Part 19

As difficult a subject as ‘Scutage,’ and one on which less has been written, the origin and character of “cornage” are problems as yet unsolved. The brilliant pen of Professor Maitland has attacked them in a paper on “Northumbrian tenures”;[572] but he cannot tell us more, virtually, than we know already, namely, that the term points to cattle, and is not derived, as Littleton in his ‘Tenures’ and the older antiquaries held, from the service of blowing a horn.

Mr. Hall, however, “hazards” the new and startling theory that the payment known by this name represents a commutation of castle-ward previously due from the drengs and thegns of the Northern marches. For this, it would seem, his only ground is the entry in the ‘Red Book’ of a list of Northumbrian cornage payments in close proximity to lists of castle-ward services. On this slender foundation is built an edifice of guesses, such as distinguishes this strange work from any other in the Rolls Series. They are prefaced, in their order, as usual, thus:

if we might venture to disregard ... we may suspect that ... the impression remains that ... May we not then conjecture that ... it will now be possible to hazard some theory ... It is at least conceivable that ... will perhaps suggest the theory, etc., etc.... (pp. ccxlii.-ccxlviii.).

Rejecting “the accepted definition of cornage as a mere seignorial due in respect of the pasturage of cattle,” Mr. Hall explains that it rests on “a radical misconception,” namely, on “the argument that the references to military service performed by” the Cumberland cornage “tenants are later interpolations in the reign of Edward I.,” whereas, as he observes, they are mentioned in a list of about the end of John’s reign. The criticism is curiously characteristic. For, on turning to Professor Maitland’s paper (p. 629), we find not a hint of “interpolation”; he has merely--misled, no doubt, by the title page of the printed ‘Testa’--mistaken a list of John’s reign for one of “Edward I.’s time.” And, so far from assigning to that period the first mention of this service, he refers us, in the same passage, to its mention in 1238, when, as he actually observes, it “looks like an ancient trait.” The misconception, therefore, is not his, but Mr. Hall’s.

In the manuscript itself we find the ward service of Newcastle and the details of the Northumberland cornage occupying a single page (fo. 195 _d_). But this circumstance, for which I shall account fully below, in no way connects the two. On the contrary, we find eleven territorial units here entered as paying “cornage” in addition to their payments for castle-ward. The two payments, it will be observed, could not both be commutations of the same thing.[573] It is quite clear that, in Cumberland, all who held “per cornagium” were bound, apart from the payment of that due, to march respectively in the van and in the rear when the king was invading or retreating from Scotland, a duty for which they were, obviously, qualified by their local knowledge; but this had absolutely nothing to do with castle-ward, nor is even this special service mentioned in the case of Northumberland. Cornage, from the time we first meet with it, appears in our records as a money payment, not as a military service, and even Mr. Hall admits that the name is derived from horned beasts, unlike the ‘ward penny’ of the south, in which he would seek its parallel, and of which the name leaves us in no doubt as to its nature. The institution of cornage, therefore, is, we shall find, as obscure as ever, although there is some evidence, unknown, it seems, to Professor Maitland as it is to Mr. Hall. Its historical importance is beyond question.

Of the cornage of Northumberland, as recorded in the ‘Red Book,’ the editor writes that “it is of the highest importance to trace its earlier history in the records of the Exchequer.” It can, as he says, be traced back to 1164; but I cannot accept his suggestion as to why it then made its appearance. One must turn, for comparison, to that of Cumberland, concerning which we read as follows:

In each succeeding year-roll, from the beginning of the reign of Henry II., the sheriff of Cumberland had rendered his account for the Neatgild of the county. The amount of this tribute was fixed at £80.... But we have no means of showing how the £80 was made up, because the sheriff answered for it in a lump sum, and no particulars of his account have survived as in the case of the Northumberland list happily preserved in the Red Book.

