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Liens personnels, réseaux, solidarités en France et dans les îles Britanniques (xie-xxe siècle)

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Bates David
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Gazeau Véronique

Partie I. Liens de parenté et solidarités familiales

Affinity as a social world: marriage brokerage, maintenance and lateral networks

A magnate affinity in 15th century Normandy: the followers of Pierre de Brézé, comte de Maulevrier (1450-65)

Gareth Prosser

Résumé

Les récits politiques du bas Moyen Âge permettent rarement d’appréhender les unités de l’action politique, c’est-à-dire les retenues des courtisans et des magnats régionaux. Ces entourages, situés au-dessous du niveau du prince, sont en fait peu documentés. L’étude de la retenue de Pierre de Brézé, qui joua un rôle important sous Charles VII et dans les premières années du règne de Louis XI, permet toutefois de démontrer comment son utilité, aux yeux de la Couronne, en vint à se confondre avec l’exploitation de ses ressources propres et de son crédit local, qui lui permettaient de mobiliser des hommes au niveau approprié, en adéquation avec l’action exigée. Ce crédit local était, en partie, la conséquence de la place de Brézé dans la hiérarchie des offices, mais il était aussi dû a l’accès que ce grand officier pouvait offrir aux puissances ecclésiastiques, aux autorités municipales et aux seigneurs laïques, et à la faveur dont il jouissait auprès d’eux. Brézé était également à même d’exploiter les droits royaux et d’influencer les cours locales, tout comme il pouvait permettre a ses gens d’accéder au centre, jouant de son influence auprès des grands officiers et contraignant les petits. Son entourage apparaît en fait, pour lui, comme le moyen d’interposer son influence entre le roi et son patrimoine, mais on voit que cet entourage se situait aussi dans un réseau complexe de liens latéraux et verticaux, qui existaient au sein de la noblesse comme entre les seigneurs et leurs domestiques. Cet entourage était multipolaire et en recouvrait beaucoup d’autres. Les retenues nobles apparaissent, en fait, comme des abstractions d’un réseau social qui trouvait ses prolongements hors de la localité, dans tout le royaume et même au-delà. Ce réseau était le champ au sein duquel l’action politique prenait place, il était aussi la problématique qui définissait des objectifs et des moyens. Il a, en dernière lecture, aidé la noblesse française à se constituer comme classe sociale.

Texte intégral

1Pierre de Brézé was one of the most important men in Normandy between the Valois reconquest and the War of the Bien Public. He founded his career on service to the Anjou brothers, King René and Charles comte du Maine, who introduced him into the service of their brother-in-law Charles VII. As courtier and minister in the 1440s, he was an architect of the Anjou-Lancaster marriage, the truce of Tours, and the great military ordonnances. In the factional politics of Louis Dauphin’s alienation he lost his primacy around the king, even before 1449. Prominent among the chefs de guerre on the Vexin and Bray marches since the 1430s, he launched himself very early into hostilities in 1449, and enjoyed the fruits : he was captain of Rouen from November 1449. The Reduction of Normandy permitted his relegation to be honourably disguised : he left court and gave up the office of sénéchal of Poitou to become Grand Sénéchal of Normandy in spring 1451.

2Although outside Charles VII’s inner circle in the 1450s, he remained a key figure in the administration of Normandy, in Channel warfare and in Anglo-French relations. At the same time he built an important landed estate, combining royal grants and other acquisitions with the Norman inheritance of his wife, Jeanne Crespin. His lands were scattered across Upper Normandy and outside the province, but its two key areas were in the Seine valley below Rouen, and in the northern Chartrain running up the Eure into the Vexin. As he recast his career he modifed his following on the basis of a portfolio of charges. These included the captaincy of Rouen and the grande sénéchaussée, a seat on the Rouen grand conseil and numerous commissions, and a string of lesser captaincies including Louviers, Mantes, and Pont-de-1’Arche.

3Courtier-officers founded politically important affinities on various bases : departments of the royal household ; charges such as the admiralty or the forest ; the opportunities for maintenance and provision supplied by patrimonial jurisdictions. These followings are mostly invisible. Many will remain so, but where the patron in question was an ordonnance captain, surviving musters affords a route into his affinity. Muster lists can be interrogated by means of other sources to detail the links which gave a given circle coherence, classify relationships, develop prosopographies fitting service to a courtier magnate into a career. Brézé’s concerns centred on Rouen, where the tabellionage shows his retainers transacting for themselves and others. The lower reaches of his ordonnance retinues are dimly visible in a way which is not true for a greater man like Jean bâtard d’Orléans, comte de Dunois. Some of Brézé’s household men, legal and administrative officers, kin and allies are similarly accessible. Above all matters central to his interest, particularly his growing territorial base in the province, have left a kernel of documents. The agents mentioned and witnesses listed in these identify Brézé’s intimates.

  • 1 P. Contamine, Guerre, État et société à la fin du Moyen Âge: études sur les armées des rois de Fran (...)
  • 2 M. Greengrass, “Noble Affinities in Early Modern France: the Case of Henri I de Montmorency, Consta (...)

4Ordonnance captains were field commanders, but also foci of their men’s pacific activities. “Même s’ils sont issus de la petite noblesse, même si leur fortune patrimoniale est médiocre, les capitaines de l’ordonnance ont un train de vie largement comparable à celui de seigneurs de haut rang”, with concomitant sizeable households, pious foundations and ambitious building projects. For Philippe Contamine, this subsidised lifestyle prefigured aristocratic domestication à la Versailles.1 Conversely, able captains could make themselves poles of attraction on a par with great magnates. The obligations of table and hall supplemented those of the camp, and good lordship extended to peace-making, marriage-brokerage, intervention in debt, lawsuit, ransom and so on. Captains interwove their companies and their other offices, reinforcing their authority in every sphere. The private-public opposition was a mere rhetorical device: as Mark Greengrass wrote of Henri IV’s constable Henri de Montmorency, “he could employ no-one, recruit no soldier nor solicit any advice without necessarily becoming a patron.”2

5If Brézé was a carpetbagger, success obscured the fact. He reaped the rewards of his service at the heart of royal government in the 1440s. He put down strong roots in Normandy. His wife, lands and offices were vital to this, but so too was his affinity. The status and numbers of those in his service reflected his power, and were instrumental in it.

The Normans in Brézé’s service

  • 3 “Hommes d’armes in Brézé musters are tabulated” in G. Prosser, After the Reduction: Re-structuring (...)
  • 4 Papiers Dom Lenoir (AN, AB XIX 3106 to 3181, and in the Norman Archives départementales.) [Hereafte (...)

6Nearly 250 hommes d’armes mustered in Brézé’s grande and petite ordonnance companies after 1450.3 Many lesser retainers were the flotsam of the Norman marcher warfare of past decades, adventurers from every French province and beyond. Personal histories of gens d’armes, such as those offered by suspects under interrogation in the later 1460s and 1470s, suggest that happenstance played a large part in the careers of such men. Surviving grants shed some light. In 1444 Charles VII remitted rents due on Jacques de Bouloy’s recently purchased residence in Louviers. He had joined Brézé as soon as he was able to bear harness, and “a grandement frayé du sien (et) perdu grand partie de ses biens.”4 Jean le Sec was in Brézé’s retinue at Louviers in 1446, when Charles VII granted him a ruined fishery on the Eure at Val-de-Reuil:

“Dès son jeune aage et depuis qu’il a pen porter harnois il s’est bien et honorablement entretenu et emploié à l’encontre de nos anciens ennemis et adversaires les anglois ès pais et frontieres de Normendie, sans avoir varié ne tenu autre parti que le notre, lequel pais avecques ses biens et chevance qu’il avoit en icelui en bonne et grande valeur selon son estat il a delaissez et abandonnez… Et que en exposant son corps a plusieurs grans perils et dangiers en l’exercise de guerre il a mainte fois esté prisonnier ès mains de nosdis anciens ennemis les anglois, lesquels en nostre service ont occis èsdis frontieres trois de ses freres germains et plusieurs autres ses parens et amis, èsquelles prisons nosdis ennemis l’ont tres durement traictié de sa personne et mis a grans et excessives rancons, pour faire le paiement desquelles il a esté et encores est destruit et desert et tellement que il est en voie de jamais ne se povoir ressourdre sans avoir de nous aucun secours.”

