Bonville–Courtenay feud

The Bonville–Courtenay feud of 1455 was a series of raids, sieges, and attacks between two major Devon families, the Courtneys and the Bonvilles, in south west England, in the mid-fifteenth century. It is perhaps most well known for culminating in an armed encounter at Clyst (called the fight, or sometimes the battle, of Clyst), near Exeter, which resulted in some loss of life, and resulted in government intervention in the politics of the west country.

Background

Tiverton Castle ruins, the family seat of the Courtenays

As Mrs. Radford pointed out in her 1912 article, the county of Devon, whilst suffering no pitched battles during the Wars of the Roses, still "suffered severely nonetheless from private feuds."[1] The rivalry between the Courtney family, who had been earls of Devon since 1335[2] and Sir William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville in the south west was inextricably linked to the national political scene, but was also rooted in regional Devon society. In 2003, Martin Cherry suggested that although the south west was indeed to a great degree lawless, this was not confined to just the more well known violence of Thomas, Earl of Devon, but was common throughout the century.[3]

National context

Main article: The Wars of the Roses
Armorial of the Courtenay Earls of Devon

Henry VI had been incapacitated by mental illness in 1453. This led to the recall to court of Richard of York, his closest adult relative, who had been banished to his estates after a failed rebellion in 1452. The following year, York was appointed Lord Protector and First Councillor of the realm, for the duration of the King's illness. He used this position to move against his chief rival, the hitherto dominant Duke of Somerset, who was imprisoned. By Christmas of 1454, King Henry had recovered from his illness, removing the basis for York's authority.[4] York and his closest allies, his brother-in-law Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and Salisbury's son Richard, Earl of Warwick, anticipated that charges might be brought against them at this assembly. Both militarily and politically it was a complete victory for York and the Nevilles: they captured the King and retook their places in government, while York's and the Nevilles' rivals, the duke of Somerset, the earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford were killed.[5] Among the royalists wounded were the Buckingham and Somerset's son Henry Beaufort, Earl of Dorset, and Thomas, Earl of Devon.[6] York was appointed Protector of England by parliament a few months later.[7] Professor Ralph A. Griffiths places the fault for the feud firmly in the lap of King Henry, through whose "thoughtless liberality and government carelessness ... personal jealousies in the west country had been exacerbated."[8] However, more recently, Martin Cherry warned against seeing the feud as the same as the later civil wars writ small; they were, he says, "qualitatively" different, resulting in the ultimate disintegration of the earl's affinity, rather than symptomatic of his violence.[9] Michael Hicks has pointed out that although there were many other regional feuds at this time (including the Lisle-Berkeley dispute, also waged in the west country), they did not have the same causes, or were necessarily caused by weak government at all: for instance, whereas the Bonville–Courtney feud had territorial domination at its root, others, such as the Berkeley–Lisle dispute, were begun over contested inheritances.[10] Cherry has also suggested that the main cause of the Bonville–Courtney dispute was the desperation of the earl to "gain access to crown patronage for himself and his clients" – something he was gradually failing to do in the face of competition.[11]

Local politics

Coat of Arms of Sir William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville

Both Bonville and the earl of Devon had great estates in the south west, with particular claims to crown patronage (Bonville had fought in the Hundred Years Wars under Henry VI and his father, and Devon was a marital cousin to the former),[12] and although the earl was both the greatest landowner and the highest ranking nobleman in the county, he had in recent years been "challenged on more than one occasion by the advancement, through royal patronage, of lesser gentry and noble families" such as William Bonville.[13] Bonville had also furthered his advancement himself by successively marrying into the lower nobility (a daughter of the Lords Grey of Ruthin) and then an aunt of the earl of Devon himself.[13] The main royal office in the area was the stewardship of the highly profitable Duchy of Cornwall, and both men had held the office alternately over recent years. Radford has traced the increasing tensions between the two to 1437. This year saw the stewardship taken from a Courtney and granted to William Bonville; the grant of £100 per annum life annuity probably did not, says Griffiths, make up for this "encroachment."[14] Severe attacks on Bonville's property were occurring by summer 1439, and by 1440, relations between the two were, Griffiths says, "at breaking point" – including open manifestations of military strength. These armed demonstrations eventually led to them both being summoned before council.[15] In 1441 the stewardship was returned to the earl of Devon, although Radford questions whether Bonville actually ever physically surrendered the office, as in November that year an arbitration took place between them to "end all [of their] differences."[12]