But this Neatgild (or cornage) can be traced back much further, namely, to the year-roll of 1130, and even earlier. It was £85 8_s._ 8_d._ under Henry I., and over £80 under Henry II.; and details of sums paid in respect of it are duly found, not only in the ‘Red Book’ (pp. 493–4),[574] but also in the ‘Testa de Nevill.’ Moreover, the cornage of Northumberland as well was answered for “in a lump sum,” and this leads me to explain the entry of the Northumbrian lists. Mr. Hall has failed to observe that his manuscript adds up the cornage wrongly, and is even guilty of a further error in asserting that this erroneous total is “xxii den. plus quam alii solebant respondere,” its real excess being £1 1_s._ 10_d._[575] Apart from its obvious bearing on the character and value of the manuscript, this error has misled the editor into stating that the sums entered, “less the pardons of the Prior of Tynemouth and the King of Scots, make up the charge of £20 for the county.” On the contrary, the grand total is £21 3_s._ 10_d._, although the sheriffs were only liable for the “lump sum” of £20. Why is this? It is because Robert “de Insula,” to whom we owe the list, held the shire “ut custos.” This most important Exchequer phrase, which the editor must have overlooked on the roll, can be traced back, at least, as far as 1130. It means that the Crown had put its own man in office, and was thus able to get at the details of the payment, for which the normal sheriff was only liable in a “lump sum.” This is why the opportunity was taken to set these details on record. This explanation applies also to the details of Newcastle ward service immediately preceding the cornage payments. The editor might have learnt from the Pipe Rolls that the sheriff was normally charged, in respect of this payment, with £32 4_s._ 5_d._ gross, and £28 14_s._ 5_d._ net, which latter sum he was entitled to retain for his wardenship of the castle. But Robert, as “custos,” recorded the receipts as amounting to £33, and was consequently called upon in 1267 to account for £4 5_s._ 7_d._(the difference between £33 and £28 14_s._ 5_d._) “de cremento wardarum Novi Castri de anno xlix° sicut recepit.” The entry, therefore, of both lists can be traced to Robert’s position “ut custos” in 49 Hen. III. Lastly, the statement that “the cornage of Westmoreland can also be traced on the rolls, but it was of very trifling value,” seems unfortunate in view of the fact that it was, when it first appears, nearly thrice as large as the whole cornage of Northumberland.

That I may not close with a negative result, I append two remarkable charters from the MS. cartulary of St. Bees, which show us the Cumbrian Noutegeld being actually paid in cows to William earl of Albemarle, as lord of Coupland, which barony was exempt from its payment to the Crown.[576]

Willelmus comes Albemarlie archiepiscopo Ebor[acensi] et capitulo et omnibus matricis ecclesie filiis salutem. Noverit paternitas vestra me dedisse et concessisse deo et sancte Marie et sancte Bege in Copelandia et omnibus (_sic_) vi vaccas in perpetuam elemosinam reddendas anno omni quo meum Noutegeld debuerit fieri. Hanc autem donacionem feci pro animabus omnium antecessorum meorum et antecessorum uxoris mee Cecilie. Testibus, etc....

* * * * *

Willelmus comes Albemarlie omnibus hominibus suis tam futuris quam presentibus salutem. Sciatis quod dedi et presenti carta confirmavi Deo et sancte Marie et sancte Bege et monachis de sancta Bega vi vaccas de meo Nautegeld (_sic_) unoquoque anno, quando accipio Nautegeld in Copuland, etc.[577] ...

Now it is a most interesting fact that in Durham also we find, as in Coupland, a payment in cows (“vaccas de metride”) made by townships in connection with their payment of “cornage.”[578] From the above important charters, it would seem that the two dues went together. In Durham there is a classical passage for the “cornage” proper, quoted by those who have dealt with “cornage,” but not by Mr. Hall. In a charter of Henry I., which I assign to 1128–9, he speaks of “cornagium de Bortona ... _scilicet de unoquoque animali_ ij _d._”[579] This is precisely the source of “cornage” which Mr. Hall desires to “disregard.” And if further proof were needed of the non-identity of “cornage” with castle-ward, it is found in the fact that, as in Northumberland, both dues existed simultaneously in Durham, vills which paid cornage being also liable to provide men for castle-ward (“castlemanni”).[580]

