the beauchamp earls of warwick, 1268-1369
TRANSCRIPT
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THE BEAUCHAMP EARLS OF WARWICK, 1268-‐1369 by
SEBASTIAN BARFIELD
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts of The University of Birmingham for the degree
of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Medieval History School of History Faculty of Arts University of Birmingham July 1997
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Abstract This is an original thesis, which traces the history of the Beauchamp family, from the time they gained the earldom of Warwick in 1268 to the death of earl Thomas [I] in 1369. During these 101 years, the Beauchamp estates increased significantly, as did the families reputation. Chapter One follows the development of the family, focusing on the three Beauchamp earls, and examining to what extent their actions and personalities contributed to the family's success, as well as discussing the importance of other relatives. Chapter Two contains an overview of the families estates in this period, as well as a discussion of the various ways in which land was added to the estates, and an examination of the setbacks which occurred. Chapter Three is the most detailed of all, and is an examination of the nature and development of the bastard feudal networks in the midlands, to which the earls and their affinity belonged. It uses information contained in the Beauchamp cartulary to reconstruct the earls' affinities, and discusses the type of men the earls attracted to their retinue.
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Dedication
This thesis is dedicated to my parents, who supported me through to its completion.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the help of my supervisor, Prof.Chris Dyer, who has provided me with substantial assistance throughout my course of study, and I am very grateful to him for all he has done. I am also grateful to Dr. Robert Swanson, who helped me with some of the more daunting palaeographic problems which I encountered. I also wish to thank, the staff of Birmingham University Library, the Public Record Office, the British Library, as well as Miss Rachel MacGregor of the archive department of Birmingham's Central library for their helpful assistance.
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Table of Contents
Introduction 7 Chapter One: The Beauchamp family to 1369 12 Chapter Two: Land and Wealth 47 Chapter Three: Bastard Feudalism and the Beauchamps' affinity 90 Conclusion 153 Bibliography 157
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List of Illustrations
Map 1: The Beauchamp earls of Warwick's manors in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, 1268-‐1369 88 Map 2: The Principal manors of the Beauchamp earls of Warwick, outside Worcestershire and Warwickshire, 1268-‐1369 89
List of Genealogical Tables
Table i: The Beauchamps of Elmley 34 Table ii: The Beauchamp earls and their relations in the fourteenth century 35
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Introduction
William Beauchamp became the first of his family to hold the title of earl
of Warwick in 1268. From this time, up to middle of the fifteenth century, his
family were the most powerful lay landholders in Worcestershire and
Warwickshire, and influenced the course of British and European history both on
and off the battlefield. Whilst their historical importance has been acknowledged
by historians through the centuries, they have usually been cast in a supporting
role to the figures whom the historian has regarded as the protagonist; Guy
Beauchamp is usually seen by political historians of Edward II's reign as an
assistant of the earl of Lancaster, Earl Thomas II, the appellant, is likewise seen
as less of a figure in Richard II's opposition than the other appellants. Earl
William and the first Earl Thomas are remembered by military historians for
their deeds on the battlefield but for little else. When historians choose to
examine the Beauchamp family, they are invariably attracted to the later, better
documented period of the family's history. Sinclair, whose thesis The Beauchamp
Earls of Warwick in the later middle ages skims through the century of the first
three Beauchamp earls in the first chapter, devotes a whole chapter to the
twenty-‐year career of Richard Beauchamp, whilst using the rest of the thesis to
trace the administration and affinity of that earl and his father. C. D. Ross has
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done some work on the estates of Richard Beauchamp1, whilst there has also
been some examination of Earl Thomas II's control over the Warwickshire
shrievelty in the later fourteenth century2. Furthermore, Richard Beauchamp's
twenty-‐year hegemony of Warwickshire has been subject to the labours of Dr
Christine Carpenter, whose seminal work on Beauchamp's affinity and midlands
society in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, combined with the efforts of
other scholars, have practically made the need for any subsequent research into
this period redundant. The reason for this concentration upon the later
Beauchamp earls appears to be due to the wealth of documents, described by
MacFarlane as ‘particularly rich and varied’3, which are only full from the 1390s
onward. These documents include accounts of the earl's receiver-‐general, two
valors, and household day books as well as many other important manuscripts.
Using these sources, scholars, such as Ross and Sinclair, have been able to study
the day-‐to-‐day administration of the Beauchamp household and estates at the
beginning of the fifteenth century in considerable detail. Whilst the documents
that would allow us to do the same for the beginning of the fourteenth century
have been lost, this is not a reason for the serious historian to write off the first
century of the Beauchamp family's tenure of the earldom of Warwick. Although
we may not have the vivid, detailed sources with which historians of the later
history of the family are spoiled, there are still a number of important sources for
1C.D.Ross, The Estates and Finances of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, xii (Oxford, 1956) 2M.S.Varnom, ‘Crown and Local Government: Warwickshire under Richard II’, Warwickshire History, 4th ser., v (1980) 3K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 187
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the period 1268 to 1369, not least of which are a private cartulary and a set of
‘unusually detailed wills’4. The Beauchamp cartulary5, ‘one of the most important
of surviving English secular cartularies’6 is itself worthy of individual study;
containing 1,237 individual charters, it covers the period from the beginning of
the twelfth century until the year 1392. The 384 charters from the period 1100-‐
1268 have been transcribed and published7, but the majority of cartulary
remains untranscribed. For the study of the first three Beauchamp earls it is an
invaluable source, as over 700 of the charters cover the period 1268 to 1369.
Despite being compiled in 1395-‐6, the number of charters concerning the
acquisitions of Thomas II is minimal, with the result that well over half of the
cartulary is relevant to our period of study. Combined with the wills, patent,
close and fine rolls, as well as the odd chance surviving manuscript, we have a
large amount of source material at our disposal.
For the purposes of this study, I have examined the history of the
Beauchamp family from three separate angles. Chapter One takes a general,
biographical approach describing the exploits of the three earls and their
descendants, their impact upon the politics of the day, and their various
marriage alliances. This is the approach which most students of the Beauchamp
family have chosen to take for the period 1268 to 1369, as McFarlane does in his
chapter ‘The Beauchamps and the Staffords’8. The second chapter examines the 4ibid 5BL. Add. MS. 28024, hereafter referred to as BC 6The Beauchamp Cartulary Charters 1100-1268, ed. E.Mason, (Pipe Roll Soc., xliii, London, 1980), xiii 7The Beauchamp Cartulary Charters, 1100-1268 8K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973)
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fortunes of the family's estates in this period. The first century of Beauchamp
rule was one of considerable importance for the future of the family, as it saw a
great increase in the size of the Warwick estates. Whilst historians such as
Holmes have examined the estates of the Clare inheritance in our period, the
development and growth of the Beauchamp lands at this time was of profound
importance for future generations, given that it saw their patrimony and status
rise to elevate them from the bottom rung of the higher nobility in the later
thirteenth century, to the middle of the pack by 1369. A survey and examination
of the family's acquisitions has never been accurately compiled, and the second
chapter attempts to remedy this. It also seeks to look at the successes and
failures of the Beauchamps land policy at this time. The third, and most
extensive, chapter is an examination of the west midlands political community as
it stood under the first three Beauchamp earls and the ways in which the family
achieved control over it. I have used a considerable amount of data contained in
the Beauchamp cartulary to reconstruct the Beauchamp's affinity in an attempt
to investigate their local authority, what methods they used to achieve it, and
how it developed over the course of the century. In this respect I am following on
from some of Hilton's ideas from A Medieval Society where he examines the
whole spectrum of midlands society at the end of the thirteenth century,
although I have restricted myself to the upper levels of this society. The chapter
also connects to Carpenter's work on the affinity of Richard Beauchamp at the
beginning of the fifteenth century, as many of the practices which she observes at
that time developed during the period of the first three Beauchamp earls.
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The period between 1268 and 1369 was a crucial one in the history of the
family, and in many respects deserves more historical scrutiny than the family's
later history. It was a century of expansion and consolidation in which the family
saw a considerable increase in the size of their patrimony, and a period in which
they established a hold on national politics. It saw a gradual shift in the interests
of the earls from their traditional base in Worcestershire to their main caput
around Warwick. Furthermore it saw the consolidation of their influence over
midlands society, as they eventually established a hold over the offices of local
administration and maintained their control through a network of ‘bastard
feudal’ connections. All of these were relevant to the successes and failures of the
family after 1369.
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Chapter 1 : The Beauchamp family to 1369
Sir William, the first earl of Warwick from the Beauchamp family,
formally did homage for his lands on 9 February 12689. From the outset, this was
unusual; whereas most sons only received their inheritance on the death of their
father, it is evident that Earl William's father, William Beauchamp of Elmley, was
still alive at the time when his son acceded to the earldom; the will of the elder
William clearly refers to his son as the ‘earl of Warwick’10, and we also have an
undated charter in which the elder William Beauchamp concedes 20 librates of
land to his son, ‘William, earl of Warwick’11. William Beauchamp of Elmley had
the right to assume the title of earl himself, as had happened in similar
circumstances a generation earlier12, but chose to give the title to his eldest son.
Earl William had inherited his title from his uncle, William Mauduit, whose sister
Isabel had married William Beauchamp of Elmley, Earl William's father. It was
the union between William and Isabel which proved to be the making of the
Beauchamp fortunes, changing them from a strong family of regional significance
into one of the greatest English families of the later middle ages.
9G.E.Cokayne, ed., The Complete Peerage, revised by Vicary Gibbs et al. 12 vols. (London, 1910-57), xii pt2, 368 10Register of Bishop Giffard 1268-1301, ed. J.Willis-Bund (Worcs. Hist. Soc., Oxford, 1898-1902), 8 11BC, fol. 173v 12A.F.J.Sinclair, ‘The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the Later Middle Ages’ (London School of Economics Ph.D thesis, 1987) , 10. John de Plessis, earl of Warwick (1242-1263) had held the title from the inheritance of his wife.
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The Beauchamps, up to this time, were essentially a great Worcestershire
family. They derived their fortune from the marriage of their ancestor Walter
Beauchamp to the daughter of Urse D'Abitot, the ‘Conqueror's notorious sheriff
of Worcester’, around the year 111013. D'Abitot, along with his brother Robert,
had seized a great part of his land from the church in Worcester during the years
of the conquest, and Walter Beauchamp inherited half of D'Abitot's estates14,
including the castle of Elmley which was their principal centre of power in the
period from 1110 to 1268.
From the twelfth to the fifteenth century, the Beauchamps owed much of
their pre-‐eminence to a number of fortunate marriages, and the marriage to
D'Abitot's heiress was the first of these. They were of that class of men whose
ability and influence made them essential cogs in the administrative machinery
of the localities; part of D'Abitot's inheritance was the hereditary shrievalty of
Worcestershire and, although free to nominate a deputy to perform the job in his
place, only Walter Beauchamp (II), Earl William's grandfather, did not serve as
sheriff of Worcestershire, in person, for at least part of his adult life15. The
shrievalty certainly helped to secure the Beauchamps' status as the most
prominent lay landholders in Worcestershire, a county unusually dominated by
ecclesiastical landlords.
13Sinclair, 7 14R.H.Hilton, A Medieval Society (Cambridge, 1966), 41 15List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, from the earliest times to AD 1831 (Lists and Index Society, ix, New York, 1963), 157
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There is no doubt that the Beauchamp family would have continued to be
only of regional historical importance were it not for the marriage between
William Beauchamp of Elmley and Isabel Mauduit. The Mauduits were a
‘respectable official family’16 in the same mould as the Beauchamps. One of
Isabel's ancestors had been chamberlain of the exchequer under Henry I, and the
Mauduits inherited that hereditary office from him17. What made Isabel such a
prized catch, however, was that her brother, William Mauduit, earl of Warwick,
lacked legitimate issue, making Isabel his heir. Mauduit had inherited the title
from his mother, a member of the twelfth-‐century Beaumont earls of Warwick.
The inheritance of the earldom can perhaps be viewed as more of a fortuitous
accident than a planned marriage; Earl William was said to be between the ages
of 26 and 30 in 126818, placing the marriage of William and Isabel in the late
1230s or early 1240s. At this time, the chances of the earldom passing to Isabel
must have seemed remote at best: Thomas Beaumont was married to Ela,
countess of Salisbury (who nearly lived on until the very end of the thirteenth
century), and if their union failed to produce any issue, then it was likely that the
marriage of his sister Margery to John de Plessis probably would. It was only on
Margery's death in 1253 that it was clear the earldom was going to descend to
the Mauduits, and even then any issue from the marriage of William Mauduit and
Alice de Segrave would have prevented the earldom coming into William of
Elmley's hands. In effect the earldom descended by chance and by default, for it
16K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 188 17GEC, xii pt.2, 368 18GEC, xii pt. 2, 368
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was the failure of both the Beaumont and Mauduit lines to produce male heirs
that allowed the earldom to pass into the hands of the Beauchamps in 1268, and
not the result of a cunning marriage policy on the part of William of Elmley.
By January 1268, William of Elmley and Isabel Mauduit had produced at
least seven children. Of the three sons, all of them were to found important
branches of the family which survived into the fifteenth century. William was the
eldest of the three, and not only inherited the earldom, but also most of the
Beauchamp estates that had been built up in the past 150 years. However,
generous endowments were given to the two younger sons, Walter and John:
John began the line of the Beauchamps of Holt, who were based in the Severn
valley, north of Worcester, and Walter was granted lands in south-‐west
Warwickshire19. The Beauchamps, throughout our period, were well known for
their military accomplishments: William of Elmley had fought in Scotland and
Wales, and all three of his sons appear to have followed in the family's martial
tradition. William proved himself on the battlefields of Scotland and Wales;
Walter, it would appear, had an ambition to go on a crusade. His father's will
describes him as a ‘crusader’, and William left his son a debt of 200 marks in aid
‘of his pilgrimage to the Holy Land for me and his mother’20. By the late 1290s he
was calling himself the ‘lord of Alcester’21, having purchased, in 1271-‐72, the
moiety of the manor of Alcester in Warwickshire, making that place one of his
19Hilton, Medieval Society, 44 20Reg. of Godfrey Giffard, 8 21W.Dugdale, The Baronage of England, 2 vols. (London, 1675) i, 248
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principal seats, alongside Powick in Worcestershire22. Walter was also to follow
in the family's tradition of administrative service; in Prestwich's words he was
‘well schooled in the established tradition of the household’23 and was a highly
suitable choice for the post of steward of the royal household24, an appointment
which suited both his bureaucratic and military skills. Walter was appointed as
steward in 1289, became sole steward in 1292, and held this position until his
death in early 1303. He served with the king in Flanders and Scotland, fighting
alongside Edward in the battle of Falkirk and appears to have been a man much
admired for his military prowess, but criticised for his arrogance; the Song of
Caerlaverock describes Walter as ‘a knight who would have been one of the best
of all, according to my opinion, if he had not been too proud and rashly insolent,
but you won't hear anyone talk of the steward without a "but"’25.
John Beauchamp of Holt was a lesser figure than his two brothers,
although the three of them did fight together in Gascony in 1296/7, and he
served the following year in Scotland. It appears that he may have been one of
the Beauchamps, alongside Earl Guy, and William, lord of Bergavenny, in
succeeding generations, who was inclined to cultured pursuits; for his father
bequeathed him ‘that book of Lancelot which I have provided for him’26. Whilst
John of Holt was not a man of national importance like his brothers, he was of
significant standing locally, and the dynasty were to remain loyal to the earls of
22Dugdale, Baronage, i, 248 23M.Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), 169 24Dugdale, Baronage, i, 248 25Prestwich, Edward I, 146 26Reg. of Godfrey Giffard, 8
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Warwick until the end of the fourteenth century. James, another male relative of
Earl William, deserves mention. Sometimes described as the earl's uncle, at other
times the earl's brother, James appears to have been the most intellectually
active of the Beauchamps, as well as the most obscure member of the family; in
1283 he was granted royal protection to go overseas ‘for study’27.
The fate of Isabel Mauduit, wife of William of Elmley, and mother to
Walter, William, and John is much disputed. Cokayne insists that she died at
some point before 126828 whilst Dugdale insists that, as the foundress of the
nunnery of Cookhill, she ‘betooke herself to a religious life there’29. The only
evidence for either of these assumptions is the internal evidence contained in
William of Elmley's will. Certainly, William does make provision for a chaplain to
‘perform divine service in my chapel without the city of Worcester, next the
Friars Minors, for my soul and the souls of Isabella my wife and Isabella de
[Mortimer] and all the faithful dead’, endowing the church with property in
Droitwich and Witton, and it is this which Cokayne sees as proof that she had
died by the time William had written his will, although there is no other reason
to suppose that this was the case. Moreover, the same document explicitly states
‘To the church and nuns of Kokeshull [Cookhill] and to Ysabella, my wife, 10
marks’30. Admittedly, this does present some problems: Isabella would appear to
have become a nun at least several months before the death of her husband, and
27Cal.Pat. Rolls, 1281-1292, 71 28GEC, xii pt.2, 368 29Dugdale, Baronage, i, 237 30Reg. of Godfrey Giffard, 8
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not after his death as was usual. Also the allocation to her of 10 marks seems
remarkably tight-‐fisted when compared to the 200 marks he gave Walter, or the
100 marks in aid of the marriage of his daughter Sarah. It is possible that Isabel
took holy orders out of concern for the state of the Warwick earldom. Matriarchs
connected to the earldom of Warwick had an unnerving ability to outlive their
husbands by a considerable margin; in 1268 there were no less than three of
these women, Countess Ela, Angaret, and Alice, who between them soaked up
valuable demesne lands in the earl's possession. It has been calculated that, at
one point, these dowagers siphoned off around 22% of the earl's income31. From
the time of the Beauchamp accession in 1268, it was not unusual for surviving
widows and unmarried daughters to enter the convent instead of being a
potential drain upon the family's resources, and what is certain is that the
Beauchamps could not afford a fourth dower. In the context of this situation,
Isabel's entering the convent of Cookhill does seem to be a very likely possibility.
Of the first three Beauchamp earls of Warwick, Earl William is the most
shadowy figure. Clearly a great and important figure in his day, no chroniclers
have left us any personal picture of the man, in the way which they have for his
son and grandson. William was a soldier of considerable importance; he was
frequently summoned against the Welsh between 1277 and 1294, and from
1296 to his death in 1298 was involved in the Scottish wars32. He was a vigorous
and innovative military commander, and it is in this role that he is best
31Sinclair, 13 32GEC, xii pt. 2, 369
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remembered by historians and chroniclers; his tactics at the battle of Maes
Moydog over the Welsh forces commanded by Madog ap Llywelyn have been
credited as anticipating the successful use of crossbow men at Falkirk33, although
there is some dispute as to how much of the victory can be ascribed to Earl
William's strategy34. He was also present at the siege of Droselan, and with John,
earl of Surrey, helped recover the castle of Dunbar35. Apart from his military
exploits, William appears to have had a tendency toward hot-‐headedness;
particularly demonstrated by his exhumation of his father's corpse in the middle
of the church of the Friars Minor in Worcestershire, because he had given
credence to the rumour that someone else had been buried in his stead36. After
his brothers, who were present and identified their father ‘by certain markings’,
the earl was excommunicated for his sacrilegious actions. Despite this episode,
and the lifelong enmity between him and Bishop Giffard, William appears to have
been a conventionally religious man; he added ‘crosse-‐crosslets’ to his coat of
arms, which Dugdale interprets as possibly implying a ‘testimony of....pilgrimage
by him made into the holy land, or a vow to do so’37. By the end of his life the earl
had resolved any quarrel with the Minorites, and, under the influence of Brother
John de Olney, bequeathed his body to their church. The friars, according to a
disgruntled annalist at Worcester Cathedral, ‘having got hold of the body of so
33GEC, xii pt. 2, 369n. 34Prestwich. Edward I, 223 35Dugdale, Baronage, i, 228 36Annales Monastici, ed. H. Richard Luard, 4 vols. (Rolls Series, xxxvi, London, 1869), iv, 471 37Dugdale, Baronage, i, 229
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great a man, like conquerors who had obtained booty, paraded the public streets,
and made a spectacle for the citizens’38.
It was also William who began to cultivate the association of the
Beauchamp earls with the legendary tale of ‘Gui de Warwic’. The tale of Guy de
Warwick is an Anglo-‐Norman romance which has been dated from between
1232 and 1242, and is thought to have been written to flatter Thomas Beaumont,
the contemporary earl of Warwick39. William's appropriation of the name ‘Guy’
for his eldest surviving son was undoubtedly influenced by the mythical figure of
Guy of Warwick. Previously the most common male family names were either
William or Walter, with James and John also being used occasionally for younger
sons. The Beauchamp family grew increasingly attached to the legend of Guy of
Warwick as our period progressed: not only was Guy used as a name for the
firstborn son of Earls William and Thomas (I), but Thomas (I) named one of his
younger sons ‘Reinbrun’ after the son of the mythical Guy. ‘Un volum del
Romaunce du Guy’ is listed in the collection of books which Earl Guy gave to
Bordesley Abbey in 130540, who was reputedly buried there with the relics of his
legendary namesake41. By the time of Thomas I's death in 1369, the legend of
Guy of Warwick was so interwoven into the Beauchamps' psyche that he
bequeathed his son ‘the coat of mail sometime belonging to that famous Guy of
38Ann. Mon., iv, 537 39L.McGoldrick, ‘The Literary Manuscripts and Literary Patronage of the Beauchamp and Neville families in the Late Middle Ages, c.1390-1500’ (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Polytechnic Ph.D. thesis, 1985), 190 40H.Todd, Illustrations of Gower and Chaucer (London, 1810), 161-2 41Sinclair, 20
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Warwick’42 as the most highly treasured of his possessions, as is shown in the
importance he places it in his will over other caskets of gold, and ornate crosses
containing pieces of Christ's cross. As McGoldrick points out, ‘the holiest of relics
from good kings and venerated public figures were subordinate to symbols of
family honour and ancestry’43. However the ‘family honour and ancestry’ was an
invented one, and William's adoption of the Guy of Warwick legend must, at least
in part, have been motivated by shrewd political and practical reasons. He
belonged to a family of administrators, and owed his earldom either to good
fortune or, as some might suppose, manipulative social climbing. It is no surprise
that he should have adopted this legend in 1268, for it provided the family with a
noble heritage and a heroic legitimacy. By Earl Thomas' time, the Beauchamps
were firmly established amongst the higher nobility, and his attachment to the
legend of Guy of Warwick appears to have been fostered by a genuine sense of
family honour.
William had married Maud, the daughter of Sir John Fitz-‐Geoffrey whose
lands were concentrated in Surrey and Essex, and was the widow of Sir Gerard
de Furnivalle44. Furnivalle died in 1261, and it would appear likely that she had
married Earl William by the time of his accession as earl; their son Guy is
described as ‘30 or more’ in 130145, placing his birth in 1271, and there is no
reason at all to suppose that he was among the first born of William and Maud's
42Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233 43McGoldrick, 141 44 GEC, xii pt 2, 370 45Cal. Inq. P.M., iv, no.24
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seven children. In fact it would make sense for Maud to have married William
soon after the death of her first husband, well before the succession to the
Warwick inheritance had been determined. MacFarlane refers to the Fitz-‐
Geoffrey as a ‘very minor baronial house’46, and it would seem likely that this
marriage was at least arranged before the succession of the earldom of Warwick
had been properly secured. The notion, sometimes put forward, that William
married Maud for financial gain can also be dismissed. Maud is frequently
referred to as an heiress; indeed she was one of four co-‐heiress' to the Fitz-‐
Geoffrey estates after her brother died without issue in 1297. However it is most
unlikely that this chance windfall had been a factor in the arrangement of their
marriage thirty years previously.
Whatever the circumstances of the marriage, Earl William was clearly
fond of his wife. Judging by his will, William does seem to have possessed a
sentimental side; he requests that if he should die oversees, his heart be removed
from his body and buried wherever his wife (‘his dear consort’) should choose to
have herself interred47, and their surviving son Guy was present when she was
buried next to her husband48. She certainly seems to have suffered from a
disabling infirmity toward the end of her life which made travel impossible49, but
this does not appear to have been a hindrance earlier on, for they had seven
children that we are aware of. Of the three sons, Guy was the only one to outlive
46McFarlane, Nobility, 192 47Dugdale, Baronage, i, 230 48Ann. Mon., iv, 549 49Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1292-1301, 357
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his father; Robert died in infancy and Dugdale maintains that John ‘died in the
life of his father’50, although it does not seem likely that he survived long into his
childhood. By the time of the earl's death, two of his daughters were nuns at
Shouldham in Norfolk, a remote monastery with close links to the Fitzgeoffery
family51, taking up a cloistered existence like so many women in the Beauchamp
family. After Guy, their sister Isabel was the most fortunate of that generation.
She firstly married into the Gloucestershire family of Chaworth; Sir Pain de
Chaworth had fought with Prince Edward in his crusade and his heir Patrick,
who Isabel married, was a man of reasonable importance, possessing land or
property in Berkshire, Wiltshire, Wales and Southampton. This marriage yielded
one child, Maud, who went on to marry the king's nephew, Henry of Lancaster52.
Dugdale reports that, following Chaworth's death in 1286-‐7, Isabel had four
manors in Wiltshire, and two in Berkshire, assigned to her ‘until her dowry
should be set forth’ along with the livery of Chedworth in Gloucestershire, and
the Hampshire manor of Hartley Mauditt, which had been granted to her and her
husband in frankmarriage by her father. Shortly afterwards, she married the
elder Despenser, without the kings licence, for which Hugh Despenser was fined
2,000 marks53.
The figure of Guy Beauchamp, the second Beauchamp earl, is much
clearer figure than that of his father, largely due to his outspoken political
50Dugdale, Baronage, i, 226 51Testamenta Vetusta, ed. Sir N.H.Nicolas (London, 1826), 52 52Dugdale, Baronage, i, 517 53Dugdale, Baronage, i, 517
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criticism of the failings of Edward II which attracted much attention from
contemporary chroniclers. We have already noted that he was born in the early
1270s, but from then we do not know anything until the occasion of his
knighthood on 25 March 129654. What is certain is that he enjoyed an unusually
broad education for his age. The description of Earl Guy in the Annales
Londonienses as ‘bene literatus’ is seized on by McFarlane who reminds us that
contemporary prelates were only ‘literatus’ if they possessed a university
education. McFarlane refutes the notion that Guy spent any time at Oxford, but
insists that the term ‘can hardly have meant less than that he was well grounded
in Latin grammar’55. It seems likely, however, that he was grounded in much
more; Tout, by no means an admirer, admits that the earl possessed an education
‘seldom found in the higher nobility of his age’56. Guy's extensive library is well
known, and we have a catalogue of what would appear to have been a small
selection from it, which the earl presented to Bordesley Abbey in 1306,
described by McGoldrick as ‘one of the most interesting book collections of the
fourteenth century’57. The majority of the works in the list are ‘romaunces’,
meaning they were written either in French or Anglo-‐Norman, and concern such
diverse topics as the lives of Titus and Vespasian, physiology and surgery,
biblical tales, legends of the holy grail, lives of the saints, and historical stories
concerning figures such as Charlemagne and Alexander. One book is mentioned
54GEC, xii pt.2, 370 55McFarlane, Nobility, 235 56T.Tout, The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (Manchester, 1930), 92 57McGoldrick, 39
25
only as ‘un petit rouge livre, en le quel sount contenuz mous diverses choses’58.
