by the favours shown to him by Louis of France. Towards the end of the reign he was obviously a very wealthy man. In 1481 he was able to afford £12 for a Christmas present to William, Lord Hastings, and could finance the education of four poor boys at Cambridge. His career illustrates the way in which personal service to the king might enrich a man and increase his influence, but it also shows how varied and continuous was the service demanded by his master. The successful Yorkist civil servant had to be a man of great energy and considerable ability.1
A similar lesson (at a slightly lower level of success) might be drawn from the careers of two of Edward’s controllers of the household, Sir John Scott (1461–70) and Sir William Parr (1471–4 and 1481–3). Like his fellow Kentishman, Scott was one of the group of faithful servants who served the king throughout his reign. Between 1461 and 1470 he was especially active on commissions in Kent, where royal favour in the form of offices, grants of land, and wardships steadily increased his influence. In 1467 he was sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret of York, and in 1468 he was one of those who accompanied the bride on her way to Bruges. From May 1469 until February 1470 he was away from court negotiating with the Hanse in Flanders. He also sat as M.P. for Kent in the parliament of 1467–8. He may have shared Edward’s exile, certainly fought at Barnet, and played a leading part in suppressing the rebellion in Kent of 1471. Though he held no household office after 1471, he continued to serve the king actively as councillor, commissioner in Kent, marshal of Calais, where he was left in charge during the invasion of 1475, as a member of the council of the prince of Wales, and as a diplomat. His presence in the parliament of 1472–5 for the Westmorland borough of Appleby, with which he had no personal connection, shows the government using its influence to put reliable and substantial supporters into the commons when their backing was needed.1
His successor, Sir William Parr, from Kendal in Westmorland, performed local service like Scott’s at the other end of the realm. Knight of the shire for Westmorland in 1467–8 and 1472–5, and for Cumberland in 1478, sheriff of Westmorland for life after 1475, and deputy to the duke of Gloucester in Carlisle and the West March, he was one of the government’s chief supporters in the north-west, along with his brother, Sir John Parr, king’s knight and master of the horse to Edward by 1472. Both were former connections of the earl of Warwick, who had committed their fortunes to Edward in 1471 soon after his land
ing, and had fought for him at Barnet and Tewkesbury; and William’s appointment soon after as controller may have been connected with that fact. His diplomatic experience was specialized in extensive negotiations with the Scots, and it was perhaps his acquaintance with Scots and Border affairs which led to his reappointment as controller in 1481 when relations with Scotland were deteriorating into open war. He was one of the two household men – the other was Sir Thomas Montgomery – to be elected as a Knight of the Garter in the second half of the reign.2
Below the great officers of the household came a much larger group, all of whom performed services to the king. They included the king’s carvers and sewers (together six in number), the knights and esquires of the body already mentioned, and the king’s knights and esquires, who occupied slightly less honourable positions in the hierarchy, though only about a half would have been on duty at any one time.1 These men had a dual function. In the household’s domestic organization they carved the king’s meat, poured his wine, helped dress and undress him, brought food to the royal table, and attended and watched his person by day and night, each according to his degree. But they also had a wider political function. According to the ‘Black Book’ of Edward’s household, they were ‘by the advice of his council to be chosen men of their possession [i.e. men of means], worship and wisdom; also to be of sundry shires, by whom it may be known the disposition of the countries’ (i.e. shires or regions).2 Their careers show that in practice they formed one of the chief links between court and country, more especially since the ‘shift-system’ allowed them to alternate between their duties about the king and their own local interests.3
Some of these men were relatives of the king, such as Thomas Bourchier and Thomas Grey, his cousins, and Thomas St Leger, his brother-in-law. Others were kinsmen of more prominent royal servants, like John, Lord Howard’s son, Thomas, the future earl of Surrey, William, Lord Hastings’s brother, Sir Ralph, and William, Lord Herbert’s brother, Thomas Herbert, esquire. The majority of king’s knights and king’s esquires belonged to established landowning families. Men like Thomas Sturgeon, the son of a London mercer, who became master of the ordnance, or Thomas Prout, a man of obscure origin who rose from king’s servitor to king’s esquire but never sat in parliament, are rare. Most were members of the county establishment, who normally not only served as sheriffs and justices of the peace but also sat in parliament for shire rather than borough seats. Of the twenty-two men named in the household ordinance of 1471 as knights or esquires of the body or king’s carvers or cupbearers, all but four can be followed through their careers: of these eighteen, fifteen were knights of the shire at one time or another.4 At least thirty such men sat in parliament during the reign, and the number may well have been much higher in fact, because so many returns of M.P.s are lacking. In the parliament of 1472–5 they represented between them as many as eleven counties. They were also prominent on commissions of array and other key commissions in the counties, especially in times of political crisis.1 They were also important as providers of troops for the king’s personal following, and made a most substantial contribution to the 1475 invasion army.2 Rarely of sufficient importance to sit on the king’s council, they nevertheless served Edward as constables of royal castles, stewards or officials in royal lordships, and commissioners to deal with a wide variety of business within their own areas of local influence.
