The author of the Vita Edwardi Secundi perhaps stated the importance of a man's landed wealth in the middle ages most succinctly: ‘By the size of his patrimony, you may assess his power’, he wrote of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, but this observation holds true for all medieval England. Land was the primary resource in the middle ages, as it is in any pre-industrial economy, and the greater the land controlled by a person, the greater that individual's wealth. But income was not the only reward which land could bring, for it endowed the holder with status and political power. A landowner would be the most important member of the local community in areas where his lands dominated, and would possess a status which could not be touched upon by those less-endowed. His extravagance, generosity and opulent life style would attract and reward adherents, servants and hangers-on away from any potential rivals, and, with his numerous supporters, he would be able to intimidate those who opposed or prevented further expansion of his powerbase, by legal or illegal intimidation. The higher nobility, in particular, were very sensitive to their own position; much of the opposition to Gaveston can be seen as resentment toward a man of comparatively humble origins being raised to the height of comital status (and being endowed with £4,000 worth of lands to support his rank), whereas his execution, despite having being meticulously planned by Earl Guy Beauchamp in Warwick, and having been sentenced and condemned under the earl of Warwick's administration), was carried out upon the nearest piece of Lancastrian land to Warwick castle because, out of all the contrariant lords, Lancaster had the largest estate. This made him the most powerful of the earls, and the one who would be most capable of resisting the hostile forces of the crown. Meanwhile, the poorest of all the earls, the De Vere earls of Oxford, played practically no role in the politics of the early fourteenth century, a sure sign that the greater the wealth of the earl, the greater his independence, and, as a consequence, the greater his political importance.

The rise of the Beauchamp family between 1268 and 1369 presents us with an illuminating example of how a family of reasonably modest means could, in three generations, rise to be become one of the longest established and well-respected of comital families. McFarlane says, when they first gained the Warwick earldom, that ‘the Beauchamp earls were of modest landed wealth. Indeed, only the Vere earl of Oxford was poorer, and he could scarcely support the rank’, and the Beauchamp estate was primarily concentrated in the midlands. Furthermore, for most of the later thirteenth century, Earl William was beset by debt, and seems to have constantly had to use the services of moneylenders in order to make ends meet. By Earl Thomas' death in 1369, the Beauchamps had acquired land holdings which stretched from Barnard Castle in County Durham to Helston in Cornwall, and which included the highly profitable land of Gower in the Welsh Marches. In one century, the estates and wealth of this family had grown consistently, so that McFarlane estimates the third Beauchamp earl enjoyed an annual income of £3,200 by the 1360s. This did not, by any means, make him one of the wealthiest of earls: the Lancaster estates were worth c£11,000 p.a. in 1311, and the De Clare inheritance has been estimated as yielding £6,000 p.a. before its dispersion in 1314. However, this was still a respectable sum; Aymer de Valence, earl of Pembroke, had lands worth approximately £3,000 a year, whilst Piers Gaveston was given £4,000 to support him as earl of Cornwall. The revenue which the lands generated, however, was undoubtedly bolstered by occasional windfalls, such as profits of war, of the sort particularly enjoyed by Earl Thomas. There is also income which we cannot possibly estimate, but which undoubtedly would have benefited the earl; ‘douceurs’, a cash bribe paid by petitioners in order to gain his favour, would have been substantial, given the third earl's control of the shrievalties of Worcestershire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire. As has been covered in the previous chapter, there can be no doubt that part of the Beauchamps' increasing fortunes in this period were due to the character and ability of the earls themselves. This, for instance, provided Earl Thomas with an annuity of 1,000 marks, along with the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. However, military prowess does not, in itself, adequately explain the rise in land, wealth and status which the Beauchamps enjoyed in this period.

When William inherited the title of earl of Warwick in 1268, he had inherited lands which were distributed over eight counties. Given the problems of communications in the middle ages, the notion of lands being scattered over England might appear a liability. The problem, however, does not appear to have been so great. The bulk of the earl's estates were concentrated in the midlands, with nine manors in Worcestershire, ten in Warwickshire and three in Gloucestershire. The estates in Worcestershire mainly derived from the Beauchamp family inheritance: the centre of Beauchamp power, prior to 1268, was Elmley Castle, described by Hilton as ‘an immense structure....inhabitable and in repair up to the end of the fifteenth century’. However, the castle appears to have been much neglected by the end of the thirteenth century, for, in 1298, Earl William's inquisitors claimed that the ‘castle of the manor requires much repair’, whilst in 1315 the castle was valued at a meagre 6s 8d on account that it needed ‘much repairing and sustaining’. This evident decline appears to have been halted from 1330 onwards; after this time ‘it would seem that an effort was made to maintain the castle in good repair’. Elmley Castle occupied an area in southern Worcestershire that had long been a Beauchamp stronghold, and which continued to be so once their lands had become part of the Warwick earldom. The main concentration of Beauchamp lands in Worcestershire began around Shrawley, to the west of Droitwich, took in properties in Droitwich associated with the salt industry, and the manor of Salwarp to the south of that town. It then included property in the town and the castle of Worcester, before fanning out to the south-east, taking in a group of manors located to the north-west of Pershore, including the manors of Stoulton and Wadborough. North-east of Pershore can be found the manors of Naunton Beauchamp and Sheriff's Lench, whilst there is another clutch of manors in the vale of Evesham to the north of the Gloucestershire border, concentrated around Elmley Castle. These include Great Comberton and Little Comberton and the Gloucestershire manor of Kemerton, just over the border. Throughout our period, the earl's properties in Worcestershire steadily increased. The manor of Acton Beauchamp, which had been granted in the mid-thirteenth century to James Beauchamp, a close relative of Earl William, came back into the hands of the Beauchamp family's elder branch, some time in the last two decades of the thirteenth century, following James Beauchamp's death without legitimate heirs. The later thirteenth century also saw Earl William and Earl Guy gradually acquiring land and rent from their own tenants in the manor of Great Comberton, extending their manor there by piecemeal acquisitions. Pirton, directly to the west of Wadborough, was in the hands of William Poer in the late thirteenth century. In 1298 his widow, Margery, quitclaimed her share to Maud Beauchamp, whilst Earl Guy slowly managed to get all Poer's heirs to release their rights to the manor between the years 1303 and 1313. Guy also bought the manor of Bishampton from the two heirs of William Pipard in 1313-14 although it appears that part of the capital messuage there was granted back to his widow Cecily as her dower. Despite the fact that acquisitions were made in this area, implying the Beauchamps were still interested in this region, there is as much evidence to suggest the contrary; namely that the Beauchamps, after the beginning of the fourteenth century, regarded the area as of secondary importance. Certainly this is suggested by the fact that Bishampton appears to have been alienated by Thomas Beauchamp by 1346, as was the manor of Pirton in 1341-2. The poor state of the castle of Elmley in the first years of the fourteenth century has already been noted. The castle of Worcester, in the Beauchamps' hands on account of their possession of the shrievalty of Worcestershire, was also allowed to deteriorate. By 1315, the castle was in such bad repair that it was considered ‘of no yearly value, because it is wholly in ruin’, whilst ‘herbage’, growing in the disused moats, was considered to have a yearly value of 10d. It was not only the castles that were allowed to fall into disrepair; the manor of Stoulton had a watermill and a windmill, which together were worth 8s. p.a. in 1298, and by 1315 these are both said to be in ruins [debilia], although they were still said to be worth 13s 4d. The fact that neither mill after 1315 is ever mentioned again indicates that they were allowed to disintegrate. This would correspond to John Langdon's view that, whilst the pre-Beauchamp earls of Warwick were ‘unusually active’ in building mills, they had over-reached themselves by the beginning of the fourteenth century, resulting in a decline in their numbers after 1315. However, this could also be regarded as an indication that what had been one of the key areas of activity for the earls of Warwick, in the late thirteenth century, became an area of diminishing importance as the fourteenth century progressed; a sign that the Beauchamps, who were once heavily involved in Worcestershire, now regarded Warwickshire as their sole midlands base.

