Henry Stafford whose side was he on??

[westwaller]

Yes folks it is time to help out poor confused Westwaller again...

Reading through bits and pieces of stuff on the Wars of the Roses, I am really confused to which side that Sir Henry Stafford was on, specifically at Towton? I seem to be coming across conflicting sources...

Was he a Lancastrian or Yorkist?.

Did he change sides? were there two Henry Staffords? if so did they both have Red & Black livery coats with the Stafford knot?

I know it might seem to be a 'bread & butter' question to some, but any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

Westwaller.

[Arlequín]

I'm sad to say that there were a couple of Henry Stafford's, all branched off the same family somewhere along the line. It's unlikely that all of them used the Stafford knot, or indeed the black and red livery.

Badges 'appear' to have been handed down to the successive heads of a family, possibly colours were too. In which case Sir Henry Stafford (2nd son of the Duke of Buckingham) might have used the knot (and the white swan), along with red and black, at least until his nephew (Henry, Duke of Buckingham) was due to come of age (Henry was wounded at Barnet and subsequently died before that happened however). This Henry Stafford fought for the Lancastrians but was pardoned after Towton and became a Yorkist thereafter.

The Lords Stafford of Southwich were distantly related to the other Staffords and largely had lands in Devon and Dorset. These were Yorkists from the get-go (possibly because the Earl of Devon was a rival? I'm not sure) and Lord Humphrey later became Earl of Devon. I'm sure his son was called Henry and he was amongst those who stopped Buckingham crossing the River Severn in 1483. The family badge seems to have been a cartwheel in flames, but other than that I don't know.

I've dragged most of that from memory, so apologies if I've misled... it does give you a starting point at least.  

Because it gets treated as a 'bread and butter' topic, that's why it's so confusing as many accounts just assume conflicting names and titles are the same person... for example there were three different men from different families who became 'Earl of Devon' between 1455 and 1485, two different Earls of Pembroke, two Earls of Wiltshire, two Marquesses of Dorset and if your name was Stafford, odds were that you were a Henry or a Humphrey... unless you were one of a large litter, in which case you could be called something else (as in John Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire - who unlike his father and brother, was a Yorkist).

It was also common to name the first son after the father, so unless they died young, the same name continues, even if one was killed in battle. So you get Thomas Fitzalan, Earl of Arundel and Thomas Fitzalan, Lord Maltravers, who are father and son for example, the latter becoming Earl of Arundel as soon as his dad bites the dust. Gets a bit confusing when you read he's dead on one page and on the next he's up and around attending coronations and stuff, or indeed dying again.  

[Phil Robinson]

Now I remember why I gave up on WotR and went Burgundian

[Arlequín]

The erm... break I took from WotR sometime ago was pretty much for the same reasons. I get a twitch in one eye when someone mentions 'retinue billmen' too.  

[Elk101]

I'd venture that he (insert any Henry Stafford here) was on his own side, like most of the rest of them. Why should the 15th century be any different to any other century in thar sense! 

Yes, not really helpful at all (though probably true) but then Arlequin is my go to source for WotR. If you haven't checked out his blog, it's bloody brilliant.

[Arlequín]

Thanks  

... and if you liked that, once I have time to do the re-writing for the new blog, you should find it somewhat more ordered, accessible and in more byte-sized chunks. At the very least the breakdown for Wars of the Roses armies should match the French already up on there.

I'd venture that he (insert any Henry Stafford here) was on his own side, like most of the rest of them. Why should the 15th century be any different to any other century in thar sense! 

Without a doubt true. The numbers of lords who followed Yorkist or Lancastrian out of pure loyalty to either could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.

[westwaller]

Thank you for clearing that up, @Arlequin 

I get a twitch in one eye when someone mentions 'retinue billmen' too.  Laugh

Is it going to open a can of worms if I ask why, or is the answer to be found in the thread about WOTR force composition?

I suspect the answer is that they did not exist in that way...

I found an interesting theory on a living history site about livery coat colours, the idea that the may have changed according to geographical region- say Norfolks men for example, may have worn different colours when fighting at one end of the country compared to the other.

[Arlequín]

Not a can of worms, but I do get quite wordy, you have been warned! 

