The troubled politics of the mid-fifteenth century are illuminated by the histories of leading gentry families just as much as they are by those of Neville, Stafford and other great aristocratic families. In one sense, lesser families offer a more subtle perspective in that, while great families were so central to politics that they could hardly avoid active involvement in the struggle between York and Lancaster, the leading gentry had the third option of neutrality. Those families that did commit themselves thus have a particular interest. Some, like the Yorkist Devereuxs or the Lancastrian Treshams, were consistent in their loyalty.  Others, however, transferred allegiance, whether through perceived self-interest, as a reaction (even a principled one) to political events or as a calculated gamble.  The story of the Blounts, one of a small coterie of gentry families that dominated Derbyshire politics, is particularly revealing in this regard. Their two changes of allegiance – in 1454 and 1484 – were examples of anticipating, rather than swimming with, the political tide. 

They were a family to whom commitment came naturally. In the early fifteenth-century they served the house of Lancaster with great distinction. Sir Walter Blount was killed at the battle of Shrewsbury in 1403 (according to some reports, acting as a decoy Henry IV); his son, Sir John Blount, a soldier notable enough to be promoted to the Order of the Garter, fell at the siege of Rouen in 1418; and Sir John’s brother and successor Sir Thomas, spent his best years in the service of Lancastrian arms in France. Sir Thomas’s eldest son, Walter, looked set to continue this tradition, entering the household of Henry VI in about 1440.

Soon, however, Walter, was to commit himself to the house of York with the same enthusiasm as his predecessors had supported Lancaster. The decisive moment came on 28 May 1454 with the famous sack of his manor of Elvaston.  This was a particularly acute example of the damaging interaction of local rivalries among the leading gentry with the crisis in national affairs. Sir Nicholas Longford of Longford, head of another family long connected with the house of Lancaster, led an armed band of 1,000 men to a raid on Elvaston. There they allegedly quartered tapestries charged with the Blount arms, justifying their action on the grounds that Blount ‘was gone to serve Traytours’.  They clearly believed that Blount had come to identify himself with the duke of York, who, the King mentally incapacitated, had become protector two months earlier.            

Whatever Blount’s prior connexion with the duke, the sack of Elvaston drove him further into the Yorkist camp. In the late 1450s he was serving both York and his ally, Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, who, as captain of Calais, appointed him as his marshal there.  The outbreak of civil war in 1459 thus presented him with opportunities. Just as his grandfather, Sir Walter, had actively supported the Lancastrian usurpation of 1399, he fought for its end. He was in the Yorkist ranks in March 1461 at the decisive battle of Towton, where he was knighted.

Blount’s support for York brought him substantial rewards, not least a great marriage. In the aftermath of the earlier Yorkist victory at Northampton in the previous July, he had tried to win the hand of Elizabeth Butler, widow of one of the Lancastrian victims of that battle, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury, but she repudiated him on the incontestable grounds that he ‘unequal and inferior to her in nobility and wealth’.  Fortunately for Blount, a widow of yet greater rank did not share her scruples. He soon married another of those widowed at Northampton, namely the King’s maternal aunt, Anne Neville (who was also Warwick’s aunt), dowager-duchess of Buckingham, the wealthiest widow in England.  It is hard to believe that Blount did not owe the match to royal patronage. With this marriage came a greater status: he served in the great office of treasurer and, in June 1465. was elevated to the peerage as Lord Mountjoy.

In the great crisis of Edward’s reign from 1469 to 1471, provoked by the King’s alienation from the earl of Warwick, Blount, after a brief period of equivocation, firmly committed himself to Edward. He fought for him in the victorious campaign of the spring of 1471, during which his son and heir, William, was killed at the battle of Barnet. In April 1472 he followed his uncle, Sir John, in having the honour of installation to the Order of the Garter.