The main group of Beauchamp lands in Warwickshire in 1268 were those that had long been in the possession of the earls of Warwick, and were scattered around the west and centre of the county. The main caput of the earldom was the castle and town of Warwick itself, including the park of Wedgnock. Claverdon was also in the centre of the county. Apart from Warwick castle and manor, the two most important properties were at opposite ends of the county. Sutton Coldfield was the principal hunting chase of the earls; by 1298 it took in part of south-east Staffordshire, with its borders taking in Salford Bridge near Perry Barr, the source of Bourne Brook, and Drayton Bassett. It was held in dower by the countess Ela up until 1287, when she exchanged it for the manor of Spelsbury in Oxfordshire, and in 1316 during Thomas' minority, it was expected to render over £24 p.a. for the crown. In economic terms, this made the manor around half the value of a manor such as Elmley or Wadborough in Worcestershire, but, as the earl's main hunting domain, its importance was clearly greater than either. Records of incursions into the park show the earls took action against intruders in 1293, 1298, 1303, 1307, 1346, 1351 and 1362, whilst the estates were under royal protection because they were fighting for the king. Earl William appears to have gone to great lengths to control access to the park. Ralph Basset's keepers in his own woods at Drayton, which joined onto Sutton chase, were obliged to take an oath before the earl himself for the faithful custody of his venison, and the earl's ranger oversaw the keeping of deer in Drayton woods, whilst, in 1289, Earl William gained permission from the king to ‘follow deer, started in his free chase of Sutton, into the [royal] forest of Cannock’. A grant in 1300 to Earl Guy of a weekly market and a four day annual fair seems to have been a deliberate attempt by the earl to integrate his manor into the developing commercial economy of its district. This initial attempt failed, for the weekly market presumably had lapsed by the time another license was given in 1353. By the early fifteenth century, Sutton Coldfield was displaying proto-urban characteristics, profiting from the food trade, catering for travellers on the Birmingham to Lichfield road.

In 1268, the other key Beauchamp manor in Warwickshire was Brailes. Like Sutton Coldfield it was isolated from the rest of the estates on the edge of the county. Unlike Sutton Coldfield, its importance was economic: in 1316 it was leased out when it was temporarily in the king's hands at £93 5s 4¾d making it the richest of all the earl's lands in the midlands, with the exception of Warwick which was leased at the price of a few shillings more. It was clearly of significant economic importance to the Beauchamps; there had been a market there every Monday since 1248, and in 1275 there were complaints that the earl's bailiff took excessive tolls there. In 1268, therefore, the earl's three principal properties in the county were situated at either end of the county and in the centre. However, as the century progressed, Sutton and Brailes were to remain isolated, whilst the earls gradually built up their estates in the centre of the county. There was, from the later thirteenth century, a concerted policy to extend his holdings in the town of Warwick, to which we will return later. Berkswell and Lighthorne were purchased from Richard D'Ammundeville in 1277. The manor of Haseley was purchased in 1301, and the manor of Sherbourne, which had been granted by an earl of Warwick to the Templars in the twelfth century, was granted to Earl Guy by the king when the order was suppressed in 1308. Some lands in Barford had already been taken into Warwick hands between 1290 and 1316, and the rest was purchased by Thomas in 1340, while Budbrooke was received by Thomas in exchange for the Worcestershire manors of Grafton and Grove Park in 1360. By 1369, the bulk of the earl's manors were concentrated in the centre of Warwickshire with only Berkswell, Yardley and Sutton Coldfield as isolated points in the north of the county, Tanworth on the Worcestershire border, Whitchurch, Ilmington, and Brailes in the south.

