In his English Military Experience and the Court of Chivalry: The Case of Grey v. Hastings Maurice Keen asks if the English gentry at the turn of the fifteenth century was going through a period of demilitarization. ‘Is there room to suggest that the seeds of that cooling of bellicose ardour, among gentlemen, that had become noticeable by the 1440s, had been sown a generation earlier?’[1] The Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms (c. 1400)[2] now residing in the library of the Queen’s College, Oxford,[3] suggests that the East Anglian gentry was still a martial group in the early fifteenth century. Rolls of arms are compilations of coats of arms, either blazoned[4] or painted, and list arms according to themes. They fall into five general classes or types, namely general,[5] regional,[6] occasional,[7] institutional[8] and illustrative.[9] It is not known who commissioned or compiled this lost regional roll, which now exists as a seventeenth century copy, but it contained the labeled arms of 150 gentry families and is one of several heraldic documents from this region and period. Heraldic sources from mid-fifteenth Norfolk indicate just the type of military cooling off Keen suggested. The book of arms of the Paston family, MS Rye 38 in the Norfolk Records Office, contains seventy-three arms of Paston relatives and associates of legal and mercantile rather than military backgrounds.[10] This is not surprising given the prosperity and commerce enjoyed in Norfolk during the middle ages. Along with the armorial cases of Sir Edward Hastings in 1407 and Lord Morley in 1386 before the Court of Chivalry, and Sir Thomas Erpingham’s heraldic window at the church of the Austin friars in Norwich erected in 1419, the Norfolk and Suffolk roll gives evidence of a close community of armigers before their chivalric ardour was exhausted. This armigerous society numbered many eminent soldiers and representatives of martial families between the earliest events mentioned in the testimony of the armorial cases before the Court of Chivalry in 1360 and Erpingham’s death in 1422.

Noel Denholm-Young writes in his History and Heraldry: 1254 to 1310 that ‘as historical documents the rolls vary much in value, since some include only living persons, while others span two or more generations and include mythical persons to glorify the patron by association. For it must be assumed that the heralds...produced their beautifully painted rolls because they were paid to gratify the tastes of their patrons.’[11] The use of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms as an historical text is also complicated by the fact that many of the shields have been left blank or exhibit slight artistic differences from the arms given for that particular family in other heraldic texts. The painting of some of the arms in different colours from how they are usually known (according to the family names given to them in the roll) might be attributable to mistakes made by either the fifteenth century author or the seventeenth century copyist. There is still a chance that the error is in the name given rather than the colours, and that these shields are actually meant to indicate entirely different people. The practice of indicating cadet status through the alteration of tinctures or charges on the shield, however, is a probably source of many such discrepancies.[12] The tables below list the blazons of the arms and their labels as given in the seventeenth century facsimile, the closest medieval blazon available in secondary sources and a reconstructed index of the 150 East Anglian individuals included. Despite these drawbacks, Denholm-Young states that ‘in a more general way the rolls reveal sociological trends not easily observable in narrative sources.’[13] The Norfolk and Suffolk roll and other regional heraldic sources portray the armigerous gentry society of East Anglia as a martial community, although Norfolk and Suffolk were not as militarized as were Cheshire or the border counties during the middle ages. The presence of many Duchy of Lancaster estates in East Anglia introduced the influence of John of Gaunt, and his recruitment of county elites for military service for his frequent campaigns on the continent accounts for many of the battles found in the biographies of the men in the roll of arms. The use of heraldic sources to shed light on the nature of gentry society in the fifteenth century, however, must begin with an examination of contemporary perceptions about heraldry and gentility. The military origin of coats of arms, for instance, does not mean that all armigers were soldiers during this period. The use of arms among most ranks of English society was permitted in medieval treatises. Possession of a coat of arms was by itself not proof of gentility in the fifteenth century. Even the concept of gentility and its associated terminology was still developing during these decades. The military theme present in these heraldic sources cannot automatically be assumed.

The origins of heraldry, or the systematic use of hereditary symbols upon a shield for identification, on the battlefields and in the tournament grounds of the Latin West in the twelfth century does not mean that the armigerous society of fifteenth century East Anglia was necessarily military in character. Coats of arms, for instance, were displayed prominently by the merchant classes of London and other large English towns and were put to exclusively civilian purposes. Since armorial bearings were in use among most levels of English society by the late fourteenth century, the terms gentleman and armiger were not yet completely synonymous. Contemporary writers frequently highlighted the right of individuals to assume arms by their own initiative, and the absence of a central English heraldic authority before the establishment of the College of Arms in 1484 contributed to a permissive heraldic climate. New armorial bearings in the middle ages were more often than not assumption rather than granted by a prince of arms. Nicholas Upton’s treatise on heraldry De Studio Militari, written before 1446, asserted that arms were, in his opinion, available to all men. ‘Meny by ther owne auctorite take armys apone them and to ther heyres. Never theleffe foche armes may frely & lawefully be borne, yff they be not borne by fome other A fore.’[14] These sentiments were present in the late fourteenth century as well. Honoré Bonet wrote in his L’Arbre des batailles that arms of assumption could legitimately be borne.[15] Not all medieval commentators were in agreement over the assumption of arms, however, and the author of the late fifteenth century treatise MS Sloane 3744 in the British Museum complained about the confusion such permissiveness created. The author distinguished arms of inheritance (ex parentela), arms granted by princes in recognition of achievement (ex meritus) and adopted arms, and states that these last arms are the least respectable type.[16] He further writes that ‘it is a proper fault among many people that they see many honest men riding and they say that yonder ride many men of arms but it ought not to be said so for they may not know whether they are all gentlemen of birth or not.’[17] Such a statement suggests that arms were used by the more humble segments of society, and that armigers who apparently thought ‘themselves to have nobility through their…business success’ were not unknown in medieval England.[18]

