Welsh Journals

EDWARD I AND THE ORGANIZATION OF WAR* Dr. Prestwich has done a great deal more than to survey and explain the organization of war under Edward I, a formidable task in itself. From the recruitment, pay, victualling and transport of armies Dr. Prestwich passes logically to consider in turn the financial resources of the Crown, and the ways in which Edward's method of raising, supplying and paying his armies contributed to the political and constitutional difficulties of the second half of his reign, and of that of his successor. In dealing with Edward's armies, Dr. Prestwich starts with their essential core, the forces of the king's household. In organization and in personnel there was marked continuity between the household troops of Henry III and Edward, and the strength of the force of bannerets and knights receiving annual fees was much the same in the middle 1280s — about 100-as in war years under Henry III. Rather surprisingly, at first sight the household force contracted rather than expanded during the Scottish wars, probably, as Dr. Prestwich suggests, because of the need to economize in a time of financial stringency. The actual strength of the household forces on campaign was not limited to the recipients of regular fees: some of them brought retainers, and additional men were recruited for wages alone. In the Welsh wars there does not seem to have been any consistent distinction in the organization of squadrons between regularly feed members of the household and temporarily paid members; but, however organized, the household provided an important part of the king's paid cavalry-a third of the total force of 600 in 1282. In Flanders in 1297 the expanded household provided the total cavalry force, and in the Scottish campaigns of 1298 and 1300 the major part of it. In the main campaigns of the early years of the fourteenth century sizeable forces of household cavalry (e.g. 1,000 in 1301) continued to be employed, and though the scale of warfare was reduced after 1304, the result of a change of strategy as well as a shortage of money, members of the household continued to perform important individual tasks on detachment, by land and sea, as well as a great variety of administrative, judicial and diplo- matic duties. As yet, however, they did not receive the more important subordinate commands, still a preserve of the higher nobility. Dr. Prest- wich sets out the evidence for the size and character of magnate retinues, demonstrating that many features characteristic of bastard feudalism in the later fourteenth century were already present under Edward I, but making the important reservation that as yet the king was not using magnate retinues as the core of paid, contract armies. Students of military history will be particularly interested in Dr. Prest- wich's chapter on Cavalry Service. The view of J. E. Morris, followed War, Politics and Finance under Edward I. By Michael Prestwich (Faber and Faber, 1972). Pp. 317. £ 5.00.