Outside Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the Beauchamps had land throughout England. The Mauduit family had originally been a Buckinghamshire family, and the most important Beauchamp manor outside of the midlands was their ancient seat of Hanslope. This manor remained an essential part of the Beauchamp estates, and Hanslope appears to have been a favoured place of residence, providing the earls with a useful place to stay on the way from Warwick to London. In the Beauchamp cartulary, it is commonly cited as the place of signing of charters, and in 1292 William Beauchamp received licence to build and crenellate a garden wall around his capital messuage there, which possibly stood on the site of Hanslope Castle, which had been destroyed in 1215. In Hanslope church there is still a painting of a bear and a ragged staff. There was also a concerted policy on the part of the Beauchamps to buy up, piecemeal, as much property, land and rent as they could: 22 folios in the Beauchamp cartulary contain over a hundred charters which detail the Beauchamps buying small portions of land in the fields around the manor, such as the two acres which Richard of Hulle gave Thomas Beauchamp in 1342-3; small amounts of rent, such as the 12d annual rent bought by Earl William from William Lupo, or the 2s 1½d rent quitclaimed by Richard Bayreueth of Hanslope, in 1295-6, for twenty shillings; or properties such as the messuage with courtyard that was quitclaimed by Thomas le Falconer to Earl William, which matches the description of the messuage with courtyard leased to John Henry and his wife Alice for 20d per annum. The receipts for this manor, along with several others, for 25 September 1327 to 15 February 1328, have been preserved. Although this period was less than six months, the profits of the manor amounted to £44 17s 11½d, which was more than twice that of Berkswell, three times that of Lighthorne and ten times the amount gained in Claverdon over the same period. Sale of grain in itself yielded a colossal £33 13s 6d, and it seems likely that this manor was more profitable than either Warwick or Brailes. In 1316, its annual value was estimated at an impressive £129 2s 6d.

There was another concentration of lands in Gloucestershire: Chedworth was traditionally a manor given up by the earls to somewhat frequent dowagers in a pattern that had become established long before 1268. Wickwar lay in the vale. Lydney, on the west side of the Severn, was a divided settlement, with the earls holding the half called Lydney Warwick as their demesne lands. Lydney's position on the Severn served to make it a centre for legal trade, in 1347 it was a place where customs were collected, but its size seems to have made it more of a haven for smugglers and profiteers; in 1282 six vessels based in Lydney were reported to trade in stolen timber from the Forest of Dean, and, in 1343, a vessel from Lydney was arrested for piracy off the Cornish coast. Whether from legal or illegal trade, Earl William appears to have encouraged the growth of the manor; he granted a weekly market in 1268, and had built a second mill there before 1282.

To the north-east of the Beauchamps' base in Worcestershire and Warwickshire were the properties they owned in Leicestershire and Rutland. Kibworth Beauchamp was an old Beauchamp property, Barrowden had belonged to the Mauduits, and Greetham had long been a part of the Warwick fief. It appears that these manors were sufficiently outside the Beauchamps' sphere of control as to be considered for alienation from the fief. In 1303, Earl Guy obtained licence to demise the manors of Barrowden and Greetham to the executors of Edmund, earl of Cornwall, to whom he was in debt, whilst Barrowden and Kibworth Beauchamp were settled upon Thomas' eldest son Guy in 1342, at the time of his marriage to Philippa De Ferrers.

From 1268 to 1369, the Beauchamps received several inheritances and gifts of land which gave them a number of isolated properties in areas where they had no other interests, and also into counties in which they had not been represented before. The Fitz-Geoffrey inheritance saw them gain Cherhill in Hertfordshire, Potterspury in Northamptonshire, and the reversion of the Buckinghamshire manor of Quarrendon. The latter two were quite near to Hanslope. Potterspury and Cherhill are two of the manors for which we have receipts from September 1327 to February 1328. Potterspury was considerably less important, for that time only yielding a profit of £7 4s 8d, with its true value probably in the region of £39 p.a., although, with over £10 having to be shared amongst the other Fitz-Geoffrey heirs, the true value to the Beauchamp estates was probably in the region of £20 pa. The receipt for Cherhill for the five months in question shows it to have yielded a staggering £47 16s 5d; three pounds more than Hanslope. However this appears to be an anomalous total, for over £20 of the revenue was from the sale of 64 acres of land to William de la Zouche; again the 1298 estimate of annual income of £48 13s 7d would appear a more accurate figure, although, after the death of Earl Guy, the crown estimated its worth at less than £19 p.a.. Quarrendon was the original caput of the Fitz-Geoffrey family, just as Hanslope had been for the Mauduits and Elmley Castle for the Beauchamps, with a park constructed for the lord of the manor in 1276. In 1332, on the death of Robert Montalt, the manor passed into the hands of Thomas Beauchamp.

Like the lands of the Fitz-Geoffrey inheritance, the Tony inheritance was concentrated in the south of England, but it brought in greater profits which were much more scattered. Flamstead, in Hertfordshire, was not too remote from Hanslope or Potterspury; it appears to have been the home of Alice, Earl Guy's widow, with her third husband William de la Zouche, and was one of the manors which Earl Thomas jointly entailed upon himself and his wife in 1344. Abberley, with its park, was easily absorbed into the earl's Worcestershire estates. Newton Tony and Stratford Tony, although in Wiltshire, were considerably removed from Cherhill, being to the south of Salisbury Plain. These two villages were too insignificant and too remote to be held in demesne, and when the manors had passed to Thomas Beauchamp in 1337, he, in turn, passed them to his brother, John. On John's death in 1360, the manors were given by Earl Thomas to one of his younger sons. The proximity of Walthamstow, Essex, to London appears to have made the manor worthy of investment; in 1361, Earl Thomas acquired the reversion of Walthamstow Bedyk to the south-west of the parish. The pattern for members of the higher nobility at this time was to have a residence in London, and a country retreat within easy commuting distance from the capital, and Walthamstow appears to have provided this. As an agricultural centre it does not appear to have been as valuable.

The manors of Kirtling in Cambridgeshire and Painscastle on the Welsh borders were far removed from any other Beauchamp properties, although both were of considerable value. The lordship of Painscastle was worth £171 per annum by the end of the fourteenth century. There was a second inheritance from the Tony inheritance in the 1340s, on the death of a dowager, and this brought in the Norfolk manors of Saham Tony, Necton, Fransham and Cressingham along with the hundreds of Waylond and Grimshoe, as well as the Cornish properties of Carnanton, Blisland and Helston, and rents from South Zeal and South Taunton. Saham Toney, with the hundreds, was worth over £115 a year and the properties in Devon and Cornwall yielded over £75 a year. By the 1340s, therefore, the Tony inheritance had made a difference to the fortunes of the Warwick earldom, in excess of £700 a year.

The most remote of Beauchamp properties were those in County Durham, which Earl Guy was awarded by the king at the beginning of the fourteenth century. They consisted of Castle Barnard, with its dependent manors of Gainford and Middleton. Like Painscastle, Castle Barnard appears to have been a very important source of revenue for the Beauchamps. In 1420, the Castle Barnard estate, alone, produced over £220 p.a. and by that time had become a great cattle ranch. No doubt continuing earlier arrangements, cattle were being driven south from Castle Barnard in order to provide for the needs of the earldom's great estates.

