Lord Bergavenny’s illegal retaining revisited, 1501–22^*

Abstract

In December 1507 George Neville, Lord (A)Bergavenny, was fined £70,650 for illegally retaining 471 men between 10 June 1504 and 9 December 1506. This notorious incident has come to be regarded by a number of historians, as well as in popular history and A-level textbooks, as the example par excellence of Henry VII’s attack on, or control of, noble power in general and on early Tudor attitudes to illegal retaining in particular. W. C. Richardson noted that ‘powerful and wealthy nobles were likely to suffer heavy penalties’ and cited Bergavenny, who ‘was a Yorkist and needed watching’.¹ Barbara Harris used Bergavenny’s punishment as evidence of an early Tudor challenge to ‘the fundamental right of the nobility to retain followers’.² Richard Rex argued that as it was nearly impossible for nobles to avoid breaching the 1504 act on retaining, ‘it became a happy hunting ground for a regime keen to impose bonds and recognisances’ and offers as the only example the ‘most notorious bond of the reign, in the sum of £100,000’ on Neville.³ Bergavenny’s fine is a key example in J. R. Lander’s influential article entitled ‘Bonds, Coercion and Fear’, which still shapes the interpretation of the reign, despite the important corrective offered by T. B. Pugh, and the fine is cited in a number of other works on the reign of Henry VII.⁴ Not all historians have followed this approach. A more balanced interpretation has been taken by Steven Gunn, who argues Henry VII’s policy towards retaining was calculatedly divisive: those nobles he trusted were encouraged to retain, while those he did not trust were spectacularly punished, and he cites Bergavenny as the key example of the latter.⁵ Others, most notably George Bernard, have argued against the idea of antagonistic relations between the early Tudor kings and the nobility and emphasized a relationship of mutual dependence and general co-operation, the lack of any generalized attack on noble power, and the continuation of such power and influence under the Tudors.⁶ Taking a different approach, Gordon McKelvie’s recent study on bastard feudalism and the law should change interpretations of Henry VII and illegal retaining in the future. McKelvie has shown that while 44 per cent of king’s bench cases against illegal retaining across the fifteenth century were initiated during Henry VII’s reign, they were not ‘a weapon with which to break the independent power of the secular nobility’; just four peers were indicted in Henry’s reign, compared to nine in Edward IV’s, and it was the gentry who were far more likely to be the subject of proceedings.⁷ Nonetheless, there is considerable value in revisiting both the fine of 1507 and the broader context of Bergavenny’s retaining across a twenty-year period, as a detailed study of this requires historians to change the way they approach this example in particular and Tudor attitudes to noble retaining more generally, given the importance of this case to the interpretive framework.

The outlines of Bergavenny’s life have been traced by historians. He succeeded his father in 1492 and had a turbulent career in national politics, with a number of successes, such as his recovery of his family’s long-lost lordship of Abergavenny, as well as the nadir of imprisonment in the Tower during 1521 after the execution of his father-in-law, Edward, duke of Buckingham, for treason.⁸ Nonetheless, he died, wealthy and respected, in his bed in 1535 in his mid sixties. His local rivalry with the Guildford family, at the centre of his retaining activities and discussed below, has also had attention from historians.⁹ It should be noted, however, that there are lacunae in what is known about Bergavenny, in particular regarding his wealth and landowning, and the subject of this article, the full story of his retaining.

A few historians have offered more nuanced interpretations of the retaining fine and the local rivalries that provoked it, and one or two have even noted the fact that Bergavenny was in trouble a few years earlier than the notorious fine over his illegal retaining.¹⁰ Yet it is only when one puts Bergavenny’s interaction with the illegal retaining statutes into its full context that it becomes apparent that his career is an important corrective to a number of misconceptions about the nobility under the early Tudors. Bergavenny was prosecuted in king’s bench for illegal retaining not once but three times (1503, 1507 and 1516), just once successfully, as well as being the defendant in one private case in star chamber in 1516 related in part to his retaining, and a further prosecution, in what court is unclear, that resulted in a small fine in 1504 for the same crime. Several of his retainers were also simultaneously prosecuted in king’s bench and star chamber in 1505 in a case very close to Bergavenny’s interests, even if he was not a defendant. It is in the context of what happened in 1503–5 and the national politics of the first decade of the sixteenth century that the fine of 1507 should be understood; moreover, whatever it was intended to achieve – whether fiscal or exemplary – it did not succeed. Bergavenny continued his activities in defiance of the retaining statutes, clearly prioritizing his local position over the consequences of breaking the national law, and nor did the fine seriously affect his finances. What follows will not trace Bergavenny’s career in full but will look at his interactions with the law over illegal retaining, and with a particular focus on the prosecutions of 1503 and 1516, as these have been much less studied than that of 1507. That of 1503 in particular is an excellent example of how to stage-manage local proceedings to produce exemplary indictments against a rival and is worthy of attention in its own right, while noble retaining during Henry VIII’s reign and later is rarely studied.¹¹

Bergavenny’s retaining was in pursuance of a rivalry with the Guildford family, Kentish landowners as well as courtiers; Sir Richard Guildford was favoured by Henry VII because of his early association with Margaret Beaufort and Henry Tudor himself before Bosworth, and he held several major offices, including that of controller of the royal household by 1494.¹² Alastair Dunn has suggested that Bergavenny was the dominant figure in West Kent and that the up-thrusting gentry family of the Guildfords showed him ‘none of the respect that a late medieval nobleman would have expected in his “country”’ and placed that within a tradition of such upwardly mobile gentry families causing disruption.¹³ Malcolm Mercer, however, has argued that Kent had been dominated for the preceding decades by a royal affinity and that this affinity was headed by Sir Richard Guildford, ‘who directed affairs in Kent for most of the reign’.¹⁴ It was thus Bergavenny who was the intruding aggressor in a settled political landscape. Both Mercer and Sean Cunningham suggest that the king acquiesced in Bergavenny’s attempts to assert his lordship in the county; if so, his political judgement on this issue can be questioned given the disturbances that arose.¹⁵ It might also be noted, however, that Guildford himself had a limited landed base and serious financial difficulties and was reliant on royal favour for his position as the leading member of the Kentish gentry. This vulnerability was not conducive to stability.¹⁶