Figure 1. Brézé lands and office

  • 5 DLN, IX, 314; XXIV, 101.

7In 1449 he was reputed of bonne maison, his bons heritages rendered worthless by the war. Most locals knew him only since the fall of Louviers in 1440. Since then “ils l’ont tousjours vu de bon etat et gouvernement et se comportant comme gentilhomme doit faire.”5 In the early 1450s he moved into the company of Brézé’s cousin Jean Carbonnel.

  • 6 Probably Hardouin de Maillé-Brézé: Prosser, op. cit., p. 131-32; Mantes, Archives communales, BB 5, (...)
  • 7 For le Beauvoisien see Contamine, op. cit., p. 598-99. He was a cadet of the Norman barons of Court (...)
  • 8 Captain of Meulan during the Bien Public, then of Amboise 1465-68: Gallia Regia ou État des oƒƒicie (...)

8Some Brézé hommes d’armes were important men. Hardouin de Maillé, Brézé’s lieutenant at Mantes, was a cadet of the Loire lineage headed by Angevin knight Hardouin IX baron de Maillé and vicomte de Tours.6 Others made good careers. Guillaume Vallée and Jean le Beauvoisien went on to lead ordonnance companies.7 Jean Blosset was a young squire and courtier of Charles VII when he served Brézé: after Louis XI’s accession he joined the opposition, served both Francois II and Charles de France, ultimately regaining Louis’s favour and becoming himself grand sénéchal of Normandy. Philippe Lhuillier, of a prominent Parisian family, became captain of the Bastille in Paris and a royal confidant. His wife Anne de Morvilliers, daughter and heiress of Louis’s first chancellor, ultimately brought him the Norman barony of Cailly and other lands.8

  • 9 A. Du Chesne, Histoire de la maison de Dreux, Paris, 1631, p. 168 sq.; BNF, ms. fr. 20401, f°. 6, 7
  • 10 Tabellionage de Rouen, 17 May 1454, 7 September 1460, 24 February 1454/55, ler March 1454/55, 15 Ja (...)

9The Roumois and Cauchois noblesse seconde were well represented in Brézé circles. Jean de Dreux chevalier seigneur de Beaussart was the eldest son of Robert de Dreux vidame d’Esneval, head of the name and arms of the Capetian house of Dreux. Dreux-d’Esneval attended the Estates in the 1460s. Charles VII pensioned him at 1,200 livres, “jusques a ce qu’il m’ait pourveu d’office ou autre provision convenable, Consideré les services par moy faiz ou temps passé, et aussi la grant diminucion de la Revenue de mes terres qui ont esté occupées par les Anglois oudit pays de Normandie...”9 His estates were in need of much reconstruction. Financially strained in the 1450s, he recovered old rents and debts and strove to disencumber his own lands of cash calls. He raised money from Brézé men, notably 400 livres from Brunet de Longchamp in 1451.10

  • 11 Prosser, op. cit., p. 392-93.
  • 12 Tabellionage de Rouen, 3 May 1452, 10 July 1454. Rouen, Archives communales, A8, Registre des Delib (...)

10The Longchamp were a Cauchois knightly family headed by Roger dit Brunet seigneur d’Ermenonville. He saw Brézé enter the captaincy of Rouen in November 1449 and lived into the 1460s. His elder son Jean seigneur de Néville-also called Brunet and also a knight-was high in the Rouen garrison, and younger son Colinet was in the grande ordonnance company.11 Jean witnessed a marriage settlement brokered by Brézé in 1452, and the first partage of the Crespin inheritance. When Charles VII died he was Brézé’s lieutenant in the Palais of Rouen. The tabellionage contracts of Jean and his father were often witnessed by Brézé’s man Jean de Torcy écuyer, dit Gallivet, and Flocquet’s man Jean Charetier.12

  • 13 G.-A. de La Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, enrichie d’un grand nombre d’arm (...)

11The Braquemont were another Cauchois knightly lineage. Guillaume or Braquet de Braquemont’s ancestors had been prominent in the late 14th and early 15th century: one was on the famous 1415 embassy to England. Another, Lionnet, had been chancellor of the duke of Orléans and helped defend Harfleur during the 1415 siege. His brother Robert was admiral under the disintegrating Armagnac regime of 1417-18. As Orléanists, they were partisans of Charles VII from early on, and Guillaume de Braquemont was échanson of Alençon in the duke’s most active campaigning period. Louis seigneur de Braquemont, a pensioner of the Dauphin in 1421, followed Alençon to Verneuil and died there in 1424.13

  • 14 Charles was the husband of Anne des Essars, kinswoman to Desmarestz’s wife, Marie, sister of Cardin (...)

12The Braquemont had been stalwarts of resistance to the Lancastrians. Braquet had been with those who captured Rue in 1435 alongside the sénéchal’s uncle Jean de Brézé and Charles Desmarestz. The latter’s Dieppe garrison included Guillaume’s cousin Charles, and it is in this circle that members of the family figured in the 1450s. Braquet entered Brézé service when he was rehabilitated, after disgrace in 1461 had distanced him from some of his previous retainers. He was the sénéchal’s lieutenant in the château of Rouen in the fourteen months between Brézé’s rehabilitation and death, thereafter serving his widow and son.14

13Brézé’s men did not match those of Dunois in terms of the royal offices they held or their individual histories of Valois service. Nonetheless, his men did hold office (figure 5), and some had calls on royal gratitude. Their different backgrounds in resistance to the Lancastrians or in service under them show how important magnate retinues were in reconciling the divisions of the past. The company included a significant grouping of Upper Norman gentlemen, and offered its captain a proxy presence in a number of other areas.

Ex-Lancastrians: avenues of rehabilitation

  • 15 Tabellionage de Rouen 29 may 1451; Prosser, op. cit., p. 406; Blondel, Œuvres, A. Héron ed., Rouen, (...)

14A relatively high proportion of Brézé’s men had served the Lancastrians. We can rarely date with precision the point at which these men transferred their allegiance, and not all stayed in the Lancastrian obedience to the bitter end. Nonetheless it is a distinctive feature of his entourage. The best known example is the former English captain of Mantes, Sir Richard Merbury. He entered the Valois obedience as Lancastrian France collapsed in order to preserve his wife’s inheritance and extract their sons, John and Edmund, from French captivity. He was treated handsomely by his new king, pensioned at 1,200 livres and made bailli of Troyes and captain for life of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Brézé found room for his sons in his company, and the family benefited from good lordship. He pledged their debts and interceded with their creditors.15

  • 16 DLN, XXV, 101; II, 237.

