Ferrers a la carte

As part of some shameless promo for my new slice of pulp fiction, here’s a potted bio of one of the chief protagonists, Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby.

Robert was born in 1239, the eldest son and heir of the 5th earl, William. The Ferrers were not particularly strong stock and suffered from a hereditary strain of gout, which usually killed off the menfolk in early middle age. They often had to be carried about in a litter, a terrible disgrace for medieval noblemen: condemned criminals were carried in carts to the gallows, so for an aristocrat to travel in the same way was considered shameful. The 12th century poem by Chrétien de Troyes, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, lampoons this aspect of chivalric culture.

To add to his shame, Robert’s father was accidentally thrown from his litter while crossing a bridge at St Neots in Huntingdonshire. He survived, but never fully recovered and died in 1254. His heir Robert was still a minor, so his wardship was granted to the Lord Edward, who promptly flogged it to Italian financiers for 6000 marks. This was probably the source of Robert’s later deadly feud with his royal kinsman.

Robert came of age in 1260. His estate was crippled by charges arising from his father’s death, which might explain why the young earl immediately embarked on a career of violence and wayward, sometimes baffling behaviour. He spent the early part of the decade attacking his neighbours in Derbyshire, stealing livestock and goods like a common brigand, at the head of a vast gang of followers. The ‘wild and flighty’ earl even attacked his own family priory at Tutbury. In the process he damaged some of the tombs of his ancestors, extremely odd behaviour for a medieval magnate. Robert certainly inherited a lot of problems, but there was an undeniably savage and unpredictable element to his character.

Fatally, Robert also lacked political judgement, which meant he got screwed by everyone. During the civil wars in England he initially supported Simon de Montfort, only to quit in disgust when Simon’s sons allowed Edward to escape from Gloucester. Simon wanted to get his hands on Robert’s assets in the lordship of Chester, and threw the hapless earl into prison after luring him to London on a false pretext. While Robert was banged up, his tenants in Derbyshire continued to resist and attacked royal officials acting in Simon’s name. Whatever Robert’s flaws, he had a peculiar gift for inspiring loyalty among the ‘men of Ferrers’, as they were called.

Ferrers arms

After Simon and his army were blown to bits at Evesham, Robert was given a chance to walk away and start again. Henry III gave him a royal pardon, sealed by the gift of a golden cup studded with precious jewels. Even Edward showed he was willing to bury the hatchet. Robert stupidly chose to throw away his shot at redemption and joined the baronial rebels in northern England. In May 1266 the rebel army was ambushed and defeated at Chesterfield while Robert was flat on his back, having his blood let for gout. He then suffered the humiliation of being captured in a church while hiding under a pile of woolsacks. The captive earl was sent south, stuck inside a cage on the back of a wagon, and imprisoned for three years at Windsor.

Despite all his naughty doings, Robert's life was spared. As yet there was no precedent for the execution of an earl in England, and nobody wanted to take that final step: it wouldn’t happen until the execution of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, in 1322. Instead the royal family conspired with the leading magnates of the realm to swindle Robert out of his inheritance, and forced him (probably under threat of torture) to sign away all his lands. Afterwards he was released, landless and penniless, to do as he pleased.

This proved a mistake. Robert gathered the men of Ferrers about him and spent five years waging a guerilla campaign to seize back his lost estates. In 1273 he stormed Chartley Castle, his family seat in Staffordshire, and was only evicted after a year-long siege. After this defeat and the return of his old enemy, Edward - now Edward I - in 1274, it might be expected that Robert had truly had his chips. Once again his head was permitted to remain on its shoulders. Edward allowed Robert to recover two of his lost manors, Chartley and Holbrook in Derbyshire, and live quietly until his death, aged forty, in 1279.

Robert left a son, John, who spent his youth lobbying in vain to recover the rest of his once-vast patrimony. This was impossible since the earldom of Derby was now in the hands of Prince Edmund, King Edward’s younger brother, and would form the basis of the great Honour of Lancaster. John was eventually appointed seneschal of Gascony, where he was poisoned by the Gascons after proving every bit as violent and unstable as his father.

Robert de Ferrers, a crashing failure in life, has the magnificent posthumous honour of appearing in my book Longsword (IV) The Hooded Men, now available on Kindle. The lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky…(etc)…

Longsword IV (The Hooded Men) on Amazon US

Longsword IV (The Hooded Men) on Amazon UK