There followed a four-year period of peace; but, as Griffiths says, this is most likely due to the fact that Bonville spent that time in service in Gascony – possibly one of the conditions of the arbitration.[15] However, that this was only a temporary respite for the county is shown by the fact that from 1449 to 1450 Devon besieged Bonville (now promoted to the baronage in recognition of his success in France)[16] in his castle of Taunton.[17] The earl of Devon had been York's ally for some years by 1455; he had supported the duke during the latter's failed rebellion at Dartford three years earlier, even joining him in the field against the King. This treason resulted in him forfeiting his royal offices in the south west, including not only the stewardship of the duchy – which was granted to Bonville for life – but Lydford Castle, the Forest of Dartmoor, and the Water of Exe.[18] Hence, like the duke in government, he was eclipsed in the south west by William Bonville, 1st Baron Bonville, who was favoured by the Lancastrian regime. Following York's rebellion at Dartford, the earl of Devon – in imitation of his ally – waged a local war against Bonville and Bonville's ally, the earl of Wiltshire, from 1451 to 1452. Raising an army of 5–6,000 men, he forced Wiltshire to desert his manor of Lackham, and then returned to the siege of Taunton. The siege was only lifted when the duke of York arrived unannounced three days later, and took the castle into his own hands, forcing a peace upon the two parties.[16]

Bonville was the recipient of much royal favour, including stewardship of the duchy of Cornwall, keeper of Lydford Castle, and the royal forest of Dartmoor, and constable of Exeter Castle by April 1455.[19] He was effectively – as one historian has called him – "the King's lieutenant in the west." The earl of Devon had already reacted against this hegemony during the duke of York's first protectorate (1454–5) and joined the royal council. However, it appears that even the council itself did not trust him to keep the King's Peace, as they placed him under a bond of £1,000 to do so. This he had treated with "customary disregard,"[19] and commenced a campaign against Bonville and his estates (with his sons, he brought hundreds of men into the city of Exeter in April 1455 in an attempt to ambush him). This was followed by further undertakings of good behaviour between the two parties. It is likely that it was at this point that Devon decided to reject his alliance with York and give his support to the crown, and his eventual wounding at St Albans. Bonville, through his wife, was related to the Harrington family of Hornby, Lancashire (his father-in-law was Thomas Harrington, a feoffee and retainer to the earl of Salisbury): Bonville's new-found Yorkist sympathies, however, seem only to have driven Devon to even "greater extremes of violence."[20] The culmination of this violence in the so-called battle of Clyst was preceded for some weeks by what has been called "exchange[s] of formal declarations of war disguised in the chivalric mode of challenges to a duel."[21] Michael Hicks has suggested that, in spite of the earl's clear superiority in numbers, it was Bonville who "goaded the earl into a fair fight," and that "in the spirit of chivalry" the confrontation at Clyst was his fault.[22] Cherry too has suggested that Bonville and Courtney of Powderham deliberately attempted to recruit members of the earl's historical tenantry, further poisoning relations,[23] and also that, although doubtless the earl has deserved the 'universally bad press' he has received from modern historians, he was still "reluctant to go to war," and that he did so "only after all other methods of achieving his aims ... had failed."[24]

The murder of Nicholas Radford

Tower at Exeter castle

From October 1455, Devon and his sons were committing acts of social disorder, seemingly intending to disrupt the administrative machinery of the county (of which Bonville, of course, was a part), for instance by preventing local Justices of the Peace from holding Quarterly sessions by force; they then proceeded to raise a small army at Tiverton under the leadership of Devon's eldest son, Thomas Courtney. It was this force that was to be guilty of what R. L. Storey has called "the most notorious private crime of the century," due not only to the violence involved, but the fact that it was "so obviously premeditated."[25] This force made its way to Upcott on 23 October 1455, the home of Nicholas Radford, a close associate and legal advisor to Bonville, and a respected member of the community who had previously been recorder of the city of Exeter and Member of Parliament. Storey has suggested that being an experienced lawyer, he was most probably targeted by Devon and his sons for the very reason that he had aided Bonville's escape from Devon's litigation in the past;[26] and in January 1455 he had enfeoffed Bonville (and others) for land valued at £400.[27]

