Sir Arnald Savage of Bobbing

SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING SPEAKER FOB THE COMMONS IN 1401 AND 1404 By Professor J. S. ROSKELL, M.A., D.Phil. The following abbreviations have been used in the footnotes: D.N.B. = Dictionary of National Biography. C.P.R. =Calendar of Patent Rolls. C.C.R. =Calendar of Close Rolls. C.F.R. ^Calendar of Fine Rolls. C.Oh.R. —Calendar of Charter Rolls. P.R.O. = Public Record Office. Rot. Parl. = Rotuli Parliamentorum. D.K.R. =Depuiy Keeper's Reports. P.P.C. —Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council, ed. N. H. Nicolas. R.S. = Rolls Series. NOT until 1376, seemingly, did the medieval Commons elect a Speaker from among theh own number and for the duration of a parhament. This constitutional invention is one of the signs of a development towards a greater pohtical maturity on the part of the lower house of parliament at this time, a development that was assisted by the general weakness of the royal authority under Richard II and Henry IV. It was under these two kings that Sir Arnald Savage lived his eventful and significant career: a knight of the King's Chamber under Richard II, after the Lancastrian usurpation in 1399 he became steward of the Household of the future Henry V and then member of Henry IV's Council. He was one of the two knights of the shire for Kent on six occasions, in the parhaments of January and November, 1390, November, 1391, January, 1401, September, 1402, and January, 1404.1 But he is chiefly memorable for his two occupations of the office of Commons' Speaker at the outset of the Lancastrian period: here he has a distinctive place in parliamentary history. His biography has a special appeal for the local historian, in that he was the first representative in parliament for the county of Kent to be Speaker, the only one in pre-Tudor times. The famUy of Savage of Bobbing near Sittingbourne in Kent by the end of the fourteenth century had long been estabhshed in that county, almost certainly for over two hundred years. It was weU connected locaUy by marriage. The first wife of Sh Arnald Savage's father, Sir Arnald, was Margery, a daughter of Michael Lord Poynings. The father's second wife who survived him by only a few months—they 1 The Official Return of Members of Parliament, 1, 238, 240, 242, 261, 263, 265. 68 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING both died in 1375—was, however, caUed Eleanor and it is very likely she Avho was the mother of the Speaker. The Speaker himself married but once, his wife being Joan, daughter of Sir Wilham Eckingham of Eckingham, who survived him by over two years—he died on 29th November, 1410, she in AprU or early May, 1413. Their only daughter, Elizabeth, was married firstly (some time before Michaelmas, 1395) to Sir Reynold, son and heh of Sir Thomas Cobham of Rundale and AUington Castle, a member of the junior branch of the famUy of Cobham of Cobham and Cooling (Kent), and then on Cobham's death in October, 1405, to WUliam Clifford, the nephew and heh of Sh Lewis Clifford, K.G. Like the Speaker's father and mother, Sh Lewis had been a member of the closely knit household circle of the Black Prince, to whose widow, the Princess Joan, the mother of Richard II, he was an executor. The Speaker's only son and heh, another Arnald (the thhd in succession) married Catherine, a daughter of Roger Lord Scales (a parliamentary peer between 1376 and 1385). This latter alliance was contracted apparently not long before St. George's Day, 1399, when Sh Arnald received a royal hcence enabling him to entaU upon his heh and Catherine Scales the manor of Trades in Newington by Sittingbourne and a future interest for hfe in the manor of Shorne between Rochester and Gravesend. This settlement represents the Speaker as having himself no more than a reversionary interest in Shorne. Although nearly ten years before, on 15th November, 1389, he had been pardoned by the King (with the assent of the CouncU) for having acquired this manor in fee without licence (it being held in chief of the Crown) from Sh Roger Northwood, it is clear that his interest was actually only in the reversion, because not until it fell in (in July, 1405) did he get fuU possession. The Speaker's elder sister, Eleanor, had married this Sir Roger Northwood. The explanation of this seeming discrepancy in the record of possession at Shorne seems to be that before 1405 Sir Arnald enjoyed from early in 1388 a tenancy of the manor under the Northwood famUy, as he certainly did from about the same time in certain other of their estates in Iwade, Halstow, and MUton (aU in the vicinity of Bobbing), for which he paid a smah rent and performed suit in the manor court of Nonvood. He was certainly lord of the manor of Shorne in January, 1407, and he died seised in November, 1410. He also died seised of the manor of Bobbing Court, held in gavelkind along with two watermills there as of the manor of MUton (which properties then went to his son and heh), and also of the manors of Holmes and Fonton (both in Iwade) and of Kemsley (in Milton), all three held in gavelkind and of the manor of MUton, which Sh Arnald's Avidow then entered as her jointure. Although he had parted with the manor of Trades in NeAvington by Sittingbourne in favour of his son and Catherine Scales, in 1399, 69 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING Sh Arnald had apparently retained some landed estate in that vUl, because he left directions in his AVUI for the foundation of a chantry at Chesley (in Newington) as AveU as at Bobbing, where he Avas buried.1 