Watch and ward list, c.1337
Item 221, fols. 232v-234r in the original codex – a digital reproduction is available here; a printed version can be found in Textus Roffensis. Accedunt, Professionum antiquorum Angliae Episcoporum Formulae, de Canonica obedientia Archiepiscopis Cantuariensibus praestanda, et Leonardi Hutteni Dissertatio, Anglice conscripta, de Antiquitatibus Oxoniensibus (Oxford, 1720), pp, 236-242.
At first, this document seems a rather incongruous addition to the Textus’ other contents, both in date and subject matter, but the reason can be found early in the list itself: the prior of Rochester was expected to provide three ‘men-at-arms’ or armoured horsemen to help patrol the sea-coast on the Hoo peninsula.
The list was drawn up at the very beginning of the Hundred Years War. Edward III was then planning to go to France, to conduct a campaign in either Flanders or Guyenne and he needed to ensure that his own country was protected during his absence. In the previous year French ships had raided the port of Orford in Suffolk.1 On 21 August 1337, the King ordered the sheriff of Kent:
to cause proclamation to be made in cities, boroughs, market towns and other fit places that archbishops, bishops, all abbots and priors and other ecclesiastical persons, earls, barons, knights, lords of towns, merchants and other rich people of that county, shall be at Rochester on the morrow of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross next, to hear the king’s intention and will concerning the defence of the realm against the king of France, who is waging war on it, which will be set forth to them by those whom the king will send for this, making known to them that if they refuse to come, the king will punish them as disobedient.2
On the same day, the king appointed John de Stratford, archbishop of Canterbury, and William de Clynton, earl of Huntingdon, both responsible for the defence of Kent, to impart the king’s ‘intention and will’ to the county’s landowners. However, because the earl and the archbishop had pressing duties elsewhere, they were replaced on the following day by Hamo de Hethe, bishop of Rochester, John de Sheppey, prior of Rochester, John de Cobeham and Thomas de Aldon.3 When the assembly was subsequently held at Rochester on 15 September, perhaps in the cathedral itself or more likely in the hall of the nearby castle, the county’s elite agreed to - or were told - who would be providing the individual watches and wards, the number of men required, and the portions of coastline they would be guarding, from the Hoo Peninsula all the way round to Dungeness. This list was drawn up by Huntingdon, who was able to attend this assembly despite his pressing duties elsewhere, together with de Cobeham and de Aldon.4 All, or a part of it, was subsequently copied into the Textus Roffensis, where it served as an aide memoire to the prior and his successors on their obligations. John de Sheppey, the prior at the time, later succeeded Hamo de Hethe as bishop and subsequently became the treasurer of England. His magnificent effigy, in its original polychrome, can still be seen in the cathedral today.5 The prior was expected to provide three men-at-arms, with eleven more supplied by seven other local landowners, making a total of fourteen. They were supplemented by seven ‘hobelars’ or mounted infantrymen, probably armed with longbows.6 These latter soldiers were named individually in the list and seem to have lived in the area concerned, one coming from Cliffe and another from Higham. Their collective task was to patrol the area along the ‘Yenlade in Hoo’ to prevent any French raiders landing there. In addition, the local communities between Dartford and Strood were expected to provide nine men to keep watch at night, ‘according to ancient practice.’ These may have been based at Cliffe and Hoo, where in later times warning beacons were ordered to be set up and which may already have been in place.7 The ‘Yenlade’ or Yantlet used to be a navigable creek that separated the Isle of Grain from the rest of the Hoo peninsula, crossed by a single bridge. During medieval times and beyond, it provided a sheltered passageway for smaller craft to traverse the water between the Thames and Medway estuaries.8 As most of the coastline of the Hoo peninsula consisted of marshland, the Yantlet creek seems to have been the most likely point where any French raiders could make a landing. The 17th-century map of Kent in John Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain in the Chapter Library shows Yantlet creek separating the Isle of Grain from the rest of the Hoo Peninsula. Similar watches and wards were also provided for Sheppey, Thanet, and Kentish coastline beyond. Only those are far as Walmer are included in the Textus list, where it abruptly ends. Why it terminates here is not clear. Perhaps a further folio, containing the rest of the list was lost before the Textus was bound in its present binding. Fortunately, a more complete version can now be found in the British Library, bound at the end of Additional Manuscript No. 38006. This lists the same defensive arrangements that can be found in the Textus but continues all the way round the coast to Dungeness. The same manuscript also contains an updated version of the list, which was compiled after Easter 1346 by John de Cobeham, Roger de Northwood, Thomas de Brockhull and the sheriff of Kent, William