Coterel gang

The Coterel Gang (also Cotterill)[1] (fl. c.1328–1333)[2] was a fourteenth-century armed gang which flourished in Derbyshire. It was led by James Coterel—supported by his brothers Nicholas and John—after whom the gang is named. It was one of a number of gangs to roam across the English countryside in the late 1320s and early 1330s, which was a period of political upheaval with a concomitant increase in lawlessness in the provinces. Coterel and his immediate supporters were of the gentry class, and, according to the tenets of the day, were expected to assist the crown in the maintenance of law and order rather than encourage its collapse. Basing themselves in the deeply-wooded areas of north Nottinghamshire, such as Sherwood Forest, they frequently cooperated with other gangs such as the Folvilles. The membership of the Coterel gang increased as their exploits became more widely know, mostly with local recruits but some coming from as far away as Shropshire. Despite repeated attempts by the crown to suppress the gang, the Coterels' criminal activities increased: by 1330 they had committed murder, extortion, kidnap, and ran protection rackets across the Peak District. They do not seem to have ever been particularly unpopular with the populace, and both the secular and ecclesiastical communities provided the gang with supplies, provisions and logistical support

Possibly their most famous offence took place in 1332. A royal justice, Richard Willoughby, was despatched to Derbyshire to bring the Coterel gang to justice; however, before he could do so, he was captured and kidnapped by a consortium composed of the Coterel and Folville gangs. They had both encountered him in his professional capacity on previous occasions and probably wanted revenge on him as much as they wanted his money. This they also received, as Willoughby paid the massive sum of 1,300 marks for his freedom. This outrage against a representative of the crown led King Edward III to launch a great commission into the troubled area to bring the gang to justice and restore the King's Peace. In the event, although a large number of gang members were arraigned, all but one were acquitted; the Coterel brothers themselves ignored their summonses and did not even attend. The King was also politically distracted by the outbreak of war again with Scotland; this provided him with the opportunity to recruit seasoned men to his army while appearing to solve the local disorder. As a result, most of the Coterel gang received royal pardons following service abroad or in Scotland, and James, Nicholas and John Coterel all eventually had profitable careers. It is generally considered by modern scholars that the activities and members of 13th-century gangs such as the Coterels provided the basis for much of the story later woven around Robin Hood in the 15th century.

Background

The origins of the Coterel gang were against a backdrop of political factionalism within central government. The King, Edward II, was extremely unpopular with his nobility.[4] King Edward II of England had court favourites who were unpopular with his nobility,[5] and in 1322 the King's cousin, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster had rebelled, been defeated, and executed for his resistance to them.[6] One of the Coterel brothers and their later allies from the Braybourne family were also involved, so it is likely, says J. R. Maddicott, that there was a political dimension to the Coterel gang's activities as part of general opposition to the King,[7] if only in that they thrived on the political chaos of the last years of Edward II's reign and the early years of that of Edward III.[8] There was clearly no deep commitment to a politic cause, however, as three years after Edward's overthrow, they were accused of ravishing the Derbyshire estates of the dead earl of Lancaster's brother and heir, Henry, 3rd Earl of Lancaster.[7] Lancaster later brought suit against the three Coterel brothers for the damage they had done to his park and chase in Duffield, where, he said, they had "hunted and carried away deer and did many other wrongs".[9] The Coterels did not deign to appear in court, but in their absence judgement was handed against them and the damage estimated at £60:[9] the cattle the Coterel stole, however, may have been worth as much as £5,200.[10]

Indeed, even though members of their own family were "contrariants"—opposed to the Despensers and Edward II—the Coterel brothers seem to have very much devoted themselves to stealing from members of that party whenever the opportunity arose. For example, after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322—when the contrariant nobles fought Edward II and lost—the Coterels ambushed fleeing survivors of the losing side, and robbed them of horses and armour. On another occasion they stole "a quantity of silver plate",[11] only to ambushed themselves by a small force of Welsh who in turn relieved them of their loot.[11][note 1] The area of the Midlands they operated within was also wealthier than the national average.[13]

Origins

Another gang, led by James Coterel and his brothers, terrorized Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, including Sherwood Forest, from 1328 to 1332. These were no common criminals but "gentlemen," probably the younger sons of landed gentry, who, when they were not committing crimes such as robbery, extortion, and murder, often by hire, were serving in Edward Ill's wars in Scotland and France while holding public office as bailiffs and even M.P.s.[14]

