It is, it seems, no longer necessary to justify the place of administrative history in an Eltonian bark. The records of medieval institutions, and the processes they reveal, have become the preoccupation of a ‘new’ administrative history, placing institutions and the ideas running through them in a wider context. Part of this revival has been manifested in the exhaustive researches of those historians interested in military service prosopography – pioneered, of course, by Andrew Ayton. This work has revealed how armies functioned internally and within the wider social networks from which this manpower was drawn.

The transformation to paid service generated a complex sea of relationships between different groups – the retinue captains providing the hubs around which clusters of men of varying continuity formed and reformed within and across the contingents of an army – which Ayton has called the ‘dynamics of recruitment’. In a world of paid service the success of these dynamics depended on the availability of money to stimulate and maintain the recruitment process. After a period of experimentation, from the mid-1340s to the 1370s, these funds came in the form of ‘a balanced scheme…pay, regard and restauro equorum’ (the ‘pay package’). To assist the costs of captains, additional lump sum payments – regard – paid before the commencement of campaign (usually at a quarterly rate of 100 marks per thirty men-at-arms) developed alongside wages, becoming common from the mid-1340s. From this time onwards, the availability of regard and an increase in the size of prests (sums offered in advance of wages before a campaign) meant more cash was theoretically available for captains to use in the recruitment process. However, like the payment of wages after a campaign, the availability of regard and prests was of course determined by the availability of cash. The government departments of the Exchequer and the Wardrobe could issue payments in cash, but in wartime the government's financial obligations almost always outstripped the ready cash available. One consequence of this cash-flow problem was that payments to important, senior noblemen – such as the Black Prince and John of Gaunt – undertaking important military and diplomatic business, often took priority over payments to lesser captains, but sufficient ready cash to pay even these most senior captains was frequently unavailable.