15According to another Norman-born Englishman in Brézé’s company, William Stroud, his English stepfather had married his mother, Cardine de Vieux, “par force ou autrement”, and taken the family to England on the Reduction. Stroud represented himself to Charles VII as Cardine’s “seul heritier par sa demeure en nostre obeissance et service ouquel il a tousjours depuis esté et continué en la compaignie de nostre Grand Seneschal de Normandie”. In May 1454 Charles VII restored him to his mother’s fief of Marigny in the Bessin and this Englishman-become-Frenchman from a broken home metamorphosed into Guillaume de Marigny.16

  • 17 Guy’s father John Affourd was a minor Lancastrian captain: BNF, PO 11 Affourde 279, 2-4. He held Br (...)
  • 18 BNF, ms. lat. 9869, f° 14; AN, K168, f° 96; cf. DLN, I, 446. Guy’s sister Margaret remained in Norm (...)
  • 19 AD Seine-Maritime, Fonds d’Anquin, c IV, 44; AD Ome, 2 E 20/1 baronnie de Briouze, Inventaire des t (...)
  • 20 Tabellionage de Rouen, 9 September 1462, 24 May 1463, 29 October 1463; AD Seine-Maritime, 1ER 1590; (...)

16Guy Affourd also returned to safeguard his family’s Norman interests. The Affourds had been closely engaged with the Lancastrian cause in France. Guy’s Norman mother, Isabel de Merle, brought them the barony of Briouze.17 On the Reduction John Affourd and his sons fled to England, forfeiting the barony. Charles VII granted it to his échanson Jean d’Escorches, then to his trésorier Jean Bureau.18 In 1456 Guy, wooed by Brézé, returned to Normandy. Brézé later acknowledged that in “le reduisant et recevant en l’obeissance du Roy” he had promised to ensure that Guy recovered his barony, even committing himself to buying out Bureau’s interest, which he did by 145919. Brézé expended cash, effort and influence to fulfil a promise to a Lancastrian exile. His profit is not obvious, but he did get faithful service. Affourd became Guy de Briouze, a soldier in the Rouen garrison from 1460. As Brézé’s maître d’hôtel he managed building works, audited estate accounts, witnessed transactions important and banal.20

  • 21 BL Additional ms. 11509 f° 42v°, 62v°-66.
  • 22 BNF, PO 2599 de Saane 57815, 4-19; DLN, IV, 295; Beaucourt, Charles VII, t. 5, 15.
  • 23 DLN, IX, 318; BNF, PO 2599 de Saane 57815, 16; Tabellionage de Rouen, 27 August 1456; DLN, IX, 318; (...)

17Guy was a lawyer, officiating at the Échiquier of 1448 and at the Norman Estates in May 1449.21 An interest in his experience in Lancastrian administration is suggested by the use Brézé made of comparable men. One was the Cauchois knight Jean de Saâne, who made his name at Verneuil in 1424 and served the Lancastrians almost to the end. He oversaw the artillery used against the Grosse Tour of Rouen after it was seized by pro-Valois conspirators in 1430; was pensioned as Henry VI’s counsellor by 1434; and was commissaire for the Norman Estates in 1439. At the Reduction Charles VII rewarded him for helping broker Rouen’s submission.22 Thereafter his new king pensioned him as his counsellor at Rouen. In 1451 he and other officials conducted an enquiry in the auditoire of the grande sénéchaussée. He and his son (who entered Brézé’s grande ordonnance company) witnessed the ratification of a settlement arbitrated by the grand sénéchal in 1452. If he had a formal position in, say, the grande sénéchaussée, this is a rare instance of continuity from Lancastrian to Valois provincial regime.23 He witnessed the second partage of the Crespin inheritance and the dower agreements between Jeanne Crespin and her son.

  • 24 DLN, Ixxv, 37.

18Nicolas le Normant offers a comparable instance at a lower level. He was Henry VI’s vicomte of Domfront for twenty years, until he was translated in 1448 to Pont-de-l’Arche. When the French took Pont-de-l’Arche, “demoura ledit le Normant depourvu de tous estat et maniere de vivre”. When Pont-Audemer fell “ses maisons furent arses et ung manoir qu’il avoit a ung lieu pres d’illec garni des bestiaulx et labours en granges en grant valeur prins pillés et emportés parcequ’il estoit lors demourant en la ville de Rouen”. At Rouen’s fall he submitted to Charles VII, and his possessions at Domfront were pillaged by the English. He estimated his losses in the year of the king’s great triumph at 4,000 écus. This litany of woe went to the king in the spring of 1451 as a plea for respite from the Chambre des Comptes. He had lost all his papers during the Reduction, so could not render the accounts the Chambre was demanding. He strove pathetically to deflect suspicion over his withdrawal into Rouen (“pour aucuns ses affaires”) as Valois armies burst into Normandy. He stressed his submission on the fall of the city and the service he had done the king at his own expense during the siege of Caen.24

  • 25 Prosser, op. cit., p. 411.
  • 26 Tabellionage de Rouen 11 October 1466; DLN, IX, 318.
  • 27 Tabellionage de Rouen, 9 September 1462.
  • 28 Prosser, op. cit., p. 411. His son Thibault (d. c.1470) married Jeanne de Brézé (presumed a bastard (...)

19Although compromised by a Lancastrian past, he rebuilt a career in Valois Normandy. He moved in the province’s highest legal circles in the 1450s.25 He is not explicitly conseiller of the grand sénéchal until 1466, but held some such position earlier. In 1452 he presided over hearings in the auditoire of the grande sénéchaussée at Rouen as Brézé’s lieutenant and in the presence of other members of the Brézé circle.26 Like Briouze, he figured in the grande sénéchaussée and in Brézé’s private deals. He remained close to the sénéchal after his disgrace, witnessing the procuration for Jeanne Crespin when Brézé was going on the Scots expedition in 1462. This indicates a post in household or council: other witnesses were certainly household men.27 He is not visible under Brézé’s successor as sénéchal, but did witness Brézé’s resumption of the Rouen captaincy in November 1464. He weathered the late 1460s storm as a royal legal technician, sitting on commissions of the sénéchaussée, and brokering troublesome civil cases.28

  • 29 Prosser, op. cit., p. 147-48, 351-52.

20Brézé was not the only Valois chef de guerre who welcomed old adversaries. D’Estouteville took into his service an old sparring partner, English captain Sir Thomas Chisenal. The link between them was chivalrous, but also affinal: Chisenal was married to d’Estouteville’s wife’s cousin. Flocquet took Durant de Thieuville’s sons into his ordonnance, though he had been a Lancastrian official and personal enemy during the occupation.29 In Brézé’s case, the evidence shows what benefits he derived from accepting the service of ex-Lancastrians. He was reaching into the Rouen notability and the local nobility. He was mining a rich seam of administrative experience, which played its own part in the sénéchal’s salience on the Norman scene. This helped to stabilise his own position, but also contributed to the more general pacification of the province under his Valois masters.

The retinue as a social unit

  • 30 On his death Brézé left 72 beds in the château: Tabellionage de Rouen, 31 December 1465.
  • 31 Jean le Prince left Rouen for Les Andelys, selling his Rouen property: Tabellionage de Rouen, 30 Ap (...)

21Men in the ordonnance companies held household positions, or officiated in matters related to the sénéchaussée, or witnessed Brézé’s private acts (figure 7). The garrison company in the Palais and château of Rouen was noticeably close to him, attending on him and his wife when they were in residence.30 Boundaries between different spheres of his service were artificial, but the garrison was the centre of gravity of his entourage, perhaps effectively his household in arms at royal wages. On Brézé’s disgrace in the autumn of 1461, it broke up.31

  • 32 Tabellionage de Rouen, 20 June 1454, 16 June 1456, 31 October 1456, 13 March 1457-58.
  • 33 Tabellionage de Rouen, 29 May 1451,25 June 1452, 2 June, 20 June, 8 December 1454.
  • 34 Tabellionage de Rouen, 1er October 1466. The Boisyvon marriage link antedated the Lancastrian conqu (...)

