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Richard II's Yeomen of the Chamber*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

James L. Gillespie
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Extract

Richard II's attempt to transform his kingdom into an absolute monarchy has provided the basic outline for the traditional interpretation of the reign. The role of the royal household and especially of the chamber has always loomed large in such an interpretation. It was the subject of Thomas Haxey's famous complaint of 1397, and it had a special interest for Thomas F. Tout who undertook a very detailed study of Richard's reign in volumes three and four of his classic Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England. Tout credited the king's tutor, Simon Burley, with the development of the chamber staff as an instrument of royal tyranny:

We may feel pretty sure that it was Burley's intelligence which developed the chamber into a special preserve of the court party, so that the chamber knights and esquires could always be trusted to further the wishes of the sovereign. There was no effort to make it an organized instrument of prerogative: it was rather the office which held the reserve of workers for the king's cause, who, as individuals, did what in them lay to carry out their master's wishes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Winter 1978 , pp. 319 - 329
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1978

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank Professors Charles Wood of Dartmouth College and George Stow of Lasalle College, and Mrs. K. M. Shinn for their help in the preparation of this study.

References

1 Tout, Thomas F., Chapters in the Administrative History of Medieval England, 6 vols. (Manchester, 1920–1933), 5:229Google Scholar. See also Theilmann, John, “Stubbs, Shakespeare and Recent Historians of Richard II,” Albion, 8(1976):107–124CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Tout, , Chapters, 3:404Google Scholar.

3 Barron, Caroline M., “The Tyranny of Richard II,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 41(1968):1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tuck, Anthony, Richard II and the English Nobility (London, 1973), p. 58Google Scholar; and Jones, Richard H., The Royal Policy of Richard II (Oxford, 1968), p. 125Google Scholar.

4 Davies, Richard G., “Richard II and the Church in the Years of ‘Tyranny,’” Journal of Medieval History, 1(October 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davies, Richard G., “The Episcopate and the Political Crisis in England of 1386-88,” Speculum, 52 (1972)Google Scholar. John Leland is currently writing a dissertation on Richard II's Counter-Appellants for Yale University and was kind enough to provide me with a draft copy of his work.

5 Gillespie, James L., “Richard II's Cheshire Archers,” Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historic Society, 123(1975)Google Scholar; “Richard II's Archers of the Crown,” Journal of British Studies (forthcoming); “Medieval English Multiple Biography: Richard II's Cheshire Archers,” The Historian, 40 (Aug. 1978)Google Scholar; and Beech, George, “Prosopography,” in Powell, James M., ed., Medieval Studies (Syracuse, 1976), pp. 151–84Google Scholar.

6 Church, Maurice, “Note on the Title ‘Valect’ (King's Valetes),” in Col. SirHennell, Reginald, The History of the King's Body Guard of the Yeomen of the Guard (Westminster, 1904), p. 301Google Scholar.

7 Tout, Thomas F., The Place of the Reign of Edward II in English History (2nd. ed.; Manchester, 1936), p. 272Google Scholar; and Myers, A. R., ed., The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), pp. 117 and 233, n. 42Google Scholar.

8 Fox, E. J., “Members of the Household of Edward IV,” Honors B. A. thesis, University of Liverpool, 1954, p. 81Google Scholar. Cf. Gillespie, James L., “Refectio Eboraca Gubernationis,” Honors A. B. thesis, Kenyon College, 1968, pp. 173–75Google Scholar.

9 Myers, , Household of Edward IV, p. 14, n. 3Google Scholar.

10 See Tout, , Chapters, 3:330–31Google Scholar.

11 Public Record Office, E. 101/398/9 (hereafter cited as PRO); PRO, E. 101/400/26.

12 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols. (London, 1767–1783), 3:419Google Scholar (Hereafter cited as R.P.); Rankin, Reginald, The Marquis d'Argenson and Richard II (London, 1901), pp. 156–77Google Scholar; and Dunham, William Huse Jr., and Wood, Charles T., “The Right to Rule in England,” American Historical Review, 81 (1976):746, n. 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Tout, , Chapters, 5:208–209Google Scholar.

14 PRO, E. 101/403/10, p. 45; and see Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1385-1389, p. 19 (Hereafter cited as C.P.R.)

15 C.P.R., 1391-1396, p. 42.

16 C.P.R., 1388-1392, p. 465.

17 PRO, E.403/560-562.

18 C.P.R., 1391-1396, p. 560.

19 Calendar of Close Rolls, 1377-1381, p. 340 (Hereafter cited as C.C.R.); C.C.R., 1385-1389, p. 602; C.P.R., 1381-1385, p. 50; C.P.R., 1388-1392, pp. 24 and 296; C.P.R., 1381-1396, pp. 44 and 532; and C.P.R., 1399-1401, p. 199.

20 See n. 12.

21 Calendar of Fine Rolls, 1450-1413, p. 221 (Hereafter cited as C.F.R.); and Gillespie, James L., “The Cheshire Archers of Richard II,” Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1973, pp. 230–35Google Scholar.

22 C.C.R., 1396-1399, p. 10.

23 Gillespie, “Archers of the Crown.”

24 Myers, , Household of Edward IV, p. 243, n. 10Google Scholar.

25 C.P.R., 1385-1389, p. 19.

26 R.P., 3:224 (art. 29.)

27 PRO, E.403/561.

28 C.C.R., 1385-1389, p. 382.

29 Ibid., p. 377; and C.P.R., 1385-1389, pp. 461-62.

30 C.P.R., 1385-1389, p. 466; C.P.R., 1381-1396, pp. 18 and 659; and C.F.R., 1383-1391, pp. 229, 249, 231, and 332.

31 Ranulf of Higden, Polychronicon, ed. Lumby, J. R., Rolls Series, 9 vols. (London, 1882–1886), 9:116Google Scholar; and Tout, , Chapters, 3:430Google Scholar.

32 Ranulf of Higden, Polychronicon, 9:211Google Scholar.

33 C.P.R., 1396-1399, pp. 193, 197, 201, 221, 276, 278, 337, 415, and 418; and C.C.R., 1396-1399, p. 274.

34 C.P.R., 1396-1399, pp. 196, 201, 204, 216, 343, 461, and 517.

35 Ibid., p. 224; and see Gillespie, James L., “Thomas Mortimer and Thomas Molineux: Radcot Bridge and the Appeal of 1397,” Albion, 7(1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 C.P.R., 1385-1389, p. 179.

37 Ibid., p. 161; and C.P.R., 1396-1399, p. 132.

38 C.C.R., 1385-1389, p. 622.

39 C.P.R., 1388-1392, pp. 318 and 322.

40 C.P.R., 1399-1401, p. 214; C.C.R., 1388-1402, pp. 79, 117, and 118; and C.P.R., 1405-1408, pp. 453-54.

41 C.P.R., 1405-1408, p. 32.

42 C.C.R., 1399-1402, p. 117; and PRO, E.404/511/419.

43 C.P.R., 1399-1401, p. 323; C.C.R., 1399-1401, pp. 320-22; C.P.R., 1401-1405, p. 325; and C.P.R., 1405-1408, p. 97.

44 Tout, , Chapters, 4:65Google Scholar.

45 Vitallis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Le Prévost, A., 5 vols. (Paris, 1838–1855), 4:164Google Scholar.

46 Rankin, , Marquis d'Argenson and Richard II, p. 300Google Scholar.