The inclusion of a number of ‘chansons de gestes’, outdated by the early
fourteenth century59, could betray Earl Guy's conservative literary tastes, or else
might simply represent a clear-‐out of some of the older books in the Warwick
library.
Guy was not the only Beauchamp book-‐owner that we know of in our
period. His daughter, Matilda de Say, was to enter the royal household of Edward
III, and bequeathed a number of unnamed French and Latin books to John de
Harleston60. Her sister-‐in-‐law, Katherine Mortimer (wife of Earl Thomas [I]) left
a book of ‘ch’ to her son Thomas. Perhaps this refers to a book of songs
[‘chansons’], but whatever, Earl Guy is perhaps the best example of a cultured
and cerebral member of the higher nobility in the early fourteenth century. This
was not lost on his contemporaries: the author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi
claims that ‘in wisdom and council he had no peer’, and that ‘other earls did
many things only after taking his opinion’61; the author of the Lanercost chronicle
credits him with ‘equal wisdom and integrity’62, whilst the Annales Londonienses
describes Beauchamp as ‘homo discretus et bene literatus per quem totum
regnum Angliae sapienta praefulgebat’63. A streak of simple piety, in an age
unrenowned for its modesty, is evident in Guy's will, in which he requests that he
58Todd, Illustrations, 161-2 59S.Hirst, D.Walsh & S.M.Wright, Bordesley Abbey II (B.A.R. British Series III, 1983), 64 60McGoldrick, 39 61Vita Edwrdi Secundi, 62 62Lanercost, 194 63Annales Londonienses, 236
26
be buried in Bordesley Abbey in a simple ceremony ‘without any great pomp’64,
especially when we compare it with the preparations, made for the funeral of his
grandson, William Beauchamp, Lord Bergavenny, who requested that five tapers
be hung about his body from the moment of death, and that twenty-‐four poor
men be cloaked in black, and each carrying torches, before 10,000 masses are
said ‘by the most honest priest that can be found’65. His affinity for the austerity
of the Cistercian order was probably, in part, political. It would be surprising to
find him embracing the Benedictines after his father's quarrels with Bishop
Giffard. However, there is also the small possibility that Guy was influenced by
the Cistercian ideas in the romance The Quest for the Holy Grail. A number of the
books which the earl gave to Bordesley Abbey were Arthurian romances, and it
is just possible that the earl was influenced by this piece of Cistercian
propaganda.
What makes Earl Guy interesting is the contradictory nature of his
character, perhaps best summed up by Tout when he compared the earl to the
‘cultivated aristocratic ruffians’ found in the later renaissance66. This apparently
‘discreet’ and ‘well-‐read’ man was also a highly skilled soldier and ruthless
politician; he served frequently in the Scottish wars under Edward I, and was
present at Falkirk, the siege of Carlaverock and the siege of Stirling Castle67. He
64Dugdale, Baronage, i, 230 65Test. Vet., 171 66Tout, Place of the reign, 16 67GEC, xii pt.2, 370
27
clearly cut a very impressive figure on the battlefield, and the author of the Siege
of Carlaverock claims that:
‘De Warwik le Count Guy
Coment ken ma rime de guy
Ne avoit voisin de lui mellour
Baniere ot de rouge coulour
O feasse de or et croissilie’68
in a clear reference to the Beauchamp coat of arms. His single-‐mindedness can be
seen in his activities during the reign of Edward II, when, despite Lancaster's de
jure leadership of the baronial opposition, Earl Guy seems to have been the most
active opponent of Edward and Gaveston. The Vita Edwardi Secundi sees Earl
Guy as the ‘brains behind the Ordinances’69, when it claims that it was ‘by his
advice and skill the Ordinances were framed’70 . Earl Guy also merits the
distinction of being the only earl to have opposed Gaveston's influence at court
consistently from Edward's coronation until Gaveston's death in 1312, which
was largely engineered by the earl himself. His nick-‐name of ‘the black dog of
Arden’, reputedly coined by Gaveston, probably refers to more than his swarthy
complexion71. Indeed the Chronicle of Lanercost claims that ‘when this was
reported to the earl, he is said to have replied with calmness: "If he call me a dog,
be sure that I will bite him so soon as I shall perceive my opportunity"’72.
68GEC, xii pt.2, 370n 69Vita, xxi 70Vita, 62 71Dugdale, Baronage, i, 230 72Lanercost, 194
28
Guy, it would appear, married twice. He first married Isabella de Clare,
daughter of the earl of Gloucester, at some point prior to May 1297. The two
were related in the ‘third degree of consanguinity’, and so had to obtain a papal
dispensation which was granted to them on 11 May 1297, stating that the
marriage had, on an unspecified date, already taken place73. How long the
marriage survived is not known, but divorce proceedings were in motion by June
130274, and the marriage had probably been dead for some time before that.
Perhaps the reason for the failure of the marriage was Isabel's age; she was at
least ten years the senior, and in 1302 she would have been in her early forties75,
making the chances of her producing an heir most unlikely, and the marriage, for
however long it survived, does not seem to have produced any children. In 1306,
apparently concerned that his lands would be split up if he died without issue,
Guy entailed his entire estates to his nephew, Philip Despenser76. The earl
remarried in 1310, to Alice de Tony, sister and heir of Ralph de Tony, and
therefore the heir of the Tony inheritance. The value of the Tony inheritance is
much disputed, for Alice already had issue by Thomas de Leyburn, her first
husband77, and McFarlane maintains the earl ‘merely enjoyed her inheritance
from their marriage in 1310 until his death five years later’78. However, this is
patently untrue as a glance at the Inquisitions Post Mortem of Earls Guy and
Thomas will demonstrate. The manors of Walthamstow in Essex, Abberley in 73Sede Vacante Register, 9 74Sede Vacante Register, 8 75GEC, v, 207n. 76Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1301-7, 427 77GEC, xii pt.2, 372 78McFarlane, Nobility, 192
29
Worcestershire, Flamstead in Hertfordshire, Stratford Tony and Newton Tony in
Wiltshire, Kirtling in Cambridgeshire, and the lordship of Painscastle in the
Welsh Marches79, were all to become valuable and important parts of the
Beauchamp inheritance, although, as Sinclair rightly points out, the presence of a
surviving Tony dowager meant that the earldom had only two-‐thirds of the
inheritance until she died in 134080.
The marriage seems to have been successful in more than just the
property which it brought into the family; during the time of their marriage,
Alice was constantly pregnant, supplying Earl Guy with at least six children in the
space of five years, all of whom survived infancy and subsequently married81.
After Guy's death, Alice went on to marry William Zouche of Ashby, with whom
he had more children, and was married to him until her death in 132482.
When Earl Guy died in 1315, which contemporary rumours claimed was
from poison administered on the orders of Edward II83, Alice was bequeathed a
portion of his plate, a crystal cup, and half of his bedding, plus ‘all the vestments
and books pertaining to his chapel’, while Thomas, his eldest son, was left a coat
of mail, helmet and suit of harness, and John, the younger son, received his
second coat of mail. His daughter Maud received a crystal cup, and Elizabeth,
another daughter, received the marriage of the Astley heir84. However, there was
79Cal.Inq.P.M., v, 397-413; Cal.Inq.P.M., xii, 303-313 80Sinclair, 18 81Dugdale, Baronage, i, 226 82GEC, xii pt.2, 372 83J. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A study in the reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), 170 84Dugdale, Baronage, i, 230
30
a very seriously problem. Thomas, the eldest son, was between one and two
years old at the death of his father85, meaning that, as was the practice in these
circumstances, the estates of the earldom would be taken into the possession of
the crown. The abuse of lands taken into the hands of the crown was common at
this period, and a lengthy period of minority could have produced long term
repercussions for the inheritance, with lands being exploited and neglected by
those charged with their maintenance. The dying earl was certainly aware of the
dangers which a prolonged minority could bring, and was successful in wringing
a very valuable concession from Edward II, that, on the event of the earl's death,
the executors of his will should have full custody of his lands ‘until the full age of
his heirs’86. It was fully in keeping with Edward II's character, that the crown's
assurance was soon disregarded, and the Warwick lands were taken into the
crown's hands within two years of Guy's death, and remained out of the control
of the executors until Thomas came of age87.
Possession of the Warwick estates from this point, until 1329, was
determined by the whims of royal patronage. The Despensers were the prime
beneficiaries in Edward II's reign, with the elder Despenser gaining wardship of
all Guy's lands except for a few which had already been granted, for which he
agreed to pay 1,000 marks a year88 , an arrangement soon commuted in
Despenser's favour, allowing Despenser the custody of the Warwick estates in
85Cal.Inq.P.M., v, 397 86Cal.Fine Rolls, 1307-19, 255 87Sinclair, 23 88Cal.Close Rolls, 1313-18, 491
31
consideration of £6,770 which the king owed him89. The issue of custody of the
Warwick lands was brought up in 1321 in the articles against the Despensers.
The agreement that the Warwick earldoms should be handled by Guy's executors
is said to have been repealed ‘without reason’ except to deliver to the elder
Despenser ‘the wardship of those lands for his own profit, so defeating by [the
Despensers'] evil counsel what the king had granted in his parliaments by good
counsel with the assent of the peers of the land’90. The only long term effect
which the events of 1321-‐22 had on the Warwick lands was to remove Elmley
Castle from the hands of the elder Despenser and take it back into the hands of
the crown91, with the rest of the estates remaining in the Despensers' possession
until Isabella and Mortimer's invasion in 1327. Afterwards, the lands passed to
Roger Mortimer, who was able to capitalise on his predominance at the royal
court by taking custody of Thomas' wardship.
It was at this time that the marriage of Thomas to Katherine Mortimer
seems to have finally taken place. The marriage itself was worth 1,600 marks,
and had originally been granted to Roger Mortimer as far back as the 20 July
131892. There were problems with this arrangement, for the king had arranged a
dispensation from the pope, granted 19 April 131993, on account of the two being
related ‘in the third and fourth degrees of consanguinity’94. The purpose of the
union was to put an end to the ‘great discord’ that existed between Earl Guy and 89Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1317-21, 121, 123 90Cal.Close Rolls, 1318-23, 494 91Sinclair, 24 92Sinclair, 23 93GEC, xii pt.2, 374 94Dugdale, Baronage, i, 231
32
Mortimer over the manor of Elvel, in the marches of Wales95, although it should
be noted that the Mortimers gained more from the arrangement than the
Beauchamps, for Katherine did not bring with her any marriage portion96. This
arrangement seems to have been permanently shelved by Edward, following the
troubles of 1321-‐22, which resulted in Mortimer's dramatic fall from royal
favour and imprisonment, and arrangements were made for Thomas to marry
one of the daughters of the earl of Arundel, either in 1324 or 132597. Arundel
was executed along with the Despensers in the reprisals which followed Isabella
and Mortimer's invasion, and with Mortimer back in royal favour, the original
plans for the marriage between Katherine and Thomas were back in place, and
they were almost certainly married between 1328 and 1330.
Of Guy's other children, the career of John Beauchamp is the most
documented, being considered ‘a person of singular note in his time’98. Like his
father and brother, he was military man, attending the king into Flanders in
1338, present at the naval victory of Sluys in 1340, and, along with his brother,
one of the original knights of the Garter. He had the distinction of carrying the
standard-‐royal at Crecy, and was appointed captain of Calais in 135899. John was
raised to the rank of banneret in 1348, having £140 per annum granted to him
from the exchequer to help him support the title. John fell out briefly with his
king in 1354, who removed John from his post as Constable of the Tower of
95Dugdale, Baronage, i, 231 96McFarlane, Nobility, 192 97GEC, xii pt.2, 374n. 98Dugdale, Baronage, i, 231 99GEC, i, 276
33
London, because Edward supposedly gave credence to ‘sinister suggestions’
against Beauchamp100. He was swiftly back in favour with the king, and John
faithfully served Edward until his death. He was based primarily in the capital,
where he built an impressive house which was subsequently bought by the
crown and used for the king's wardrobe101. By the time of his death in 1360, he
had acquired the Worcestershire manor of Frankley, as well as Brockenhurst in
Hampshire, and gained the Wiltshire manors of Stratford Tony and Newton Tony
from his elder brother102. Of Guy's daughters, Elizabeth did indeed marry the
heir of the Warwickshire lord, Nicholas of Astley, which her father had granted in
his will. Thomas de Astley was in fact Nicholas' nephew, and he founded a chapel
for the aid of the souls of him and his wife in 1337103. It is not known how long
she lived for, but it seems that they produced at least six children104, and that he
was still alive in 1366105. Maud, another of Guy's daughters, led a more colourful
life. She firstly married Geoffrey de Say, whose property included manors in
Middlesex, Hertfordshire and Kent. Together, they produced at least four
children. William was the only boy, and his father's heir. Of the three daughters,
Idonea went on to marry John Clinton of Maxstoke106. Maud was also very close
to Edward III, Queen Philippa, and their daughter Isabel; she was so valued by
the royal family that, in 1368, she was awarded an annuity of 100 marks per
100Dugdale, Baronage, i, 231 101Dugdale, Baronage, i, 231 102Cal.Inq.P.M., x, 493-5 103Dugdale, Baronage, i, 669 104GEC, i, 283n 105GEC, i, 284 106Dugdale, Baronage, i, 511
34
annum for her long service in the royal household107. After Geoffrey's death in
1359, it appears that she married again, for in her will she requests that she be
buried in Black Friars, London ‘near Edmund, my beloved husband’108, but
Edmund's identity remains a mystery.
Earl Thomas has been described as the ‘embodiment of the preux
chevalier’109, a man apparently uninterested in domestic political machinations,
but devoutly faithful to his king. In Dugdale's words, he was ‘scarcely out of some
great or memorable imployment’110, and was undoubtedly one of the finest
soldiers of his age. The reason for his loyalty may lie in the circumstances of his
youth. Sinclair is right to point out that there is much we do not know about the
circumstances of his minority111. What is certain is that he and Edward III were
very close in age, Edward being two years Thomas' senior112, and that in, January
1328, Joan du Boys, a nurse to Princess Eleanor113, was curiously described as
‘keeper of the land and heir of Guy de Beauchamp’114. There is a reasonable
chance that Thomas may well have spent some of his youth in the royal
household, and the chances of a friendship existing at the time of his minority are
reasonable, given that the new king did ‘a special favour’ for Thomas by
receiving his homage on 20 February 1329115, despite the fact that Beauchamp
107GEC, xi, 477 108GEC, xi, 477n. 109Sinclair, 25 110Dugdale, Baronage, i, 232 111Sinclair, 24-25 112McFarlane, Nobility, 189 113Sinclair, 25 114Cal.Close Rolls, 1327-1330, 192 115Cal.Close Rolls, 1330-34, 30
35
was then still a minor116. McFarlane is probably right in assuming that the two
young men would have found a common bond in their animosity to the court
favourites of Edward II and Isabella when he writes that ‘nor was Edward III
likely to be unsympathetic toward those who had suffered at the hands of the
Despensers and Mortimer’117.
Thomas, like his father and grandfather, served in Scotland frequently
during the 1330s, being captain of the army against the Scots in 1337, but is most
remembered for his service in France which constantly preoccupied him from
1339 up until his death in Calais thirty years later. Most notably, he was at the
battle of Crecy in 1346, where he was one of the two marshals of the army, and
held joint command of the Prince of Wales' division. The Complete Peerage
provides an effective summary of the earl's exploits, which are far too extensive
and of too little relevance to merit inclusion here118. Of interest to us are the
rewards which Earl Thomas received for his services. His loyalty to the king's
cause was certainly very lucrative and he frequently enjoyed one-‐off payments of
cash after major excursions; he obtained £1,000 in June 1340119 for his wages
following the French campaign the previous year, which saw the withdrawal of
the French army at Vironfosse120, and a further £610 was earned the following
year ‘for the time in which he was beyond the seas as a hostage for the king's
debts’121. In 1347 he enjoyed a £1,366 11s 8d ‘gift from the king’122. Eventually, 116Dugdale, Baronage, i, 232 117McFarlane, Nobility, 190 118GEC, xii pt.2, 372 119Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1340-43, 2 120GEC, xii pt.2, 372 121Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1340-43, 223
36
in 1348, Earl Thomas was retained for life by Edward III, at a cost of 1,000 marks
per annum123, ostensibly ‘for his fee for his stay with the king with 100 men-‐at-‐
arms’, but also undoubtedly for his loyal and faithful service124. In addition to
these monetary rewards, Thomas enjoyed royal patronage with grants of offices
and decoration. Alongside his brother John, he was one of the founder Knights of
the Garter, and served as Marshal of England from 1343/4 until his death, a post
that was held at the discretion of the king125. Another grant allowed him to
consolidate his hold of the West Midlands; in 1344 he was made sheriff of the
counties of Warwickshire and Leicestershire for life, in addition to the shrievalty
of Worcestershire which he already held through hereditary tenure. The
surrender of royal power was a valuable concession given that the role of sheriff
could be a very politically sensitive one. The oath that Thomas' father Guy had to
swear when he took up the hereditary post of sheriff of Worcester is preserved
in the exchequer, and ‘shows the importance attached to safeguards against a
power which was likely to be maintained for a generation’126. The actual financial
benefit generated by the shrievalty was probably slight: in 1390-‐91 the
shrievalty of Worcestershire yielded a grand profit of £2 6s 6d127; this does not
show the true value which this award brought, namely an increased political
dominance over his local region. In addition to these gifts, we have to add the
spoils of war, which appear to have been considerable. In the aftermath of the 122Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-48, 440 123Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1348-50, 145 124Sinclair, 28 125GEC, xii pt.2, 373 126W.A.Morris, The Medieval English Sheriff to 1300 (Manchester, 1927), 181 127Sinclair, 224
37
battle of Poitiers, for instance, we know that Thomas captured the archbishop of
Sens who eventually paid £8,000 for his freedom, whilst he also won three-‐
quarters of the ransom of the Bishop of Le Mans, which netted the earl a further
£3,000128. In the 1960s, debate raged amongst historians as to who, if anyone,
gained financially from the Hundred Years' War. McFarlane put forward the
hypothesis that the crown and certain members of the nobility did very well out
of higher taxes, and ransoms, and Thomas' experience would support this
theory. Whilst this notion was famously questioned by Postan, both did agree
that, at least, in the first two or three decades of the Hundred Years War, there
was a substantial amount of money coming in from abroad129. Certainly the earl
of Warwick did considerably well out of Poitiers at least, especially when one
considers that the earl had fought so long throughout the battle ‘that his hand
was galled with the exercise of his sword and poll axe’130.
Given that his family's crusading tradition was amongst ‘the longest and
the most consistent’131 of all the higher nobility, it is hardly surprising that the
most martial of our three earls should have chosen to further enhance his
families crusading credentials. In 1365, Thomas took advantage in the lull in
hostilities between England and France by embarking on a three year expedition
to join the crusades of the Teutonic knights in Lithuania, bringing with him an
army of no less than ‘300 horse for his attendants and train; which consisted of
128McFarlane, Nobility, 195 129C.Allmand, The Hundred Years War: England and France at war, c.1300-c.1450 (Cambridge, 1988), 131 130Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233 131C.Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 1095-1588 (Chicago,1988), 180
38
knights, esquires, archers, friends and servants’, supposedly returning with a son
of the Lithuanian king, who was christened in London with the name Thomas,
with the earl acting as godfather132. By the time of his death in 1369, Beauchamp
had undoubtedly earned a reputation as the most feared soldier in the English
army, and it was in this year that he oversaw the devastation of Caux133 whilst
serving as a member of John of Gaunt's expedition. Beauchamp was clearly seen
by chroniclers and opponents alike as the most formidable of Edward II's
commanders: ‘a man who possessed a military élan of a kind which can never be
attributed to John of Gaunt’ who, on arriving at Tourneham, on the French coast,
to find a stand-‐off between the English and French armies, mocked Lancaster
and Hereford by asking how long they intended on doing nothing, and boasted
‘that if the French remained as they were for two days, he would have them dead
or alive’134. Walsingham goes further in his account, claiming that the French
were so terrified by reports of the arrival of the earl of Warwick, that they fled
even before he had time to disembark135.
Earl Thomas died of plague whilst on this expedition, in November
1369136. In his will, dated two months previously, he requested that he be buried
in the collegiate church of Warwick, the first Beauchamp earl to request this, and
bequeathed that his executors build a new choir in the same church137 which in
132Dugdale Baronage, i, 233 133GEC, xii pt.2, 374 134J.Sherborne, War, Politics and Culture in Fourteenth Century England (London, 1994), 86 135Sherborne, War, 95 136GEC, xii pt.2, 374 137Dugdale, Baronage, i, 234
39
Dugdale's time still boasted pictures of Thomas' daughters ‘curiously drawn and
set up in the windows’138. He requested that every church in each of his manors
be given ‘his best beast to be found there, in satisfaction of tithes forgotten and
not paid’, a distinct sign that he did not trust his own officers, the reeves or
bailiffs, who should have paid the tithes. A further demand that his executors
‘should make full satisfaction to every man, whom he had in any sort wronged’
shows that he might well have turned a blind eye to the abuse of power by those
who acted in his name. He also asked that his executors cause masses to be sung
for his soul and distribute alms for its health, ‘especially at Bordesley, Worcester
and Warwick’139. The list of Beauchamp's goods which he bequeathed gives some
idea of the opulence which he enjoyed: amongst them ‘twenty-‐four dishes and as
many more saucers of silver’, golden rings, ornate crosses and religious relics
were all to be distributed. The bequests also give an idea of the supreme social
circle in which he existed: his son William inherited a casket of gold with a relic
of St George which Thomas of Lancaster had given him at his christening; John
Buckingham, bishop of Lincoln, gained a cross of gold, which the Lady Segrave
had given him, and reputedly had ‘sometime been the good King Edward's; and
his daughter Philippa de Stafford received "an ouche called the eagle" which had
been given him by Edward the Black Prince alongside "a set of beads of gold,
with buckles" which the queen had given him’140.
138GEC, xii pt.2, 374n. 139Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233 140Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233-234
40
Thomas, like so many other members of the higher nobility from the mid-‐
fourteenth century attempted to determine how his estates would be handled
after his death. He did this on a number of occasions, in order to make provisions
for all of his children. In April 1344, he jointly enfeoffed the bulk of his lands to
himself, with successive remainders to his son and heir Guy and then his other
sons. He set aside lands in South Taunton and Carnanton, and the Cornish
manors of Blisland and Helston, to be given after his death directly to his son
Thomas, with remainder to Reinbrun. Reinbrun in turn was to receive the
Rutland manors of Barrowden and Greetham along with Wrangdyke hundred in
the same county. He furthermore settled a group of Worcestershire manors on
himself and his wife, thereby providing Katherine with a jointure141. As the
Beauchamp family circumstances changed, this arrangement was revised; Guy's
death in 1360 left Thomas as the main heir, but there were two younger sons
who were clearly reaching the age of majority, and these had to be
accommodated. Already in 1356, William and Roger were mentioned in the re-‐
enfeoffment of Gower, which was made into a jointure between him and his wife
in tail male142. The position of Roger, being the youngest of five sons, at this time
must have appeared rather tenuous, and so it was probably for this reason that
his uncle, John Beauchamp, specified him as his heir to a purchase of a £40 rent
in 1360143. Meanwhile, from 1358 to 1361, his brother William was at Oxford
being groomed for the church; as such he became the first peer known to have a
141Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-1345, 251 142Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-58, 416 143Cal.Close Rolls, 1360-64, 126
41
university education144. He was already was in possession of a canonry at Sarum
when the death of two of his elder brothers reduced the potential future
pressure on the Warwick estates, and it was safe for him to follow the families
martial traditions and become a knight145. In his father's will, provisions were
made for Beauchamp's executors to provide William with lands worth 400
marks per annum, a bequest which McFarlane estimates as a capital loss of more
than £5,000 from the earldom146. Clearly his fathers generosity was only possible
because, by 1369, William was his only surviving younger son.
In July 1345, Thomas Beauchamp also attempted to make provision for
his daughters in the event of his death. He created a trust in which Elizabeth,
who was to marry John Beauchamp of Hatch, received £1,200; Matilda, who was
to marry Roger Clifford, received 1,000 marks; likewise Philippa, who was to
marry Hugh de Stafford; and Katherine, who even at this point might have been
destined for a convent, was to receive £200147. This presumably expired after the
twelve years stated in the agreement, and the future of the daughters in question
had been settled. The earl's financial situation had clearly greatly improved by
the 1350s, for when Philippa finally did marry Hugh de Stafford in 1353, her
portion was £2,000, three times the amount the earl had provided in 1345148.
For the most part, the earl used his daughters as means of attracting eligible son-‐
in-‐laws or rewarding his supporters. Philippa's marriage to Hugh, earl of
144McFarlane, Nobility, 235 145McFarlane, Nobility, 190 146McFarlane, Nobility, 191 147Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-45, 517 148McFarlane, Nobility, 86
42
Stafford, served to cement an alliance between two great midland families of
national importance. Joan's marriage Ralph Basset of Drayton was intended to
ease relations between the two neighbouring families who had not always been
allies149 , and also secured a jointure for the bride of Buckby, Moulton in
Northamptonshire, Olney in Buckinghamshire, and the Staffordshire manor of
Walsall, with a reversion to the Beauchamps if the male line expired150. Thomas
vigorously used his children's marriages as means of extending his own
considerable land holdings. The Beauchamp family's patrimony was the sole
consideration in his dealings and the individuals involved in the marriages
sometimes suffered harsh consequences as a result of this policy. This is evident
in his treatment of his daughter Margaret, and the young family of Guy, his eldest
son. Thomas had obtained a highly prestigious wedding for Margaret with Guy
de Montfort, a Warwickshire family who had been the Beauchamps' tenants and
associates for generations. As part of the marriage settlement, a jointure of the
entire De Montfort estate was arranged consisting of five Warwickshire manors,
two Nottinghamshire manors, two manors in Rutland and one in Surrey, with
reversion back to the earldom if the line should die out151. When Guy died in
1361, the estates were then the property of Margaret, who, it would appear, was
sent by her father into a religious life at Shouldham, where she was still living
149Ralph had been a faithful supporter of Edward II during Earl Guy's time. 150Sinclair, 44. This paid off in 1390, with the reversion bringing the manors into the Warwick estates. 151Sinclair, 34; VCH Warwks., iii, 46
43
when he wrote his will in 1369152, allowing the De Montfort estates to be
absorbed into the Warwick fief.