22Pierre le Bouteiller was the sénéchal’s lieutenant in Rouen. The bishop of Lisieux applied to him in 1459 to transfer to his custody prisoners from the Grosse Tour of the Château. He was in charge in château and town when Brézé fell in July 1461. His responsibilities may have varied over time according to different delegations. He was not the only lieutenant, and is consistently named after Brunet de Longchamp in the garrison musters. If he was a less important Brézé man in Rouen than Brunet, he was more consistently resident. Le Bouteiller had been high in Brézé’s service for years. When Brézé pledged the Merbury debts in 1451 he witnessed first, ahead of Brézé’s maître d’hôtel. He witnessed important acts alongside Brézé’s maîtres d’hôtel Pierre de Vieuxchâtel and Jean le Prince, the greffier of his council Guillaume Maugier, and other servants, including most contracts relating to the transport and partage of the Crespin inheritance.32 His family was bequeathed a small cash gift in Jean Crespin’s will.33 He was still in Brézé’s service when the sénéchal fell at Montlhéry. He was perhaps one of those around whom the affinity was articulated. Pierre de Boisyvon dit Soubtil was a squire in the Rouen garrison, later (1466) a servant of le Bouteiller, while his brother and heir Guillaume de Boisyvon was an archer in Brézé’s grande ordonnance (1454-60). If Pierre was kin to Guy le Bouteiller, an homme d’armes in the grande ordonnance company, this picture would be strengthened, for Guy was linked by blood and marriage to the Dampont and Maugier, two families with their own links to the sénéchal.34

23The heart of most companies was commensal, and lesser units of sociability circled around the captain. The life of these groups is now inaccessible, but traces remain. One such network, linking various hommes d’armes, other servants, the bastard Crespin line and a subordinate of Flocquet as bailli of Évreux, is schematised in figure 8. Marriages point to the social world in which Brézé servants and their families operated. His officers were present at the conclusion of marriage contracts and in the settlement of dowries and marriage-related lawsuits.

  • 35 On the Dresnay see GR, 21195; G. Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, Paris, 1881-1890, (...)

24An example is the match of Jean de Saâne and Marguerite, daughter of Regnault de Dresnay. Regnault was a prominent courtier-officer and soldier, bailli of Sens, and the son of Brézé’s paternal aunt: the two men were longtime allies. Just as the sénéchal had links to the Anjou princes, Dresnay served the house of Orléans. He was their bailli of Asti in the 1450s and 1460s. His son Guyon was a Brézé homme d’armes. In May 1452 Brézé arranged Marguerite’s marriage to his homme d’armes Jean de Saâne, son of the ex-Lancastrian Cauchois knight. He acted for Dresnay in the negotiations and paid for the festivities.35

  • 36 DLN, LXXV, 125, Tabellionage de Rouen, 11 July 1454, 21 February 1454-55.

25It is not usually so clear that the initiative belonged to Brézé, but suggestive instances can be given. Jean Poulain was his homme d’armes in the 1440s, granted a sergeanty in the forest of Lucy for services in the Reduction. His brother Thibaut served Brézé, then his cousin Jean Carbonnel seigneur de Sourdeval. In 1454 Jean married Jeanne daughter of Pierre Crespin, the Marquis de Mauny. Poulain’s interests were around Caen, but this match brought him the Percheron fief of Le Maréchal and other properties formerly gifted to the Marquis by his Crespin kin. Men associated with Brézé and Jeanne Crespin helped make the marriage: Jean le Prince witnessed cessions of property and acted as procureur over rents contracted in the marriage settlement; Brézé’s agent Jean Gouel witnessed the handing over of part of the Marquis’s cash don du mariage.36

  • 37 BNF, PO 2437, Rat 54785, 5; AD Seine-Maritime, 1 B 5548 doss. 1470-1526; Tabellionage de Rouen, 10, (...)

26A more vexed instance is that of Jean bâtard de Graville, whose marriage to Guillemette d’Estelan ended in separation around 1460. He was in the company, and as lord of her fief of Estelan was sénéchal of Maulévrier. Whether or not the marriage was brokered in Brézé’s circle, both parties to it can be tied to figures in it (figure 8). Such networks were not bounded by à single affinity. The Houel, for example, had ties to Richemont’s men. Pierre was lieutenant of Jean de Loncelles, verdier of Bur-le-Roy, homme d’armes under Couvran. His elder brother, Virois lord Jean Houel, managed Richemont’s artillery at the siege of Vire in 1450. A man of the same name witnessed the ratification of an arbitral sentence delivered by the grand sénéchal in 1452.37

  • 38 DLN, XVIII, 37; Tabellionage de Rouen 18 février 1451-52. He held land in the bailliages of Rouen a (...)
  • 39 AD Seine-Maritime, 1ER 1590, unnumbered cahier, 16th century extracts; 1ER 1590, 1595-96, Comptes d (...)

27Graville’s exercise of the sénéchaussée of Brézé’s comté raises the possibility that tenurial bonds and service in his estate administration supplemented other links within the retinue. Estate accounts mention payments to or through several ordonnance men without identifying their formal position. Jean le Prince’s career shows how amorphous Brézé’s service could be: he was a lawyer, household officer, royal official, estate administrator and perhaps soldier. An ex-Lancastrian official, receiver of the quatrièmes of Rouen in the 1440s, after 1450 he became Brézé’s maître d’hôtel, and lieutenant général of the bailli of Gisors Jean de Brézé.38 Along with Saâne, Briouze, Braquemont, le Normant and Jean Gouel he audited Brézé baronial accounts in the 1450s and 1460s. Jean le Prince le jeune was vicomte of Bec-Crespin (1455-59). Either he or this presumed son entered the Rouen garrison in the early 1450s.39

  • 40 DLN, 1xxv, 157; BNF, PO 118 Auber en Normandie 2497, 21; Tabellionage de Rouen, 23 November 1458, 1 (...)
  • 41 Pierre Houel and Jacques du Moucel were hommes d’armes in the 1450s. Guillot Houel was Brézé’s proc (...)

28Indirect links suggest a penumbra of servants beyond the retinue but tied to it. Jean Auber, an archer of the Rouen garrison, became verdier of Trait-Maulévrier in 1452.40 Around 1467 other forest officials shared patronyms with Brézé men, as did a collector of his tolls on the Eure in 1460.41 Other men can occasionally be identified as his tenants. Attention should probably focus on vicinage rather than vassalage but this picture might change if archers were included and especially if fiefs on the Norman borders were examined.

Mutual assistance

29This was a social world being built on the framework supplied by Brézé’s administrative and military cadres. As such it was centred in his personal designs. His involvement in Channel warfare turned in the later 1450s into support for Lancaster in the English dynastic war. This brought him a Lancastrian grant of the Channel Islands, which he tried to make effective from 1460. Sourdeval’s ordotmance company followed its captain into this effort. Sourdeval became his commander there after taking the château of Montorgueil on Jersey.

  • 42 T. Nicolle, “L’Occupation de Jersey par les comtes de Maulévrier”, Bulletin de la Société Jersiaise(...)

30Sourdeval’s men garrisoned the island in the early 1460s. Brézé depended on these Lower Norman kinsmen and well-wishers for military support, but he drew on a wider group of servants as administrators. The August 1462 assises on Jersey were run by Jean Carbonnel chevalier seigneur de Cérences, Guillaume Carbonnel seigneur d’Audeville, Guillaume de Braquemont, and a group of Cotentin law officers. Guy de Briouze presided: he became governor of the island when Sourdeval followed Brézé on the expedition to the north of England in 1462-63.42

  • 43 BNF, PO 509 Brézé 11513, 48.
  • 44 Tabellionage de Rouen, 5, 7 October 1462: Antoine Crespin witnessed the contracts. Brézé ceded his (...)