Thomas Ohlgren

There is no firm evidence as to James Coterel's precise motives for embarking on his career in crime. Perhaps, suggests Bellamy, having started off in a small way, they discovered both that they were good at it and that it provided an easy source of income.[15] The Coterel gang was a combination of "criminal gentry",[16] the class on whom—"paradoxically"[17]—the upkeep of law and order usually devolved to in the localities.[17] They were joined by men of lower class.[18] It was probably composed of the Coterel brothers with a small number of local men as its kernel.[19] The gang is first mentioned in official records on 2 August 1328, when the three brothers Coterel—James, John and Nicholas—allying with one Roger le Sauvage[note 2] and others attacked the vicar of Bakewell, Derbyshire,[22] one Walter Can, [23] in his church, evicted him from it[24] and stole 10 shillings from his collection plate. The offence was committed at the instigation of one Robert Bernard, who had held a number of important positions: he had been a clerk for the Westminster chancery, had taught at Oxford University and was, at the time of the offence, registrar of Lichfield Cathedral.[22] Bernard had himself been vicar of Bakewell in 1328 but had been forcibly ejected by his parishioners for embezzling church funds. He was, says J. G. Bellamy, "an unsavoury individual"[22][note 3] and may have personally participated in the assault on Walter Can.[23]

The Coterel family

The Coterl family has been described as "not only numerous, but also litigious".[9] Nicholas, James and John were the sons of a major Derbyshire landowner, Ralph Coterel. Nicholas had been involved—how deeply is now unknown—in Lancaster's rebellion in 1322, for which he had received a pardon.[7] James Coterel, in his youth, has been described as a fourteenth-century juvenile delinquent.[26] James was the eldest, and presumably, the dominant personality of the brothers, [27] ("young men of prys", as they were later termed)[15] and was the acknowledged leader of the gang, which was later recorded as the "Society of James Coterel".[22] He became of particularly high standing in the local community.[28] The gang he led has been described as something like a "federation of gangs", on account of its fluid membership and interconnectivity with other groups of a similar kidney[20] in the Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland area.[29]

Activities

The Coterels and their associates were a greenwood gang, as they favoured making their hide-outs in the local woods.[30][note 4] They cooperated with other such gangs, most notably with the Folvilles,[32] and when Eustace Folville hid out in Derbyshire—"during his enforced absences from his native shire"[22]—James Coterel was later described as his leader,[22][note 5] although strictly the Coterels were of a lower social status[20] (Maurice Keen wrote that James Coterel "might have ranked as a minor gentleman",[18] while Folville was a knight[18]). Either way, they did not merely have contacts within the gentry class; they were members of it.[33] They were known to hide out on the "wild forests of the High Peak"[34]—James Coterel was called "the king of the Peak"[35]—with spies keeping a look-out for the Sheriff's men; they avoided capture this way on at least one occasion.[34] The Coterels had a strategy of never staying more than a month in the same place, although they did return, intermittently, to various safe houses.[36] One of the areas they concentrated on was around the village of Stainsby, where the Sauvage family was based and on whose manor the Coterels often made their headquarters.[16] James Coterel committed murders in Derby in 1329 and 1330[21] and he was attached at the Derbyshire eyre for the crime that year—although he was not arrested, and nor was he ever to be.[28] Most of the gang who proceedings had been attempted against were found to be legally vagabonds, and the sheriff postponed the hearings three times before giving up.[37] Sir Roger de Wennesley, Lord of Mappleton,[38] was then dispatched to arrest the gang on 18 December that year. De Wennesley was a "sworn enemy" of the Coterels, having stabbed one of their relations[23]—and Coterel gang associate[11]—Laurence Coterel to death in March the same year.[23][note 6] De Wennsly was unable to locate the gang,[23] who were then declared outlawed in March1331.[28] If anything, though, says one commentator, their outlawry "seems to have inspired them to expand the range of their criminal behaviour".[23] Soon after de Wennesley's failed commission, the Coterels kidnapped John Staniclyf, a tenant of de Wennesley's. They refused to release Staniclyf until he swore an oath never to oppose the gang again, and he was forced to pay a bond of £20 to ensure his compliance.[41]

Panorama of High Peak, Derbyshire
A High Peak panorama, Derbyshire, where the Coterel gang headquartered occasionally when on the run.

The peak of the gang's activity was between March 1331 and September 1332.[42] Roaming the peak district, they sheltered in Sherwood Forest, where they were continually joined by new recruits until they numbered at least fifty strong.[2] James Coterel was later personally accused of recruiting 20 men in the Peak and Sherwood areas,[14] but recruits could also come from afar: Sir John de Legh, for example, was from Shropshire.[43] Many men—Sauvage, for example[note 7]—joined them after getting into debt and then being outlawed when they were unable to repay what they owed.[44] But although some members were already outlawed when they sought out the gang, the majority would seem not to have been,[19] or even to have had criminal records at all.[45] The increase in membership allowed the gang to expand its operations, both geographically and by type.[19] In 1331 they were joined by Sir William Chetulton of Staffordshire (already, says Bellamy, an "infamous gang leader"[46] himself by this point), who had previously operated in Sir James Stafford's gang in Lancashire.[46] In December 1331, the gang was joined by John Boson, an Esquire from Nottingham who held land off William, Lord Ros; Bosun's father had not only been an outlaw himself but had been an early associate of James Coterel.[45] The Coterel gang were the subject of multiple presentments throughout their short career,[47] and committed at least two murders as well as extortions[note 8] and kidnappings around the Peak District,[7] running protection rackets,[20] and generally involving themselves in the feuds of their neighbours.[2] Although until the summer of1331 the Coterel gang had made a name for themselves by committing extreme acts of violence, it would seem that from that point forward they made it policy to avoid violence where possible and concentrate on more financially-profitable schemes.[49] They became particularly involved in extortion, and Barbara Hanawalt has described their technique as being refined: they possessed "such an evil reputation for extortion that they only had to send a letter threatening damage to life, limb, and property in order to extort money".[48] This was the gang's method with the Mayor of Nottingham, to whom they wrote demanding £20—"or else".[50] They utilised the indenture system: one half was sent to the victim with the demand, and the sum demanded was to be paid to whoever arrived at the appointed time bearing the other half of the indenture.[48][note 9] This seems to have been the speciality of two members of the gang, William Pymm of Sutton Bonington and Roger Sauvage,[15] and

