Robber knights

In May 1305 a private war erupted in Gascony between the lords of Albret and Caumont. John de Havering, Edward I’s seneschal, reported that ‘the whole duchy was thrown into disorder’ and set about raising an army to quell the disturbance.

The trouble quickly spread to Poitou, Saintonge, Périgord, the Toulousain and Commines. Other families got involved, jumping in one side or another, until Havering was forced to send messengers to the French seneschals of neighbouring areas. They were asked to prevent men-at-arms from those regions from converging on Gascony ‘by reason of the aforesaid wars’.

This was nothing new. Gascony had always been a troublesome, war-torn place. In March 1250 Simon de Montfort, then seneschal, wrote to warn Henry III of the antics of Gascon gentry:

‘...for they will do nothing but rob the lands, and burn and plunder, and put the people to ransom, and ride by night like thieves by thirty or forty in different parts’.

Part of the problem was the slackening of the crusading effort against the infidel. Members of the Gascon nobility had been prominent in the Reconquista in Spain, and the decline of military action on the Iberian peninsula after 1264 left them at a loose end. A few chose to go to Outremer, even after the fall of the last Christian strongholds. As late as 1319 the countess of Foix, Margaret, paid a Béarnais noble of her family to serve in the Holy Land.

The other problem was the proliferation of younger sons among the lesser Gascon gentry. Inheritance laws in the duchy were complex, and cadet or bastard sons often had little to do except fight, booze and screw. Since they were all gentry, these robber knights were often protected by their kinsmen. In 1311, for instance, an outlaw nicknamed ‘Burd’, bastard son of Amanieu de Fossat, was spared the gallows because his father was lieutenant to the seneschal.

The over-population of young gentry folk in Gascony was a serious issue. Castles and manor houses were often shared, which led to some awkward living arrangements. A notarial instrument of April 1288 records that one Raymond-Guillaume was to inherit the hall and living quarters of his father’s castle, while his brother Guillaume was to have the tower. Both were forbidden from making windows, apparently so they didn’t have to look at each other. This custom of shared accommodation, called ‘Condominium’, often led to disputes and yet more private wars.