March Mafia

In 1286 Edward I sailed for Gascony and did not return for three years. He left the kingdom in the hands of a deputy, his cousin Edmund, Earl of Cornwall.

Once the pard was away, his nobles started to play. In December 1286 William de Warenne, son and heir of Earl Warenne, was killed at a tournament in Croydon. He was rumoured to have been murdered. The earl had granted to his son the lordship of Bromfield and Yale on the March, which just happened to lie adjacent to the lands of Reynold Grey, justice of Chester. As a matter of course the dead man’s lands were taken into the king’s hands, which meant Grey took custody of them. Earl Warenne protested that he had granted Bromfield and Yale direct to his son and not in chief from the king. Eventually, at a council meeting in London at Candlemas 1287, Grey was forced to release the lordship.

Grey wasn’t used to being thwarted. He raised an army on his lands in the March and invaded Bromfield and Yale, seizing most of it for himself. When Earl Warenne protested, Grey stuck two fingers up at him and replied that he would keep what he had conquered, and take more if he felt like it. This man, supposedly, was a royal justice invested with the responsibility of enforcing law and order in the king’s absence.

Warenne wrote his friend, the earl of Warwick, asking for assistance. Full-scale civil war in the March was on the cards, but fortunately Warwick had a few more brain cells than the average feudal gangster. He informed the regent of the brewing crisis, and Cornwall in turn issued a general prohibition against military activity. This order was specifically aimed at the earls of Gloucester, Warwick and Norfolk, Hugh Despener, William de Braose, William Fitz John, Earl Warenne and Reynold Grey.

Who promptly ignored it.