With the exception of Shorne, which lay a dozen mUes or so to the west of Bobbing Court between the Medway and the Thames, aU his estates were in the immediate neighbourhood of Bobbing, that is, in the thick neck of land connecting the Isle of Sheppey Avith north Kent proper. What was the value of these lands is not knoAvn, but it is unlikely that it was very substantial. The Speaker's father, Sh Arnald Savage, had been a closely attached member of the household of the Black Prince for a quarter of a century and more, down to the very time of his death in July, 1375. He had served in Edward Ill' s French wars, in the Cr6cy campaign of 1346 in the retinue of his father-in-law, Michael Lord Poynings. But by 1349 his main connection was with the Prince of Wales: he was then acting as a feoffee in the Prince's interest in two manors of the honour of WaUingford. He was at that time both sheriff and escheator in Kent and he was to be knight of the shire in 1352. In 1359, 1360, 1365 and 1366 there is evidence of his being in Gascony Avith the Prince. On 12th March, 1359, the office of Mayor of Bordeaux was committed to him and he retained the post untU 1363. His connection with the Black Prince involved him in much diplomatic business. In 1363 he was a party to the negotiations with Pedro the Cruel of Castile. In May, 1366, Pope Urban V was using his good offices in his attempts to restore peace in Aquitaine between the Black Prince and Gaston, Count of Foix, and Gregory XI did the same in 1371, in which year and again in 1372,1373, and 1375, Savage was a commissioner to treat with France, in the last of these instances (in February and AprU, 1375) as a member of the English diplomatic corps accompanying John of Gaunt to Flanders. In 1372-4 he was acting as one of two proctors for Cardinal William Indicis, one of the Limousin group in the Sacred College and a nephew of Clement VI, in the archdeaconry of Canterbury, for the fruits of which they answered to the cardinal who was, of course, non-resident. How intimately the Speaker's father was stiU attached to the Black Prince, who now for some time had been in failing health, is suggested by his appearance among the witnesses of the Prince's charter to the mayor and corporation of Coventry at Candlemas, 1375, a document attested by members of the Prince's council, his chamberlain, his land-steward, his receiver-general, his steward of household, and his secretary, and it was at WaUingford, the centre of one of the 1 D.N.B., XVII, 824-5. The Genealogist, N.S. XXI, 245; XXI I , 229; XXIX, 201-8; Archceologia Cantiana, XXIX, 157, 164; N. H. Nioolas, Testamenta Vetusta, i, 93; C.P.R., 1396-9, 571; ibid., 1388-92, 162; C.O.R., 1386-9, 475; ibid., 1402-6, 462; ibid., 1406-9, 380; ibid., 1409-13, 165; O.F.R., 1406-13, 210; ibid., 1413-22, 323; The Register of Archbishop Ohiohele, ed. E. F. Jacob, ii, 205. • 70 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING Prince's most important honours, that soon after his return from Bruges, Savage died (intestate) on 22nd July, 1375.1 It was in the Benedictine priory at WaUingford that he was buried, and so later in the same year was his widow, Eleanor, to whom her son, the later Speaker, acted as principal executor. She left him the wainage of the manors of Bobbing and Trades. How closely the Speaker's mother had been involved with her husband in the affahs of the Black Prince's household is clear from the fact that it was in consideration of her services as the nurse of the Prince's heh, Richard of Bordeaux, that on 13th March, 1380, there was remitted the fine of £40 which her son Amald had originaUy been requhed to pay for a royal licence to marry at will.2 Born in 1358, Arnald Savage (the later Speaker) was at the time of his father's and mother's death still in his minority and was presumably a royal ward; certainly in July, 1376, the manor of Tracies in Newington was in the King's hands as held in chief of the Crown. He was presumably of age when on 28th October, 1379, by a bUl of the Treasurer, he received the royal licence to marry whom he wished for a fine of £40 payable in the Exchequer; his sureties were one of his mother's executors and Thomas St. Leger, a near neighbour, in whose manor of East HaU near Sittingbourne young Savage was aheady a feoffee. As we have seen, the fine was remitted in March foUowing by royal letters patent under the great seal.3 By October, 1380, Savage had offered proof of age, although livery of seisin of his father's estates Avas deferred untU 9th May, 1382.4 In the meantime, he already had begun to act as a member of occasional royal commissions in Kent. On 23rd August, 1380, when there was a scare of French invasion he was made a commissioner for the arming of all the landholders of the Isle of Sheppey and the hundred of MUton. A year later, after Kent had undergone aU the distress and dislocation of the Peasants' Revolt, Savage was put on a very large commission appointed to keep the peace in the county, with powers of arrest and imprisonment against any who stirred up insurrection and with authority to suppress unlawful assembhes. This commission, issued on 2nd September, 1381, was 1 The Genealogist, op. cit., XXIX, 202; Calendar of Inquisitions post mortem Edward III, IX, 237; T. Carte, Catalogue des Rolles Gascons, i, 145, 147, 153; Cal. of Papal Registers, Papal Letters, III, 577; IV, 22, 98; D.N.B., loe. cit.; Exchequer, Accounts Various, Q.R., P.R.O. E.101/316/no. 9; Foreign Accounts, E.364/8, file H; O.P.R., 1422-9, 187; C.Ch.R., V, 241; Historical Manuscripts Commission, 5th Report, MSS. of Dean and Chapter of Canterbury, 427 b (cf. Le Neve, Fasti, i, 41). 