It has been argued that one effect of purveyances was to raise prices, and that in this indirect way the poor would have been affected by royal demands for victuals,[465] but there were no contemporary complaints to this effect. Nor were there complaints that the government was forcing producers to sell at abnormally low prices, although a comparison of the prices offered by the purveyors with the national averages that have been calculated by Farmer reveals that the former were consistently lower. In 1304, for example, the figures were 4s. 10d. and 5s. 6d. respectively. A further indication that low prices were being paid by the crown is that royal officials obtained better prices for their own produce from the purveyors than other men. Simon de Kyme, sheriff of Yorkshire, paid 5s. a quarter for wheat in 1304 to everybody save John Sandale, who received 6s. Sandale obtained the same high price from the sheriffs of Essex and Hertfordshire, as did John Droxford from the sheriff of Hampshire.[466]
A comparison with the victualling arrangements of the sixteenth century shows quite clearly the superiority of Edward I’s administration. Even during the most efficiently organized expedition of Henry VIII’s reign, that of 1544, the council of Boulogne noted that ‘we thinke surely that meny people have dide amongst us in their sikeines for lack of socour of freshe meates’. Men such as William Paulett and Stephen Gardiner, who hold a high place in the estimation of sixteenth-century historians, were less successful in dealing with the problem of keeping large armies adequately provisioned than the corrupt but extremely competent Walter Langton. With officials of the calibre of Bromsgrove and Dalilegh in charge of the victualling bases, Edward I never found that lack of victuals forced him to abandon a campaign after only six days on the Border, as happened in 1542.[467] There were occasional complaints: in 1303 a commission was set up to enquire into the reasons for the incompetence shown by the sheriff of Essex and Hertfordshire,[468] while on one occasion the Keeper of the Wardrobe wrote to the sheriff of Somerset and Dorset, complaining that he had not sent the supplies he had collected north, ‘I marvel greatly at your immense folly’.[469] Commissariat arrangements broke down when the king was at Conway early in 1295, when there was no wine or beer, and food ran short.[470] There was a serious lack of victuals before the battle of Falkirk in 1298,[471] and in the winter of 1301-2 many horses died for want of fodder.[472] But such examples are not common. Though hardly spectacular, the achievement of Edward I’s servants in building up so efficient a victualling service was very considerable. Without it, the king’s military ventures could never have taken place.
VI. The Navy
Transport of the huge quantities of supplies collected for Edward I’s armies could best be achieved by sea. Ships were needed to carry troops to Gascony and to Flanders, and to form the bridges required for crossing the Menai straits and the Firth of Forth. In the war with Philip IV the navy assumed more than a mere logistical importance: control of the sea was essential if the enemy plans for invasion were to be thwarted. The sailors who served Edward I had a vital, if undramatic, rôle to play.
The fleet used in the first Welsh war was not large. Its core was provided by the Cinque Ports, which had an obligation to provide ships for fifteen days’ unpaid service when called upon. The main squadron from the Ports was composed of eighteen ships, and a further seven joined later. There were also two ships from Bayonne and Southampton, and eight small vessels hired locally.[473] The fleet played an important part in keeping the army supplied, and in transporting men to Anglesey. More ships were used in the second Welsh war. Again the Cinque Ports produced the majority of the fleet: forty sailing vessels and two galleys. This amounted to roughly three-quarters of the full service of fifty-seven vessels the king was entitled to demand. In addition seven ships were acquired locally, and a bridge of boats constructed to take troops across to Anglesey. The cost of the fleet for this war came to £1,404.[474]
Valuable as the navy was in Wales, its services were obviously of much greater importance in the war with France. The immediate occasion of that war was the rivalry of the Cinque Ports with the sailors of Normandy, which erupted into hostilities in 1293. Once war was officially declared in the following year both sides began to make naval preparations. Philip IV brought shipbuilders from Genoa to build galleys, some in Marseilles and some in Normandy. In April 1295 a squadron of thirty galleys sailed from the Mediterranean for service against the English. In addition the French had the use of some 220 merchant vessels requisitioned for the war, though in late November they received a severe setback when many vessels were destroyed in a storm. But Philip did not abandon hopes of launching an invasion fleet against England, and in 1297 he recruited the greatest naval expert of the time, the Genoese admiral Benedetto Zaccharia, to assist him. Fortunately for the English the truce was agreed before Zaccharia’s plans could be carried out.[475]