Evidence that armorial bearings were used by the merchant classes of medieval London supports the assertions of these writers that arms were frequently assumed by burghers and civilians. Significantly, the use of arms for non-military purposes allows one to ask whether or not gentry heraldry in East Anglia was martial in character. Sylvia Thrupp’s work on London merchants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries reveals many instances of arms among non-noble families. Thrupp has identified two dozen London merchant families of non-alderman rank from this period for whom impressions of armorial seals or references to arms in wills have survived. Even more London aldermen appear to have been armigerous, and Thrupp writes that this pattern was not confined to medieval London. ‘On the whole there can be little doubt that the use of arms was fairly widespread among London merchants in both centuries, and provincial deeds and monuments indicate, in the same way, that the custom was also common among the greater provincial merchants.’[19] Such heraldry was as much a matter of identification as it was a self-conscious attempt by merchants to mimic the behaviour of the gentry and the nobility. This type of heraldry also differed from the use of merchants’ marks in that these arms were being used an indication of one’s claims of status. Neither were these coats of arms employed merely to advertise their bearers’ trades. Thrupp writes that English merchant heraldry in the Middle Ages usually employed the same charges and devices used by gentry armigers and that both types of arms were indistinguishable from one another.[20] It is difficult to determine whether or not such arms were considered as legitimate as arms of inheritance or granted by a prince, but it is clear that at the time the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms was compiled, arms were not the sole preserve of soldiers or nobles. This means that the martial character of any armigerous community must be based on facts other than their possession of a coat of arms. In addition, any attempt to distinguish a gentleman at the turn of the fifteenth century based on the use of a coat of arms is problematic.

Any examination of the knights and esquires listed in a medieval roll of arms must address the issue of gentility. In particular, was gentle status at the turn of the fifteenth century measured by the possession of a coat of arms? If the terms gentleman and armiger were essentially interchangeable, is it legitimate to look exclusively at the latter group? It would seem that there was not much of a difference between the gentleman and the armiger at least in terms of the wording of patents of nobility and grants of arms. Sir George Sitwell writes that the letters of nobility issued by Henry VI in 1448-9 to Roger Keys and Nicholas Cloos, clerks of works at Eton and King’s College, included the phrase nobilitamus nobilesque facimus et creamus and also granted new armorial bearings in signum hujusmodi nobilitatis.[21] This wording could also be found in contemporary grants of arms, and from this perspective the difference between gentlemen and armigers seems slight. Sylvia Thrupp goes further and argues that a gentleman’s status was dictated by his use of a coat of arms.[22] The spread of armorial bearings through these levels of society, however, took several generations and armorial usage was not universal by the fourteenth century. It took half a century for the use of arms to spread among the manorial lords in the fourteenth century and ‘it was thus in a sense faute de mieux that arms became the principal evidence of nobility.’[23] Sitwell effectively demonstrates the distinctions between gentility and heraldry through an examination of those knights and esquires who did not possess arms at the turn of the fifteenth century. The records of the armorial cases in the Court of Chivalry and other contemporary sources, he continues, are full of men of standing whose families did not have arms.[24] Indeed, the criteria for a grant of arms from the medieval English heralds seems to have been as much a financial as it was a social matter. Fifteenth century grants were made to those men who had £300 of wealth or enjoyed an income of £10 or more from their lands.[25] Certainly the desire of merchants to adopt the armorial bearings of knights and esquires is proof enough that arms were perceived as signs of gentility, but this association was merely incidental. Those from the ranks of knight downward had not always born arms and did not universally do so by the fifteenth century. Significantly, the notion of the gentleman was one that was only beginning to come into use during this period, and the fluid nature of this term supports the study of armigers as an independent community.

The imprecise meaning of gentil-homme in early fifteenth century England means that any attempt to define the gentry merely by the use of a coat of arms would be an over-simplification. Sitwell writes that the term itself first appears in English records in 1413[26] and that during this period the term valetti, or yeoman, was used to describe those of lesser rank than esquires.[27] A statute from the reign of Henry V that required defendants in appeals and indictments to state their estate and degree seems to have spurred the adoption of the term.[28] Sitwell argues that such requirements forced the younger brothers of knightly and baronial families to adopt a new terminology to distinguish themselves from their titled siblings, whereas previously such lines were blurred. ‘This want of discrimination…is reflected in the use of the words themselves, for in Edward III.’s time every nobleman was a gentilhomme and every gentilhomme a noble.’[29] Thrupp is not wholly convinced that the concept of the gentleman emerged from the need of landless siblings to reclaim of sense of identity. Nevertheless, she recognizes the importance of defining this community along the lines of income and occupation.[30] That the word gentleman was not even in wide use across England by the end of the period being studied here is not necessarily a problem. The register of York freemen, for instance, is, according to Sitwell, a continuous record of styles and ranks from 1272 and charts the emergence of this term. The first gentleman so described within its pages occurs in 1417, followed by a second in 1426. By 1433 the word gentleman is being used annually in the register.[31] Thus it would be fair to say that the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms contains no gentlemen as such. The fluid nature of the language used to describe these ranks of society highlights how unfixed the distinctions between these groups were. In this regard knights, esquires, valets and gentlemen cannot be defined by the use of a coat of arms, but those who did bear arms provide the historian with a tangible reference point to begin an examination. The armigerous society of East Anglia at the turn of the fifteenth century as given in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms is a group that may be organized along lines of income and occupation. The use of arms by merchants and the new gentlemen to assert their social aspirations is in sharp contrast to the military role they still fulfilled for the knights and esquires of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Although the Norfolk and Suffolk roll was painted at the turn of the fifteenth century, some of the arms included belong to men who had died a generation earlier. While it would be incorrect to use the roll of arms to construct a portrait of a society at a specific moment, the biographies of the knights and esquires listed highlight East Anglian gentry society during the decades before and after roll’s composition. At least twenty-five of these knights were accomplished soldiers, and Sir Oliver Ingham’s (d. 1344)[32] martial achievements in particular are extensive as he served both in Scotland[33] and France. In 1324 he saw action in Gascony under the earl of Kent, later being appointed seneschal of both Gascony and Acquitaine. Ingham was also influential in preventing the fall of Bordeaux to the French in 1340.[34] The mayor of Bordeaux a generation later from 1399 to 1402, Sir Edmund Thorp (d. 1430),[35] was also included in the roll of arms and was for a time appointed commissioner to resolve disputes between Henry V and the Duke of Burgundy.[36] This knight also served on the seas under Sir Thomas Percy, admiral of the northern fleet and Richard II’s household vice-chamberlain.[37] Thorp was also at the fall of Harfleur in 1415 as a lieutenant under Thomas Beaufort, earl of Dorset and present at the siege of Rouen along with many other members of the East Anglian gentry in 1418. [38] Thorp died later that year at the siege of Louviers after leading nine men-at-arms and thirty-three archers at Alençon.[39] The coat of arms of his kinsman Sir Roger de Thorp is also present in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms, Sir Roger having fought at the battle of Borough Bridge in 1322.[40] Another knight listed in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll who served in France was Sir Henry Inglose (d. 1451) who was present at the siege of Rouen in 1418 and was later captured at the battle of Val Bange in 1421,[41] while Sir Walter, later Lord Mauny, (d. 1372) served under John of Gaunt in France as well a generation earlier in 1369.[42] Sir Robert Knollys (d. 1407)[43] also enjoyed a successful career as a soldier serving in both France and England. Knollys was knighted in 1351 and served under both Henry of Lancaster in 1357 and the Black Prince in Spain in 1367. Bertram de Guesclin was captured by Knollys in 1359 and he also assisted in suppressing the great revolt of 1381.[44]

