The Hundred Years War - Desmond Seward [85]
Many others rose through the War, and a successful career in France was frequently a prelude to high office in England. The Fiennes brothers, James and Roger, did so well that the first built Knole and the second built Hurstmonceux ; James, who had been Captain of Arques and Captain General of the Seine towns, and was Seigneur of Court-le-Comte, became Lord Saye and Sele in 1446 (only to be lynched by Jack Cade a few years later). Another new peer, who had also been Captain of Arques and who owned lands in France, was Lord Sudeley, the builder of the magnificent castle of that name in Gloucestershire. That very professional warrior the first (and last) Lord Wenlock, who was granted land at Gisors in 1421 and who went on to fight in the Wars of the Roses until he was killed at Barnet, erected the Sommaries outside Luton. The fortress of Raglan was the creation of Sir William ap Thomas, and Heron Hall that of Sir John Tyrrel, both of whom had fought in France. Sir John Montgomery (who took part in the capture of Joan of Arc) built Faulkbourne Hall, and his son Middleton Towers. Most of these great houses were of red brick, for which their creators must undoubtedly have acquired a taste in France. In addition these lordly soldiers built beautiful Perpendicular churches, if not so many as the bourgeois wool men ; McFarlane calls them ‘the war churches’ as opposed to the wool churches. Of these the best known is the chapel at Warwick, with its armoured effigy in gilded metal of a Beauchamp Earl who died in 1439.
Ransoms still formed a large part of such money. The Count of Vendôme was bought at a high price by Henry V from Sir John Cornwall, later Lord Fanhope and the builder of Ampthill. Sir John has been described by E. F. Jacob as ‘an example of a highly well-placed speculator in ransoms’; his purchases included the Lords of Gaucourt and Estouteville in 1423 (taken prisoner at Harfleur eight years before) and the Duke of Bourbon. Sir Rowland Lenthall built Hampton Court in Herefordshire with prize money from prisoners captured in Henry V’s campaigns.2 Sir Walter Hungerford, later Lord Hungerford, rebuilt the castle and also the church at Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset ; Leland was told that he paid for this out of loot from Agincourt, but it is known that Sir Walter brought no less than eight valuable prisoners back to England.
Besides ransom there was plunder. Apparently the French nobility had the obliging habit of campaigning with their jewels and family plate ; and everyone took a cut from the pâtis money. There was also paid office. Understandably the dual monarchy had a very large number of captaincies to fill. McFarlane claims: ‘There was hardly a knight, or indeed an esquire of Henry V’s army that was not given one or more of these offices of responsibility and profit under his son.’ He adds that some of them were entrusted with the administration of entire French provinces, not just of a town or castle. Such men bled white the territories under their rule.
Of course Englishmen were captured and had to pay ransom themselves, but because their armies won more battles—including all the larger ones—the ratio of Frenchmen to Englishmen taken prisoner was overwhelmingly in favour of the latter. It is also true that there were other and sometimes more important factors at home in England in the creation of patrician fortunes and of new noble houses—advantageous marriages, grants for services to the crown and the exploitation of English offices. Nevertheless at this time French money played a major and often a key role, and a very large