The Court of Chivalry! My review of Philip J. Caudry's book

TMR 20.04.17 Caudrey, Military Society and the Court of Chivalry in the Age of the Hundred Years War (Muhlberger)

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Caudrey, Philip J. Military Society and the Court of Chivalry in the Age of the Hundred Years War. Warfare in History. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2019. Pp. 238. $99.00. ISBN: 978-1-78327-377-5.


   Reviewed by Steven Muhlberger
        Nipissing University (retired)
        Steve.Muhlberger@gmail.com




On the final pages of Philip Caudrey's book the reader is presented with an impressive list of monographs and edited volumes with the title War in History. That series is evidence of two things: the impressive bulk of scholarship on medieval military history produced in recent decades, and the prominent place Boydell & Brewer has played in this scholarly enterprise. We might look at this list and wonder whether there remains much to do in exploring the English experience of warfare in the later Middle Ages.


Fear not: Caudrey's short but substantial Military Society and the Court of Chivalry is a fine demonstration of how much systematic prosopographical research can contribute to military history.


The Court of Chivalry was an important English judicial institution of the later Middle Ages. It seems to have emerged during the campaigns of Edward III at the beginning of the Hundred Years War, when unprecedented numbers of soldiers came into close contact. Sometimes that contact led to disputes particularly relevant to fighting men. Caudrey calls them "specifically military-chivalric complaints" such as "disputes over ransoms and indentures, judicial duels, treason trials and armorial controversies" (11). The Court of Chivalry administered a body of law which settled either conflicts that took place outside the realm or disputes that were not part of the Common Law. The importance of the Court is easy to underrate because few of its documents have survived. During the later Middle Ages, some very important cases were taken before the Court, which was presided over by the Earl Marshal and the Constable, prestigious peers, and involved many fighting gentry. The most common disputes and the best documented concerned the possession of well-known coat of arms borne by different families. The use of armory was intimately involved with aristocratic identity, and so the meetings of the Court might involve hundreds of gentry, who contributed depositions in which the fighting men testified about who had borne those arms, at court but especially on campaign.


Anyone interested in the structure and mentality of the English army during the Hundred Years War will certainly be interested in the records of the Court of Chivalry, all concerning disputes about armory. Over the past two centuries  scholars have scrutinized three cases before the court whose records are reasonably complete: Scrope v. Grosvenor, Lovel v. Morley and Grey v. Hastings. Caudrey argues that despite a great deal of work on the reconstructed biographies of the participants in the judicial procedures, there remains room for more. Caudrey argues that a wider approach to the testimony makes possible a greater exploration of relations between magnates and gentry as they organized networks for war or interacted in peacetime.


Military Society consists of an introduction, four chapters, a conclusion and three appendices devoted to summaries of the careers of some of the most important contestants in the court cases. Chapters 1 ("Military Service") and 2("Lordship") survey many of the depositions made by witnesses in the second (1369-1389) and third stages (1415-1453) of the Hundred Years War, with an emphasis on the variety of ways individual soldiers were recruited or took up military life. Caudrey discusses previous scholarship based on the testimony before the Court which reveal the patterns of military service typical of professional soldiers. Caudrey insists, however, that there is more to be learned if one takes more subtle look at the broader context of the deponents' experience. He looks not only at the details of military service but also (in chapter 3) takes a different approach to the role of lordship in recruiting testimony in the Court cases. Scholars have long been aware that members of a household were willing and able to back up the interests of their lord by providing favorable testimony and "vertical." Caudrey, however, argues that "sideways" connections between men of similar rank and shared experience could likewise provide mutual support. Thus Caudrey sees the role of lordship in the workings of the Court as more complex than has been appreciated.


In chapter 4 ("Soldiers, Civilians and Chivalric Memory") Caudrey uses the Court records for insights into broader aspects of chivalric culture. He is particularly interested in memory--what was remembered and by whom. The court cases provide a significant store of raw materials--stories of campaigning in particular--from which a sense of chivalric identity could be built. And it was. This chapter shows that much of the valuable data appealed to in the court cases came from oral tradition that arose from a strong sense of regional identity, based upon stories of revered ancestors and heroes of past campaigns. Some earlier scholarship has understood that chivalric feeling in England fell off in the last stages of the Hundred Years War. Caudrey is reluctant to accept this, believing the depositions rather show the vitality of chivalric tradition.


Caudrey's book has much to recommend it. Some readers may find the details a bit overwhelming, while others may wish for more. But this reader found it very readable, and clear enough that it might serve among other things as a useful introduction to the fascinating controversies of the Court of Chivalry.​