Of all the Beauchamp properties in 1369, the single most important possession was the territory of Gower, which included the demesne manor of Kilvey, and the castles of Swansea and Oystermouth. This had been acquired in 1354, and was the culmination of a legal dispute which spanned three generations, and which will be discussed later. From that date, it would appear that this Welsh lordship was responsible for up to 20% of Earl Thomas' landed income; in 1367 the profits passed by the earl's receiver there to his lord totalled over £600. Of added significance is the fact that the profits of Gower were not the result of sale of agricultural produce or fixed rents as it was on the earl's English estates; most of the revenue came from the profits of the court, and so-called ‘casual revenue’, which were largely immune from the crisis of the Black Death that was affecting the earl's English manors at the time. Earl Thomas appears to have seen the economic potential in the regions fledgling coal-mining industry, concentrated in the lordship of Kilvey, which yielded a profit of £70 18s 3d in 1366-7. In addition to the lands gained in 1354, Thomas Beauchamp also possessed the manor of Elvel from 1337, on account of his marriage to Roger Mortimer's daughter, Mortimer having disputed the rights to the manor with Earl Guy. Elvel brought in a comparatively modest sum, £194 in 1397, but along with the lordship of Gower, it has been estimated that these holdings more than compensated for any fall in income caused by the Black Death. It was not only the Beauchamps who benefited. Their interests in Gower correspond with the growing influence in the Welsh Marches of the Staffords, Hastings, and Montagues; all of them English aristocratic families who expanded into Wales in the later fourteenth century.

George Holmes, in his study of the estates of Elizabeth de Burgh, has perceived the economy of a great aristocratic household in our period to be based around ‘goods producing’ and ‘money producing’ manors. The ‘goods producing’ manors were concentrated in their home counties, were smaller, and raised agricultural produce which would be used primarily to support the lord's household by using the produce itself, or trading it locally to provide for other agricultural necessities. The ‘money producing’ manors were scattered among the more remote areas of the country, and provided cash for the wages of servants and officials, as well as the purchase of luxury items. The comparison with de Burgh is inviting, at least for the estates in 1369; the lady Clare's annual revenue of £2,000 to £3,000 per annum is approximately the same as Earl Thomas'; she also held Usk, a marcher lordship, as well as property that was spread out over many counties. It should be remembered that a sedentary noble, such as Burgh, would have run a different type of household to an active, military noble such as Beauchamp, who would have had more occasion to visit his outlying manors, relying on their hospitality in the course of his frequent travels. We lack any documentation that reveals the eventual destination of goods produced in the counties of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, but they do seem to fit the idea of a ‘goods producing’ manor. Of the partial receipts we have for the year 1327-28, the midlands manors yield considerably less profit than the manors in other counties. Bearing in mind that Hanslope produced over £44 and Cherhill nearly £30, the comparative penury of the earldom's midlands estates is shown up: in Worcestershire, Pirton only yielded a profit of £2 15s 10¾d; Wadborough £5 7s 7½d; in Warwickshire Claverdon brought in less than £2, and Haseley and Beausale together yielded £4 14s 7d. Certainly these figures do not represent the manors' full values, but they do allow us to make a reasonable comparison between the various estates documented. The midlands also had its share of highly profitable manors; we have already discussed Brailes, we shall see how Warwick was of great financial importance to the earls, and it would appear from these receipts that Berkswell was also a prize money-spinner.

There is evidence, however, that, at least by 1369, it was the estates in remote areas of the country which generated the lion's share of the earldom's income. In 1315, the king granted eleven of Earl Guy's twenty-two midland manors (along with some other properties) to his executors. The total annual revenue expected from half of the estate's manors (including the manors of Brailes and Warwick) was just under £480 per annum. It would seem unlikely that the income collected from all of their estates in Worcestershire and Warwickshire exceeded £1,000 per annum, a sum perceived as just above subsistence level for someone of comital rank. The property in the Welsh Marches, in particular, but also in County Durham, in Buckinghamshire, Wiltshire and Gloucestershire was therefore extremely important. It would provide the cash revenue with which to purchase and distribute luxuries and largesse, support military campaigns, and provide the funds for the acquisition of more property. This line of thought becomes even more interesting when we extrapolate this idea back to the time of Earl William in the late thirteenth century. At this time the lands from Warwickshire and Worcestershire would have provided most of his income, with Hanslope being the only high earning property he possessed outside of the midlands, and the dowager Countess Ela possessing rights to a significant portion of his lands. At a very rough ‘guesstimate’ we can estimate his annual revenue, before the Fitz-Geoffrey windfall in 1297, at around £1,000 to £1,200 per annum, a handsome sum for the time, but for someone of comital status this represented the bottom rung of the ladder.

*****

It was the creation of new estates that transformed the Beauchamps' wealth, from the second lowest of all the earls to the middle of their ranks. An important question now arises: how did the Beauchamps acquire these new lands? Was it part of a consistent land policy, or does the history support Holmes' contention that ‘a great inheritance tended to expand’, due to the fact that the constant extinction of other noble houses would invariably provide inheritances for the well-established surviving lines?

If the Beauchamps did exercise consistent land policy, it was based around small scale acquisitions. We have already discussed this in relation to Hanslope, where small pieces of property were added piecemeal to the earls' holdings throughout our period. This is precisely the long-term strategy which the Beauchamps took in their town of Warwick. Warwick was undoubtedly the most important property in the Beauchamp estates; it was their powerbase, the centre of their administration and, in 1315, brought in a higher revenue than any other property in the midlands. At that time, its economic importance was possibly only eclipsed by Hanslope and Barnard Castle. The Beauchamp cartulary contains over 50 charters which detail small scale purchases in the town from 1268 to 1369, compared to only one such purchase for the town of Worcester. The purchases in question were mostly rents and buildings, be they tenements or messuages, with the buying of plots of land also making up a sizeable number. The purchase of plots of land appears to have been a calculated desire to expand their existing holdings, for when an abuttal clause is attached to the charter, it usually does state that the land being sold is directly next to one of the earl's existing holdings. In some cases, the earls seem to be buying land directly next to Warwick Castle itself, which can be explained as expansion, or merely a desire for privacy, whilst elsewhere the land is next to tenements which they own. Here, presumably, the land is intended to provide an extension to the earl's property, and would eventually come to be used as a site for further tenements.