Resolving these differing pictures of dominant lord defending his influence or aggressive, assertive baron must rest on an assessment of Bergavenny’s landholding; however, this is a very difficult exercise, given that both his own and his father’s inquisitions post-mortem are no longer extant and there are very few surviving accounts from his own administration.¹⁷ Yet more can be done than has been attempted. His grandfather’s inquisition post-mortem in 1476 noted lands in fifteen counties and Westminster, but recorded income was just £389, while a subsidy assessment of 1524 recorded income of £500.¹⁸ Both were clearly substantial underestimates, as a partial list of Neville’s lands in 1521 noted an annual income of £1,622.¹⁹ However, it can be said with some certainty that the Lords Bergavenny were not dominant Kentish landowners. Various sources record only the manors of Birling, Mereworth (including Old Hay), Ryarsh, Luddesdown, Yalding and West Peckham in the county.²⁰ Birling, surveyed at a clear value of just over £65 in 1522, was Bergavenny’s primary seat and boasted two parks and a substantial residence.²¹ Michael Zell has noted that the majority of the Neville estate lay outside the county – though that should be amended to the vast majority.²²

This is germane to understanding why Bergavenny broke the retaining laws so frequently but has not been discussed by historians. After the statute of 1468 it was lawful to retain only members of a household, (estate) officers and legal counsel by any grant of livery or contract. In practice, not only were the rules irregularly obeyed, but it was easy enough for lords to recruit large followings through expansion of the membership of the household and multiplication of estate offices, as well as through loopholes in the legislation, little emphasized by scholars, such as a grant of an annuity without conditions of service attached or, in fact, being a tenant on a lord’s manor.²³ Normally, lords did not need to resort to such methods as mass distribution of livery badges, cash handouts or verbal oaths for service, as they had sufficient lands within an area to use their own tenants if they needed large numbers of men or they had significant numbers of gentry associates who could raise the manpower. Lordship could rarely be extended in regions where lords had few or no estates or compensatory territorial offices, such as major royal or monastic stewardships.²⁴ Bergavenny had few estates in Kent, yet, resident primarily at Birling in the centre of the county, he found it necessary to try and extend his lordship well beyond what its territorial basis would normally allow.²⁵ Whether this was because of a personal dislike of Sir Richard Guildford, a belief that his superior social status entitled him to local dominance or another motive cannot now be constructed in the absence of any direct evidence of his reasons. It might be noted, though, that Bergavenny’s grandfather, Edward, was bound over to the king for the considerable sum of 4,000 marks in 1476 on condition that he and his servants do no damage to William Culpeper of Aylesford, Kent, esquire.²⁶ Clearly, the issue was not new for the Bergavenny family in the first few years of the sixteenth century, and nor were the methods used by the family to try and overcome the problem. In the imposition of a substantial recognizance to enforce good behaviour, Edward IV’s actions in 1476 also show the continuity of one type of response by the crown to such disorderly actions, both with Lancastrian kings and with Henry VII’s regime.

It is important to note that other kings besides Henry VII were prepared to act against members of the nobility if significant disorder or violence occurred as a result of illegal retaining. Edward IV’s 1468 retaining statute was probably in response to the murder of Roger Vernon of Haddon, Derbyshire, in which the retainers of peers were implicated, and it was used to indict the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk in 1469.²⁷ Henry VIII and Cardinal Wolsey acted to contain the serious disturbances between Lord Hastings and the marquess of Dorset in Leicestershire in 1525 through the use of the statutes.²⁸ Such decisions were political, as was the extent to which a verdict was pushed through. Edward IV did not do so against the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, as both fought for him in the civil war of 1469–71. Henry VIII took a surprisingly lenient line with both Leicestershire peers in 1525. Henry VII has the reputation of not being so lenient, given Bergavenny’s fine and the equally spectacular one imposed on James Stanley, bishop of Ely, in 1506; yet these were just as political and, as will be seen with the former case, leniency was also applied.²⁹

The legal processes begun against Bergavenny in the early summer of 1503 were complex and carefully orchestrated. They were also initiated and carried forward, it should be noted, by his local rivals, the Guildford family, albeit in co-operation with others, and thus need to be treated with some caution. They followed a warning in the form of a royal proclamation against retaining sent to the sheriffs of Kent and Sussex, Sir Richard Guildford and Thomas Iden, and the bailiff of the hundreds of Milton and Marden in Kent in March 1502.³⁰ There survives in the king’s bench indictment file for the Trinity term of 1503 a total of twenty-two documents relating to Bergavenny’s alleged illegal retaining, comprising one writ ordering the indictments to be sent to king’s bench, one precept to the sheriff by the justices of the peace (J.P.s), six jury panels and fourteen indictments.³¹ All fourteen indictments were, highly unusually, signed by the presiding J.P.s, headed by Sir Richard Guildford and also including his son, Edward Guildford, and William Fyneux, brother of Sir John Fyneux, chief justice of king’s bench since 1495, as well as a Kentish J.P. and landowner.³²

The orchestrated nature of the proceedings is evident in that Sir John Fyneux was initially omitted from the list of J.P.s to whom the writ ordering return of indictments was sent and who were said to have held sessions at Goudhurst in Kent on 16 June 1503. He was then added in an interlineation as the first named J.P; this was because he witnessed the writ, issued on 21 June at Westminster, as well as endorsing it as the responding J.P.³³ However, Fyneux was not named as being present at the sessions in any of the other documents in the file. It may well be that there was communication between William Fyneux and/or Richard Guildford and the chief justice about how to proceed, and that the rather unusual nature of the indictments and the process followed was a result of consultation with him. One of the jury panels contains a note that certain jurors were to be amerced, subject to the discretion of the J.P.s and the agreement of Fyneux and Sir Robert Rede, another justice of king’s bench.³⁴ Fyneux may thus have been consulted on the amercement officially and perhaps the form of the indictments unofficially. While Fyneux was a Kentish landowner, his residence and estates were in East Kent, and his interests focused on Canterbury. He seems to have been acting here on behalf of the king rather than because of a direct connection with the Guildfords.³⁵

