Recruitment

The two principal methods of recruitment used by the Crown to raise armies during the first phase of the Hundred Years' War were the indenture system and the commission of array. Indentures, or contracts of service, were first used under Edward I, and then more frequently under Edward III during the Anglo-Scottish wars, until they became the predominant method of recruitment when an army was not led by the king in person and more specifically, when the royal Wardrobe was not present. It was the use of short-term contracts between the king and his captains that allowed Edward III to pursue his highly successful strategy of fighting France on multiple fronts in the 1340s and 1350s. The indenture system essentially filled the vacuum created by the absence of the king and his Wardrobe clerks, who would ordinarily administer the army's finance, and became the most effective means of raising an expeditionary force, or several, if required, which were led overseas by the king's lieutenants.

The use of indentures resulted from the wider developments in military organisation during the first half of the fourteenth century, whereby the feudal elements of the English armies of Edward I and Edward II, based on the provision of compulsory and unpaid military service, were replaced by wholly paid armies. At the turn of the thirteenth century a royal host typically included a combination of feudal, voluntary unpaid and paid components, but by the time of Edward III's wars in Scotland all armies were paid. The system of contracts was used to raise ‘mixed’ retinues by indenture, which from the 1330s onwards consisted of approximately equal numbers of men-at-arms and mounted archers. These retinues could vary in size from a couple of soldiers to a more substantial force of several hundred men depending upon the rank and status of the captain under whose command they served. It was the retinue captain who was responsible for recruiting and leading his men in war.

The commission of array, by contrast, was the traditional means by which infantry divisions were raised from the local communities of England and Wales.

When Lancaster's fleet sailed up the Gironde estuary and disembarked at Bordeaux on 9 August 1345 the duchy of Aquitaine was only a pale shadow of what it had once been. The territories under English control were limited to the southern coastal towns of Bayonne and Bordeaux, Saint-Sever and the maritime strip of land which joined them. There were no towns deeper inland which had remained loyal to Edward III, as French forces had advanced as close as Libourne, to the east/north-east of Bordeaux, and to Langon in the south. The principal aim of the expedition was simply to recapture the key fortifications that had fallen to the French, and to regain control of areas that had been gradually encroached upon since Philippe VI had declared the duchy confiscate in May 1337. The grant of extensive administrative, judicial and military powers to the king's lieutenant suggests, as Jonathan Sumption points out, that ‘his military objectives were left entirely to his own discretion’. It is unlikely that Lancaster had any preconceived plans of attack before landing in Aquitaine, and the openness of his objectives is reflected by the lack of precision in his indenture with the king, which simply states that ‘if there is war … to do the best he can’ (si guerre soit, et a faire le bien q'il poet).

The first acts of warfare in the duchy had begun in the regions surrounding Bordeaux two months prior to the arrival of Lancaster. Local Gascon lords allied to the English conducted raids in Agenais, Périgord and Saintonge, which resulted in the capture of Montravel and several other formidable castles along the Dordogne river. It was in the second half of June, however, that the official offensive began when the English seneschal, Ralph, Lord Stafford laid siege to Blaye.6 This garrison town lies roughly 40 kilometres north of Bordeaux and seems to have been an obvious choice of attack given its proximity to the provincial capital and its strategic position on the north bank of the Gironde. Stafford then doubled back and marched up the Garonne valley and laid siege to Langon, having left part of the Gascon forces behind at Blaye.

On Sunday 13 March 1345 the king entered into an indenture, or formal contract of service, with Henry of Lancaster, whereby Henry agreed to go to Aquitaine as the king's lieutenant and command an army of 2000 men who were to assemble at Southampton on 14 May, ready to embark for the duchy. The bulk of the cost of the expedition was to be financed by the accumulated clerical and lay subsidies, forms of extraordinary direct taxation granted to the king by parliament two years earlier. The indenture stipulated that the army was to comprise 500 men-at-arms, 500 Welsh infantry and 1000 archers (half mounted, half on foot). It also set out, amongst other things, the extensive military and judicial powers that Lancaster was to have as the king's lieutenant, and stated that he was to serve in the duchy for an initial period of six months. The terms embodied in the indenture of service are discussed in greater detail in the next chapter, but, first, an important prerequisite to an in-depth study of Lancaster's army is an examination of the typical soldiers who were required to serve under the earl's command. Although the various troop types which constituted English armies in the fourteenth century have been discussed extensively in previous studies, there remains some ambiguity surrounding the terminology used both by contemporary clerks and present-day scholars to describe men of different rank and status. A brief definition of each type of soldier that served with Lancaster is therefore needed. It is necessary to determine how they were equipped, to analyse the various terms used by clerks to describe such men and where they fitted in the overall structure of the army, and how they related to medieval society in general.

