John FitzWalter, 2nd Baron FitzWalter
John FitzWalter, 2nd Baron FitzWalter (Fitzwalter
FitzWalter built a strong
FitzWalter intermittently returned to France and the war, but notwithstanding his royal service—he also served on the
Historians have considered FitzWalter's criminality as illustrating how the disorder that pervaded the 15th century had its origins in the 14th. Although historians have generally considered his activities to demonstrate King Edward III's failure to maintain law and order, as FitzWalter's downfall demonstrates, royal justice could be firm when it chose, if not always swift.
Early life
The
John FitzWalter was around 13 years old when his father died in 1328.
FitzWalter received
Royal service and war in France
Diplomatic relations between England and France had been tempestuous for some years, and in 1337 crisis broke out when the king of France, Philip VI, confiscated the Duchy of Aquitaine, then a possession of English kings. In response, King Edward invaded France, thus beginning the Hundred Years' War.[16] Harris has described the young men of FitzWalter's class and generation as being "untapped pools of genteel manpower",[15] manpower which the King was determined to exploit. FitzWalter was summoned alongside 43 other Essex knights to muster in Ipswich in December 1338. Armed and ready to fight,[15] FitzWalter joined the retinue[5] of William de Bohun, who had recently been created Earl of Northampton.[17]
FitzWalter gained a reputation as a good soldier during Edward III's early campaigns,[7] and he periodically returned to fight in France over the course of his career.[3] In 1346, for example, no longer serving under Northampton, he served with the Prince of Wales,[5][note 4] with whom FitzWalter indentured to serve for six months at a wage of 100 marks. In return he brought the Prince 20 men-at-arms (himself, four other knights and 15 esquires) and 12 archers.[19] As part of the Black Prince's vanguard[18] FitzWalter fought at the siege of Calais[19] in 1346. He was by now an experienced soldier[20] and had been made a knight banneret.[18] He was still on campaign in France in 1348, by which time he had returned to Northampton's service.[21]
FitzWalter frequently returned to England to attend parliament.
At some point in his career, FitzWalter married Eleanor, second
Criminal career
The Historian
FitzWalter gathered his own affinity for the prominent local gentry around him. They included such figures as
The names of many of FitzWalter's gangsters are known to historians by the survival of their later indictments. They include Walter Althewelde, William Baltrip, John Brekespere, John Burlee, John Clerke, Thomas Garderober, William Saykin, Roger Scheep, John Stacey and William de Wyborne.[39] Another, known only as Roger, was the parson of Osemondiston.[39][40][note 8] In return for furthering FitzWalter's causes, his retainers could expect his full protection: on at least one occasion he broke one of his men, Wymarcus Heirde, out of Colchester gaol before he could be brought before the justices.[44] Heirde had been attached and imprisoned at the berestake by the bailiffs of Colchester, but before they could begin proceedings FitzWalter despatched "Simon Spryng' and others" to free Heirde with force of arms.[41]
Lord Fitzwalter's bailiffs ... distrain[ed] all the animals of the prior, and to impark and retain the said distress until the £30 were fully paid. As a result, the prior did not dare to keep his ploughs and carts on his land to cultivate the land or carry the corn, whereupon the ripening corn withered and the prior lost all the profit from his land, to such great damage to the house that the king, feeling for the destruction of Holy Church, took the said house under his protection.[45][46]
National Archives manuscript JUST 1/266
The later indictments list FitzWalter's litany of crimes. He took illegal
FitzWalter's gang were also responsible for killings. In 1345, one Roger Byndethese was sentenced at
Siege of Colchester
The FitzWalter family had long had turbulent relations with their Colchester neighbours.[note 12] In 1312, townsmen and merchants had broken into Lexden Park and hunted Robert FitzWalter's deer. The principal source of antagonism between the two parties was over disputed pasture rights in Lexden, and the area was the scene of many confrontations and assaults from both sides. FitzWalter, in turn, denied the jurisdiction of Colchester burgesses there and prevented the town from taxing his tenantry on the estate.[61] There was also repeated friction over a watermill adjacent to FitzWalter's Lexden Park. Although owned by Colchester men, FitzWalter objected to the presence of any men from the town near his property and refused them entry to their own mill for over six months. The townspeople later complained that, although FitzWalter had, at some point, offered to buy it from them, "Lord John has not paid for it and still keeps it".[41] Further, to ensure a constant supply of water for his mill, FitzWalter evicted the owner of another watermill in nearby West Bergholt to use it as a backup for his own; the mill's owner was also a townsman of Colchester.[62]