The sessions at Goudhurst on 16 June 1503 were complicated. Four presenting juries were summoned to sit on the one day. One dealt with an alleged concealment by a previous jury, while three, representing groups of hundreds, endorsed as billa vera (true bills) duplicate sets of four or five indictments each.³⁶ Each of the latter group of indictments dealt with a different set of accusations of retaining, varying in the retainers named, the length of time they had been retained (some for four months but mostly for seventeen months) and who swore them into the lord’s service, with Bergavenny himself doing so at Birling, while his brother, John Neville, and the former’s servant William Smith did so at Goudhurst.³⁷ The seventy-eight named men were mainly of yeomen status from West Kent villages, though there were also three gentlemen, including Edward Culpeper of Aylesford and Robert Gaynesford of Addington, both of whom are named in later sources in connection with Bergavenny. The groups of bills are generally identical to each other, with only very occasional differences in the contents. Each indictment was signed by the J.P.s. There are minor variations in who signed which indictment for reasons that are not clear, though the key players, such as the two knights, Guildford and Sir John Darell, as well as Edward Guildford and William Fyneux, signed all.³⁸

The remaining material in the bundle was an indictment of a jury that had been sworn in at a session at Yalding in Kent – a manor owned by Bergavenny – on 23 May 1503 before John, Lord Clinton, Sir Edward Poynings and William Head (the only J.P. to preside at both this session and the indictments of Bergavenny at Goudhurst).³⁹ The jury at Yalding were indicted for returning a false verdict regarding Robert Tykhill, gentleman, and nineteen others of Goudhurst and Horsmonden, who had riotously assembled and lain in wait to attack the king’s subjects on his highway; they were also said to have been illegally retained by Bergavenny.⁴⁰ The Yalding jurors were amerced for concealing the crime under the statute of the 1487 Westminster parliament, which is better known as the Star Chamber Act, but which, somewhat incongruously, included provision that J.P.s could inquire into concealments and amerce at their discretion.⁴¹

The proceedings at Goudhurst achieved their initial aim with some alacrity. Just five days later, as noted above, a writ was issued from Westminster, witnessed by Sir John Fyneux, ordering copies to be sent into king’s bench, and the same term summaries were written onto the king’s bench controlment roll, the record of crown pleas in the court.⁴²

To summarize this process, we have a singularly detailed set of indictments, triplicated by use of multiple juries, initiated by well-connected courtiers, facilitated (probably) by the chief justice of king’s bench, against a lord who was not in particular favour at court, in the reign of a king who is usually said to have been suspicious of noble power. All this should have led to an exemplary prosecution. Instead, despite all these advantages, the prosecution failed utterly. The next step in the process would normally have been a hearing in king’s bench, probably in the Michaelmas term of 1503. But there was no hearing in king’s bench until Easter term 1505, when Bergavenny appeared and produced a pardon dated 6 December 1503; all the others accused were also released sine die, without further process, that same term.⁴³ The reasons for the failure of this prosecution are bound up in two further prosecutions of Bergavenny and his men in 1503–4.

Another case was initiated by the Guildfords against Bergavenny’s servants in the spring of 1503, in both star chamber and king’s bench simultaneously; the former has been printed in full.⁴⁴ This was initiated by a bill by George Guildford, son of Sir Richard, against a number of servants of Bergavenny and unnamed others, ‘all which Riotouse persons with many other lyke be unlawfully reteignyd by the seid lorde & at his pleasur & comaundment’.⁴⁵ There was some overlap with those named in king’s bench, notably Robert Gainsford, gentleman, Robert Tykhill, gentleman, and William Smith, yeoman, who was named as Bergavenny’s retaining agent in several of the indictments. George Guildford alleged that he had been holding the manorial court at Aylesford in Kent, where he was steward, on 14 April, when Gainsford and twenty-six others entered the court, attacked Guildford and his servants – Guildford alleged he was saved from death only by the bar of the court, while one of his servants was grievously wounded – and the court was broken up. They also alleged that a week later Bergavenny’s retainers to the number of one hundred disrupted the fair at Maidstone. The defendants in response alleged that in fact Guildford and his servants had attacked them as they passed the court house, noted earlier incidents and generally threw the blame back onto the Guildford faction. Guildford’s replication restated his position, and there were a number of depositions submitted providing detailed testimony to support the original accusations. What has not been noticed is that there was a simultaneous king’s bench case launched for the same alleged assaults at Aylesford by Gaynesford et al.⁴⁶ Bergavenny was not a defendant or directly accused in either court. It is highly likely that the star chamber case did not reach a conclusion because the king’s bench case did. In the latter court, both sides pleaded just as in the star chamber bill, answer and replication, though rendered into the formulaic Latin of the common law, and damages of £100 were claimed by George Guildford.⁴⁷ An initial guilty verdict was passed by a jury in Kent, presumably under a nisi prius. This was then overturned and the jurors found guilty of taking a false oath, while George Guildford was found guilty of embracery. He was bound over in December 1505 alongside Alexander Culpeper, John Gage and William Cromer to pay 800 marks ‘for the fine made for the [in]quest peruired in Kentt’.⁴⁸ Given almost all of the prosecutions against Bergavenny were by the Guildford family or based on their information it is tempting but misleading to see them as the innocent or injured party throughout their rivalry with Bergavenny; the fine for embracery clearly demonstrates that the Guildfords were just as capable of illegal behaviour.

