The Role of Ransoms in Medieval Warfare

by Helena P. Schrader


The concept of ransom dates back to classical times, but during the Early Middle Ages they fell into disuse and we hear little about them. By the mid-11^th century, however, they were back in fashion, and from the mid-12^th century to the end of the 15^th they were a dominant feature of warfare.  Although they have since disappeared from Western warfare, the criminal custom of capturing people for ransom still persists in some parts of the world such as Latin America and Nigeria. In England, the age of ransoms was the High Middle Ages, when ransoms constituted a fundamental component of warfare. Without them, the very course of English history would have been different — not just because kings like Richard I of England and John “the Good” of France might have been killed rather than held for ransom, but because the custom of allowing a captive to buy his freedom altered many aspects of warfare itself.

It is worth noting, however, that the tradition of ransom was strongest in France. It spread with French influence to England and the Holy Land, but was not so well established in the Holy Roman Empire or Iberia. Interestingly, the Saracens either had an independent tradition of ransom (and if someone knows about this please leave a comment!) or rapidly adopted the “Frankish” custom because it was so highly lucrative. The Arabs were, after all, very good businessmen and traders, and ransoms were first and foremost a financial transaction.

In the French/English tradition, ransoms were a means of enriching oneself, and the rules of tournaments reflected this by dictating that a captured knight had to surrender his horse and armor to his captor. It was the lure of loot as much as the hope for fame and honor that produced the “tournament circuits” of the 12^th to 14^th centuries, where knights travelled from tournament to tournament like modern-day professional athletes. But the fortunes made on the tournament fields were a pale imitation of what “real” ransoms could bring.


A man taken in battle by his enemy was completely at the mercy of the victor, and the stakes were impossibly high; the victor was within his right to slaughter his opponent. The custom of ransom dramatically decreased casualties, because the prospect of financial gain greatly increased the proclivity of victorious fighting men to show mercy toward those who surrendered to them. This had the unfortunate side-effect, of course, of making the lives of wealthy men more valuable than the lives of the poor. As a result, throughout the High Middle Ages there was a tendency for those of a class deemed good for ransom to escape death, while their less fortunate followers paid the price of defeat with their lives.

But ransoms were not fixed and so not immutably tied to rank and title. They were always negotiable, and a rich merchant’s son — assuming he had enough time to describe the size of his father’s purse to his erstwhile murderer — stood as good if not a better chance of being granted the privilege of ransom than a poor knight. Ransoms were always based on what a man (or his family) could pay quite simply because there was no point in setting a price that one could not hope to collect — unless the real intent was to ensure the captive could never again raise arms against you.

Had Philip II of France, for example, held Richard the Lionheart captive instead of the Holy Roman Emperor, it is probable that he would have set demands intended to keep Richard in a dungeon for the rest of his life.  Likewise, the ransom set for John “the Good” of France after he was captured at the Battle of Poitiers was dictated far more by the political advantage of denying the French a rival king to Edward III than by thoughts of monetary gain. Except where kings and important nobles were at stake, however, ransoms were generally dictated by a captive’s ability to pay.


By which, of course, I do not mean the captive himself, for he was just that — held captive. Ransoms were usually raised by a captive’s relatives — parents, wives, siblings, children. If they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) scrape together the funds needed, then the appeal would go to cousins and in-laws, anyone who might have money and care enough for the captive to contribute to the cause. Lucky men, who enjoyed the respect of those more powerful and wealthy than themselves, might also be ransomed by their feudal overlord. Examples of this were the payment of Aimery de Lusignan’s ransom by King Amalric, or William Marshal’s ransom by Queen Eleanor. In the case of captive kings and barons, of course, they did not have to rely on the generosity of those that loved or respected them. They could demand contributions from their subjects, vassals and tenants.

Usually a man was held in captivity until the ransom was paid, and conditions varied. Some men enjoyed comfortable “house arrest,” able to interact with the household and even family of the man to whom they had surrendered. Others were kept locked in a single room, even a dungeon. In the worse cases, prisoners were kept chained the walls of their prison until the ransom was paid.  On rare occasions, a man (of high rank generally) might be freed on parole in order to enable him to better collect the sum owed. Famous cases of this were Baldwin of Ramla, who was released by Saladin after payment of only a small portion of the enormous ransom set, and Bertrand du Guesclin, who the Black Prince paroled so he could raise his ransom. The former talked the Byzantine Emperor into paying the outstanding portion of his ransom, and the latter raised his ransom from the King of France, Louis d’Anjou and Henry of Trastamare.

While the payment of a ransom could financially ruin a man and his family, ransoms could make the fortune of those fortunate enough to take a valuable prize.  The English and Gascons almost tore the French king apart at the Battle of Poitiers in their eagerness to lay claim to his ransom. Desmond Seward describes a situation like this in his history of the Hundred Years War ( The Hundred Years War: The English in France, 1337-1445, Macmillan, New York, 1978):

[King John] was recognized and surrounded by a great crowd of soldiers anxious to take so fabulous a ransom. Although he surrendered to a knight of Artois, he was still in peril, for the brawling mob of Gascons and English began to fight for him. Finally he was rescued by the Earl of Warwick and Lord Cobham, who took him to the Prince [of Wales].