31Louis XI sanctioned the “voyaige en Royaume d’Escoce” but subsidised it to the tune of only 3,000 livres.43 Brézé therefore had to turn to his affinity as a financial network. The most important of the transactions which helped bankroll the venture involved the Patriarch of Jerusalem. In October 1462 he purchased Jeanne Crespin’s dower lands from the couple for 4,000 écus. Half this sum was owed “pour cause de prest par lui a eulx autreffois fait sur certains gaiges.” When the Patriarch delivered the money two days later, one fifth of it was in English pennies. Brézé notarised a very sweeping procuration for his wife on 9 September, in the presence of Briouze, le Normant and Jean Gouel.44

  • 45 They notarised a succession settlement: Tabellionage de Rouen, 17 September 1462.

32Others with Brézé links were active on the Rouen rent markets in the same period, a subset of a larger group of French nobles who were in Rouen, raising funds and presumably participating in the expedition (figure 4). The Longchamp may also have been involved.45 One of those advancing monies, Henri Hurel, was ceded the fief of Mesnil-Durescu by the new lieutenant général of the bailli, Gauvain Mauviel, who had a close association with the Dreux-Esneval. He was also engaging in rent sales and deals with Rouen notables of the du Bosc family.

  • 46 Le Bouteiller foreclosed on the sequestrated fief. Brézé and his wife registered their prior claim, (...)

33That these transactions relate to the English expedition is inference, and the sources are rarely adequate even for this, but financial transactions were a commonplace feature of engagement with a great lord. Men in Brézé’s service were also drawn into the legal and financial skirmishing involved in Brézé’s land acquisitions. He picked up with the Crespin succession a dispute with Robert Leschamps’ ecuyer. Leschamps’ wife claimed Le Vivier as heiress of Guillaume de Bellengues’ late daughter. Brézé’s retainer Pierre le Bouteiller bought up Bellengues’ debts, and involved himself in the litigation to decisive effect.46

  • 47 Échiquier 1462, 229v°; Tabellionage de Rouen, 19 April 1461.
  • 48 Tabellionage de Rouen, 18 January 1456-57, 19 July 1456; Prosser, op. cit., p. 145.

34Buying up debts was common in such combats. When Jeanne Crespin’s title to Mauny was challenged by Breton ducal courtier Jean de Mauny, Brézé bought up his adversary’s obligations and harried him with executions upon his goods and lands, forcing him to settle in 146147. It was not only through coercion that Brézé was able to secure advantage. He paid Roger de Bréauté only 50 livres for the fief of Troubleville in the summer of 1456, the price being discounted for “bons et agreables services, courtoisies et plaisirs.” Six months later it was part of the purchase price of another fief, in a transaction which valued it at five times as much.48

  • 49 Tabellionage de Rouen, 7 July 1456.
  • 50 Tabellionage de Rouen, 13 July 1461.

35Clearly, he did not always pay the market price for his acquisitions. When Brézé intervened over the debts of Marguerite de Ganzeville, widow of his man Jean Basset, he was able secure her a discount of about one third. The creditors were anxious to retain Brézé’s favour, and quit the widow 730 livres for “honneur et reverence et a la faveur et Requeste de noble et puissant seigneur monsieur Pierre de Brézé, Comte de Maulevrier et Grand Senechal de Normandie que pour la bonne amour qu’ilz avoient a ladite damoiselle”. The sénéchal pledged the rents owed, and the arrears were abandoned49. Such deference was shared by the clergy of Notre Dame d’Ecouis, and by Guerouldin Naguet, a Rouen armourer who quit debts at preferential rates for services rendered by Brézé and “pour demourer en sa bonne grace.”50

  • 51 Tabellionage de Rouen, 13 May 1463.
  • 52 BNF, PO 91 Argouges 1892, 179.

36Equally, men looked to Brézé for assistance at law. When Robert de Dreux-d’Esneval taxed goods entering his town of Pavilly, the residents resisted all the way to the Échiquier. Robert turned to the grand sénéchal, whose court awarded him provision, set up a commission to broker an accord in his favour, and imposed its ratification by means of fines.51 The sénéchaussée was a convenient place for Brézé’s men to do business, and the best evidence of its operations often involves his men. In November 1452 Brézé arbitrated between Jean d’Argouges and his brother-in-law Thomas seigneur de Clamorgan. D’Argouges had overturned his sister Katherine’s marriage settlement in 1450. Immediately after the Reduction he seized the Bessin lordship of Cosqueville, which the couple had held for twenty-seven years. Both parties were demeurants, indeed d’Argouges was a prominent former Lancastrian, but Brézé maintained a man who had recently entered his ordonnance retinue, upholding d’Argouges in possession and compensating the couple with other lands of the maternal inheritance.52

37So Brézé’s allies and servants could exploit their connection with him in their own affairs. For Affourd and Stroud, he reversed the consequences of forfeiture. He ameliorated the debt problems of the Merbury, Marguerite de Ganzeville and others. Dreux-d’Esneval and d’Argouges turned to him for port et soustenance in their lawsuits, and the latter’s arbitrament was rendered in the presence of Vieuchâtel and ratified in the presence of the Saâne, father and son.

Allies: Jean Carbonnel and Robert de Flocques

  • 53 Hozier’s genealogies are unreliable. La Roque believed that the family divided in the generation ar (...)

38Two men holding positions in their own right in the Norman establishment of Charles VII can also be seen in the context of the Brézé affinity. Robert de Flocques was the more substantial of these figures, the quintessential Norman exile become routier, surviving on the winnings of war to achieve great stature in royal service in the last decade of his life. Both he and the Cotentin knight Jean Carbonnel seigneur de Sourdeval were rooted in the Norman petty nobility and in the profession of arms. Sourdeval exemplifies how demeurants could create a context for themselves within the new establishment and a career in the process. He began with the advantage that he was Brézé’s cousin, though his broader genealogy cannot be reconstructed with precision.53

  • 54 DLN, III, 360, 182, 204; XXVI, 93. Caries is the sobriquet of Richard Carbonnel écuyer seigneur de (...)
  • 55 DLN, III, 302; BNF, PO 594 Carbonnel 13863, n° 2; DLN, ix, 250.
  • 56 DLN, IV, 207, 223. C. T. Allmand and C. A. J. Armstrong eds., English suits before the Parlement of (...)

39The Carbonnel were a ramified Cotentin clan, seemingly Orléanist during the civil wars, members of which went on to enter Lancastrian service. Caries Carbonnel écuyer defended Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte against the duke of Gloucester during the Lancastrian conquest, and secured confirmation in his lands on its surrender. Two other Carbonnel knights, Guillaume and Jean, obtained comparable confirmations between 1418 and 1420.54 This situation was not stable: Guillaume defected fairly rapidly, and Jean’s son Henry joined the Valois in the late 1420s: in 1451 he was described as twenty-three years an exile in the obedience of Charles VII, and three times a prisoner. He had abandoned 3,000 livres worth of lands and had incurred debts, partly to pay ransoms.55 Others declined to make such sacrifices. Jean himself remained in Normandy and still enjoyed his lands in the 1440s, though they had declined in value by a third by 1451. Caries was sufficiently well affected to be provided to the verderie of Valognes, and died in the Lancastrian obedience in 1426. His close kin remained demeurant up to the Reduction. His son Jean kept faith with Lancaster even after, fleeing to England with his wife and children in 1450. His lands were granted to Sir Thomas Chisenal, but within a few years he submitted and was restored.56

  • 57 Échiquier 1462, 231; 1463, 228; AD Seine-Maritime, IB 38, Registre des Appointements (1463), 2 and, (...)

