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Authors: Danny Danziger

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If the king has promised to remain in a place for a day, and particularly if he has got a herald to make a public announcement of his intention, he is sure to upset all the arrangements by departing early in the morning. As a result you see men dashing around as if they were mad, beating the packhorses, running their carts into one another – in short it’s hell. If, on the other hand, the king has ordered an early start, you can take it for granted that he’ll sleep until midday. Then you’ll see the packhorses loaded and waiting, the carts ready, the courtiers dozing, traders fretting and everyone grumbling. People go to ask the maids and doorkeepers what the king’s plans are, for they are the only people likely to know the secrets of the court. Many a time the message would come from the king’s chamber mentioning a city or town he planned to go to, and though there was nothing certain about it, after hanging about aimlessly for so long, we would all be roused up and comforted by the prospect of good lodgings. At once there would be such a clatter of horse and foot that all hell seemed let loose. But when our courtiers had gone ahead almost the whole day’s ride, the king would turn aside to some other place where there was just enough accommodation for himself. I hardly dare say it but believe he takes a delight in seeing what a fix he puts us in. After wandering three or four miles in an unknown wood, often in the dark, we think ourselves lucky if we stumble upon some filthy little hovel. All too often there is a bitter quarrel over a mere hut, and swords are drawn for possession of lodgings that pigs would shun.
On one occasion Geoffrey de Mandeville, son of the earl of Essex, killed a servant of William Brewer, one of John’s senior officials, in a brawl over lodgings in Marlborough. William complained to John, who swore that by God’s teeth he would hang the killer. But Geoffrey was the son-in-law of the powerful Robert FitzWalter, lord of Dunmow in Essex and of Baynard’s Castle in London, and he fled to him for protection. When Robert interceded on his son-in-law’s behalf a blazing row broke out between king and baron, during which Robert told the king that if Geoffrey were to be hanged, two thousand knights would lace up their helmets and go to war. A few years later Robert became the commander of the rebels fighting for Magna Carta.
The king’s household always included a number of barons, men such as William Brewer. Servants in the king’s household, they were also the lords of great estates and masters of their own households. Through their influence, the authority of the Crown was carried into the localities. This informal power system was reinforced by the appointment of members of the king’s household to local offices. In the early years of John’s reign, for example, the sheriff of Nottingham was William Brewer, and at different times he was sheriff of eight more counties. Household knights, too, were often appointed as sheriffs or as constables of royal castles. They also constituted a rapid-response force capable of dealing with trouble that blew up unexpectedly. In the event of war the military department of the household was dramatically increased in size as more and more troops were brought on to the payroll and employed to garrison key castles. A household cavalry composed of knights and mounted archers was used as a main field force, while other household knights acted as captains of supplementary forces.
In his coronation oath, when John promised to do good justice and equity to the people entrusted to his care, there is no doubt that in theory this meant all of his subjects. But it meant especially those who had attended his coronation, and their friends and relatives. If a king could win the approval of the few dozen baronial families who constituted the small but powerful élite of medieval England, he would be a successful ruler. These families were not only his subjects, they were his tenants. In legal jargon they were tenants-in-chief: they held their estates from the king. In return for their tenancies, they were expected to serve and aid him. Essentially this meant they were to support him politically and, in time of war, give him military service and financial aid. A tenant-in-chief’s heir had to pay a kind of inheritance tax, known as a relief, to take up his inheritance, while if he – or she – were under age, the king took both the minor and their estates into his custody to do with very much as he pleased. In these circumstances he controlled his ward’s marriage. If there were no direct heirs then, after provision had been made for the widow – whose own remarriage was also subject to Crown control – the king could grant the land to whomever he wished. He had at his disposal not only offices such as those of sheriff or constable of a castle, but also heirs, heiresses and widows.
From Henry II’s time lists were kept of the widows and wards in the king’s gift, together with information that allowed the king to assess their market value and to check that the estates in his custody were being efficiently managed. Here, for example, is the first entry on a roll known as the ‘Roll of ladies, boys and girls in the king’s gift’, a government record drawn up in 1185.
The widow of Everard de Ros, who was the daughter of William Trussebut, is in the gift of the lord king, and is 34 years old, and has two sons, of whom the first born is 13. And the land is in the custody of Ranulf Glanvil. And her dower land in Stroxton is worth £15 a year with this stock, two plough-teams, 100 sheep and 3 pigs and one horse. Not possible to increase its value.
This degree of control over the inheritances and marriages of the richest people in the realm meant that the king’s powers of patronage were immense. When Richard I came to the throne one of his first acts was to give his father’s old servant, William Marshal, the hand of Isabel de Clare, heiress to immense estates in Normandy, England, Wales and Ireland. At the time Richard and William were standing at the foot of Henry II’s still unburied corpse in the church of Fontevraud in the Loire Valley; as a fabulously wealthy ward Isabel was held for safe-keeping in the Tower of London. On hearing the good news from the king’s own mouth, William rushed to get the girl before anything could go wrong or the king could change his mind. In his haste to board a ship at Dieppe he fell off the gangplank, but he made it to London and he got his bride. The king had, in effect, the power to make a trusted servant a millionaire overnight. No head of government in the West today has anything remotely approaching the power of patronage in the hands of these kings of England. This was why the royal court was the focal point of the whole political system, a turbulent, lively, tense, factious place in which men – and a few women – jostled each other in desperate attempts to catch the king’s attention.