There was, however, action taken against Lord Bergavenny in autumn 1503, just not for any of the actions for which he had been indicted in king’s bench. The obligation section of Henry VII’s chamber book records that ‘lorde Bergeyveney & Edward Ferys er bounden in ij obligacions to pay l li at Ester & l li at halotide for his Retynder’.⁴⁹ The entry is not precisely dated, but the nearest heading in the main text, 1 November 1503, is a couple of folios earlier, and the entry relating to Bergavenny is likely to have been made within a few weeks of this.⁵⁰ The wording does not give complete clarity, but ‘retainder’ here is likely to be the giving of a token or badge to signify the agreement to retain and be retained, though it might also relate to an oath or the payment of a fee, and that both the lord giving a badge or fee and the person who accepted it were fined. A marginal notation in the chamber book notes that the two payments of £50 were received on 16 May and 3 November 1504, respectively.

Edward Ferrers was the son and heir of Sir Henry Ferrers, sheriff of Kent in 1487–8 and a Kentish landowner. Henry died in 1500, and Edward was in his mid thirties at the date of the offence. Edward’s early interests were Kentish, and he held land in Brenchley, close to the epicentre of the Bergavenny/Guildford dispute.⁵¹ Ferrers was a much more substantial member of the gentry than any of the gentlemen named in the king’s bench indictment. He was also by this stage in the crown’s service. As early as September 1500 he was among the witnesses to the surrender of the great seal by the executors of Cardinal Morton and he was an esquire in the royal household by early 1503, having robes provided to him for Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.⁵² From early in 1503 to March 1504 he was, alongside Richard Empson, James Hobart, Edward Poynings and others, involved in transactions by which Bergavenny sold land in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire to Westminster Abbey for the endowment of Henry VII’s chapel there.⁵³ The fact that Edward Ferrers was a member of the royal household would explain the substantial fine – Henry VII had issued a number of statutes and ordinances forbidding the retaining of royal tenants by anyone other than a member of the royal family, and the retaining of a member of his household would have been more serious and not to be tolerated.⁵⁴

Ferrers was not named in the king’s bench indictments of summer 1503. It seems likely that his connection with Bergavenny was not known at this stage by the Guildfords. It was also handled in a different way. There was no king’s bench prosecution against either Ferrers or Bergavenny, nor indeed can any extant legal prosecution in any form be located. It is most likely that, given the household connection, it was heard before the royal council or the council learned, whose records have survived extremely patchily for this date.⁵⁵ While it may have been equally illegal, Ferrers was in a different category to the Kentish gentlemen, yeomen and labourers and was treated differently. The fine did not end the connection between the two men: Bergavenny’s servant received money on Ferrers’ behalf during the French campaign of 1513 and they were both jointly seized of property in Kent in 1530.⁵⁶

It seems most likely that in paying his fine of £100 in relation to the Ferrers case Bergavenny and Henry VII agreed that this would suffice to end both the king’s bench case against him. Certainly, the pardon he pleaded in king’s bench dated 6 December 1503 covered all retaining offences against the statute before 2 December and is very close in date to the Ferrers fine of the previous month.⁵⁷ The hanaper account merely notes a payment of 16s 4d for a special pardon.⁵⁸ There is no evidence at all of any other payment by him around this date, and the evidence of punitive fines, secured by obligations and recognizances, survives very fully at this date in the records of the king’s chamber, the close rolls and other supporting material.⁵⁹ Historians have assumed he was fined as a result of the star chamber case and have linked the sale of his lands in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire to Westminster Abbey as either a way to clear a debt to the king or as a way of regaining his favour.⁶⁰ Yet given that he was not a defendant in the star chamber or the king’s bench case initiated by George Guilford, that there is no evidence of a verdict, let alone a fine, in the star chamber case, and the sale of lands was on generous terms – Bergavenny probably received in the region of £1,300 for lands sold worth £64 p.a., that is, at least twenty years’ purchase price⁶¹ – this is highly unlikely. The idea of a fine can clearly be ruled out on other evidence as well: the initial grant of the manors by Bergavenny to the abbey was in 1502 and legal process in the sale began in Hilary term 1503, before either the star chamber or king’s bench cases had been initiated. Given they were outlying estates the sale might well have been entirely voluntary. The evidence suggests very strongly that for two cases in two different courts in 1503–5, and another case pursued in one of these and one other court at the same time, Bergavenny received just a £100 fine: this should be categorized as a minor sanction by the king. One might also imagine a warning not to continue with these activities. It shows a considerable degree of leniency of behalf of the king, who effectively condoned all illegal retaining activities except the retaining of an esquire of the royal household. It also explains – in part – why the sequel in 1507 was so different.

Bergavenny’s position was strengthened during 1505–6 by the collapse in the position of his local rival, Sir Richard Guildford. Guildford was chronically impecunious and was arrested in June 1505 for a debt owed to one of Bergavenny’s servants. The following month he was investigated for his failure to account as master of the ordnance and the armoury between 1486 and 1492. Proceedings were initiated by Edmund Dudley, and it is not impossible that Bergavenny colluded with the king’s agent in this.⁶² Guildford lost his household offices (other than his position as knight of the body) and while he was pardoned in April 1506, this was the end of his public career; he obtained licence to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and died there in September 1506.⁶³