...These plunderers, kidnappers and murderers nevertheless appear in a matrix of affinities and patronage coextensive with the local gentry.[52]

Howard Kaminsky

one of the bearers they used to carry such a letter to William Amyas, a wealthy Nottingham ship owner in 1332 was Pymm's own mother.[10] In direct imitation of royal justice, they demanded tribute from the local populace;[53] William Amyas was told that, if he failed to comply, "everything he held outside of Nottingham would be burned".[10] On another occasion they went, mob-handed, to the house of one Robert Franceys, where they forced him to hand over 40 shillings; Fraunceys, so a chronicler wrote was sufficiently scared by his experience that "he left his house and did not return for a long time".[54] A Bakewell man, Ralph Murimouth, was forced to hand over 100 shillings.[49]

All this they did with apparent immunity.[55] In 1331 the gang kidnapped Robert Foucher of Osmaston (whom they knew would soon be wealthy, as he was due to be granted some local parkland).[56] One of their most notorious acts was not an extortion, however, but another kidnapping—that of Sir Richard Willoughby, a royal justice, whom they captured in 1332.[28]

Kidnapping of Richard Willoughby

Photograph of a Victorian reconstruction of Nottingham Castle
Victoran illustration reconstructing Nottingham castle and environs in the later medieval period

The kidnap of Richard Willoughby has been described as a "daring and very high-profile event".[57] He was captured in Melton Mowbray on 14 January 1332[46] and spirited away while on a judicial commission in the East Midlands. The Coterels, accompanied by members of the Folville gang,[28] numbered between 20 and 30 men.[46] In exchange for Willougby's life, they demanded the then large sum of 1,300 marks for his release. Willoughby was a wealthy man, and had raised the necessary amount by the following day.[28][note 10] Clearly, says Hanawalt, the risks associated with attacking such a prominent individual were deemed to be acceptable in expectation of such large amounts.[48] 300 marks of the ransom went to the Folvilles.[30] It is likely that the Coterels and their associated were motivated at least in part by the fact that many of them would have come up against Willoughby on occasions[59] in his capacity as a puisne judge[60] who was regularly active on commissions of oyer and terminer in the region.[61] It is known that in June 1329 he investigated the pillaging of the Earl of Lancaster's lands by the Coterels, and in 1331 he heard the complaint of the vicar of Bakewell over his eviction by the gang.[62] Willoughby was, though, notoriously corrupt[58][63]—the royal yearbooks would later report Willoughby as selling the laws of the land "as if they were cattle or oxen"[64][65]—and according to the near-contemporary Knighton's Chronicon, the Coterel associates had much to feel aggrieved about:[59] Willoughby had judged a number of cases against members of the gang.[18] He was, says Bellamy, "thus a fit subject for humiliation".[66] His kidnap was almost certainly the chance for revenge "for some wrong or imagined wrong once suffered"[62] as much, if not more than financial gain.[62]

The distribution of the ransom took place in one of Sir Robert Touchet's manors at Markeaton Park; Touchet was a prominent Midlands landowner,[67] and was probably the Coterels' chief patron.[15] With his brother, Edmund Touchet—who was parson of nearby Mackworth—he knew and approved of the Coterel scheme. These men, who provided the gang with material assistance when it was required were exemplar of the kind of support the Coterels enjoyed locally.[67] The kidnapping of Willoughby was not merely a local outrage, but, says historian John Aberth, for the crown it was "an unprecedented assault on the dignity of its bench and the authority of its law."[60] In Derbyshire itself, however, there was a "widespread lack of sympathy" for the judge.[30]

Support for the gang

The Coterels poached, ambushed, had a spy in Nottingham, ill-treated clerics, were pursued by bounty hunters and the sheriff, operated in Sherwood, entered royal service, had as an ally a member of the gentry who had lost his inheritance, were retained at one time by a local magnate and wore his livery, and were pardoned by the King.[68]