The buying of messuages, tenements and rents, however, does not appear to follow this pattern. Property of this sort appears to have been collected regardless of whether it abutted existing Beauchamp properties. The emphasis on tenements and rents, as opposed to land purchases, perhaps shows the Beauchamps' priorities in Warwick: tenements and rents were convenient and steady sources of income. This is despite a considerable amount of land which was owned in the environs of Warwick; in the minority of Thomas it stood at 342 acres of arable and over 99 acres (and 3 roods) of pastoral land. When buying buildings it seems to have been the desire for a simple cash revenue which determined the purchase. Some of the purchases were bought from widows, who were now in possession of their husband's property; the earl could be quite generous by providing for the rest of their lives in return for the quitclaim of their property. Alice Crompes was given a shop with its own cellar and latrine in Warwick, by Earl Thomas, in return for quitclaiming a messuage which she had inherited from her late husband. In cases where someone defaulted on a debt, and they had made over some of their property to be held as security, the earl would occasionally buy the debt off the creditor, in order to acquire the property which had been forfeited: Earl Thomas' receiver, John de Sanndrestete, bought a tenement in Castle Street from a Bristol widow on the earl's behalf, which she had acquired because someone had defaulted on a debt of £15. We also should not ignore the fact that the earls were buying rents in an area where they had the most control; the earl of Warwick's administration would have been concentrated in the castle, and the town's administrative officials would have been dominated by his men, which made it easier for his officials to deal with any cases of default should they arise. This would perhaps explain why they troubled to purchase very small amounts of rent, some of which brought in revenue of no more than a few pence per annum. To chase up so small a debt in an outlying manor could have cost more than the debt itself, but in the centre of his domain it would have been less troublesome. This would also have been made possible by the local knowledge and connections which his officials would have had in the town, making them well placed to discover if a property was on the market.

The problem of guarding isolated holdings in remote counties is demonstrated by the case of the Le Neir family in Southampton. Earl William had inherited the right of weighing ‘all merchandise sold by weight, at all hours and places in that town’, a right which he had rented to the Le Neir family for 20s annual rent. Nicholas de Barflete was alderman of the town, and had even been a witness for the charter between Earl William and the Le Neirs. He, along with other burgesses of the town, forcibly seized the weights and balance and took the right of weights and measures for their own use. This was, in fact, a calculated attack by the governing elite of the town on the rights of the earls of Warwick and his appointed representatives, and shows the problems inherent in maintaining control over holdings in areas out of the control of the earl and his administration. The problem was referred to the royal justices, and it was probably their intervention which kept the weighing rights in the hands of the earl; both earls Guy and Thomas purchased property in Southampton in the fourteenth century, but tellingly Earl William does not appear to have done so, a possible sign that, during his lifetime, he saw local animosity toward absentee landlords had made this remote property unworthy of development. A similar problem could be encountered in more significant outlying holdings. Following the grant of Barnard Castle, and its associated manors, to Guy Beauchamp in 1307, the earl found his holdings in County Durham to be the source of a dispute between Anthony Bek, bishop of Durham, and himself. Bek saw Edward I's grant to the earl as a blow to his own authority; Beauchamp refused to recognise the bishop of Durham as the feudal lord of the lands in the franchise, claiming that he held the lands as a direct grant from the crown, and denied the bishop judicial authority, and the lucrative rewards which Bek had previously enjoyed. Shortly after the death of Edward I, when the likelihood of royal intervention was at its weakest, Bek organised an incursion into the manor of Middleton, driving away the earl's livestock and causing damage estimated at £1,000. Faced with these losses, and a new king less likely to defend his authority, the earl capitulated and restored the liberty of the manors to Bek. The dispute over Barnard Castle is evidence that an outlying property, even one as well fortified as this, was not immune from the attentions of a hostile neighbour who had a large part of the local community behind him.

The piecemeal buying of land seems only to have occurred on a large scale in Warwick and Hanslope. Outside of these places, land purchases consistently tended to involve whole manors. After a manor was bought, small scale purchases of land and property did follow in many cases, but never on the scale of Warwick and Hanslope. Earl William and Countess Maud purchased the manors of Sheriff's Lench and Church Lench from James Beauchamp in what appears to have been a straightforward purchase. This also seems to be the case with the manor of Ashorne, which Earl Thomas bought from John Vessi and his wife Joanna in 1358-9. The following day, orders were issued from the Vessis to their retainers, John Hukyn and William de Marton, to hand over the manor to John de Whately, the earl's retainer, and with that and the payment of an (unrecorded) fee, the land sale seems to have been completed. The transfer appears to have been more problematic when there were various people with claims to the manor. After the death of Thomas de Haseley, Earl Guy bought the manor of Haseley from his heirs, his wife Anna and his son Robert. Separate charters record their quitclaim of the manor in 1301-2, with his widow receiving £20 annually from rents in Kibworth Beauchamp for life. Although Robert had quitclaimed the manor in the same year, he still retained some rights in the manor, and it was not until three years later that he surrendered these to Earl Guy in exchange for a cash payment of £20. We have already discussed the acquisition of Pirton which was quitclaimed to Earl Guy in various pieces between 1298 and 1313.

Perhaps the most complicated land deal was that by which the Beauchamps brought the Warwickshire manors of Berkswell and Lighthorne. Richard de Ammundeville, with his wife Maud, sold the manor to Earl William in 1277. Ammundeville was a close associate of Earl William's, as is shown by his frequent presence in the lists of witnesses on the earl's charters. The original sale was very generous to the Ammundevilles; by recognising the earl as lord of Berkswell and Lighthorne, Earl William gave them custody of the manors until their deaths, along with the profit of the manor of Brailes (excluding £16 rent), and a one-off cash payment of £100. This sale made sense to a couple who lacked any heirs and were probably too old to produce any, but was clearly a gamble on the part of the earl; he was alienating his second most profitable manor for an unspecified period of time, for two manors which might not come into the Warwick estates in his own lifetime. The gamble did not pay off. Ammundeville was still very much alive twenty years later, when, in 1297, he received land worth £100 per annum in the midlands manors of Beoley, Yardley and Claverdon from Earl William, in exchange for the manor of Berkswell. On Earl William's part, this deal appears to have been a very costly and ill-judged arrangement, and by demising a further £100 worth of land a year he appears to have been digging himself into a deeper hole. The manor of Berkswell was most certainly not worth £100 per annum in 1297. In 1315-16, after a large amount of peasant lands were purchased and enclosed in 1305-6, it was estimated by the crown to be worth £38 8s 3d p.a., and for the five months it was in the crown's hands in 1327-8, it yielded a total £11 16s 8¾d. The purchase of Berkswell and Lighthorne demonstrate a lack of judgement on the part of the first Beauchamp earl which, given his financial circumstances, he could scarcely afford.