2 Nicolas, Testamenta Vetusta, i, 93; Archceologia Cantiana, XXIX, 164; O.P.R., 1377-81, 460. 8 The Genealogist, XXIX, 202-8; C.P.R., 1374-7, 294; ibid., 1377-81, 313, 396, 460. 4 C.O.R., 1381-5, 70. 71 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING renewed on 14th December foUowing and on 8th March, 1382, with enlarged poAvers. By this date Savage was acting as sheriff of Kent; appointed on 23rd November, 1381, he served for exactly a year. It was only during his term of office that he procured hvery of seisin of his father's estates. In June in the same year he was included in a commission for sewers in the hundred of MUton.1 I t is very hkely that aheady he was attached as an esquire to the household of Richard II. Certainly in the Exchequer year 30th September, 1383-4, he Avas in receipt of an aUowance of £2 a year, for Avinter and summer liveries, from the treasurer of the Royal Household. (He was to remain a retainer in the Household untU the end of Richard's reign.)2 In this same year, on 29th February, 1384, he was appointed for the first time as a justice of the peace in Kent, a commission to which he was re-appointed in February, 1385 and May, 1386; on 28th June, 1386, however, he was dropped from it. In the meantime, he had served on a variety of casual local commissions of royal appointment: by patent of 6th March, 1384, he Avas authorized to inquhe into the tenure of certain estates acquhed by Edward III in Kent, including the castle and lordship of Leybourne, the castle and town of Queenborough, and the manor of Gravesend; on 24th January, 1385, he was appointed a commissioner of array against the eventuality of a French invasion (the commission being re-constituted, with Savage remaining a member, on 15th April following); on 7th March, 1385, he was commissioned to investigate unlicensed hunting in the king's free warren in the Isle of Sheppey.3 Despite the close threat of French invasion in the summer of this year, Richard I I personally led an expedition into Scotland. On 29th June, 1385, as an esquhe Savage was advanced £3 at the Lower Exchequer for his own wages in the expedition and for the single archer he retained to serve with him. Whether he performed the service of carrying a white banner on the expedition at his OAvn costs, as his tenancy of the manor of Shorne obhged him to do, is not known. One thing is quite certain: that he was knighted during the expedition; it was as a knight of the Royal Household that, on 7th August, 1385, after the death of the King's mother, the Princess Joan of Kent, he was issued with a black mourning gown by the keeper of the Great Wardrobe.4 On 20th October following he was again appointed sheriff in Kent and served until 18th October, 1386, again acting in the meantime in the spring of 1386 as a commissioner of array. Earlier in this same year of his shrievalty, on 12th March, 1386, he had 1 C.P.R., 1377-81, 574; ibid., 1381-5, 77, 84, 135, 138; P.R.O., Lists and Indexes, ix, List of Sheriffs, 68. 2 Exchequer, Accounts Various, P.R.O., E. 101/401/2, 42. 3 O.P.R., 1381-5, 423, 688-9, 694. * Exchequer, Issue Rolls, P.R.O., E.403/608, mem. 16; Exchequer, Accounts Various, P.R.O., E.101/401/16. 72 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING taken out royal letters of protection as intending to go on John of Gaunt's expedition to Spain, but, although Lancaster's plans in this dhection matured, Savage's did not, and the letters were revoked on 28th July foUowing, on the grounds that he was not making preparations to accompany the duke.1 It is certain that he did not go: after the parliamentary commission took charge of the administration in November, 1386, and reversed the Lancastrian policy of appeasement with France, Savage, in spite of his connection with the King, joined the maritime force put under the dhection of Richard, Earl of Arundel, to prosecute the war more vigorously in the Channel. Savage's recent enhancement of status is exemplified in the size of his retinue, which mustered on 13th March, 1387; it included another knight besides himself, 28 esquhes, and 36 archers.2 Sh Arnald Savage's reaction to the political events of 1387-8 is not known. Although he was closely connected with the Court, nothing of iU befell him. Perhaps his joining Arundel's expedition did him no harm. Nothing is known of his doings in 1388 except that he was appointed on 15th March to serve on an enquhy into a complaint of the barons of Faversham that certain presents of fish they had been making to the constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports to secure his good offices with theh lord, the Abbot of Faversham, had come to be claimed by him as perquisites of the wardenship; the Faversham barons were evidently turning to theh own profit the impeachment (during the MercUess Parhament) of Sh Simon Burley, the late warden, who had also abused his position in other directions. Later in the year, on 22nd October, 1388, Savage was included in a commission of sewers in the Isle of Thanet and between Reculver and St. Mary Chffe. After the faU of the government of the AppeUants in May, 1389, Savage was not restored to the Kentish commission of the peace, but he continued to act on occasional local commissions of royal appointment. On 6th October, 1389, and again on 24th November foUowing, he was appointed to enquire into the previous year's revenues of eleven manors in Kent which, forfeited by the late Sh Simon Burley, had been granted to the prior of Chiltern Langley, Avho had never received them. Savage was stUl retained as a King's knight by Richard II Avhen in January, 1390, he was caUed upon to act for the first time as knight of the shire for Kent. Re-elected to the second parhament of the year which met in November, 1390, he was shortly afterwards (on 29th December) commissioned to investigate the maladministration of the late escheator for Kent and Middlesex who, first appointed in February, 1388, had been responsible for arranging the seizure of the Kentish 1 Lists of Sheriffs, loe. cit.; C.P.R., 1385-9, 176, 198. 