John Bellamy

The gang received a strong degree of support from among the regional public generally[2] and the gentry and churchmen particularly. Within Lichfield Cathedral, apart from Robert Bernard, there was seven canons at Litchfield,[8] including one John Kinnersley, who were all later accused of being supporters of the Coterels and of providing James with "protection, succour and provisions".[7][note 11] There was, commented Bellamy, "was no lack of worldly knowledge in the Litchfield cloisters":[70] Kinnersley was James Coterel's legal receiver on multiple occasions.[28] The Cathedral Chapter supported the gang even after the gang was identified,[22] and it seems likely that the Chapter directly employed the gang on a number of occasions,[71] for instance, the robbing of the vicar of Bakewell, and to collect tithes.[15] It is probably due to the particular support of these two religious houses that James Coterel never faced arrest.[28] Also among the Coterel's local supporters was the Cluniac prior of Lenton, Nottinghamshire, who on at least one occasion gave them advance warning of an intended trailbaston commission[28][note 12] led by Richard de Grey.[72] Similar support was received from the Cistercian house at Haverholme.[33]

While on the run, local people kept the gang members supplied with material support as well as information.[73] Such peripheral support was always far more numerous than the gang itself, and it has been estimated that the Coterels could rely on around 150 such supporters[17] (57 of whom were from the villages of Bakewell and Mackworth alone).[74] Such support was not wholly based on fear,[75] but neither did people believe that outlaws were romantic figures out to help the community; perhaps, says Barbara Hanawalt, "respect and a reluctant admiration" was the prevailing attitude of the populace.[76] For example, one Walter Aune delivered a quantity of food to them in the woods on one occasion.[note 13] On another he delivered the rents from Richard le Sauvage's Stainsby manor to Sauvage while the latter was hiding out with the Coterels.[73] When the gang was hiding out in Bakewell they were brought sustenance by local man Nicholas Taddington; Taddington also showed them secret paths around the countryside.[77] Occasionally the gang had to actively forage for food, and William Pymme is known to sent his servants and members of his household out for this purpose.[77]

The gang enjoyed support within local officialdom as well, including at least six bailiffs in the High Peak district. They were supporters although not necessarily active members,[15] a group which included at least seven local men who attended parliament during the decade.[78] Another "clandestine ally"[15] was Sir Robert Ingram. Ingram was a man of some importance; he had been High Sheriff of Nottingham and Derbyshire between 1322 and 1323 and then from 1327 to 1328 as well as Mayor of Nottingham for two terms, 1314–1316 and 1320–1324;[79] he had also been recruited by the Coterels.[80] It was Ingram who wrote to a Coterel spy (explorator)[81] in Nottingham Castle, William de Usfton, who was not only Lord of the manor of Radmanthwaite in Nottinghamshire but also a counterfeiter.[15] Ingram's letter informed the Coterels that their base in the High Peak forest had just been discovered, and thus enabled their escape.[81] Not everyone supported the gang, of course; in 1331, a petition was presented to parliament which complained about members of the gentry uniting in order to kidnap and kill the king's loyal officials—almost certainly an oblique reference to the Coterel gang.[82] A jury later reported how the gang "rode armed publicly and secretly in manner of war by day and night".[36]

Royal response

Edward III from an illuminated manuscript c.1430
King Edward III, as represented in an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript.

In response to Willoughby's kidnapping, the King despatched a "powerful" judicial commission to the north Midlands in March 1332.[83] Fifty men were brought before the bench.[2] In the event, however, although many indictments were presented and heard, "hardly any of the principals were brought into court, much less convicted", even though King Edward personally attended the sessions held at Stamford, Lincolnshire.[83] Some of those arrested were bailed; for example, Roger de Wennesley—who by now had joined the gang he had been sent arrest the previous year—while on bail, became a forger and wrote "pretended letters to arrest certain persons...by means of which he extorted money daily".[84] Of the fifty brought to the bench, only one—de Uston—was convicted.[2] This was William de Uston, who was acquitted of a charge of assault[84] but then sentenced to death for robbery.[85] It may be that, in spite of recent provisions strengthening the powers of a town's night watch and gaol delivery, juries composed of local people were unwilling to accuse men who were their neighbours; in 1332 the majority of accusations the presentment juries made were against men in other towns.[86]The lack of convictions may not have been only due to fear of reprisals among the jurors. They may also reflect sympathy for the gang, and perhaps a general unwillingness to condemn anyone who, as Bellamy put it, was "not of notorious record".[85]

A jury of presentment, composed of men from the hundreds of Wirksworth and Appeltree, sat in September 1332,[note 14] which claimed that the gang was known to collaborate with Robert Bernard, backed by the chapter of Lichfield Cathedral.[22] This commission documented the Coterel's activities minutely, and, Anthony Musson has said, it is "a tribute to the functioning of the judicial machinery" of the county in the midst of a severe break down in order that it was able to do so.[90][note 15]

Later events

The Coterel gang's violence was instrumental in the regime of Isabella and Mortimer taking the concerted approach to law and order that they did, and the resultant legislation.[55] However, the gang received no legal penalties, and James Coterel was eventually pardoned—of all "extortions, oppressions, receivings of felons, usurpations, and ransoms"[28]—in 1351, probably at the instigation of Queen Philippa, whose patronage he seems to have enjoyed even during his days of criminality.[28][note 16] The few members of the gang who were eventually brought before the King's Bench in 1333 were acquitted, and the three Coterel brothers seem to have continued receiving the patronage of Lichfield Cathedral, while Barnard retained both his employment at Oxford University[8] and his church living until his death in 1341.[52]

2014 photograph of Lichfield Cathedral by David Illif
2014 photograph of Lichfield Cathedral; the Dean and Chapter hired the Coterel gang from the beginning, protected them during their crime wave, and then supported them in later years.