Thomas Courtney's force attacked Radford's manor that night; they set fire to the wall and gates to draw him out. On them, including Courtney, solemnly promising him no harm if he would speak with them, he let them in – although apparently he commented upon their large number. Whilst Radford and Devon's son drank wine, the latter's followers "ransacked"[26] Radford's house, stealing goods up to the value of 1,000 marks, including all his horses and the sheets off his invalid wife's bed.[28] On a pretext of meeting his father the earl, Courtney persuaded Radford to accompany Courtney when he withdrew his force; however, he abandoned Radford on the road a short distance from the latter's house, and six of Courtney's men killed him.[28] Devon subsequently despatched a force to the chapel where Radford's body was; they performed, says Storey, a "mock inquest, one of them acting as coroner and others, with assumed names, as jurors. They brought in a verdict of suicide."[28] They then forced Radford's servants to convey his corpse as if he had been a heretic to the graveyard, where it was deposited unceremoniously into an open grave; the stones laid ready to build his memorial were then dropped on the body, crushing it. This prevented, by preventing recognition, an official inquest being held into Radford's death.[28]

Following the murder

The murder of Nicholas Radford, says R.L. Storey, was only "the curtain raiser" for further military activities. Devon proceeded to raise a force and occupy Exeter – "as if they were the city's lawful garrison" – until just before Christmas, seizing the keys of the city;[29] various houses in the city belonging to Bonville and his supporters were ransacked, and members of the Cathedral were arrested and forced to buy their freedom. In one case, a man was bodily removed from the choir whilst celebrating Mass. Both Bonville and Courtney had 'extensive relations' with the Cathedral, dating back to the 1430s, but the Courtneys had greatly contributed to its expansion in the previous century.[30] Their actions in 1455 were probably inspired by the fact that Radford had entrusted much of his wealth to the safe-keeping of the church, and Devon saw an opportunity to enrich himself; possibly, says Storey, he was forced to take such action to be able to pay his men.[31] Martin Cherry has pointed to the lack of references to any martial expenses on the earl's behalf in the extant accounts, as indicating that his campaign effectively paid for itself.[27] During the same period, Devon, "in warlike fashion and like an insurrection"[29] also besieged Powderham Castle, which belonged to his distant cousin and Bonville ally, Sir Philip Courtenay (died 1463); the latter resisted, and Bonville came to his assistance. Prior to doing this, however, he raided the earl of Devon's house at Colcomb and proceeded to ransack it. Bonville attempted to lift the siege at Powderham on 19 November, but was repulsed by Devon, and lost two men in the fight,[32] which may have involved up to a thousand men.[33] Meanwhile, Devon continued his attempts to persuade the city of Exeter to raise a force on his behalf – which they refused to do – before leaving Exeter on 15 December,[32] as Bonville approached, on his way to Powderham. The two forces met at Clyst, just south west of Exeter.[34]

The fight at Clyst

Map of the location of the Clyst engagement, 1455

Devon marched from Exeter to encounter Bonville at Clyst Heath; there are very few extant sources for the event, and only one chronicler provides any details, saying he "departed out of the city with his people into the field of Clyst, and there bickered and fought with the Lord Bonville and put them to flight, and so returned again that night into the city."[35] Many bones were discovered when the site was excavated in 1800, although some, Storey points out, must belong to those killed in the 1549 engagement on the same site. Although difficult to assess the extent to which the engagement can be described as a battle (one chronicler estimated the dead at twelve men)[21] it does appear to have been decisive in Devon's favour. The earl returned to Exeter, where the mayor had "tactfully" laid on a celebration.[35] Hannes Kleineke has described the mayor's decision to illuminate the city walls on the earl's return as "pragmatic",[36] whilst Cherry explains the mayor's behaviour as being due to the fact that the earl, "in his peculiar manner, [had behaved] punctiliously" to the mayor.[21] The earl subsequently sent a sortie led by Thomas Carrew to attack Bonville's manor at Shute where they faced no resistance and pillaged freely, stealing Bonville's cattle, furnishings, and food.[37][38]

