accounts of the estates, the holding of the manorial courts,
were further departments of administration : every baron on
his own property practised the method and enforced the disci-
pline which he knew and shared in the king’s court; he was
a man of business at home, and qualified in no small degree for
the conduct of the business of the realm. And this is a point
that enables us to understand how it was possible that men
like the earl of Arundel of Henry V⅛ time, or lord Cromwell
of Henry VΓs, could be called to the office of treasurer at a
moment’s notice : they had been brought up and lived in houses
the administration of which was, on a somewhat reduced scale
indeed, but still on the same model, the counterpart of the
economy of the kingdom itself’.

474. When the baron went to war, he collected his own
contingent for the royal army, frequently at his own cost, but
always with the expectation of being paid by the king. And
this is one of the points in which the later medieval practice is
most curiously distinguished from the earlier. The old feudal
institutions, which, for the purposes of war, long retained a
vitality which in other respects they had lost, were now re-
placed by a combination of chivalric sympathy with mercantile
precision. This reflects very distinctly the two sides of the
policy of Edward III, who must have introduced the practice
when he found that for foreign service the feudal organisation
of the army was absolutely useless, and had to attempt to
utilise on the one hand the chivalry and on the other the
business-like astuteness of his subjects. Armies were no
longer raised for the recovery of the king’s inheritance by
writs of summons, but by indenture of agreement. The great
lords, dukes, earls and barons, bound themselves by inden-
ture, like the apprentices of a trade, to serve the king for
a fixed time, and with fixed force, for fixed wages². Beyond

¹ Several volumes of Household books have been printed; Bishop Swin-
field⅛, by the Camden Society in 1854 and 1855 ; the Northumberland
Household Book, by Bishop Percy and Sir H. Nicolas; those of the duke
of Norfolk by the Boxburghe Club, in 1844; and that of the duke of
Buckingham by the Abbotsford Club.

² Forexample, in 1380 Thomas of Woodstock agreed to serve the king
in Brittany, by indenture; Kot. Parl. iii. 94: in 1381 the names of all

their wages the great men reckoned on the ransom of their Money

_                                                speculation

prisoners, the poorer on the plunder of the battle-field or the in war.
foraging raid. As the lords hound themselves by indenture to
the king to serve in the field or to act as constables of castles
or governors of conquered provinces, so the lower ranks of
knights and squires bound themselves to the baronial leaders,
took their pay and wore their livery. When John of Gaunt
went to Castille he took with him by indenture some of the
noblest knights of England. John Neville, the lord of Eaby,
bound himself to serve him for life at wages of goo marks a
year ¹. When duke Richard of York or Edmund of Somerset
governed Normandy, the terms of their appointment, service
and remuneration, were set out in a like indenture of service.
This document sometimes determined also the lord’s share in
the winnings of his retainers².

When accordingly, in the troubled times of Richard II and The great
τττ       °     . .                 _η               τιι retinues of

Henry VI, the necessities of private defence compelled the the nobles
• ι             .                                    , served in

great households to revive the practices of private war, the some mea-
service by indenture and the wearing of livery were familiar classes to-
methods of enlistment ; and the barons, besides their hosts of^gether,
menial servants, had trains of armed and disciplined followers.

If to these we add the council of the duke or earl, the personal
or official advisers who attended him when he had anything
like public business to manage, the lawyers who held his courts,
the clerks who kept his accounts, and the chaplains who sang
and celebrated the sacraments in his chapels, we shall see that,
who had agreed to serve the king in his wars, with indentures and without
indentures, were to be enrolled ; ib. p. ɪ ɪ 8. The haggling about indentures
of service during the minority of Henry VI is one of the most curious
points brought out in the Ordinances of the Privy Council.

¹ Calendar of the Patent Bolls, p. ι86 ; a long list of knights who had
entered into the same engagement was used by Sir H. Nicolas in editing
the Scrope and Grosvenor Roll.

² See for example the indenture by which John de Thorpe Esquire binds
himself for life to serve Ralph Neville, earl of Westmoreland, in peace
and war ; the earl is to have ^tIes tierces de guerre gaignez par le dit Johan
ou par sezgentz quelx il avera as gages ou coust du dit conte;’ if Thorpe
takes any captain or man of state, the earl is to have him, ^t faisant al
pernour resonable regarde pur lui Madox, Formulare, p. 97 : there are
also indentures between the earl of Salisbury and his own sons, touching
the lieutenancy of Carlisle, ib. p. 102, and between the earl of Warwick
and Robert Warcop, p. 104.

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