In short, they existed as we understand them, but as part of the greater mass of men at arms and not as a separate entity - essentially you had 'men at arms' and archers in retinues, while levies were formed from archers and bills... the bills being the lowest form of life on the military scale, as they were drawn from the mass of people earning the lowest incomes (and hence who had to own the least equipment... i.e. just the bill, or indeed a pointy stick). Most rules and lists overrate them, even though what evidence survives shows them as 'making up the numbers' when they appear at all. Archers were the 'line infantry' of the day whether as melee or missile troops.

Livery colours are a hard one. Where there is a garter plate for an individual surviving, usually his crest and the 'cloth' flowing from it conforms to what we know (when we know) of his badge (or at least one of them) and his livery colours. Badges seem to survive within family lines more than colours, hence my saying before that they were passed down to the head of the family in succession. 

I suspect that badges were granted, like coats of arms and titles (15th C. coats of arms were useless for identifying people, they were so complex), while colours were personal choice perhaps. Whether that meant that they routinely changed to taste, or expense, is unknown and it has been suggested that Norfolk had one spiffing livery for his household men and another more serviceable one for his retainers, judging by the household accounts. The 'right to chose a livery' seems to have been restricted several times in law, along with retaining and it seems that if you were below 'knight banneret' rank (i.e. hereditary nobility in the main), you shouldn't have one.

'Regional colours' sounds good, but falls down when you look at what others in the same areas were wearing, which was rarely uniform. One of the Grey's had a different coloured livery for every day of a tournament in the 1470s, although the badges were the same. Up on the marches it seems that despite their rivalry, Northumberland's and Salisbury's men were 'apparently' both wearing black and red... but I suspect that it was actually more like Montagu later adopting 'Percy red and black' when he became Earl, rather than their being 'historic' Neville colours.

Hard and fast rules are hard to determine, although we know that some people changed their colours, while others kept the same ones, even through generations. The 'Buckingham' Staffords seem to have stuck with red and black throughout, while successive Lords Clifford went from white (the OG himself and his son 'Butcher Clifford'), to apparently blue and yellow ('Clifford the Shepherd') in the same period. In the 1450s there appears to have been a fashion for blue and white amongst the higher nobility (Henry VI, Duke of York, Duke of Somerset etc.), so maybe their was an 'association' aspect in play too, in that case the fact that they were related to the crown perhaps.

We simply know far less than we do know it seems.   

[westwaller]

That all sounds about right to me, after all the fighting bill evolved from an agricultural implement. I believe it is thought that spears were the thing for the lowliest of troops at this time though.

Seems what the Perry twins still have to make are a set or three, of WOTR Archers in the melee, they are including some arms for this purpose in their Agincourt box, so not to do so for the WOTR seems a bit of an oversight.

It is a shame there are not more bucklers for the archers in the Bows & Bills set, although they are a bit of a pain to put on the miniatures.

[janner]

The erm... break I took from WotR sometime ago was pretty much for the same reasons. I get a twitch in one eye when someone mentions 'retinue billmen' too.  

Welcome to my world! My current research revolves around trying to track down noble participants from North West Europe on the Third Crusade, and name-fellows (homonymous) are a constant nightmare.

[Arlequín]

That all sounds about right to me, after all the fighting bill evolved from an agricultural implement. I believe it is thought that spears were the thing for the lowliest of troops at this time though.

The Statute of Winchester was revised a number of times and the final kit list for the 15th Century, for those below £2 income (about £10k in today's terms relatively speaking) was 'gisarmes, knives and other less weapons', so pretty much anything that could hurt someone and no need for armour, or anything like that, unless they happened to own (or borrow or steal) some. That they were described as 'bills' is the only clue we have to what the majority likely carried. The French had the 'coustille', which was very much like a scythe blade on a pole (inline rather than at an angle though) and I imagine there were probably a few of those in England too.  

They were now allowed by law to own and carry bows (as they had been since the mid to late 14th Century) if they had them, but if they did they must practice with them. Bows were imported and relatively pricey for what they were and price fixing (and other measures) were bought in to make them more affordable, even then prices per stave rose from around 5d (about £100 today) to 20d (about £400) in 1483. To get an archer's pay, your bow had to be to a set standard, as did your skill with it.

