1 The military careerist in fourteenth-century England Andrew Ayton* Department of History, University of Hull, Hull, United Kingdom (Received 1 August 2016; Accepted 31 August 2016) This article seeks to explain how it was that the careerist soldier became so prominent and ubiquitous a feature of the English military scene during the second half of the fourteenth century. Beginning with a characterisation of the military careerist in his various guises, the discussion proceeds with an investigation of how the pool of militarily-employed manpower and the wider recruitment context changed during the fourteenth century owing to the impact of exogenous agencies of change on the dynamics of recruitment. The importance of expanded employment opportunities across Europe and the socio-economic consequences of the Black Death are noted, but particular attention is given to how the English crown’s management of war strategy and operations, and its influence on army structures and recruitment mechanisms, created a fertile soil within which military careerism could flourish. The roles played by ‘supersized’ mixed retinues and by opportunities for service in garrisons (especially at Calais) and at sea are considered in turn. The article concludes with an assessment of how the rise of the careerist affected the character of England’s military community and the social cohesion of its armies. Keywords: careerism; military service; soldiers; armies; garrisons; navies; recruitment; Calais; Edward III of England; Richard II of England For over three decades from the late 1410s until 1450 the English crown maintained a large garrison establishment on a permanent footing in Normandy and the pays de conquête. This, 2 it has recently been argued, was the defining period for the late medieval English professional soldier,1 and it is an argument that has much to commend it, for long-term service within a single institutional context does indeed represent a major step towards ‘professionalism’ in the modern sense. Moreover, the large number of men-at-arms, archers and others employed on these terms – 3000 to 4000 from the beginning, reaching a peak of about 6000 in 1436, with inevitable shrinkage towards the end2 – is indicative of how far the professional practitioner had become emblematic of England’s military community during the second quarter of the fifteenth century.3 The crown’s heavy reliance on standing forces at this particular time, to maintain a ‘scale of garrisoning never hitherto experienced by the English’ in pursuit of a policy of conquest and occupation,4 can be compared with contemporary developments elsewhere in Europe. For Venice and Milan, it was rivalry and regular conflict that prompted the shift towards greater permanence: stability and loyalty were achieved by extending the duration of military contracts from a few months to several years.5 For the Hungarian crown, it was defence against the Ottoman threat that necessitated the maintenance of a chain of garrisoned fortresses along the southern frontier of the kingdom from the Adriatic to Transylvania.6 For the Portuguese, capturing Ceuta on the Moroccan coast in August 1415, a symbol of reconquista resumed, committed the crown to sustaining a garrison of 2700 men in what was essentially a base for raids on land and at sea.7 Setting *E-mail: [email protected] Postal address: Department of History, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, United Kingdom 1 The following abbreviation is used in this paper: TNA: Kew, The National Archives. A.R. Bell, A. Curry, A. King and D. Simpkin, The Soldier in Later Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 266–70. 2 A. Curry, ‘English Armies in the Fifteenth Century’, in Arms, Armies and Fortifications in the Hundred Years War, eds. A. Curry and M. Hughes (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), 39–68 (51). 3 ‘Professional’ in the adjectival sense: ‘having the qualities of’. D.J.B. Trim, ‘Introduction’, in The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism, ed. D.J.B. Trim (Boston: Brill, 2003), 1–38 (25). 4 Bell and others, Soldier, 266. 5 M. Mallett, ‘Condottieri and Captains in Renaissance Italy’, in Chivalric Ethos, ed. Trim, 67–88. 6 P. Engel, The Realm of St Stephen. A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526, ed. A. Ayton (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 237–8. 7 M. Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400–1668 (London: Routledge, 2005), 21. 