WAS YOUR ANCESTOR A LATE MEDIEVAL SOLDIER? (PART 2)
by Stephen Jolly, IHGS Student, Fellow Commoner St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge
I recently published a piece featuring the Universities of Southampton and Reading database of soldiers who served the English Crown during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453): www.medievalsoldier.org. Use of this database had thrown dramatic new light on my family history revealing forebears on active service in Lancastrian Normandy in the period 1430-42.
However, the discoveries didn’t stop there. My forebears – men-at-arms Nicholas and Perkyn, archers Robert, John, Thurston, Teviston, Tristram – served in the personal retinues of at least two generations of Standish family captains. As a result, I have subsequently been able to trace the campaign itinerary my forebears took through Northern France in 1434-5 under the general command of John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel. I have also been able to establish from a Memorandum of Mainprise (Calendar of Close Rolls, 16 March 1425) that my earliest known forebear, Nicholas, “of Chorley, gentilman … co. Lancaster”, may have been a lawyer to the Standish lords of Duxbury in the 1420s.
In turn, these findings support the assertions of JW Clay, ed. Familiae Minorum Gentium (Harleian Society Vol 39/3: 1048 ff London 1895) that my family were “minor gentry” six centuries ago. In fifteenth-century England, to put a family unit out on military campaign overseas – with horses, armour and weapons – for more than a decade required significant resources and by extension, in a feudal society, land to sustain campaigning from afar.
There is also a delightful twist in the tale, evidenced in Richard St. George’s 1613 Visitation of Lancashire. During the 1434-5 campaign, my ancestors were almost certainly involved in removing a relic of twelfth-century Irish saint Lorcán Ua Tuathail (St Laurence O’Toole) from his shrine in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame et Saint-Laurent at Eu. A “relique of St Laurence head” was taken back in a saddle bag to England; such an action at that time being considered an act of piety, a “translatio”.
In 1442, seven years after the death of Sir Roland Standish, the relic was used as the basis for the dedication of the parish church of St Laurence in Chorley. However, much controversy surrounds this matter. Some argue that the relic vanished during the Reformation in common with many other popish gewgaws. This is not a view accepted by local historians in Chorley. In line with the St Laurence Historical Society, they argue that the relic was more likely placed within the Standish burial vault by Alexander, the last living male descendant of Sir Roland Standish, in 1642. In 2005, the St Laurence Historical Society sought permission to open the vault to allow researchers from Trinity College Dublin to test for DNA and to locate the relic. The request was rejected by the Church authorities. To complicate matters further, the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame et Saint-Laurent at Eu continues to claim uninterrupted ownership of the head of St Laurence.
Based on the 1577 edition of Holinshed and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, entry for John FitzAlan, 14th Earl of Arundel, it is possible to map a tentative route for Arundel and his troops during the 1434-5 campaign:
• St Lo (Arundel appointed captain of garrison in October 1434)
• Bomeline (Beaumesnil?)
• Dorle (Deauville? Chateau Bonneville-sur-Touques?)
• St Selerine (St Céneri-le-Gérei)
• Louviers via Orbec
• St Selerine (St Céneri-le-Gérei)
• Sillye (Sillé-le-Guillaume)
• Melley (Seigneury de Mellay, Juigné-sur-Sarthe)
• St Laurent, Beaumont-sur-Sarthe
• (Le) Mans
• Deep (Dieppe)
• Eu?
• Rue (Rouen?) - April
• Mantes (Mantes-La-Jolie) - May
• Gourney (Gournay-en-Bray)
• Beauays (Beauvais)
• Gerberoy – 9 May
While there is no direct evidence for Arundel’s troops being in Eu in the late spring of 1435, we know that there was a longstanding English presence there (Joan of Arc being imprisoned overnight in Eu en route to her execution at Rouen in 1431). The town is also less than 20 miles east of Dieppe where Arundel’s troops were stationed.
Holme’s account suggests that Sir Roland Standish had some 19 men-at-arms and 60 archers under his direct command, including members of my family. On 9 May 1435, Sir Roland and many of his retinue met their deaths at Gerberoy. Arundel himself was wounded fatally.
Although written more than a century after the event, Holinshed’s account of the battle merits recounting at length:
The Erle cõming thither, encamped himselfe with fiue. C. horsemen in a little close not farre from the Castell. The Frenchmen perceyuing that the Earle and his horses were wearie, and that his archers were not yet come, determined to set vpon him before the comming of his footemen, the which they knewe to be little more than a mile behinde. Wherefore for a policie, they set forth fiftie horsemen as though there had beene no mo within the Castell. The Erle perceyuing this, sent forth sir Randolfe Standish to encounter them, hauing with him an hundred horses.
The Frenchmen fought couragiously a while, and sodainly came out all the remnant, and slue sir Randolfe Standish, and all his companie, and boldly set on the Erle and his bande, which manfully resisted the French men, till at length the Hyre [Commander Étienne de Vignolles] caused three Culuerings to be shote off amongst the Englishmen, whereof one strake the Earle on the ancle, and so brake his legge, that for payne he fell from his horse. Then the French menne entered amongest the Englishmenne, tooke the Earle lying on the grounde, wyth Sir Rycharde Wooduile, and sixe score moe, and there were slaine almoste two hundred. The residue saued themselues as well as they might”.
The muster rolls suggest that only Nicholas Joly may have survived this bloody encounter but that he and a new generation of family members – archers Robert, John, Tristram – went on to enlist to serve under James, heir to Sir Roland Standish, in 1441.
Undoubtedly, there is further research to be done to understand both the context and the detail of these fifteenth-century military campaigns as well as my family’s role in them. While contemporary documentation is sparse and often inaccessible, Allmand’s Lancastrian Normandy, 1415-1450: The History of a Medieval Occupation (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1983) seems a promising place to start …
I should like to express my thanks to Christopher Whittick of the Ranulf Higden Society, Anthony Christopher of the Chorley Historical & Archaeological Society, archival researchers Lee Richards and Graham Hicks for their support with this project.