Sir Robert de Salle (d. 1381)[45] was another East Anglian knight who fought against rebels in the fourteenth century. Described by Froissart as one of the largest knights in England, Salle served under the Black Prince in 1363. He was killed in fighting during Lister’s rebellion after having killed many of the rebels, some of whom were recorded as saying that Salle was no gentleman but of base stock. Indeed, his sole heir was a brother, John de Salle, who ran a tavern in Norwich.[46] Another Norfolk knight listed in the roll of arms, Sir Ralph Shelton (d. 1414),[47] also served abroad during this period. Shelton was present with John of Gaunt both at the siege of St Mâlo in 1378 and in Spain in 1386, and also saw naval action with Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford.[48] Sir William Elmham (d. 1403)[49] distinguished himself both as a soldier and diplomat during the reign of Richard II and was very active in Spain, having accompanied a group of English mercenaries to Castile in December of 1365 in support of Henry of Trastamara’s ambitions in Castile. Two years later Elmham was active trying to restore Peter I of Castile this time under the command of the Black Prince, and in 1374 he was sent by John of Gaunt to entreat the support of Peter III of Aragon for the former’s conquest of Castile.[50] Later that year Elmham successfully defended the castle of Bayonne in Aquitaine against the besieging forces of Henry of Trastamara. Elmham was along with Thorp, Shelton and another knight in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms, Sir John Ingoldisthorp (d. 1419)[51], an accomplished sailor and was appointed admiral of the northern fleet in 1380, and sailed with Thorp under Percy in 1385. His martial achievements were tempered by his role in the Flemish crusade of 1383 lead by the bishop of Norwich, Henry Despenser. After initial successes in the field Elmham and his fellow captains Sir Thomas Trivet and Sir Henry Ferrers received 7000 francs from the French in exchange for their support of a treaty under which the English would evacuate Flanders. Unfortunately for Elmham he was arraigned upon his return for this unauthorized withdrawl, although he was granted a full pardon by Parliament the following year.[52] The inclusion of the coat of arms of Sir Miles Stapleton in this roll of arms does not help one in determining whether or not Sir Miles Stapleton the elder (d. 1364) or his grandson and namesake (d. 1466)[53] was the intended individual. Regardless of which knight was in the mind of the compiler of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll, the fact that both grandfather and grandson were capable soldiers supports the martial characterization of this armigerous group. The elder Stapleton, a founding member of the Order of the Garter, fought at Crécy alongside many of the other knights mentioned above, while his grandson managed to capture seven men in the course of his career in France.[54]

The career of Sir Thomas Erpingham (d. 1428)[55] highlights the martial theme apparent in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms as well as the trend of service to the Dukes of Lancaster common among the East Anglian gentry. Erpingham’s successes on the field of Agincourt in command of the English archers in 1415 concluded a military career encompassing five decades. Erpingham’s soldiering took him from Aquitaine in 1368 with his father and the Black Prince to Scotland in 1385 and 1400 as a retainer of John of Gaunt.[56] In that same year Erpingham saw action against the Duke of Brittany at the relief of Brest, and the next year he followed the Duke of Lancaster to Spain in support of John of Gaunt’s dynastic ambitions in Castile. Erpingham’s subsequent appointments to the important military posts of warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover Castle as well as his elevation to the Order of the Garter were made both as reflections of his martial prowess as well as in recognition of his loyalty to the House of Lancaster. Erpingham entered the service of John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke, earl of Derby in 1390, exactly a decade after he became the former’s retainer,[57] and followed his new master around most of Europe. In 1391 Erpingham and the future Henry IV went on crusade to Prussia and on through the Holy Land on pilgrimage. Erpingham also demonstrated his loyalty to his Lancastrian master by accompanying Bolingbroke into exile in 1398, and in his absence Erpingham entrusted his lands and property to associates including Sir Robert Berney (d. 1415).[58] The Berney arms, Party per pale Azure and Gules a cross engrailed Ermine in dexter chief a crescent Argent, [59] do appear in the roll of arms although without any given name. Sir Robert, however, was an active member of Norfolk society around the time of the painting of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll. Although Berney did not have as much military experience as Erpingham, he did serve with this neighbor of his in the company of the John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster both on the Scottish expedition of 1385 and his Spanish adventure two years later. Erpingham even rewarded Berney by making him his deputy when Erpingham was created warden of the Cinque Ports and constable of Dover Castle upon his return from exile. Berney died on expedition in Normandy in 1415 as part of Henry V’s French invasion force while serving under Humphrey, duke of Gloucester.[60]