Many members of the Coterel gang appear to have undertaken royal service in Scotland and in France in the latter years of the decade,[29] which led directly to the end of the gang's activities.[39] This included de Legh in 1330,[92] and certainly both James' and Nicholas Coterel's names are on the 1338 summons to join the royal army in Flanders.[93] The crown, for its part, withdrew its commissions from the region claiming that the King's Peace had been restored; in reality, it had been distracted by the outbreak of war with Scotland again, and, wrote E. L. G. Stones, "the impetus of the general attack on disorder, which had seemed so strong in March 1332, rapidly declined".[81] Bellamy notes how usual this was: "as was usual in the middle ages, expenditure of royal energy meant temporary success"; but, with the King soon preoccupied with projects abroad, the status quo ante soon returned.[82] For their part, those who fought for the King were pardoned by him on their return for the offences they had previously committed.[39] There were rewards as too: in May 1332, James Coterel was granted the wardship of Elizabeth Meverel.[94] Although sentenced to hang, Coterel's ally Chetulton produced a pardon obtained by for him by Ralph, Lord Neville; when it looked as though a second murder could be laid at his door, he was able to produce a second pardon.[95] By July, Chetulton was back in royal favour, and commissioned to capture robbers in Nottingham.[38] In 1334 Sir William Aune received was appointed surveyor of the King's Welsh castles,[94] and that same year, William de Uston—the only member of the gang to have been convicted, and, indeed, sentenced to death—was commissioned to investigate some murders in Leicester that were believed to have been carried out by Sir Richard Willoughby's servants.[96] And one of the last occurrences of James Coterel's name in official records indicates that he too regained the king's trust, as in November 1336, "he was on the right side of law",[38] having been commissioned to arrest a "miscreant Leicestershire parson".[38] They were, says Bellamy, reformed characters, and the Coterel brothers would never again ride armata potentia.[96][44]

Scholarship

The Coterel gang has been described by a late-twentieth-century historian as being the locus of an "apparent disregard for the law which has been shown as emanating from the Midlands".[97] They have also been identified as causing the acceleration of the legal concept of conspiracy, which was in its infancy.[98] Royal authority, too, was weakened by its appearance of powerlessness in the face of the Coterels' wide-spread and systematic lawlessness.[73] The Coterel's activities show how "interwoven the criminal, the military, and the royal administrative" could be: sometimes, says Carter Revard, "the outlaw of one year could be the brave soldier of the next".[99][note 17]

The Coterels were "unique to th[eir] time and location",[90] and, suggests one scholar, symptomatic of a changing system of retaining,[98] in which once-firm ties to a supporting lord had become much more fluid and uncertain, with the result that some men chose to, effectively, operate outside the feudal system.[101] While much of the gang warfare that plagued England in the early 14th century can be put down to the return of unemployed soldiery from the north, as contemporary chroniclers were prone to assume, organised crime such as that of the Coterels'—which does not seem to have contained this element of demobilization—were, say Musson and Ormrod, "the product more of the disturbed state of domestic politics in the 1320s than of the crown's war policies".[29]

Fictional connections

It would be wrong to romanticize. The Folvilles, the Coterels and their like were tough, brutal and unscrupulous men, some way removed from their more refined counterparts of the ballads. Their attacks were particularly directed against the rich; they specialized in extortion...Such victims were probably selected, not from any tender respect for 'social justice', but rather from a well-judged sense of where the best pickings lay.[102]

John Maddicott

John Bellamy has drawn attention to the degree to which the tales of Robin Hood and Gamelyn intersect in detail with known historical events such as the Coterels were involved in, although he also notes that there are probably an equal number of points on which the stories diverge with history.[96] A comparison to Gamelyn shows how, even while that lord was a fugitive, his tenants "maintain their deference and loyalty to him...they go down on their knees, doff their hoods, and greet him as 'here lord'", all the while keeping him fully abreast of the state of legal proceedings against him.[73] Gamelyn as "King of the outlaws" was also reflected in the fame of the Coterel gang in local society.[53] Likewise, the propensity for attacking royal officials demonstrated by the Coterels is also "very much Gamelyn style",[103] says T. A. Shippey, as was the King's willingness to pardon them in return for military service.[103][note 18]