Few men had a share of a king’s ransom, but as long as a man was on the winning side, it was possible to accumulate a small fortune from the ransoms of lesser men. Ransoms more than plunder was what made the Hundred Years War so lucrative for England — and impoverished France. The latter was in part due to the fact that because a ransom was a reflection of a man’s ability to pay, it was also indirectly a reflection of his “worth.” The English soon learned that it was to their advantage to let French captives name their own ransoms because pride often induced the prisoners to name ransoms suited more to their self-image than the size of their pocketbook.  Even the Black Prince used this tactic when setting the ransom for Guesclin; the latter named the huge sum of 100,000 francs, something he could not possibly have raised from his own resources, hence the resort to the King of France et. al.

Yet common as ransoms were throughout the High Middle Ages, they remained a privilege not a right. The Knights Templar, for example, explicitly prohibited their members from paying ransoms. A Knight Templar was expected to die for Christ and find salvation for his soul in that act of martyrdom. This may have contributed to the Saracen tendency to slaughter captured Templars and Hospitallers; they had no monetary value and so eliminating them sooner rather than latter made sense.

Normally, however, it was the circumstances in which the victor found himself, not the ideology of the captive, that determined whether a ransom would be accepted or not. In the heat of battle, many soldiers became overcome by “blood lust” that utterly obliterated their greed for gold. Or, when the battle was not one between mercenaries but between true adversaries, fighting men might simply hate their opponents too much to be willing to grant mercy. There were also times when commanders made a strategic decision to kill prisoners. A famous case in point here was Henry V’s order to kill the French prisoners taken at Agincourt, which was largely dictated by his sense of vulnerability. Underestimating the demoralizing effect of his initial successes, he felt he needed every Englishman on the frontline, ready to repel the next attack by the still numerically superior French and was unwilling to spare men to guard the prisoners.


Even more significant, however, is that by the Wars of the Roses commanders were beginning to prefer annihilation of the enemy’s ability to fight over the profit gained from ransoms. It is a clear indicator of the increasing hatred between the rival factions for the English throne that Edward IV allegedly told his soldiers to “kill the lords and spare the commons.” Edward IV recognized that the commons might not pay monetary ransoms, but they were his subjects and he gained nothing from killing them. The rebellious lords, on the other hand, were the threat to his throne.

 In the subsequent century, as warfare became increasingly tied to religion and kings became increasingly despotic, the notion that an opponent might be allowed to live in exchange for a payment of money became discredited. Ransoms became anachronistic and eventually disappeared from the customs of Western warfare altogether.

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Helena P. Schrader is the author of three books set in the crusader kingdoms. St. Louis’ Knight is set in the Latin Kingdom of Cyprus in the mid-13^th century and Knight of Jerusalem and Defender of Jerusalem are the first two books in a three biographical novel of Balian d’Ibelin, who defended Jerusalem against Saladin in 1187 and later played an important role during the Third Crusade. St. Louis Knight was winner of the 2014 Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction set in the High Middle Ages.

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The Birth of Heraldry in the Middle Ages

By Rosanne E. Lortz

It is not much of an exaggeration to say that average readers see the entire span of the Middle Ages as a homogeneous mass of history. They assume that everything from the fall of Rome up until the Battle of Bosworth is filled with highborn damsels in flowing dresses and armored knights with lions rampant on their shields.

"The Accolade" by Edmund Blair-Leighton

The King Arthur legend has not helped matters. Arthur supposedly lived in the sixth century—that beginning of the Middle Ages which is sometimes referred to as the Dark Ages—however, many of the legends and tales concerning him and his Round Table were invented during the High Middle Ages, six hundred years later.

Naturally, these tales took on the clothing and characteristics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rather than the realities of the sixth, further muddling up our ideas of what part of the Middle Ages looks like what. The complex system of knightly tournaments and symbolic heraldry in the Arthur legends makes us assume that such was the case through the whole of the Middle Ages.

My first novel, I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, is set during the fourteenth century, in the chivalric world that many associate with the whole of the Middle Ages. But when I began researching my second novel, Road from the West, a tale of the First Crusade set at the end of the eleventh century, I found myself having to expunge many of my “stock” medieval notions in order to be more authentic to the time period.

Two hundred and fifty years can effect radical changes. The differences between the eleventh century knight and the fourteenth century knight might not be quite as dramatic as the differences between the Lexington militiaman and the modern day Navy Seal, but they are there nonetheless.

One example of the difference is in the use of heraldry. In the fourteenth century world of the Black Prince, every character had an emblem on his shield, specific colors in his banner, and a motto he had adopted—many of these devices having been passed down from father to son. In the eleventh century, these defining characteristics of knighthood had not yet developed.

Historian Elizabeth Hallam writes:

Heraldry—the systematic use of hereditary devices—attained its maturity under the later Plantagenet kings. Symbols like the Roman eagle, the dragon of Wessex and the Viking raven had been known for centuries, but these belonged to peoples, not particular people.

At the time of the Norman Conquest, a mere thirty years before my setting of the First Crusade, we begin to see knights taking up specific symbols for themselves, but, according to Hallam, these “seem to have been personal rather than inherited.” 

Francois Velde writes:

The Bayeux tapestry provides a terminus a quo: no heraldry there. Combatants have designs on their shields, but the same design is seen on different individuals' shields (even on opposite sides of the battle) and the same individual uses different designs at different times.

In other words, the symbols adopted by eleventh century knights seem rather random, and certainly not something passed from father to son. It is not until the twelfth century when we see the Plantagenets taking the golden lions for their coat-of-arms and passing them down from father to son.