Despite the fine of 1503 for retaining Ferrers, Bergavenny remained in favour with the king, who stayed with him at Birling on 29–30 July 1504.⁶⁴ However, problems were brewing for him too, not as a result of what was happening in Kent but because of national, dynastic politics. The leading Yorkist claimant to the throne, Edmund de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, was handed over to Henry in April 1506 by representatives of Archduke Philip, as a result of his fortuitous shipwreck in England in January 1506, which allowed Henry VII to impose terms. Polydore Vergil stated that on evidence provided by the interrogation of Edmund, Bergavenny was imprisoned – although he was later released as the evidence had proved unreliable. It is not clear whether this related to recent connections between Neville and de la Pole or, perhaps more likely, to events in 1497. In June 1506 an Oxfordshire jury recited a story rich in improbable detail concerning a conversation and actions between Suffolk and Bergavenny on 13 June 1497, a few days before the battle of Blackheath, when the royal army defeated the Cornish rebellion. A royal messenger allegedly disturbed Suffolk and Bergavenny in bed together at Suffolk’s residence of Ewelme, Oxfordshire. Bergavenny hid under the covers, and when the messenger was gone, Bergavenny allegedly asked Suffolk the potentially treasonous words ‘yf a man will doo aught what will ye doo now it ys tyme?’ Suffolk’s response was to hide Bergavenny’s shoes to ensure he did not join the rebels, while he rode off to join the king.⁶⁵ Shoes notwithstanding, Bergavenny served in the king’s army at Blackheath against the rebels on 17 June, and indeed it would be surprising if he had not been with the king by 13 June. The indictment of 1506 seems to have been thoroughly orchestrated. The presenting jury in this case was exclusively made up of gentry – two knights, eight esquires and six gentlemen – which was extremely unusual. It may have been this rather than Bergavenny’s 1507 retaining fine that Edmund Dudley referred to in his petition of 1509 rehearsing the victims of Henry VII’s injustice of which he had been one of the chief agents. Item fourteen in Dudley’s list noted that ‘the Lord Abergeny had a very sore end, for any prooffe that was against him to my knowledge’.⁶⁶ Henry had already effectively condoned Bergavenny’s illegal retaining before 1506 and his activities on this front for which he was prosecuted in the following year did not suffer from a lack of proof. That it related to these stories regarding potential treason – far more lacking in proof – can be conjectured from further circumstantial evidence, a number of bonds taken in December 1507 that related to Bergavenny’s allegiance and not the payment of the fine for retaining.⁶⁷ Bergavenny was also one of the few nobles bound over in 1492 after the end of the French campaign to return to the king’s allegiance, in his case for £400, which suggests some concern rather earlier, though why is unclear.⁶⁸ There was not that great a chronological gap between the summer of 1506, when the indictment regarding Bergavenny’s conversations with Suffolk was made, any subsequent imprisonment and December 1506, the date at which process probably started against Bergavenny’s mass retaining.⁶⁹ Concerns regarding Bergavenny’s loyalty may well have remained in the mind of the king or his advisors while they ordered evidence to be gathered relating to a crime that could be more easily proved in court than a decade-old conversation. Obviously, the linking of the fine and Dudley’s admission regarding lack of proof to treason rather than illegal retaining is speculative but it is certainly feasible.⁷⁰

Thus, the enormous fine, for which Bergavenny is as famous as a second rank late medieval nobleman can be, came at the end of four years of legal processes, all of which had ceased, treasonable accusations and obscure political manoeuvrings. It was certainly not part of a consistent crackdown on illegal retaining. The proceedings that ended in the fine began with two indictments made by the same jury on 13 January 1507 at Maidstone, both before Sir John Fyneux, Sir Robert Rede, Sir Thomas Bourgchier, Sir Edward Poynings, Edward Guildford, William Fyneux and eleven other J.P.s, a significant proportion of a very large county bench.⁷¹ These two indictments were summoned into king’s bench by writs witnessed by Sir John Fyneux on 30 January and 3 February, respectively, and were delivered there in person by Fyneux as a named J.P.⁷² A third indictment was taken much later, in July 1507, at Dartford, before Sir John Fyneux, Edward Guildford and two other J.P.s, which added the names of five more men; this might be considered a tidying up exercise.⁷³ Full pleadings were entered in the Coram Rege roll for Michaelmas 1507.⁷⁴ In the three indictments Bergavenny was accused of retaining 277, 189 and 5 men, respectively, a total of 471, from 10 June 1504 at Birling until 6 December 1506, a period of thirty months, and binding them to do whatever he commanded, on foot and mounted, lawfully and unlawfully.⁷⁵ The Coram Rege roll records that Bergavenny appeared in court in late October and pleaded guilty to the charges as laid down, for which he was fined, according to the rates laid down in the 1504 statute, of £5 per man per month, £41,550, £28,350 and £750, respectively, for the three indictments – £70,650 in total.

The 471 men retained here are of course a huge increase on the seventy-eight men named in the indictments of June 1503. There was, in fact, some significant overlap – fifty-four names appear in both 1507 and one or both of the 1503 king’s bench and star chamber cases. Six gentlemen were named in both, as was Thomas Brodebrigge, described as a yeoman in 1503 but a gentleman in 1507. John Johnson, described as Bergavenny’s household servant in 1503 was presumably the identically named yeoman of Shorne in 1507.⁷⁶ Of the rest, the vast majority of yeomen status, there was a considerable focus around Maidstone, Aylesford, Dartford, Gravesend, as well as further east towards Tonbridge. There were a number from Goudhurst and Horsmonden, the foci of the struggle in 1503. Assuming the indictment was accurate Bergavenny had recruited from a wide area of Western and central Kent; Mercer has calculated they were drawn from eighty-six towns and villages.⁷⁷ Such a retinue would give Bergavenny followers in most parishes and small urban centres, provide an information network, and grant him sufficient manpower to use aggressively or defensively if required, in addition to his own tenants at Birling and the few other manors he held in Kent; none of those named in the indictment were from Neville’s estates as their service was legal. One important aspect to illegal retaining has been little commented on, and that is the way such retaining cut across tenurial structures. Tenants of other lords, such as the bishop of Rochester, and county gentry were drawn to Bergavenny. This might be one reason why both houses of parliament were prepared to pass bills against illegal retaining by mass distribution of livery or other short-term means during the later middle ages; it might adversely affect all landowners.