2 Exchequer, Foreign Accounts, P.R.O., E.101/40/33. 73 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING estates of some of Richard II's friends who had suffered death and forfeiture during the MercUess Parhament of 1388. Only two days later (on 31st December), retained as a King's knight, Sh Arnald Avas granted for life or until further order an annuity of 40 marks charged on the issues of the county of Kent, in consideration of his father's good serAdce to the Black Prince and his own to the King.1 Whether Savage was aheady one of the knights of the King's Chamber is not known, but he was certainly one of the eight Chamber knights in the financial year 30th September, 1392-3, during which he received 10 marks as his fee and 8 marks aUowance for his winter and summer robes from the keeper of the Wardrobe. He was stiU one of the " milites camere et aule regis " in the year September 1395-6 and probably remained so until the end of the reign.2 It was with the controUer of the Household, Sh Baldwin de Raddington, and two other members of the Household, that on 24th July, 1392, a month after the mayor of London, John Hende, and other prominent citizens had been sentenced to imprisonment for contempt by a Great CouncU at Nottingham (following the King's quarrel with the City over the raising of a royal loan), Savage went baU in £2,000 for the late mayor; some two months later Hende and his feUow citizens were pardoned and the mainprises annulled. On 4th January foUowing (1393) Savage was granted for life the constableship and custody of the royal castle of Queenborough in the Isle of Sheppey, and five weeks later (by patent of 8th February, 1393) he was given an annuity of 20 marks charged on the fee-farm of Canterbury to offset his own charges whUe holding this office.3 In addition, he was advanced during the next three years by the Exchequer various sums amounting to over £220 for his repairs, alterations and improvements to the structure of the castle. He surrendered the constableship on 5th June, 1396, when to compensate him for the loss of the annuity and also for the surrender of the annuity granted him in December, 1390 (together worth £40 a year) Richard II granted him a fresh annuity of £50 for life charged (as from the previous Easter) on the petty customs of the port of London.4 This annuity he held for the rest of the reign, and Henry IV was later to confirm it. In the meanwhUe, in November, 1391, Savage had been for the second time running re-elected as knight of the shire of Kent. Not for over nine years, however, was he to sit among the Commons again. In the previous February he had been appointed by the Council to act on a general royal enquhy into cases of slackness of administration in the 1 O.P.R., 1385-9, 465, 651! ibid., 1388-92, 131, 142, 152, 358, 436; O.O.R., 1389-92, 387. 2 Exchequer, P.R.O., E.101/403/22; ibid., E.101/403/10. 3 O.O.R., 1392-6, 78; C.P.R., 1391-6, 206, 216. * Exchequer, Issue Rolls, E.403/641-654, passim; C.P.R., 1391-6, 286, 719. .74 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING seven hundreds of Kent. On 12th February, 1392, he was put on an oyer and terminer foUowing reports of the neglect of waUs, causeways, and dykes, and the resulting depopulation of the Isle of Thanet. At the end of the same month he was included in an enquhy into merchandise thrown ashore at Northbourne as wreck of sea, and a day later was appointed a commissioner of array for Kent in event of a renewal of war with France if the existing truce was not renewed. On 18th September, 1393, he was put on a commission to examine the old bridge over the Medway at Rochester, falling material from which was causing the tide-race to endanger the new bridge erected there by Lord Cobham and Sh Robert KnoUes, which the commissioners were also authorized to have repahed. Earlier in this year, on two occasions (in February and May) proceedings in the Exchequer against Savage as a royal commissioner in Kent had been stopped because the commissions had not come into his hands; one was a commission appointing him a justice of oyer and terminer; the other, one appointing him to enquire in Thanet into the liabUity to find a ferry service over the river Sarre and to repair causeways on its banks.1 For the first time for ten years he was again made a J.P. in Kent on 1st May, 1396; he apparently served uninterruptedly on this commission of the peace until the end of Richard II's reign. It was five weeks after this that his annuity of £40 as a knight of the King's Chamber was raised to £50. What Savage was doing during the last three years of Richard II's reign can only be the subject of conjecture. On 3rd AprU, 1398, however, he was ordered on pain of £200 to appear personaUy before the Council " to declare what shah there be laid before him". It is possible that his actions in 1387-8 had been equivocal in the King's view. It is also possible that he had had relations at that time with John Lord Cobham of Cooling, his neighbour, who, as a prime