The nondescript knights of the Bayeux Tapestry

So why the change? Why do my knights of the First Crusade have no family crest to deal with, whereas my knights of the Hundred Years’ War are awash in stripes, blocks, chevrons, lions, dragons, and other heraldic beasts?

Velde says the change was

 …due to the evolution of military equipment from the late 11th to the mid-12th c, with fighters unrecognizable under their helmets (there is a nice illustration from the 11th century Bayeux tapestry showing William lifting his helmet so as to be recognized by his troops in battle). This led fighters to paint emblems on their shields. The question is then to establish a proper chronology of this emergence and of the transformation of these emblems into armory, i.e., constant use of one design by the same person and application of strict rules in the design itself.

Hallam agrees with this assessment. “Protected by an enveloping helm instead of the old open-faced Norman helmet, knights were unrecognizable in battle or tournament except by the devices emblazoned on shield, surcoat (or ‘coat-of-arms’) and horse trappings.” 

The greater protection afforded by the new helmets also afforded a virtual anonymity. To be recognizable, a knight must adopt a consistent symbol which others would associate with his name.

Velde (summarizing the work of heraldry expert Pastoureau), says that we can distinguish two phases in the birth of heraldry: “the transformation of decorative motifs painted on shields into permanent and individual emblems (1100-1140) and the transformation of the latter into hereditary emblems subjected to precise rules (1140-80).”

So, that red flag that my eleventh century Duke Bohemond flies from the towers of Antioch? A mere whim. No connection to his family heritage. Probably only hung there because he liked the color red.

Those three golden lions on my fourteenth century Black Prince’s shield? The established coat-of-arms of the Plantagenets, seen in an early form on Geoffrey of Anjou’s shield, seen again as a pair of lions on Henry II’s shield, and formalized to three lions in 1198.

Just one of the many differences that two-and-a-half centuries make in the complex period known as the Middle Ages….

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Greenwich Editions, 2002.

Velde, Francois. "Origins of Armory." Heraldica. http://www.heraldica.org/topics/origins.htm

"The Pope May Be French, but Jesus Is English!": England and the Avignon Papacy

by Rosanne E. Lortz

“The Pope may be French, but Jesus is English!” It’s a zinger that always brings a laugh in the 2001 film A Knight’s Tale.

While most of this “period” film is the product of the screenwriter’s fertile imagination, this particular line is culled from the pages of history itself. It was a statement the exultant English made after the Black Prince trounced the French in the early part of the Hundred Years’ War, and it was what the English bitterly believed—and not without reason—all throughout the fourteenth century.

Battle of Crecy (1346) 

England’s connection with the papacy goes back to the earliest centuries of the Middle Ages. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, was sent to evangelize the Anglo-Saxons by Pope Gregory I. Later, King Alfred, as a young child, went on a pilgrimage to Rome, asking the pope to intercede with God in prayer for the English as they battled the invading Vikings.

In the lay investiture controversy of the high Middle Ages, the popes supported the archbishops against the kings of England as Anselm clashed with the Conqueror’s sons and Thomas Becket battled Henry II. This controversy climaxed in the early thirteenth century, with King John capitulating to Pope Innocent III and even rendering him fealty for the country of England.

England, technically, now belonged to the pope, and in return for John’s allegiance, Pope Innocent helped his “vassal” against the French king Philip Augustus.

This concord between the pope and England did not last long, however, due to the close connection that formed between the see of Saint Peter and the throne of France. In 1309, Clement V, a Frenchman who had been elected pope, refused to go to Rome and moved the papal seat to Avignon. For the next 67 years, the pope ruled from that French city.

As might be expected, the pope’s favor was now heavily weighted toward the French, and much of the papal policy during this period was directly due to the French crown’s influence. In England there was a “manifestation of popular feeling” against the prejudiced papacy. Historian Henry Dwight Sedgwick writes that, “the English people believed, and so did the Prince of Wales with a vengeance, that [the papacy] used all its influence on behalf of France.”

In 1374, the Black Prince’s father, Edward III, called a council with all the bishops and lords of the realm to ask their advice on a certain matter. One contemporary chronicler describes the scene thus:

Then the Chancellor announced that the cause of the convocation was this: ‘The Pope has sent to our Lord the King a bull in which he writes that, as he is the lord of all temporalities through the vicarate of Christ, and also the spiritual and paramount lord of the Kingdom of England through the gift of King John, he commands the King to levy a tax to aid him against Florentine rebels and others, and not to delay sending it to him….

In plain and simple terms, the pope was trying to strong-arm money out of King Edward. The council had been called because the king wanted to know if he was theologically obliged to pay it.

The chronicler goes on to tell how the Archbishop and all the bishops of the realm agreed with the pope’s demand, citing the standard example of the two swords (as outlined in the papal bull “Unam Sanctam”). In a nutshell, the “two swords” doctrine used the Bible verse Luke 22:38 (“And they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And he said unto them, It is enough.”) as proof that all spiritual and earthly power had been given to the pope as Peter’s successor.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the possible author of the "two swords" doctrine

According to his churchmen, King Edward was obliged to pay the pope’s tax.  It was not the answer the king wanted. He did not want to give money to a lackey of the French king.