Sir William Bardwell (d. 1406)[61] was a Suffolk knight who made his military career in a similar fashion to many of his East Anglian counterparts, having served with Shelton at St Mâlo under Lord Willoughby in 1378 and with Erpingham in Castile under John of Gaunt in 1386. He was also present with the Norfolk knight Sir William Elmham on crusade in Flanders in 1383, having been retained to raise six archers and seven men-at-arms for John, Lord Clifton of Buckenham.[62] Also involved with Sir William Elmham’s attempts to install Henry of Trastamara in Castile in 1365 was Sir Nicholas Dagworth (d. 1402),[63] the nephew of the eminent fourteenth century soldier Thomas, Lord Dagworth. Sir Nicholas distinguished himself in Brittany in 1346,[64] in Gascony in the 1350’s under the Black Prince and in Burgundy in 1360. While in Burgundy Dagworth managed to defend Flavigny with only a dozen men from a greatly superior French force. Dagworth experienced similar successes against the French six years later when he took 500 prisoners in a pitched battle against the dukes of both Anjou and Orléans, and by the end of the decade was entrusted with the northern English castle of Norham.[65]

Sir Thomas Felton (d. 1381)[66] was also associated with many other individuals listed on the roll of arms through his military career. Sir Stephen Hales’s manors of Great and Little Ryburgh bordered Felton’s manor at Testerton[67] and together with Sir William Elmham Felton was appointed the seneschal of Aquitaine in 1375,[68] while Sir John Curson married Felton’s daughter Mary in 1389.[69] Sir William Wingfield and Sir Ralph Shelton acted as trustees to the Felton manors for Sir Thomas and his widow respectively.[70] Felton was a capable soldier at the battles of both Crécy and Poitiers despite his capture by the French in 1377.[71] Along with Sir Robert de Salle and Sir Robert Knollys, Sir Stephen Hales (d. 1394)[72] was able to use his military experience to help calm the revolts that shook East Anglia in the 1380’s. Hales was the knight who came to the rescue of a group of serjeants-at-arms who had been barricaded in a Norfolk barn by irate men in 1380 after they had tried to conscript sailors and appropriate ships in the name of the king. Hales was also active in suppressing the lawlessness that followed in the wake of Lister’s rebellion, during which he was along with the Lords Morley and Scales forced to join with Geoffrey Lister’s band. Hales was particularly humiliated when he was forced to carve Lister’s meat and taste his food before meals and, understandably, he later fought against the rebels’ requests for mercy in the following Parliament.[73] Hales’s soldiering began at the sea battle of Winchelsea in 1350, but most of his career was spent in Gascony and Castile. Hales served under the Black Prince in France and Spain beginning in the 1350’s and after the battle of Najera in 1367 was awarded an annuity of 500 marks for life.[74]

It was a shortage of cash that was Sir Edmund Noon’s (d. 1413)[75] problem in 1402. Appointed as deputy for the defense of the counties of Carlow and Kildare to the lieutenant of Ireland Prince Thomas of Lancaster, Noon wrote to the council of Henry IV that the troops under his command had gone unpaid and were on the verge of desertion despite the pawning of Prince Thomas’ plate and jewels. Previously he had accompanied the Black Prince to Gascony in the 1370’s and had sailed with Sir John Ingoldsithorp under the earl of Arundel in 1387.[76] Although the arms of Wingfield, Argent on a bend Gules three wings conjoined in lure Argent,[77] are given in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms without the individual’s Christian name, one Sir William Wingfield (d. 1398)[78] was active in Suffolk in the years leading up to the roll’s composition date. Sir William’s cousin Sir John Wingfield of Wingfield (d. 1361) was an important retainer and councilor of the Black Prince, William Montagu, earl of Salisbury and John de Warenne, earl of Surrey. William’s cousin’s connections facilitated his entry into royal service and by 1347 Wingfield was present with the Black Prince at the siege of Calais. Wingfield was also involved in a naval engagement in the waters off Winchelsea with the Spanish in 1356 and by 1365 was knighted in the service of Thomas de Vere, earl of Oxford. It was in the service of the earl of Oxford that Wingfield joined the Duke of Lancaster’s forces at Harfleur in 1369.[79]

Although many East Anglian gentry families listed in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms are represented by more than one individual, the Ufford family from Suffolk is represented by eight separate coats of arms. The identification of these individuals is complicated by the fact their coats of arms were differenced from each other with small brisures and marks. The arms blazoned Sable a cross engrailed Or in dexter chief a fleur-de-lys Argent are labeled as belonging to Sir Walter Ufford, although heraldic reference sources also give the exact coat to his kinsman Sir Ralph Ufford.[80] Similarly, the shield given as belonging to Thomas Ufford, differenced with the addition of an annulet Argent rather than Sir Walter’s fleur-de-lys, was also borne by one Sir Rauf Ufford.[81] Secondary sources suggest that Thomas Ufford was also known to have used a shield bearing an annulet Or, so perhaps either the compiler of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll or the seventeenth century copyist either painted the annulet in the incorrect tinctures or misattributed the annulet Argent to Thomas rather than Rauf. Some of these eight members of the Ufford family were prominent soldiers of the fourteenth century. Thomas Ufford was present on crusade in Prussia at the head of a company of English soldiers in 1348, 1362 and 1365.[82] Sir William Ufford[83] (d. 1382)[84] was a knight of the Order of the Garter along with his father, Sir Robert Ufford,[85] earl of Suffolk (d. 1369).[86] Sir Robert was along with Sir Walter Mauny a soldier in France for more than twenty years and was also involved with the capture of Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer in 1330 at Nottingham Castle. Sir Robert’s brother Sir Edmund Ufford[87] (d. 1375)[88] was also a soldier in France having accompanied the Black Prince on campaign in Aquitaine in 1356.[89]