The conventional view that medieval armies were made up of ‘cavalry’ and ‘infantry’ contingents does not fit with the English armies of the fourteenth century. As Michael Prestwich points out, it would be problematic to define a soldier by whether he fought on horseback or on foot, not least because the developments in army organisation in Edward III's reign had transformed the military role, and sometimes the status, of the medieval soldier.

If ‘the size and splendour of a magnate's retinue signalised his importance in the [medieval] world’, then Henry of Lancaster must have been considered one of the most important men of his time. The comitiva(retinue) which Lancaster assembled for war in 1345 was not only the largest of the retinue contingents which set out to Aquitaine in that year, but the largest ever to be mobilised for any military expedition up to that date. It was a harbinger of the ‘super-retinues’ which characterised the structural composition of the English armies of the second half of the fourteenth century and more importantly, from a historian's point of view, it remains the most fully documented of the retinue contingents in Lancaster's army.

The subject of the military retinue has received much scholarly attention over recent decades, but an in-depth study of a single English retinue which campaigned in France up to the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) has rarely been undertaken. As a result of the recent rediscovery of the missing portion of Lancaster's 1345 retinue roll, the men who served under his banner in Aquitaine now can be seen to represent the largest military retinue of the first half of the fourteenth century for which there is full nominal evidence of the entire troop, that is to say, the identities of all of the men are known to us. This provides a unique opportunity to investigate the formation and structure of a war retinue of exceptional size based firmly on prosopographical evidence of the individuals who took up the sword (or indeed the bow) with Lancaster. Such an approach can modify Kenneth Fowler's earlier assessment of the earl's comitiva, and further our understanding of the means by which a magnate could raise a retinue of unprecedented magnitude in the mid 1340s.

To understand Lancaster's war retinue in 1345 we must endeavour to answer the basic but fundamental question: how was Lancaster able to assemble a military contingent which itself was the size of a small army? By what means did he go about the task of recruiting such a sizable troop?

The financial system of the English government of the fourteenth century is a well-researched subject which has interested historians for more than a century. Consequently, there is an abundance of historiography based on the royal medieval administrative system. T. F. Tout's impressive Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England marked the beginning of a plethora of important scholarly studies which have developed our understanding of the role of the state and of the king within the overall financial system, the evolution of the different departments of government and the working of the administration in practice. It is no surprise, however, that comparatively little attention has been given to studying the financial administration of a single army or military expedition based firmly on the pay records, considering that the relevant documents are often widely dispersed among the administrative records and, in many respects, it remains a specialist subject of study. An attempt to trace the expenditure of the Crown and military captains through the administrative records and to construct a schedule of payments which are itemised in the extant accounts has, up to now, yet to be undertaken.

This approach to the sources will enable us to understand some basic issues of financing an army. For example, how did the king's wages effectively reach the pockets of soldiers who served on expeditions overseas, and can we identify the individuals (both prominent and obscure) who were involved in the process? How did the ‘money chain’, so to speak, work in the mid 1340s – from which departments was funding issued, and what different methods of payment were used by the Crown? The details of payments to captains can also be used to analyse the efficiency of the royal administrative system over the course of the expedition, and assess whether it was affected by the growing war effort following Edward III's great expedition to Normandy in 1346. A close scrutiny of the sources will help elucidate the various administrative procedures of accounting for service in Aquitaine, and provide valuable insight into how the financial system worked in wartime.