Philippa de Ferrers had married Sir Guy de Beauchamp, son and heir of
the earl of Warwick, at some point before 1353. She was the daughter of Henry
Ferrers of Groby, a lesser noble family with a record of administrative and
military service 153 . Guy's portion, like his brother Thomas, who married
Philippa's niece, was ‘unlikely to have been large’, at least according to
McFarlane 154 . However, by an agreement of 1340, Henry de Ferrers
acknowledged that he owes the earl 5,000 marks, as did a certain Thomas de
Ferrers, presumably a kinsman, and Ralph de Hastyng, sheriff of York155. It is
possible that this might be a record of some part of the marriage settlement, but
even if this is unrelated, it shows that Henry de Ferrers was able to make
financial deals with Earl Thomas involving substantial sums of money, and we
should not be so naive as to be believe that he married his daughter into the
ranks of the higher nobility with a less than appropriate settlement. The result of
this union were two children, Katherine and Elizabeth, aged 7 and 1¾
respectively at the time of their father's death in 1359156. That Guy should die,
leaving a young family, and no male heir, was clearly a cause for concern for the
earl. Cokayne points out that Guy's daughter Katherine was entitled de jure to the
title of the Warwick earldom157, although the estates were not in danger of 152Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233 153GEC, v, 345-6 154McFarlane, Nobility, 192 155Cal.Close Rolls, 1339-41, 462 156Cal.Inq.P.M., x, no.590 157GEC, xii pt.2, 375
44
passing to her because of the 1344 entail discussed above. Doubtlessly at her
father-‐in-‐law's insistence, Phillippa made a solemn vow of chastity on 11 August
1360, before Reginald Bryan, Bishop of Worcester, at the collegiate church in
Warwick158, which, it would appear, she kept until her death in 1384. Guy's two
daughters were both nuns at Shouldham, and it would appear that Katherine was
the only one to survive infancy, living there until at least April 1400. Her titular
right to the earldom of Warwick was explicitly recognised in May 1398 by
Richard II, when he gave her a life pension of 40 marks per annum. on account of
her being ‘a daughter of Guy de Warrewyke and kinswoman and heir of the last
earl of Warwick, and because she cannot enjoy aught of her inheritance’159.
It would not be unreasonable to say that life was kinder to those members
of the family whose actions did not threaten the stability of the Warwick estates.
John Atherston, Thomas' illegitimate son, was taken care of after his father's
death by his half-‐brother Earl Thomas [II], who gave him a rent in
Worcestershire and probably used his influence to secure a captaincy for
Atherston of a castle in the Calais March160, whilst Mary, another illegitimate
daughter, received respectable gentry status by marring Sir Richard Herthull, a
knight and close associate of her father 161 . Reinbrun's daughter Eleanor,
probably illegitimate, for there is no record of a marriage or of her mother,
likewise married a knight in her grandfather's Buckinghamshire manor of
158Dugdale, Baronage, i, 235 159Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1396-99, 357; GEC, xii pt.2, 375n. 160Sinclair, 272 161Dugdale, Baronage, i, 235
45
Hanslope, had a daughter called Emma, who, according to Dugdale, married a
man named Forster ‘from whom the Forsters of Hanslope owe their descent’162.
It was the earl's legitimate heirs who were occasionally forced into the
priesthood, or a far away nunnery.
There is a common thread that binds the first three earls of Warwick and
the century from 1268 to 1369. All were remarkable warriors whose undoubted
skill on the battlefield earned them substantial rewards from both Edward I and
Edward III. They were, by nature, faithful supporters of the crown; we must
remember that Earl Guy opposed Edward II after years of faithful service from
Edward I. They were also helped greatly by fortune; invariably the Beauchamp
earls had fewer sons than they did daughters, so that Guy was the only son of
William's to reach manhood, and Guy and Thomas each produced one surviving
younger son who outlived them. Both John Beauchamp and William Lord
Abergavenny were notable men in their own right who enhanced the family
name and gained lands which eventually were brought back into the family fief.
The Beauchamp family escaped the fate of less fortunate families, who broke up
their estates in the desire to endow a multitude of sons. Furthermore, by the
middle of the fourteenth century, the earl was quick to utilise new legal
developments which gave him greater control over how his estates were to be
handled after his death. He was able to use enfeoffment to specify how his lands
were to be distributed after his death, firstly in order to provide land for his
younger sons, and secondly to prevent the possibility of a female heir, following
162Dugdale, Baronage, i, 235
46
the death of his eldest son. By 1369, the earl was using his will in order to
stipulate the settlement he had decided for his younger son. Earl Thomas' use of
new legal formulas is remarked upon by Bean who writes that ‘whereas Thomas
Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, in 1345 employed an indenture with his feoffees to
raise dowries for his daughters after his death, twenty-‐four years later he
bequeathed lands to a younger son by means of directions to his feoffees which
were incorporated within his testament’163. By the only time in our period when
there was the possibility of a future drain on the Warwick estates through an
excess of younger sons, the earl was using the latest legal solutions available to
keep his patrimony secure, and his children provided for.
All in all, the year 1369 seems to mark a temporary watershed in the
Beauchamp family's fortunes. With Thomas' death ended the 1,000 marks per
annum cash supplement which the family had been used to, and William's
endowment deprived Warwick of a further 400 marks per annum. Neither did
the second Earl Thomas have the advantage of the shrievalty of Warwickshire
and Leicestershire, or indeed the personal qualities of his father and grandfather.
Thomas [II] is best remembered by history as Warwick the Appellant, who spent
the final years of Richard II's reign imprisoned and with his estates confiscated.
It was left to Richard, earl of Warwick, to revive the Beauchamps' fortunes in the
fifteenth century.
163J.M.W.Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism (Manchester, 1968), 124-5
47
Chapter 2: Land and Wealth
The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi perhaps stated the importance of
a man's landed wealth in the middle ages most succinctly: ‘By the size of his
patrimony, you may assess his power’, he wrote of Thomas, earl of Lancaster164,
but this observation holds true for all medieval England. Land was the primary
resource in the middle ages, as it is in any pre-‐industrial economy, and the
greater the land controlled by a person, the greater that individual's wealth. But
income was not the only reward which land could bring, for it endowed the
holder with status and political power. A landowner would be the most
important member of the local community in areas where his lands dominated,
and would possess a status which could not be touched upon by those less-‐
endowed. His extravagance, generosity and opulent life style would attract and
reward adherents, servants and hangers-‐on away from any potential rivals, and,
with his numerous supporters, he would be able to intimidate those who
opposed or prevented further expansion of his powerbase, by legal or illegal
intimidation. The higher nobility, in particular, were very sensitive to their own
position; much of the opposition to Gaveston can be seen as resentment toward a
man of comparatively humble origins being raised to the height of comital status
(and being endowed with £4,000 worth of lands to support his rank), whereas
164J. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A study in the reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), 9
48
his execution, despite having being meticulously planned by Earl Guy
Beauchamp in Warwick, and having been sentenced and condemned under the
earl of Warwick's administration, was carried out upon the nearest piece of
Lancastrian land to Warwick castle because, out of all the contrariant lords,
Lancaster had the largest estate. This made him the most powerful of the earls,
and the one who would be most capable of resisting the hostile forces of the
crown. Meanwhile, the poorest of all the earls, the De Vere earls of Oxford, played
practically no role in the politics of the early fourteenth century, a sure sign that
the greater the wealth of the earl, the greater his independence, and, as a
consequence, the greater his political importance.
The rise of the Beauchamp family between 1268 and 1369 presents us
with an illuminating example of how a family of reasonably modest means could,
in three generations, rise to be become one of the longest established and well-‐
respected of comital families. McFarlane says, when they first gained the
Warwick earldom, that ‘the Beauchamp earls were of modest landed wealth.
Indeed, only the Vere earl of Oxford was poorer, and he could scarcely support
the rank’ 165 , with their lands primarily concentrated in the midlands.
Furthermore, for most of the later thirteenth century, Earl William was beset by
debt, and seems to have constantly had to use the services of moneylenders in
order to make ends meet. By Earl Thomas' death in 1369, the Beauchamps had
acquired land holdings which stretched from Barnard Castle in County Durham
to Helston in Cornwall, and which included the highly profitable land of Gower in
165K.B. McFarlane, The Nobility of later Medieval England (Oxford, 1973), 199
49
the Welsh Marches. In one century, the estates and wealth of this family had
grown consistently, so that McFarlane estimates the third Beauchamp earl
enjoyed an annual income of £3,200 by the 1360s166. This did not, by any means,
make him one of the wealthiest of earls: the Lancaster estates were worth
c£11,000 p.a. in 1311167, and the De Clare inheritance has been estimated as
yielding £6,000 p.a.168 before its dispersion in 1314. However, this was still a
respectable sum; Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, had lands worth
approximately £3,000 a year, whilst Piers Gaveston was given £4,000 to support
him as earl of Cornwall169. The revenue which the lands generated, however, was
undoubtedly bolstered by occasional windfalls, such as profits of war, of the sort
particularly enjoyed by Earl Thomas. There is also income which we cannot
possibly estimate, but which undoubtedly would have benefited the earl;
‘doucers’, a cash bribe paid by petitioners in order to gain his favour, would have
been substantial, given the third earl's control of the shrievalties of
Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire. As has been covered in the
previous chapter, there can be no doubt that part of the Beauchamps' increasing
fortunes in this period were due to the character and ability of the earls
themselves. This, for instance, provided Earl Thomas with an annuity of 1,000
marks, along with the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. However,
166McFarlane, Nobility, 191 n.3 167Maddicot, Lancaster, 22 168G.A.Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 36 169J.R.S.Phillips, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke 1307-24 (Oxford, 1972), 17, 243
50
military prowess does not, in itself, adequately explain the rise in land, wealth
and status which the Beauchamps enjoyed in this period.
When William inherited the title of earl of Warwick in 1268, he had
inherited lands which were distributed over eight counties. Given the problems
of communications in the middle ages, the notion of lands being scattered over
England might appear a liability. The problem, however, does not appear to have
been so great. The bulk of the earl's estates were concentrated in the midlands,
with nine in Worcestershire, ten in Warwickshire and three in Gloucestershire.
The estates in Worcestershire mainly derived from the Beauchamp family
inheritance: the centre of Beauchamp power, prior to 1268, was Elmley Castle,
described by Hilton as ‘an immense structure....inhabitable and in repair up to
the end of the fifteenth century’170. However, the castle appears to have been
much neglected by the end of the thirteenth century, for, in 1298, Earl William's
inquisitors claim that the ‘castle of the manor requires much repair’171, whilst in
1315 the castle was valued at a meagre 6s 8d on account that it needed ‘much
repairing and sustaining’172. This evident decline appears to have been halted
from 1330 onwards; after this time ‘it would seem that an effort was made to
maintain the castle in good repair’173. Elmley Castle occupied an area in southern
Worcestershire that had long been a Beauchamp stronghold, and which
continued to be so once their lands had become part of the Warwick earldom. 170R.H.Hilton, A Medieval Society (Cambridge, 1966), 43 171Worcestershire Inquisitions Post Mortem, ed. J. Willis-Bund, 2 vols. (Worcs. Hist. Soc., Oxford, 1894-1909), i, 63 172 Worcs Inq. P.M., ii, 74 173R.H.Hilton, ‘Building Accounts of Elmley Castle, Worcestershire, 1345-6’, University of Birmingham Historical Journal, x (1965), 77-87
51
The main concentration of Beauchamp lands in Worcestershire began around
Shrawley, to the west of Droitwich, took in properties in Droitwich associated
with the salt industry, and the manor of Salwarp to the south of that town. It then
included property in the town and the castle of Worcester, before fanning out to
the south-‐east, taking in a group of manors located to the north-‐west of
Pershore, including the manors of Stoulton and Wadborough. North-‐east of
Pershore can be found the manors of Naunton Beauchamp and Sheriff's Lench,
whilst there are another clutch of manors in the vale of Evesham to the north of
the Gloucestershire border, concentrated around Elmley Castle. These include
Great Comberton and Little Comberton and the Gloucestershire manor of
Kemerton, just over the border. Throughout our period, the earl's properties in
Worcestershire steadily increased. The manor of Acton Beauchamp, which had
been granted in the mid-‐thirteenth century to James Beauchamp, a close relative
of Earl William, came back into the hands of the Beauchamp family's elder
branch, some time in the last two decades of the thirteenth century, following
James Beauchamp's death without legitimate heirs174 . The later thirteenth
century also saw Earl William and Earl Guy gradually acquiring land and rent
from their own tenants in the manor of Great Comberton175, extending their
manor there by piecemeal acquisitions. Pirton, directly to the west of
Wadborough, was in the hands of William Poer in the late thirteenth century. In
1298 his widow, Margery, quitclaimed her share to Maud Beauchamp, whilst
174VCH Worcs., v, 225 175VCH Worcs., iv, 58
52
Earl Guy slowly managed to get all Poer's heirs to release their rights to the
manor between the years 1303 and 1313176. Guy also bought the manor of
Bishampton from the two heirs of William Pipard in 1313-‐14 although it appears
that part of the capital messuage there was granted back to his widow Cecily as
her dower177. Despite the fact that acquisitions were made in this area, implying
the Beauchamps were still actively their property, there is as much evidence to
suggest the contrary; namely that the Beauchamps, after the beginning of the
fourteenth century, regarded the area as of secondary importance. Certainly this
is suggested by the fact that Bishampton appears to have been alienated by
Thomas Beauchamp by 1346178, as was the manor of Pirton in 1341-‐2179. The
poor state of the castle of Elmley in the first years of the fourteenth century has
already been noted. The castle of Worcester, in the Beauchamps' hands on
account of their possession of the shrievalty of Worcestershire, was also allowed
to deteriorate. By 1315, the castle was in such bad repair that it was considered
‘of no yearly value, because it is wholly in ruin’, whilst ‘herbage’, growing in the
disused moats, was considered to have a yearly value of 10d.180 It was not only
the castles that were allowed to fall into disrepair; the manor of Stoulton had a
watermill and a windmill, which together were worth 8s. p.a. in 1298181, and by
1315 these are both said to be in ruins [debilia], although they were still said to
176VCH Worcs., iv, 181 177VCH Worcs., iii, 263 178ibid 179VCH Worcs., iv, 181 180Worcs. Inq. P.M., ii, 57 181Worcs. Inq. P.M., i, 64
53
be worth 13s 4d182. The fact that neither mill after 1315 is ever mentioned again
indicates that they were allowed to disintegrate. This would correspond to John
Langdon's view that, whilst the pre-‐Beauchamp earls of Warwick were
‘unusually active’ in building mills, they had over-‐reached themselves by the
beginning of the fourteenth century, resulting in a decline in their numbers after
1315183. However, this could also be regarded as an indication that what had
been one of the key areas of activity for the earls of Warwick, in the late
thirteenth century, became an area of diminishing importance as the fourteenth
century progressed; a sign that the Beauchamps, who were once heavily involved
in Worcestershire, now regarded Warwickshire as their sole midlands base.
The main group of Beauchamp lands in Warwickshire in 1268 were those
that had long been in the possession of the earls of Warwick, and were scattered
around the west and centre of the county. The main caput of the earldom was the
castle and town of Warwick itself, including the park of Wedgnock. Claverdon
was also in the centre of the county. Apart from Warwick castle and manor, the
two most important properties were at opposite ends of the county. Sutton
Coldfield was the principal hunting chase of the earls; by 1298 it took in part of
the south-‐east Staffordshire, with its borders taking in Salford Bridge near Perry
Barr, the source of Bourne Brook, and Drayton Bassett184. It was held in dower
by the countess Ela up until 1287, when she exchanged it for the manor of
182Worcs. Inq. P.M., ii, 66 183J.Langdon, ‘Watermills and Windmills in the West Midlands, 1086-1500’, Economic History Review, 3rd ser., xliv (1991), 432 184VCH Warwks., iv, 236
54
Spelsbury in Oxfordshire185 , and in 1316 during Thomas' minority, it was
expected to render over £24 p.a. for the crown186. In economic terms, this made
the manor around half the value of a manor such as Elmley or Wadborough in
Worcestershire, but, as the earl's main hunting domain, its importance was
clearly greater than either. Records of incursions into the park show the earls
took action against intruders in 1293, 1298, 1303, 1307, 1346, 1351 and 1362187,
whilst the estates were under royal protection because they were fighting for the
king. Earl William appears to have gone to great lengths to control access to the
park. Ralph Basset's keepers in his own woods at Drayton, which joined onto
Sutton chase, were obliged to take an oath before the earl himself for the faithful
custody of his venison, and the earl's ranger oversaw the keeping of deer in
Drayton woods188, whilst, in 1289, Earl William gained permission from the king
to ‘follow deer, started in his free chase of Sutton, into the [royal] forest of
Cannock’189. A grant in 1300 to Earl Guy of a weekly market and a four day
annual fair190 seems to have been a deliberate attempt by the earl to integrate his
manor into the developing commercial economy of its district. This initial
attempt failed, for the weekly market presumably had lapsed by the time another
license was given in 1353191. By the early fifteenth century, Sutton Coldfield was
185VCH Warwks., iv, 233 186Cal.Fine Rolls, 1307-19, 265 187Cal.Pat.Rolls, passim. 188BC, fol. 106 189Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1281-1292, 321 190Cal.Chart. Rolls, ii, 489 191VCH Warwks., iv, 235
55
displaying proto-‐urban characteristics, profiting from the food trade, catering for
travellers on the Birmingham to Lichfield road192.
In 1268, the other key Beauchamp manor in Warwickshire was Brailes.
Like Sutton Coldfield it was isolated from the rest of the estates on the edge of
the county. Unlike Sutton Coldfield, its importance was economic: in 1316 it was
leased out when it was temporarily in the king's hands at £93 5s 4¾d making it
the richest of all the earl's lands in the midlands, with the exception of Warwick
which was leased at the price of a few shillings more193. It was clearly of
significant economic importance to the Beauchamps; there had been a market
there every Monday since 1248, and in 1275 there were complaints that the
earl's bailiff took excessive tolls there194. In 1268, therefore, the earl's three
principal properties in the county were situated at either end of the county and
in the centre. However, as the century progressed, Sutton and Brailes were to
remain isolated, whilst the earls gradually built up their estates in the centre of
the county. There was, from the later thirteenth century, a concerted policy to
extend his holdings in the town of Warwick, to which we will return later.
Berkswell and Lighthorne were purchased from Richard D'Ammundeville in
1277195. The manor of Haseley was purchased in 1301196, and the manor of
Sherbourne, which had been granted by an earl of Warwick to the Templars in
192C.C.Dyer, ‘The hidden trade of the Middle Ages: Evidence from the West Midlands of England’, Journal of Historical Geography, 2nd Ser., xviii (1992), 141-150, 149 193Cal.Fine Rolls, 1307-19, 265 194VCH Warwks., v, 18 195VCH Warwks., v, 117 196BC, fol. 95-96
56
the twelfth century, was granted to Earl Guy by the king when the order was
suppressed in 1308197. Some lands in Barford had already been taken into
Warwick hands between 1290 and 1316, and the rest was purchased by Thomas
in 1340198, while Budbrooke was received by Thomas in exchange for the
Worcestershire manors of Grafton and Grove Park in 1360199. By 1369, the bulk
of the earl's manors were concentrated in the centre of Warwickshire with only
Berkswell, Yardley and Sutton Coldfield as isolated points in the north of the
county, Tanworth on the Worcestershire border, Whitchurch, Ilmington, and
Brailes in the south.
Outside Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the Beauchamps had land
throughout England. The Mauduit family had originally been a Buckinghamshire
family, and the most important Beauchamp manor outside of the midlands was
their ancient seat of Hanslope. This manor remained an essential part of the
Beauchamp estates, and Hanslope appears to have been a favoured place of
residence, providing the earls with a a useful place to stay on the way from
Warwick to London. In the Beauchamp cartulary, it is commonly cited as the
place of signing of charters, and in 1292 William Beauchamp received licence to
build and crenellate a garden wall around his capital messuage there200, which
possibly stood on the site Hanslope Castle, which had been destroyed in 1215. In
Hanslope church there is still a painting of a bear and a ragged staff201. There was
197VCH Warwks., iii, 166 198VCH Warwks., v, 11 199VCH Warwks., iii, 66 200Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1281-1292, 497 201A.E.Goodman, The Loyal Conspiracy (London, 1971), 141
57
also a concerted policy on the part of the Beauchamps to buy up, piecemeal, as
much property, land and rent as they could: 22 folios202 in the Beauchamp
cartulary contain over a hundred charters which detail the Beauchamps buying
small portions of land in the fields around the manor, such as the two acres
which Richard of Hulle gave Thomas Beauchamp in 1342-‐3203; small amounts of
rent, such as the 12d annual rent bought by Earl William from William Lupo204,
or the 2s 1½d rent quitclaimed by Richard Bayreueth of Hanslope, in 1295-‐6, for
twenty shillings205; or properties such as the messuage with courtyard that was
quitclaimed by Thomas le Falconer to Earl William206 , which matches the
description of the messuage with courtyard leased to John Henry and his wife
Alice for 20d per annum207. The receipts for this manor, along with several
others, for 25 September 1327 to 15 February 1328, have been preserved208.
Although this period was less than six months, the profits of the manor
amounted to £44 17s 11½d, which was more than twice that of Berkswell, three
times that of Lighthorne and ten times the amount gained in Claverdon over the
same period. Sale of grain in itself yielded a colossal £33 13s 6d, and it seems
likely that this manor was more profitable than either Warwick or Brailes. In
1316, its annual value was estimated at an impressive £129 2s 6d209.
202BC, fol. 22-44 203BC, fol. 27 204BC, fol. 25 205BC, fol. 25-26 206BC, fol. 37 207BC, fol. 36 208PRO SC6/1123/4 209Cal.Close Rolls, 1313-18, 255
58
There was another concentration of lands in Gloucestershire: Chedworth
was traditionally a manor given up by the earls to somewhat frequent dowagers
in a pattern that had become established long before 1268210. Wickwar lay in the
vale. Lydney, on west side of the Severn, was a divided settlement, with the earls
holding the half called Lydney Warwick as their demesne lands. Lydney's
position on the Severn served to make it a centre for legal trade, in 1347 it was a
place where customs were collected, but its size seems to have made it more of a
haven for smugglers and profiteers; in 1282 six vessels based in Lydney were
reported to trade in stolen timber from the Forest of Dean, and, in 1343, a vessel
from Lydney was arrested for piracy off the Cornish coast211. Whether from legal
or illegal trade, Earl William appears to have encouraged the growth of the
manor; he granted a weekly market in 1268, and had built a second mill there
before 1282212.
To the north-‐east of the Beauchamps' base in Worcestershire and
Warwickshire were the properties they owned in Leicestershire and Rutland.
Kibworth Beauchamp was an old Beauchamp property, Barrowden had belonged
to the Mauduits, and Greetham had long been a part of the Warwick fief213. It
appears that these manors were sufficiently outside the Beauchamps' sphere of
control as to be considered for alienation from the fief. In 1303, Earl Guy
obtained licence to demise the manors of Barrowden and Greetham to the
210VCH Gloucs., vii, 166, 171 211VCH Gloucs., v, 74 212VCH Gloucs., v, 77, 72 213VCH Rutland, ii, 171, 134
59
executors of Edmund, earl of Cornwall, to whom he was in debt214, whilst
Barrowden and Kibworth Beauchamp was settled upon Thomas' eldest son Guy
in 1342, at the time of his marriage to Philippa De Ferrers215.
From 1268 to 1369, the Beauchamps received several inheritances and
gifts of land which gave them a number of isolated properties in areas where
they had no other interests, and also into counties in which they had not been
represented before. The Fitz-‐Geoffrey inheritance saw them gain Cherhill in
Hertfordshire, Potterspury in Northamptonshire, and the reversion of the
Buckinghamshire manor of Quarrendon. The latter two were quite near to
Hanslope. Potterspury and Cherhill are two of the manors for which we have
receipts from September 1327 to February 1328. Potterspury was considerably
less important, for that time only yielding a profit of £7 4s 8d216, with its true
value probably in the region of £39 p.a., although, with over £10 having to be
shared amongst the other Fitz-‐Geoffrey heirs, the true value to the Beauchamp
estates was probably in the region of £20 pa217. The receipt for Cherhill for the
five months in question shows it to have yielded a staggering £47 16s 5d; three
pounds more than Hanslope. However this appears to be an anomalous total, for
over £20 of the revenue was from the sale of 64 acres of land to William de la
Zouche218; again the 1298 estimate of annual income of £48 13s 7d219 would
appear a more accurate figure, although, after the death of Sir Guy, the crown 214Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1301-1307, 130 215VCH Rutland, ii, 170; Cal. Inq.P.M., xii, 310 216PRO SC6/1123/4 217Cal.Fine Rolls, 1272-1307, 398 218PRO SC6/1123/4 219Cal.Fine Rolls, 1272-1307, 398
60
estimated its worth at less than £19 p.a.220. Quarrendon was the original caput of
the Fitz-‐Geoffrey family, just as Hanslope had been for the Mauduits and Elmley
Castle for the Beauchamps, with a park constructed for the lord of the manor in
1276. In 1332, on the death of Robert Montalt, the manor passed into the hands
of Thomas Beauchamp.
Like the lands of the Fitz-‐Geoffrey inheritance, the Tony inheritance was
concentrated in the south of England, but it brought in greater profits which
were much more scattered. Flamstead, in Hertfordshire, was not too remote
from Hanslope or Potterspury; it appears to have been the home of Alice, Earl
Guy's widow, with her third husband William de la Zouche, and was one of the
manors which Earl Thomas jointly entailed upon himself and his wife in 1344221.