Edward I began taking measures to combat the French naval threat in November 1294. Orders were sent out for the construction of thirty galleys, substantial vessels of 120 oars each, to be ready by Christmas. This date was of course grossly optimistic, but the ships were completed in the course of 1295. Unlike the French, the English do not seem to have made efforts to obtain the advice of shipbuilders from the Mediterranean although this types of vessel was comparatively rare in northern waters. The result was that the first of the two galleys built at London had to put back for repairs after its maiden voyage, while one built at Newcastle needed a refit after less than six months in service.[476] Little is known about the use and effectiveness of these galleys. In January 1297 the Southampton vessel, which two years earlier had a crew of four constables and 116 men, captured five French ships,[477] but such incidents were rare. Later in the same year, 1297, the Lyme Regis and Southampton galleys were used to escort ships carrying money to Gascony, and the fleet taking the king’s daughter Margaret, duchess of Brabant, across the North Sea was escorted by the galleys built in Ipswich and King’s Lynn.[478] Once the war with France was over, no further use was made of the galleys.
The English government did not have to rely solely on specially-built ships to defend the coasts. Merchant ships could be requisitioned for war. The earliest indication that this was being done is a writ of protection of November 1294 for the sailors of Great Yarmouth who were serving with William Leyburn, captain of the fleet, and his subordinate, John Botetourt.[479] In 1295 efforts to defend England against the French were on a larger scale. News came in the spring of the steps being taken to bring together a large enemy fleet, and so in April the sheriffs of the coastal shires of the south, east and north-east were ordered to assemble ships at Portsmouth, Harwich, Orwell and Ravenser.[480] An account for only one of the squadrons that was collected survives; it was composed of eight ships, including the Grimsby and Newcastle galleys, which were guarding the coast from King’s Lynn to Berwick in the late summer and autumn of the year.[481]
Arrangements were also made to defend the coasts with land forces against the threatened invasion. The Treasurer was ordered to see to this in December 1294, and William Leyburn and the constable of Dover were made responsible for organizing a guard system. Sheriffs were to make public proclamations asking for all to be ready and armed to repel the enemy.[482] At the end of August 1295, following an unsuccessful French attack on Dover at the beginning of the month, various magnates and knights were appointed to guard the coasts. A royal clerk, Peter of Dunwich, was made responsible for co-ordinating arrangements in eastern England. The cost of such arrangements was not born by the central government, but fell on the local communities.[483] The measures were hardly tested by the French: an attempt on Winchelsea was thwarted by a naval squadron from Yarmouth, and a raid on Hythe with seventeen ships and one galley resulted in the loss of the galley.[484] But the traitor Thomas Turberville considered that the defences were inadequate on the south coast, and pointed out in his letter to the French that the Isle of Wight was undefended.[485] Discovery of this letter in the autumn of 1295 may have spurred the government to make more el
aborate arrangements in the following year. Evidence of musters of the defence forces suggests that the organization was being overhauled and made more efficient. Villages and hundreds were assessed to find out how many soldiers could be raised, and officers were put in charge of each group of ten men. The city of London provided a force of twenty men-at-arms for four weeks in Kent, each man being paid a lavish twenty marks. The numbers of men enrolled were quite considerable, though it seems doubtful that they would have been adequate to deal with a full-scale invasion. There were seventy-six fully-armed cavalrymen on the Isle of Wight in April 1296. The infantry forces in Hampshire totalled 504.[486]