The twenty-five knights included here number many prominent East Anglian soldiers, including Richard II’s standard-bearer Sir Simon Felbrigg (d. 1442)[90] whose arms, Or a lion rampant Gules,[91] are listed in the roll. Felbrigg was present at the battle of Agincourt in 1415 and had previously seen action at Brest in the retinue of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Sir Robert Walkfare, a veteran of the battle of Poitiers in 1356, is another solider listed in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll, while the unnamed arms blazoned Gules a lion rampant Ermine[92] probably belonged to another soldier from the region. According to an ordinary of fourteenth and fifteenth century Norfolk arms, this particular coat was borne by the Nerford family. One Sir John de Nerford served in France and was killed there in 1364.[93] Sir John Fastolf (d. 1459)[94] was an East Anglian solider able to exploit warfare for personal gain whose arms are not painted in the roll. Although one of the two painted Fastolf coats is attributed to John Fastolf, it is most certainly intended to represent Sir John’s father and namesake. According to secondary heraldic sources, Sir John Fastolf differenced his own coat of arms from that of his family, blazoned Quarterly Or and Azure on a bend Gules three escallop shells Argent by replacing the escallop shells with crosses crosslets.[95] The arms given as belonging to John Fastolf in the roll of arms[96], however, bear three shells rather than three crosses.[97] The roll of arms also contains the arms of three East Anglian individuals involved in armorial cases before the Court of Chivalry during this period: Sir Edward Hastings (d. 1437)[98] and the lords Morley (d. 1416)[99] and Lovell. These cases are important in part for the records they left which illuminate the uses of and thoughts about heraldry among the medieval gentry.

The Court of Chivalry was presided over in the Middle Ages by the constable and the marshal, the monarch’s two chief lieutenants in time of war. According to a statute of 1390, the Court of Chivalry was to concern itself with ‘contracts touching deeds of arms and war within the realm which cannot be determined nor discussed by the common law.’[100] The court existed long before the reign of Richard II, however. This statute was issued in response to the concerns of the Commons that as a court administering civil law rather than common law it could be exploited and misused by the Crown for its own ends.[101] The earliest reference to the existence of the court comes from the testimony of a witness in one of its own cases. In the 1380’s one John Molham described himself as a one-time clerk in the court before the battle of Crécy, and Maurice Keen argues that the court’s roots in the first half of the thirteenth century reveal something of its origins. Keen sees the Court of Chivalry as a permanent forum that tried the same types of cases brought before the commanders and captains of armies and hosts on campaign. These temporary military tribunals settled matters relating to prisoners, ransoms, traitors and armorial bearings. The records of the armorial cases are particularly useful in constructing a view of the role of heraldry in the lives of the English gentry, and as early as 1347 there is reference to cases over arms and crests being tried by commissions in the host besieging Calais.[102] Forty years later another armorial argument broke out between Thomas, Lord Morley and John, Lord Lovel and the ensuing litigation saw a great number of East Anglian knights and esquires testify.

Lovel and Morley both appeared armed in the same arms on the Scottish expedition of 1385 and the proper ownership of these arms, blazoned Argent a lion rampant Sable crowned and armed Or, was soon brought before the Court of Chivalry’s attention. These are the same arms given in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms for Morley,[103] while a Lovel is recorded as having the arms Argent three hounds courant in pale Sable.[104] While the majority of Lovel’s witness were drawn from the counties of Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, Lord Morley drew much of his support from his home county of Norfolk.[105] It is the testimony of these East Anglian individuals which provides a glimpse into the uses that the coats of arms in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll were put to in the late fourteenth century. The Court of Chivalry met between 13 April 1386 and 27 April 1387 on forty-six days and convened in many different churches and manors in Norfolk and Suffolk.[106] Witnesses’ testimonies frequently focused on occasions when the litigants or their ancestors were observed using the contested armorial bearings on campaigns and such a record is valuable to military historians. The details of armorial usage in churches and monuments contained in the records of the Lovel-Morley case is equally significant in piecing together the heraldic life of East Anglia. Over two dozen of Lord Morley’s lay witnesses out of a total of 111, for example, testified as to these civilian instances of heraldry.[107]

The significance of church heraldry among the Norfolk gentry is apparent from the testimony of Morley’s witnesses. On one occasion Thomas, Lord Morley’s kinsman Sir William Morley was recorded as donating a coat of arms of the contested blazon to a parish church in Somerton, while one Thomas Bolyngton erected armorial banners in several churches after Robert, Lord Morley was killed in fighting at Reims.[108] One of Lovel’s witnesses, Sir Maurice Bruyn, testified that this Robert Morley as he lay dying before Reims conceded his arms to Lord Burnell.[109] Apparently this claim was not persuasive enough for the Court of Chivalry. The judgment of the court was given in front of a large crowd at the church of St Peter at Calais[110] by Henry of Lancaster in favor of Morley and his descendants, but interest in the armorial dispute among the English host went beyond the matter of identification in battle. Arms were intimately linked with the chivalric concepts of honor, as was attested to by Richard, Lord Scrope in 1391. Scrope asserted that ‘the highest and most sovereign things a knight ought to guard in defence of his estate are his troth and his arms.’[111] In this case, however, whoever could establish a claim to these arms could also make a claim to the Burnell estates as the heir to the Burnell arms.[112] Property concerns were also integral to the armorial dispute that would surround Sir Edward Hastings at the turn of the century.

The case of Sir Edward Hastings against Reginald Lord Grey of Ruthyn before the Court of Chivalry concerned the proper descent of the arms Or a maunch Gules, the Hastings earldom of Pembroke, estates associated with the title and various duties to be performed at the sovereign’s coronation.[113] While the previous earl of Pembroke died childless in a tournament at Woodstock in 1389, the row between Sir Edward Hastings and Lord Grey came to ahead on campaign in Scotland. In 1400 both men were serving in Henry IV’s host and although both appeared attired in the disputed arms, the fact that Edward was a minor at the time meant a legal delay of several years.[114] In fact another knight commemorated in the roll of arms, Sir Simon Felbrigg, noted that Lord Grey might not have come into possession of the Pembroke estates after the earl’s death in 1389 so easily if his death had not come during Edward’s minority.[115] When the Court of Chivalry did convene in 1407 under the Constable of England, Prince John,[116] and the Earl Marshal, Ralph Neville, earl of Westmorland, it called about a hundred and forty witnesses, nearly a hundred of whom were called in Hastings’s defense.[117] Although the court had returned its verdict in Lord Grey’s favour by 1409, one of the central arguments presented by Hastings concerned heraldic cadency marks.