mover and member of the parliamentary commission of 1386, which Richard II's judges had declared in 1387 to be a treasonable undertaking, had recently been condemned to banishment and forfeiture for his offence; certainly by October, 1395, Savage was one of Lord Cobham's feoffees in his most important estates in Kent, Surrey, Wiltshhe, and in London.2 However this may be, on 29th April, 1398, within httle more than a week of his appearance before the Council, Savage was able to secure repayment of a loan he had made to the King to the amount of £100.3 He does not appear to have accompanied Richard II to Ireland in May, 1399. After Henry of Bolingbroke's landing in July following, he very probably lay low until Henry's accession Avas assured. Perhaps as something of a precaution in event of trouble, on St. George's Day, 1399, 1 C.P.R., 1388-92, 439; ibid., 1391-6, 85, 86, 357-8; C.O.R., 1392-6, 120, 142. 2 C.P.R., 1391-6, 728; O.C.R., 1396-99, 277; ibid., 1392-6, 498. 8 Exchequer, Issue Roll, P.R.O., E. 403/559, mem. 2. 75 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING he had conveyed his manor of Trades to his son and heh and his young Avife (Catherine Scales). I t is reasonably clear, especially from Avhat followed in the reign of Henry IV, that Sir Arnald Savage was not long in giving his adherence to Richard II's supplanter. On 10th September, 1399, some three weeks before Richard was deposed, he Avas commissioned by the CouncU to enquhe into the removal of the goods and chattels of Roger Walden, who had secured the see of Canterbury following Archbishop Arundel's banishment in 1397 and who was now thrust out to aUow Arundel to be restored to the primacy; Walden's property undoubtedly included much of Arundel's OAvn furniture and other household goods which, after their confiscation, Richard II had given to him; the commissioners were to deliver Walden's goods to the prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, and Wilham Makenade.1 Savage was not elected to the parhament summoned to witness Richard's deposition and Henry IV's accession. But on 28th November, 1399, he was confirmed in his office of justice of the peace in Kent, which he was to continue to hold untU his death exactly eleven years later. And on 18th December he was put on a commission of array in the county, which was renewed on 23rd January, 1400.2 Nothing further is known of Savage until his election as senior knight of the shhe for Kent to the second parhament of the new reign, first summoned to meet at York in October, 1400, and then prorogued to meet at Westminster on 20th January, 1401. On the third day of the session Savage was presented by the Commons " pur lour Parlour et Procuratour en Parlement." The King agreed to his election! Sir Arnald made his official " protestation," then went on to rehearse briefly the declaration of the causes of summons as made by Chief Justice Thhning, and subsequently requested that the Commons should not be hurried into making theh answers regarding the most important issues, which was hkely if such were only brought to theh notice at the end of the parliament. The King, through the Earl of Worcester, disclaimed any such intention. Three days later the Commons asked the King to give no hearing to tale-bearers from among theh own number which might excite his displeasure against some of their feUows; the King's answer was that theh proposals should be agreed to by aU of them before he gave credence to any such bearer of news. The mind of the Speaker can be detected in the Commons' definition on the same day of the three pre-requisites of good government: " seen (sense), humanite et richesse "; and in their statement that they abstained from dilating on the merits of the King, to avoid 1 C.P.R., 1396-9, 697; Ohronicon Adae de Usk, ed. E. Maunde Thompson, 2nd ed., 37. 2 O.P.R., 1399-1401, 209, 211, 560, 76 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING being accounted " flaterers et glosers."1 The King's financial requirements were to the tune of £130,000, although no figures were laid before the Commons. But the smoothness with which, according to the roU of the parliament, its business was conducted is deceptive and conceals an uneasy atmosphere. The Commons pressed theh advantage to push forward theh claims. At the end of the fifth week the Commons asked that the business of the parhament should be enacted and engrossed by the clerk of the parhament before the justices left, so that their memory should stUl be fresh, and on the same day backed up this demand with a request to know the King's answers to their petitions before they made a financial grant. The first of these requests was favourably answered; the King at first temporized regarding the second, saying that he Avould consult the Lords, but on the last day of the session turned it down as uncustomary. On a later occasion, when deploring the existence of discord between some of the Lords, the Commons emphasized the need for unity between the estates, which could be likened to a Trinity: the King, the Lords Sphitual and Temporal, and the Commons. Here is surely to be discerned the authentic voice of theh Speaker. So, too, in theh ingenious demonstration on 10th March, the last day of the session, that a parliament was like the mass, the archbishop beghiriing the office, the King in the middle at the offertory undertaking to uphold the faith of the Church (a reference perhaps to the statute De haeretico comburendo passed during the session) and to ensure the maintenance of just law to poor and rich alike, and then finaUy