' - J~" - - - - |^l rirUfriiil[jiiTlffuflfim]f^ i i THE LIBRARIES 1 | i COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY [^I | 11 I i | 1 I i General Library s I i 1 SIR JOHN HAWKWOOD. Only Five hundred copies have been printed of Sir John Hawkwood, " one hundred reserved for presentation to the Public Libraries, the Press, and Friends .• and Four hundred numbered copies for the Public of which this is N° 336. jS^jA^Mfr S I It JOHN HAWKWOOD (/: act TO). STORY OF A CONDOTTIERE I'KANSLATKI' FROM 11IK ITALIAN JOHN TEMPLE-LEADER. Esq. & Sis. GIUSEPPE MARCOTTI BY LEADER SCOTT. ITonbon, T. FISHER UN WIN 26. PATERNOSTBB SQUARE. 1889. [AN rights reserved.] L / FLORENi i PRINTED BY <. BARBERA, VIA FAENZA, 66 ; PREFACE. nemo ami \v- 'INK'S. The hi orj of.the mercenarj companies in ttalj ao longer re- mains to be told; if having been published in 1844 by Ercole Ricotti howe sive monographs on the same subject hi ve produced such a wealth of information from new sources thai Ri- i • cotti's work, . dmosi requires to be rewritten. The Archicio Stortco Italiano has already recognised this by dedicat- ing an entire volume to Documents for the history of Italian war\ from tin 13"' to the 16"' centuries collected by Giuseppe Canestrini. These re oi Sfreat importance; but even taking into account all we owe to them, and to all thai later historical researches have brought to light, the theme is not yet exhausted: truth is like happiness, and though as we approach we see it shining mure intensely, and becom- ing clearer in outline, yel we can never feel, thai we have obtained full possession of it. One of the most celebrated condottieri was the Englishman John " Hawkwood, or as contemporary Italian ch) i put it G ; Acuto " whom Filippo Villain proclaims as 'grand master of v. Giovio with elegan con m defines himg acerrimus bellator el cun- ctator egregius, while Muratori recognises him as a " brave and n captain." qualifying his praise however by adding : brig nd of the first rank:" and Ammirato says " by many proofs he showed himself vali.- geous in his own person, astute in reaping advan- tages, and a man who could wait the results of action without hurry- ing tu obtain fame." As for popular tradition, we have thi my of Ft s chetti, who (in his l l~' Novelli l ti tory of certain monks PREFACE. who gave Hawkwood the greeting of "Peace" on which he replied: "May the Lord take awaj your alms." The alarmed monks excused themselves, by saying they " meant only to be kind," and he ex- " plained: Do you not know that I live by war, and that peace would be my undoing?" and the story-teller adds: "It certainly is true that Hawkwood fought in Italy longer than any other man ever fought, and nearly every part of it became tributary to him : so well did be manage his affairs that there was little peaee in Italy in his days." Warrior by trade, in peace his occupation was g This truly charac- teristic story was paraphrased in Latin: De eo qui pads nomine ro- ganti pauperi nihil dare voluit. {Facezie di Filitimo Ermotimo, 1560). It was said that if be had wished, he might easily have cut a principality out of Tuscany for himself, or perhaps have become Lord of the whole province, — anew Castruccio or Uguccione della Fag- else giuola ; — but either he lacked the ambition, or he knew the place and the times well enough to realise how impossible it would have been to found a lasting dynasty. In any way he was for more than thirty years one of the most effective dominators of Italian affairs, and in her history, — military, political, and social, — he figures as a personage whose character and actions have an importance more than sufficient to justify the simpli curiosity of biographical erudition. It is now evident that there is more than a little to add and to rectify in his history ; and — taking into account several inedited do- cuments corroborating that which has, it is true, been already nar- rated, though neither clearly nor precisely — it would seem that a new monograph of John Hawkwood may well be attempted. Paolo Griovio gave a place to the English Condottiere in the Elo- gia virorum bellica virtutc illustrium; hut it is a short record with more rhetoric than biography in it, — more romance than history: it is a sketch in tine Latin prose with an ugly woodcut, and two un- happy verses by Giulio Feroldo ; and as to truth, the famous bishop of Como always had (since Benedetto Varchi shewed up Paolo Giovio's errors in history) the most justifiable reputation id' giving it quite a secondary importance. Domenico .Maria Manni collected many valuable facts edited and inedited, and formed a praiseworthy biography (published in 1760, in Vol. II of the appendix to Reruin Italirnnnii Srrijitart'.s). but it was incomplete and not always exact. From the literarj correspondence in 1640-1641 between Sir William Boswell English ambassador to the Hague, and .1. de Lael of Leiden (British Museum, /uhl, tin, ml MSS. 6395) it results that Mr. John PREFACE. 