XIV

Bannockburn

As Sir Henry Howorth has so truly observed, in a presidential address to the members of the Archæological Institute, the transition from the chronicle to the record as a source of mediæval history is one of the most striking and hopeful features in recent historical research. And in no respect, perhaps, has the study of original records modified more profoundly the statements of mediæval chroniclers than in the matter of the figures they contain. Dealing with the introduction of knight-service into England, I was led to give some instances in point,[581] and specially to urge that “sixty thousand” occurs repeatedly as a conventional number ludicrously remote from the truth. It is now, I believe, generally accepted that my estimate of about five thousand for the number of knights’ fees in England[582] is nearer the truth than the “sixty thousand” which, in his History, Mr. Green accepted. But we still read in ‘Social England’ (i. 373) that William I. “is believed to have landed ... with at least 60,000 men”; nor did Mr. Freeman himself reject the statement of Orderic that “sixty thousand” men were gathered on Salisbury Plain for the “Mickle Gemót” of August 1, 1086. We who saw, only last summer, the difficulty of there assembling a force scarcely so large, even with all the modern facilities of transport and organization, can realize, more forcibly than ever, the incredibility of the fact.

“Stephen Segrave,” Dr. Stubbs reminds us, “the minister of Henry III., reckoned 32,000 as the number” of knights’ fees; and even so late as 1371, ministers allowed a parliamentary grant to be calculated on the belief that there were 40,000 parishes in England, when there were, as a fact, less than 9,000.[583] So too, as is well known, Fitz Ralph, archbishop of Armagh, declared at Avignon, that at Oxford, in his early days, there were 30,000 students, although it is probable that they cannot have exceeded 3,000 in number.[584] It is even said that Wycliffe doubled Fitz Ralph’s estimate.

There is nothing, therefore, strange in the fact that two centuries and a half after the Norman Conquest, we still find absurd numbers assigned to armies in the field and accepted with thoughtless readiness, even by modern historians. This, we shall see, has been the case, among many other battles, with that of Bannockburn (1314).

The ultimate “authority” for the numbers engaged at this ever memorable fight is Barbour’s Brus. Of Edward that romancer wrote:

He had of fechtaris with hym tha Ane hundreth thousand men and ma And fourty thousand war of tha Armyt on hors, bath hede and hand And zeit of thai war thre thousand With helit hors in-till playn male Till mak the front of the battale And fifty thousand of archerys He had, forouten the hoblerys; With men on fut and small rangale.

In accordance with this statement we read further of the king, that

His folk he delt in battalis ten In ilkane war weill ten thousand.

Of the Scots we are told that:

Of fectand men I trow thai ware Thretty thousand, and sum deill mare

* * * * *

Weill thretty thousand men and ma Mak we four battalis of all thai.

* * * * *

The quethir thai war thretty thousand.

On the English side we have a statement in the ‘Vita Edwardi Secundi.’ It is there asserted, of the host marching on Stirling, that

Erant autem armatorum amplius quam duo milia, excepta peditum turba copiosa.[585]

The same authority states that Bruce

Circiter quadraginta milia hominum secum produxit.... Ibant etiam quasi sepes densa conserti, nec leviter potuit talis turba penetrari.[586]

Let us now see how modern writers have dealt with the numbers present, remembering that the character and issue of the battle turn largely on the vast numbers assigned to the English host.

In the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’ (1886) Dr. Æneas Mackay adopts the traditional view of the English numbers, following Barbour, indeed, blindly:

On 11 June the whole available forces of England, with a contingent from Ireland, numbering in all about 100,000 men, of whom 50,000 were archers, and 40,000 cavalry, were mustered at Berwick.[587]

A far abler and more cautious writer, Mr. Joseph Bain, F.S.A. Scot., in his ‘Calendar of Documents relating to Scotland’ (1887), reckoned that “the whole English army probably did not exceed 50,000.”[588] Against Hailes on the Scottish side, he supports Hume, who, he writes:

founded on the writs enrolled in the _Foedera_, addressed to the sheriffs of twelve English counties, two earls, and five barons for the foot, who numbered in all 21,540. This is undoubtedly good authority, for ... the Patent Rolls of the time are not defective. Contingents from all the English shires were not invariably summoned. In the writs in question the men of the northern and midland counties, which incurred most danger from the Scots, were summoned (p. xx.).