the coming of the Commons to say Ite missa est and Deo gratias for three reasons, namely, that God had granted them a just, knowledgeable and humane King, that the King had taken steps to meet the threat of subversive doctrine, and that there was amity between him and themselves and the Lords. The King had aheady pardoned the Commons for any offence they had unwittingly given to cause displeasure on his part. The Commons granted a tenth and fifteenth and renewed the subsidies of tunnage and poundage. Savage had no cause for dissatisfaction Avith the session. Nor had the Commons Avith him: the St. Albans chronicler heard and stated that " tam diserte, tam eloquenter, tam gratiose declaraAdt communitatis negotia, praecipue ne de cetero taxis gravarentur, aut taUiaghs, quod laudem ab universis promeruit ea die". Nor apparently had Henry IV much cause for complaint: three days after the dissolution, on 13th March, 1401, the patent of June, 1396, granting Savage £50 a year for hfe on the London petty customs, was confirmed.2 When the recent parliament had been in session for a month, on 1 Rot. Pari., iii, 455-6. 2 Annates Henrici Quarti, (R.S.) ed. H. T. Riley, p. 335; C.P.R., 1399-1401, 444. 77 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING 21st February, the Commons asked for an examination to be made by the CouncU of any Welsh-born officials of the CroAvn. The King, by way of answer, ordered his CouncU and the CouncU of the Prince of Wales to scrutinize the relevant statutes of Edward I, which had prohibited the employment of Welshmen in royal administration, and to reform them with the advice of Lords and Commons. In the previous autumn Owen Glendower had developed his quarrel with Lord Grey of Ruthin into a fuU-scale Welsh national rising, which had aheady requhed the King's personal intervention (although to httle purpose). The primary responsibUity for the suppression of the Welsh revolt rested with the Prince of Wales and Henry Hotspur, justice of Chester and North Wales. At the end of November, 1400, aU Welsh rebels had been summoned to present themselves at Chester for submission to the Prince. On 21st March, 1401, the CouncU authorized him to discharge any unsatisfactory constables of castles. In April he moved with Hotspur into Wales and before the end of May had recovered Conway Castle, which the rebels had taken through the negligence of the constable. Before this surrender took place, the terms of the settlement had been aheady arranged as between Hotspur on the one hand and, on the other, Sh Arnald Savage and the latter's fellow members of the Prince's CouncU. How long Savage had been a member of Henry of Monmouth's Council is not known, but it is almost certain that he had joined it before the recent January-March 1401 parhament in which he acted as Speaker. He was personaUy summoned to a Great CouncU convened at Westminster in the middle of August foUowing. On 7th October he attested the surrender to the Prince of the Anglesey and other Welsh lands of two Welsh rebel landowners. Some two months later together with the Prince's chancellor and chamberlain and on the Prince's behalf, Savage had requested the constable of Chester Castle to take three Welsh hostages into his custody there. Savage is described in the memorandum of 13th December, 1401, relating to theh reception as then being the Prince of Wales's steward of Household. How long he had occupied this important ofiice in the Household of the heirapparent is again not known, but it is highly probable that he was holding it when one of the chief members of the prince's CouncU in the previous spring, and very likely that he had been doing so when Speaker. Precisely when he relinquished the post is once more a matter for conjecture. By 2nd AprU, 1403, he had been replaced in it by Sh John Stanley (a Lancashhe and Cheshire knight, whose ties with Richard II, like Savage's, had been very close).1 But it is almost certain that 1 Royal and Historical Letters during the reign of Henry IV, (R.S.), ed. F. C. Hingeston, i, 69; P.P.O., i, 161; D.K.R., XXXVI, 207, 482; ibid., 380; J. S. Roskell, The Knights of the Shire for the County Palatine of Lancaster, 1377-1460 (Chetham Soc. N.S. vol. 95), 123. 78 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING Savage was compeUed to give up the office when he became a member of the royal Council; this appointment had taken place at the latest by Michaelmas, 1402. Whether Savage was re-elected as knight of the shire for Kent to the parhament which met at Westminster in January, 1402, is not known, because aU the returns of knights and burgesses alike have been lost, but he was certainly once more elected for Kent to the second parhament of the year which met on 30th September and sat until 25th November foUowing. In July, 1402, he had acted on a commission of array in Kent,1 but of much greater interest is his appointment at (or shortly before) Michaelmas, 1402, to be a member of the King's CouncU with a fee of £100 a year. He was destined stUl to be a member of the Council at the end of 1406.2 In the course of the parhament of the autumn of 1402 he was one of a number of recipients of royal letters of privy seal requesting benevolences for the payment of garrisons in S. Wales,3 but two days after the end of the parliament his new office stood him in good stead when (on 27th November, 1402) he was granted the custody of the manor of MUsted (near Sittingbourne, Kent) during the minority of the heh, a royal ward, at a farm of £4 a year payable in the Exchequer; Savage's son Arnald was one of his