3 England’s shift towards institutionalised military professionalism alongside the experience of other polities serves primarily to highlight the variety of forms that standing forces took at this early stage in their development – the variety being the result of differences in the circumstances of demand and supply: of particularities in the nature of military and political objectives and in the potential of, and limits imposed by, resources and institutions. Necessarily quite as varied as a consequence were the ‘local’ identity and experience of military professionals: their terms of service, their operational roles and the social and institutional structures within which they served. If military professionalism, as both a key feature of standing forces and an individual career choice, was an evolving and non-uniform phenomenon in the early to mid fifteenth century, what of its antecedents in the fourteenth? Immediately evident when we survey the second half of the fourteenth century are the prominence and ubiquity of English fighting men whose careers may appear to justify the epithet ‘professional’. Sir John Hawkwood, the much sought-after mercenary leader in Italy, or Sir Robert Knolles, the freebooter and royal captain in the French wars, spring to mind, as does Chaucer’s fictional Knight, whose dedication to the martial life took him just about everywhere except Italy and France. Like all his pilgrims, Chaucer’s veteran man-at-arms was both larger than life and a familiar figure of his time.8 Indeed, it is the ubiquity of proto- professionals in the mid to late fourteenth century that demands attention and explanation: men like John Dancaster, leader of the band of adventurers from the Calais garrison who captured the castle of Guînes from the French in 1352;9 or Richard Musard, the soldier of fortune who became the companion and trusted lieutenant of Count Amadeus of Savoy for 8 S.H. Rigby, ‘The Knight’, in Historians on Chaucer: the ‘General Prologue’ to the Canterbury Tales, eds. S.H. Rigby and A.J. Minnis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 42‒62. 9 E.M. Thompson, ed., Chronicon Galfridi le Baker de Swynebroke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1889), 116–19; Calendar of Patent Rolls Preserved in the Public Record Office: Edward III, vol. 9, 1350–54 (London: H.M.S.O., 1907), 238, 242–4; TNA, E 101/170/16, ff. 19r–v. 4 over 20 years until, with the count, he died of the plague while on campaign in 1383;10 or the extraordinary Nicholas Sabraham, whose campaigning life, which took him from Brittany to the Black Sea, was if anything even more varied and packed with incident than that which Chaucer bestowed upon his Knight.11 As these examples illustrate, what is strikingly different about the world of the dedicated English soldier during the later fourteenth century, as compared with the reigns of Henry V and Henry VI, is the diversity, in terms of location and character, of accessible wars, and also their intermittent nature. Consequently, there was no single, predominant institutional context within which long-term service could flourish. Since what might be regarded as the pre-requisite conditions for military professionalism existed only in certain localities, notably Calais, the dedicated soldiers of the fourteenth century are perhaps more appropriately described as ‘careerists’, a term that conveys something of the individualism that was a key feature of their martial lives.12 Viewed from one perspective, what follows is an exploration of the implications of that individualism. Accordingly, we shall examine how the interaction of personal background and opportunity, of supply and demand at individual level, contributed to the distinctive patterns of experience of fourteenth-century careerists. Nevertheless, our underlying purpose is to investigate how it was that the military careerist became so prominent and ubiquitous a part of the English military scene during the mid to late fourteenth century, and what consequences this had for the military community as a whole. To this end, it is necessary to begin with a working characterisation of our subject. 10 E.L. Cox, The Green Count of Savoy. Amadeus VI and Transalpine Savoy in the Fourteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 183, 207, 228, 252–3, 262, 280, 298, 338. 11 N.H. Nicolas, ed., The Scrope and Grosvenor Controversy. 2 vols (London: Johnson & Co, 1832) 1: 124–5; A. Ayton, ‘From Brittany to the Black Sea: Nicholas Sabraham and English Military Experience in the Fourteenth Century’, in The Courts of Chivalry and Admiralty in Late Medieval Europe, eds. A. Musson and N. Ramsay (Woodbridge: Boydell, forthcoming, 2017). 12 An alternative term, ‘freelance’, is not used because it implies socially unembedded, mercenary service, which, as we shall see, is not necessarily synonymous with military careerism. 5 The military careerist How is the careerist to be identified amidst the amorphous crowd of men who took up arms at some point in their lives? He is, perhaps, most obviously identifiable from what he actually did: by the intensity and single-mindedness of his focus on war, by the frequency and regularity – even continuity – of his service. One problem with this approach to identifying careerism – with counting campaigns and assessing length of service ‒ is that we are often let down by our sources. As relatively well-documented as fourteenth-century English royal armies and garrisons undoubtedly are, there are many lacunae in the sequence of nominal records; and freelance service is still more patchily documented.