The argument that a label of three points Argent was used in this East Anglian family to indicate not only the heraldic heir, but also the heir of the Hastings earls of Pembroke divided those soldiers brought before the Prince John and Westmorland. Sir Edward raised this heraldic argument in part to counter Lord Grey’s genealogical evidences in support of his claim to the earldom. Lord Grey was John, earl of Pembroke’s closest living heir upon the latter’s death in the Woodstock tournament through the marriage of Grey’s grandfather, Roger (d. 1353), to Elizabeth Hastings.[118] In this regard Grey’s claim to the title was sound, but Elizabeth Hastings’s father John (d. 1313)[119] had as his second wife Isabel Despenser. Sir Edward was their great-great grandson and, as such, was the senior living Hastings after Pembroke’s accidental death in 1389. Incidentally, Sir Edward’s claim that the earl of Pembroke’s heir bore the Hastings arms differenced with a label Argent helps one to date the composition of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms within the first decade of the fifteenth century. Sir Edward’s arms are painted in the roll without the label of three points, and as such he is portrayed with the undifferenced arms of the Hastings earls of Pembroke.[120] This fixes the painting of the roll before the 1409 judgment against Hastings, but probably sometime after confrontation between Grey and Hastings on the Scottish expedition of 1400. The Suffolk knight Sir William Hoo testified that he had seen both Hastings’s father and grandfather armed in the Hastings arms differenced with a label as a sign of their cadet status, while another East Anglian knight whose arms appear in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms, Sir William Bardwell, claimed that brisures were used to indicate the succession of titles as well as arms. He testified that the arms of the Prince of Wales, as heir to the English throne, was also differenced with a label Argent.[121] Apparently Edward’s father Hugh (d. 1386)[122] was acknowledged by his peers as the heraldic heir of his cousin the last Hastings earl of Pembroke. Hugh bore the Hastings arms with the label of three point as the young earl had no children, but on occasion Hugh was asked to use the undifferenced arms of his family.[123] Hugh was asked by the duchess of Norfolk and her daughter the countess of Pembroke to use the arms of Hastings without the label while serving with many other Norfolk knights under John of Gaunt in Spain to honour his young cousin.[124] When Hugh died on this campaign he was laid to rest in Calais with these undifferenced arms.[125]

The accounts of Hastings’s witnesses regarding his family’s personal use of heraldry are like those of Morley’s witnesses and demonstrate a regard for heraldry that was personal, celebratory and commemorative. Richard Fishlake testified that Edward’s father Sir Hugh Hastings would leave a representation of his family’s arms when on campaign abroad. The physical trail of Sir Hugh’s family heraldry could be found around medieval Europe in the wake of his crusading activities, and escutcheons of his arms were hung in the churches of the Knights Hospitallers at Rhodes and of the Teutonic Knights in Konigsberg in Prussia, where Sir Thomas Erpingham saw the Hastings arms differenced with a label Argent.[126] One Nicholas Braynton had seen the same label in 1373 when Edward’s father Hugh was dubbed by John of Gaunt.[127] On that occasion an escutcheon quartered with the arms of Folliot had been placed before him.[128] The arms of Hastings could also be found in English churches of the fourteenth century. One Thomas Pikworth testified that Sir Edward’s grandfather Hugh placed a banner of his arms in a church at Falmouth. Hugh Hastings had raised the banner after he survived a shipwreck in 1379 when he was serving in the company of Bardwell, in a fleet commanded by Sir John Arundel.[129]

Lord Grey was insistent that the Hastings titles were inseparable from the Hastings coat of arms and, as such, jealously guarded his victory in the Court of Chivalry.[130] Sir Edward claimed during the course of his trial that Grey had maliciously suppressed evidence in support of his claim. ‘I say, that thow Reginald de Grey, Knight, with other thine adherentes & complices in this partie, hast withdrawen the evidences & munementes pteyninge to me touchantes the heritage of Hastinges, & colludes in subtraction of my proves falslych agaynst knighthode and cōmune profyte, in wicked ensample and in subvercion of true lawes.’[131] Hastings moved to appeal his courtroom defeat after the judgment came down in Grey’s favor on 9 May 1410, but in 1417 before the appeal could be decided Hastings was arrested for failing to pay Grey £987 for the cost of the original suit.[132] Grey had maneuvered into a position where Hastings would face imprisonment until the debt was settled even though Hastings viewed such a payment as tantamount to recognition of Grey’s legal victory in 1410. Hastings likewise refused Grey’s offer to release him without repayment if only he would abandon his appeal.[133] Sir Edward complained of being ‘boundyn in fetters of iron liker a thief or a traitor than like a gentleman of birth.’[134] Hastings also refused to compromise his claim to his arms and title for over twenty years and remained in prison despite the deaths of his wife and children. In 1421 Hastings wrote to Grey that because of this ‘distresse in prison my body and my lemys ar aperted and I brought in til langweryn sicknesse that I am nevir like to be heile…and also in the long distresse of prisonement my wife is dede,’ but he maintained that he was in the right. Hastings only offered to renounce his arms and title if Lord Grey agreed to a marriage between his daughter and Sir Edward’s son, but Hastings’s incarceration continued until he expired from poor health in 1437.