As with others who served Edward well, their rewards were considerable. A typical example of a successful king’s knight is Sir John Pilkington, of Chevet Hall near the royal lordship of Wakefield in Yorkshire. A member of a cadet branch of the important Lancashire family of that name, his services during the crisis of 1460–61 were rewarded with his appointment as an esquire of the body, in July 1461, with a fee of 50 marks a year, and he was made constable of Berkhamsted Castle and controller of tonnage and poundage in the port of London. Substantial grants of forfeited Lancastrian estates followed in the 1460s. Imprisoned in 1470 for his loyalty to Edward, he was knighted by the king at Tewkesbury, and enriched by further grants of land and office in the years which followed. Shordy before he died in 1478, he was wealthy enough to found his own chantry in the parish church of Wakefield, and to secure a licence to fortify his new-built hall at Chevet and three other North-Country houses; and his estates were valued after his death at £ 213 yearly, at least double their worth before Edward’s accession.3
To the king the value of these men lay also in their political reliability. As a group, they showed a high degree of political loyalty to their master. Some shared his Burgundian exile, and an impressive number fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury.4 Their loyalty survived his death, for they were also prominent amongst the leaders of the 1483 rebellion against Richard III, a king who had deposed, and was presumed to have murdered, Edward’s legitímate heir.1 It is to Edward’s credit that he could inspire both loyalty and devoted service from all who knew him well. It is true that this was a mercenary age, and service was rewarded generously, but it would be unwise to ignore the importance of Edward’s personal charm and leadership in extracting such hard work and devotion from his servants.
Yet events were to prove that there were serious weaknesses in the structure of this royal affinity which Edward built around his person. Knights and gentry in the king’s service formed only a comparatively small group amongst the English gentry as a whole. By contrast with the earlier Lancastrian kings, Edward IV spent comparatively little money on retaining the services and the loyalty of gentry who did not come to court. There has survived ‘a list of fees and wages granted out of the Crown to divers folk by king Edward IV, whom God pardon’, reflecting his expenditure of this kind at the end of his reign.2 Together they total £9,164. Much of it went on the salaries of the officers of state and the judges, such as the chancellor’s £420, the keeper of the privy seal’s £365, and the £215 paid to the chief justice of the king’s bench; there were also the fees and rewards of a number of chancery and exchequer officials. There are a few payments which appear to be annuities, among them £107 17s 4d to the king’s mother, Duchess Cecily, 300 marks to Earl Rivers, 200 marks to another royal brother-in-law, Thomas, Lord Maltravers, and 100 marks to John, Lord Dinham. Almost all the remainder is taken up by the wages and fees of the king’s household staff, heralds and pursuivants, seijeants-at-arms, minstrels, trumpeters, yeomen of the Crown and of the chamber, and an occasional senior officer like the king’s secretary, Oliver King. Another list gives the fees and wages of officers of the Duchy of Lancaster for 1482–3 totalling a further £1,391.3 All this represents, however, essentially a wages bill, not expenditure on annuities. There is no sign of anything comparable with Henry IV’s massive expenditure of £24,000 on annuities alone in 1400. Such retaining fees absorbed nearly £9,000 of the Duchy of Lancaster revenues in the early years of Henry’s reign.1
Consequently Edward IV did not command anything comparable with the great ‘Lancastrian connection’ recently analysed by Dr A. L. Brown, which included no fewer than two hundred retainers who normally stayed at home in their shires and had no close personal connection with the king.2 Lancastrian expenditure on retaining, it has been argued, was justified because ‘it created the political following which enabled Henry of Lancaster to usurp the throne and keep it in the upheavals which followed’, and after 1399 the Crown became the centre of bastard feudalism ‘because the king’s own affinity was far greater and stronger than that of any of his supporters’.3 The House of York had never had such a connection, and Edward IV as king did not seriously attempt to create one. In his first decade he used the extensive resources of his patronage to buy baronial support, particularly in his attempt to create a ‘new Yorkist’ peerage. But even after 1471 he was not much concerned to extend and expand the king’s affinity amongst the substantial gentry of England. His affinity remained strongly court-centred, and in 1483 its members were not strong enough to control the dissensions amongst the Yorkist nobility.4 Richard of Gloucester came to power at
the head of a largely independent affinity, inherited from Warwick and the Nevills, and firmly rooted in the north of England.
1 A. L. Brown, ‘The King’s Councillors in Fifteenth-Century England’, TRHS, 5th ser., xix (1959), 95–118, and for recent work on the Yorkist council, see especially the two valuable papers by J. R. Lander, ‘The Yorkist Council and Administration’, EHR, lxxxiii (1958), 27–46, where the problems of the evidence are fully discussed, and ‘Council, Administration and Councillors, 1461–85’, BIHR, xxxii (1959), 137–78. These largely supersede the discussions in such older works as J. F. Baldwin, The King’s Council in England in the Middle Ages (1913), 419 ff. For some comment on the judicial work of the council, see below, pp. 402–3.
2 Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors’, 151, 158; Brown, op. cit., 116. The figure of 105 excludes 19 persons named as councillors only in connection with diplomatic negotiations.
1 Below, pp. 319–22; and on the general point, Brown, op. cit., 116–17.
2 The exception was William Grey, bishop of Ely.
3 Brown, op. cit., 117. The majority of lords were equally reluctant to attend parliament regularly: J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, BIHR, xxix (1956), 153–204.
1 Lander, ‘Council, Administration and Councillors’, 159–60.
2 They include Hastings, Herbert, Ferrers, Dinham, Mountjoy and Humphrey Stafford.