At this point, John Mardisle, a Franciscan friar and a master in theology whom the king had especially invited to the council (and perhaps conferred with beforehand?), stood up to challenge the prevailing opinion.

He quoted [Christ’s command to Peter]: ‘Put up thy sword unto the sheath,’ and showed that the swords did not signify such powers; for Christ did not possess temporal lordship, and did not pass it on to His disciples, but taught them to turn from it. This he proved by Holy Writ, by the Gospels, by the opinion of learned men…and by the decretals themselves he showed that the Pope admitted that he did not have universal lordship.

Such was the friar’s eloquence that he convinced all present (although, to be fair, the king and his lords were only too happy to be convinced) that the pope was overreaching his power when he demanded money.

The Archbishop, in somewhat of a huff that his opinion had been disregarded in favor of John Mardisle’s arguments, remarked snarkily that, “There has been good counsel in England without Friars.”

But the Black Prince, as much averse to the papal tax as his father, responded with equal acidity: “Because of your foolishness we were obliged to call them. Had we followed your counsel, we should have lost the Kingdom.”

On the next day, when the Archbishop and prelates of the realm were again asked by the king to give their opinion on the matter, the Archbishop—who seems to have still been in quite a snit—said that he did not know what to say. The Prince, according to the chronicler, responded, “Answer, you Jackass! It is your business to instruct all of us.” (The chronicler takes pains to excuse the prince’s rude behavior, for “when he was ill, the wild Plantagenet blood unloosed the customary restraint of his gentle manners.”)

And with the Black Prince berating him thus, “the Archbishop answered: ‘My voice is that the Pope is not lord here,’ and all the prelates accordingly said the same.”

With this victory, the prince, it seems, was not yet willing to let the subject alone. “What has become of the two swords?” he asked, rubbing salt in an open wound.

“My Lord, I am better instructed now than I was,” replied the cleric who had voiced the doctrine the previous day.

And so, thanks to the arguments of the Franciscan friar, King Edward refused to pay the tax to the pope with a clear conscience.

Papal Palace in Avignon, France

It was not long after this incident that the Avignon papacy came to an end, and Pope Gregory XI returned the seat of the papacy to Rome in 1376. With the pope no longer under the thumb of the French king, English antipathy toward the papacy abated.

The French, however, were loath to lose their influence over the highest churchman in the West. They backed a rival claimant to the papacy, and a second pope, known as the antipope again set up rule back at Avignon. This instigated what is known as the Great Schism with two different popes both claiming to be the true successor of Saint Peter.

The schism was over a political rather than a theological matter. The kings of Europe took sides, with England, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Scandinavian countries accepting the Roman pope, and France, Scotland, and the Spanish kingdoms siding with the usurper in Avignon. The matter was not fully resolved until 1418 at the Council of Constance where the rule of the Roman pope was upheld.

Once again, England was able to be on proper terms with the acknowledged head of the Western church…for another century, at least, until Henry VIII would behave with as much belligerence as the Black Prince, berating his bishops until they agreed that, “the Pope is not lord here.”

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boniface VIII. "Unam Sanctam, 1302." Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/b8-unam.asp

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. The Black Prince. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.

The Horrors of War: The Black Prince and the "Massacre" at Limoges

by Rosanne E. Lortz

The year was 1370. The Hundred Years’ War was in full swing. The Battles of Crecy and Poitiers had already been fought. Edward, Black Prince of Wales, had already earned a reputation as the most famous knight in all Christendom.

The place was Aquitaine—the duchy that the spirited Eleanor had transferred to English control in the twelfth century, the duchy that the French king Philip VI had tried to confiscate in 1337, and the duchy that the Black Prince had already fought so hard to reclaim.

The French forces were buzzing like hornets around the city of Limoges, but the Black Prince was not worried. Limoges had a strong English garrison, and its governor—the bishop—was a close friend and the godfather to the prince’s eldest son.

But the prince’s confidence, as it turned out, was misplaced. The bishop of Limoges, after receiving an envoy from the French, decided to transfer his allegiance and surrender the city. The historian Richard Barber notes that “one late chronicle even says that he spread rumours of the prince’s death in order to persuade the citizens.”

And that is the backstory to what many consider one of the great military atrocities of the medieval period—the siege of Limoges, and the massacre thereafter which was perpetrated by the Black Prince.

Edward III bestows the rule of Aquitaine upon the Black Prince

Froissart’s Chronicles gives a chilling description of what happened at that unfortunate city in the year 1370.

When intelligence was brought to the prince that the city of Limoges had become French…he was in a violent passion…. He swore by the soul of his father, which he had never perjured, that he would have it back again, that he would not attend to anything before he had done this, and that he would make the inhabitants pay dearly for their treachery…. 

…The prince, the duke of Lancaster, the earls of Cambridge and of Pembroke, Sir Guiscard d'Angle and the others, with their men, rushed into the town. You would then have seen pillagers, active to do mischief, running through the town, slaying men, women, and children, according to their orders. It was a most melancholy business; for all ranks, ages and sexes cast themselves on their knees before the prince, begging for mercy; but he was so inflamed with passion and revenge that he listened to none, but all were put to the sword, wherever they could be found, even those who were not guilty: for I know not why the poor were not spared, who could not have had any part in this treason; but they suffered for it, and indeed more than those who had been the leaders of the treachery. 