While the cases of Lovel v. Morley and Grey v. Hastings in the Court of Chivalry are a rich source of material for military historians, the East Anglian witnesses for Morley and Hastings reveal some of the details concerning gentry heraldry at the turn of the fifteenth century. Whereas the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms gives a sense of the breadth of gentry heraldry in East Anglia, descriptions of church heraldry and cadency marks by men in the roll like Morley, Hastings, Felbrigg and Bardwell suggests the depths of heraldic usage and traditions in this community. The case of Sir Edward Hastings illustrates how closely armorial bearings were linked to issues of the descent of titles and property ownership, and his pathetic imprisonment and death highlights the strength of his convictions. Of course, his stubborn refusal to pay for his release probably had more to do with his interest in the Pembroke estates rather than heraldic pride, but it does at least suggest that armorial matters were of considerable social as well as military concern. Whereas Hastings’s concerns were personal, Sir Thomas Erpingham’s memorial window erected after his death was communal and commemorative.

In 1419 Erpingham erected the east chancel window of the Austin friary church at St Michael in Conisford, Norwich and glazed it with armorial glass in commemoration of those armigerous families in East Anglia that had died out since 1327.[135] The Erpingham window originally contained the arms of eighty-two individuals in eight lights, although the arms of twenty-five further defunct families from the area were added afterwards.[136] At least fifty-six individuals recorded on the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms, or just over one-third, had their arms commemorated in this armorial window.[137] Distinguishing which members of the Ufford family were intended to be portrayed in the window is made difficult by the similarities between their coats of arms. The third shield in the first light of the window, for example, is attributed by Blomefield to Sir Thomas Ufford, and Ken Mourin gives Sir Thomas’s arms as Sable a cross engrailed Or a label of three points Argent. The Norfolk and Suffolk roll, however, has Sir Thomas’s arms with an annulet Argent. Similarly, there is disagreement over the very next shield in the first light. The arms of Sir Ralph Ufford are said by Mourin to contain a fleur-de-lys Argent in dexter chief, but the roll of arms attributes this blazon to Sir Walter Ufford. It is also unclear why Erpingham included Sir Edmund Ufford[138] along with the other defunct armigers, as his son and heir Sir Robert Ufford is recorded in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll with the same arms.[139] Likewise, one Sir Bartholomew Bacon is listed both by Blomefield and the compiler of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll, although Mourin gives a different blazon to that in the roll of arms.[140] The arms of Sir Hugh Tursbut also occur in both records, although with conflicting blazons.[141] Despite these few irregularities, the Erpingham window illuminates many of the individuals contained in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll.

The fact that Erpingham chose to honor only those armigerous families from Norfolk and Suffolk that had failed in the male line allows for a comparison between the failure rates of armigerous families in early fifteenth century East Anglia and the rates for the gentry population as a whole. M. J. Sayer, for instance, writes that the size of the gentry in early fourteenth century East Anglia remained the same into the seventeenth century. ‘The overall number of gentry was stable…in Norfolk the number of about 400 gentle lineages at any time in the Visitation era is not far from that of 440 lay manorial lords in 1316.’[142] Yet of the more than 600 gentry families recorded in the visitations of Norfolk and Suffolk between the 1560’s and the 1660’s, only ninety were considered gentry in the fifteenth century.[143] This gives a rather steep rate of decline that is upheld by the Erpingham window. If one assumes that the 150 families contained in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll represents the armigerous gentry population of East Anglia in the late fourteenth century, then apparently a third were extinct a generation later when the window at St Michael’s church was commissioned. The armigerous society portrayed in the Erpingham window is, like that of the Norfolk and Suffolk roll, a particularly martial group. Nineteen of these men had seen action, while many others came from eminent military families such as the Feltons, the Fastolfs and the Walkfares.[144] Erpingham’s gift of this armorial window to the church of the Austin friars does not only offer one a further glimpse into an armigerous community, with its patterns of growth, decay and military service, but it is a touching insight into Erpingham’s own failed line. His only daughter Joan or Juliana Erpingham married Sir William Philip of Dennington, and as such his arms survived not as living heraldry but in armorial glass. Erpingham’s concern with preserving the armorial record of those failed families also suggests a personal attachment to one’s arms as was displayed by Hastings in his refusal to compromise with Grey over his arms.

The presence of many eminent soldiers and representatives of martial families in the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms reflects the military career of John of Gaunt since many of these knights were members at one time or another of the Lancastrian affinity. The economy and society of East Anglia at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries, however, was not a military one. Norfolk was a particularly wealth county in the middle ages and local farming, sheep raising and transportation through the ports at Lynn and Yarmouth combined to foster trade and the rise of a merchant class.[145] An equally independently minded peasant and tenant population contributed to a climate that did not favor the establishment of any single dominating magnate in the region.[146] The deaths of William Ufford, earl of Suffolk, without heirs in 1382 and of the elderly duchess of Norfolk, Margaret Marshal, in 1399 when her grandson and heir Thomas Mowbray was in exile delayed the emergence of any regional leader.[147] Mowbray’s death six months later left the vast Bigot estates in the hands of a minor, and the deaths of many other lesser landholders, including the earls of March (d. 1398), Oxford (d. 1400) and Lord Scales (d. 1402), left much of the area’s properties to under-aged heirs.[148] The county elites of Norfolk that make up much of the roll of arms also formed a close community of office holders and manorial lords who jealously guarded their own independence from both the Crown and major lords.[149] The frequent occurrence of East Anglian armigers serving in military roles within the retinue of the duke of Lancaster, however, occurred as a consequence of these factors rather than in spite of them.

The marriage of John of Gaunt to Blanche, heiress of the Duchy of Lancaster, made him a major landholder in East Anglia upon the death of the latter’s father in 1362. The major duchy estates in Norfolk were located in the North of the county in the areas of the North and South Erpingham hundreds, Brothercross, North Greenhoe and the Smithdon hundred.[150] The value of his estates and manors made him an attractive lord, since his annual receipts from these lands amounted to more than £900, a figure only surpassed by the duchess of Norfolk.[151] The East Anglian gentry, unfettered by the absence of any single dominant lord, had the freedom to become the retainers of those magnates best suited to their needs. John of Gaunt’s frequent absenteeism in East Anglia may have seemed attractive to such an independent community. In spite of Gaunt’s lack of presence in the life of the county, he was still able to attract the service of many of local elites thanks to the lucrative manors in his gift.[152] Sir Thomas Erpingham benefited from his possession of the South Erpingham hundred, while Gaunt let the manor of Fakenham to Sir Thomas Morieux.[153] Gaunt called upon his retainers primarily for military service and many of the soldiers listed above saw action in his company. Sir William Elmham acted on behalf of Gaunt at the court of Peter III of Aragon in 1374 in support of his Castillian campaign. Sir Edward Hastings’s father Hugh died there in the presence of Sir William Bardwell and Sir Thomas Erpingham, while Sir Walter Mauny, Sir Ralph Shelton, Sir Simon Felbrigg and Sir William Wingfield all served under Gaunt in France during the late fourteenth century.