Abberley, with its park222, was easily absorbed into the earl's Worcestershire
estates. Newton Tony and Stratford Tony, although in Wiltshire, were
considerably removed from Cherhill, being to the south of Salisbury Plain. These
two villages were too insignificant and too remote to be held in demesne, and
when the manors had passed to Thomas Beauchamp in 1337, he, in turn, passed
them to his brother, John. On John's death in 1360, the manors were given by
Earl Thomas to one of his younger sons223. The proximity of Walthamstow,
Essex, to London appears to have made the manor worthy of investment; in
1361, Earl Thomas acquired the reversion of Walthamstow Bedyk to the south-‐
220Cal.Close Rolls, 1313-18, 255 221VCH Herts., ii, 194 222VCH Worcs., iv, 220 223VCH Wiltshire, v, 146
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west of the parish224. The pattern for members of the higher nobility at this time
was to have a residence in London, and a country retreat within easy commuting
distance from the capital, and Walthamstow appears to have provided this. As an
agricultural centre it does not appear to have been as valuable225.
The manors of Kirtling in Cambridgeshire and Painscastle on the Welsh
borders were far removed from any other Beauchamp properties, although both
were of considerable value. The lordship of Painscastle was worth £171 per
annum by the end of the fourteenth century226. There was a second inheritance
from the Tony inheritance in the 1340s, on the death of a dower, and this bought
in the Norfolk manors of Saham Tony, Necton, Fransham and Cressingham along
with the hundreds of Waylond and Grimshoe, as well as the Cornish properties of
Carnanton, Blisland and Helston, and rents from South Zeal and South Taunton.
Saham Toney, with the hundreds, was worth over £115 a year and the properties
in Devon and Cornwall yielded over £75 a year227. By the 1340s, therefore, the
Tony inheritance had made a difference to the fortunes of the Warwick earldom,
in excess of £700 a year228.
The most remote of Beauchamp properties were those in County Durham,
which Earl Guy was awarded by the king at the beginning of the fourteenth
century. They consisted of Castle Barnard, with its dependent manors of
224VCH Essex, vi, 254 225VCH Essex, vi, 256 226Goodman, Conspiracy, 142 227A.F.J.Sinclair, ‘The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the Later Middle Ages’ (London School of Economics Ph.D thesis, 1987), 29 228Sinclair, 29. She calculates the inheritance in 1337 to be over £500, plus the figures quoted for Norfolk and the west country give this rough estimate.
62
Gainford and Middleton. Like Painscastle, Castle Barnard appears to have been a
very important source of revenue for the Beauchamps. In 1420, the Castle
Barnard estate, alone, produced over £220 p.a. and by that time had become a
great cattle ranch. No doubt continuing earlier arrangements, cattle were being
driven south from Castle Barnard in order to provide for the needs of the
earldom's great estates229.
Of all the Beauchamp properties in 1369, the single most important
possession was the territory of Gower, which included the demesne manor of
Kilvey, and the castles of Swansea and Oystermouth. This had been acquired in
1354, and was the culmination of a legal dispute which spanned three
generations, and which will be discussed later. From that date, it would appear
that this Welsh lordship was responsible for up to 20% of Earl Thomas' landed
income; in 1367 the profits passed by the earl's receiver there to his lord totalled
over £600. Of added significance is the fact that the profits of Gower were not the
result of sale of agricultural produce or fixed rents as it was on the earl's English
estates; most of the revenue came from the profits of the court, and so-‐called
‘casual revenue’230, which were largely immune from the crisis of the Black
Death that was affecting the earl's English manors at the time. Earl Thomas
appears to have seen the economic potential in the regions fledgling coal-‐mining
industry, concentrated in the lordship of Kilvey, which yielded a profit of £70 18s
3d in 1366-‐7.231 In addition to the lands gained in 1354, Thomas Beauchamp
229McFarlane, Nobility, 194 230Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 250 231Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 250
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also possessed the manor of Elvel from 1337, on account of his marriage to
Roger Mortimer's daughter, Mortimer having disputed the rights to the manor
with Earl Guy. Elvel brought in a comparatively modest sum, £194 in 1397232,
but along with the lordship of Gower, it has been estimated that these holdings
more than compensated for any fall in income caused by the Black Death233. It
was not only the Beauchamps who benefited. Their interests in Gower
correspond with the growing influence in the Welsh Marches of the Staffords,
Hastings, and Montagues; all of them English aristocratic families who expanded
into Wales in the later fourteenth century.
George Holmes, in his study of the estates of Elizabeth de Burgh, has
perceived the economy of a great aristocratic household in our period to be
based around ‘goods producing’ and ‘money producing’ manors. The ‘goods
producing’ manors were concentrated in their home counties, were smaller, and
raised agricultural produce which would be used primarily to support the lord's
household by using the produce itself, or trading it locally to provide for other
agricultural necessities. The ‘money producing’ manors were scattered among
the more remote areas of the country, and provided cash for the wages of
servants and officials, as well as the purchase of luxury items234. The comparison
with de Burgh is inviting, at least for the estates in 1369; the lady Clare's annual
revenue of £2,000 to £3,000 per annum is approximately the same as Earl
232R.R.Davies, Lordship and Society in the March of Wales, 1282-1400 (Oxford,1978), 51 233Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 250 234Holmes, Estates, 111
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Thomas'; she also held Usk, a marcher lordship, as well as property that was
spread out over many counties. It should be remembered that a sedentary noble,
such as Burgh, would have run a different type of household to an active, military
noble such as Beauchamp, who would have had more occasion to visit his
outlying manors, relying on their hospitality in the course of his frequent travels.
We lack any documentation that reveals the eventual destination of goods
produced in the counties of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, but they do seem
to fit the idea of a ‘goods producing’ manor. Of the partial receipts we have for
the year 1327-‐28, the midlands manors yield considerably less profit than the
manors in other counties. Bearing in mind that Hanslope produced over £44 and
Cherhill nearly £30, the comparative penury of the earldom's midlands estates is
shown up: in Worcestershire, Pirton only yielded a profit of £2 15s 10¾d;
Wadborough £5 7s 7½d; in Warwickshire Claverdon brought in less than £2, and
Haseley and Beausale together yielded £4 14s 7d235. Certainly these figures do
not represent the manors' full values, but they do allow us to make a reasonable
comparison between the various estates documented. The midlands also had its
share of highly profitable manors; we have already discussed Brailes, we shall
see how Warwick was of great financial importance to the earls, and it would
appear from these receipts that Berkswell was also a prize money-‐spinner.
There is evidence, however, that, at least by 1369, it was the estates in
remote areas of the country which generated the lion's share of the earldom's
income. In 1315, the king granted eleven of the Earl Guy's twenty-‐two midland
235PRO SC6/1123/4
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manors (along with some other properties) to his executors. The total annual
revenue expected from half of the estate's manors (including the manors of
Brailes and Warwick) was just under £480 per annum236. It would seem unlikely
that the income collected from all of their estates in Worcestershire and
Warwickshire exceeded £1,000 per annum, a sum perceived as just above
subsistence level for someone of comital rank. The property in the Welsh
Marches, in particular, but also in County Durham, in Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire
and Gloucestershire was therefore extremely important. It would provide the
cash revenue with which to purchase and distribute luxuries and largesse,
support military campaigns, and provide the funds for the acquisition of more
property. This line of thought becomes even more interesting when we
extrapolate this idea back to the time of Earl William in the late thirteenth
century. At this time the lands from Warwickshire and Worcestershire would
have provided most of his income, with Hanslope being the only high earning
property he possessed outside of the midlands, and the dower Countess Ela
possessing rights to a significant portion of his lands. At a very rough
‘guesstimate’ we can attribute his annual revenue, before the Fitz-‐Geoffrey
windfall in 1297, to around £1,000 to £1,200 per annum, a handsome sum for the
time, but for someone of comital status this represented the bottom rung of the
ladder.
*****
236This figure taken from figures included in Cal.Fine Rolls, 1307-19, 265. The total there is £531 9s 1½d, but I have deducted the figures for the lands outside Worcestershire and Warwickshire to reach the total of £479 4s 11d.
66
It was the creation of new estates that transformed the Beauchamps'
wealth, from the second lowest of all the earls to the middle of their ranks. An
important question now arises: how did the Beauchamps acquire these new
lands? Was it part of a consistent land policy, or does the history support
Holmes' contention that ‘a great inheritance tended to expand’237, due to the fact
that the constant extinction of other noble houses would invariably provide
inheritances for the well-‐established surviving lines?
If the Beauchamps did exercise consistent land policy, it was based
around small scale acquisitions. We have already discussed this in relation to
Hanslope, where small pieces of property were added piecemeal to the earls'
holdings throughout our period. This is precisely the long-‐term strategy which
the Beauchamps took in their town of Warwick. Warwick was undoubtedly the
most important property in the Beauchamp estates; it was their powerbase, the
centre of their administration and, in 1315, brought in a higher revenue than any
other property in the midlands238. At that time, its economic importance was
possibly only eclipsed by Hanslope and Barnard Castle. The Beauchamp
cartulary contains over 50 charters which detail small scale purchases in the
town from 1268 to 1369239, compared to only one such purchase for the town of
Worcester. The purchases in question were mostly rents and buildings, be they
tenements or messuages, with the buying of plots of land also making up a
sizeable number. The sale of plots of land appears to have been a calculated
237Holmes, Estates, 8 238Cal.Fine Rolls, 1307-19, 265 239BC, passim
67
desire to expand their existing holdings, for when an abuttal clause is attached to
the charter, it usually does state that the land being sold is directly next to one of
the earl's existing holdings. In some cases, the earls seem to be buying land
directly next to Warwick Castle itself240, which can be explained as expansion, or
merely a desire for privacy, whilst elsewhere the land is next to tenements which
they own241. Here, presumably, the land is intended to provide an extension to
the earl's property, and would eventually came to be used as a site for further
tenements.
The buying of messuages, tenements and rents, however, does not
appear to follow this pattern. Property of this sort appears to have been collected
regardless of whether it abutted existing Beauchamp properties. The emphasis
on tenements and rents, as opposed to land purchases, perhaps shows the
Beauchamps' priorities in Warwick: tenements and rents were convenient and
steady sources of income. This is despite a considerable amount of land which
was owned in the environs of Warwick; in the minority of Thomas it stood at 342
acres of arable and over 99 acres (and 3 roods) of pastoral land242. When buying
buildings it seems to have been the desire for a simple cash revenue which
determined the purchase. Some of the purchases were bought from widows, who
were now in possession of their husband's property; the earl could be quite
generous by providing for the rest of their lives in return for the quitclaim of
their property. Alice Crompes was given a shop with its own cellar and latrine in
240e.g. BC, fols. 64, 70, 116 241e.g. BC, fol. 71 242PRO SC6/1040/24
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Warwick, by Earl Thomas, in return for quitclaiming a messuage which she had
inherited from her late husband243. In cases where someone defaulted on a debt,
and they had made over some of their property to be held as security, the earl
would occasionally buy the debt off the creditor, in order to acquire the property
which had been forfeited: Earl Thomas' receiver, John de Sanndrestete, bought a
tenement in Castle Street from a Bristol widow on the earl's behalf, which she
had acquired because someone had defaulted on a debt of £15244. We also should
not ignore the fact that the earls were buying rents in an area where they had the
most control; the earl of Warwick's administration would have been
concentrated in the castle, and the town's administrative officials would have
been dominated by his men, which made it easier for his officials to deal with any
cases of default should they arise. This would perhaps explain why they troubled
to purchase very small amounts of rent, some of which brought in revenue of no
more than a few pence per annum. To chase up so small a debt in an outlying
manor could have cost more than the debt itself, but in the centre of his domain
it would have been less troublesome. This would also have been made possible
by the local knowledge and connections which his officials would have had in the
town, making them well placed to discover if a property was on the market.
The problem of guarding isolated holdings in remote counties is
demonstrated by the case of the Le Neir family in Southampton. Earl William had
inherited the right of weighing ‘all merchandise sold by weight, at all hours and
243BC, fol. 4 244BC, fol. 9
69
places in that town’, a right which he had rented to the Le Neir family for 20s
annual rent245. Nicholas de Barflete was alderman of the town, and had even
been a witness for the charter between Earl William and the Le Neirs. He, along
with other burgesses of the town, forcibly seized the weights and balance and
took the right of weights and measures for their own use246. This was, in fact, a
calculated attack by the governing elite of the town on the rights of the earls of
Warwick and his appointed representatives, and shows the problems inherent in
maintaining control over holdings in areas out of the control of the earl and his
administration. The problem was referred to the royal justices, and it was
probably their intervention which kept the weighing rights in the hands of the
earl; both earls Guy and Thomas purchased property in Southampton in the
fourteenth century247, but tellingly Earl William does not appear to have done so,
a possible sign that, during his lifetime, he saw local animosity toward absentee
landlords had made this remote property unworthy of development. A similar
problem could be encountered in more significant outlying holdings. Following
the grant of Barnard Castle, and its associated manors, to Guy Beauchamp in
1307, the earl found his holdings in County Durham to be the source of a dispute
between Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, and himself. Bek saw Edward I's grant
to the earl as a blow to his own authority; Beauchamp refused to recognise the
bishop of Durham as the feudal lord of the lands in the franchise, claiming that he
held the lands as a direct grant from the crown, and denied the bishop judicial
245BC, fol. 89 246Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1272-1281, 66 247BC, fol. 90-92
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authority, and the lucrative rewards which Bek had previously enjoyed248 .
Shortly after the death of Edward I, when the likelihood of royal intervention
was at its weakest, Bek organised an incursion into the manor of Middleton,
driving away the earl's livestock and causing damage estimated at £1,000. Faced
with these losses, and a new king less likely to defend his authority, the earl
capitulated and restored the liberty of the manors to Bek249. The dispute over
Barnard Castle is evidence that an outlying property, even one as well fortified as
this, was not immune from the attentions of a hostile neighbour who had the a
large part of the local community behind him.
The piecemeal buying of land seems only to have occurred on a large scale
in Warwick and Hanslope. Outside of these places, land purchases consistently
tended to involve whole manors. After a manor was bought, small scale
purchases of land and property did follow in many cases, but never on the scale
of Warwick and Hanslope. Earl William and Countess Maud purchased the
manors of Sheriff's Lench and Church Lench from James Beauchamp in what
appears to have been a straightforward purchase250. This also seems to be the
case with the manor of Ashorne, which Earl Thomas bought from John Vessi and
his wife Joanna in 1358-‐9251. The following day, orders were issued from the
Vessis to their retainers, John Hukyn and William de Marton, to hand over the
manor to John de Whately252, the earl's retainer, and with that and the payment
248C.M.Fraser, A History of Anthony Bek (Oxford, 1957), 21, 208 249C.M Fraser, A History of Anthony Bek, 21;Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1307-1313, 169-170 250BC, fol. 160 251BC, fol. 103 252BC, fol. 104
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of an (unrecorded) fee, the land sale seems to have been completed. The transfer
appears to have been more problematic when there were various people with
claims to the manor. After the death of Thomas de Haseley, Earl Guy bought the
manor of Haseley from his heirs, his wife Anna and his son Robert. Seperate
charters record their quitclaim of the manor in 1301-‐2, with his widow receiving
£20 annually from rents in Kibworth Beauchamp for life253. Although Robert had
quitclaimed the manor in the same year, he still retained some rights in the
manor, and it was not until three years later that he surrendered these to Earl
Guy in exchange for a cash payment of £20254. We have already discussed the
acquisition of Pirton which was quitclaimed to Earl Guy in various pieces
between 1298 and 1313.
Perhaps the most complicated land deal was that by which the
Beauchamps brought the Warwickshire manors of Berkswell and Lighthorne.
Richard de Ammundeville, with his wife Maud, sold the manor to Earl William in
1277255. Ammundeville was a close associate of Earl William's, as is shown by
his frequent presence in the lists of witnesses on the earl's charters256. The
original sale was very generous to the Ammundevilles; by recognising the earl as
lord of Berkswell and Lighthorne, Earl William gave them custody of the manors
until their deaths, along with the profit of the manor of Brailes (excluding £16
rent), and a one-‐off cash payment of £100257. This sale made sense to a couple 253BC, fol. 96 254BC, fol. 96 255VCH Warwks., iv, 29 256BC, passim 257Warwickshire Fleet of Fines, 1195-1509, ed. E.Stokes & F.C. Wellstood (Dugdale Society, xi, London, 1932), 202
72
who lacked any heirs and were probably too old to produce any, but was clearly
a gamble on the part of the earl; he was alienating his second most profitable
manor for an unspecified period of time, for two manors which might not come
into the Warwick estates in his own lifetime. The gamble did not pay off.
Ammundeville was still very much alive twenty years later, when, in 1297, he
received land worth £100 per annum in the midlands manors of Beoley, Yardley
and Claverdon from Earl William, in exchange for the manor of Berkswell258. On
Earl William's part, this deal appears to have been a very costly and ill-‐judged
arrangement, and by demising a further £100 worth of land a year he appears to
have been digging himself into a deeper hole. The manor of Berkswell was most
certainly not worth £100 per annum in 1297. In 1315-‐16, after a large amount of
peasant lands were purchased and enclosed in 1305-‐6259, it was estimated by the
crown to be worth £38 8s 3d p.a.260, and for the five months it was in the crown's
hands in 1327-‐8, it yielded a total £11 16s 8¾d261. The purchase of Berkswell
and Lighthorne demonstrate a lack of judgement on the part of the first
Beauchamp earl which, given his financial circumstances, he could scarcely
afford.
The general pattern for Beauchamp accumulation of manors seems to be
that they concentrated on purchasing whole manors in Worcestershire or
Warwickshire; sometimes outside these counties, small-‐scale land and property
258Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1292-1301, 256; BC, fol. 85 259 BC, fol. 88-89 260Cal.Close Rolls, 1313-18, 255, 276 261PRO SC6/1123/4
73
were bought, but only on very rare occasions would this be a whole manor262.
We have already established the financial importance of the property held
outside the midlands, but what is interesting is that its accumulation came as a
result of inheritance, and not an active policy of purchase; this is surely an area
where the Beauchamps owed their fortune to good luck and good marriages.
They merely had to wait for these inheritances to fall into their laps, although in
some cases the wait could be a considerable period of time. In the case of the
Fitz-‐Geoffrey fortune, Earl William and Countess Maud had to lobby for their full
share; they ‘often came to the chancery and sued instantly their pourparties of
the inheritance’263 due to complaints of the size of their portion by their co-‐
inheritors. The matter was not settled until 1299264, after it had been prolonged
for two years, and during which time Earl William had died. Quarrendon, whose
reversion had been assigned to the earl as part of the Fitz-‐Geoffrey inheritance,
did not come into Beauchamp hands until 1332265. The Tony inheritance proved
even more problematic: the inheritance was only at the disposal of the
Beauchamps from between 1310, when Alice de Tony had married Earl Guy, to
1315 when Guy died and the estates remained with Alice, who subsequently
married William de la Zouche of Ashby. Although Alice died in 1324, the estates
remained with Zouche until his death in March 1337266, and so most of the Tony
inheritance did not finally pass into the Beauchamp estates until twenty-‐seven 262Although Thomas did purchase the reversions of 3 manors in 1351; Black Princes Reg., iii, 40 263Cal.Fine Rolls, 1272-1307, 398 264Sinclair, 14 265Cal.Close Rolls, 1330-33, 429 266Cal.Inq.P.M., viii, 65
74
years after Guy and Alice's marriage. These lands alone have been calculated as
being worth in excess of £500 per annum267. As mentioned above, it was not
until the 1340s when the Norfolk and west country manors became available,
that the full Tony estates had become assimilated into the Warwick estates.
Neither did the Beauchamps always inherit from their wives; the
Worcestershire manors of Beoley and Yardley appear to have been alienated
from the main bulk of estates as early as 1316 in order to provide for John
Beauchamp, younger son of Earl Guy268. At the time of his death he was also in
possession of Stratford Tony and Newton Tony, both of which found their way
back into the Beauchamp estates after 1360. The Beauchamps were fortunate in
producing only a small number of younger sons who, when endowed with land,
failed to produce male offspring and therefore brought the original endowments
plus new acquisitions back in the family fold. This was particularly the case with
Earl Thomas' third son, whose death produced a windfall for the Beauchamps in
the beginning of the fifteenth century. We have already discussed, in the
previous chapter, Earl Thomas' treatment of his daughter Margaret, and how it
appears he sent her to a convent in order to appropriate the dower she received
from the De Montfort lands. We should not forget that this brusque treatment
did earn the earl the reversions of Beaudesert, Henley, Whitchurch,
Wellesbourne Mountford and Ilmington in Warwickshire, Lowdham and
267Sinclair, 29 268VCH Worcs., iii, 239; iv, 15
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Gunthorpe in Nottinghamshire, Preston and Uppingham in Rutland, and the
Surrey manor of Ashtead 269.
We have already noted how it was possible for a king to reward a faithful
lord, especially for military service, and have discussed some of the rewards
which Earl Thomas received from Edward III, most notably the annuity of 1,000
marks a year and the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Rewards
from the crown also brought lands for Earls Guy and Thomas, although Earl
William appears to have gone unrewarded despite his faithful service to Edward
I in the Welsh and Scottish wars. After his bravery at the battle of Falkirk, Guy
was rewarded with the gift of a 1,000 marks worth of land which had formerly
belonged to Geoffrey de Moubray270. Unfortunately, with Edward's characteristic
lack of generosity, the lands to which Guy was entitled were firmly under the
control of the Scots, and the Beauchamps never gained a penny from this ‘gift’.
The first real reward which they received from the hands of the crown came in
1307, in the form of the Balliol estate of Barnard Castle in Co. Durham, and its
associated manors271. Following Edward II's promotion of his favourite, Piers
Gaveston, into court circles, the king appears to have tried to persuade Guy away
from his initial opposition to the favourite by granting him some Templar
properties in Warwickshire. In 1308 Guy received the manor of Sherbourne272,
along with all the Templar properties in Warwick itself, which were worth £13 269Sinclair, 34. Sinclair states that all of these manors passed to Earl Thomas II in 1369, which doesn't appear to be the case. Ilmington apparently went to Peter de Montfort's heirs, as did Whitchurch, VCH Warwks., v, 99, 210 270Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 69 271Cal.Fine Rolls, 1272-1307, 552; Cal.Close Rolls, 1301-1307, 492 272VCH Warwks., iii, 166
76
8s 0d in 1322-‐23273. According to Maddicott this policy of bribery appears to
have been initially successful, if only for three months: ‘sporadic appearances as
a charter witness from mid-‐August to the end of November show he was not
averse to the king's company’274.
Royal favour can be seen as the main force behind the acquisition of
Gower. The Beauchamps had maintained a claim over the territory from the time
of Earl William, who began legal proceedings in 1278 to wrest control of the land
of Gower and the castle of Swansea from William de Braose275. Although they
failed at this time, the case was re-‐opened in the autumn of 1352, and the verdict
was found to be in the earl of Warwick's favour in June 1354. The Glamorgan
County History argues that there was ‘nothing to suggest the judges decision was
influenced by royal intervention’, and that the verdict was the result of Warwick
successfully showing that the last William de Braose's gift of lordship to his son-‐
in-‐law, Mowbray, was invalid276. Earl Thomas may have presented an impressive
legal case, but it is impossible to ignore the more compelling evidence put
forward by R.R.Davies that the decision made in the king's court was one of a
series of arbitrary judgements made by Edward in 1354, in order to assert his
authority over the Welsh Marches. He had restored the Mortimer inheritance as
it had stood in 1330, and confirmed the lordship of Chirk to the earl of
Arundel277, as well as supporting Earl Thomas in his legal dispute, in order to
273PRO SC6/1040/24 274Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 91 275G lam. Co. Hist., iii, 227 276ibid, 249 277R.R.Davies, Lordship and Society, 272
77
strengthen his hand in the powerbase of his son, Edward the Black Prince. He
later backed up Warwick in 1360; when Edward, the Black Prince, claimed that
the lordship of Gower was part of the principality of Wales, the king raised Earl
Thomas to the status of Marcher lord278. And so the Beauchamps' most valuable
territory was, in part, the result of a power struggle between the king and his
eldest son. The dependence on the goodwill of the king was underlined at the
end of the fourteenth century when the Beauchamps lost the lordship as the
result of an equally arbitrary decision made against the earl of Warwick by
Richard II279.
It is more difficult for the historian to trace the shadier side of land deals.
For the most part, we are unable to determine how much pressure was applied
to those who quitclaimed their property to the Beauchamps, but we would be
naive to believe that this was not an option to be used if they were particularly
keen to lay their hands on a manor or a property. They were certainly known to
use the ‘carrot’ when after certain holdings (when buying land in Wedgnock park
they exchanged it for land elsewhere at a ratio of 2:1280), and were certainly not
above using the ‘stick’ either. Thomas Avene quitclaimed the manor of Kilvey to
Earl Thomas in 1355, according to his own testimony, under duress whilst he
was held as a prisoner by the earl in Swansea Castle281. In 1359, the earl was
ordered by the king to desist from ‘destraining or aggrieving’ Thomas Avene and
278R.R.Davies, Lordship and Society, 253 279Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 253 280BC, fol. 73 281Glam. Co. Hist., iii, 251
78
Richard Turbervill282, lord of Landimore. Sir Richard Turberville had a long
running dispute with the lord of Gower over Landimore; tellingly this territory
had become assimilated into the lordship of Gower by 1366283. Such intimidation
was more common in the Marcher lordships than in England where such flagrant
abuses were less tolerated. There is evidence, however, of unlawful possession of
property in England as well as Wales, sometimes with the flimsiest and most
transparent of reasons. Such a case occurred after the Leicestershire manor of
Kibworth Harcourt, next to Kibworth Beauchamp, was sold by Henry de
Fodering and Robert de Candoure to the scholars of Merton, Oxford in 1299.
Howell describes Kibworth Harcourt as being eclipsed by Kibworth Beauchamp
‘for reasons which have probably more to do with the activities of the Harcourt
and Beauchamp families at higher levels than with geographical convenience’284.
Although the manor had been acquired by licence from the king, Earl Guy
claimed that the manor had been acquired without a licence and seized the
manor, keeping it for sixteen years. Curiously he gave orders to his attorney to
return the manor to the warden of Merton three days before his death285,
perhaps in a wish to spare the college the expense of claiming the manor back
from the escheator after his demise. In the investigation for the inquisitions post
mortem for Guy, another unlawful seizure was disclosed; the manor of
Westerdale in Yorkshire had been assigned to a certain John de Eure as an
282Cal. Close Rolls, 1354-60, 548 283Glam. Co.Hist., iii, 251 284C.Howell, Land, Family and Inheritence in transition, 1280-1700 (Cambridge, 1983), 53 285Cal.Close Rolls, 1323-27, 484-5
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escheat after the Templars had been dissolved. The manor was forcibly seized by
the earl's constable of Castle Barnard, John le Irrays, and it was held by Earl Guy
until his death286.
