The nine essays in the current volume address key issues in the history of the fourteenth century in a variety of ways. Longitudinal studies of king’s confessors and corrodies of the crown provide insights into the intersection of political, religious and demographic currents over the longue durée and are complemented by studies of documentary sources of various kinds – newsletters, chronicles and municipal archives – to challenge current understandings of key events such as the deposition of Edward II, the evolving identity of the parliamentary peers and Richard II’s vision for the house of Lancaster. More prosopographical and biographical studies of post-plague clerics, and of knights within comital affinities and within their own individual affinity groups, shed light on county communities and gentry society in the long fourteenth century, as well as the impact of the Black Death on society at large, but particularly on religious continuity and discontinuity at the parish level.

As always, the editors of this volume are grateful to the other members of the FCE editorial board, especially those who have recently joined us. Their support and advice, as well as that of Caroline Palmer and everyone at The Boydell Press, continues to be fundamental to this enterprise. We look forward to returning in person to the International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo as well as the International Congress at the University of Leeds, where the papers sponsored by the Society of the White Hart and the Fourteenth Century Society have led to so many fruitful exchanges of ideas, many of which have made their way into the pages of this journal.

The contributors to this volume, as well as the editors and publisher, have been forced to adapt to unforeseen circumstances that have challenged one and all. The inability to access archives and libraries, coupled with the demands of new pedagogical techniques that had to be adopted seemingly overnight, were professional disruptions matched only by the profound personal difficulties presented by the loss of loved ones, enforced separations and isolation and the often debilitating uncertainly that has been unleashed in the COVID-19 pandemic. It is the editors’ hope that this volume of essays is a small testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring value of the study of humanity’s past as we navigate an uncertain present.

The following is a survey of the main medieval power structures (monarchy, upper landholding classes, urban elite and the Church) and their relationship with the welfare of the medieval populace, using the Midlands town of Leicester, and its county of Leicestershire, as a case study. The title comes from The Beveridge Report (1942), the findings of a commission set up to examine the challenges connected with the development of a welfare state in England after the end of the Second World War – namely, ‘Want is one only of five giants on the road of reconstruction; the others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness.’ Despite its date, this general schema is a timeless condensation of a set of ideas expressed in medieval culture through the seven corporal mercies (to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, shelter the stranger, visit the sick and prisoners, and bury the dead), and, in a less straightforward manner, the seven spiritual mercies (to instruct the ignorant, counsel the doubtful, admonish sinners, bear wrongs patiently, forgive offences willingly, comfort the afflicted, and pray for the living and the dead). Such a working structure provides a novel vantage point from which to examine how medieval provision looked ‘in the round’ at the local level, especially to potential recipients.

When Agnes Maltravers died in the summer of 1375, she was one of wealthiest women of the lesser peerage. Holder of dower and jointure lands from three husbands, and an heiress in her own right, upon her death Agnes controlled at least twenty-eight manors spread throughout East Anglia, the Welsh Marches and the south-west. Her personal possessions at the time of the writing of her will were equally impressive: among other bequests, she was able to distribute valuable forget-me-nots to relatives and friends, including her ‘great cup’, one dragenall, six plates, six pottengers, six saucers, and two pitchers, all made of silver. As well as these and other valuable chattels given out to relatives and friends, at death, she also believed that she would have enough accessible cash to promise at least seventy pounds in monetary gifts to various churches, priories, hospitals, local houses of all four mendicant orders, as well as to servants and executors. Nonetheless, though she had luxurious tastes, as well as personal generosity, it is not as simple to say that Agnes was a spendthrift: for herself, she ordered ‘that no manner of finery of gold cloth should be put on my body except five candles, each candle of five pounds of wax’. Indeed, the affluence present at the end of her life masked a long period of genteel insecurity earlier on, when she had to fight both to regain and retain what was hers by right and also to look after the interests of her last, and most controversial, husband – John Maltravers.

Agnes was the daughter of William de Bereford, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas – a charismatic individual who had been on the commission to hear complaints against Edward I's treasurer, an executor to the will of Piers de Gaveston and later a Lancastrian retainer – and Margaret, daughter of Hugh, Lord de Plescy, the first peer of the family, but of a long line of Scottish, Welsh and French campaigners.

AS SEEN in the preceding chapters, Edward III's patronage programme was essentially demarcated by a mixture of the resources open to him at any given time, his ability to dictate how they were used, and the interests of his new men. But, though he had greater control than previous kings over the resources coming into his hands due to developments in land tenure and royal finance, as well as in administrative offices such as that of escheator, there was still a degree of chance as to what patronage was available to grant out at any particular moment. Indeed, while the increasingly efficient administration of forfeitures, entails, life grants and annuities all made it easier for the king to tailor patronage to his new men, the exact timing of the return of feudal incidents to royal possession was still mainly dependent upon circumstances outside the control of the king and his administrators – namely, the marriage and death of tenants-in-chief, forfeitures as a result of rebellions, wars, etc. Only with annuities could the king be relatively sure of an immediately available source of endowment – and even then, as seen in the last chapter, there could be problems. Not only was payment of the annuity dependent upon the health of the source from which it was granted, but it was also usually not feasible for Edward III to incur such obligations too freely – pressed, as he was, to finance the Scottish and French war efforts through an increasingly confident, and argumentative, parliament.

The following conventions and abbreviations are used in several of the appendices. Further conventions and abbreviations are explained at the beginning of the appendices in which they are used.

Title indicates most important title to date.

Branch of family is indicated if needed for identification from another branch of the family also individually summoned to parliament. See family branch abbreviations below. Italics indicate uncertainty of identity.

DESPITE the pessimistic eulogy of at least one fifteenth-century poet, and most historical opinion prior to the 1950s, Edward III's reign (1327–77) is now rated as one of the most successful of the English Middle Ages. Raised in the court of his father, Edward II, a generally unpopular king deposed in 1327, Edward III came to power in his own right in 1330 after the overthrow of his guardians, his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover, Roger Mortimer. At first preoccupied with the Disinheriteds' campaign against the Bruce line, by 1337 he had entered into a war with France, a conflict which brought financial trouble and parliamentary crisis by 1340. However, once military campaigning began to go well on the Continent, first in Brittany, then at Crécy and Calais, domestic criticism, while never entirely silent, had less on which to focus. Rather, the next crisis to hit England came with the advent of the Plague in 1348, which would continue until 1350, and would revisit the realm in 1361, 1369 and 1375.

UNFORTUNATELY for Edward III's new nobility, appropriate sources of landed income, long or short term, were not always available at the time of endowment. Until these could be found, the king used other means to sustain these individuals – something done mainly through payments from various sources of royal revenue. Undeniably, though financial patronage was often a ‘secondary indicator of importance’, as one historian has called it for Henry I's reign, nonetheless, it remained a very useful and important one throughout the Middle Ages. Though whether Anglo-Norman kings favoured money fiefs for ordinary patronage to household knights is now open to debate, it is more difficult to deny that later kings used cash payments as a flexible way to show favour, especially to those moving into or within the nobility. Henry III gave such payments to his courtiers, and Edward I, while generally believed to have been tight-fisted, granted a variety of dona to his supporters. But it was only in the first quarter of the fourteenth century that increased co-ordination between use of cash payments, especially annuities, and other forms of patronage really came into its own. Before this, the lack of secure entails and life grants meant that it was difficult to know if, when or how a piece of land was going to return to the king, and therefore if an annuity should be granted in expectation of those lands coming back into the king's possession.