There was not that day in the city of Limoges any heart so hardened, or that had any sense of religion, who did not deeply bewail the unfortunate events passing before their eyes; for upwards of three thousand men, women and children were put to death that day. God have mercy on their souls! for they were veritable martyrs.

The picture Froissart paints is a gruesome one, and one that I had to grapple with when writing I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince. Although the story in my novel ends ten years before the Siege of Limoges, I believed that the events at Limoges must inform how I thought of the Black Prince’s character in his earlier years. It was a little difficult to reconcile the romantic hero with the man who could give the command to slaughter more than three thousand defenseless men, women, and children.

Is it possible to portray the Black Prince as anything other than a mass murderer?

Perhaps.

There are a couple considerations that made me take a more nuanced approach to the prince’s character.

In his book The Medieval Siege, Jim Bradbury says, “it needs to be emphasized that Limoges was not an exceptional atrocity.” In the Middle Ages, a city that surrendered could, for the most part, expect to be treated with restraint whereas a city that defied a besieging army could not. Wholesale sack and slaughter in cities that “held out” against a prolonged siege was considered a just punishment for the city’s obstinacy and a deterrent to other enemy cities that might otherwise do the same—thus causing far greater expenditure of effort and loss of life on the side of the besieging army.

Bradbury gives the example of James I of Aragon (who on most occasions granted quarter) refusing to make terms in one particular instance and hanging and beheading all the inhabitants of a captured city. He also cites the examples of the Crusaders’ capture of Jerusalem where the streets ran red with blood and of Richard the Lionheart’s actions at Acre where hundreds of Moslem prisoners were slaughtered.

If Edward, the Black Prince, must lodge with the mass murderers, he has a good deal of company including many of the other military leaders in medieval Europe.

Another historian, Richard Barber, acknowledges that post-siege massacres occur in many of the medieval chronicles. Interestingly, however, he sees these accounts as more a conventional literary trope than a precise description of what actually happened. (Much like how film makers insist on including a car exploding in flames in every car chase scene, despite the infrequency of that occurring in the real world.)

Barber writes that:

Froissart’s vivid picture probably arises from two sources: he is portraying in conventional terms the taking of a city by storm, and his information may have come from a source strongly hostile to the prince. Under the accepted laws of war at the time, a city taken by assault was entirely at the mercy of its conquerors. However, it was extremely rare for a place of the importance of Limoges to be taken in this way, and Froissart is merely depicting what would have been expected to happen under such circumstances. None of the sources which might be expected to make capital, for propaganda purposes, out of such a massacre, even mention it: the references in the papal and French records are purely factual, referring to some destruction of property.

Barber sees Froissart’s gruesome account as more rhetorical hype than historical substance.

So what did happen then at Limoges? According to Barber,

Much more reliable sources put the number of dead at about 300, or one in ten of the population. In fact, the number of dead may well have been less than the number of those carrying arms in defence of the city, estimated at about 500. 

The Black Prince, in Order of the Garter regalia

With these two considerations in mind—Bradbury’s explanation that if the massacre did happen the prince was far from unusual, and Barber’s contention that the massacre didn’t happen and that Froissart is all wet—reconciling the accounts of the Black Prince as the flower of chivalry and the Black Prince as a genocidal maniac became a little easier.

As I mentioned above, my novel I Serve ends ten years prior to Limoges, but my understanding of the events of that siege still helped me construct the character of the prince in his younger days. Thus, in my novel, when the prince observes his own father Edward III threatening to massacre the citizens of Calais, he does not react with shocked modern sensibilities but acknowledges that the king would have the right to do so—for the siege had been a year in length and cost him much time and many men. But at the same time, he also throws in his plea with the remonstrations of the nobles and the implorations of his mother for the king to grant the citizens of Calais clemency.

And, if Barber is right, then despite all the rape, pillage, and slaughter we see splashed about the pages of the medieval chronicles, maybe clemency was the case more often than not. Maybe sieges were a bloodier affair on paper than in person. Maybe the Black Prince was not the butcher of Limoges. One can always hope….

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of two books: I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince, a historical adventure/romance set during the Hundred Years' War, and Road from the West: Book I of the Chronicles of Tancred, the beginning of a trilogy which takes place during the First Crusade.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barber, Richard. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1978.

Bradbury, Jim. The Medieval Siege. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1992.

“The Prince of Wales’ Revenge on Limoges.” Edited by Steve Muhlberger. Tales from Froissart. http://usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh381/froissart_limoges.htm.

The Elusive History of the Order of the Garter

By Rosanne E. Lortz

“Honi soit qui mal y pense – Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.” So reads the motto of the famous Order of the Garter, a society of knights established by Edward III, the English king who began the Hundred Years’ War with France. But what does the motto refer to and why did Edward choose it? That question is just one of the many surrounding the foundation of the Garter Order.

According to historian Elizabeth Hallam, the inspiration for chivalric orders like the Order of the Garter came from “the imagination of a 12th-century Norman churchman, Wace, who added the story of the Round Table to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fictional history of King Arthur.” The stories of the Knights of the Round Table spread far and wide as other writers took Wace’s idea and elaborated on it. “During the 13th century knights in tournaments adopted the roles and fictional coats of arms of Arthur and his knights. ‘Round Tables’ were set up at many English tournaments,” and this playacting eventually “led to knights forming more regular tourneying brotherhoods: the golf clubs of their age.”

