Arlequ?n's Worlds: Wars of the Roses - War and Society

Commissions of Array

The ordinary soldiers of English armies had been traditionally raised through the obligation for all able-bodied free men to serve their king and contribute to the defence of their county and country. The Assize of Arms of 1252 and the Statute of Winchester of 1285, revised the traditional duties of the king's subjects, not only to provide themselves with watchmen, constables and to make them self-policing (the 'hue and cry' requirements), as well as instituting collective responsibility for the acts of their fellows, but also laid out terms of military service. These terms established that all men between the ages of 15 and 60 were liable to do service and set out the levels of equipment they were to provide at their own expense.

Each hundred was to appoint two constables from amongst its population and their duties in this regard was to inspect the arms held by the population in twice yearly musters. They reported to the local justices of the peace and informed them of any defaulters. Some muster rolls have survived, which show that there could be quite a degree of latitude with regard to what was accepted and that in some cases equipment was handed down within a family, but the individual couldn't wear it. While not a breach of the law in itself, it certainly went against the spirit of it.

The raising of such forces was to be at the expense of the individual for a period of forty days and was designed for local defence, i.e. within the confines of their county. Service outside of the county, or in excess of the forty days, was to be at royal expense, with the men receiving wages for their service. Invariably though, the whole levy of men available for service were not called up at the same time. While some individuals might have relished the adventure, most people at this time had never ventured more than a few miles from their homes, for most the possibility of service was a burden and an inconvenience.

These men were not full time soldiers, in truth they were not soldiers at all and their normal role in life was as farmers and craftsmen. The limits on their service also meant that to maintain a continuous armed presence, a succession of summonses of a fraction of the population would be required to maintain it. The needs and requirements of the wars in France had resulted in cash payments being made in lieu of service, in the same way as 'knight service' had been changed to a cash sum. Counties were assessed as to the numbers of men (usually specified as archers) they were required to provide and a tax was levied and paid to the crown to hire troops in their stead.

The process of levying the county militias was undertaken through the issuing of a warrant - the 'Commission of Array' to certain individuals, usually the sheriff of a county, the mayor of a town or city, or royal office holders, like the Warden of the East March etc. The Commissioners were required to present the warrant to the justices of the peace within the areas specified to prove that they had a legal right to do so and then the justices notified the constables, who then raised the requisite numbers.?

It seems that communities often only raised the numbers they had been assessed to provide, yet in some cases they supplied numbers well above this, while in others well below.?The system was open to abuse, in some cases forces were raised without a commission being presented and sometimes by opponents of the king into the bargain. In other cases the lack of a written commission, even if it was actually on the king's behalf, might be refused. John Neville, Lord Montagu failed to raise men in Pontefract, as they refused to be summonsed by anyone but a Percy, the area's traditional holders of the commission to array.

Livery and Maintenance

Even the most mundane tasks were performed by?contract.?

The shift to a more peaceful England led?to the nobility?creating

gardens to surround their?houses.

By the fifteenth century England was no longer a feudal society in the classic sense of the word. Very much like today, commercial and social relationships were the core of day to day life, and were governed through legally binding contracts, called indentures. The bulk of these had no military or political relevance; you might indenture an individual to supply bread to your home, in the same way as you might have a 'standing order' with the Milk Man today, which is essentially an informal indenture (which also existed then). Such arrangements permeated English society from the highest to the lowest levels. Other arrangements however were more significant and while the cash sums ('retainers') that exchanged hands were often merely token payments, it was the implication that an individual would serve another, in return for 'good favour', that was more important and which was to define English politics throughout this period. Two concepts were present in this system, the first was that an individual would be 'maintained', which essentially meant that both the person retaining and the 'retainer' himself would support each other as required.

This might mean that a powerful individual might use his influence to ensure that a legal case was settled in favour of 'his man', even to the point of suborning judge and jury (by a number of methods) to ensure this. More importantly in a wargaming sense, is that a man would 'maintain' his superior by turning out alone, or with others (depending on the agreement previously reached when forming the indenture), armed and equipped to act in accordance with his wishes.

To signify who was 'maintaining' him an individual might often wear a recognisable badge, which identified him to other individuals serving the same person (or indeed his opponents), while those engaged in more direct relationships and duties, might wear a livery in that individual's 'colours' (like a present day jockey wears the horse owner's colours).

Arrangements of this type were termed 'Livery and Maintenance'. Some individuals might have a relatively small number of retainers, numbering less than double figures, while others might have thousands. It was also not uncommon for an individual to be retained by more than one person, especially if they were were political allies.

Feudal Tenure

At the lower levels of society indentures were far less common. While England was experiencing prosperity as a result of the trade in wool, there were still those who toiled in the fields or served those engaged in other industries or crafts. Serfdom, essentially a form of slavery, whereby a class of people where bonded to the land they worked, had largely disappeared following the Black Death. Instead holding land by renting it, or in some cases buying it, were far more common. While this practice had created a wealthier and more industrious yeomen class, there were still those who were less prosperous, or indeed held no land.

'Cottagers'

For such men, the only real change in their fortunes was that they were no longer legally tied to the land that they worked, they could move to another's land to work if they felt that things would be better there. By the same token, they could also be evicted and forced to move elsewhere, should they displease their landlord. Such people rented or held cottages, often with a small area of attached land, with which to feed their own families and worked the fields, mills and other rural tasks, in return for wages. Rents were commonly reduced by agreeing to perform certain services for the landlord, one of which was often to provide military service on demand, usually for the forty days they would be required to serve in law in any case.

With the exception of the Scottish Border regions, where such service was also as self-serving as it was onerous, the requirement to actually provide such service rarely arose. Even the common law requirement to own weapons and equipment could often be ignored, as many of their landlords maintained stocks of weapons and equipment, which they would issue to their tenants if the need arose. Nevertheless the practice of requiring service from tenants, gave many of the landowning classes a potentially large reservoir of additional (if untrained) manpower with which to supplement their households and indentured retinues.

Source: http://arlequinsworld.blogspot.com/2012/08/wars-of-roses-war-and-society.html

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