The general pattern for Beauchamp accumulation of manors seems to be that they concentrated on purchasing whole manors in Worcestershire or Warwickshire; sometimes outside these counties, small-scale land and property were bought, but only on very rare occasions would this be a whole manor. We have already established the financial importance of the property held outside the midlands, but what is interesting is that its accumulation came as a result of inheritance, and not an active policy of purchase; this is surely an area where the Beauchamps owed their fortune to good luck and good marriages. They merely had to wait for these inheritances to fall into their laps, although in some cases the wait could be a considerable period of time. In the case of the Fitz-Geoffrey fortune, Earl William and Countess Maud had to lobby for their full share; they ‘often came to the chancery and sued instantly their pourparties of the inheritance’ due to complaints of the size of their portion by their co-inheritors. The matter was not settled until 1299, after it had been prolonged for two years, and during which time Earl William had died. Quarrendon, whose reversion had been assigned to the earl as part of the Fitz-Geoffrey inheritance, did not come into Beauchamp hands until 1332. The Tony inheritance proved even more problematic: the inheritance was only at the disposal of the Beauchamps from between 1310, when Alice de Tony had married Earl Guy, to 1315 when Guy died and the estates remained with Alice, who subsequently married William de la Zouche of Ashby. Although Alice died in 1324, the estates remained with Zouche until his death in March 1337, and so most of the Tony inheritance did not finally pass into the Beauchamp estates until twenty-seven years after Guy and Alice's marriage. These lands alone have been calculated as being worth in excess of £500 per annum. As mentioned above, it was not until the 1340s when the Norfolk and west country manors became available, that the full Tony estates had become assimilated into the Warwick estates.

Neither did the Beauchamps always inherit from their wives; the Worcestershire manors of Beoley and Yardley appear to have been alienated from the main bulk of estates as early as 1316 in order to provide for John Beauchamp, younger son of Earl Guy. At the time of his death he was also in possession of Stratford Tony and Newton Tony, both of which found their way back into the Beauchamp estates after 1360. The Beauchamps were fortunate in producing only a small number of younger sons who, when endowed with land, failed to produce male offspring and therefore brought the original endowments plus new acquisitions back in the family fold. This was particularly the case with Earl Thomas' third son, whose death produced a windfall for the Beauchamps in the beginning of the fifteenth century. We have already discussed, in the previous chapter, Earl Thomas' treatment of his daughter Margaret, and how it appears he sent her to a convent in order to appropriate the dower she received from the De Montfort lands. We should not forget that this brusque treatment did earn the earl the reversions of Beaudesert, Henley, Whitchurch, Wellesbourne Mountford and Ilmington in Warwickshire, Lowdham and Gunthorpe in Nottinghamshire, Preston and Uppingham in Rutland, and the Surrey manor of Ashtead .

We have already noted how it was possible for a king to reward a faithful lord, especially for military service, and have discussed some of the rewards which Earl Thomas received from Edward III, most notably the annuity of 1,000 marks a year and the shrievalty of Warwickshire and Leicestershire. Rewards from the crown also brought lands for Earls Guy and Thomas, although Earl William appears to have gone unrewarded despite his faithful service to Edward I in the Welsh and Scottish wars. After his bravery at the battle of Falkirk, Guy was rewarded with the gift of a 1,000 marks worth of land which had formerly belonged to Geoffrey de Moubray. Unfortunately, with Edward's characteristic lack of generosity, the lands to which Guy was entitled were firmly under the control of the Scots, and the Beauchamps never gained a penny from this ‘gift’. The first real reward which they received from the hands of the crown came in 1307, in the form of the Balliol estate of Barnard Castle in Co. Durham, and its associated manors. Following Edward II's promotion of his favourite, Piers Gaveston, into court circles, the king appears to have tried to persuade Guy away from his initial opposition to the favourite by granting him some Templar properties in Warwickshire. In 1308 Guy received the manor of Sherbourne, along with all the Templar properties in Warwick itself, which were worth £13 8s 0d in 1322-23. According to Maddicott this policy of bribery appears to have been initially successful, if only for three months: ‘sporadic appearances as a charter witness from mid-August to the end of November show he was not averse to the king's company’.

Royal favour can be seen as the main force behind the acquisition of Gower. The Beauchamps had maintained a claim over the territory from the time of Earl William, who began legal proceedings in 1278 to wrest control of the land of Gower and the castle of Swansea from William de Braose. Although they failed at this time, the case was re-opened in the autumn of 1352, and the verdict was found to be in the earl of Warwick's favour in June 1354. The Glamorgan County History argues that there was ‘nothing to suggest the judges decision was influenced by royal intervention’, and that the verdict was the result of Warwick successfully showing that the last William de Braose's gift of lordship to his son-in-law, Mowbray, was invalid. Earl Thomas may have presented an impressive legal case, but it is impossible to ignore the more compelling evidence put forward by R.R.Davies that the decision made in the king's court was one of a series of arbitrary judgements made by Edward in 1354, in order to assert his authority over the Welsh Marches. He had restored the Mortimer inheritance as it had stood in 1330, and confirmed the lordship of Chirk to the earl of Arundel, as well as supporting Earl Thomas in his legal dispute, in order to strengthen his hand in the powerbase of his son, Edward the Black Prince. He later backed up Warwick in 1360; when Edward, the Black Prince, claimed that the lordship of Gower was part of the principality of Wales, the king raised Earl Thomas to the status of Marcher lord. And so the Beauchamps' most valuable territory was, in part, the result of a power struggle between the king and his eldest son. The dependence on the goodwill of the king was underlined at the end of the fourteenth century when the Beauchamps lost the lordship as the result of an equally arbitrary decision made against the earl of Warwick by Richard II.