George Holmes discerns the Beauchamps' acquisition of small scale pieces
of land as following a pattern which was extensive during the tenure of Earls
William and Guy, which then declined during the first decade and a half of the
tenure of Earl Thomas until it accounted for a near negligible expenditure in the
mid-‐1340s. He uses this as evidence that ‘land was no longer a good object of
deliberate investment’, largely on account of the new agricultural situation
created by the Black Death287. Holmes' analysis is misleading; the Black Death
inevitably was to have an effect on the value of land, but he exaggerates the
decline in landed purchase in the fourteenth century. Earl Thomas was an
enthusiastic buyer of landed property, both before and after the Black Death and
continued to make small-‐scale land purchases: in 1364-‐5 the earl bought £20
worth of rent in Milcote, Warwickshire288; land purchases in Warwick and
Hanslope continued throughout this period. Holmes is right when he discerns a
lack of small scale purchases elsewhere throughout this period, but is wrong to
suggest that land was not a viable investment. It was probably after the 1340s
that the earl of Warwick swapped the Worcestershire manors of Grafton and
Upton Warren for Budbrooke and The Grove289; in 1351 he bought the reversion
286Cal.Inq.P.M. v, 412 287Holmes, Estates, 114 288Cal.Close Rolls, 1364-8, 83 289VCH Warwks., iii, 65
80
of three manors in Cheshire290; the same year he purchased the manor of
Hindlip291; in 1358-‐9 he bought the manor of Ashorne in Warwickshire292.
Instead of purchasing small portions of land, the earl appears to have been using
his resources to purchase whole manors. The most simple explanation for this
change would appear to have been the changing fortunes of the earl himself; as
we have discussed in the previous chapter, the mid-‐1340s brought the earl much
rewards from his military service, and it would appear that at least some of his
new income was spent on large scale land purchases.
Purchase remained only part of the multi-‐faceted process by which the
Beauchamps' accumulated land between 1268 and 1369. Land purchase was
most important in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, and was responsible for
only a part of their rise in wealth during this period. They were crucial, however,
for maintaining their control over their county and also in producing goods for
the earls' manors and household. The lands which they gained from royal favour
were more important; all of these lands were the by-‐products of political activity.
The lands in Scotland and the north of England were an attempt by Edward I to
give his magnates a personal stake in the Scottish wars; the Templar lands were
the result of Edward II's favouritism to Gaveston, and the lordship of Gower only
came into the hands of Earl Thomas as a consequence of the power struggle
between Edward III and the Black Prince. The seizure of lands illegally and
forcibly was dictated by opportunity, but apart from the territory of Kilvey, the
290Black Princes Reg., iii, 40 291BC, fol. 6; it was swapped for land in Purshull three years later, BC, fol. 7 292BC, fol. 104
81
Beauchamps gained their important lands within, and with the assistance of, the
legal framework of the period. If we are really looking for factors behind the
fortunes of the Beauchamps, it was the Tony inheritance and the lordship of
Gower which propelled them from the lower ranks of the earls up to the middle
of the pack.
*****
Whilst we have been examining the fortunes of the Beauchamps over this
period, and how they benefited the creation of estates, it is equally important to
examine their problems and setbacks, and how they were overcome. Part of the
reason for the Beauchamps' success in this period is the fact that there were
relatively few of these. However, there were two events which had the potential
to hamper seriously the fortune of the family; these were the associated problem
of the earls' debts, and the problem of Thomas' minority in the early fourteenth
century. The problem of Earl William's debts, which appear to have accumulated
from the poor financial management of his ancestors, explains his extremely
difficult financial position throughout the later thirteenth century. This may have
encouraged him to give his faithful service to Edward I, even through the perils
of the crisis of 1296-‐97, as well as his desire to expand the number of his
demesne manors, even to the extent that he was tempted into costly gambles, as
in the purchase of Berkswell and Lighthorne.
82
Earl William's problems were inherited from his father, grandfather and
great-‐grandfather. In 1242, it was recorded that twelve years of arrears from the
farm of Worcestershire had gone unpaid, and there were still debts outstanding
from the farm of Feckenham forest at the time of Walter de Beauchamp II293.
William Beauchamp of Elmley appears to have left his finances in a chaotic state.
In 1270, Earl William was forced to lease the manors of Beoley and Yardley for
five years to the executors of his father's will. An additional lease of the manor of
Greetham and Cottesmore in Rutland, confirmed on the same date294, could also
have been made to satisfy his father's creditors. He was certainly in considerable
debt to the crown, and one of Edward I's first actions toward his new earl was to
pardon him of £95 worth of arrears and allow him to pay off his debts to the
exchequer at a rate of £20 per annum295, subsequently lowering this to £10 per
annum in 1276296. He was also lumbered with a debt of £1,000 which his father
had borrowed from the bishop of Worcester297, and was in debt to other parties,
including a ‘jew of London’ in 1270. Emma Mason, who has made extensive
studies of the Beauchamp family prior to 1268, considers the root of Earl
William's problem to have been the fact that, for much of his tenure as earl,
William had to support three dowagers, and his relative penury was the result of
these ‘accidents of survival and succession’298. Mason's argument is compelling: 293Sinclair, 7 294Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1266-1272, 441 295Cal.Close Rolls, 1268-1272, 70 296Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1272-1281, 169 297Register of Bishop Giffard 1268-1301, ed. J.Willis-Bund (Worcs. Hist. Soc., Oxford, 1898-1902), 498 298E.Mason, ‘The Resources of the Earldom of Warwick in the Thirteenth Century’, Midland History, iii (1975), 67
83
countess Ela, the longest lived of the dowagers who survived to the very end of
the thirteenth century, held dower rights in a third of the estates which her
husband had received on his succession in 1229299. There was also countess
Alice, widow of the Mauduit earl, and, up to 1280, Angaret; an ancient dowager
from William's father's side of the family, for whom the Beauchamp estates were
forced to provide. Certainly the presence of these women placed much strain on
the resources of Earl William in the later thirteenth century, but Mason is wrong
in seeing them as the root of the problem itself. Earl William's financial
difficulties were the result of debts taken out by the Beauchamps of Elmley; the
dowers merely exacerbated an existing situation by soaking up revenue which
could have been used to clear up his father's financial mess. As a result of this, it
would appear that the earl was increasingly driven to moneylenders. In 1282,
Edward I underwrote a loan from the Bouruncinus' of Lucca for £500 should
William be unable to pay ‘at Martinmas as he promised’300; in the same year he
was also in debt to the Riccardi of Lucca to the tune of 500 marks. His debt to the
Riccardi gradually increased, growing to £240 by 1287301. By 1294, William still
had outstanding debts with the Italians, but these, and debts of other magnates,
were written off after pressure had been exerted by Edward I302. Nevertheless,
the following year, William was again heavily in debt to the Riccardi, owing them
£400303, and shortly before his death in 1298 he was forced to hand over one of 299Mason, Resources, 73 300Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1281-1292, 17 301Kaeuper, Bankers to the Crown: The Riccardi of Lucca and Edward I (Princeton, 1973), Chapter 1, Table ii, 302Kaeuper, Bankers, 34 303Kaeuper, Bankers, Chapter 1, Table ii,
84
his manors in repayment of an unspecified debt304. We also know, from an
undated charter305, that Earl William was forced to hand over his lands in
Ledecombe Basset to William Comyn after defaulting on a loan. The act of
quitclaiming land in order to honour a debt which cannot be paid shows a
certain amount of desperation, and in medieval society, where social status was
derived from the land, the loss of property in this way must have been severely
embarrassing. There can be little doubt that the earl's financial situation was
very precarious for several years.
Despite enormous debts, the Beauchamp estates were able to survive. No
matter how deep the earl sank into the financial quagmire, there were several
mitigating factors which would always prevent bankruptcy. The problem of the
dowers was serious, but temporary: he simply had to wait for them to die and
their lands would swiftly fall back into his hands. Most importantly, however,
there was the support of the crown. Earl William had always been fiercely loyal
toward his king. Edward I was very unlikely to let one of his finest soldiers and
trusted supporters go under, and despite his notorious lack of generosity, he
does appear to have stepped in to help the earl in various ways, by allowing him
to pay off his debts in instalments, by exerting royal pressure on foreign
moneylenders, or acquitting him of small debts he owed to exchequer306. It can
even be argued that Edward did not reward William with any great gifts of land,
304Kaeuper, Bankers, 34, 35 305BC, fol. 587 306In 1284 he was aquitted of £27 16s 9d, Cal.Close Rolls, 1279-1288, 267; In 1285 he was aquitted of £250, Cal.Close Rolls, 1279-1288, 310
85
calculating that the earl's financial hardship would make him reliant on the
goodwill of the king, and make the earl a political dependent of the crown:
according to the Evesham chronicle, Edward bribed William to support him in
the crisis of 1296-‐7307. We must also bear in mind that the higher nobility in the
later thirteenth century often borrowed money to finance a military campaign or
a large capital project; Gilbert de Clare borrowed £1,800 from a Sienese banking
company and an ecclesiastical landholder such as Canterbury Cathedral Priory
could be more than £1,300 in debt to Italian bankers in the 1280s. Dyer uses the
above figures to show how the loans ‘demonstrated the healthy financial state of
the borrowers’308 which is certainly true in the cases which he cites, but the
evidence of Earl William's debts does seem to point to a serious, but not
terminal, financial problem.
The minority of Earl Thomas also affected the wealth of the Beauchamps.
We have already mentioned this problem in the previous chapter. The period,
from 1315 to 1330, when the lands were out of the control of the Beauchamp
family seems to have had the potential to harm the estates financially. The
interest in the Beauchamps' lands, by those charged with maintaining them,
whether they be the younger Despenser, Mortimer or the king's own officials,
appears to have been directed solely by the desire to gain short term profit. The
lands were not well maintained and fell into disrepair: in 1327 it was found that
‘the lands, houses, walls and buildings of the castle, and in the mills, parks,
307Prestwich, Edward I, 419 308C.C.Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 40
86
woods and stews belonging thereto’ 309 had fallen into disrepair through
negligence; in 1322 a watermill in Warwick, that had belonged to the earl, was
burned down whilst the manor was under royal control310. The royal officials
themselves were often corrupt: it was found that the bailiff of Sutton Coldfield
had been bribed with the gift of a cottage and a croft from a woman who was
going to be convicted for theft during Thomas' minority311; on the death of
Thomas de Clinton, whose lands were held ‘of the demise’ of Earl Guy, the king's
officers ‘devastated houses, woods and gardens, and extorted heavy ransoms’312.
McFarlane, despite describing Thomas' minority as a ‘set-‐back’, does see that it
was, in part, beneficial to the Beauchamp fortunes: Thomas ‘was at least passive
until the first years of Edward III’313, thereby escaping the blood bath that
engulfed a large proportion of the higher nobility in the later years of Edward II's
reign. We should also be aware that the system of granting wardships had
proved highly profitable for the Beauchamp family. The king's gift of the
marriage of Hugh Despenser netted Earl William 1,600 marks in 1282; Thomas
gained from the wardship of Robert de Clifford in 1346314; Earl Thomas also
fought a long and protracted legal battle with his own daughter over his custody
of the wardship of her son, the Basset heir, and his lands315, such was the value of
his wardship. In the long term, the wardship system was of a benefit to the
309Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1324-27, 352 310Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1321-4, 161 311Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1334-38, 366 312Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1317-21, 173 313McFarlane, Nobility, 189 314Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-48, 58 315Cal.Close Rolls, 1343-6, 248, 264, 411, 568, 656; Cal.Close Rolls, 1349-54, 289
87
Beauchamps, despite the long period in which their lands were out of the control
of Earl Guy's executors.
The problem of debt and minority were small when compared to the
problems faced by other great noble families. Great noble lines such as the De
Clares were extinguished on the battlefield and their inheritance divided.
Between 1268 and 1369 the Beauchamps were fortunate both in the quality of
each of the successive earls and also in the politics of the time. The Beauchamp
family could have ended in the early fourteenth century if the king had been
revenged on Earl Guy as he had sworn he would, after Gaveston's murder and
before the birth of a Beauchamp heir. That the Beauchamp story in this time is
one of success is due to the fact that the family suffered very few setbacks, and
the ones which they did endure were temporary and reversible.
88
Map 1: The Beauchamp earls of Warwick's manors in Warwickshire and Worcestershire, 1268-‐1369
(Revised by the author from C. Given-‐Wilson, The English Nobility in the Later Middle Ages: the Fourteenth Century Political Community (London, 1987), xvii) 1. Warwick Castle and manor 20. Worcester Castle 2. Haseley 21. Hindlip 3. Budbrooke 22. Salwarpe 4. Claverdon 23. Shrawley 5. Sherbourne 24. Abberley 6. Barford 25. Elmley Lovett 7. Beausale 26. Beoley 8. Henley-‐in-‐Arden 27. Grafton Flyford 9. Beaudesert Castle and manor 28. Bishampton 10. Tanworth 29. Stoulton 11. Berkswell 30. Wadborough 12. Yardley 31. Little Comberton 13. Sutton Coldfield 32. Great Comberton 14. Lighthorne 33. Elmley castle and manor 15. Ashorne 34. Earls Croome 16. Moreton Daubney 35. Sheriffs Lench 17. Acton Beauchamp 36. Naunton Beauchamp 18 Brailes 37. Pirton 19. Upton Warren 38. Little Intebergh
89
Map 2: The Beauchamp estates outside Warwickshire and Worcestershire
90
Chapter 3: Bastard feudalism and the Beauchamps' affinity
In attempting to discern the local importance of the Beauchamp family in
our period we have to look at those who were associated with them, and in
attempting to discern the extent of their influence, it is necessary to venture into
the well-‐trodden territory of bastard feudalism. We must firstly examine the
work of historians who have undertaken similar studies. The modern term
‘bastard feudalism’, used to describe the nature of social relationships between a
lord and his subjects, is far removed from the original meaning, as it was coined
by Charles Plummer316. For him, and many other historians up to the middle of
this century, the phrase was a negative one; a term of abuse, used to put forward
the notion that the ideal relationship between a lord and his tenants, bound to
him by the noble principles of homage and service, had been contaminated by a
corrupt level of retainers. The retainer supposedly was not bound to one lord, as
of old, but allowed his service to be sold to the highest bidder. This perception of
‘bastard feudalism’ comes largely from the study of the Paston letters, but the
term was redefined fifty years ago, by K.B.McFarlane in his seminal essay
‘Bastard Feudalism’317. Although many of his assertions have been modified or
316K.B.McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xx (1943-5), 161 317ibid
91
disregarded by the tide of subsequent research, McFarlane's influence is still
apparent in the output of the many historians who work in this particular field.
According to Crouch318, the term ‘feudalism’ has been listed as having ten
different ‘perceptions’, and in attempting to define ‘bastard feudalism’, we come
up against a similar problem. Most of the influential historians working in this
field have their own ‘perception’ of bastard feudalism, or at least emphasise what
they see as its most important aspects. For some, the crucial feature of bastard
feudalism is the introduction of the written contract and paid cash stipends, and
a corresponding decline in tenurial land grants319, whilst others see it as the
mutual relationship between a lord and his affinity, with each helping to
strengthen the other's position in society320. Some, such as Crouch, object to the
use of the term altogether saying that the differences between the ‘feudal’ and
‘bastard feudal’ eras are purely ‘matters of degrees and cosmetic’321. Hicks
perceives the bastard feudal system as enduring largely unchanged from the
mid-‐twelfth century to 1650 322 . Bean, whilst accepting that there are
‘fundamental weaknesses in the basic assumption underlying the classic
interpretation of bastard feudalism’, perceives a change in the evolution in the
concept of lordship between the time of the Conquest, and the later medieval
318P.Coss, D.Crouch & D.Carpenter, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revised’, Past and Present, cxxxi (1991), 166 319K McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’ 320C.Carpenter, ‘The Beauchamp affinity: A study of bastard feudalism at work’, English Historical Review, xcv (1980), 514-532 321David Crouch, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revised’, P&P, cxxxi, 168 322M.Hicks, Bastard Feudalism (London, 1995)
92
period, with the role of lord being replaced by that of a patron323. Coss is correct
when he argues for ‘a more general application and utilisation’324 of the term, for
if we intend to understand the relationship between a lord and his clients and
how it arose, then we should not look at one particular feature in particular
isolation, but consider the system as a whole.
For our purposes, the two pivotal works which we must consider are
Christine Carpenter's essay ‘The Beauchamp affinity: A study of bastard
feudalism at work’ and the debate over Coss' essay ‘Bastard feudalism revised’,
which deal with the nature of the affinity of Richard Beauchamp in the early
fifteenth century, and the development of bastard feudalism in the thirteenth
century respectively. Carpenter's work on the affinities of Richard Beauchamp in
Warwickshire exposes ‘a riot of mutual back-‐scratching’325, whereby both the
earl and those in his affinity gained much from their association. Whereas
McFarlane believes the key feature of the age was the introduction of a written
indenture between master and servant, she proves convincingly that the
monetary remuneration which those in the affinity obtained from the earl ‘did
not constitute a large measure of their annual income’326, at least of the more
prominent members, and the annuities which Beauchamp dispensed never
amounted to someone's primary income, even in the case of those men with a
lesser social standing. It was also likely that much of the fee might be spent
323J.M.W.Bean, From lord to patron: lordship in late medieval England (Manchester, 1989), 5, 237 324Coss, ‘Bastard feudalism revised’, P&P, cxxv (1989), 40 325C. Carpenter, ‘The Beauchamp affinity’, 525 326ibid, 519
93
fulfilling their obligations327. They did, however, gain much economic and social
advantage once they were members of the ruling clique of Warwickshire. As
members of the Beauchamp affinity, they had the local legal, military and
bureaucratic might of the county behind them. Retainers used other members of
the affinity as witnesses in risky, personal, financial transactions, as an attempt
to insure themselves against default. If possible, transactions were kept within
the affinity, especially in the case of purchase agreements, which Carpenter
views as ‘perhaps the most risky method of acquiring land’328. As a landholder's
effectiveness was, in the last resort, implicitly linked to his ability to throw
defaulters off his land, the lord and the affinity could provide him with the
military muscle with which to do that. Neither can one ignore the many social
and prestigious advantages which service brought to the individual landholder;
the privilege of sitting on the council of a great magnate could bring many
tangible rewards, additional fees, new patrons and career opportunities among
them329. The affinity also had a social function, with social interaction taking
place in the households of the lord's men, or that of the lord himself, cementing
the alliance by tying up the various parties' public and personal lives.
The benefit, however, was not one-‐sided. The importance of demesne
farming put a strain on the central administration, and created a market for men
of talent and ability who served as stewards, receivers, auditors or other posts in
327ibid, 519 328ibid, 522 329C.Given-Wilson, The English Nobility in the later Middle Ages: The Fourteenth Century Political Community (London, 1987), 103
94
the lord's estates, where they were given liveries and were rewarded by the
payment of a modest cash stipends. Because the lord would reward the retainer
with his patronage, instead of demising his own land, the lord benefited by
establishing ‘lifetime relationships with limited rewards’330. Carpenter shows
how the lord would use the affinity as a means of building up support for himself
where his presence was weakest, which he would need to do if he intended to
keep the local administration under his control; Richard Beauchamp, whose
estates were concentrated in the north and west of Warwickshire, actively
sought support from the dukes of Norfolk who had a strong presence in the east
of the county.331 Bastard feudalism, therefore, can be seen as an attempt by the
higher aristocracy to preserve their primacy in a time of social upheaval, and it
should be pointed out that the benefit was mutual with both parties gaining
much from the association.
Carpenter's work shows bastard feudalism in its most sophisticated and
highly developed form, as it existed in Warwickshire two generations after the
end of our period. She is fortunate in that she is able to draw upon a great deal of
documentation, such as receivers' accounts, which have not survived from the
time of the first three Beauchamp earls. However, the Beauchamp Cartulary does
contain witness lists which, in conjunction with other sources, can provide us a
very good idea of the nature of the Beauchamps' affinity in the century from
1268 to 1369. Much of what we shall see is relevant to the debate between Coss,
330ibid, 823 331C.Carpenter, ‘The Beauchamp Affinity’, 517
95
Crouch and Carpenter over the origins and development of bastard feudalism in
the thirteenth century. In particular we need to bear in mind David Crouch's
views, that the ‘social order referred to as bastard feudalism can be dated back to
the early thirteenth century’332, and that it was firmly in place throughout the
second half of that century. If Crouch is correct, then we would expect that
Carpenter's depiction of Warwickshire society under Richard Beauchamp in the
early fifteenth century would be similar to what we would find under Earl
William a century and a half previously. As we shall see, the development of
bastard feudalism in the west midlands was far from static, and much of what
Carpenter identifies as being present in the workings of Beauchamp's affinity in
the first two decades of the fifteenth century actually first came into place during
the century before the death of Earl Thomas [I] in 1369.
********
Most commentators now accept that the system of bastard feudalism was
the result of the serious social changes at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
The great aristocratic landowners of England were beginning to find their
position in society gradually eroded; Henry II's legal reforms had introduced a
measure of protection into rights of tenants, a development which served to
greatly hamper the ‘lords' ability to manipulate things in his own interest’333, and
332Crouch, ‘Bastard Feudalism Revised’, P&P, cxxxi, 165 333S.L.Waugh, ‘Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth Century England’, English Historical Review, ci (1986), 812
96
their ability to exploit their tenants, as had once been the case. An expansion in
royal government created a lot of jobs, which in turn led to a growth in articulate,
politically experienced and wealthy gentry in royal service. Meanwhile, the
transfer of demesnes from short-‐term leasing to direct management occurred at
this time largely as a response to a period of inflation which made leasehold
rents uneconomical. The nobility were forced to turn to the gentry because they
needed stewards, receivers, auditors and other officials to manage their estates
directly, as well as skilled representatives to defend their interests in the new
legal system. It was for this reason that the nobility began to try and attract the
gentry into their own service, by providing largesse, influence and financial
rewards.
By the time that Earl William became earl of Warwick in 1268, this social
change had been developing for a couple of generations. However, Warwickshire
and Worcestershire at this time were substantially different to the ‘bastard
feudal’ society as described by Carpenter a century and a half later. What is
certain is that the house of Warwick appears to have already adapted to the new
form of administration which direct demesne cultivation required at the start of
our period, as can be seen by the adoption of the lord's council, commonly used
by noble households in the later middle ages. Holmes describes the magnate's
council as ‘the centre and most elusive part of bastard feudalism’334. It was here
that the lord's most important knights, clerks and officials would discuss and
334G.A.Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 76
97
advise on the management of the earl's estates and, if necessary, pass judgement
on petitions from tenants and lesser officials. Holmes has been able to only pick
up a handful of scattered references to the councils of various lords in the
fourteenth century: the earl of Salisbury and the lady of Clare both had a council
in the reign of Edward III, and the earl of Gloucester had one at the beginning of
the fourteenth century. The earliest reference Holmes appears to have been able
to uncover for the earl of Warwick's council is 1375335. However, there is a
reference as early as 1280, in an agreement between Earl William and Godfrey
Giffard, bishop of Worcester, in which the bishop agrees ‘to cause an instrument
to be made as the counsels of the earl and of himself shall ordain’336. This is one
of the earliest references we have to a lay English magnate possessing a council,
and we can safely assume that a regular council of retainers and advisors formed
a feature of the administration throughout our period. The presence of a council
pre-‐supposes a sophisticated body over-‐seeing a complex administration, with
officials made up of members of the gentry. Unfortunately, due to the absence of
relevant material, we are forced to resort to conjecture when attempting to
discover any more of the internal workings of the earl's households and estates
at this point. Sometimes there is a reference which can illuminate part of his
administration, but mostly we have to assume that he ran his household as most
other lords did, with a household steward and a chamberlain, and with stewards,
receivers, bailiffs and other officials running his estates.
335Holmes, Estates, 77 336Cal.Close Rolls, 1279-1288, 43
98
So who were the sort of men who would have sat on Earl William's
council in the later thirteenth century? Undoubtedly his senior officials would
have made up an important majority, along with other lords with whom the earl
was on friendly terms, as well as professional men, commonly lawyers. Judging
by witness lists for the earliest years of Earl William's tenure, the strongest
bonds which existed between him and those with whom he associated were
those of family. Walter Beauchamp of Alcester, John Beauchamp of Holt, and
James Beauchamp, whom Sinclair and Dugdale believe to have been the earl's
uncle, but is more often referred to as his brother337, are frequent witnesses to
the earl's charters, particularly from 1268 up to the end of the 1270s. Walter and
John both appear to have been hunting companions of the earl: Walter and the
earl were accused of trespassing into Kinver forest in Staffordshire in 1268-‐9
and poaching two hinds, whilst John accompanied the earl into the same forest
on a similar expedition in 1271338. He appears on charters of the earl signed as
far away as Southampton and Westminster, as well as charters concerning
Worcestershire and Warwickshire, which would appear to suggest that he was
not averse to travelling a great distance on his brother's business339. Although
there are a number of charters which he witnessed which are not dated, the last
dated charter upon which he appears is 1282-‐3, and most of the undated
charters he witnessed appear to have been signed before then. We should not
337Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1274-81, 192 338‘Pleas of the Forest’, Collections for a history of Staffordshire, ed. The William Salt Archaeological Society (London, 1884), 142 339BC, fol. 89, fol. 155 et passim
99
forget that Walter was later to be one of the most notable courtiers of his day;
later in life he pursued a successful career serving in the royal court where he
was appointed steward of the household in 1289, becoming sole steward in
1292, and holding the post until his death in early 1303340. As we shall see, it was
not uncommon in the fourteenth century for some of the most prestigious
Beauchamp retainers to be promoted to the royal court through the earl's
patronage. It is possible that Walter was the first, and most prestigious of these,
and it is tempting to hypothesise that he learned much of the art of running a
large noble household in the service of his brother.
James Beauchamp, the most obscure member of the family, was present
in Southampton, with Walter and William, when William leased his weighing
rights in the town to the Le Neirs341. He appears on over a dozen charters, the
latest being as late as 1294-‐95342. He accompanied William into Wales in 1277343
and, whilst having been endowed with a modest landed income from his family,
sold his Worcestershire manors of Sheriff's Lench and Church Lench in 1282-‐3 to
the earl344, probably due to his lack of an heir. Acton Beauchamp, which he also
held, somehow found its way into the earl's estates between 1280 and 1298345.