3 Maurice bad compiled, and written in English, a life of Sir John Hawkwood, profiting by the Italian authors existing in the ambassa- dor's library, and by Sir William Boswell's own observations. It is possible that this is the MS. biography of Hawkwood, which is pre- served in the Ashmolean Collection of Oxford (N° 74!)). It consists of 100 pages folio, and diverges from the subject in lout; digressions on general contemporary history, complacently quoting Tacitus and other Latin writers. The author thus metaphorically announces his " subject on page 21 : I nowe applie my selfe to my intended theme, the life of the valiant and fam'd Sir John Hawkwood, or rather some few discourses, considerations, and observations on several passages "I his life, and acts, for these we have growing at our own home, anil th" other must chiefly be imported from forraine parts where they yrow too thinne." In any case t lie book would only have a very limited biographical value were it not for the documents which were furnished by the Italian archives. Thus if our subject is not without precedent, neither is it yet exhausted. For the rest, in narrating and documenting the life of this soldier of fortune, it is enough merely to indicate, and not reproduce entire, those o'eneral facts of the time which are well known, or easily found m accredited histories. Our labours refer to the career of the classical Condottiere in the midst of his soldiers, and to his relations with the princes and republics to whom he sold his sword; ami it will suffice for this, if we. throw some of the modern lights on the social and mi- litary conditions of Italy, during the second half of the 14"' century. To simplify chronology wo have indicated tin- dates by marginal numbers. Dates of Hie old Florentine ami Pisan styles have been reduced to modern style. THE HAWKWOOD FAMILY. — FIRST ENGAGEMENTS IN FRANCE. [Mobant, Hist, of Essez [1768] which cites the feudal registers of the Earls of Oxford — Camden's Britannia — Fuller, Worthies of England [1668] — Stowe, Annals — Will 1 of Gilbert Hawkwood existing in the- Harleyan Charters 51 I 6, pub. in Gentleman's :.s, . \'m[ .. p. 1061 — Filippo Villani, Cronica — Ahhibato, Istorii I tint — Samuel Smiles, Life and Labour — Matteo Villani, Cronica — Becker, Adventurous Lives — Larousse, Uietionnaire universd du XIX siecli — Fboissart, Chroniques — Guilelmus i>e Nam. is. Chronica — Perrens, li'-toii, dt Florence.] On the left bank of the little river Colne in Esst-x, in the parish of Sible Hediugham not far from the ancient city of Colchester, there still exists an old house and estate named Hawkwood Manor, — once a feudal dependance on the Castle of Hedingham belonging to the Earls of Oxford, and which was in the possession of the Hawkwoods as far back as the reigns of John Lack-Land and Edward III. Tradition says that our John Hawkwood was born here, and we have no reason to doubt it. The epoch of his birth is not proved : we only know that, he died very old in 1394, and that in 1360 he was already a captain of assured reputation ; we may therefore conclude that he came into the world in the beginning of Edward the Third's reign, about the year 1320. John's father was named Gilbert and he was by trade a tanner ; a fact jDerfectly compatible with his well-to-do condition as a landowner. There are not wanting fabricators of marvellous gene- alogies, which make Hawkwood's ancestry originate with ; ; ; 6 His FATHER'S AVILL. Memprecius King of the Frisians. On the other hand Fi- lippo Yillani and Ammirato believe Hawkwood to be a personal cognomen, rather than a family surname, recount- ing that " the mother being about to give birth to a child, had herself carried into a forest, and here the boy was born," — hence the name hawk and -wood. The Florentine historians were better informed in say- ing that his parents " were well born although not of grand lineage (gentil' huomini mercatanti e antichi borghe- " si I." The fact that they used the aristocratic particle de," and that they possessed lands, goods, and money, is proved by some English documents, among which is the AVill of Gilbert de Hawkwood himself.* 1340. In this his last testament Gilbert de Hawkwood declares his wish to be buried in the church of Sible Hedingham then in the first place he leaves 2 solidi to the building marks solidi for fund of St.