Henry of Grosmont, Duke of Lancaster,
2nd Member of the Order dressed in
Garter robes

Edward III, who was fond of holding these “Round Table” tournaments, eventually moved to create an official society that would mimic King Arthur’s legendary brotherhood of knights. The Order of the Garter was founded in 1344 (if we are to believe Jean Froissart), in 1350 (if we are to believe Geoffrey le Baker), or in 1348 (if we piece together some of the expenditures in the Royal Exchequer). This discrepancy in sources may seem amusing at first, until you realize that the date of establishment is only one of many knots historians must untangle as they weave together a history of the Order.

Froissart, a contemporary of King Edward’s, gives us this glimpse of the establishment:

At that time King Edward of England conceived the idea of altering and rebuilding the great castle of Windsor, originally built by King Arthur, and where had first been established the noble Round Table, from which so many fine men and brave knights had gone forth and performed great deeds throughout the world. King Edward’s intention was to found an order of knights, made up of himself and his sons and the bravest and noblest in England. There would be forty of them in all and they would be called the Knights of the Blue Garter and their feast was to be held every year at Windsor on St George’s Day. To institute the feast, the King called together the earls, barons and knights of the whole country and told them of his intentions and of his great desire to see them carried out. They agreed with him wholeheartedly, because they thought it an honourable undertaking and one which would strengthen the bonds of friendship among them. Forty knights were then chosen from among the most gallant of them all and these swore a solemn oath to the King always to observe the feast and the statutes, as these were agreed and drawn up. 

Henry VIII surrounded by the Garter Knights

Geoffrey le Baker, also a contemporary chronicler, gives his own description of the establishment of the Order and highlights the importance of the garter in their knightly regalia: “All these men, together with the king, were dressed in robes of russet and wore garters of dark blue on their right legs. The robes of the order were completed by a blue mantle, embroidered with the arms of St George.”

Nowadays, the garter is associated almost exclusively with women’s lingerie. How did it come to be the symbol of a chivalric order for an English king and his knights? Here we find yet another confusing tile in the mosaic of the Order’s history.

One legend, written down by Polydore Vergil in 1534, gives this romantic rationale:

[P]opular tradition nowadays declares that Edward at some time picked up from the ground a garter from the stocking of his queen or mistress, which had become unloosed by some chance, and had fallen. As some of the knights began to laugh and jeer on seeing this, he is reputed to have said that in a very little while the same garter would be held by them in the highest honour. And not long after, he is said to have founded this order and given it the title by which he showed those knights who had laughed at him how to judge his actions. Such is popular tradition. 

The romantic elements of the story continued to grow over time. By the end of the sixteenth century, Joan of Kent, the Countess of Salisbury (she who would later marry the Black Prince), had become the celebrated beauty whose garter fell to the floor while dancing with the king. And the chivalrous Edward responded to his jeering courtiers with the same words which he would make the motto of the Order: “Honi soit qui mal y pense – Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.”

How much stock should be put in this story is difficult to say. Some historians partially accept it, but state that the woman referred to was actually Joan of Kent’s mother-in-law (another Countess of Salisbury for whom King Edward was reputed to have a violent passion). Others discount the story altogether as a tale too fantastical and too anachronistic. Richard Barber, a historian of the latter school, writes:

The word ‘garter’ is extremely rare, and indeed only appears once before the foundation of the Order…here it is applied to an item of apparel worn by fashionable squires to keep up their hose…. I have found only one piece of evidence of ladies wearing garters before the fifteenth century: in 1389, the prostitutes of Toulouse were to wear a badge of a garter by royal decree – once again, there is a suggestion of political mockery and propaganda [i.e. the French making fun of Edward III and his already-established Order]. 

After arguing that the garter was not commonly worn by women during the fourteenth century, Barber goes on to say that the garter of this time period was a much different item of dress than we would think of as a garter today.

The form of the garter, as shown in the earliest known representation, is also unusual: it is a miniature belt, with buckle and perforated tongue, hardly a purely practical item of clothing. Later garters were usually a strip of cloth or silk, tied in a knot. I would tentatively suggest that the design is connected with the knight’s belt, one of the insignia used in the ceremony of knighthood. 

Those who accept Barber’s opinion, that the symbol of the Garter was a masculine one, a piece of equipment typically worn by knights, must still find an explanation for the Order’s motto: “Honi soit qui mal y pense – Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.” If the episode of a lady dropping her garter never occurred, then what motivated Edward to choose this phrase?

Philip IV

A plausible answer to this question can be found in Edward III’s claim to the French throne. In 1328, the last son of the French king Philip IV died, leaving no male heir. Edward III of England, as the son of Philip IV’s daughter Isabella, considered himself next in line for the French crown. The French, however, had already chosen Philip VI, nephew to Philip IV and grandson to Philip III, to be their ruler.

The laws of inheritance during this time period varied by country and were hotly disputed within France itself, but suffice it to say that there were more quibbles with Edward’s claim than the fact that he was English. In 1337, he invaded France in an attempt to take the French crown by force and began the conflict now known as the Hundred Years’ War. The Order of the Garter, whether it was founded in 1344, 1348, or 1350, came onto the scene during the first phase of this war, and all of its founding members were English nobility who would take part in the fight against France. Its motto, “Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it,” could very well be a gauntlet thrown at those naysayers who denied Edward’s claim to the crown.