As you can imagine you would have to be pretty desperate for men to sign these guys up and it is rare to find them as retainers except in forces drawn from very poor areas (like mid-Wales, or possibly the Scots Borders). One of the Herberts had a force half each of archers and bills in the 1490s, while others only have them in single figures if they had them at all (no idea what was going on there and as it does not stipulate what armour they had, perhaps they were some form of banner guard or something?). As the Herbert at Edgecote is also believed to have been low on archers, I guess their recruiting grounds were particularly poverty stricken. Surprisingly archers were traditionally few in relative numbers in North and Central Welsh-Wales in any case - True story!    

While there were a lot of archers in England, they seem to have been snapped up pretty sharpish by the nobles and knights. In 1457 Royal Commissioners could not raise 13,000 archers from four counties for a commission of array, all but 8,000 of them were waving around letters of exemption from the guys who had retained them. You can imagine how good the standard of the 'leftovers' might have been, or their keenness to fight, if they weren't signed up themselves. Raising 13,000 men would therefore require 5,000 bills to make up the numbers, hardly a thrilling force to rely on. The commissioners didn't in fact and just went back to the king with the rolls for the 8,000 archers they had found.

I forget who said it, but someone at the time mentioned 'a bow with a bill at his back', so mixed groups may very well have been common in some cases, but it does imply the bills were there to back the archers, rather than replace them when it came to hand strokes.

Welcome to my world! My current research revolves around trying to track down noble participants from North West Europe on the Third Crusade, and name-fellows (homonymous) are a constant nightmare.

I thought I was a glutton for punishment.  

[westwaller]

In response to this thread I am currently tooling up my WOTR archers with Swords & Bucklers! I Might have to send for some spare command sprues to get more...

I have often wondered what the archers did with their bows in the melee, There are fictional accounts of archers using them to actually fight with, (string off) but surely if the your bow cost as much as you say, then unless you have no choice, you would want to avoid that. Did they just leave them behind, and hope to see them later?

[Arlequín]

I'm not sure how many would have swords and bucklers to be honest... certainly the household archers and the better off 'retinue' ones maybe. The rest I would have to guess, but given mention of archers having axes, falchions, daggers and even owning polearms, I would imagine it was quite eclectic amongst those on lower incomes. In other words don't get too carried away with the swords and bucklers.



As for what they did with their bows, that's anyone's guess. I can't see them bagging them up and slinging them across their backs in the heat of battle, but maybe they did. Maybe the non-combatants, arrow boys or whoever, collected them up to be reclaimed later... sheer guesswork here on this. Certainly they could be used as a weapon, and 'staff-fighting' is apparently the lost English martial art, so some people claim.

 

[janner]

I'd just offer up that learning to use a sword and buckler properly takes at least as much time to perfect as bowmanship. This is from a man who has yet to perfect either art mind 

[Arlequín]

I don't think learning to use them properly is so important, you just need to be better than the guys facing off against you. 

The point is though, is whether you could afford them. The full-timers and part-timers in the households and retinues perhaps, but the 'occasional soldier' not so much I'd guess. The lowest income class of archer only had to provide a bow, dagger and sword... bearing in mind that a cheap sword could be picked up for a few pennies, proportionately the same price you would pay now for one of those imported display swords you see around and probably about as much use. I suspect that they wouldn't be too fussy if the sword was replaced by an axe or other hand weapon either.

Bucklers and shields are mentioned nowhere in statutes, but we do know from contemporary illustrations and comments that bucklers at least were fairly common. I think it was Mancini who described Richard III's (or Gloucester as he was at the time) retainers as all being big lads with bow sword and buckler... but then they would be the cream of his men on that occasion, rather than a cross-section of the whole he could muster.

Obviously all that aside, I cannot imagine anyone not providing themselves with the best they could afford or borrow, if it was to their benefit to do so. Like motorcyclists today, they are only required to wear a helmet, but serious riders have Kevlar reinforced leathers which are not cheap, or at least the majority have normal reinforced ones if they can't run to that... nevertheless you still see the odd daredevil in jeans or shorts for all that though.