FitzWalter's grievances against the men of Colchester may not have been without foundation. In 1342, claimed FitzWalter, Colchester men had invaded Lexden Park,
A crisis point was reached when one of FitzWalter's men was killed during another attack on Lexden Park.[68] An inquest was held in Colchester, but FitzWalter disputed its findings. Instead—and in breach of the borough's liberties which allowed it to administer its own internal affairs—FitzWalter brought in the county coroner[61] (probably one of his own retainers)[53] to perform another inquest. Neither inquest appears to have satisfied the parties involved.[61] FitzWalter attempted to have a bailiff of Colchester, John Fordham, indicted for the death, but to no avail.[68]
FitzWalter reacted violently to the death of his man, doubtless encouraged by previous attacks on Lexden and the injuries to Osekyn.
Indictment
Essex,
Thus the great man, with most of his confederates, got off with fines; one 'little' man was hanged. 'As it is seide in olde proverbe—"Pore be hangid bi the necke; a riche man bi the purs".'[41][note 15]
Elizabeth C. Furber
Thus
Some, although not all, of FitzWalter's associates were also convicted. Marney and Bradenham were imprisoned and fined (and later released) with their lord.
FitzWalter was imprisoned for a year,
FitzWalter was also bound to pay Edward the "colossal"[3] amount of (at least) £847 2s 4d;[39][note 18] this he paid off incrementally.[3] In doing so, FitzWalter effectively bought his estates back from the King.[40] Indeed, the size of the fine—which he spent the last decade of his life paying—is probably the only reason his estates were returned to him in the first place.[29] For ten years, comments Barbara Hanawalt, the pipe rolls "benignly enter payments to the king from his 'dear and faithful' John FitzWalter".[86]
Later life
Probably as a direct consequence of his violent behaviour in Essex, and although he sat in parliament and on the king's council, he never held royal office in the county, and nor was he appointed to any of its commissions.[3]
FitzWalter died on 18 October 1361, and was buried alongside his wife and ancestors in Dunmow Priory.
The criminal activities and disregard for the law demonstrated by men such as John FitzWalter, says Elisabeth Kimball, suggests that "the lack of governance associated with fifteenth-century England seems to have had its roots in the fourteenth".[76] FitzWalter, argues the historian G. L. Harriss, was fundamentally "flawed in character" and from his youth had been on a "downward spiral of violence which brought the withdrawal of lordly and neighbourhood protection" both by the crown and by the rest of the local gentry.[32] Characters such as FitzWalter have traditionally been seen by historians as demonstrating Edward III's poor record with law and order; on the other hand, suggests Ormrod, although royal justice may have been delayed, it was still sure, and when it came, harsh.[83]
Notes
- Cokayne is not specific about FitzWalter's precise date of birth, merely stating that he was "aged 13 and more at his father's death".[5]
- seised.[11]
- ^ FitzWalter's transfer to the Prince of Wales' army, says, the historian Andrew Ayton, "removed a sizeable group from the pool of manpower" available to the Earl of Northampton for his own force.[18]
- ^ Regardless of one's other criminal activities, park raiding was a favoured pastime, explains Gloria Harris, because it was "a way of securing luxury food, such as venison, making a profit on the value of the animals poached, or taking revenge on the owner—or it may have just been for the thrill of the chase".[15] FitzWalter was not alone in his behaviour: gang-warfare was common in the early fourteenth century, and his generation has been described as "a roll-call of colourful, gentry criminals".[35] Andrew Ayton has noted that, summoned alongside FitzWalter in 1338, were equally infamous men, including members of both the Folville and Coterel gangs, who had been active in the East Midlands the previous decade.[35]