sureties.4 On 4th June, 1403, he was present at a meeting of the King's Council where a petition of his own was favourably considered: he asked that his existing grant of £50 a year for life, charged on the London petty customs, should be raised by 25 marks in Adew of the additional expenses he would be bound to incur since his appointment (with the assent of a recent Great CouncU) to be a royal councillor attendant on the King's person; the grant passed the great seal on the same day and, whether or not he was stiU a councUlor at this later date, he was stiU enjoying the additional annuity along with the old one in October, 1409.5 In August and September, 1403, he was again a commissioner of array in Kent. On the day after Christmas foUoAving he attended a meeting of the Council, when the King was present and expressed his intention of moving out to Sutton, where some of the counciUors (including Savage) were to foUow for further discussions.6 The first parhament to meet after the Percy revolt ended at Shrewsbury in July, 1403, had aheady been prorogued to meet at Westminster on 14th January, 1404, having first been summoned to Coventry for 1 C.P.R., 1401-5, 115. 2 Privy seal warrants for issue, P.R.O., E.404/21/270; Exchequer, Issue Rolls, P.R.O., E.403/580, mem. 2; 685, mem. 1; 587, mem. 14; 589, mem. 12; 657, mem. 1; P.P.G., i, 222, 238, 244, 246, 295; ii, 83, 87, 89. 3 P.P.O., ii, 74-5. 1 O.F.R., 1399-1405, 180. 6 Ancient Petitions, P.R.O., S.O., 8, file 186, no. 9256; C.P.R., 1401-5, 236; C.C.R., 1402-5, 192, 444; ibid., 1409-13, 6. 0 C.P.R., 1401-5, 290; P.P.C., ii, 83. 79 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING 3rd December, and Sh Arnald Savage had been re-elected knight of the shhe for Kent. On the second day of the session the Commons presented him once more as theh Speaker. His othenvise normal " protestation" was extended to include a request that the Commons should not incur the King's displeasure (as a result of unauthorized reports) if they complained of his conduct of affahs. The Commons were not long before they expressed (on 25th January) theh concern about the dangerous state of the North after the Percy rising and the abuses of the practice of giving liveries, complained of excessive royal expenditure, and attacked the Royal Household as extravagantly organized and as overrun with aliens, the Breton entourage of the Queen included. A two years' appropriation of income from certain specified sources of revenue, amounting to over £12,000, was agreed upon, together with the appointment of special treasurers of the yield from whatever taxes parhament would be prepared to grant. The King's CouncU Henry IV was prevaUed upon to nominate at the Commons' special and insistent request, in order to ensure the remedying of aU the complaints and grievances disclosed during the session, and twenty-two lords, knights and esquhes were appointed in parhament to act untU it should meet again: among the seven commoners Avere three knights of the shhe in the parliament, John Doreward (for Essex), John Curson (for Derbyshhe), and the Speaker himself who was continued in office.1 The parliament ended (after nearly ten Aveeks of session) on 20th March, 1404, with a provisional grant of a novel tax of five per cent on landed income which, as further concessions of taxes in the Coventry parhament of the foUowing October suggest, proved quite inadequate to the King's needs. The role played by Savage suggests one of two things, or perhaps both: that being a royal CouncUlor did not prevent a supporter of the King from offering loyal criticism as a member of the Commons, or that the Speaker for the Commons could in that capacity only speak and act as the Commons requhed him to do. It had been a very unsatisfactory session from Henry IV's point of Anew. And it proved to be Savage's last; he never again sat as knight of the shire. In the course of his Speakership Savage had been re-appointed a justice of the peace in Kent (on 10th February, 1404) and he was reappointed again two years later when the next commissions were issued. He continued in the meantime to aet as a member of the King's Council, perhaps in this capacity taking the musters of the retinues of the admhals for the North and West respectively at Sandwich and Southampton, along with one of the receivers of the parliamentary subsidies, in accordance with writs of 11th June, 1404. Although his re-appointment as King's Councillor in the January, 1404, parhament was 1 Rot. Pari, iii, 530a. 80 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING expressly made (according to the terms of a special grant of 50 marks as a reward for his attendances made to him on 2nd December, 1404) untU parliament should reassemble, Savage evidently continued in office after the Coventry Parhament of the autumn of 1404. By the middle of August, 1406, some £208 was owing to him for his fees during the preArious four years, of which he then managed to secure a cash payment of httle more than a thhd at the Lower Exchequer. During the second session of the long parhament of this year, on 22nd May, 1406, he had been again personaUy nominated in parhament by Henry IV as one of his CouncU, and two days later the reconstructed CouncU undertook office proAdded that funds were made avaUable for its proper functioning.1 Governmental and administrative inefficiency and the character of Household rule were again the burden of the Commons' complaints, but finance was the root of the trouble. After the second parhamentary session, on 28th June Savage was made a commissioner for the