Response from government

Powderham Castle, west front, viewed from under the Victorian gatehouse. The leftmost tower dates from 1390–1450 as does the main high central block, which originally housed a full-height great hall.[39]

However decisive the earl of Devon's victory had been, it had also drawn the attention of the government, which was still under the control of Bonville's allies, York, Salisbury, and Warwick, but had up until that point failed to intervene in this local feud (as it had also failed to do at the beginning of the Percy–Neville feud in Yorkshire some years before). The feud has been described as an example of local activities influencing parliament itself,[40] and Griffiths said it was used as "a pretext for demanding York's appointment as protector."[41] When parliament reassembled on 12 November it was presented with (to some degree, exaggerated) reports that Devon was leading an army 4,000 strong, including 400 cavalry. The King was incapacitated, and unable to manage the situation; York used the immediate necessity for intervention as a mechanism for being formally appointed Protector. He did not, however, immediately hasten to the south west to punish the earl of Devon, who was at this stage merely dismissed from his role on the commission of the peace in early December.[42] Soon after, the local gentry were ordered to be ready to assist York, who however did not set out until news was received of the Clyst confrontation. One chronicler states that following his defeat, Bonville "fled, and came to Grenewiche to the kyng, and the kyng sent him agayne to the lord protectour;"[43] although it is also possible that he was committed to the Fleet Prison for a short time.[44] When finally York left for the south west, he summoned the earl of Devon to Shaftesbury where the earl was arrested and sent to the Tower of London.[45]

Aftermath

The earl of Devon remained imprisoned for only a few months. It is possible that an attempt was made to bring him to trial in February, but if so, it was probably – in Storey's words – "countermanded." This could have been, he suggests, indicative of York's "waning" position, as the protectorate was soon to come to an end:[45] Cherry has said that the King's resumption of personal power in February 1456 must have come as "a considerable relief" to the earl.[46] He seems to have taken the Yorkists' eclipse as a further opportunity to continue the feud, which provoked governmental admonishment in March, when his son John, with 500 armed men, again prevented the Exeter JPs from sitting, and evicted them. Commissions of oyer and terminer were issued in August, being led by Bonville's ally the earl of Wiltshire.[47] Although Bonville presented a long list of offences committed by Devon to the council (whilst mitigating his own involvement), the Crown "was obviously unimpressed" by this, and eventually not only restored Devon to commission of the peace (12 September 1456) but also pardoned him and his sons for any involvement in the murder of Radford, eventually even appointing him to the lucrative office of keeper of the forest and park of Clarendon.[46] The region subsequently remained quiet; Bonville was of advanced age and Devon was possibly unwell, as he died in Abingdon within eighteen months.[48] His will was executed by some of the most important men on the Queen's council.[46]

The region took no active part in the ensuing civil wars until the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471, but both parties to the feud were killed in the civil wars over the next few years. Devon's heir, the killer of Radford, was a thorough supporter of the Lancastrian regime; after the Yorkist victory at the Battle of Northampton in June 1460, he took his troops northwards to Margaret of Anjou[46] in York, where, in April 1461, he was executed by the new King, Edward IV after the Battle of Towton. Bonville's son and grandson had by then been killed with the York and Salisbury at the Battle of Wakefield in December 1460, and Bonville himself, captured after the Second Battle of St Albans was summarily beheaded[49] – probably, so the chroniclers tell us, after a mock trial directly instigated by the earl of Devon.[50]