Cameron has argued that the ‘whole business was contrived for appearance’s sake and needed Bergavenny to admit his guilt so that detailed bargaining could begin. The ease with which guilt was admitted suggests the threat of a greater charge, and Dudley’s statement that no charge was proved against him is correct, in that the case was stopped by a privy seal writ before it came to judgement’.⁷⁸ There are a number of problems with Cameron’s judgement. While he may well be right that there was a greater charge – of treason – in the background, on a technical level, the case did not need to come to judgement as Bergavenny admitted his guilt. Moreover, to dismiss the case as ‘contrived’ and to assume that Bergavenny had to plead guilty or the case would fail is problematic. While the timing was, perhaps, contrived, in that a prosecution could have been launched earlier than it was, as well as restricting the period of retaining to dating after the 1504 statute, there is nothing implausible in the accusation that Bergavenny was illegally retaining on a massive scale across much of Kent in pursuit of victory over his local rivals. The fact that many but not all of the 1503 names were included in 1507 suggests detailed evidence gathering and gives an impression of accuracy rather than being invented for political purposes as Cameron suggests. Many of the men – Robert Gaynesford, Edward Culpeper, Robert Tykhill and William Smith for example – appear in so many sources for Bergavenny’s activities that their connections to the lord are highly likely. Perhaps we should take Bergavenny’s admission of guilt at face-value. Given he had received an earlier fine regarding Ferrers and had escaped other prosecutions, he must have known that the king was unlikely to back down this time and admitting guilt was sensible, not least if he was guilty as charged. The chamber books add the interesting detail that he confessed his crimes before the chief justices of king’s bench and of common pleas, which suggests a meeting outside of the formal environs of the court of king’s bench in Westminster Hall itself.⁷⁹

The close rolls managed to inflate the fine to ‘£100,000 or thereabouts’ rather than the precise sum of £70,650 specified in king’s bench, but either way the sum was, of course, beyond any individual’s means to pay.⁸⁰ Bergavenny submitted himself to the king’s grace, and on 24 December the enormous fine was commuted to an annual payment of £500 for ten years and he was forbidden to enter Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, where his principal estates and residences lay, without the king’s licence.⁸¹ There is no way of knowing whether such licence was asked for or given, or indeed whether he simply ignored the restriction. The annual payment was heavy but not insupportable on a substantial income, precisely as Henry VII would have wanted it. Bergavenny paid only two instalments of the fine, the second on 11 March 1509, six weeks before the king’s death, and the fine and any remaining debt were explicitly cancelled by Henry VIII on 21 July 1509.⁸² It is, of course, a matter of speculation whether the annual payment of £500 and closer scrutiny of his actions would have discouraged Bergavenny had Henry VII lived longer than he did. Perhaps he would have lain low until Henry’s death, however long that was, rather than risk further fiscal punishment. Equally the Guildford family needed some time to recover after the death of Sir Richard in 1506 – it was not until 1516 that the next recorded bout of trouble erupted – and therefore Bergavenny might not have needed to act illegally to maintain his local position for some time.

What has not been sufficiently emphasized are the financial and landed benefits granted to Bergavenny between 1508 and 1512, which are remarkable in the context of the fine. Even Henry VII did not appear to hold Bergavenny’s crime against him; just two months after the imposition of the fine, on 21 February 1508, Neville was formally granted two manors in Suffolk, previously held by Edmund de la Pole, in tail male, with all issues from the preceding six years – a grant on paper worth approximately £800.⁸³ Henry VIII not only pardoned him the fine but granted Bergavenny his family’s long-lost lordship of Abergavenny, with castle and town, worth at least £280 annually in December 1512.⁸⁴ Solely in financial terms, Bergavenny paid £1,000 of the fine to the crown, but over the five years after the fine received lands worth more than £310 annually (purchased on the open market, this would have cost him over £6,000 at a standard twenty years’ purchase price). This he achieved while inflicting a defeat on his local opponents.

The reasons for the reversal of fortune relate to Henry VIII’s need to disassociate himself from his father’s deeply unpopular regime and his priorities regarding warfare with France; Bergavenny was likely to be a significant contributor to any such war, as so it proved. Ironically, he was granted a licence in August 1512 ‘to retain as many men as he can get in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey or elsewhere’, to whom ‘he shall give … badges, tokens or liveries as he thinks convenient’.⁸⁵ Bergavenny recruited widely, significantly improved his status in Kent by being, in the words of a royal grant ‘deputed to lead the shire to resist the French king’ by Henry VIII, and in 1513 he brought the joint largest retinue to the invasion of France.⁸⁶ That he was high in royal favour during this period is evident in the fact that he was elected to the Order of the Garter, being installed at St. George’s day in 1513. Henry VIII stayed with Bergavenny in 1513 and 1515 at Birling.⁸⁷

Bergavenny’s third brush with the laws against illegal retaining in 1516 therefore needs a little explanation, given royal favour over the preceding few years and the general receding of political and dynastic tensions with the accession of Henry VIII. The answer lies in the fact the initiative seems to have come from Cardinal Wolsey not the king; Wolsey was prepared to entertain allegations against Bergavenny and several other noblemen at this time and it certainly had much more to do with the Cardinal’s agenda than the king’s. On 2 May 1516 Wolsey delivered an impressive oration before the king and a large gathering of councillors, decrying ‘enormityes usuallye exercized in this his Realme to the derogacion of indifferent Justice’ and announcing measure for the redress and reformation of this situation’.⁸⁸ On 8 June a correspondent of the earl of Shrewsbury was informed by the king’s solicitor that the marquis of Dorset, Lord Hastings, Sir Richard Sacheverell (Hastings’ father-in-law), Lord Bergavenny and Sir Edward Guildford were to be prosecuted in king’s bench. There were, as George Bernard pointed out, political overtones to these actions: by 31 May the marquess of Dorset, the earl of Surrey and Lord Bergavenny had been expelled from the council.⁸⁹ The reference to Guildford is probably an error, as a case in star chamber against Bergavenny, immediately prior to the king’s bench prosecution against him, was initiated by Guildford; there is also no evidence of a prosecution in king’s bench of Guildford in the controlment roll of that year.⁹⁰ While Wolsey’s flagship law and order policy might be responsible for the timing of the set of indictments, again, however, we should not discount the possibility that Bergavenny was breaking the law, in one way or another, given significant evidence against him; the context was yet again to do with the Bergavenny-Guildford rivalry.