Similarities have been noticed between the tales of Robin Hood and the activities of such gangs as the Coterels, particularly in their attacks upon authority figures[76] and the pavage imposed by Hood's gang is similar to the tribute extorted by the Coterels.[105] The tale of Adam Bell was similarly shaped by the Coterels' and Folvilles' activities.[106]

R. B. Dobson and John Taylor suggested that there was only a limited connection between the invention of Robin Hood and the criminal activities of the Coterels, who do not, summarizes Maurice Keen, "seem to offer very promising matter for romanticization".[107] However, contemporaries were aware of such a link: in 1439 a petition against another Derbyshire gangster, Piers Venables, complained that he robbed and stole with many others and then disappeared into the woods "like as it had been Robin Hood and his meiny".[107] John Maddicott, on the other hand, has noted an "accumulation of coincidences" between the Coterel and Folville gangs and the exploits recounted of Hood. These he lists principally as[2]

An unprincipled abbot of St Mary's, York, who lent money to knights and others; a chief justice who, as a Yorkshireman, may well have been retained by the abbot and who had some reputation for the illicit use of power; and a corrupt sheriff of Nottingham, detested both by the gentry and by the lesser men of his county and finally outlawed for his misdeeds.[2]

— John Maddicott

Maddicott describes the capture of Willoughby as very much "a feat reminiscent of the world of ballads"[2] and the gang's popularity as "close to the standing of Robin Hood and his men as folk heroes".[2] Those who actively supported and aided the Coterel gang in Derbyshire, said Maddicott, were of the same kidney as those who, another time, was the audience of the Hood ballads.[108] After all, he says, they did take from the rich, "even if they did not give to the poor, and if the rich were also royal officials, like Willoughby, such retribution may have seemed well deserved".[102] David Feldman likewise describes the Coterels and their supporters as "disgruntled gentry with an eye for the main chance" who set themselves up as Robin Hood types, except, like Maddicott, Feldman reiterates that what they "robbed from the rich never reached the poor."[33] They possessed a certain "gentrified behaviour", as it has been called, with the more usual brutality of the gangs which dovetail in the ballads.[109]

Coterel's ally Robert Ingram has been proposed as the original inspiration for the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Gest of Robin Hood, a late-15th-century re-telling of the tale.[79] The close association with criminally-minded ecclesiastics and blatant outlaws such as the Coterels have also been linked to the fiction of Friar Tuck, who, whilst being a "large, merry body" was also the leader of his own "merry gang of murderers and thieves".[110][note 19] John Maddicot has concluded that while the links between fiction and reality are strong, it is "perhaps more likely that the character of Robin Hood may well have taken the career of some real outlaw, such as James Coterel...given him a fictitious name, and embroidered his his progress in a series of episodes peopled with identifiable villains and set against real backgrounds in Barnsdale and Sherwood Forest".[102]