40The relationships between the Carbonneaux closest to Brézé can be weakly inferred from a very complex case in the early 1460s over land in the county of Mortain. This shows that the chief of the name and arms was Jean Carbonnel de Cérences, a knight in his late twenties on the Reduction. His namesake and uncle or cousin, Sourdeval, was certainly demeurant in the later 1430s, transacting at Caen over his lands in 1438-39. He was variously qualified lord of Chassegay, Mully and Marcelet, the latter in right of his wife, Perrette des Bois. For clarity he is here referred to by his later toponym, Sourdeval.57

  • 58 Histoire de Gaston IV, comte de Foix, par Guillaume Leseur, chronique médiévale du xve siecle, ed. (...)

41As the occupation dribbled to its pathetic end the loyalties of these men frayed. Sourdeval was in French service during the 1449 campaign, probably the same Jean Carbonnel who was paid in November at Rouen for his expenses in the king’s company. This may be the moment he entered Valois service, though a homonym had appeared at the Tours tournament in 1447. By spring 1452 he was commanding the small garrison of Pont-de-1’Arche. He went with the king to Guyenne in 1453. Early the same year he was commanding forty lances at Touques. This is the first indication that he was with Brézé, into whose hands the captaincy had recently come by an exchange of offices with Dunois’ wife Marie d’Harcourt, who got the bridge at Meulan (worth 1,200 livres parisis a year to her) in return. Carbonnel’s company garrisoned Touques until 1460.58

  • 59 BNF, PO 1167 de Floques 26583, 14; A. Plaisse, Un Chef de guerre du xve siecle, Robert de Flocques, (...)

42Before 1450 Flocquet’s career has little in common with that of Sourdeval. The young Robinet was pannetier of Charles VII by 1425 and in 1432 he was with various French captains in the Beauvaisis. He was raiding near Paris in 1435, then joined the revolt of the commons in the Caux, briefly holding Tancarville. His actions as chef de guerre, often denigrated as écorcherie, interacted haphazardly with the king’s war aims, but towards 1440 he was drawn more consistently into frontier warfare. In the early 1440s he was in the Oise valley with the comte d’Eu and many of the greatest French captains, including Pierre and Jean de Brézé.59

  • 60 Plaisse, Robert de Flocques, p. 73, 87-9. Ibid., p. 113 sq. and sources there cited on the conquest (...)

43The first explicit link to Brézé appears when Flocquet’s reputation as a routier captain was already made: in 1439 Charles VII ordered Flocquet and Jean de Brézé (Pierre’s uncle), to garrison Durtal and Baugé. In 1440 both men were ravaging the Autunois under Maine and during the Praguerie Flocquet was with the Brézé in the royal camp. In the early 1440s the pair emerged as crucial royal agents on the frontier, and began to make the Perche and Vexin very vulnerable for the Lancastrians. Raids into the Évrecin turned after autumn 1440 into territorial conquest. Conches fell to Flocquet and Jean de Brézé in September 1440 (though it was not held); Louviers fell soon after, and Beaumont and Beaumesnil followed in the summer of 1441.60

  • 61 DLN, XXV, 75.

44The “grans explois de guerre” of the Brézé, uncle and nephew, and Flocquet were recorded in letters patent in 1442. Over the previous two campaigning seasons they had taken and fortified Conches and garrisoned it with troops cleared from the countryside in the king’s obedience. The king thanked them for their great contribution to the recent siege of Pontoise and for their capture of Évreux, “a la tres grand foulle et dommage de sesdits adversaires et au grant bien et honneur de lui et sa seigneury.” In these collaborative efforts, the trio had spent heavily (6,000 saluts at the taking of Évreux alone), and were still in debt to their own men and others.61

  • 62 For their bargain with Thomassin le Mareschal, Lancastrian élu of Évreux and “un des principaulx mo (...)
  • 63 Plaisse, Robert de Flocques, p. 116. The comital title implied enjoyment of the demesne, which Plai (...)

45Évreux was taken by Pierre de Brézé, Jean de Brézé and Flocquet on 15 September 1441.62 Flocquet’s biographer denies that Pierre’s subsequent creation as count of Évreux had any but honorific significance, eliding ambiguities in Flocquet’s emergence as royal bailli and captain at Évreux: he may have been less than independent of Brézé, lord of the place and the king’s favourite and minister. They were joined together in a complex of other grants and gifts. They were granted in survivance the profits of the greniers of Évreux and Conches and the revenues of the two vicomtés. At Évreux they presented to benefices in the king’s name, including those adjudged to have fallen in regale, their incumbents being in the Lancastrian obedience.63

  • 64 Plaisse, Vie municipale, p. 136; Beaucourt, op. cit., t. 5, p. 17; Héraut Berry, p. 409.

46That they were strong allies is clear, a relationship illustrated in the stained glass of the Trois Maries in Évreux Cathedral where, side-by-side, they face their Crespin wives and brother-in-law. When Flocquet broke his leg during the Reduction campaign, Jean Crespin actually commanded his men. The strong links between the Brézé and Flocquet ordonnance companies are easily demonstrable, explicable by reference to the shared background of the retinues in the attrition of the Évrecin in the previous decade. The relationship culminated in Brézé’s knighting of Flocquet in the field before Sandwich in 1457, and ended with the sénéchal sharing a death cart with his nephew Jacques de Flocques on the morrow of Montlhéry.64

  • 65 Héraut Berry, p. 409; AD Eure-et-Loir, E 161 (4 novembre 1459).
  • 66 Tabellionage de Rouen, 16 June 1456; 8 February 1456/1457; La Roque, op. cit., t. 1, p. 114.

47While Flocquet was Brézé’s brother-in-law, their relationship tempered by shared war enterprise over many years, Sourdeval was kin to Brézé’s mother, and his captaincy at Touques is best explained by Brézé’s provision. He bore the sénéchal’s standard at Sandwich in 1457, where he was knighted, and he witnessed the marriage contract of his daughter in 1459.65 As a senior kinsman Brézé was generous on the occasion of Sourdeval’s own daughter’s marriage. The 800 écus he gave the couple transmuted into enjoyment of his maternal Cotentin inheritance. This usufruct ultimately transferred all Brézé’s Cotentin lands to Sourdeval. The transaction was complex, but weight should be placed on Brézé having put Sourdeval’s request to proceed before his own council.66 The witnesses to the final cession exemplify the congruence of royal and Brézé interest in the matter: they were Guillaume Maugier, greƒƒier of Brézé’s council at Rouen, and Thomas de Louraille, Norman trésorier des guerres.

  • 67 BNF, PO 594 Carbonnel 13863, 34, 133. At Sandwich Guillaume Carbonnel shared command of the Admiral (...)

48Sourdeval was prospering in royal and Brézé service, therefore. Before the death of Charles VII he was a royal chambellan, modestly pensioned. Other members of the family were entering the Norman military establishment: Étienne Carbonnel was captain of the ƒranc-archers of the bailliage of Rouen; Guillaume Carbonnel écuyer became a senior homme d’armes in the company of Jean de Bueil, and led the admiral’s men on the Sandwich raid in 1457. Sourdeval’s own ordonnance command was therefore only one entry into royal service for his kin.67 Nonetheless, a high proportion of his homines d’armes were his kin: Guillaume, Emond and another Jean Carbonnel served, and also Clement des Bois, perhaps kin to Sourdeval’s wife. A distinct group came of families (Hamon, Patry, Suhart) which neighboured one of the Carbonnel lines in the plain of the Aure river east of Bayeux.