Naval forces were larger in 1296 than in the previous year. In January Osbert de Spaldington was authorized to raise a fleet of 100 ships from the ports between King’s Lynn and Berwick.[487] No account for this survives, but there is one for the next command to the south, that of John Botetourt, who had a fleet of ninety-four vessels drawn from ports between Harwich and King’s Lynn, with a total complement of 3,578 men. No less than fifty-three of the ships came from Yarmouth.[488] The navy succeeded in preventing any French raids in 1296. In July the Master of the Templars in England reported that the enemy were preparing to descend on Yarmouth in ships disguised as fishing vessels.[489] However, no such attack took place. French activities were confined to the harassment of English merchant shipping at sea.[490]
In 1297, the last year of hostilities with France, the government could not afford to divert so much of its naval resources to the defence of the shores, as ships were needed for the transport of supplies to Gascony and men to Flanders. In March a commission was set up to provide ten well-armed ships to watch the French coast, and in July two squadrons were created to guard the English coasts, one of six ships to the north of the Thames, and one of twelve to the south of it. Clearly the panic over the invasion threat had largely subsided.[491]
Defence was only one part of the navy’s rôle during these years of crisis. Of greater importance was the activity of English shipping in transporting men and supplies to Wales, Scotland, Gascony and Flanders. No details for 1295 survive, but the wardrobe account shows that the impressive sum of £12,852 6s. 1d. was spent on sailors’ wages in the attack on Anglesey and in the fleets sent to Gascony. In the following year the account combines naval expenditure with the cost of maintaining the prisoners taken in Scotland, the two items coming to £18,278 11s. 6d.[492] According to the chroniclers the fleet used on the east coast of Scotland was only twenty-four strong, but in contrast, 134 ships were used to transport the Irish troops to Furness, and a squadron of thirty was then sent north to the Isles.[493] But the main expense that year must have been the fleet which carried Edmund of Lancaster and the earl of Lincoln to Gascony. Details survive of a part of this, fifty ships from the Cinque Ports whose wages from 7 March until 3 May came to £1,519 15s. 0d.[494]
In 1297 the bill for sailors’ wages was much lower than it had been in the previous two years, amounting to only £5,586 19s. 3d. The main reason for the drop was that no large fleets were sent on the long and expensive run to Gascony. Thirty-eight ships took victuals there, and in addition a small convoy of six carried 11,000 marks to the paymasters of the army there. Early in the year a fleet of eighteen English and twelve Zeeland ships took the duchess of Brabant from England. In May seventeen ships were employed taking money to the count of Flanders and John de Bar. On their return they sailed down the French coast as far as Normandy destroying enemy shipping.[495] The main naval enterprise in 1297, however, was the transport of the royal expedition to Flanders in August. Arrangements were made surprisingly late in the year. On 27 April writs were issued asking that all ships of over forty tons burthen should assemble at Winchelsea at Midsummer, and in addition, the Cinque Ports were asked to produce their full service. It was emphasized that no precedent was to be made of this expedient, and the king relied on his usual mixture of appeals to patriotism and threats to persuade the seaports to comply with the request. No very elaborate arrangements were made to collect the ships together, reliance being placed on the sheriffs and the town bailiffs, with the Warden of the Cinque Ports and the Captain of the king’s sailors, William Leyburn, and his subordinate, John Botetourt, also playing their part.[496]
As the army that assembled was not as large as Edward had intended, the problem of raising sufficient ships was not so great as originally envisaged. The accounts show that there were thirty-two ships used simply for the transport of supplies and horses, while the main expedition was taken across to Flanders in 273 ships. Of these, seventy-three were provided by the Cinque Ports, and fifty-nine by their great rival Yarmouth. The king himself sailed in the Cog St. Edward, the largest of the Cinque Ports vessels, with a crew of forty-nine men. But this ship was not the largest of the fleet. That place was taken by the Sainte Marie of Bayonne, with a complement of 100 men. Another fleet, consisting of thirty-four ships, was needed to take Robert FitzPayn and those accompanying him to Flanders in October. The total number of sailors needed to transport all the forces and supplies to Flanders was about 5,800:[497] a large number in view of the fact that there were not many more than 9,000 men in the army. Presumably another substantial fleet was required to bring the expedition home in 1298, but apart from some writs ordering the collection of ships, little evidence of it survives.