From Mr. Bain I turn to our latest authority, Mr. Oman’s ‘History of the Art of War.’

To the memorable Scottish victory Mr. Oman, as we might expect, devotes special attention (pp. 570–579). He attributes “the most lamentable defeat which an English army ever suffered” to two fatal errors, of which one “was the crowding such a vast army on to a front of no more than two thousand yards” (p. 579). His argument, in detail, is this:

Two thousand yards of frontage only affords comfortable space for 1,500 horsemen or 3,000 foot-soldiers abreast. This was well enough for the main line of the Scottish host, formed in three battles of perhaps 25,000 men in all, _i.e._ eight or nine deep in continuous line. But, allowing for the greater space required for the cavalry, the English were far too many for such a front, with the ten thousand horse and 50,000 or 60,000 foot which they may have mustered.

The result of this fact was that from the very beginning of the battle the English were crowded and crushed together and wholly unable to manœuvre (p. 575).

In his first work (1885) Mr. Oman had adopted “100,000 men” as the number of Edward’s host; in 1895 it had become “an army that is rated at nearly 100,000 men by the chronicler.”[589] In 1898 we learn that “the estimate of a hundred thousand men, which the Scottish chroniclers give, is no doubt exaggerated, but that the force was very large is shown by the genuine details which have come down to us” (p. 573). These “genuine details” prove to be the figures in the ‘Foedera,’ on which Mr. Bain relied. Mr. Oman arrives at his figures thus:

Edward II. had brought a vast host with him.... There have been preserved of the orders which Edward sent out for the raising of this army only those addressed to the sheriffs of twelve English counties, seven Marcher barons, and the Justices of North and South Wales. Yet these account for twenty-one thousand five hundred men, though they do not include the figures of any of the more populous shires, such as Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, or Middlesex. The whole must have amounted to more than 50,000 men (p. 573).

To the numbers of Edward’s host he attaches so great an importance that he gives the details, from Rymer, in a note. I make the total, myself, to be 21,540.[590] It is Mr. Oman’s extraordinary delusion that the other English counties were similarly called on for troops, but that the orders have not been “preserved.” On the strength of this illusion alone he adds some 30,000 men to the English host! A glance at Rymer’s list, as given in his own pages, is sufficient to dispel that illusion. As Mr. Bain correctly implies, the counties called on for troops form a compact group, of which Warwick was the southernmost. Moreover, even within that group, the southern counties were evidently called on for much less than the northernmost, Warwick and Leicester only sending 500 men, while Northumberland and Durham were called on to supply 4,000, as was also Yorkshire. We have only to turn to the ‘Rotuli Scotiæ’[591] for 1314 to learn that the writs originally issued (_i.e._ in March) for the Bannockburn campaign summoned no more than 6,500 men, and these from the counties “beyond Trent” alone.[592] As the peril increased subsequent writs called for a further 6,000 men from these counties, and extended the net so as to obtain 3,000 from Lincolnshire, 500 from Warwickshire and Leicestershire, and 500 from Lancashire (previously omitted); this, with 4,940 men from Wales and its marches, made up the total.

When Edward III. arrayed his host, twenty-five years later, for the French war, he only asked for 500 foot from Northumberland (as against 2,500), and 1,000 from Yorkshire, but from Warwickshire with Leicestershire he exacted 480. These figures speak for themselves. Any one of ordinary intelligence can see that the forces on these two occasions were raised on entirely different principles, Northumberland being called on for five times as many men in 1314 as in 1339, while Warwickshire and Leicester supplied almost as many in the latter as in the former year. And yet Mr. Oman actually makes the comparison himself (p. 593), and prints the numbers in detail for both occasions without any comprehension that this was so. Indeed, he bases on his misapprehension a theory that as, at the later date (1339), the quotas were never more than a third of those demanded for Bannockburn (1314), a comparatively picked force was secured.