On Blount’s death in 1474, effective headship on the family devolved on his son, James. Although land and title passed to James’s elder brother, John, it was James who was the most politically active, and it was James who took the lead in the next major event in the family’s history. At the beginning of his rule, Richard III confidently placed his trust in the Blounts, giving them a central role in the defence of Calais (with which the family had long been associated), In James’s case this trust proved spectacularly misplaced, for he soon dealt the new King a major blow. Among the captives at Hammes castle, of which James was lieutenant, was the militant Lancastrian, John de Vere, the attainted earl of Oxford, who had been imprisoned there since 1474. The two men must have known each other well, and, at some date shortly before 28 October 1484, Oxford persuaded James not only to release him but to join him in fleeing to join Henry of Richmond at the French court. The probability is that Blount, alienated by the deposition of Edward V, needed little persuasion to revert to the family’s Lancastrian loyalties. He was now wholly committed to Richmond. He landed with him at Milford Haven on 7 August. 1485 and fought at the battle of Bosworth two weeks later. Unsurprisingly, albeit not as mightily as his father had done after the change of regime in 1461, James prospered in the early years of Henry VII’s rule. Sadly, he died childless in 1492 at the height of his career.

Whether Lord Mountjoy shared James’s dramatic change of allegiance cannot be known.  It may be that James, as a younger brother, took the active role because his forfeiture, should Richmond have failed, would not endanger the family’s future. John may also have been restrained by a natural caution.  The striking and well-known provision of his will is suggestive: he advised his sons (the eldest of whom, William, was only seven) , ‘never to take the state of Baron upon them if they may leye it from them nor to desire to be grete about princes for it is daungeros’.  Given that between 1403 and 1471 three of his family, including his eldest brother, had met violent deaths serving ‘princes’, such caution is understandable. Yet this was to be balanced by the positives: the family had been advanced to the peerage by their service to the Yorkists, and, when he drew up his will, his brother’s support for Henry VII promised further promotion.  In any event, the new Lord Mountjoy disregarded his father’s well-meaning advice.  Most famous as a friend and patron of Erasmus, he made a very successful career at the court of the most dangerous of princes, Henry VIII.

S.J.P.

Further reading

H. Castor, ‘Sack of Elvaston’, Midland History, xix. 21-39.

For biographies of Sir Walter Blount (d.1403), Sir Thomas Blount (d.1456) and Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy: The Commons, 1386-1421, ii. 258-60, 262-5; 1422-61, iii.  382-91.  A biography of Sir James Blount will appear in The Commons, 1461-1504.

Over the next few months we’ll be publishing some tasters of ‘The Story of Parliament’ from a number of the academics who contributed to the book. We start with a short introduction to Henry VIII’s chief minister and one of the most significant figures in the development of Parliament, Thomas Cromwell. Cromwell has been the recent focus of attention thanks to Hilary Mantel’s Booker-Prize-Winning novels, but his importance in guiding royal policy through Parliament, in particular the Reformation Parliament of 1529-35, makes him one of the period’s most significant politicians and administrators.

This article was originally written by Dr Paul Cavill, Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Cambridge University.

As Henry VIII’s leading minister in the 1530s, Thomas Cromwell dominated the decade’s parliaments. The son of a Putney blacksmith, Cromwell was born around 1485. Returning to England in the 1510s after continental adventures, Cromwell acted as a general land agent. One of his many clients possibly helped him get elected to parliament in 1523. There he may have delivered a speech urging the conquest of Scotland.

In 1524, the king’s minister Cardinal Wolsey recruited Cromwell to oversee the building of his new colleges in Ipswich and Oxford. This experience eased Cromwell’s transition to the king’s service after the cardinal’s fall in 1529. With Henry’s favour, Cromwell was again elected to the Commons, where he quickly demonstrated his ability as a royal spokesman. He helped to draft the most important bills in the Reformation Parliament. He then masterminded the nationwide enforcement of the break with Rome.