The star chamber documents are undated but Guy has argued that Wolsey compelled Guildford to inform against Bergavenny, which would date the document to 1516, and this seems likely.⁹¹ Guildford’s colourful accusations decry the activities of a number of Bergavenny’s men, including William Waller, gentleman, who was accused of being Bergavenny’s recruiting agent and William More, gentleman, was allegedly retained by being given a 5 mark annuity by Neville.⁹² Bergavenny was accused of illegally retaining these men and thirty-eight others, and they for wearing his badges. It also notes specific blandishments offered to men by his agents, both of cash – 40s annually seemed to be going rate for a yeoman – clothing and occasional other benefits. One John Wardaker was told that ‘yf he wold be retayned to the said lord he shold a byde at home and not be charged to goo ouer see with the king’.⁹³ The document throws in a few other crimes (gaol-breaking, illegal imprisonment) in the context of a particular incident in Cranbrook for good measure and alleges that Bergavenny intended ‘to haue the substaunce of the hole shire of Kent reteyned vnto hym’ by virtue of having obtained the stewardship of the franchises of the archbishop of Canterbury.⁹⁴ A limited response by Bergavenny to an interrogatory concerning some of these accusations also survives, noted as being taken before Wolsey and others of the king’s council.⁹⁵ In it Bergavenny flatly denied that he had retained any of the named men contrary to the form of any statute, denied that he had retained any men as steward of the archbishop of Canterbury and rejected accusations of other crimes at Cranbrook by rehearsing a very different story to that told by Guildford. There the star chamber case seems to have rested; Wolsey, presumably having made his point in having Bergavenny answer charges before the council, must have been content for the case regarding illegal retaining to be handed over to, or continued in, king’s bench.⁹⁶

On 8 July the king’s attorney general, John Ernley, submitted a bill of information to king’s bench accusing Bergavenny of illegally retaining two gentlemen and forty-two others on 20 May 1515 until 8 July 1516. Thirty-two were described as resident in Cranbrook, where the alleged violence took place, which was significant as Guildford owned land there, which demonstrates both Bergavenny’s ascendancy and his aggressive retaining tactics.⁹⁷ On 11 July Bergavenny and the rest of the defendants appeared by their attorney and denied the charges. Two defendants, John Fisher and William More, alleged that they were household servants of Bergavenny. Given Fisher has been named in 1503 as his servant and even Guildford’s star chamber bill called him a household servant of Neville, this defence seems genuine.⁹⁸ Two more, William Lynde senior and junior, argued that they were of the mistery of carpenters and had been paid £27 to undertake works at Birling over the previous couple of years. That Bergavenny had retained the rest he and they flatly denied. Ernley reiterated the charges and process continued. There was a postponement until Hilary term 1517, and the Coram Rege roll simply notes that process was respited until 30 June 1522, some six years after the initial indictment, when Bergavenny appeared in person to plead a pardon. The pardon had been acquired on 29 March 1522 primarily for misprision of treason in conjunction with the downfall of his father-in-law, the duke of Buckingham, in 1521, but it also specifically included actions pending against Bergavenny in king’s bench for retaining against the statute by information of Sir Edward Guildford.⁹⁹

This process shares a number of similarities with proceedings in 1503–5. Charges in king’s bench were laid by the crown over retaining a small number of men, based on information brought by a local opponent, and that alongside the king’s attorney general, there may have been influential support – arguably the chief justice of king’s bench in 1503–5 and Wolsey in 1516 – yet despite this, both cases got nowhere, languishing until a pardon was acquired. While Bergavenny specifically included the case in his pardon in 1522, that must have been a matter of convenience. Having been released from imprisonment in the Tower for misprision of treason, the king’s bench case was not significant. The contrast of both of these actions with that of 1507, when, as Gunn has pointed out, it was surely Henry VII who drove the prosecution, is stark.¹⁰⁰

More than one historian has linked Bergavenny’s retaining in 1507 with the substantial retinues that he led to France in 1513 and 1515, comprising 521 and 984 men, respectively, with J.P. Cooper noting that this illustrated the crown’s dilemma: ‘if it wanted military force at its disposal it could not destroy retaining altogether’.¹⁰¹ While Cooper may well be right in general terms, using Bergavenny as an example here is rather problematic. Bergavenny’s huge group of retainers named in the king’s bench prosecutions was not, unlike many magnate affinities, multi-purpose; it was not for foreign war and domestic service, for display and for county governance. It was designed solely to dominate Kentish local society and defeat a local rival for county supremacy.¹⁰² This can be illustrated by reference to Bergavenny’s 1513 retinue. Of the 486 men in his retinue below the rank of captain or demi-lance, just fifty-nine were paid conduct money to return to Birling. While these may represent a small fraction of Bergavenny’s Kentish retainers, they are rather more likely to represent Bergavenny’s household. Of the rest, 287 returned to Abergavenny, forty to Lewes, forty to Bury St Edmunds and twenty each to Walsingham, Colchester and Ipswich.¹⁰³ This reflects Bergavenny’s important clusters of estates in Sussex, East Anglia and his new-acquired lordship of Abergavenny – as well as his comparative lack of estates in Kent. His 1513 retinue thus represented his tenants not his retainers. The retinue of 1515 also bears little resemblance to the 1507 retainers. Totalling 984 men, it was comprised of a number of sub-retinues, only one of which was obviously related to Bergavenny’s retaining in Kent, in addition to his own contribution of 125 men, which again reflected his household and tenantry.¹⁰⁴ Beyond formal retinues for foreign campaigns, while it might be objected that Bergavenny’s retaining might play a role in local defence in the case, for example, of a French raid, not only was Bergavenny’s retinue so scattered across the county it could not be a quick response force, it would have been the duty of every able-bodied man to defend the county, arranged by local constables, and Bergavenny, alongside Lords Clinton and Cobham, would have led county levies in such a case on the basis of their superior social status. The lack of overlap between the domestic retaining and the military retinues is evident. They were clearly built for different purposes; the former, in lieu of a major landed base, short-term, for service in Bergavenny’s Kentish disputes and not otherwise, the latter comprising his tenantry and thus longer-term because it was based on his estates, for overseas military service. It makes the lack of concerted and sustained royal action against a retinue designed to break the law in 1503–5 and 1516 even more striking. It is also a reminder, if one was needed, that magnate power was not always used benignly. While historians have, rightly, stressed the importance of lordship in late medieval society, that bastard feudalism was not the disruptive force it used to be portrayed as, and the fundamental co-operation of crown and nobility, Bergavenny’s actions serve as an example that emphasize the complexity of the picture.¹⁰⁵ Using the retaining method most criticized by contemporaries – the mass distribution of livery – for ends that really benefitted only himself, and which did create some disorder, arguably Henry VII between 1503 and 1505 and Henry VIII and Wolsey in 1516 were over-lenient towards Bergavenny.