We note that the Commissions of Array in the latter year were directed to levy only from about one-third to one-fifth of the numbers which the sheriffs had been told to provide in the former year. They were, of course, individually better in proportion to the greater care which could be taken in selecting them.[593]

We have seen that, on the contrary, in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, the number summoned was almost the same, and that the above theory is, therefore, another delusion. In 1339 the proportion varied from 20 per cent. to 96 per cent. of the numbers summoned in 1314, and did so, as we have seen, on a geographical system. Mr. Oman bases his above assertion on a note in which four lines contain four direct mistakes. It asserts that Yorkshire sent “six thousand,” Lincolnshire “four thousand,” Warwick “five hundred,” and Leicester “five hundred,” in 1314, when the right numbers, as given by himself on page 573 of the same volume, were: Yorkshire _four_ thousand, Lincolnshire _three_ thousand, and Warwick and Leicester _together_ five hundred. The result of this astounding inaccuracy is that he fails to understand the system of these levies in the least.

It is, no doubt, surprising that, after years of study, a writer should produce a work intended to constitute a standard authority on mediæval warfare, in which he has not even grasped so elementary a fact as the raising of English armies, in the 14th century, on geographical principles, and should consequently invent an imaginary host of nearly 30,000 men. Precisely as in 1314, the bulk of the foot for the Scottish expedition were raised from the Northern counties, so in 1345, for the contemplated French expedition, it was from the counties south of the Trent that the infantry (archers) was raised.[594] But it is even more surprising that he should substitute for this system a theory, based on the misquotation of his own figures alone, that, in 1339, we meet with a new system of summoning a comparatively small quota of picked men. It is but a further instance of his grievous lack of accuracy that on page 599 he renders the “homines armati”[595] summoned from the towns as “seventeen hundred archers,” although he prints from Rymer, a few pages earlier, the numbers of the foot summoned in 1339, of whom half are distinguished as archers and half as “armati.”

One would have imagined that the fact of the host being drawn from the northern half of England alone would have been obvious from the dates. The orders from which Mr. Oman takes the numbers demanded were only issued from Newminster on May 27,[596] and ordered a rendezvous of the force at Wark (Northumberland) on June 10. The troops were to be there on that day “armis competentibus bene muniti, ac prompti et parati ad proficiscendum” to the immediate relief of Stirling. The time was desperately short, and haste was enjoined (“exasperes, festines”). Moreover, the English leaders were clearly not such fools as Mr. Oman imagines. The “orders” state that foot are wanted because the Scots

nituntur, quantum possint, ... in locis fortibus et morosis (ubi equitibus difficilis patebit accessus) adinvicem congregare.

Common sense tells one that 60,000 foot could not be manœuvred in such country, and would only prove an encumbrance. Edward, therefore, only summoned less than 22,000. As to his horse, Mr. Oman writes: if the English “had, as is said, three thousand _equites coperti_, men-at-arms on barded horses, the whole cavalry was probably ten thousand” (p. 575). But why? At Falkirk, sixteen years before, Edward I., he writes (p. 565), had

the whole feudal levy of England at his back. He brought three thousand knights on barded horses, and four thousand other men-at-arms.

If 3,000 “barded horses” implied 4,000 other horsemen in 1298, why should they imply 7,000 in 1314? More especially, why should they do so when, as we have seen, the king, in summoning his foot forces, himself described the scene of the campaign as “ubi equitibus difficilis patebit accessus,” so that he was most unlikely to take a large force of cavalry?[597] Estimating the horse on the Falkirk basis, the English host cannot have amounted to more than 30,000 men instead of the 60,000 or 70,000, horse and foot, at which Mr. Oman reckons it.[598]

And what of the Scotch? Let us compare these passages:

The front between the wood There was only something and the marsh was not much slightly more than a mile of more than a mile broad, a space slope between the wood and the not too great to be defended by marshes.... This was well the _forty_[599] thousand men enough for the main line of the whom Bruce had brought Scottish host, formed in three together p. 571). lines of perhaps _twenty-five_ [600] thousand men in all (p. 575).

It is true that the Scottish king had a fourth battle in reserve, but, according to Mr. Oman’s plan, it was no larger than the others, if so large. It would only, therefore, add some 8,000 men to the above 25,000. Where then are the 40,000?