Although the real events surrounding the founding of this Order may never be totally proved, it is indisputably acknowledged that the Order of the Garter is the most famous and longest lasting society of chivalry in the world. On April 23, 2008, Prince William was appointed the one thousandth member of the group. The video below shows the procession of the Garter Knights on the day Prince William was inducted into the Order. Some of the vestments have changed to accommodate the more modern clothing of our own time, but one can still see the blue mantle described by Geoffrey le Baker. And if you look closely at the circular badge attached to that mantle, you will see that enigmatic motto still in use: “Honi soit qui mal y pense – Shamed be the one who thinks evil of it.”

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Hundred Years' War, I Serve chronicles the story of Sir John Potenhale. A young Englishman of lowly birth, Potenhale wins his way to knighthood on the fields of France. He enters the service of Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, and immerses himself in a stormy world of war, politics, and romantic intrigue. The Order of the Garter makes an appearance in the book as the Black Prince is invested by his father as the first member of the society.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barber, Richard. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1978.

Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

Hallam, Elizabeth, ed. Chronicles of the Age of Chivalry. London: Salamander Books, Ltd., 2002.

How Joan of Kent Became Princess of Wales

by Rosanne E. Lortz

Edward, the Black Prince, and Joan of Kent: a pair of star cross’d lovers that eventually came together in one of history’s true love matches. It took three marriages and over thirty years before Joan finally became the Princess of Wales, but if the chroniclers are to be believed, it was worth the wait.

Seal of Edward II

Joan, who later became known as “The Fair Maid of Kent,” was the daughter of Edmund of Woodstock, half brother to King Edward II of England. Edmund supported the king in the bitter battle against his wife Queen Isabella, pejoratively known as the “she-wolf of France.” When Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer triumphed, Edward II was deposed, placed in prison, and later murdered. Edmund Woodstock, for the crime of remaining loyal to his brother, was sentenced to death for treason in 1330. As the story goes, Edmund had to wait nearly half a day for the authorities to find an executioner willing to do the deed since no one wanted to be responsible for his unjust death. Edmund of Woodstock was survived by his wife and four children. Joan, the third of Edmund’s progeny, was a little less than two years old at the time.

Young Edward III had been placed on the throne by Isabella and Mortimer, but he was more filial to his father’s memory than his mother’s commands. When he came of age, he organized a coup to remove the adulterous pair from power. Mortimer he executed, Isabella he imprisoned, and in a kindly gesture, he took Edmund Woodstock’s widow and her brood into his household to be provided for.

Edward III and the Black Prince

As these events were transpiring, Edward III’s wife Philippa gave birth to their oldest son, another Edward, to whom history would give the appellation, the “Black Prince of Wales.” This Prince Edward and his cousin  Joan were raised in close proximity to each other, and later events indicate that they grew to be fast friends. A marriage between the two was never considered, at least not by the one person who mattered. King Edward III was determined to secure for his eldest son a matrimonial alliance that would benefit the country of England. During the Black Prince’s early years, his father attempted at various times to betroth him to the daughter of the French king, the daughter of the Duke of Brabant, and a Portuguese princess. None of these marriage alliances materialized, however, and the prince was destined to remain a bachelor until the age of thirty, winning great glory on the battlefields of Crecy and Poitiers.

Joan, on the other hand, was in the unenviable position of having too many marriages materialize. When she was twelve years of age (fifteen or sixteen, according to other sources), she contracted a secret marriage with Thomas Holland, a man twice her age and seneschal to the house of Salisbury. Her royal family, it is certain, knew nothing of this marriage to Holland, for a few years later they betrothed her to William Montacute, the Earl of Salisbury. What happened next is unclear, whether Joan actually did go through with the marriage to Salisbury or whether the news of her earlier marriage came out first and prevented the ceremony. Holland, it is thought, must have been overseas at the time or he would have spoken up to prevent the polyandrous relationship. One fact at least is certain: there were now two Englishmen claiming Joan of Kent as their wife.

Joan’s opinion on the matter was that her first marriage to Thomas Holland was binding and ought to be recognized. But Joan’s opinion was also of little consequence. One story, perhaps apocryphal, describes the Earl of Salisbury locking the lady up in a tower and refusing to let her go to her first husband. An appeal was sent to the pope asking him to rule on the situation. Even though it had been undertaken without her guardians’ permission, Pope Clement VI decided in favor of the first marriage, and Joan took her place in Holland’s home as his wife.

Joan’s marriage to Thomas Holland produced two sons and two daughters. Her oldest son, Thomas, was privileged to have the Black Prince stand godfather to him at his baptism, a sign of the mutual regard between his mother and her cousin Edward. Holland, although his first appearance on the scene was as a lowly seneschal, rose swiftly in the world. He became Earl of Kent in right of his wife, and shortly before his death in 1360 was named captain-general of all of England’s holdings on the continent.

At Holland’s death, Joan—fabulously wealthy, still young, and still beautiful—was the most eligible widow in all of England. A French chronicler tells how many of the English lords sought her hand in marriage, asking the Black Prince to be the go-between and make the match. Here is historian Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s delightful summary of the story:

The widow, as I say, was a great catch, and, as in those martial days there was little time for the more delicate hesitations and diffidences of life, suitors very soon gathered round. Many gentlemen, knowing that she and the Prince were not only cousins but good friends, went to him and asked him to say a few words to her in their favor. The most importunate of these was Lord Brocas, a very gallant nobleman of high rank, who had served the Prince well both in war and peace. The Prince, accordingly, accepted the commission and went to see the Countess of Kent several times on the suitor’s behalf. The chronicler states that he went very willingly; for which, apart from the commission, there were reasons enough. First, she was his cousin; second, he took notice of her very great beauty and of her gracious manner that pleased him wonderfully well; and third, the time passed agreeably.  