- ^ Bradenham has been described as "no common criminal [being] a successful and innovative farmer, a lawyer legal adviser" who—unlike FitzWalter—had sat on royal commissions in Essex.[36] Although described by Furber as a "doubtful character" on account of his association with FitzWalter, he was not indicted in 1351.[37]
- ^ Marney had taken part in a major operation—possibly over the course of several days—against the Earl of Northampton's Essex estates in 1342. During this attack, he and about ten others had systematically raided, damaged, and stole from seven of the earl's parks in diverse parts of the county.[15]
- ^ Osemondiston, later called Osmondston, was a village in FitzWalter's manor of Diss, on the River Waveney.[41] It was also known as Scole, by which name it is known today. [42][43]
- ^ A remnant of FitzWalter's Lexden Park is still extant today (51°53′20.7″N 0°51′53.9″E / 51.889083°N 0.864972°E). Covering slightly over 8 hectares (80,000 m2), it lies to the south of Lexden Road, between Church Lane and Fitzwalter (sic) Road.[55] The vast majority of the Park in Fitzwalter's day was to the north of the road.[56]
- ^ It is unknown why FitzWalter had commanded his men to kill Byndethese, but it was not an uncommon fate for those who abjured the realm in the 13th and 14th centuries. In many cases, the victim swore to take a certain route to the coast, it being subsequently recorded that the abjurer "strayed off", "deviated from" or was "fleeing from his path" and that it was explicitly for this that local vigilantes beheaded him. Generally, too, this was not seen as an unlawful killing by the courts. The scholar Kenneth Duggan has argued that this allowed the men responsible, such as FitzWalter, to "bypass ... formal justice and formal jurisdictional lines".[57] The principle behind such vigilantism was that, to contemporaries, the abjurer who departed from the king's highway rejected "the warrant of Holy Church, to wit, the cross", and thus put himself beyond the protection of the church.[58]
- ^ W. R. Powell has explained this historical tension by the transformation of Colchester, by the 14th century, into "one of the most important towns in eastern England. Under a series of royal charters, from 1189 onwards, the burgesses had secured a degree of self-government, including the right to hold a hundred court for the town and its liberty (or suburbs), certain hunting rights in the liberty, and a monopoly of fishing in the River Colne. But the earlier charters had been loosely drafted, and disputes often arose concerning the burgesses' jurisdiction over the manors within the liberty, and over the river."[10] The dispute between the burgesses and the FitzWalters, he suggests, specifically arose because the borough had claimed Lexden since Saxon times, but their claims had been put aside after the conquest.[10]
- ^ Recruiting offenders for military service was a common strategy of Edward III, as he both gained a soldier and at the same time removed a troublemaker.[74] The men would often be pardoned on their return, and as such the practice was unpopular with contemporaries: petitions against it had been submitted to parliament in 1328, 1330, 1336 and 1340.[75]
- ^ This was necessary because of endemic corruption within the King's Bench then sitting at Chelmsford.[77] Shareshull's commission was to remain there until 1361, and particularly focussed on the enforcement of labour laws.[76] As a result of its lengthy tenure, it raised fines from 7,500 individuals, which amounted to more than one in ten of the adult Essex populace.[29]
- ^ This proverb is found in the 15th-century British Library Add. MS 41321, folio 86.[79]
- ^ FitzWalter's indictment roll is held at the National Archives in Kew, classified as JUST 1/266.[46][81] The FitzWalter gang's portion of the indictments consists of three membranes, probably the raw notes taken contemporaneously—"the clerk probably had no time to recopy them"[81]—and written in French. They are marked on the dorse as having been taken at Chelmsford in 1351 and forwarded Coram Rege the same year.[82]
- ^ Merriam-Webster defines thefbote, in middle English and Scots law as "the offense of agreeing to receive stolen goods or a compensation from a thief whether by the owner by way of composition or by a judge as an inducement for conniving at the escape of the thief from punishment".[84]
- ^ Furber points out that it is difficult to establish the precise amount demanded by the crown, "as there are numerous small amounts on the Pipe Rolls" which may or may not be connected to FitzWalter. The figure provided is the sum of all the major payments he is certain to have paid and is thus a minimum.[85]
References
- ^ Henderson 1978, p. 33.