raising of Crown loans in Sussex and Kent, and on the same day he was included in another commission for the same counties and for the Cinque Ports authorized to inquire into malversation on the part of the sheriffs and other accountable officials, into the state of Crown leases and fee-farms, and into annuities charged on such sources of royal revenue. About this time he was also serving on a commission of array in Kent against the possibility of French invasion and, as a councUlor, on commissions set up to investigate specific appeals against judgments given in the Court of the Constable and Marshal.2 He was in active attendance on the CouncU during the final and extremely critical session (13th October-22nd December) of the Long Parhament of 1406. Savage was not, however, present at an important meeting of the CouncU on 8th December, when a group of the most important officials of State and Household foregathered with the Prince of Wales to discuss reforms in the Household, especiaUy the appointment of a good Controller; perhaps because his name was then put forward for this office as an alternative to that of Sh Thomas Brownflete, a Yorkshhe knight. Brownflete was preferred, and when Sh John Tiptoft, Speaker in the Long Parhament, who was now appointed Treasurer of the Household, resigned this office in July, 1408, it was to be Brownflete who then moved up into his place.3 Savage continued as a royal councUlor and it is possible that he acted as such untU the CouncU was re-shaped early in 1410. Certainly as late as October, 1409, he was receiving the 100 marks a year from the petty customs of London, to which figure his old Ricardian annuity 1 O.P.R., 1401-5, 617; ibid., 432; Exchequer, Issue Rolls, P.R.O., E.403/580, mem. 2; ibid., E.403/585, mem. 1; Rot. Pari., iii, 572b. 2 O.P.R., 1405-8, 61, 155, 198-9, 231-2, 269. 3 P.P.O., i, 295-6; J. H. Wylie, The Reign of Henry IV, ii, 475n. 81 0 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING of £50 had been raised in June, 1403, in consideration of his expenses and work as a member of the CouncU. In the meantime, he had served on a number of royal commissions, local and otherwise. In February, 1407, he was re-appointed J.P. in Kent. In March and AprU foUowing he was again made a member of commissions of oyer and terminer after appeals had been made against certain judgments in the Court of the Constable and Marshal. In May he was put on an oyer and terminer touching escapes of felons in Kent, and in June was included in a commission of array in the county and in one of sewers from West Greenwich round the Thames estuary to within a short distance of Dover.1 In October, 1408, he was appointed to serve on a royal embassy to France along with the ex-chanceUor, Bishop Langley of Durham; in May and September, 1409, he was one of the further embassies sent to France to treat for reformation of breaches of truce and for a perpetual peace. These were his last important appointments, for the commissioner of array for the Isle of Thanet appointed in March, 1410, was probably his son.2 In the meantime, Sh Arnald had acted as a trustee to Sh Nicholas Hawberk, who on the eve of his death on 9th October, 1407, made over to him and a few others aU his goods and chattels. These they subsequently transferred to his widow, Joan Baroness Cobham of Cooling (Kent). Sir Nicholas, who was this lady's thhd husband, had served as sheriff and raglor of Fhntshhe and as constable of Flint Castle from 1396 to 1406, had fought at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 as a member of the Prince of Wales's retinue, and had been one of the knights of the King's Chamber and HaU; within a year of his death his widow married the notorious LoUard knight, Sh John Oldcastle, who was summoned to parhament for the first time in 1410 as Lord Cobham.3 In the year after Hawberk's death, another friend of Sh Arnald Savage died: John Gower, the " moral " poet, who on 15th August, 1408, made Savage one of his executors.4 Little more than two years passed after this before Sh Arnald's own life ended: aged about fifty-two, he died on 29th November, 1410, and Avas buried at Bobbing. His son and heh was another Arnald, then aged about twenty-eight years; he secured the famUy estates in July, 1411, was knight of the shhe for Kent in November, 1414, went overseas with Henry V's first expedition to Normandy (in the retinue of his wife's step-father, the lieutenant of Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset, Admhal of England) and died chUdless in 1420. His father's wUl was 1 C.C.R., 1409-13, 6; C.P.R., 1405-8, 493, 303, 326, 350-1, 363, 357. 2 Exchequer, Issue Roll, E.403/598, mem. 3; T. Rymer, Foedera, VIII, 585-6, 599; G.P.R., 1408-13, 223. 3 Archceologia Cantiana, XI, 91; Coll. Topogr. et Geneal., VII, 336; Wylie, Henry IV, iii, 290-1. 4 D.N.B., VIII, 300. 82 SIR ARNALD SAVAGE OF BOBBING then stUl not fully executed, for proAdsion had not yet been made for the estabhshment of his chantries at Bobbing and Chesley. The tomb of the former Speaker and his wife was not yet completed either, for Sh Arnald the son left 20 marks for a brass for them both; his mother had not long survived her husband, dying in the spring of 1413.1 The younger Arnald's wish to have his parents commemorated in this way was evidently fulfilled, for a brass, representing the Speaker as an armoured knight and his wife as a widoAv in Aveeds, still survives in Bobbing Church. 1 Hasted, Kent, ii, 635; The Genealogist, XXIX, 202-8; C.C.R., 1409-13, 165; O.F.R., 1405-13, 190, 210; Chichele Register, ii, 205. 83