On one occasion, when the Prince was speaking to her of the said gentleman, she answered that she should never marry again. She was moult soubtille et sage and repeated this to the Prince several times. The Prince replied, “Heigh ho! Belle Cousine, in case you do not wise to marry any of my friends, the great beauties, of which you are compact, will be wasted. If you and I were not of common kin, there is no lady under heaven whom I should hold so dear as you.” And the Prince was taken unawares by love for the Countess. And then, like the subtle woman, and skillful in ambush, that she was, the Countess began to cry. Then the Prince tried to comort her; he kissed her very often, and felt great tenderness for her tears, and said to her: “Belle Cousine, I have a message for you from one of the gallant gentlemen of England, and he is besides a very charming man.” The Countess answered, still weeping: “Ah, Sire, for God’s sake forbear to speak of such things to me. I have made up my mind not to marry again; for I have given my heart to the most gallant gentleman under the firmament, and for love of him, I shall have no husband but God, so long as I live. It is impossible that I should marry him. So, for love of him, I wish to shun the company of men. I am resolved never to marry.”  

The Prince was very desirous to know who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, and begged the Countess insistently to tell him who it was. But the Countess the more she saw his eagerness, the more she besought him not to inquire further; and, falling on her knees, said to him: “My very dear Lord, for God’s sake, and for His mother’s, the sweet Virgin, please forbear.” The Prince answered that, if she did not tell him who was the most gallant gentleman in the world, he would be her deadly enemy. Then the Lady said to him: “Very dear and redoubtable Lord, it is you, and for love of you no gentleman shall lie beside me.” The Prince, who was then all on fire with love for her, said: “Lady, I swear to God, that as long as I live, no other woman shall be my wife.” And soon they were betrothed.

A less colorful, and probably less embroidered version of the story is given in the Life of the Black Prince written by Chandos Herald:

The prince, very soon after this [the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360], married a lady of great worth, with whom he had fallen in love, who was beautiful, pleasing and wise. He did not wait long after his marriage before going to Gascony to take possession of his lands. The prince took his wife with him, whom he loved greatly. 

Because the two were closely related, they needed to receive a dispensation from the pope allowing the marriage. They had no trouble obtaining it. The historian Richard Barber writes: “Innocent VI, like all the Avignon popes, favoured the French cause, and the prince’s proposed marriage eliminated an important diplomatic weapon for the English.” The French wanted nothing better than to see Edward III’s son make a politically useless marriage.

But although an alliance with Joan offered no political advantage, the prince never appeared to regret his choice. Seven years later, the romance was still alive, as evidenced by a letter written to Joan after the Battle of Najera. The prince’s salutation reads: “My dearest and truest sweetheart and beloved companion.”

Although sickness and time would harden the prince’s character, making him capable of committing the massacre at Limoges in 1370, we never hear of anything but felicity betwixt him and Joan. Together Edward and Joan had two sons, the youngest of whom would become Richard II of England.

Edward died in 1376 at the age of 45. He had instructed that his body be laid to rest in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, in the Chapel of Our Lady with a space nearby for his dear wife. He even had carvings of her face added to the ceiling there. The crypt, however, was not deemed worthy enough, and so his body was moved upstairs to be placed by the shrine of the famous Saint Thomas Becket. Joan lived nine years longer to see the accession of her son to the throne, the rise of the Lollards, and the Peasants’ Revolt. When she died, her body was laid to rest in Lincolnshire beside the tomb of Thomas Holland, her first husband. And so, despite the prince’s dearest wishes, in the end he and his “beloved companion” were separated.

As wife to Edward, the Black Prince, Joan became history’s first English Princess of Wales. But there was more to remember about Joan than just her title. She was, in the words of the chronicler Froissart, “la plus belle de tout le royaume d’Engleterre et la plus amoureuse – the most beautiful woman in all the realm of England, and the most loving.” Or to use Henry Dwight Sedgwick’s translation: “the prettiest girl and greatest coquette in England.”

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Rosanne E. Lortz is the author of I Serve: A Novel of the Black Prince. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the Hundred Years' War, I Serve chronicles the story of Sir John Potenhale. A young Englishman of lowly birth, Potenhale wins his way to knighthood on the fields of France. He enters the service of Edward, the Black Prince of Wales, and immerses himself in a stormy world of war, politics, and romantic intrigue. Joan of Kent appears as a supporting character in the novel as Sir John Potenhale serves as the go-between to carry secret messages between his master the Black Prince and the lady he is forbidden to love.

You can learn more about Rosanne's books at her Official Author Website where she also blogs about writing, mothering, and things historical.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barber, Richard. Edward, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine: A Biography of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The Boydell Press, 1978.

_______, trans. and ed. The Life and Campaigns of the Black Prince: from contemporary letters, diaries and chronicles, including Chandos Herald’s Life of the Black Prince. Great Britain: The 

Boydell Press, 1979.

Froissart, Jean. Chronicles. Translated and edited by Geoffrey Brereton. London: Penguin Books, 1978.

Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. The Black Prince. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1993.