The one naval engagement that took place on the Flanders campaign was, ironically enough, between the sailors of the Cinque Ports and those of Yarmouth, in the port of Swyn. One Yarmouth source put the damages at thirty-seven ships, 171 men lost, and a financial cost of £15,356. The assize roll, probably more accurate, states that seventeen ships were burned, twelve more looted, and 165 men killed. Damages were put at 5,000.[498] The Wardrobe and all its equipment aboard the Bayard of Yarmouth were only saved from destruction in the fight by the quick-witted action of one Philip de Hales, who cut the mooring cable, enabling the ship to escape.[499]
Ships for the Scotch campaigns of the later years of the reign were collected in much the same way as they had been for Flanders and Gascony.[500] The only service the government could call on by established right was that of the Cinque Ports. The full total of fifty-seven ships was requested for the projected campaign of 1299 which never took place,[501] but for the following year the king stated that he would be content with half the usual number of ships, on condition that they were manned by the same number of sailors as the full quota, which came to 1,254 men. In fact they provided thirty ships, with a total complement of 1,106. Once they had completed their brief period of two weeks’ unpaid service, these men were paid wages just like the men of the other ports, at the standard rate of 3d. a day for the ordinary sailors and 6d. for the shipmasters.[502] The next year, 1301, saw no demand made for service from the Cinque Ports, presumably because there was no feudal summons that year, and it was felt to be unreasonable to burden the Ports when no one else was similarly afflicted. However, they were asked to send twelve ships to Ireland at royal wages to assist in transporting men and supplies to Scotland.[503] As no mention of these vessels appears in the accounts, it seems probable that the Ports did not comply with the royal request.
In these years relations between the crown and the Cinque Ports were not good. In one account they presented they claimed that they were owed a total of £2,476 6s. 8d., largely for the Gascon war, but a note at the foot of the document, written by a royal clerk, pointed out that they had not paid any of the taxes levied between 1294 and 1297, nor had they accounted for 600 marks received from the Treasurer of Ireland. In addition it was claimed that they had impeded the justices making enquiries about foreign coin circulating in England, and damages were put at £1,000. The barons of the Ports asserted that these debts were offset by the payment of 2,000 marks for the tax of a fifteenth levied in 1301. Eventually the crown appears to have agreed that it owed the Ports £500 in wages, and that the rest of the claims should be allowed to cancel each other out.[504]
In view of these di
sputes it is not surprising to find that in 1301 there were only three ships from the Cinque Ports on the wardrobe pay roll.[505] But in 1303, with a feudal summons, the Ports were asked for their service. As in 1300, the full number of ships was not demanded: twenty-five was suggested as a sufficient number. Although no account for the contingent survives, it is known that the king was not satisfied with their performance since a commission was set up in December 1303 to enquire into the desertion of men from the Cinque Ports and other Kentish seaports during the campaign.[506] The service of the Ports was again demanded in 1306, twenty-seven ships being requested. In fact, they only brought twenty-four, with a total complement of 990 men. The ships from Hythe arrived in Scotland on 3 July, and most of the others two days later. Instead of doing their unpaid service at once, they were at wages until 17 September, and then did fifteen days at their own cost. Most then returned south, but a squadron of twelve ships remained in the north at wages. The total cost to the crown of the fleet was £1,276 14s. 0d.[507]
To get the other ports to send ships to assist in the Scotch wars the crown might either appoint commissioners to negotiate with the towns, or simply send writs to the mayors and bailiff’s demanding that they send a specific number of vessels. It is not clear which method was employed in 1300, a year in which few ships from outside the Cinque Ports were engaged. In December 1299 and January 1300 Richard de Bromsgrove was using a small number of ships, never more than nine at any one time, on the task of taking food to the castles for which he was responsible.[508] During the summer some fifteen small ships were occupied in supplying the army in Galloway with victuals. There were also two substantial galleys, each with a crew of about fifty, provided by Simon de Montague. Eight Irish ships were also used.[509]
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