- ^ Coss 1995, p. 79.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Starr 2004.
- ^ a b National Archives 1348.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Cokayne 1926, p. 476.
- ^ a b Furber 1953, p. 61.
- ^ a b Starr 2007, p. 19.
- ^ a b Furber 1953, p. 20 n.2.
- ^ a b Moore 2018.
- ^ a b c d Powell 1991, p. 68.
- ^ Kenny 2003, pp. 59–60.
- ^ a b Stow 1908, p. 279.
- ^ Barron 2002, p. 226.
- ^ Vincent 2017, pp. 25–26.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Harris 2017, pp. 65–77.
- ^ Curry 2003, pp. 2–3.
- ^ Ormrod 2004.
- ^ a b c Ayton 2007, p. 242.
- ^ a b Furber 1953, p. 61 n.3.
- ^ Ayton 2007, p. 214.
- ^ Ayton 2007, p. 210.
- ^ a b c d e Cokayne 1926, p. 477.
- ^ Ayton 1999, p. 33.
- ^ Ayton 1999, p. 33 n.43.
- ^ Hutchinson 1778, p. 218.
- ^ a b c Goodman 2004.
- ^ Leese 1996, p. 218.
- ^ Sayles 1988, p. 453.
- ^ a b c d Hastings 1955, p. 347.
- ^ Thornton & Ward 2017, pp. 1–26.
- ^ Ward 1991, p. 18.
- ^ a b Harriss 2005, p. 201.
- ^ Leitko 2010.
- ^ Mortimer 2009, p. 240.
- ^ a b Ayton 1998, pp. 173–206.
- ^ Phillips 2004, p. 36.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 181 n.2.
- ^ Round 1913, p. 86.
- ^ a b c d e f Furber 1953, p. 65.
- ^ a b c d e Hanawalt 1975, p. 9.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Furber 1953, p. 63.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 83 n.1.
- ^ Blomefield 1805, p. 130.
- ^ Hanawalt 1975, p. 7.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 83.
- ^ a b National Archives 1351.
- ^ a b c d e Furber 1953, p. 62.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 82 n.6.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 44.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 45.
- ^ C. P. R. 1907, p. 136.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 83 n.2.
- ^ a b c Furber 1953, p. 46.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 43.
- ^ TL92SE - A (Map). 1:10,560. Ordnance Survey. 1968.
- ^ Cromwell 1826, p. 238.
- ^ Duggan 2018, pp. 208–212.
- ^ Barrett & Harrison 1999, p. 25.
- ^ Hanawalt 1975, p. 14 n.32.
- ^ a b Britnell 1986, p. 31.
- ^ a b c d e f V. C. H. 1994, p. 22.
- ^ V. C. H. 1994, pp. 259–264.
- ^ Cohn & Aiton 2013, p. 195.
- ^ Britnell 1988, p. 161.
- ^ a b Furber 1953, p. 88 n.1.
- ^ a b Britnell 1988, p. 164.
- ^ Ward 1998, p. 119.
- ^ a b c Powell 1991, p. 69.
- ^ Round 1913, p. 89.
- ^ a b c Partington 2015, p. 90.
- ^ Ward 1991, p. 16.
- ^ Hanawalt 1975, p. 14.
- ^ a b Scattergood 2004, p. 152.
- ^ Bellamy 1964, pp. 712–713.
- ^ Aberth 1992, p. 297.
- ^ a b c Kimball 1955, p. 279.
- ^ Putnam 2013, p. 73.
- ^ a b c d Furber 1953, p. 64.
- ^ Owst 1933, p. 43.
- ^ a b c Ward 1991, p. 23.
- ^ a b Furber 1953, pp. 11–12.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 12.
- ^ a b c Ormrod 2000, p. 107.
- ^ Merriam-Webster 2018.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 65 n.1.
- ^ Hanawalt 1975, p. 10.
- ^ Furber 1953, p. 10.
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