One of the clichés of the age was that life at court was hell. According to Walter Map, Henry II was advised by his mother Matilda to treat the business of political patronage like training a hawk.
He should keep posts vacant for as long as possible, saving the revenues from them for himself, and keeping aspirants to them hanging on in hope. She supported this advice by an unkind parable: an unruly hawk, if meat is often shown it and then snatched away or hid, will become keener, more attentive and more obedient.
One inescapable problem was that in the nature of things there were never enough offices, heirs, heiresses and widows to go round. For every William Marshal who had reason to be satisfied, there were bound to be several who were disappointed. Every single act of royal generosity thwarted someone else’s hopes. Even so, at the mouth of this hell, there were always hundreds desperate to enter.
It had long been standard practice for kings to use the patronage system as a handy source of income. Ambitious men offered money to obtain the good things the king had to offer: office, succession to estates, custody of land, wardship or an advantageous marriage. All these were to be had at a price, and the price was negotiable. At times there was a lively auction, and although the king was certainly not required to accept the highest bid, it was an area in which he could, if he chose, raise more money by consistently driving harder bargains. John drove some very hard bargains indeed. Geoffrey de Mandeville agreed to pay 20,000 marks for the hand of John’s former wife, Isabel of Gloucester. A northern baron, Nicholas de Stuteville, offered 10,000 marks for the succession to his brother’s estates. Both Geoffrey and Nicholas felt that they had been pushed too far. Both would be among the rebels of 1215. Magna Carta (Clause 2) addresses this source of tension.
If when any of our earls or barons or other tenants-in-chief holding by knight service dies, his heir is of age and owes relief, then he shall have his inheritance on payment of the traditional relief, namely £100 for an earl’s or a baron’s barony, £5 at most for a full knight’s fee, and anyone who owes less than the service of one knight shall pay less in accordance with the ancient custom of fiefs.
The importance of this issue is indicated by the fact that it was dealt with so early in the charter. Clauses three to seven tackle other aspects of the king’s control over inheritance, wardship and marriage. Iconic statements about the freedom of the subject before the law or the king’s duty of justice come in Clauses 39 and 40. In 1215 they counted for much less than the content of Clauses 2 to 7.
Clearly, patronage could be used as a way of squeezing the rich, but it was often more useful as an instrument of political control. Generally, the Exchequer made little or no effort to collect the sums offered by men seeking advancement. Often, indeed, the greater the sum owed, the less was actually paid. This was not slack government. It was a way of ensuring that many rich and influential people were permanently in debt to the Crown. The expectation that the Exchequer would not press too hard for payment meant that the politically ambitious sometimes offered more than they could afford. This gave them a powerful motive for serving faithfully; if the king came to distrust them, he might demand immediate payment of the debt – and if they could not pay up, their lands might be forfeit to the Crown.
All twelfth and thirteenth-century kings used this system to a greater or lesser extent, but none as blatantly as John. Because he was always suspicious of men’s loyalty, he consciously set out to compel them to be loyal. In 1213 John de Lacy, constable of Chester and lord of Pontefract, agreed to pay 7000 marks in order to succeed to his father’s lands. In setting out the terms of the agreement, John made open use of both carrot and stick. He gave de Lacy three years to pay, and agreed to let him off 1000 marks if he gave loyal service: the carrot. As a pledge for the payment de Lacy had to surrender his two most important castles to the king: the stick. In 1214 de Lacy went on the expedition to Poitou with John when many barons refused to do so. One castle was restored. In March 1215 he was one of the very few barons to vow to go on crusade with John; the next day all his debts were cancelled. In consequence John no longer had a financial stranglehold over him; at last he had some freedom of action. Two months later he joined the rebels. King John was now paying the price for having reduced the time-honoured bond of good lordship and faithful service to nothing more than a calculation of profit and loss.
Early in the reign, William de Briouze, one of John’s closest associates, had offered 5000 marks for the lordship of Limerick in Ireland. For seven years he paid virtually nothing. Then he fell out of favour, and the Exchequer came knocking at his door. When he couldn’t pay up immediately, John ordered one of his military captains, Girard d’Athée, to occupy William’s estates in south Wales. The king then pursued him and his family to Ireland. William managed to escape to France but his wife and eldest son were captured – and disappeared from view. It was generally believed that they starved to death in one of John’s prisons. According to John’s own account, all this was merely ‘action for non-payment of debt in accordance with the custom of our kingdom and the law of the Exchequer’. These words were hardly calculated to reassure the many other landowners in debt to him. From now on, too many members of the political élite saw his style of government as a threat to themselves and their families.
The élite were those people described in Magna Carta (Clause 14) as the ‘archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls and greater barons’, who received letters addressed to them individually when summoned to play their part in giving the king ‘the common counsel of the realm’. One of the tasks Magna Carta imposed upon the sheriffs was that of ensuring that all the rest of the tenants-in-chief would be summoned too. Clearly assemblies at which the king received ‘the common counsel of the realm’ were envisaged as occasions of the greatest political importance, at which all the tenants-in-chief represented the whole nation. What were they expected to talk about? They were to be summoned, said Clause 14, ‘for the assessment of an aid or scutage’. ‘Aids’ and ‘scutages’ were two forms of tax. Kings had always had the right to request or demand – it was not always easy to tell the difference – financial help, or aid, from their subjects in situations of exceptional need. Scutage, which meant something like ‘shield-tax’, was levied on the king’s tenants in place of actual military service, and was meant to help meet the costs of war. Clause 12 spelled matters out further:

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