References

  1. ↑ Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 252
  2. ↑ Cokayne, G.E. & Gibbs, V.,(ed.), The Complete Peerage of Great Britain and Ireland, 16 vols, rev. (London, 1916), 323
  3. ↑ Kleineke, H., 'Why the West was Wild: Law and Disorder in Fifteenth-Century Cornwall and Devon', in: Clark, L.S., (ed.), The Fifteenth Century III: Authority and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2003), 76
  4. ↑ Hicks, M.A., The Wars of the Roses, (Yale, 2010), 107.
  5. ↑ Goodman, A., The Wars of the Roses: Military Activity and English Society, 1452–97, (London, 1981), 24
  6. ↑ Hicks, M.A., The Wars of the Roses, (Yale, 2010), 110.
  7. ↑ Hicks, M.A., The Wars of the Roses, (Yale, 2010), 114
  8. ↑ Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 577
  9. ↑ Kleineke, H., 'Why the West was Wild: Law and Disorder in Fifteenth-Century Cornwall and Devon', in: Clark, L.S., (ed.), The Fifteenth Century III: Authority and Subversion (Woodbridge, 2003), 77
  10. ↑ Hicks, M.A., The Wars of the Roses (Totton, 2012), 96
  11. ↑ Cherry, M., 'The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire', in Griffiths, R.A. (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), 123–4
  12. 1 2 Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 253
  13. 1 2 Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 574
  14. ↑ Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 574–5
  15. 1 2 Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 575
  16. 1 2 Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 576
  17. ↑ Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 254
  18. ↑ Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 255
  19. 1 2 Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 165
  20. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 166
  21. 1 2 3 Cherry, M., 'The Crown & Political Society in Devon' (PhD thesis, University of Wales (Swansea), 1981), 307
  22. ↑ Hicks, M.A., The Wars of the Roses, (Yale, 2010), 116
  23. ↑ Cherry, M. 'The Courtenay Earls of Devon: The Formation and Disintegration of a Late Medieval Aristocratic Affinity', Southern History, 1 (1979), 95
  24. ↑ Cherry, M., 'The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire', in Griffiths, R.A. (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Glourcester, 1981), 123
  25. ↑ Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 167
  26. 1 2 Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 168
  27. 1 2 Cherry, M., 'The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire', in Griffiths, R.A. (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), 136
  28. 1 2 3 4 Storey, R. L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 169
  29. 1 2 Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 257
  30. ↑ Attreed, L., 'Arbitration and the Growth of Urban Liberties in Late Medieval England', Journal of British Studies, 31 (1992), 227–8
  31. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 170
  32. 1 2 Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 171
  33. ↑ Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 258
  34. ↑ Radford, G.H., 'The Fight at Clyst in 1455', The Devonshire Association, 44 (1912), 260
  35. 1 2 Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 171–2
  36. ↑ Kleineke, H., '"þe Kynges Cite"– Exeter in the Wars of the Roses', in Clarke, L. (ed.), Conflicts, Consequences and the Crown in the Later Middle Ages: The Fifteenth Century VII (Woodbridge, 2007), 156
  37. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 172
  38. ↑ Orme, N., 'Representation and Rebellion in the Later Middle Ages', in Kain, R. & W. Ravenhill (eds.), Historical Atlas of South-West England (Exeter, 1999), 141, 144.
  39. ↑ Powderham Castle guide book, p. 9.
  40. ↑ Lander, J.R., 'Henry Vl and the Duke of York's Second Protectorate, 1455-6', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 3 (1960), 59
  41. ↑ Griffiths, R.A., The Reign of Henry VI, (Berkeley 1981), 755
  42. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 172–3
  43. ↑ Lander, J.R., 'Henry Vl and the Duke of York's Second Protectorate, 1455-6', Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 3 (1960), 64
  44. ↑ Cherry, M., 'The Crown & Political Society in Devon' (Ph.D thesis, University of Wales (Swansea) 1981), 303
  45. 1 2 Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 173
  46. 1 2 3 4 Cherry, M., 'The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire', in Griffiths, R.A. (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), 138
  47. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 173–4
  48. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 174
  49. ↑ Storey, R.L., The End of the House of Lancaster (Guildford, 1966), 174–5
  50. ↑ Cherry, M., 'The Struggle for Power in Mid-Fifteenth Century Devonshire', in Griffiths, R.A. (ed.), Patronage, the Crown and the Provinces in Later Medieval England (Gloucester, 1981), 138–9

Bibliography

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