The Siege of Aiguillon

At the beginning of 1346, the French army in Aquitaine and the surrounding regions was in disarray following the English acquisition of territory, and by March its possessions were restricted to a few major strongholds. In response to Lancaster's military success and territorial gains the French raised an army of an unprecedented size for the southern theatre of war. The army that Philippe VI provided for his son, Jean, duke of Normandy, was the result of a period of intense military recruitment financed by papal loans and taxation of the communities in the south. Soldiers were recruited from various regions in France and crossbowmen were hired from Aragon and Genoa. It is difficult to determine the size or composition of the entire French army; from among the vast range of numbers given by the chroniclers, it seems reasonable to estimate that the army numbered somewhere between the 10,000 given by Robert Avesbury and the 30,000 recorded in the Récits d'un bourgeois de Valenciennes. This huge force was led by no fewer than twenty-one counts and another thirty-one noblemen.

The main army under Normandy's command comprised an array of northern lords, including Pierre, duke of Bourbon, Eudes IV, duke of Burgundy, and Gautier of Brienne, duke of Athens, as well as Jean, count of Boulogne, Bouchard, count of Vendôme and Charles, count of Joigny. They were augmented by the military officers of the royal household: Raoul II, constable of France and count of Eu, and both marshals and the master of the Royal Archers. A second army assembled at Toulouse at the instance of Jean de Marigny, bishop of Beauvais, which included nobility drawn from the southern seneschalcies, such as Jean, count of Armagnac, Pierre- Ramond, count of Comminges, and Gaston Fébus, count of Foix. The French force which mustered in the south brought with it a train of siege equipment, including five cannons; considering the weight and size of such equipment it made logistical sense for it to be brought by the southern army which was located closer to the intended theatre of war than its northern counterpart.

This catalogue provides key information on individuals who served, or who intended to serve, in Lancaster's retinue on the Aquitaine expedition of 1345–46. The entries are not complete biographies, but provide a summary of qualitative evidence of each person. Entries are arranged in alphabetical order by surname and are given in the following format:

Note that evidence of county of origin is tentative when based solely on a locative surname which has several toponyms. For example, it is feasible that the archer Thomas de Ashley may have originated from either Cheshire or Northamptonshire, as there are places named Ashley located in both counties. Forenames are given in their modern indigenous form, except where ambiguity remains. Locative surnames are given in their modern form if the place-name can be identified with certainty (e.g. Blakschaue is rendered as Blackshaw, Yorkshire), as are descriptive (e.g. Broun as Brown) or occupational names (e.g. Cok as Cook), except where a more common form of the surname exists in the sources. Sir Thomas Cok, for example, is rendered as Cok rather than Cook.

For the purpose of brevity entries have been kept short and generally do not include information which can be found in the main text of this work, or in well-known secondary literature. Evidence of military service is not referenced in detail, nor are the administrative commissions undertaken by men at county level which has been largely sourced from the online Calendar of Patent Rolls. Similarly, the evidence of landholdings is often duplicated with the evidence of service in Lancaster's retinue (line two), and therefore is usually only referenced once.

In the summer of 1345 Henry of Lancaster, earl of Derby, led an English royal army to the duchy of Aquitaine in south-west France. The expedition was a remarkable achievement for the English and marked the first successful land campaign of the Anglo-French conflict which has come to be known as the Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). More importantly, the enterprise signified the beginning of a string of military victories for the English in different theatres of war from 1345 to 1347. In 1345 the earl led an outnumbered force to two major victories during the early stages of the expedition, first at the town of Bergerac and then at the battle of Auberoche; these events were the prelude to Edward III's great voyage to Normandy the following year which culminated in his decisive defeat of the French at the battle of Crécy and the subsequent capture of Calais (1347). The success of the expedition in Aquitaine set the tone for the highly effective multi-front warfare launched by Edward III in the mid 1340s, resulting in victories over the Scots at Neville's Cross (1346) and over the French at La Roche-Derrien (1347), and the subsequent capture of the French king, Jean II, at the battle of Poitiers in 1356 which ultimately compelled the French to accept the ignominious Treaty of Brétigny-Calais in 1360.