Henry VII effectively condoned Bergavenny’s illegal retaining in Kent in 1503–5; two cases in king’s bench and star chamber ended without verdict, while a further king’s bench case against his retainers ultimately ended with their acquittal and a fine for the Guildfords. This sits in uneasy juxtaposition with the unprecedented fines imposed on Bergavenny in 1507 and the £145,000 imposed on James Stanley, bishop of Ely, in 1506, for retaining. The difference is surely in the political relationships. In 1503–5 Bergavenny was not under suspicion of treason; by the time of his fine in 1507 after the indictment linking him to de la Pole, he was. In 1506 James Stanley was struggling to aid the inexperienced new earl of Derby keep the Stanley affinity together in the teeth of royal suspicion since the execution of Sir William Stanley in 1495. His uncle, Edward Stanley, Lord Monteagle, at odds with the new earl and being courted by the king, was bound over for just £200 for retaining offences four months earlier.¹⁰⁶

Such political fines did have precedents. King John had imposed a 50,000 mark fine on Matilda de Briouze, Henry III attempted to impose a fine of 100,000 marks on Robert de Ros (though the intervention of the council reduced it to 1,00 marks), while a fine of £50,000 was levied on the earl of Derby in 1269 for him to recover his lands. On a lesser scale but less chronologically distant to Henry VII’s reign, Richard II fined the city of London £10,000 in 1392.¹⁰⁷ Even in terms of dealing with local disorder, other kings used similar methods: the three principals involved in disorder in Shropshire in 1413 were bound over for more than £14,000 and all had to find sureties, who also submitted substantial recognizances.¹⁰⁸ Henry VII was thus not unique in the application of such large fines, though he was certainly at the extreme end of the spectrum; his use of retaining laws was novel compared to other fifteenth-century kings, though other kings had used different tools to curb disorder or for political prosecutions. There were also remarkably few such fines against noblemen during the reign for illegal retaining, as the evidence of king’s bench and the king’s chamber books shows.

It is hard to avoid the impression that Bergavenny chose to break the law on more than one occasion in pursuit of his aims of local dominance and prioritized his local success over whatever punishments might come his way for doing so. He avoided the full rigour of the law; despite the fame of his fine, which in the end was only a minor hindrance, he acquired two royal pardons for other king’s bench cases. More importantly as far as he was concerned, he was also successful, driving his rivals, the Guildford family, into comparative local obscurity – as the duke of Norfolk noted in 1534, when he said, ‘Look how the house of Burgeyne had subverted the house of Guildford’.¹⁰⁹ Bergavenny would surely have disagreed with a modern historian’s verdict that his ‘political thuggery in the backyard of the Tudor monarchy was highly unproductive’.¹¹⁰ Royal favour and grants continued on either side of the 1507 and 1516 prosecutions; in 1519 not only did Henry VIII visit Neville at Mereworth, but Neville had lodgings and daily liveries at court, ‘an honour reserved only for those closest to the king’.¹¹¹ It was Bergavenny’s connections with the duke of Buckingham – and perhaps his involvement with the earl of Suffolk – that caused the considerable downturns in his career, not his local activities.¹¹² He seems to have been a regular presence at court, more frequently present in the royal council than most of the peers, and comfortable in the royal presence even at the height of his troubles; Henry VII visited Bergavenny at Birling in April 1500 as well as July 1504; Henry VIII’s three visits have been noted.¹¹³ By the end of his career he seems to have reconsolidated his position from its nadir in 1522. The evidence of his will of 1535 suggests considerable wealth and local influence, consolidated through a series of marital alliances with south-eastern families.¹¹⁴

What George Neville’s brushes with the law demonstrate is that without the king’s direct initiative, prosecutions against peers were not likely to succeed. What happened in 1507 is in direct contrast to 1503 and 1516, when Henry VII and Henry VIII, respectively, did not clamp down hard on Bergavenny and the course of the common law meandered without royal direction to an inevitable conclusion of exculpation. While it might be argued that mere indictment and ongoing process might discourage a peer, the evidence points the opposite way in Bergavenny’s case, and indeed in others. Bergavenny delayed for eighteen months pleading a pardon in king’s bench between 1503 and 1505 and allowed process in king’s bench to continue for almost six years between 1516 and 1522 before acquiring one.¹¹⁵ The spectacular fine of 1507 was the exception rather than the rule for royal policy – and was provoked by either royal frustration that earlier leniency had been disregarded or more likely Bergavenny’s dangerous connection with the confirmed rebel and traitor, Suffolk – nor was there was any consistent enforcement of the retaining laws against peers. If the fine was intended as an example pour décourager les autres from retaining, it does not seem to have worked, and it is striking that neither Bergavenny’s fine nor that of James Stanley is reported in the two most detailed narrative accounts of the reign, Polydore Vergil’s Historia Anglia and the Great Chronicle of London, nor in the later but more detailed chronicle by Edward Hall, nor in the strictly contemporary but much patchier correspondence of the Plumpton family. Were contemporaries not as concerned as modern historians by such ostensibly important legal events? Or were they not widely reported, in which case the idea that they were a deterrent to others might be questioned? Even a fine of £70,650 served neither to stop the recipient peer from breaking the law in the future nor to end his local power, given his ongoing influence in Kent and indeed favour at court; the lack of serious repercussions for the Stanley family from the huge fine of 1506, either for their local influence or for the way they defended it, is equally telling. Bergavenny’s fine, taken out of its all-important context, is deeply misleading and cannot be used to demonstrate any policy of a clampdown by Henry VII on noble power, retaining or finances. The context actually shows a very different picture of local disorder, royal reaction and the interplay of national politics with local concerns.

Footnotes