  • 68 For biographical notices and references, see Prosser, op. cit., p. 309-10, 439-41, 435-6, 398.
  • 69 Tabellionage de Rouen, 5, 7 October 1462.

49The Sourdeval company was like Brézé’s own in being open to lineages tainted by Lancastrian service, and there is no clear line of demarcation between the Carbonnel men and those of Brézé himself. In Brézé’s company was Sourdeval’s son-in-law Richard de Thieuville, and Jean d’Argouges, whose mother was Charlotte Carbonnel, and who held land in the Aure plain. Jean le Sec served Brézé at Louviers before entering Sourdeval’s company. Guillaume Malherbe moved in the other direction.68 Sourdeval’s man Jean de Paris witnessed Brézé land sales in the early 1460s.69 Men called Poulain, Houvet and Le Barbier were in both retinues.

  • 70 The Brézé and Carbonnel remained allied into the 16th century: Jacques Carbonnel de Cérences was en (...)

50Sourdeval’s company had been born in Brézé service and became his garrison on Jersey after 1460. Its membership had strong links with the Brézé ordonnance in the Seine valley. Its captain had emerged as Brézé’s kinsman, remained his subordinate, and followed him on the Northumbrian expedition of 1462. His retinue was probably the core of the company to which the sénéchal was restored in 1464. The connection survived the upheavals of the early 1460s, an adequate demonstration of its strength: but the link was not immutable, and in the Bien Public the affinity split, with Carbonnel leading other men of the fallen Brézé into the service of Charles de France.70

Conclusion: affinity and ordonnance

  • 71 M. Hicks, Bastard Feudalism, London 1995, p. 43-68; J. M. W. Bean, From Lord to Patron. Lordship in (...)

51Attempts to translate the insights of K. B. McFarlane into a French context have foundered on the marginality in France of the indenture, so central to the English historiography of bastard feudalism. The disintegration of the McFarlane-derived consensus in England is useful for the French historian insofar as it has seen a strong revival of interest in other instruments of retaining. The indenture becomes but one of the means by which a connection was constructed: the household, estate administration and tenantry have re-emerged, and relegated extraordinary retaining to a secondary and perhaps chronologically aberrant position71.

52Those who served and followed Brézé were attached to him in various ways. Some, more than we can now know, were household men and estate officers. Others were kinsmen and longstanding allies. A few were his tenants. His ordonnance men all served at royal wages, but it was not the king who had given them place and who would lead them in battle, but Brézé. In a banal sense, this affinity was built on clientage, but the word is not used, and few of his noble hommes d’armes would have regarded themselves as his dependents. This is not to say that they were not his: ses gens, son écuyer, and so on. They turned to him to broker their disputes, assist them in debt and legal problems and even advance them in marriage. He was their lord.

  • 72 S. Carroll, “The Guise Affinity During the Wars of Religion”, French History, 9 (1995), p. 53-88.

53He certainly did have serviteurs, a term with much broader connotations than definite household or personal service. He also had clients proper, men he had placed in royal or town office. He showed himself capable of building a constituency, earning the respect and goodwill of townsfolk who found him a useful as well as a necessary intercessor with the crown. The boundaries between all these categories of Brézé’s service and lordship are artificial. Stuart Carroll’s work on the Guise following in the 16th century shows how extensively urban elites, local communities and aristocratic affinities interpenetrated each other72. With his reach into the Rouennais legal milieu and his large noble retinue Brézé also exemplifies this.

54Without the liberality of the crown consequent upon his service Brézé could never have made his wife’s claims a base for regional eminence. Yet he would have been of less use to the king in Norman governance and English policy without that eminence. His affinity was vital in establishing him in the province. The life of the ordonnance company distinguished it imperfectly from the retinue of the magnate. This paper has set the retinue of Pierre de Brézé in its non-military context. Vicinage, kinship and marriage links gave it social coherence, and with household and tenurial relationships integrated it into other spheres of Brézé’s service and with other companies. It is possible to show what Brézé was doing for his men and what aid he might ask of them. As he put down roots in Normandy, members of his entourage acquired lands and offices.

55Berry Herald shows us the Norman ordonnance acting with discipline and cohesion. Its leaders came out of the common enterprise of the English war, and there was some interchange between the companies themselves. Their roots were in the comradeship of the Upper Norman frontier. It had been here in the 1430s and 1440s that Brézé, Flocquet and many others had made their chivalrous reputations. The primary purpose of ordonnance retinues was always military, and all other uses to which they might be put by their captains or lieutenants, whether credit network, political base or private muscle, were derived from an essentially chivalrous ethos. The coherence of the Norman ordonnance made it a force for stability and a tool of governance in the 1450s. This situation changed after 1461, as a result of Louis XI’s own policy and patronage decisions.

Lands

Income

Date

Source

Remarks

Crespin inheritance

2,000+ l.t.

1454

Crespin sale

“Bonne et grande revenue” in 1462

Maternal inheritance in
Cotentin

1,200

1456

Rouen 16 June 1456

Alienated in 1456

La Salle, Breche in
Anjou

500

1459

ADELE 161

Dower assignation

Villes-Saint-Denis (Jeanne Crespin’s dower)

600

1462

Rouen 5 Oct. 1462

Alienated in 1463

Brézé’s grants in
Périgord, Limousin,
Quercy (Montfort,
Aillac, Carlus,
Creuses, Marteau)

3,150

1446-
1461

DLN, II, 358. ADEL El 16

Estimated from the rachat set by the
Grand Conseil,
1462-63

Touberville

600

1451-
1462

Rouen 17 May 1451, 16 June
1451, 16 Dec. 1451,31 Oct.
1456, 18 Jan. 1456-57,5 Oct.
1462.

Calculated from
prix du roi:
certainly a minimum

Acquisitions in
Anjou

1,000

1465

Rouen 19 Aug. 1465

Includes La Salle and Breche?

Nogent-le-Roi

500

1465

Rouen 19 Aug. 1465

Excludes Anet,
Montchauvet &
Bréval

Maulévrier

1,040

1465

Rouen 19 Aug. 1465

Channel islands

zero?

1460-
1468

Estimated

Breton lands (Broon)

600

1451

Rouen Jul. 13-14 1451

Exchanged for
Norman rents

Saint-Cyr, La
Bouchardière,
Gallardon & other properties in
Saumurois

1,000+

1468-
1474

ADELE 161

Assignation of dower rent

  • 73 For Brézé lands as they existed in the 1470s and 1480s, see L. Douet d’Arcq, “Procès criminel inten (...)

Figure 2. Brézé landed resources in the 1450s and 1460s73

Office

Value (l.t.)

Date

Remarks

Royal Pension

6,000

1451-61

Under Charles VII

Captaincy of Rouen

1,000

Pension from city

Captaincy of Touques

100

1450s

Worth much more in guet?
Later passed to Sourdeval

Grenier of Louviers

1,458

1444-51

Average over 7 years

État oƒ ordonnance
company

1,200

1450-61

Grande sénéchaussée

1,200

Wages

Captaincy of Mantes

100

1454

Wages

Figure 3. Brézé income from the crown and royal office in Normandy
and the Vexin (1450s and 1460s)

Vendor

Service

Raised

Creditor/Buyer

Date

Jean de
Drosay seigneur deSainte-Marie-aux-Anglais

Maître des Requêtes de l’hôtel of Charles VII

240 l.t.
25 l.t.