See also

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Notes

  1. ↑ The looting of Contrariants' estates was not confined to the Coterel gang: in the period between their defeat at Boroughbridge and the arrival of royal officials to administer them, they were pillaged on a widespread scale, especially by "ordinary" (that is, non-gang related) people. Similar destruction had taken place on the lands of the Disinherited in the 1260s, and would later take place to those of Despenser following his execution in 1326. The advantage that gangs such as the Coterels had, though, was that they could do this so much more systematically.[12]
  2. ↑ Sauvage was an independent criminal in his own right, and an extortioner par excellence, who had recently extracted £20 from William Amyas and £40 from Geoffrey Luttrell, both leading Nottinghamshire gentry.[20] Before joining the Coterel gang, he had already committed two murders in Derby, various crimes in Oxford, had escaped to London, been arrested there, escaped again, and returned to Derbyshire, where he allied with Coterel.[21]
  3. ↑ He had been evicted from Bakewell on Christmas Day 1328. He continued his career of embezzlement at Lichfield as a Chantry priest, "where on four successive founder days between 1325-9 he failed to pay the stipulated sum to the poor".[22] In another link to the political opposition to Edward II, Barnard had been imprisoned in Oxford Gaol in 1326 for allegedly supporting Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer.[25]
  4. ↑ Forests were, of course, popular with outlaws as hiding places, they were increasingly becoming beyond the reach of royal justice.[31] Michael Prestwich has noted one 14th-century outlaw who "described himself almost poetically as 'Lionel, King of the rout of raveners', writing threatening letters from 'Our castle of the wind in the Greenwood Tower in the first year of our reign",[20] deliberately mimicking the stilo regio, or royal style, used in Chancery letters.[14] A modern scholar has noted how "outlaws could make the innocent woods fearsome places to tread", and quotes Bartholomeus Anglicus, a contemporary monk and commentator, as saying "For often in woods thieves are hid, and often in their awaits and deceits passing men come and are spoiled and robbed and often slain".[30]
  5. ↑ The Folville gang is as, if not even more infamous than the Coterels: six brothers who all turned to crime, the eldest and their leader, Eustace "was the most notorious; he committed three or four murders—one of which was of a baron of the Exchequer—a rape, and three robberies between 1327 and 1330".[20]
  6. ↑ This illustrates how it was a policy of Edward III to use members of one gang against another, and to take advantage of pre-existing feuds[39]. De Wennesley, though, was eventually to join the Coterel gang himself and was arrested in 1332.[40]
  7. ↑ Roger le Sauvage had borrowed 1,000 marks from Sir William Aune (who would later be a staunch supporter of the Coterel gang), and then entailed his manor of Stainsby on his wife before joining Coterel.[44]
  8. ↑ A favoured method of extortion was simple but effective. It would be arranged for the intended victim to receive a severe (but not life-threatening) beating, following which, he would be approached by others and offered protection from any future attacks".[48]
  9. ↑ In law this was called "extortion by false letters and counterfeit seals".[51]
  10. ↑ Because he had been on the King's business at the time of the kidnap, he was subsequently granted an annuity of 100 marks in compensation.[28] Willoughby made his family "the wealthiest non-baronial family" in Derbyshire.[58]
  11. ↑ This was not as uncommon as may be assumed, says Prestwich, "and some remarkable stories were told" of the phenomenon by contemporaries.[69] In 1317, 6 monks from Rufford Priory assaulted, robbed and kidnapped one Thomas of Holm, and demanded a ransom of £200. On another occasion, the rector of Manchester "invited a couple and their daughter to dine; but after dinner, two of the rector's servants came and seized the daughter, beat her so that her ribs were broken and put her in the rector's bed. He spent the night with her; she died a month later of her injuries".[69]
  12. ↑ Indeed, the Prior of Lenton and the Dean and Chapter of Litchfield's support for James Coterel was one of the few things they agreed on—they had repeatedly clashed over possession of various High Peak district advowsons, and the fact that they came together over Coterel illustrates how highly he was regarded by them. James Coterel would later act as a tax collector for the priory, and "was even entrusted with one arrest warrant in 1336 and another in 1350, when he and six others were instructed to find and capture three monks of Lenton"[28] who had absconded from their House.[28]
  13. ↑ Aune was unlikely to have acted out of fear of the gang; one of James Coterel's closest allies was Walter's brother Sir William Aune.[77]
  14. ↑ These records are of the 1332–1333 presentments held before Richard de Grey, Henry de Grey, John Darcy, Nicholas de Langeford, John de Twyford and Richard de la Pole, keepers of the peace.[87] They consist of a roll of 13 rolls, have been fully translated from the original Latin and transcribed by the Historical Manuscripts' Commission in 1911, who published them as part of their Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Middleton Preserved at Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire, pp. 272–283.[88][89]
  15. ↑ Musson points out that the amount of time the jury devoted to investigating the Coterels is demonstrated by the amount of the roll devoted to it. The roll is held by The National Archives in Kew, classification JUST 1:1411b. The Folvilles are recorded on membranes two to six, and the Coterels are on seven and eight.[91]
  16. ↑ Payling suggests that this is likely because James brother Nicholas was bailiff of Philippa's Derbyshire liberty, although Nicholas did not, says Payling, "acquit himself well in that office, since he was summoned before the king's council to answer a charge of embezzlement in 1359".[28]
  17. ↑ Revard gives a similar example, from a few years later, in Sir Laurence Ludlow, who in 1340 was both outlawed for assault and battery, but also requested to collect the Black Prince's feudal dues for him in Stokesay.[100]
  18. ↑ King Edward III's policy of pardoning has been the subject of much debate among historians. It has been estimated that between 1339 and 1340, almost 900 pardons were issued to returning soldiers (all in acknowledgement of participation in the Flanders' campaign): of which, it is suggested, three-quarters were murderers.[83] John Bellamy has suggested that the King's intention was not only to avail himself of a large pool of men willing to fight, but to remove them from the theatre by sending them abroad, and, hopefully, drain their energies for the future.[104] The practice was unpopular with contemporaries: petitions had been submitted to parliament in 1328, 1330, 1336 and 1340 against it.[83]
  19. ↑ In a similar comparison to that between Robin Hood and James Coterel, there was a real Friar Tuch—one Richard Stafford, a chaplain, who was known as Frere Tuck, and, like the Coterels, "was never tried in a court, perhaps because...he never bothered to appear".[110]

