War and the Soldier in the Fourteenth Century
A study of the military experience in the later middle ages from the point of view of the soldier, examining the everyday realities of life on campaign or in garrison duty, the terror of battle and the tedium of siege, the hunger and the sickness, the rewards and the comradeship of arms would be a fascinating exercise, if a very difficult one to undertake. Despite the wide ranging compass of his title, Bell has not written that book.
Instead we have a view of the military life from the point of view of the muster clerk and the royal bureaucrat. Bell has employed modern data processing capacity to analyse the muster rolls for two expeditions to France commanded by the Earl of Arundel in 1387 and 1388. In addition he has used a range of other sources (predominantly material already in print- the "History of Parliament" is much cited and Bell relies on the incomplete published versions of the relevant Court of Chivalry cases) to look at the previous and subsequent careers of the men who appear on these rolls.
The two expeditions are set in the wider context of English military activity in the second half of the Fourteenth Century. This was on the whole an unsuccessful period for English arms- and has in consequence been under-studied in Anglophone scholarship. Arundel's expeditions fitted the rather downbeat pattern of the times. A bright start in the shape of a naval victory off the Flemish coast (which saw so much wine brought to England that wine prices collapsed) was followed by aimless forays into Brittany. One might perhaps wonder if some of the perception of failure in this period is due to the absence of coherent image projection by the English elites. A competent propagandist could, one feels, have turned Arundel's sea victory into another Sluys (itself a naval victory whose glory obscured the largely futile follow-up campaigns on land) while shuffling off responsibility for subsequent failures on to the shoulders of the Duke of Brittany. Bell does not, however, challenge traditional accounts of the 1369-99 period.
The failure to project a victorious image points to a factor which bulks large in his analysis- political instability in England. Between Arundel's two expeditions abroad he had been prominent in the defeat of Richard II's forces at Radcot Bridge. Indeed he was to die on the scaffold in 1397 for his leading role amongst the Lords Appellant. It is not unreasonable to suppose that this turbulence might have had an impact on Arundel's armies. Bell labours mightily to extract conclusions about political loyalties and alignments in the 1387 domestic conflict from the known or apparent allegiances of the men on his muster rolls, drawing heavily on the lists of those who sued for pardons in 1398 when Richard was back in the saddle and settling scores. As he himself recognises, however, the results are rather tenuous. While it does not appear that either of Arundel's armies can be characterised as simply a partisan turn out of Appellant supporters, alignments and loyalties in the twenty years or so from Radcot Bridge to the Scrope rebellion against Henry IV are so unpredictable, shifting and individualistic as to defy easy categorisation. Bell's own case studies make this abundantly clear- Sir John Bussy, a prominent military supporter of the Appellants in 1387, was to be executed by Henry IV as an upholder of Richard II's "tyranny" while men who appear to have stood by Richard at Radcot Bridge transferred their allegiances seamlessly to the Lancastrian monarch. Owain Glyn Dwr served in 1387; men he served alongside fought against him when he rose against the English crown in the 1400's. Men listed elsewhere as "King's knights" may have served the Appellant government on an expedition to France because they actually agreed with the Appellant political programme as against Richard's preference for peace with France, because the expedition was billed as a royal campaign or because they were professional soldiers for whom participation in foreign campaigns was a way of life. As Bell admits, at this distance in time it is very hard to tell which motive predominated.
Bell's source material is inevitably biased towards the more senior ranks in Arundel's two armies- retinue commanders leave more trace on the records than archers, none of whom ever made it into Parliament and very few of whom turn up in Court of Chivalry depositions. His material confirms and adds detail to the established picture of how English armies of this era were put together rather than challenging it. Arundel could call on a hard core of "professionals" who would serve on most foreign campaigns. Their ranks were supplemented by more occasional soldiers recruited on the basis of personal connections, tenurial links or other incentives. This pattern is easier to discern at knightly level but probably applied further down the social scale. Cases in which successful service as an archer led to social advancement are however exceedingly rare and the problems which the former routier Sir Robert Knollys had in imposing his will as commander of a major expedition suggest that social hierarchy was largely unaffected by military service- in the ultimate analysis birthright status trumped advancement on merit. On the other hand, most men born to high status could point to some military experience in their lives. Campaigning was not an alien world for the bulk of the English elite, even if the majority of them only engaged in military activity on a few occasions.
It has to be said that Bell's book is not an easy or exciting read. His very close focus on his sources means that the wood disappears behind the individual trees for long periods. A heavy use of biographical case studies leads to a substantial amount of rather tedious repetition when the same men appear in different contexts. The source driven nature of the analysis also has some unfortunate effects; for instance recruitment from Arundel's Sussex estates is separated from his recruitment in Shropshire and the Welsh Marches because estate surveys exist for the former area but not the latter even though it would make more sense to handle both regions together as examples of tenurially-based recruitment.
Overall, this is a worthy rather than exciting or ground-breaking study. It harnesses modern data processing capacities to ask a largely traditional set of questions about the composition of late medieval English armies and the military activities of the English elites. While the answers are interesting enough, they do not seriously revise long-established views. Perhaps a study based almost exclusively on material generated by central government was never going to do so.