It is, indeed, probably the shortness of the period between Lancaster's success in the duchy and Edward III's victory at Crécy which has caused historians to overlook the true significance of what has, in many ways, become a ‘forgotten war’. It not only delivered the first blow to the flower of French chivalry, but also provided a vital psychological boost to English armies that were fighting, or were preparing to fight, in other theatres of war. It helped legitimise Edward III's dynastic claim to the French throne, provided an impetus to military recruitment at home and, ultimately, divided the French forces which itself helped pave the way for Edward's decisive victory against the French king, Philippe VI. ‘The way of Normandy’ (viage de Normandie), as it was known at that time, therefore, has largely diminished the importance of the events which had unfolded in Aquitaine the previous year.

Historical Background

The military expedition led by Henry of Lancaster to Aquitaine in 1345 was part of a long-running conflict between England and France which is known by historical tradition as The Hundred Years' War (1337–1453). This intermittent and protracted war dominated politics and society in western Europe in the later Middle Ages, and enveloped a swathe of kingdoms which played an integral role in the course of events that ensued. The Iberian kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Navarre and Portugal, the counties and duchies of Artois, Brabant, Hainault, Holland, Jülich, Luxemburg, Namur and Zeeland that constituted the Low Countries, as well as the Holy Roman Empire, Scotland and the states that form modern-day Italy, were, along with other kingdoms, drawn into the apparently interminable conflict. A plethora of alliances were made between these ruling powers and between them and the two protagonists of the war, the longest lasting of which was the union between France and Scotland which threatened England, on and off, from the ‘Auld Alliance’ in 1295 until a Scottish king, James VI, also became king of England in 1603. In fact the term, Hundred Years' War, or Guerre de cent ans, its French precedent, is a misnomer of nineteenth-century historians that obscures the context of a wider Anglo- French conflict which had begun in the reign of Henry II (1154–89), the first Plantagenet king of England. At the heart of hostilities were English-held territories in France, and the duchy of Aquitaine in particular, which came into English possession through Henry's marriage to Eleanor, the heiress to the duchy, and had remained in the hands of his royal successors since the mid-twelfth century. Other territories that formed part of the Angevin empire – the assemblage of lands under Plantagenet control – at its greatest extent included Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine and Poitou, but by 1204 only Aquitaine remained in English possession. In the successive reigns of Richard I and John hostilities between the kingdoms of England and France persisted, but in the reign of Henry III (1216–72) the relationship between the two monarchs was redefined at the Peace of Paris of 1259. English kings held Aquitaine thereafter as a fief of the French crown.

The detailed study of Henry of Lancaster's expedition in 1345–46 has attempted to add to our understanding of the army, the expedition, and the careers and lives of the individuals who took up arms in Lancaster's retinue. A close scrutiny of the royal administrative records has provided fresh insights into the military preparations prior to the army's embarkation, and has thrown new light on the shipping of the earl's expeditionary force. Overall the assembling of Lancaster's army was impressive and the time in which it was mobilised is a testament to the efficacy of England's military organisation. A new analysis of the arrival and departure of different retinues and military contingents in the duchy has highlighted the changes in the army's composition and, indeed, the changes in the nature of warfare over the course of the expedition. The decision to send infantry-based reinforcements to Aquitaine in 1346 was clearly a response to Lancaster's anticipation of siege warfare on account of the arrival of the duke of Normandy's huge army in the duchy. The earl's need for soldiers who possessed the ‘shooting power’ to defend a castle's walls is borne out by the arrival of the contingent of 300 Welshmen which was entirely made up of archers.

It has been shown that 1345 was a crucial year for military developments in England, not least in the Crown's use of the indenture system to recruit magnates for military service. That three retinue captains in Lancaster's army accounted for their service directly at the Exchequer is indicative of the development of the indenture system which, by the time of the Agincourt campaign (1415), was used to recruit all royal armies. The Crown's use of contract management fulfilled an important role in the financing of multiple expeditionary forces in the mid 1340s and demonstrates the professionalism of the royal administration. A systematic study of the extant pay records has shown that the finances of Lancaster's army were administered efficiently, despite the fact that the multi-front warfare launched by Edward III inevitably put an enormous strain on the royal system of finance.