Cromwell joked how in 1523 he had “endured a parliament” that, after 17 weeks of inconclusive debate, had “left where it began”. By contrast, radical decisiveness characterised the parliaments that Cromwell managed, as an MP and, from 1536, as a member of the Lords. By using parliament to confirm the royal supremacy and overhaul government, Cromwell gave it a more important constitutional role. Although early ideas of parliamentary sovereignty may have influenced him, Cromwell was primarily seeking efficient means of advancing his royal master’s interests. Cromwell’s papers reveal a cultured man of the world, interested in religious and social reform. He may have gone too far for Henry VIII. His reputation as a Protestant sympathiser contributed to his fall from power and his execution in 1540.

PC

Dr Paul Cavill is Lecturer in Early Modern British History at Cambridge University. He studies the political and religious history of Tudor England, and is author of The English parliaments of Henry VII, 1485–1504 (Oxford, 2009).

‘The Story of Parliament’ is available at the Parliamentary bookshop for £14.99. You can purchase it here.

Between Robert the Bruce’s victory at Bannockburn and the union of the crowns under James VI & I there were a series of border confrontations between England and Scotland. The most devastating battle occurred in 1513, at Branxton Moor, known as the Battle of Flodden or Flodden field.

Henry VIII, eager for glory on the continent, had joined an alliance with Spain and Pope Julius II against France in 1511. Despite the marriage between Henry’s sister Margaret and the Scottish king, James IV, James upheld his obligations under the ‘auld alliance’ and in August 1513 invaded England to aid the French. Intending to divert English attention from the continent, James only advanced a few miles into Northumbria and set up a defensive camp at Flodden.

The English, under the regency of Catherine of Aragon whilst Henry VIII was away, had prepared for a Scottish invasion. Thomas Howard, the earl of Surrey, had been appointed Warden of the Northern Marches and responded by mustering an army. After Surrey arrived in Flodden and saw the impressive defences James had established, which unsurprisingly the Scottish king would not abandon, Surrey moved his army to Branxton Moor, north-east of Flodden and between the Scottish army and their supplies in Scotland.

James was forced to leave his commanding position, and the resulting battle on the moor during the afternoon of 9 September was a disaster for James and Scotland. Casualty members are still debated, but between 7,000 and 11,000 Scots died in the Battle (the English lost around 4,000). The defeat had greater political consequences however as the Scottish lost 13 barons, 5 heirs to titles, 3 bishops, 2 abbots, and, of course, James himself. Scotland was left with a 17-month-old monarch – James V – and there followed a period of political intrigue between the young king’s guardian and mother, Margaret, and the Scottish regent, John Stewart, 2^nd duke of Albany.

On the English side the battle was a triumph, and the careers of many parliamentarians were furthered by their part in the victory. Many were knighted on the battlefield: for example Sir William Rous, who had been little known before Flodden but the following year helped escort Princess Mary to France to marry Louis XII, and the two sons of Sir Marmaduke Constable (Sir Marmaduke and Sir John). William Sabine, a ship owner, had helped to transport the royal army to France before heading north. He was quickly recruited into the army. His service helped his later career as a naval commander, merchant and official, sitting in the 1539 parliament through his connection with the Howard family.

Some had more difficult careers after the battle. Sir Christopher Dacre, brother to Thomas, 2^nd lord Dacre, was also knighted after the battle thanks to the two brothers “marvels” against the Scots, despite losing 800 horses. The family were in serious trouble in 1534, however, when Sir Christopher and his nephew William, now 3^rd Lord Dacre, were sent to the Tower accused of using their Scottish contacts to further their feuds with other English families. Dacre was later pardoned and probably sat in later parliaments.

For later English MPs, an ancestor who fought at Flodden was something to be proud of (such as George Buc and John Winchcombe , son of the renowned ‘Jack of Newbury’). Of course in the 18^th century they were joined in the Commons by those, such as James Halyburton and Archibald Kennedy, who were equally proud of ancestors who had died on the opposite side.

EP

You can read the first post in our England-Scotland series, on Parliament and Bannockburn here. The next in our series will discuss Scottish attitudes to James VI & I’s attempted union in the early 17^th century, watch this space!