The martial theme apparent in the roll of arms is in part related to the nature of the Lancastrian affinity. In Helen Castor’s words, the associations Gaunt ‘made among the more eminent members of local society during the 1370s and 1380s seem to have been inspired primarily by his need for military service.’[154] The prominence of his son in East Anglian affairs naturally expanded upon his ascension to the throne, but the change in regime was met with neutrality and indifference.[155] The plurality of lordships in the area included Richard II and his father the Black Prince, men who had relied on the service of royalist retainers including Sir John Wingfield, Sir Thomas Felton, Sir Simon Felbrigg and Sir Edmund Thorpe. The reign of Henry IV, however, transformed the Duchy of Lancaster into a new bastion of royal power in the area. This focused the energies of Henry’s private domain to the public realm and provided a pool of men the king could draw upon for offices and military service.[156] In this way the social and economic peculiarities of East Anglia that promoted a mercantile rather than a military society also drew the local elites to wealthy magnates including John of Gaunt. These retainers were subsequently put into military service due to Gaunt’s frequent campaigning.

This is not to say, however, that the Norfolk and Suffolk roll of arms lists only the arms of soldiers. Armigerous merchants and clerics are also present, including Thomas de Hemenhale who was consecrated bishop of Worcester in 1337.[157] The families of many of the soldiers included secured their lands thanks to the legal or financial practices of their ancestors. John Berney (d. 1374), the father of Sir Robert Berney[158], was in addition to being the steward of the Black Prince’s Norfolk estates a successful lawyer.[159] Although Hugh Fastolf (d. 1392) is not commemorated in the roll of arms, his kinsmen Sir John Fastolf[160] and Sir Thomas Fastolf[161] are both named in it. His profitable career as a Yarmouth merchant and ship owner allowed him to acquire properties and manors in Norfolk and Suffolk and gave him the financial security to arrange advantageous marriages for his sons John and William.[162] It is difficult to use such heraldic sources to construct a view of county society as a whole. Indeed, Philippa Maddern’s study of East Anglian violence in the fifteenth century suggests that Norfolk and Suffolk were not particularly violent places. Maddern also states that ‘the gentry may have been more warlike in appearance than in fact.’[163] Social convention and the chivalric ideal were for them persuasive factors in the decision to serve in war.[164] These heraldic sources can more properly be used to construct a view of the armigerous society of East Anglia at this time. While the roll of arms provides a starting point for establishing the size and membership of this community, the Erpingham window and the records of the armorial cases before the Court of Chivalry provide the depth of details that highlight the views and attitudes of this community. Not all knights, esquires and yeomen in England at the end of the fourteenth century had military experience, nor were all those who used coats of arms during this period soldiers, but those who were members of both groups in Norfolk and Suffolk at this time bear witness to a lasting, martial tradition.

Erpingham’s monument in the church of the Austin friars to those armorial families that had died out since the coronation of Edward III suggests a concern for the memory of these individuals and their accomplishments that matches the intensity of Sir Edward Hastings’s defense of his arms. The testimony of witnesses in his case and the case of Lord Morley further illuminate the nature of heraldic cadency in the Middle Ages. This, along with the link between the ownership of arms and the inheritance of titles and properties, played an important role in Hastings’s trial. His later imprisonment and death, in part for refusing to accept his legal defeat, suggests how strongly armorial bearings were associated with concepts of honour at this time. What had begun as a method of battlefield identification in the twelfth century had three centuries later evolved and become associated with the chivalric ideals espoused by the gentry and the nobility. Significantly, while heraldry was clearly related to such concepts at this time, arms had yet to become a proof of gentility. Medieval heraldic treatises frequently stressed that arms could be adopted and legitimately used by burghers and other civilians. Sir George Sitwell asserts that ‘the lawyers and heralds of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with one accord, Englishmen and foreigners alike, declare that every man is justified in devising a coat of arms for himself.’[165] Gentility seems to have been perceived in the fifteenth century more in terms of birth, income and occupation rather than by the possession of a coat of arms. The use of arms by nobles, knights and esquires meant that, as indicators of class status, coats of arms were appropriated by merchants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the gentry armigers of Norfolk and Suffolk still counted many strenuous knights among its numbers. Erpingham and members of the Hastings family also distinguished themselves on crusades and left a record of their armorial achievement in the churches of Rhodes and Lithuania.[166] The witnesses from Norfolk called by Morley at his trial also demonstrate a strong heraldic presence in the county churches. The particular conditions in East Anglia, namely the strong merchant class and lack of any single dominant magnate, also encouraged many of these gentry armigers to enter into the Lancastrian retinue. The military service required by John of Gaunt and his heir Henry Bolingbroke of his retainers accounts for many of the campaigns in which these armigers fought. Henry’s accession to the throne put the resources of the duchy estates behind the new dynasty and placed many of these Lancastrian retainers into royal offices. These battle lists provide evidence that the waning of chivalric spirit and martial prowess identified by Maurice Keen in his English Military Experience and the Court of Chivalry: The Case of Grey v. Hastings[167] as having taken hold of the English gentry by the middle of the fifteenth century was still yet to emerge fully from among the gentry armigers in East Anglia from the 1360s to the 1420s.

Norfolk and Suffolk Roll of Arms

Queens College Library MS 158 ff 298r - 302v

Norfolk and Suffolk Roll of Arms: Alphabetical Index of Names

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