It is more difficult for the historian to trace the shadier side of land deals. For the most part, we are unable to determine how much pressure was applied to those who quitclaimed their property to the Beauchamps, but we would be naive to believe that this was not an option to be used if they were particularly keen to lay their hands on a manor or a property. They were certainly known to use the ‘carrot’ when after certain holdings (when buying land in Wedgnock park they exchanged it for land elsewhere at a ratio of 2:1), and were certainly not above using the ‘stick’ either. Thomas Avene quitclaimed the manor of Kilvey to Earl Thomas in 1355, according to his own testimony, under duress whilst he was held as a prisoner by the earl in Swansea Castle. In 1359, the earl was ordered by the king to desist from ‘destraining or aggrieving’ Thomas Avene and Richard Turbervill, lord of Landimore. Sir Richard Turberville had a long running dispute with the lord of Gower over Landimore; tellingly this territory had become assimilated into the lordship of Gower by 1366. Such intimidation was more common in the Marcher lordships than in England where such flagrant abuses were less tolerated. There is evidence, however, of unlawful possession of property in England as well as Wales, sometimes with the flimsiest and most transparent of reasons. Such a case occurred after the Leicestershire manor of Kibworth Harcourt, next to Kibworth Beauchamp, was sold by Henry de Fodering and Robert de Candoure to the scholars of Merton, Oxford in 1299. Howell describes Kibworth Harcourt as being eclipsed by Kibworth Beauchamp ‘for reasons which have probably more to do with the activities of the Harcourt and Beauchamp families at higher levels than with geographical convenience’. Although the manor had been acquired by licence from the king, Earl Guy claimed that the manor had been acquired without a licence and seized the manor, keeping it for sixteen years. Curiously he gave orders to his attorney to return the manor to the warden of Merton three days before his death, perhaps in a wish to spare the college the expense of claiming the manor back from the escheator after his demise. In the investigation for the inquisitions post mortem for Guy, another unlawful seizure was disclosed; the manor of Westerdale in Yorkshire had been assigned to a certain John de Eure as an escheat after the Templars had been dissolved. The manor was forcibly seized by the earl's constable of Castle Barnard, John le Irrays, and it was held by Earl Guy until his death.

George Holmes discerns the Beauchamps' acquisition of small scale pieces of land as following a pattern which was extensive during the tenure of Earls William and Guy, which then declined during the first decade and a half of the tenure of Earl Thomas until it accounted for a near negligible expenditure in the mid-1340s. He uses this as evidence that ‘land was no longer a good object of deliberate investment’, largely on account of the new agricultural situation created by the Black Death. Holmes' analysis is misleading; the Black Death inevitably was to have an effect on the value of land, but he exaggerates the decline in landed purchase in the fourteenth century. Earl Thomas was an enthusiastic buyer of landed property, both before and after the Black Death and continued to make small-scale land purchases: in 1364-5 the earl bought £20 worth of rent in Milcote, Warwickshire; land purchases in Warwick and Hanslope continued throughout this period. Holmes is right when he discerns a lack of small scale purchases elsewhere throughout this period, but is wrong to suggest that land was not a viable investment. It was probably after the 1340s that the earl of Warwick swapped the Worcestershire manors of Grafton and Upton Warren for Budbrooke and The Grove; in 1351 he bought the reversion of three manors in Cheshire; the same year he purchased the manor of Hindlip; in 1358-9 he bought the manor of Ashorne in Warwickshire. Instead of purchasing small portions of land, the earl appears to have been using his resources to purchase whole manors. The most simple explanation for this change would appear to have been the changing fortunes of the earl himself; as we have discussed in the previous chapter, the mid-1340s brought the earl many rewards from his military service, and it would appear that at least some of his new income was spent on large scale land purchases.

Purchase remained only part of the multi-faceted process by which the Beauchamps' accumulated land between 1268 and 1369. Land purchase was most important in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, and was responsible for only a part of their rise in wealth during this period. It was crucial, however, for maintaining their control over their county and also in producing goods for the earls' manors and household. The lands which they gained from royal favour were more important; all of these lands were the by-products of political activity. The lands in Scotland and the north of England were an attempt by Edward I to give his magnates a personal stake in the Scottish wars; the Templar lands were the result of Edward II's favouritism to Gaveston, and the lordship of Gower only came into the hands of Earl Thomas as a consequence of the power struggle between Edward III and the Black Prince. The seizure of lands illegally and forcibly was dictated by opportunity, but apart from the territory of Kilvey, the Beauchamps gained their important lands within, and with the assistance of, the legal framework of the period. If we are really looking for factors behind the fortunes of the Beauchamps, it was the Tony inheritance and the lordship of Gower which propelled them from the lower ranks of the earls up to the middle of the pack.

*****

Whilst we have been examining the fortunes of the Beauchamps over this period, and how they benefited from the creation of estates, it is equally important to examine their problems and setbacks, and how they were overcome. Part of the reason for the Beauchamps' success in this period is the fact that there were relatively few of these. However, there were two events which had the potential to hamper seriously the fortune of the family; these were the associated problem of the earls' debts, and the problem of Thomas' minority in the early fourteenth century. The problem of Earl William's debts, which appear to have accumulated from the poor financial management of his ancestors, explains his extremely difficult financial position throughout the later thirteenth century. This may have encouraged him to give his faithful service to Edward I, even through the perils of the crisis of 1296-97, as well as his desire to expand the number of his demesne manors, even to the extent that he was tempted into costly gambles, as in the purchase of Berkswell and Lighthorne.