References

  1. ↑ Pollard 2004, p. 267.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Maddicott 1978, p. 294.
  3. 1 2 National Archives 1331.
  4. ↑ Powicke 1956, p. 114.
  5. ↑ Le Baker 2012, p. 11.
  6. ↑ Maddicott 2004.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 Röhrkasten 2004.
  8. 1 2 3 Gregory-Abbott 2009, p. 76.
  9. 1 2 3 Rogers 1941, p. 617 n.7.
  10. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 80.
  11. 1 2 3 Fryde 1979, p. 150.
  12. ↑ Waugh 1977, pp. 863–864.
  13. ↑ Miller 1991, p. 67.
  14. 1 2 3 Ohlgren 2000, p. 18.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Bellamy 1973, p. 73.
  16. 1 2 Crook 1987, p. 51.
  17. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 72.
  18. 1 2 3 4 Keen 2000, p. xxviii.
  19. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 70.
  20. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Prestwich 2005, p. 512.
  21. 1 2 Stones 1957, p. 123.
  22. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Bellamy 1964, p. 699.
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Gregory-Abbott 2009, p. 75.
  24. ↑ Bellamy 1973, p. 79.
  25. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 699 n.1.
  26. ↑ Johnson 2004, p. xx.
  27. ↑ Hanawalt 1974, p. 14.
  28. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Payling 2004.
  29. 1 2 3 Musson & Ormrod 1999, p. 80.
  30. 1 2 3 4 Hayman 2003, p. 52.
  31. ↑ Vollmer 2005, p. 154.
  32. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 698.
  33. 1 2 3 Feldman 1988, p. 114.
  34. 1 2 Firth Green 1999, p. 187.
  35. ↑ Ormrod 2011, p. 108.
  36. 1 2 Bellamy 1964, p. 702.
  37. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 701.
  38. 1 2 3 4 Bellamy 1973, p. 84.
  39. 1 2 3 Hanawalt 1975, p. 10.
  40. ↑ Gregory-Abbott 2009, p. 75 n.4.
  41. ↑ Bellamy 1973, p. 77.
  42. ↑ Bellamy 1973, p. 83.
  43. ↑ Ohlgren 2000, p. 8.
  44. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1964, p. 700.
  45. 1 2 Bellamy 1964, p. 705.
  46. 1 2 3 4 Bellamy 1973, p. 71.
  47. ↑ Rose 2017, p. 128 129.
  48. 1 2 3 4 Hanawalt 1975, p. 6.
  49. 1 2 Bellamy 1964, p. 706.
  50. ↑ Hanawalt 1979, p. 92.
  51. ↑ Waugh 1977, p. 866 n.127.
  52. 1 2 Kaminsky 2002, p. 78.
  53. 1 2 Gray 1999, p. 36.
  54. ↑ Hanawalt 1979, p. 90.
  55. 1 2 Musson 2001, p. 256.
  56. ↑ Wiltshire 2005, p. 62.
  57. ↑ Musson & Powell 2009, p. 75.
  58. 1 2 Richmond 2002, p. 7.
  59. 1 2 Spraggs 2001, p. 19.
  60. 1 2 Aberth 1996, p. 66.
  61. ↑ Kaeuper 1988, p. 128.
  62. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 78.
  63. ↑ Bubenicek & Partington 2015, p. 171.
  64. ↑ Payling 1991, p. 33.
  65. ↑ Hanna & Turville-Petre 2010, p. 5.
  66. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 708.
  67. 1 2 Spraggs 2001, p. 20.
  68. ↑ Bellamy 1973, p. 88.
  69. 1 2 Prestwich 2005, p. 514.
  70. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 704.
  71. ↑ Hanawalt 1975, p. 16 n.49.
  72. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 709.
  73. 1 2 3 4 Scattergood 1994, p. 171.
  74. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 703.
  75. ↑ Dobson 1997, p. 29.
  76. 1 2 Hanawalt 1999, p. 279.
  77. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 81.
  78. ↑ Bellamy 1973, p. 82.
  79. 1 2 Harris 1977, p. 237.
  80. ↑ Post 1985, pp. 91–92.
  81. 1 2 3 Stones 1957, p. 127.
  82. 1 2 Bellamy 1973, p. 6.
  83. 1 2 3 4 Aberth 1992, p. 297.
  84. 1 2 Bellamy 1964, p. 710.
  85. 1 2 Bellamy 1973, p. 85.
  86. ↑ Feldman 1988, p. 113.
  87. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 702 n.3.
  88. ↑ Musson & Powell 2009, pp. 78–79.
  89. ↑ HMC 1911, pp. 272–283.
  90. 1 2 Musson 2001, p. 266.
  91. ↑ Musson 2001, p. 266 n.53.
  92. ↑ Ohlgren 2000, p. 8 n.20.
  93. ↑ Stones 1957, p. 129.
  94. 1 2 Bellamy 1973, p. 86.
  95. ↑ Bellamy 1964, p. 711.
  96. 1 2 3 Bellamy 1973, p. 87.
  97. ↑ Musson 2001, p. 65.
  98. 1 2 Rose 2017, p. 128.
  99. ↑ Revard 2005, p. 155.
  100. ↑ Revard 2005, p. 157 n.15.
  101. ↑ Waugh 1999, p. 49 50.
  102. 1 2 3 Maddicott 1978, p. 296.
  103. 1 2 Shippey 2013, p. 84.
  104. ↑ Bellamy 1964, pp. 712–713.
  105. ↑ Gray 1999, pp. 36–37.
  106. ↑ Pollard 2004, p. 193.
  107. 1 2 Keen 2000, p. xxix.
  108. ↑ Maddicott 1978, p. 295.
  109. ↑ Ohlgren 2000, p. 19.
  110. 1 2 Gregory-Abbott 2009, p. 85.

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