Langley. This was the year in which Edward III invaded France with a large army, resulting in his famous victory at Crecy. In this revised list, only the bishop and prior of Rochester are listed as being responsible for the ward at ‘Yenlade in Hoo’. This fuller version is probably the source of the list found printed in Philipott’s ‘Villare Cantianum.’9 Just a year after the list was compiled, the watch and ward system would have been put into operation in earnest. Portsmouth was sacked and burnt in March and a devastating raid was also made on Southampton in early October. It was also thought that the French would attempt to land on the Isle of Sheppey and that they would go on to attack London. With the king absent abroad, on 14 October 1338 the keeper of the realm and the king’s council sent letters to the bishop and prior of Rochester, Sir Philip de Pympe, and other landowners in Kent commanding them to send men-at-arms and archers urgently to Sheppey to defend it.10 This was no doubt in addition to their existing duties, ensuring that other sections of the Kentish coastline were patrolled and watched. It is therefore likely that the prior’s three horsemen and their counterparts spent many weary hours in the saddle that autumn, making sure that the French did not also land in the Hoo peninsula. There was no let-up in the following year, with the French first attacking Harwich, followed by further descents on Southampton, Plymouth, and the Isle of Wight. Thereafter various attempts were made to attack the Kent and Sussex coasts, but only Hastings was successfully sacked and burnt. On this occasion, William de Dene recorded in his chronicle, the Historia Roffensis, that Bishop Hamo de Hethe provided six men-at-arms with ‘covered’ or barded horses (sex homines ad arma cum equis coopertis) to help defend the Kent coast from the attacks made by the French fleet.11 It was only after that fleet was defeated and destroyed by Edward III himself at the battle of Sluys in 1340, that the prior’s busy men-at-arms would have found some rest at last from their onerous duties.12
Randolph Jones
Transcription and translation
The ‘Watch and Ward’ for Yantlet in Hoo, 1337
Watch
Hundred of Number of men to provide
Hoo 2
Malling 1
Shamel13 5
Dartford 1
Total 9
Ward
Men-at-arms14
Prior of Rochester 3
Philip de Pympe, Knight15 2
Thomas Malmayns16 2
John de Frenyngham17 2
Stephen de Dalham18 1
Thomas Walram 1
John Giffard 2
Henry de Greffort 1
Total 14
Hobelars
Roger de Estcheker 1
John att Forde 1
Robert Vyannde 1
Henry Lomer 1
Robert le Ram 1
John Mortemere de Clyve 1
Michael Sunna de Hieham19 1
Total 7
Footnotes
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1 Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Vol. I. Trial by Battle (London, 1990), p. 164.
2 CCR 1337-39, pp. 254, 255.
3 CPR 1334-38, pp. 502, 504.
4 For careers of these three men see: Matthew Raven, ‘William Clinton, Earl of Huntingdon, and the county of Kent: a study in magnate service under Edward III,’ Archaeologia Cantiana, Vol. 142 (2021), pp. 59-80, Nigel Saul, Death, Art, and Memory in Medieval England. The Cobham Family and their Monuments 1300-1500 (Oxford 2001), pp. 19-20; Dorothy Gardiner, ‘The Manor of Boughton Aluph and Sir Thomas de Aldon,’ Archaeologia Cantiana, Vol. 50 (1939), pp. 122-130.
5 For Sheppey’s biography, see the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
6 Summary at the end of this list erroneously mentions a total of 12 men-at-arms and 6 hobelars for the Yantlet ward.
7 CPR 1377-81, p. 77.
8 Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, Vol. 4 (Canterbury, 1798), pp 250-1.
9 Thomas Philipott, Villare Cantianum: or Kent surveyed and illustrated (London, 1659), pp. 4-7. This source states that the prior of Rochester was responsible for providing eight men-at-arms, but this is an error.
10 CCR 1337-39, p, 609; Thomas Rymer (ed.), Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et cujuscunque generis Acta Publica, inter Reges Angliae (London-1821), Vol. II, part II, p. 1026; Sumption, The Hundred Years War, pp. 248-9.
11 Henry Wharton, Anglia Sacra, sive Collectio Historiarum, Partim antiquitus, partim recenter scriptarum, de Archiepiscopis & Episcopis Angliae, a prima Fidei Christianae susceptione ad Annum MDXL (London, 1691), vol. 1, p. 374.
12 Sumption, Hundred Years War, pp. 261-5.
13 The Hundred of Shamel contained the parishes of Halling, Cuxton, Cobham (part), Shorne, Chalk, Denton, Merston, Higham, Cliffe, Cooling, Frindsbury, and Strood.
14 All of these men are mentioned in the Kent Lay Subsidy of 1334/5, though not all necessarily in connection with the Hundreds of Hoo and Shamel. See H.A. Hanley and C.W. Chalklin (eds.), The Kent Lay Subsidy of 1334/59 (1961), available online here
15 Frequently sitting in parliament as a knight of the shire for Kent, Sir Philip’s principal seat was at Pympe’s Court, Nettlestead, but he also held an estate in Allhallows on the Hoo peninsula. See Hasted, Survey of Kent, Vol. 4, p. 29.
16 In the Kent Lay Subsidy of 1334/5, Thomas was assessed for 9s. 10½d. for property held in the Hundred of Hoo. He held three quarters of a knight’s fee in Stoke. Hasted, Survey of Kent, p. 39.
17 John de Frenyngham or Farningham.
18 In the Kent Lay Subsidy of 1334/5, Stephen de Delham was assessed for 8s. 3¾d. for property held in the Hundred of Hoo and 4s. 7¾d. in the Hundred of Shamwell.,
19 Possibly ‘Michael Somers’.