John Beauchamp of Holt appears to have been a less frequent associate at this
time, although he continued to witness charters into the time of Earl Guy, long
after James and Walter had disappeared from the retinue of the earl. He even 340M. Prestwich, Edward I (London, 1988), 145 341BC, fol. 89 342BC, fol. 119 343Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1274-81, 192 344BC, fol. 160 345VCH Worcs., v, 225
100
accompanied Earl Guy on a trip abroad in 1299, at a time when relations
between the earl of Warwick, and his other uncle, Walter Beauchamp, had
become extremely acrimonious.
Outside the immediate circle of the earl and his brothers, many other
associates of the earl, in the first decade and a half of his tenure, were those with
some connection to the family. Bartholomew de Sudley, lord of Burton Dasset,
had married the earl's sister, Joan, in 1253, and in 1269 had acted, along with the
new earl of Warwick and others, as executor of the will of the earl's father,
William Beauchamp of Elmley346. He appears on a number of charters in the late
1260s and the 1270s, concerning land purchases around Yardley in the north of
Warwickshire and Comberton in South Worcestershire347, and was a witness as
late as 1277 for the earl's purchase of Berkswell from Richard de Amundeville348.
He was certainly one of the few local landowners who we can be sure were close
to the earl on a personal basis. In 1269, both he and Earl William, along with John
FitzGeoffrey, brother of countess Maud, stood surety for Theobald le Bottiler for
a debt of 600 marks349. Le Bottiler also enjoyed a family tie to the earl being the
nephew of the Countess Maud350. In 1276, when he was going to Ireland, he
empowered William Beauchamp to nominate an attorney for him351.
346Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1266-72, 441 347BC, fols. 116, 117, 144 348BC, fol. 85 349Cal.Close Rolls, 1268-72, 116 350Register of Bishop Giffard 1268-1301, ed. J.Willis-Bund (Worcs. Hist. Soc., Oxford, 1898-1902), 529 351Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1274-81, 140
101
On the indication of one piece of evidence, it would appear that, on
occasions, the administration of Earl William's estates could be a very haphazard
affair. According to a local jury, between 1286 and 1291 John de Anste had been
bailiff of the Gloucestershire manor of Lydney. When he was sued by the earl for
failing to render any accounts for the five year period, John's defence was that he
had never been bailiff, but had merely been farming the earl's wood there for 6s
8d a year352. That an official could escape from rendering an account for up to
five years in itself shows the earl's retainers were subject to a very relaxed form
of administrative control at this time, and the confusion over Anste's office also
demonstrates the problems with communication which lords faced and which
were inherent in farming lands spread over a number of counties.
The picture of the affinity at the start of William Beauchamp's tenure as
earl of Warwick, superficially, seems to be far removed from that depicted by
Carpenter. It would appear that, throughout his first decade and a half as earl,
William relied mainly upon his own officials and his immediate family circle. So
what then of the cornerstone of bastard feudalism, the symbiotic relationship
between a lord and the local gentry? Hilton dismisses the idea of the earl of
Warwick possessing a bastard feudal affinity at this time, and describes the
county community as being made up of men with no more than one or two
manors.353 His own study of the witness lists of the Beauchamp cartulary reveal
that the earl's signatories were mainly local personalities with extremely
352N.Denholm-Young, Seignorial Administration in England (London, 1937), 158 353R.H.Hilton, A Medieval Society (Cambridge, 1966), 57
102
localised interests and connections, whose presence was invited by the lord
because they knew about the local circumstances, including land boundaries.354
They would also be make the local community aware of the change of ownership.
Worcestershire and Warwickshire consisted of patchwork of groupings of local
knightly families which, superficially at least, appear far different from the
seamless web of Beauchamp influence detected by Carpenter in the early
fifteenth century.
However, Hilton makes the mistake of regarding the period of 1269 to
1315 as stable, and a period in which relations between the earl and the local
gentry remained static, whereas it was actually a crucial period of change.
Hilton's assumptions appear to be hold true for the period from 1268 to the early
1280s, when contact with the local gentry does appear to have been limited. As
time went on, however, the local gentry gradually became important figures in
the Warwick administration, as is demonstrated in the figures of Sir John de
Ladbroke and Sir Walter de Cooksey
Walter de Cooksey appears to have been a key member of the earl's
affinity. His family had held the manor of Cooksey in Upton Warren of the
Beauchamps since the mid-‐thirteenth century355, and he had also inherited the
manor of Great Witley356. He was, perhaps, the only members of the local gentry
in the earl's affinity before the late 1270s who was not, in some way, part of the
earl's family, and appears on charters from William's first year as earl, when the
354Hilton, Medieval Society, 58, 59 355VCH Worcs., iii, 232 356VCH Worcs., ii, 171
103
earl was buying land in Comberton. He appears as witness on over twenty
charters in the Beauchamp cartulary, including witnessing the earl's purchase of
land in Inkberrow in 1274-‐5 357 alongside other Beauchamp stalwarts
Bartholomew de Sudley, James Beauchamp and John Beauchamp. He witnessed
the earl's loss of property at Ledcombe Bassett from debt358 , along with
transactions between James Beauchamp and the earl in 1282-‐3359. In 1294-‐5 he
quitclaimed all his rent in Beoley to the earl360, although his younger son was to
build up the family patrimony in the mid-‐fourteenth century. Cooksey
bequeathed his body to the Friars Minor of Worcester in 1295361, three years
before Earl William, showing a significant coincidence of religious affiliations.
This might simply suggest that both men had an affinity for the less conventional
religious houses in the county, but it is more likely that Cooksey shared his
masters animosity toward the Benedictines; if he had acted as one of the earl's
officials, it is quite possible that he might have personally been involved in the
dispute with Bishop Giffard. The bond between Earl William and his most
trusted associates apparently could affect their private and spiritual lives as well
as their professional one.
Sir John de Ladbroke was a knight with interests in Oxfordshire,
Warwickshire and Leicestershire. He was also, according to an undated charter, a
‘man of the earl of Warwick’362, and his name appears with an excessive degree 357BC, fol. 121 358BC, fol. 137 359BC, fol. 160 360BC, fol. 119 361VCH Worcs., ii, 171 362BC, fol. 100
104
of frequency on Earl William's charters. The first reference we have to him is in
1282-‐3363, although it is unclear how long he had been in the earl's service
before that point. He witnessed charters between Earl William and the Countess
Ela364, Bordesley Abbey365, and other retainers of the earl, such as Thomas Le
Parker366 and John the Archer367. In 1292-‐3 he did suit of court for the earl at the
court of Edmund, earl of Cornwall, for which he was rewarded with one of the
earl's tenements in Leicestershire368. He was also justice of gaol delivery in
Warwick in 1290 and 1308, a commissioner in Warwickshire regarding the
reissue of the Magna Carta in 1300, and investigating prises in December
1309369. It would appear that he occupied a pivotal role in the administration as
a retainer. Ladbroke also provides evidence of the bond between earl and
retainer at this time, which appears to have been a personal one and was not
binding between Ladbroke and William's heir: even though he survived until
1310, he only appears on a single charter in Earl Guy's period370.
Ladbroke and Cooksey illustrate that, after the first decade of Beauchamp
rule, a network was gradually developing which included the earl and key figures
from local gentry families; a network which resembles the relationship perceived
by Carpenter between Richard Beauchamp and the Hugfords and Mountfords in
the early fifteenth century. Carpenter points out, however, that the network 363BC, fol. 108 364BC, fol. 102 365BC, fol. 65 366BC, fol. 102 367BC, fol. 103 368BC, fol. 50 369Knights of Edward I, ed. C.Moore, 5 vols. (Harleian Society, 1929-32) iii, 54 370BC, fol. 139
105
sustained by Richard Beauchamp was very much dependent upon the strength
and power of the earl himself. She shows that Beauchamp's affinity, without the
gravitational centre of a powerful lord, soon dispersed into fragmented local
networks of the local gentry371, very similar to those Hilton describes. This
comparison offers us a valuable insight to the development of the earl's affinity.
In the previous chapter we have already discussed the precariousness of his
financial situation in the late thirteenth century. For much of his early time as
earl he was forced to endure the presence of three dowagers using up much of
his resources, as well as a series of crippling debts. His financial problems would
have put a curb on the extent he was able to bribe and distribute largesse and his
limited land holdings would have reduced his visibility at a grass-‐roots level.
Both of these were key attributes required for the attraction of a retinue. As a
means of rectifying this, William engaged in a policy of small-‐scale land
accumulation from the start of his tenure as earl; buying land in Worcestershire
and Warwickshire, as well as whole manors such as Sheriff's Lench and Church
Lench from James Beauchamp, Beoley and Yardley from the Comyn family.
Midland manors, such as Little Inkberrow, which came back into the Beauchamp
fold after having been let out, were kept and added to the patrimony. We have
seen in the previous chapter that, in economic terms, the value of these manors
was comparatively slight when compared to his outlying manors, but William's
concentration of land in the midlands meant that the earl of Warwick was far
better represented on a grass roots level in Worcestershire and Warwickshire at
371C.Carpenter, ‘The Beauchamp Affinity’, 531
106
the end of the thirteenth century than he was in 1268. The increase in the earl's
midlands manors would also have increased the need for experienced retainers
to oversee his manors, thereby creating a greater need for members of the local
gentry within the earl of Warwick's administration.
There is evidence that William's growing accumulation of land led to a
direct increase in his political power. Coss views ‘the invasion and subversion of
law courts and offices of administration’372 as being the central feature of
bastard feudalism, and we need to look at the relationship between the earl and
the sheriffs of Worcestershire and the joint office of Warwickshire and
Leicestershire, if we want to see how effective his control was over both of these
areas. He was fortunate in that he held the shrievalty of Worcester from the time
of his father's death in 1269, and was free to appoint whom he liked to the post if
he did not wish to serve himself. What is striking is that, after holding it
personally for two years between 1269 and 1271, William resumed the office of
sheriff for the eleven years between 1275 and 1286373. A sheriff's duties were
tiresome, exacting, and quite often, could be financially damaging, as he was
expected to reimburse the crown personally for any shortfall in income. William
Bagot, the longest serving sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in the
thirteenth century, spent his final ten years in and out of prison, pursued by the
debts he ran up in office374. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the position of
372Coss, ‘Bastard Feudalism revised’, P&P, cxxxi, 193 373List of Sheriffs for England and Wales, from the earliest times to AD 1831 (Lists and Index Society, ix, New York, 1963), 157 374G.Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire in the Thirteenth Century, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, vii (Oxford, 1948), 44
107
under-‐sheriff was often seen as something of a poisoned chalice and that,
throughout our period, ‘dozens of Beauchamp men who held the post at one time
or another did so as one of the conditions of their service to the earls’375.
Furthermore, candidates for the post were limited as they had to have the
resources in order to enter such a financially risky position, and those who did
serve, rarely did so for any longer than a couple of years. William's decision to
hold the office personally may be put down to precedent; his father had held the
office personally, as had most of his ancestors. However, it is unlikely that this
was the primary reason; between 1271 and 1275 Simon Alein occupied the post
of under-‐sheriff as nominated by William. Alein may have been one of the earl's
Worcestershire retainers, but we know little more about him than the fact that
he had the borough of Droitwich let to him and a certain Richard Fitz Joce to
farm for a period of five years from 1271376. It would not be an unreasonable
supposition that William's decision to resume personal control of the shrievalty
after 1275 indicates that he found the position too sensitive to be handed to a
proxy, and that, at that time, the only way he could secure the control of the
administrative and legal apparatus of the county was if he occupied the position
of sheriff personally. It also indicates a distinct shortage of suitable candidates of
a knightly class in the county who could be entrusted by the earl to oversee his
interests. By the mid-‐1280s, however, circumstances had changed enough for the
post to be handed over to one of the earl's supporters. The first of these, Simon
375A.F.J.Sinclair, ‘The Beauchamp Earls of Warwick in the Later Middle Ages’ (London School of Economics Ph.D thesis, 1987), 291 376VCH Worcs., iii, 75
108
de Greenhull, is an obscure figure, but Reginald le Porter or Pershore who held
the post of under-‐sheriff nearly continuously from 1290 until 1306377 was one of
William's, and later Guy's, most trusted associates. Le Porter was a frequent
witness on Beauchamp charters, including a quitclaim of Church Lench and
Sheriff's Lench by James Beauchamp to William in 1282-‐3378. Witness lists make
it clear that he was not of knightly rank, and he was certainly an official who
worked his way up through the earl's administration before being appointed
under-‐sheriff. He was a contemporary of a certain William de la Porte, also
known as ‘of Pershore’, and it probable that the two men were related. William
was the earl's nominee for one of the offices of chamberlain of the exchequer, the
hereditary post which the Beauchamps had inherited from the Mauduits. This
post was usually occupied by a cleric, who often ‘enjoyed ecclesiastical benefices
in the Beauchamp gift’ 379 . William held the post from 1290 until 1309,
contemporary to Reginald's tenure of the Worcestershire shrievalty. That the
two men's background was similar is beyond doubt, but whether they were
kinsmen, or whether the ‘of Pershore’ denotes a connection with the abbey is
uncertain. Whatever, circumstances in Worcestershire, with Earl William
building up his territory in that area, had improved dramatically by the end of
the later thirteenth century, and it was possible for the earl to entrust the key
post of under-‐sheriff to a loyal retainer in the 1290s whereas that had not been
possible in the 1270s or the early 1280s.
377List of Sheriffs, 157 378BC, fol. 160 379Sinclair, 291
109
At this time, the situation with the shrievalty of Warwick and
Leicestershire was more complicated. Whereas Worcestershire was recognised
as being under William's control by virtue of his hereditary right, the sheriff of
Warwickshire and Leicestershire was appointed by the king as his
representative in those two counties. None of the many who held office in the
last third of the thirteenth century were closely connected to the earl of
Warwick. Some, such as William de Beville, who held the post from 1288 to
1290, or Stephen de Rabaz, who succeeded him and held the post until 1293380,
were officers of the crown, with no foothold or connections in the midlands. De
Beville was a Northerner who, at other times, had held the shrievalties of
Northamptonshire and Cumberland as well as Bedford and Buckingham.381 A
career administrator of this sort was probably less susceptible than others to the
earl's influence, although this cannot be discounted. More often than not,
however, the sheriffs were prominent local landholders who Templeman
classifies as being ‘leading members of the local gentry’382. These men should
have been a sort target; they were local men who would be more interested in
the fortunes of themselves and their peers than the king's. Some certainly did
have a distant connection with the earl. Fulk de Lucy, who held the post from
April 1287 until the following Easter, was an occasional charter witness for
William Beauchamp and the Countess Maud383. Balanced against this, he was
380List of Sheriffs, 144 381G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 42 382G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 43 383He appears on at least three occassions. BC, fols. 66, 99
110
also one of the crown's most active and loyal officials in the region, redeeming
himself for backing the wrong side in De Montfort rebellion. William le Castello,
sheriff in the early 1290s, appears on a charter in Sutton Coldfield in 1282-‐3384.
Robert de Verdon, sheriff from Christmas 1278 until May 1280385, appears on a
charter over a decade after his tenure as sheriff had ended386. Other men, such as
Osbert de Bereford, are conspicuous by their absence from William's witness
lists. The sheriff of the later thirteenth century most associated with the earl,
Thomas de Charlecote, or de Haseley, held the post for less than two months. He
was clearly a long-‐standing associate of the Beauchamp family. He witnessed a
charter in 1268, between the earl and his father, William Beauchamp of Elmley,
shortly before the latter's death the following year387. In 1288-‐9 he witnessed
Countess Ela's quitclaim to the earl of Claverdon and Tanworth388 whilst also
witnessing charters between the earl and prominent figures such as John de
Clinton and Thomas de Arden of Ratley389. It is his inclusion as a witness to
charters between members of the Beauchamp family themselves which testifies
to a close bond between him and the earl. At some point in the 1290s he
witnessed a charter between William and his heir Guy390; over 30 years he had
witnessed land transactions between the head of three generations of the
384BC, fol. 108 385List of Sheriffs, 144 386BC, fol. 85 387BC, fol. 173 388BC, fol. 102 389BC, fol. 97; fol. 99 390BC, fol. 66
111
family391. Another witness to the indenture between Earl William and Guy was
Richard D'Amundeville, for whom de Haseley, listed as Thomas de Charlecote,
was attorney when D'Amundeville quitclaimed Berkswell in 1277-‐8 392 .
Amundeville was unique in being the only person to hold the post of assistant
sheriff of Warwickshire from July 1282393 to help ‘in keeping the peace in these
troubled times’394. Amundeville was an independent figure in his own right, and
no stranger to royal patronage. Prior to his appointment as under-‐sheriff he had
been staying in Northampton Castle as the king's guest395. He was not above
extortion; on one occasion in Berkswell he held a view of frankpledge twice,
making his tenants appear and pay a second time396. Amundeville most certainly
did have strong ties to the Beauchamps. He witnessed a charter between Earl
William and his brother Walter Beauchamp397, amongst others. Even Hilton,
whilst denying the presence of a bastard feudal affinity at this time, has to admit
that Amundeville ‘was more often with the earl than most local signatories’398.
Clearly he would have been open to influence, especially in favour of the earl of
Warwick. We do not know for how long he served as under-‐sheriff, but the
wording of his appointment does give the impression that it was only a
391G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 45. His family were in terminal decline. Although he had managed to purchase a manor at Whitnash, his son, Robert, was forced to sell the manor of Haseley to Earl Guy in 1301, and the property at Whitnash was disposed of in 1346 392BC, fol. 85 393List of Sheriffs, 144 394G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 12 395G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 12 396G. Templeman, The Sheriffs of Warwickshire, 12 397BC, fol. 9 398Hilton, Medieval Society, 61
112
temporary arrangement. Indeed, given the wholesale appropriation by the
Beauchamps of the shrievalty in the fourteenth century, it is remarkable how
little connection there appears to have been Earl William and the sheriffs in the
later thirteenth century.
We have some insight into the relationship between the gentry and the
Beauchamps at the close of the thirteenth century. Earl William, through his
hereditary right of the Worcestershire shrievalty, had succeeded in controlling
the legal and administrative apparatus of that county, although his influence was
tempered by the considerable privileges enjoyed by the bishop of Worcester, the
Cathedral Priory and the other monasteries. He exercised limited influence over
the sheriffs of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, but by the end of the thirteenth
century he had nearly succeeded in accumulating the ‘critical mass’ of property
which would ensure control over the county community of Warwickshire. He
still lacked the resources to distribute largesse on a wide scale, a prerequisite of
that virtue which Carpenter describes as ‘good lordship’.
William was probably also inhibited in his actions by the presence of rival
lords. This could take the form of other members of the higher nobility with
neighbouring territories, who were better off, and would undoubtedly be able to
attract a larger number of followers. This affected William to a greater extent
than either his son, or grandson. This was because the county of Warwick had its
royal administration attached to that of Leicestershire, and there was an
independent earl of Leicester up until 1308. One would expect that there would
have been a degree of competition between the two earls over the control of the
113
county administration up to this time, and after 1308 there would have been a
similar rivalry between the Beauchamps, and the earls of Lancaster, once the
earldom of Leicester had been incorporated into the Lancastrian estates. We
should also not forget the concentration of Lancastrian lands which were present
in the north midlands, as well as the relative proximity of the De Clare family, the
very well-‐off earls of Gloucester. All of these lords would have been more
attractive patrons to members of the gentry in the thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries. We should also consider the importance the church, as land
owners and as a source of competition to the earl's influence in the county,
especially the figure of Godfrey Giffard, bishop of Worcester. Giffard represented
the only credible figure capable of hampering the earl's control of
Worcestershire, and dealings between the two men were bound to be strained.
The problem was exacerbated by the pugnacious character of both men, and
soon a dispute arose between the bishop and the earl over the earl's lands in the
Hundred of Oswaldslow, with the bishop proclaiming overall supremacy despite
the earl protesting that he could act independently of the bishop and his
officers399. The dispute between the two men was a struggle over who exercised
the ultimate authority in areas where the earl and the bishop's interests crossed.
A legal dispute between the two men went on for the rest of the earl's life, and
the earl's decision to be buried with the Worcester minorites should be seen as a
final rebuke to Worcester cathedral priory.
399Reg. of Bihop Gifford, xxxii
114
By 1298 all the ingredients required for the affinity of the earl of Warwick
to dominate Worcestershire and Warwickshire were in place. The Fitz-‐Geoffrey
inheritance in 1297 had added respectably to the earl's patrimony and the new
earl, being shrewd, strong-‐willed and a man of consummate political ability, was
of the right calibre to provide a focal point for the county community. George
Holmes dubbed the ‘period of disordered politics which ended in 1330’, in which
Earl Guy was a leading figure, as ‘the first turbulent age of bastard feudalism’400,
and certainly from the outset of Guy's tenure as earl we see the full flourishing of
the system.
From 1300 onwards, the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire
seems finally to have come under the control of the earl of Warwick. Philip de
Gayton, sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire from 1300 to 1302, was
probably the earl's most important retainer. He appears to have come from a
modest Northamptonshire knightly family; following his death Philip left 10
marks rent to William, parson of the church of Gayton in Northampton401. De
Gayton appears to have been a younger son; his brother Theobald inherited the
manor of Gayton as well as other lands in Northamptonshire. Philip's position
with the earl appears to have been well rewarded, for he set about buying
property in Warwickshire with a vengeance. He purchased the manor of Norton
Lindsey from the Neville family402, along with The Grove in Budbrooke403, a
400G.Holmes, Estates, 82 401Cal.Inq.P.M., v, 600 402VCH Warwks., iii, 138 403VCH Warwks., iii, 66
115
manor which subsequently passed to the Beauchamps in the mid-‐fourteenth
century. He bought the manor of Shrewley-‐in-‐Hatton in 1312, without bothering
to pay for a king's licence, and had to pay 10 marks for a pardon404. Whilst most
of the charters on which Philip appear are from the first decade of the fourteenth
century, none of them seem to pre-‐date his appointment as sheriff, and it would
appear that de Gayton was recruited to the earl's affinity following his period as
sheriff, and had not been associated with the earl prior to his appointment. He
appears to have become the most senior of the earl's retainers soon afterwards.
A significant number of the charters on which de Gayton appears are concerned
with the manor of Berkswell: around 1305, the earl appears to have embarked
upon a policy of buying up peasant lands and common pasture, and enclosing
them, and Gayton's presence as witness on most of these charters405 is a possible
indication that he was responsible for the implementation of this policy. In 1305
he was nominated by the earl as his attorney, whilst Earl Guy was overseas on
the king's business406, and in 1307 was given exemption from being put on
assizes, juries or inquisitions because he was the earl's steward407. He appears to
have retired from the earl's service c.1311 when the last reference to him as a
witness for the earl appears408, possibly to see to his own property which he had
been able to purchase from the rewards of his office.
404VCH Warwks., iii, 118 405BC, fols. 86-89 406Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1301-7, 360 407Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1307-13, 13 408BC, fols. 85-6
116
De Gayton was succeeded as sheriff by John de Dene, who held the post on
no less than five occasions between 1302 and 1312. Although de Dene does not
appear on any of the earl's surviving witness lists, he was clearly a staunch
Beauchamp man. He served as the earl's attorney in 1304409. In 1308, following
the death of Henry de Lacy, earl of Leicester, a petition from Thomas de Meynil
was examined in which he accused Sir John de Dene ‘who is a bachelor of the earl
of Warwick’ of attempting to oust him from the office of coroner of
Leicestershire. De Meynil had been coroner of Leicestershire for over twenty
years, and, following the death of Edward I, was re-‐elected to the post only to
find that de Dene ‘would put another in his place without assent of the whole
county’410. This petition is remarkable because it shows that, by the beginning of
the fourteenth century, the earl of Warwick, already with Warwickshire under
his effective control, was seeking to extend his influence, albeit unsuccessfully411,
over Leicestershire, soon after the lands of the earldom of Leicester had been
assimilated into the Lancastrian inheritance. Furthermore, Maddicott supposes
that it was de Dene, on the orders of the earl, who suppressed Gaveston's pardon
in Warwickshire, which eventually provided the legal loophole under which the
king's favourite was eventually tried and executed412.
The furore over Gaveston's execution provides an illuminating snapshot
of Warwickshire administration in 1312. Because Gaveston's pardon was not
409Cal. Chanc. Warr., 1244-1320, 213 410Cal. Chanc Warr., 1244-1320, 271 411Edward subsequently ordered de Dene not to oust Thomas from his office. ibid. 412J. Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster 1307-1322: A study in the reign of Edward II (Oxford, 1970), 128
117
read out in Warwickshire, he was still technically outlawed in that county. Whilst
Gaveston was in prison at Warwick jail, the Bridlington Chronicle records that
Gaveston was tried and found guilty by the justices William Inge and Henry
Spigurnel413. Spigurnel had served as under-‐sheriff of Worcestershire, a position
nominated by the earl of Warwick, for several months in 1306414, and the two
men were both experienced justices of the king's bench. Gaveston's detention
and trial were carried out under Warwickshire administration by men whose
loyalty was primarily to Guy Beauchamp. However, because Beauchamp's
position was more assailable than the earl of Lancaster's, Lancaster ‘took upon
himself the peril of the business’415 and Gaveston was beheaded on Blacklow Hill,
this being the area of Lancaster's land nearest to Warwick Castle. For our
purposes the most interesting document connected with this case is surely the
long list of pardons which Edward issued in October 1313 to ‘Thomas, earl of
Lancaster, and his adherents, followers and confederates’416. Given that the
pardon not only included those who participated in Gaveston's death but also
included those who had indulged in ‘forcible entries into any towns or castles, or
any sieges of the same; or on account of having borne arms, or having taken any
prisoners, or of having entered into any confederacies whatever... touching or
concerning Gaveston’417, the list is more remarkable for those who are not
mentioned rather than those who are. Earl Guy himself is the second name on 413Chronicles of the Reigns of Edward I and Edward II, ed. W.Stubbs, (Rolls Series, 1882-3), ii, 43 414List of sheriffs, 157 415Vita Edwardi Secundi, ed. N.Denholm-Young (London, 1957), 28 416Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1313-17, 21 417Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1313-17, 21
118
the pardon list, but for the most part the list is primarily of Lancaster's
adherents, with only a very few individuals of Warwick's named. Dugdale picks
out a group whom he claims were ‘servants and retainers to this earl’ including
Peter de Limesey, Osbert de Clinton, Ralph de Grendon and others418. However,
none of these men were particularly associated with Beauchamp and, given the
circumstances of Gaveston's detention at Warwick, the names who are absent
are most apparent. Both Inge and Spigurnel, who reputedly sentenced Gaveston
to death are absent, as is John de Dene, then sheriff, who must have been heavily
implicated in the affair. Theobald de Gayton is included on the list whilst his
brother Philip, more intimately connected with the earl, is absent. Walter de
Cooksey is present; as we have seen, his father was very closely connected with
Earl William's administration, but the younger Walter does not appear on a
single charter of Earl Guy's. Quite possibly this was because his master was the
earl of Lancaster. Lancaster needed to be well represented in the midlands.