Earl William's problems were inherited from his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. In 1242, it was recorded that twelve years of arrears from the farm of Worcestershire had gone unpaid, and there were still debts outstanding from the farm of Feckenham forest at the time of Walter de Beauchamp II. William Beauchamp of Elmley appears to have left his finances in a chaotic state. In 1270, Earl William was forced to lease the manors of Beoley and Yardley for five years to the executors of his father's will. An additional lease of the manor of Greetham and Cottesmore in Rutland, confirmed on the same date, could also have been made to satisfy his father's creditors. He was certainly in considerable debt to the crown, and one of Edward I's first actions toward his new earl was to pardon him £95 worth of arrears and allow him to pay off his debts to the exchequer at a rate of £20 per annum, subsequently lowering this to £10 per annum in 1276. He was also lumbered with a debt of £1,000 which his father had borrowed from the bishop of Worcester, and was in debt to other parties, including a ‘jew of London’ in 1270. Emma Mason, who has made extensive studies of the Beauchamp family prior to 1268, considers the root of Earl William's problem to have been the fact that, for much of his tenure as earl, William had to support three dowagers, and his relative penury was the result of these ‘accidents of survival and succession’. Mason's argument is compelling: countess Ela, the longest lived of the dowagers who survived to the very end of the thirteenth century, held dower rights in a third of the estates which her husband had received on his succession in 1229. There was also countess Alice, widow of the Mauduit earl, and, up to 1280, Angaret; an ancient dowager from William's father's side of the family, for whom the Beauchamp estates were forced to provide. Certainly the presence of these women placed much strain on the resources of Earl William in the later thirteenth century, but Mason is wrong in seeing them as the root of the problem itself. Earl William's financial difficulties were the result of debts taken out by the Beauchamps of Elmley; the dowagers merely exacerbated an existing situation by soaking up revenue which could have been used to clear up his father's financial mess. As a result of this, it would appear that the earl was increasingly driven to moneylenders. In 1282, Edward I underwrote a loan from the Bouruncinus' of Lucca for £500 should William be unable to pay ‘at Martinmas as he promised’; in the same year he was also in debt to the Riccardi of Lucca to the tune of 500 marks. His debt to the Riccardi gradually increased, growing to £240 by 1287. By 1294, William still had outstanding debts with the Italians, but these, and debts of other magnates, were written off after pressure had been exerted by Edward I. Nevertheless, the following year, William was again heavily in debt to the Riccardi, owing them £400, and shortly before his death in 1298 he was forced to hand over one of his manors in repayment of an unspecified debt. We also know, from an undated charter, that Earl William was forced to hand over his lands in Ledecombe Basset to William Comyn after defaulting on a loan. The act of quitclaiming land in order to honour a debt which cannot be paid shows a certain amount of desperation, and in medieval society, where social status was derived from the land, the loss of property in this way must have been severely embarrassing. There can be little doubt that the earl's financial situation was very precarious for several years.

Despite enormous debts, the Beauchamp estates were able to survive. No matter how deep the earl sank into the financial quagmire, there were several mitigating factors which would always prevent bankruptcy. The problem of the dowagers was serious, but temporary: he simply had to wait for them to die and their lands would swiftly fall back into his hands. Most importantly, however, there was the support of the crown. Earl William had always been fiercely loyal toward his king. Edward I was very unlikely to let one of his finest soldiers and trusted supporters go under, and despite his notorious lack of generosity, he does appear to have stepped in to help the earl in various ways, by allowing him to pay off his debts in instalments, by exerting royal pressure on foreign moneylenders, or acquitting him of small debts he owed to exchequer. It can even be argued that Edward did not reward William with any great gifts of land, calculating that the earl's financial hardship would make him reliant on the goodwill of the king, and make the earl a political dependent of the crown: according to the Evesham chronicle, Edward bribed William to support him in the crisis of 1296-7. We must also bear in mind that the higher nobility in the later thirteenth century often borrowed money to finance a military campaign or a large capital project; Gilbert de Clare borrowed £1,800 from a Sienese banking company and an ecclesiastical landholder such as Canterbury Cathedral Priory could be more than £1,300 in debt to Italian bankers in the 1280s. Dyer uses the above figures to show how the loans ‘demonstrated the healthy financial state of the borrowers’ which is certainly true in the cases which he cites, but the evidence of Earl William's debts does seem to point to a serious, but not terminal, financial problem.

The minority of Earl Thomas also affected the wealth of the Beauchamps. We have already mentioned this problem in the previous chapter. The period from 1315 to 1330, when the lands were out of the control of the Beauchamp family seems to have had the potential to harm the estates financially. The interest in the Beauchamps' lands, by those charged with maintaining them, whether they be the younger Despenser, Mortimer or the king's own officials, appears to have been directed solely by the desire to gain short term profit. The lands were not well maintained and fell into disrepair: in 1327 it was found that ‘the lands, houses, walls and buildings of the castle, and in the mills, parks, woods and stews belonging thereto’ had fallen into disrepair through negligence; in 1322 a watermill in Warwick, that had belonged to the earl, was burned down whilst the manor was under royal control. The royal officials themselves were often corrupt: it was found that the bailiff of Sutton Coldfield had been bribed with the gift of a cottage and a croft from a woman who was going to be convicted for theft during Thomas' minority; on the death of Thomas de Clinton, whose lands were held ‘of the demise’ of Earl Guy, the king's officers ‘devastated houses, woods and gardens, and extorted heavy ransoms’. McFarlane, despite describing Thomas' minority as a ‘set-back’, does see that it was, in part, beneficial to the Beauchamp fortunes: Thomas ‘was at least passive until the first years of Edward III’, thereby escaping the blood bath that engulfed a large proportion of the higher nobility in the later years of Edward II's reign. We should also be aware that the system of granting wardships had proved highly profitable for the Beauchamp family. The king's gift of the marriage of Hugh Despenser netted Earl William 1,600 marks in 1282; Thomas gained from the wardship of Robert de Clifford in 1346; Earl Thomas also fought a long and protracted legal battle with his own daughter over his custody of the wardship of her son, the Basset heir, and his lands, such was the value of his wardship. In the long term, the wardship system was of benefit to the Beauchamps, despite the long period in which their lands were out of the control of Earl Guy's executors.

The problem of debt and minority were small when compared to the problems faced by other great noble families. Great noble lines such as the De Clares were extinguished on the battlefield and their inheritance divided. Between 1268 and 1369 the Beauchamps were fortunate both in the quality of each of the successive earls and also in the politics of the time. The Beauchamp family could have ended in the early fourteenth century if the king had been revenged on Earl Guy as he had sworn he would, after Gaveston's murder and before the birth of a Beauchamp heir. That the Beauchamp story in this time is one of success is due to the fact that the family suffered very few setbacks, and the ones which they did endure were temporary and reversible.

Back to Home