A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



from whence to advance into Scotland.' 1 In 1335 Thomas Lungvillers and 

 John de Mountenay were relieved from furnishing forty light horsemen 

 (hobelers) by a levy of 40 in ^e county, Newark excepted. 2 During the 

 same year the inhabitants of the town of Nottingham made complaint that 

 they had been overburdened by an order to provide ten light horsemen, and 

 their quota was accordingly reduced to six. 8 In 1336 William de Shareshull 

 and others were ordered to take an inquisition in the county, and to punish 

 according to their crime certain light horsemen, archers, and others, chosen 

 and arrayed to serve in the company of Thomas earl of Warwick, leader and 

 captain of the army, ' who did not set out, or after coming to those parts 

 stealthily withdrew and went home again, so that through their default the 

 enemy again carried fire and sword into the realm.' * Each year while the 

 war lasted came fresh demands and frequent attempts to evade the same. 6 

 For instance, in 1346, John Fitz William and others were sentenced to lose 

 their lands and possessions because 'contemptibiliter detractaverant electionem 

 hominum pro bello Scotiae.' ' 



The disasters both at home and abroad which marked the reign of 

 Richard II were but the necessary outcome of the absorption of Edward III 

 in continental warfare. His grandson had to carry on the French war, the 

 character of which was changed by the fact that Crecy and Poitiers had taught 

 the French a lesson in generalship. He had also to face the social upheaval 

 which times of famine and plague, coming with times of heavy taxation and 

 disarrangement of labour, made inevitable. For ' Richard the Redeless ' 

 both these tasks were impossible. He caught at the theories of absolutism 

 which were occupying the minds of the great jurists of the time, and for 

 him the king was to be solutus legibus in practice as in theory, whereas in 

 the Middle Ages theory and practice could never agree. It was the battle 

 between this absolutist theory and the counter-development of Wiclifs ideas 

 into the Lollard theory of the sovereignty of the people that was the far- 

 reaching cause of the Peasants' Revolt. Although the county of Notting- 

 ham was hardly affected directly by Lollardy, and thus took no active part 

 in the Peasants' Revolt, it suffered under the general causes of the social 

 discontent, and was moreover involved in Richard's absolutist schemes. It 

 was at Nottingham Castle that, having forced the judges to uphold the 

 prerogative of the crown, he prepared in 1387 for a coup d'etat against the 

 ' over-mighty subject,' which, had it been successful, might have seriously 

 changed not only the course of Richard's reign, but the development of the 

 constitution. 7 The * Wonderful or Merciless Parliament ' swept aside his 

 schemes, and, baffled for a time, he resorted to a policy of constitutional 

 government. But in 1397 came a second attempt to set up his royal 

 prerogative. The duke of Gloucester and the earls of Arundel and Warwick, 

 three of the lords appellant, were seized and sent to different castles. A 

 council was called at Nottingham, and there they were appealed of treason. 8 

 By the end of the year Arundel was beheaded, Warwick banished, and 



' Hence the majority of the great councils of the reign were held there, and many letters patent are 

 dated thence. 



* Cal. of Pat. 1334-8, p. 131. *Rot. Scot. (Rec. Com.), i, 339$. 



4 Cal. of Pat. 1 334-8, p. 575. See the frequent levies throughout the Rolls of Scotland. 



'Rot. Scot. (Rec. Com.), i, 68 jb. 



* Walsingham, Hut. Angl. (Rolls Ser.), ii, 161, 174. 8 Ibid. p. 223. 



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