Maddicott writes, ‘his strength lay in the north midlands rather than in the north
itself’ 419 and he possessed many lands in Staffordshire, Leicestershire,
Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. The list is an extensive summary of
Lancaster's retainers, and tells us much about the nature of a lord's affinity in the
time of Edward II; the affinity appears to have been much more defined and rigid
than in the early fifteenth century, or even a generation later in the mid-‐
fourteenth century. These are men who rarely appear as witnesses of the earl of
418W.Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (London, 1730), i, 392 419Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 10
119
Warwick, and given that Thomas of Lancaster and Guy of Warwick were close
political allies, the split in the county community between their adherents as
revealed by this list is striking. Whereas Cooksey's father was a Beauchamp
adherent, and frequent witness, his son was a Lancastrian adherent and does not
seem to have associated himself with the members of the Beauchamp affinity.
That Lancaster's adherents assumed the total responsibility for Gaveston's death
is also revealing. Beauchamp's role as mastermind of the affair was well known,
both to Edward II and the populous at large. Following Gaveston's death, the
king's wrath appears to have been directed at Beauchamp; Edward had vowed to
‘have the earl of Warwick's head, or deprive him of his goods and condemn him
to perpetual exile’420. And yet once the responsibility for the deed had been
claimed by Lancaster it was his supporters who were deemed culpable, and
required pardons, and not Warwick's. The bond between lord and affinity were
strong, and, as the pardon list reveals, a lord's supporters were liable for the
conduct of their master.
There are a handful of names on the pardon list who were associated with
the earl of Warwick, but they are so few that we can deal with them individually.
They are important because they are possible examples of men of talent whose
ability made them sought after by many lords, and whose appearance was a
crucial feature of bastard feudal society. What is more likely is that they are
members of the affinity of the earl of Warwick who found their way into the
pardon list; they had probably been implicated in Gaveston's murder and were
420Vita, 32
120
pardoned for that reason. A man like John Hamelyn most probably did have
some contact with the affinity and administration of Lancaster. His lands were
concentrated in Leicestershire, Staffordshire and Lincolnshire, and given
Lancaster's landed interest in these counties one would expect Hamelyn to have
become assimilated in Lancaster's administration there. If Hamelyn's presence
on the list of Lancaster's retainers does indicate that this occurred, it was
probably only in a minor role; Lancaster was the largest lay landholder in
England, holding a third of the land of the crown, and places in his
administration must have been limited and highly sought after. All other
evidence seems to point to Hamelyn as a staunch Beauchamp man. His first
appearance on a Beauchamp charter was as early as 1302421. His name appears
as a witness on 14 charters in the Beauchamp cartulary, and all, except for one,
were for Guy de Beauchamp. Mostly he appears to have witnessed charters in the
town of Warwick, perhaps an indication that this was where he spent most of his
time on the earl's business. He was with the earl, however, at Elmley in 1304422,
Evesham in 1305423 and at Westminster in May 1315424. John Hamelyn testified
to the king's treasurer regarding the earl's enfeoffment of the manor of
Chedworth in 1306425, was one of Guy's executors in 1315426, and appears to
have been one of those charged by the earl to keep an eye on the affairs of his
children after his death. He witnessed a feoffment from the earl to his infant son 421BC, fol. 171 422BC, fol. 139 423BC, fols. 173-174 424BC, fol. 110 425Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1301-7, 442 426Cal.Fine Rolls, ii, 265
121
John of the manors of Beoley and Yardley427, and as late as 1325-‐6 witnessed
Thomas Beauchamp, then still a minor, buying land in Warwick428.
Another important figure in the administration of Earl Guy, who appears
in the pardon list, is William de Sutton. His name would suggest a north
Warwickshire origin, presumably around the area of Sutton Coldfield. The
property of New Hall, in Sutton Park, a moated house probably occupied in the
thirteenth or fourteenth century, is said to have been conveyed by William to
Robert of Sutton around 1327429. His name occurs frequently; in particular he
seems concerned with the numerous small land purchases made by the earl in
the town of Warwick itself, and his career of service seems to have been a long
one. He is listed as a burgess of Warwick in 1306430, was witness, alongside John
Hamelyn, to the young Thomas Beauchamp's land purchase in 1325-‐6431, and is
referred to as one of Earl Thomas' stewards in 1332432. It was he who was asked,
in 1327, to investigate the level of deterioration at Warwick Castle, which had
occurred during the minority of Thomas Beauchamp433. He married well; it
would appear that his wife was Margery de Spineto, a rich widow, and he
obtained guardianship of her son and her estate, including the manor of
Coughton in Warwickshire, in 1318. He was still lord of Coughton in September
1338434. 427BC, fol. 120 428BC, fol. 74 429VCH Warwks., iv, 239 430BC, fol. 69 431BC, fol. 74 432BC, fol. 103 433Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1324-7, 352 434VCH Warwks., iii, 80
122
The third and last major Warwick figure on the list of pardons is that of
the clerk Adam de Harvington. De Harvington was appointed by the earl to the
post of Deputy Chamberlain of the exchequer in 1298435. He was appointed by
Edward I, at the request of Earl Guy, to the custody of the manor of Talton,
Worcestershire436. He too was an executor of Guy's will437, witnessed the earl's
feoffment of Beoley and Yardley to his younger son in 1315438 and with other
clerks was entrusted to farm with £100 worth of the earl's lands in Rutland,
Leicestershire and Gloucestershire439 for 10 years from 1315. It had been Earl
Guy who promoted him into royal service and, following the earl's death, he
appears to have progressed through the ranks of the royal administration,
becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer at Dublin in 1326 and Chancellor of the
Exchequer at London in 1327. In 1342 he conveyed the reversion of the manor of
Harvington to Earl Thomas440.
It was a characteristic of Earl Guy that many of his most trusted associates
were clerks, of whom de Harvington was one. This might simply have been the
preference of a well-‐educated man wishing to surround himself with his
intellectual peers, but it is more likely to show an increasing need for literate
men in what was essentially a bureaucratic position. Many of the clerks Guy
patronised were of a similar social cachet to Harvington, who, despite his career
435Officers of the Exchequer, ed. J.C.Sainty (Lists and Index Society, Special Series, xviii, 1983), 27 436Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1301-7, 155; VCH Worcs., iii, 544 437Cal.Fine Rolls, ii, 265 438BC, fol. 120 439Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1313-17, 263 440VCH Worcs., iii, 40
123
in holy orders, was still from a respectable knightly family. John de Neville,
another clerk in the administration of Earl Guy, was briefly made sheriff of
Warwickshire and Leicestershire441. It was he who had taken seisin of the manor
of Haseley for the earl in 1302442. For whatever reason, his appointment to the
shrievalty in 1311 seems been a very temporary measure; he only served for a
fortnight before the post was handed back to John de Dene443. Peter Le Blount,
another clerk, whom Guy appointed to the exchequer444 and served as executor
of the earl's will along with Harvington445, was in the prominent Blount family,
and his brother Walter was a member of Lancaster's affinity446. Blount was
appointed parson of the earl's manor of Hanslope447. William de Wellesbourne
perhaps came from a lower class. He first appeared as a witness on an inspection
of an old charter in 1310-‐11448, but by 1314-‐5 was listed as being ‘rector of the
church of Berkswell’ when he acted as feoffee between the earl and his infant son
John449. At around the same time he was made attorney by the earl in a property
transaction450, and like Harvington was also an executor of the earl's will. In
1315 the earl demised £100 worth of lands to Harvington, William de
Wellesbourne and Simon de Sutton. De Sutton was another clergyman in the
earl's retinue who had been appointed to the church of South Luffenham whilst 441List of Sheriffs, 145 442BC, fol. 96 443List of Sheriffs, 144 444Officers of the Exchequer, 14 445Cal.Fine Rolls, ii, 265 446Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1313-17, 23 447Dugdale, Antiquities, i, 393 448BC, fol. 115 449BC, fol. 120 450BC, fol. 48
124
Roger Caumpe, yet another of the earl's executors, was parson of the church of
Kibworth Beauchamp in Leicestershire. Wellesbourne, Blount, Sutton and
Caumpe's appointments show the earl rewarding his clerical retainers with
ecclesiastical benefices. As a method of reward this was far more advantageous
to the earl than demising land, for not only was the appointment subject to the
earl's discretion, and was open to more manipulation than a life grant of land,
but the clerks could be expected to oversee the earl's interests in the manor.
In the last six months of the life of Guy Beauchamp, the earl finally
achieved his political ambitions. Following Edward II's humiliation at the Battle
of Bannockburn, the Lancastrian faction gained the upper hand. Edward II was
forced to capitulate to the demands of the ordainers and re-‐instate the
ordinances. Earl Guy, widely regarded as the ‘brains behind the ordinances’451,
was almost permanently in the king's presence from January 1315 to his death
six months later. By this time, Guy had become a senior member of the king's
council452, exercising such a degree of influence that at least one chronicle
records that he actually held the post of chief councillor453. During this period it
would appear that many of Guy's key officials and associates followed him to
London, and stayed with the earl for at least part of his time there. A charter
signed in Westminster not only shows stalwarts such as Adam de Harvington,
Simon de Sutton and William of Wellesbourne to have been present in
451Vita, xxi 452Maddicott, Thomas of Lancaster, 166 453J.C. Davies, The Baronial Opposition to Edward II (Cambridge, 1918), 395
125
Westminster alongside the earl, but also more independent figures such as John
Hamelyn, Thomas de Clinton and Thomas de Pipe454.
The years 1298 to 1315 were a decisive period for the development of
bastard feudalism in Worcestershire and Warwickshire. The earl succeeded in
staffing the local administrative system with his placemen, and the shrievalty of
Warwickshire and Leicestershire was firmly under his control for the first time.
The system which Carpenter perceives in the fifteenth century of an all-‐
encompassing affinity had not yet developed, and only a relatively few number of
knights loyal to the earl were needed to staff the county administration and legal
system. The very attraction of the Beauchamp affinity at this point in time seems
to have been its exclusiveness, and those who were not in the ruling clique could
be very active in their opposition to it. In 1297 John de Clinton of Coleshill stood
accused of harbouring trespassers who had broken into the earl's park at
Claverdon455. By 1300, Walter Beauchamp, once a stalwart of the administration
of Earl William, was reportedly willing to plunge the area into civil war over a
quarrel with his nephew, Earl Guy, and the matter was not settled until the king
intervened personally456. The earl was later to buy the overlordship of Walter
Beauchamp's son and heir, as a means of reinforcing his control over the
troublesome Alcester branch of the family457. Later, in Edward II's reign, the
earl's hostility to the king brought those members of the county community 454BC, fol. 110 455Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1292-1301, 256 456Willelmi Rishanger quondam monachi S.Albani et quorundam anonymarum, chronica et annales, regnantibus Henrico tertio et Edwardo Primo, AD 1259-1307, ed. H.T. Riley, (Rolls Series, xxviii, London, 1865), 406 457BC, fol. 111
126
opposed to the ruling clique in sympathy with the crown's position. By the time
of the earl's death in 1315, there was a ready supply of candidates who had been
out of favour with the Beauchamp affinity, and who were to find jobs in the local
administration during the minority of the earl's son. Walter de Beauchamp was
appointed sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in 1316, whilst William le
Beauchamp, of the Holt branch of the family, was appointed as sheriff of
Worcestershire in the same year458. John Pecche, who had formerly been a close
associate of the Beauchamps in the later years of Edward I, and had even
witnessed a charter between Earl William and his heir Guy459, does not appear
on any witness lists after 1307, the year Edward II succeeded to the throne and
the earl of Warwick became an outspoken critic of the royal court. His loyalty to
the court was rewarded when he was made guardian of the earl's land and
property in Warwick in the years 1321-‐25460.
Whilst their rivals may have prospered in the years of Thomas' minority,
a hard-‐core of the affinity appears to have survived intact throughout the
wilderness years of 1315 to 1330. The earl's children might well have provided a
focal point for some of them in this period. The wardship of Thomas, as the earl's
heir, was fiercely sought after and awarded on the discretion of the king. The
details of the childhood of John, the earl's younger son, are unknown, but William
of Wellesbourne's role as feoffee when the earl provided the manors of Beoley
458List of Sheriffs, 144-5,157 459BC, fol. 66 460PRO SC6/1040/24
127
and Yardley for the infant461 would suggest that the earl's executors, and
Wellesbourne in particular, had accepted a moral obligation to oversee the
affairs of the child. Certainly, in May 1316, someone was complaining on John's
behalf over incursions into his park at Beoley462. In 1325-‐26, John Hamelyn,
William de Sutton, William de la Zouche, widower of Countess Alice and Thomas
Beauchamp's stepfather, as well as Thomas de Brailes, a future steward of the
earl463, gathered to witness the young Thomas Beauchamp's purchase of land. A
minor would have provided a suitable focus for the affinity; it was only a matter
of time before he would come into his inheritance and would be able to reward
those who loyally taken care of his interests in his youth. The fact that an affinity
does seem to have survived in these years also testifies to the fact that, even
without the presence of a central dominant figure, a network of loyalty had
grown up which those in it found too valuable to disregard. The principal benefit
would have been that of land purchase; as Carpenter points out, a possible buyer
would find out that a certain property was for sale by word of mouth, and the
network provided an invaluable system of communication. The network also
provided a guarantee in an age when land transaction was a very risky venture.
The manor of Frankley is an example of how a property was repeatedly traded
throughout the affinity. Adam de Harvington gained the manor in 1308, and sold
the reversion to Edmund de Grafton, a frequent charter witness of Earl Guy's.
The manor stayed with the Grafton family until John de Grafton conveyed the
461BC, fol. 120 462Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1313-17, 497 463BC, fol. 101
128
manor to Gilbert de Chasteleyn in 1350. Chasteleyn sold the manor in 1354 to
John de Beauchamp464. Between 1308 and 1354, the manor had passed through
two generations of the Beauchamp's affinity, before it eventually passed to the
earl on his brother's death in 1360.
Thomas Beauchamp's tenure as earl, between 1330 and 1369, in some
ways marks the zenith of the Beauchamp's control over the county community.
From 1344 to 1369 the earl held the shrievalty of Warwickshire and
Leicestershire, as he did the shrievalty of Worcestershire, of the gift of the king.
Whilst the importance of the sheriff was gradually being eroded he was still the
most important figure in the county administration. With power being devolved
to new commissions of the peace, the earl's position of dominance was not
affected, for he frequently sat on the commissions himself, or else one of his key
associates was always on the commission. Furthermore, the reign of Edward III
was far less divisive than the troubled reign of Edward II, and, unlike his father,
Thomas was one of the crown's most trusted supporters. The earl could
therefore expect the king to reinforce his authority and those opposed to the earl
were less likely to obtain a royal intervention in their favour. This sense of unity
was apparently felt at a local level, with the earl of Warwick the undisputed
master of the west midlands.
In some respects, Earl Thomas was more fortunate than his father or
grandfather. Throughout much of their time of earl, they were unfortunate to
have two major earldoms, those of Gloucester and Leicester, bordering their
464VCH Worcs., iii, 121
129
lands. Both of these houses dissolved in the early fourteenth century, with Henry
de Lacy's inheritance becoming part of the holdings of the earl of Lancaster, and
the Clare inheritance split up. The presence of the Earl of Lancaster's estate, the
largest in England, in proximity to the earl might appear to be a distinct danger
to the hegemony of the earl of Warwick in the midlands. However, because his
estates were so great, and his central administration was concentrated in the
north-‐west, it meant that the opportunities for preferment for those who sought
it were severely limited in Leicestershire and the north midlands in general, and
the earl of Warwick was able to draw on the gentry from this area for his own
administration. By the end of our period, Goodman notes that very few of the
Leicestershire gentry were retainers of the earl of Lancaster, and that John of
Gaunt ‘did not pursue a policy of domination over the gentry through office
holding’ in the county, although he did follow this policy elsewhere465, even after
control of the shrievelty came back to the crown in 1369. Simon Pakeman and
Robert de Herle were two important Leicestershire figures who, if they had been
born a generation earlier, would probably would not have come into the earl of
Warwick's administration because they would have gravitated toward the
administration of an independent earl of Leicester.
Earl Thomas' full appropriation of the powers of the shrievalty of
Warwickshire and Leicestershire came on the 26 June 1344466, when the king
made the earl sheriff of those two counties for life. This reward from Edward III
465A.Goodman, John of Gaunt: The Excersise of Princely Power in Fourteenth Century Europe (Harlow, 1992) 466List of Sheriffs, 145
130
certainly testifies to the king's affection and gratitude to the earl, but it also
shows his confidence in the earl and his affinity not to use their additional power
to undermine the crown's interests. In the Beauchamp cartulary, there exists a
remarkable charter which gives some idea of the personal control which the earl
of Warwick was able to exercise over his under-‐ sheriffs by the middle of the
fourteenth century. The charter is between the earl and John Waleys, who had
been sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire since October 1343, and who
was Earl Thomas' first under-‐sheriff in June 1344467. Before his appointment as
under-‐sheriff, Waleys signed a document in which he recognised the earl's right
to 40 librates of rent from his property in Leicestershire, on the understanding
that the document would be annulled if he satisfied the earl in the performance
of his office468. Effectively this meant that the under-‐sheriff would have been
totally under Beauchamp's control unless he wished to lose a substantial sum of
money. Waleys does not appear to have been a Beauchamp man, he appears to
have owed his appointment as sheriff to royal favour, hence the need for this
agreement between him and the earl, and in a sense the charter can be
interpreted as a sign of weakness on the part of the earl, who should not have
needed to resort to such unusual measures. However, it does show that the earl
realised that his control over the shrievalty had to be absolute. The fact that the
charter between the earl and Waleys is the only one of these charters to have
been included in the Beauchamp cartulary, coupled with the fact that Waleys
467List of Sheriffs, 145 468BC, fol. 9-10
131
only survived in his post of under-‐sheriff for three months before being replaced
by Richard of Stonley, a key retainer of the earl, suggests that Waleys did not
satisfy the earl in his duties as under-‐sheriff and had to forfeit both his office and
the deposit he had made for his ‘good behaviour’. After Waleys, all of
Beauchamp's choices for the office of sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire
were staunchly dependable and tended to serve for lengthy periods.
The importance of the sheriff was gradually diminishing throughout the
middle of the fourteenth century and replaced by commissioners of the peace.
The earl was fully active in these commissions from his first appointment as a
commissioner in February 1332. Often the other keepers, or commissioners as
they were later called, were associates of the earl. Thomas de Astley was
appointed with the earl as keeper of Warwick in March 1332469, on a commission
of oyer and terminer with the earl in 1361470 and on a commission of array with
the earl in 1367471, and was married to the earl's sister Elizabeth. His family also
had a long-‐standing connection to the Beauchamp family; they held the manor of
Astley itself on condition of holding the earl's stirrup whenever he mounted a
horse472. Lord Peter de Montfort, whose heir Guy married Thomas' daughter
Margaret473, sat on a commission of oyer and terminer with the earl in 1344474
and 1359475, and served as justice of the peace with the earl in March 1351476 469Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1330-4, 294 470Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1361-4, 63 471Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1364-7, 431 472VCH Warwks., vi, 17 473W.Dugdale, The Baronage of England, 2 vols. (London, 1675), i, 226 474Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 411 475Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1358-61, 221 476Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 87
132
and April 1352477. If the earl was absent then there was always at least one of
his close associates on the team of commissioners. This was especially true if
there was any incursion into the earl's property. A commission of oyer and
terminer into a break-‐in at the earl's park at Sutton Coldfield in 1346 included
Peter de Montfort and John de Peyto, the younger, who was an occasional charter
witness of the earl in the 1340s478. A similar complaint by the earl, concerning
incursions into his park at Warwick a year later, was investigated by a
commission consisting of Simon Pakeman, John de Merynton and Richard de
Stonley, alongside the judges Roger Hillary and William de Shareshull. As we
have mentioned, de Stonley was one of the earl's key retainers. John de Merynton
had served as a witness between the earl and John Waleys, in the charter where
the latter gave the earl his security of loyal service479. Simon Pakeman came from
a modest background, and his father was a well-‐to-‐do freeholder in the
Leicestershire village of Kirby Muxloe. His overlords were the Herle family, and it
seems he owed his legal background to the attentions of William de Herle, whose
ward he was. By 1337, Pakeman was appearing as an attorney at the Court of
Common Pleas, where Herle was chief justice. Although primarily a man of the
earl of Lancaster, Pakeman also distinguished himself by serving the earl of
Warwick. Presumably he came to Beauchamp's attention by way of Herle's son,
Robert, who was Pakeman's overlord at Kirby Muxloe as well as one of the earl of
477Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 284 478BC, fol. 97;Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1338-40, 436 479BC, fol. 9
133
Warwick most prominent retainers480 . Pakeman was described as Thomas
Beauchamp's attorney in 1341481 and was later to prove his legal skills as the
earl's legal representative in the dispute over Gower in 1356, for which the
grateful earl gave Pakeman all lands and rents he had in Upper Boddington in
Northamptonshire482. Curiously, Pakeman's work for Warwick was primarily
concentrated between 1346 and 1362, at a time when Henry Grosmont was earl
of Lancaster, and Pakeman was denied the patronage which he had received
under Earl Henry of Lancaster, or which he would subsequently attain in the
service of John of Gaunt483. In the late 1360's he would serve as a justice of the
peace alongside Beauchamp.484
The earl's stranglehold over the county administration was all
encompassing. All legal settlements were subject to his goodwill or that of his
affinity, and those accused of wrongdoing against the earl or his property could
expect to be judged by a highly prejudiced group of his henchmen. This situation
seems to have resulted in a large number of people attempting to escape from
the widescale control of the affinity, and appears to have reached its apogee in
February 1345 when the king asked for a list of those fleeing Warwickshire
480G.G.Astill, ‘Social Advancement through seignorial service? The case of Simon Pakeman.’, Transactions of The Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, liv, (1978-9), 15-19 481Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1340-43, 240 482Dugd, Antiquities, i, 395 483Astill, ‘Social Advancement’, 20 484Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1364-7, 434; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1367-70, 62; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1367-70, 193
134
because they were not ‘willing to be judged by’ the earl, Peter de Montfort,
Robert de Herle, Richard de Stonley or John de Merynton485.
As a leading soldier of his day, Earl Thomas was frequently on campaign.
To maintain control over the West Midlands he was forced to rely on his
retainers more than his predecessors, gradually devolving more and more
autonomy to them in his absences. His request in his will that the church in each
of his manors be ‘given his best beast to be found there, in satisfaction of tithes
forgotten and not paid’ and that his executors ‘should make full satisfaction to
every man, whom he had in any sort wronged’486 implies an abuse of power by
his officials of which the earl was fully aware. In 1345, he enfeoffed a large
proportion of his Worcestershire and Gloucestershire manors, along with
Haseley in Warwickshire, to Thomas de Ferrers, Robert de Herle, John de
Melbourn, Roger de Ledbury, Hugh Cooksey, Richard de Stonley and Walter de
Shakenhurst in order to provide marriage portions for his daughters. Bean sees
this as an ‘expedient that was undoubtedly intended to secure the profits of the
estates to the earl in his lifetime, despite the vesting of the legal title in the
feoffees’487. The arrangement appears to have been a successful one; at some
point prior to 1363, the earl re-‐enfeoffed the same manors along with many
additional properties, to Sir John de Buckingham, Sir Robert de Herle, Sir John de
Beauchamp, Sir Ralph Bassett of Sapcote, Sir Richard de Pirton, Walter de
485Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-45, 490 486Dugdale, Baronage, i, 233 487J.M.W.Bean, The Decline of English Feudalism 1215-1540 (Manchester, 1968), 123
135
Shakenhurst and John le Rous488. Unlike the 1345 enfeoffment, this charter has
not survived, and so we can only guess at the purpose of this enfeoffment.
However, both of these agreements indicate a very strong dependence of the earl
upon his most trusted retainers and associates; these men were undoubtedly
those entrusted with the day-‐to-‐day running of these manors, and the fact that
he had given them the legal title to these estates, regardless of the reason for the
enfeoffment, demonstrates that the earl had total confidence in them. The earl
was still able to exercise as much control over these lands as he wished; in 1363
he provided a gift of £40 rent from the Wiltshire manors of Stratford Tony and
Newton Tony, to his cousin Sir Roger Beauchamp. The rent was officially given to
Sir Roger by Buckingham, Herle, etc. ‘with the earls assent’489, although the earl
was clearly the de facto, if not de jure, controller of the property and on his death
the lands reverted automatically back into his estate490.
At around the same time the earl appears to have deputised much of the
decision-‐making regarding the extension of his patrimony to the discretion of his
retainers. Two documents491 in the Beauchamp Cartulary reveal two of his
retainers, Richard de Stonley in 1347 and John de Sandrested in 1351, ‘in the
work of Earl Thomas’492, to have bought property in their own name and then
quitclaimed it to the earl. It is uncertain how common this practice was, but
clearly it did present a risk; if the retainer had purchased a valuable property for
488Cal.Close Rolls, 1360-64, 510; Cal.Close Rolls, 1369-74, 108 489Cal.Close Rolls, 1360-64, 510 490Cal.Close Rolls, 1369-74, 108 491BC, fol. 9 492BC, fol. 9
136
a reasonable price it would be feasible for him to pass it on to the earl at a higher
price, and thereby earn a hefty commission. Whether Stonley or Sandrested did
receive commissions for this service is unrecorded, but it is still a clear indication
that even matters as important as the purchase of property were being entrusted
to the earl's retinue, and is a sign of the importance of the earl's foremost
retainers in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The affinity of Earl Thomas was clearly the most influential group in the
west midlands in the mid-‐fourteenth century, and it is necessary to find out of
what sort of people it was made. Essentially the affinity of the earl can be broken
down into two categories: existing local landholders, and retainers with clerical
and administrative skills. On occasion the latter group also possessed a martial
background, who served the earl at home but also served in his company on his
frequent military campaigns. There was frequently an overlap between both
groups and the boundaries between these two camps became very blurred when
a member of a local knightly family rose through the earl's administrative ranks.
The first group are perhaps the easiest to categorise; their association
with the earl increased their own position in the region's social hierarchy and
the affinity's subversion of the instruments of local power could be used for their
own individual interests as well as that of the earl. Sir Hugh de Cooksey, one of
those whom the earl demised land for his daughters' dowries in 1345493, was the
younger son of Walter, Earl William's associate. Hugh Cooksey had succeeded in
transforming the fortunes of his family from their modest knightly origins to
493Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 517
137
being one of the most important Worcestershire knightly families by a persistent
policy of land accumulation. His relationship with the earl appears to have been
amicable, albeit at arms length, and his inclusion as guardian of the earl's lands is
one of only a few connections between him and Thomas Beauchamp on a
personal level. He did act as a witness between the earl and a Beauchamp man,
Thomas Cassy of Hadzor494, but any role in the earl's administration would have
been hindered by the needs of his own extensive patrimony. Nevertheless, he
served frequently with the earl on judicial commissions in the 1340s and
1350s495, and sat on a commission investigating an incursion into the earl's
parks in Worcestershire in 1349496. Cooksey himself owed some of his land to
favourable court judgements; a suit of dower brought by Isabel, widow of Hugh's
elder brother Walter, over a messuage and a carucate of land in Stockton on
Teme, appears to have been ruled in Hugh's favour497, and his relationship, along
with that of other prominent local landowners, to the earl seems to have
stemmed from a mutual need on the sides of both parties. Other prominent,
independent, midland landholders were connected with the earl more
intimately. As we have seen, Beauchamp had enfeoffed land to the Leicestershire
based Ralph Bassett of Sapcote and others in the 1360s498. Basset appears to
have served with Beauchamp at Calais in 1347, and received a general pardon
494BC, fol. 5-6 495Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1338-40, 484; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 88; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 284; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 508; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 62 496Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1348-50, 311 497VCH Worcs., iv, 347 498Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1361-4, 48
138
there at the earl's request499. He was joint holder of a debt along with the earl
and Richard de Pirton in 1359500 and their association appears to be an example
of the earl cultivating support in Leicestershire. Beauchamp increased his
connections in Staffordshire by the marriages of two of his daughters to Ralph
Basset of Drayton and Ralph, earl of Stafford. The earl of Stafford had sat on a
commission of oyer and terminer with Beauchamp in 1344501 and, in 1351, a
bond made between the two men was recorded in the close rolls502. In July 1356,
Ralph acted as feoffee when the earl re-‐granted his castle of Swansea and lands
of Gower to himself and his heirs in tail male503. This appears to be an example of
a feature of bastard feudalism identified by Carpenter; the affinity being used as
a means of extending influence into areas where the earl was less well
represented, but it also goes further. By effectively incorporating a fellow peer
such as the earl of Stafford into his circle of associates, the earl was linking his
affinity with that of a neighbouring county, in such a way as did not occur
between the affinities of Earl Guy and Thomas of Lancaster. To use Carpenter's
words, bastard feudalism appears to have developed into more of a ‘seamless
web of influence’ by the mid-‐fourteenth century, effectively extending the
influence of Beauchamp into the north midlands, and Stafford into
Worcestershire and Warwickshire.
499Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-8, 520 500Cal.Close Rolls, 1354-60, 645 501Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-45, 411 502Cal.Close Rolls, 1349-54, 349 503Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 416
139
Part of the standard definitions of a bastard feudal society is a
specialisation in the work of a lord's retainers, and the distinction between the
earl's wartime and peacetime retinues. Bean, however, perceives that there was
a degree of crossover between the retinues of the higher nobility in times of
peace war and, in the mid-‐fourteenth century, there does appear to have been
some crossover between the earl's wartime and his peacetime revenues. A likely
explanation for this is to be found in the earl's own character; just as his father,
being an educated man, had patronised educated men of the church, so did his
son apparently promote those whom he had served on military campaigns with.
The first contact we have between Ralph Basset of Sapcote and the earl was in
Calais in 1347504. Two other of the earl's key retainers were also granted
pardons for serving against the French; Gilbert de Chasteleyn, and Richard de
Stonley505.
Gilbert de Chasteleyn first appears with Thomas Beauchamp in Calais in
September 1346 where he is described as being from "kengham"506, possibly
Kingham in Oxfordshire. Before that time he had acted in Warwickshire as a
feoffee between John de Segrave and Sir Fulk de Birmingham. Immediately after
serving with the earl he appears to have been a very prominent member of the
west midlands' county community. He was an occasional charter witness for the
earl; witnessing charters in Warwick as well as at the earl's manor of Sutton
504Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-8, 520 505Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-8, 539, 543 506Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1345-8, 495
140
Coldfield507. He was present in 1350 when one of the earl's retainers quitclaimed
all the property he had acquired in Warwick in the service of the earl508, showing
an involvement in the earl's internal administration. However, he appears to
have been of most use to the earl in local affairs and was appointed as under-‐
sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire in October 1351, holding the post
until October 1354 509 . Immediately prior to his appointment as sheriff,
Chasteleyn appears to have attempted to build up a base for himself in the
midlands; in 1350 he acquired the Worcestershire manor of Frankley from John,
son of John de Grafton in 1350510, and in 1351 bought a messuage, two carucates
of land, twelve acres of meadow and £8 rent from William Trussel in the
Warwickshire manor of Loxley511. He frequently served as justice of the peace
with the earl, both in Warwickshire and Worcestershire throughout his time as
sheriff512, and was a commissioner into a break-‐in of the earl's parks of Elmley in
1349513, and Sutton Coldfield in 1351514. He appears to have used his experience
in the administration of the earl of Warwick as a springboard for a career in the
royal administration. Following his tenure as sheriff he sold the manor of
Frankley515 in 1354, and thereafter appears to have travelled frequently in the
service of the crown. In 1355, he was appointed by Edward to oversee the
507BC, fol. 79; BC, fol. 149 508BC, fol. 9 509List of sheriffs, 145 510VCH Worcs., iii, 121 511VCH Warwks., iii, 131 512Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-54, 87, 158, 284, 450, 508; Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 62 513Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1348-50, 311, 321 514Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1350-4, 158 515VCH Worcs., iii, 121
141
running of Titchfield Abbey in Berkshire516, and in July of that year he was
appointed steward of the household of the king's daughter Isabel517. His last
appointment appears to have been in 1358, when he was appointed as a
commissioner in Northampton518, whereafter he dramatically disappears from
view. Chasteleyn's promotion into the royal household shows just how far an
ambitious and talented household knight was able to progress at this time and is
very similar to that of an even more senior retainer of the earl's, Robert Herle,
who also became an important agent of the crown. Chasteleyn and Herle's
example is perhaps a precedent to the findings of Bennett who perceives a
connection between the importance of the duke of Lancaster in the declining
years of Edward III's reign and the earldom of Chester to Richard II, and ‘a
wholly unprecedented importance in the affairs of the realm’ of men from the
north-‐west of England519. Bennett concludes that ‘closeness to the royal family
determined access to government patronage’520, and in this respect the affinity of
the earl of Warwick was well placed. The king and the earl were on very friendly
terms, and both the earl, and his brother John, were founder members of the
Order of the Knights of the Garter. Close associates of the earl would doubtlessly
have come into contact with the king and his retinue. One of the advantages
which the earl could offer those who had served him loyally, was the chance to
further their careers in the king's administration, and it is highly likely that he
516Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 332 517Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 451 518Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1358-61, 73-4 519M.J. Bennett, Community, Class and Careerism (Cambridge, 1983), 206 520Bennett, Community, 204
142
exercised his influence upon the king for their benefit; the arrangement could
have proved mutually beneficial, both for Beauchamp and the retainer
concerned. The retainer, if he was ambitious, gained an invaluable elevation in
status, and the earl would have benefited from a greater influence in the royal
administration by having friends and people who owed their position to him in
the service of the crown.
Sir Robert de Herle was probably the earl's most senior official from 1339
until the end of the 1340s. He came from a respectable Leicestershire family, and
his sister married into a cadet branch of the family of the earl of Pembroke. He
does, however, appear to have had a administrative and legal background;
William de Herle, Robert's father, was chief justice of the court of common pleas
intermittently between 1327 and 1337. Furthermore, he sat on the king's council
up to his death in 1347521. He also appears to been close to the Bassets of
Drayton; in 1339 he was the Bassetts' retainer in their manors of Moulton,
Buckby, Olney and Walsall522. In April of that year, the earl granted a life
indenture to Sir Robert Herle at Wadborough. Herle was commissioned to serve
the earl as one of the ‘bachelors’ of his household in peacetime, and to attend the
earl in time of war and at tournaments. He was to receive adequate expenses for
him and his squires, and in addition to this, the earl granted Herle the
wardenship of Barnard Castle along with its forests and lands523. Bean has
pointed out that the Barnard Castle appointment in itself would have made Herle
521Dictionary of National Biography, ix, 699 522BC, fols. 111-112 523BC, fol. 174
143
a pivotal figure in the running of the earl's estates524 . Herle's fee is not
mentioned in the original indenture, but a seperate letter patent shows that, at
this time, the earl granted Herle a a lifetime lease on some lands and rents in the
vicinity of Barnard Castle525. Herle witnessed the earl re-‐granting his estate to
his male heirs in 1344526, and is listed as one of the retainers who nominally had
to hand over the earl's lands to his feoffee's527. In September 1343, Herle
obtained a pardon of the king's suit for homicides, felonies, robberies and
larcenies perpetrated by him and any consequent outlawries, and it is noted that
the pardon was sealed personally in front of Edward III and Thomas, earl of
Warwick528. In 1344, he and the earl are described as mainpernors to have a
priest, William de Sharnebourn, ousted from the benefice of Stowemarket in the
diocese of Norwich529. In February 1345, he was required, along with other
members of the earl of Warwick's clique, to submit the names of those who were
refusing to be judged by him530, and in July of that year he was one of the team to
which Thomas entrusted some of his lands to provide marriage portions for his
daughters531. At some point in the late 1340s he appears to have progressed
from the earl's service to that of the king. In November 1354, he is described as
steward of the lands and castles of Edmund and John, the king's sons532. By the
524Bean, From Lord to Patron, 63-4 525Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1338-40, 320 526BC, fol. 19 527BC, fol. 19 528Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 118 529Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 289 530Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 490 531Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1343-5, 517 532Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 554
144
November of 1360 he is described as the ‘king's lieutenant in Brittany’533, whilst
a year later he was referred to as the ‘king's admiral’, and was constable of Dover
Castle and warden of the Cinque ports534. However he was clearly still on close
terms with the earl of Warwick, and appears on several of the earl's crucial
charters in the 1350s and early 1360s. In July 1356, he acted as feoffee for the
earl when he entailed Gower and Swansea castle535, and is listed as part of the
team to whom the earl enfeoffed his lands to in the 1360s536. He and many others
of the same men purchased the manor of Conesgrave in the same year537. Herle
is perhaps the finest example of a man using the bastard feudal system to his
own uses. He had been rewarded by the earl for his services by a lifetime
indenture, became an officer of the king's household whilst still aiding and
working for his old lord when his skills were required. Herle's elevation could
not have occurred without the help of the earl of Warwick. It was a sign of the
cordial relations between the king and his magnates at this time that no conflict
of interest occurred and it was seen as perfectly acceptable for a man of
considerable talent, as Herle doubtlessly was, to serve both masters.
Coming from knightly families, Chasteleyn and Herle shared a similar
background. The career of Richard de Pirton demonstrates how a man, of
apparently humble origins, could progress equally as far. His name implies that
his origins were in the Beauchamp's Worcestershire manor of the same name.
533Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1358-61, 479 534Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1361-4, 150 535Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 416 536Cal.Close Rolls, 1360-4, 510 537BC, fol. 82
145
Although, as a ‘clerk’, he is listed as one the earl's key retainers in 1344538, he
rose in prominence in the period after Chasteleyn and Herle left for the service of
the king. In 1354 he was listed as the earl's steward at his manor of Bliston,
Cornwall539, and whilst, in 1356, his role as feoffee in the entail of Gower and
Swansea shows his importance, his position is still described as that of ‘clerk’540.
That year he was acting as attorney in the name of the earl and overseeing
transactions of land on the earl's behalf541. At some point after May 1352,
probably the late 1350s, he became the earl's ‘attorney-‐general’, a post which he
still held in February 1362 when he co-‐owned a debt of £1,000 along with
Thomas Beauchamp542. Like most of Beauchamp's trusted retainers, he was
enfeoffed of a large proportion of lands in 1361 by the earl543. He appears to
have remained the earl's attorney-‐general until the earl's death in 1369, and he
subsequently sat in the same post for the earl's son, the second Thomas, earl of
Warwick. In later years he rose to prominence as dean of Colchester, but still
frequently sat on the earl's council up to his death in 1387. He was buried in St
Paul's, London, next to John Beauchamp, Earl Guy's younger son, who had died in
1360544.
Unlike Herle or Chasteleyn, Pirton does not seem to have played much of
role in the administration of the west midlands; his duties were apparently
538BC, fol. 19 539Black Prince's Reg., ii, 192 540Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1354-8, 416 541BC, fol. 7 542Cal.Close Rolls, 1360-4, 386 543Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1361-4, 48 544Sinclair, 353
146
consigned to the running of the earl's own estates and he did not seem to sit on
any judicial commissions or act as a justice of the peace. He was, however,
appointed by the earl to his hereditary office of Chamberlain of the Exchequer, a
post which he held continuously from 1353 to 1365545. The circumstances of his
dismissal from the post were part of a royal scandal which shows the dangers
and rivalries in royal service. Pirton and Ralph de Kestevan, the other clerk of the
exchequer, were accused of framing Richard de Chesterfield, a deputy clerk, for
the crime of embezzling over £1,000. Chesterfield was tried for the crime twice,
and found to be innocent, whereupon the king's wrath turned against Pirton and
Kestevan; Edward III passed a decree that if ‘those who prosecute false claims
should be found false or bad, those making them should incur the same pain as
the accused would have if convicted’ and invited Chesterfield to seek retribution
under its terms, an offer which he declined. Nevertheless, Pirton was confined to
the Tower of London until he should ‘make to the king fine and ransom
according to the statute’546. What is remarkable about the incident is that a
member of the affinity of the earl of Warwick was accused along with
Chesterfield, so that two key figures in the Warwick administration were on
opposite sides of the dispute.
William de Wenlock had strong connections to Beauchamp's affinity. He is
listed as a clerk making arrangements for the marriage of Isabel, daughter of the
545Officers of the Exchequer, ed. J.C.Sainty (Lists and Index Society, Special Series, xviii, 1983), 15 546Cal.Close Rolls, 1364-8, 114-125
147
earl in 1359547 , and was co-‐owned the manor of Conesgrave with other
prominent members of the earl's affinity, including Pirton548. Wenlock was
accused of bribing Chesterfield with a jewel worth 24 marks ‘to suffer him to go
in his company into the king's presence at Westminster with a bag with the
money reserved for the king's chamber, to the scandal of the king’549, a charge
Wenlock described as ‘frivolous, fictitious, and of malice set forth’550. This
dispute between Pirton and Wenlock, both members of the same affinity, and
joint-‐owners of a manor, shows that, in this case at least, the affinity was not
necessarily a close bond of allegiance. All of this occurred whilst the earl was
away on his Prussian crusade, and without his presence, the shared allegiance
between Pirton and Wenlock appears to have fragmented. The whole
Chesterfield incident shows the internecine rivalry that could occur in the
administrative ranks, and, if the charges levelled against Pirton were true, gives
some indicator of the ruthless character which would have been a pre-‐requisite
for an ambitious retainer in the administration of the higher nobility.
Men like Wenlock would have provided the cohesive element upon which
the earl's system of control was established. Whilst Herle and Chasteleyn appear
to have served their apprenticeship with the earl before graduating onto the
crown's affairs, and Pirton would have been absent from the seat of the earl's
midland powerbase for long periods of time, it was the lesser retainer, usually
547Cal.Close Rolls, 1354-60, 619 548BC, fol. 82 549Cal.Close Rolls, 1364-8, 122 550Cal.Close Rolls, 1364-8, 125
148
from clerical or administrative backgrounds, who formed the backbone of the
administration. Such a man was Robert Mile, who with Thomas Cassy of Hadzor
and Thomas Stokke, acted as a feoffee when the earl bought the reversion of
some lands on the outskirts of Droitwich551 in 1357; in the same year he gave
£40 to Simon de Luscombe which the earl owed him552, and, in 1361, he received
£10 10s 0d from John Hastang in part payment of a debt which Hastang owed the
earl553. It would appear likely that he was the same Robert Mile who was
appointed warden of Stratford-‐upon-‐Avon college in 1384. The brothers Thomas
Robyne and William de Salwarp are further examples of this type of lesser figure.
In 1351, Thomas was referred to as ‘our parker of Salwarp’554, and is listed as
holding a moiety of the manor of Potterspury in 1369555. William appears to
have been one of the earl's retainers in Droitwich in 1356, was one of the
feoffees when the earl re-‐entailed his property in the 1360s556, and was one of
the team of Beauchamp men who purchased the manor of Conesgrave in 1363557.
The ambitions of these men appear to have been modest, and whilst their
connection with the earl would have made them notable figures in their local
region, they did not appear to share the career ambitions of men such as Herle or
Pirton. Instead, Thomas and William's main long-‐term goal appears to have been
to provide a chantry for the parish church of St Martin's in Salwarp. They
551BC, fol. 6 552BC, fol. 4 553Brit. Lib. Add. Ch. 73922 554BC, fol. 7 555Cal.Close Rolls, 1369-74, 108-9 556Cal.Pat.Rolls, 1361-4, 48 557BC, fol. 82
149
originally obtained a licence for this in 1347, but were thwarted in their efforts
for over twenty years, until the earl appears to have intervened personally in
1368558. It was still these sort of men upon whom the earl was relying to ensure
that his estates were well kept and looked after; men with very localised
interests and aspirations, whose ambition was to be successful in their own part
of the county.
The picture of the administration of Earl Thomas is therefore distinct
from that of his father and grandfather. The period 1330 to 1369 appears to have
been one in which the relationship between lord and retainer flourished. Earl
Thomas could prove a generous master; Simon Pakeman was well rewarded for
his legal expertise in the Gower suit, John Lenkenore, a household knight of Earl
Thomas, was granted the Oxfordshire manor of Spelsbury for a time559. Robert
de Herle was given his lifetime indenture, tellingly, in 1339 which is when he
appears to have begun his period in the earl's service. The earl of Warwick's
reliance upon his retainers in this period can be attributed to two factors. The
first of these was clearly the character of Earl Thomas himself. His interests were
limited, and seem to have been merely confined to the battlefield, the life to
which he was particularly suited. He did not take part in the internal politics of
Edward III's reign, and, whilst the circumstances of his children's marriages, and
the expansion of his estates prove he could fiercely pursue his own interests, he
also appears to have been uninterested in the running of his estates; his
558VCH Worcs., iii, 512 559BC, fol. 14
150
retainers appear to have been left unhindered in their day-‐to-‐day tasks. The
other reason for the increasing importance of the earl's retainers appears to
have been a parallel rise in the earl's landed holdings. With the significant
increase in his own wealth, which marked his tenure as earl, so did his own
administration need to become more elaborate. Given that the lands which
yielded the most revenue were situated some distance from the west midlands,
those charged with their upkeep would have been granted a degree of autonomy
not needed by those within one or two days travelling distance away from
Warwick. In addition, the less profitable manors, particularly those in the old
Beauchamp fief in Worcestershire, would have become gradually less important
with properties such as Gower falling under the earl's control, and so they were
entrusted to his retainers and supporters, even to the extent of being enfeoffed
directly to them in order to provide marriage portions for his daughters. This, in
turn, also served to augment the importance of those whom he chose to enfeoff.
Not only was the earl increasingly reliant upon his own paid retainers, but
he was also increasingly reliant upon his affinity of neighbouring lords. The local
royal administration in which the earl maintained control over the crown's
offices in the county was always a co-‐operation between the earl's retainers and
neighbouring lords who were on close terms with the earl. Whilst Beauchamp
men such as Herle and Richard de Stonley frequently sat on judicial
commissions, so did men such as Peter de Montfort, Astley and Cooksey,
neighbouring lords who were friendly with the Beauchamp family and who,
alongside Beauchamp's retainers, were able to work the system for their own
151
benefit. The men to whom the earl chose to demise his lands in 1345, in order to
provide dowries for his daughters, were mainly his retainers, but also include
the names of Thomas de Ferrers and Hugh de Cooksey, showing that the earl was
willing entrust his lands to local landholders outside his own administration. The
transitory nature of his own affinity is also a peculiar trait. Major players such as
Herle or Chasteleyn were only an integral part of his administration for a
number of years before going on into the service of the crown. Even a man such
as Pirton, who appears to have remained in the service of the earl of Warwick for
most of his professional life, spent time in the earl's Cornish manors, as well as at
London; a natural result of the increase in the earl's landed estates.
The growth of the Beauchamp's administration and their affinity from
1269 to 1369 shows a very strong, linear development which changed with the
fortunes of the Beauchamps themselves, and can be divided into three main
stages. The first period lasted from 1269 to the mid 1280s, with the earl of
Warwick indisputably the most powerful lay figure in the west midlands, but
with only a limited amount of support from, and control of, the local gentry. By
about the early 1290s, the death of most of the remaining dowers, as well as
gradual land accumulation in the region appears to have realised a ‘critical mass’,
whereby the earl could attract sufficient prominent local knights and
landholders to staff the local administration with his placemen. Those members
of his family, on whom he had relied previously, saw their importance eclipsed
by a new system based on the affinity, by which all forms of county
administration were subject to the discretion of the earl and his followers. This
152
appears to have been based upon a solid system of allegiance, with little
crossover between the adherents of different lords. Given that it was a system
based on its own exclusiveness, those to whom it opposed were able to take their
grievances to the king, who, nominally at least, did have power to sanction the
earl and his associates. This system appears to have grown, until 1344, when the
third stage of the development officially brought the shrievalty of Warwickshire
and Leicestershire under the control of the earl and his affinity. As described
above, this period saw a growing reliance upon the earl's retainers, although it
would appear that this was entirely according to the wishes of the earl himself.
The years 1344-‐69 marked the zenith of Beauchamp control over
Warwickshire and Worcestershire in the fourteenth century. The earl's heir,
Thomas [II] was not a man of the calibre of his father, and succeeded in
becoming embroiled in the troubled, factional politics of Richard II's reign with
the consequence that, as in the reign of Edward II, those who were denied
privilege by the lord's affinity were able to seek the protection of the king.
Thomas II's problems would have been compounded by the fact that he had lost
the control of the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire, when the office
reverted back to the king on the death of his father. The earl of Warwick would
not enjoy the same level of control over the west midlands as Thomas I until the
time of Richard Beauchamp at the beginning of the fifteenth century.
153
Conclusion
The history of the Beauchamp family between 1268 and 1369 is the story
of a family new to the ranks of the higher nobility attempting to consolidate their
position both locally and nationally. The form of this thesis has been to examine
this process by concentrating on three separate ‘perspectives’ in each seperate
chapter. However, we would be well advised not to ignore the wider picture; to
break down one single narrative into its component parts, albeit necessary for
the purposes of historical analysis, presents us with the danger of viewing the
subject in an artificially fragmented state, rather than as a natural, cohesive
whole. Although I have attempted to bring the reader's attention to this fact at
relevant points in text, the point must be made that the Beauchamp family, their
method of land accumulation, and their cultivation of an affinity in the West
Midlands were not isolated from each other but actually benefited from the
developments in a parallel area of the Beauchamps growing importance.
The personal strengths and actions of the Beauchamp earls were
responsible for a substantial growth in their patrimony throughout this period.
Primarily this was through successful marriage alliances, especially Guy
Beauchamp's marriage to Alice de Tony. Through their military achievements
they achieved valuable rewards such as Barnard Castle, and through political
acumen Earl Guy achieved the Warwickshire manor of Sherborne, and his son
gained the lordship of Gower. The lifetime shrievalty of Warwickshire and
154
Leicestershire, which secured Beauchamp control over the shrievalty of those
two counties between 1344 and 1369, was the king's reward for the earl of
Warwick's military abilities. Also, the growth of the earl's estates would have
been aided by the presence of a bastard feudal network; land purchase was a
very difficult process in the middle ages and the development of a Beauchamp
affinity would have certainly eased the process of buying and selling land.
We should also bear in mind that, in the crisis over Gaveston, the earl of
Warwick was able to act with a level of independent autonomy, both in the
midlands and in national politics in general. This would have proved more
difficult if he was in financial difficulties, but as it was, he had just substantially
increased his estates by his marriage in 1310. A contrariant stand would likewise
have been difficult to maintain if he did not enjoy control over his base in the
midlands and the general support of the county community. In the later
thirteenth century, Earl William was bought off by Edward I because he did not
possess either the patrimony or the local support to oppose the king. The growth
of the Beauchamp family estates, and the development of a midlands affinity can
be seen to have given the earl of Warwick greater political independence. As
Holmes has pointed out, the ‘heritage’ which the nobility ‘passed on and hoped to
augment from generation to generation, was a unit of political power, and itself a
creature of politics’560.
560G.A.Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 7
155
With the establishment, on the death of Earl Thomas I in 1369, of the
Beauchamp chapel in Warwick, the family had finally made Warwick their main
centre of influence. The first two Beauchamp earls of Warwick appear to have
been reluctant to attach themselves too closely to the heart of their fief. Earl
William appears to have been more attached to his native Worcestershire, and
chose to be buried in the same church as his father. Earl Guy preferred Bordesley
Abbey, a Warwickshire setting which was isolated from the heart of his estate.
However, Thomas I's resting place marked the final consolidation of the
Beauchamps as earls of Warwick. Just over a century previously, when his
grandfather had succeeded to the title, the Beauchamps were still provincial
notables who had risen to the levels of the higher nobility by way of an
administrative background, a fortunate marriage, and a substantial amount of
luck. By 1369, Thomas Beauchamp was one of the most prominent figures of his
generation, and the Beauchamps were one of England's oldest comital families.
156
List of Abbreviations
BC -‐Brit. Lib., Additional MS. 28024, ‘The Beauchamp Cartulary’ Black Princes Reg. -‐The Black Princes Register Brit. Lib -‐British Library Cal.Chart.Rolls -‐Calendar of Charter Rolls Cal.Close Rolls -‐Calendar of Close Rolls Cal.Fine Rolls -‐Calendar of Fine Rolls Cal.Inq.P.M. -‐Calendar of Inquisitions Post Mortem Cal.Pat.Rolls -‐Calendar of Patent Rolls GEC -‐G.E.Cokayne, ed., The Complete Peerage, revised by Vicary Gibbs et al (London, 1910-‐57) PRO -‐Public Record Office VCH -‐The Victoria County History of England
157
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