Laurens Surreau
Canon of Rouen
Naudin Anquetil

6 Jun.
21 Dec.

Robert le
Grant seigneur des
Vaulx near
Meulan

35 l.t.

Pierre le Cordier sr
Beaucerre

11 Jun.

Rouen council

4,500 l.t.

Countess of Harcourt

14 Jul.

Pierre
Louvain

Destituted ordonnance
captain

1,000 l.t.

Charles de Melun (600 l.t. deferred)

12 Aug.

Jean
Blanchart

Royal household man

24 l.t.

Jean du Fay

18 Aug.

Richard de
Thieuville seigneur de
Gonneville

Flocquet, then Brézé
grande ordonnance

100 l.t.
100 l.t.

Richard de Brumare grenêtier of Caen
Henri Hurel, Rouen merchant

25 Aug.
13 Sep.

Jean du
Mesnil seigneur de
Normare and
Rosay

150 l.t.

Guillaume Hamelin
bourgeois of Rouen

20 Sep.

Abraham
Fremin

Brézé’s vicomte of
Maulévrier

75 l.t.

Michel Bonte
procureur du roi in the bailliage of Rouen

13 Sep.

Jean
Carbonnel seigneur de
Sourdeval

Brézé cousin and
Lieutenant

800 l.t.

Henri Hurel

25 Sep.

Brézé and
Jeanne
Crespin

6,000 l.t.

Louis d’Harcourt patriarch of
Jerusalem

5 Oct.
7 Oct.

Jean de
Heudreville seigneur du
Mesnil-Eude

Had served in
Granville garrison?

204 l.t.
of 250 l.t.

Jean de Drosay

7 Oct.

Jean du Fay

Vicomte of La
Carnaille for the countess of Harcourt.
Eldest son of
Guillaume du Fay,
lieutenant general of the bailliage of Gisors

15 l.t.

J du No dit le Gallois

10 Oct.

Nicolas Aux
Coulombs

Bailli of Eu, 1472

150 l.t.

Rouen chapter

28 Oct.

Tassin seigneur de
Cuisy of
Beauvais

60 l.t.

Rouen chapter

5 Nov.

Girard de la
Lande seigneur de
Saint Denis duBosc-Guerard near
Harcourt

Kin to Guillaume de la
Lande Bailli d’Harcourt, 1475?

100 l.t.

Jacques Tourte
bourgeois of Rouen

5 Nov.

Colinet de la
Fontaine

100 l.t.

Mathieu des Loges

9 Dec.

Thomas de
Courcy

Son of Guillaume baron de Courcy

200 l.t.

Richard le Pelletier
bourgeois of Rouen

14 Nov.

Gauvain
Mauviel

Lieutenant general of the bailliage of Rouen.
Kinsman and ally of the Dreux-Esneval

1,200 l.t.
50 l.t.

Henri Hurel
Jacques Fouques canon of Rouen

31 Dec.
3 Jan.

Guillaume
Payen

100 l.t.

Richard le Pelletier

21 Feb.

Figure 4. Constitutions of rent in Rouen, winter 1462-63,
from the Rouen tabellionage under the given date

Name

Brézé service

Royal or other office

Source

Jean Auber

Archer, Rouen garrison

Verdier of Trait-Maulévrier 1452-66

DLN, LXXV, 157;
BNF, PO 118 Auber en
Normandie 2497/22

Jean Blosset

Grande ordonnance

Captain of Exmes
1459-61

ADO 34 J l. Chartrier de Carrouges, papiers
Jean Blosset: comptes of Argentan and
Exmes Saint Michel
1481, and other unnumbered pieces.

Jean le
Bourlier,
Bourrelier

Bailli of
Nogent 1452; in receipt of gifts from
Brézé before
1460

Èlu of Dreux

ADEL C 64; E 123 dossier fief du
Bourrelier 197, 198,
199, 200; E 141.

Pierre le
Bouteiller

Maître d’Hôtel
etc.

Grenêtier of Rouen
1467

BNF, fr 26090/569

Jean de Brézé chevalier seigneur de
Corboing

brother/
ordonnance
lieutenant

Bailli/captain of
Gisors, captain of
Louviers 1451-60

GR, BNF, PO 501 de
Bressay 11348/7

Oudin Caruel

Rouen garrison

Captain of Chantilly
1436-40, and of
Amfreville to 1450

GR 21011; DLN IX,
258.

Jean le
Cauchois

Grande ordonnance

Grenêtier of
Pontaudemer

Jacques
Charretier dit
Limoges

Homme d’armes under
Flocquet, later under Jacques de Brézé

Vicomte of Évreux

DLN XXIV, 153; GR

Doucereau

Clerc

Sergeant of Val-de-Saire in Vicomté
Valognes (by grant
1452)

DLNX, 37

Roger Gouel

Witnessed marriage of
Brézé’s daughter;
Bailli of Bec-Crespin.

Sénéchal of archdiocese of Rouen
1461-85; bailli of
Dieppe for the archbishop 1455-64;
Lieutenant of Grand
Maître des Eaux et
Forêts in Normandy,
1461-62; Estates delegate 1469

ADELE 161;
Beaurepaire 1868,
20ff; ADSM A 154,
133v°-35; Mancel V, 15

Jean Gouel

Soliciteur des causes, procureur général 1455-
1467

Lieutenant et procureur du Grand
Maître des Eaux et
Forêts, 1452; élu of
Alençon, 1459-61

ADSM 1ER 1596;
ADEL C 68; ADEL
E 161; DLN/15, 285;
AN K69 43bis

Laurens
Guedon

Bailli of Bec-Crespin

Avocat du roi at
Rouen; Bailli of
Tancarville, 1458;
Bailli of Harcourt
1460

ADSM 1ER 1595
Comptes du Bec
Crespin 1459-60;
BNF, NAF 22791/15;
Rouen 15 June,
21 Oct 1460.

Robert de
Hellenvilliers
chevalier

Procureur et lieutenant in captaincy of
Mantes

Bailli of Gisors 1450

AC Mantes BB5 p.95; DLN LXXV, 115
GR

Guillot Houel

Procureur at
Nogent, Pont-de-l’Arche

Maître du Pont at
Pont-de-l’Arche

DLN, XIII, 265;
Mancel CCCIV (l) sub 29 Sep. 1454.

Pierre Houel

Grande ordonnance

Lieutenant of Verdier of Bur-le-Roy

BNF, PO 2437 Rat
54785/5

Philippe
Luillier

Grande ordonnance

Captain of Corbeil,
1465

BNF, fr 6972/1v°

Guillaume
Maugier

Secretary & greffier of council, 1462

Monnoier of Rouen (office created for him, Aug 1462)

Chron. de Jersey, ed. Mourant (Jersey
1858) p. 13; BNF, fr
6972/295v°

Jean le Moine

Prévôt of
Nogent, Anet,
Montchauvet,
Bréval 1459-
60

Garde des prisons of
Orbec 1466;
Lieutenant of
Vicomte d’Avranches, 1470

BNF, PO 1977 Le
Moine à Chartres
45418/2, 3; DLN/75,
275; GR7462

Michel le
Moine

Counsellor at
Chartres 1460

Verdier of Évreux
1453, 1461; élu of
Évreux 1466

BNF, PO 1977 Le
Moine à Chartres
45418/3; ADSM IB
27, 13; DLN/14 p. 359; /11 275

Nicolas le
Normant

Conseiller/lieutenant of grand
sénéchal, see text

Verdier of Brotonne
Jul. 1465

ADSM 6 E 13, 98

Pierre Nyvellet

Resident at
Mauny 1456;
Rec gen &
auditeur,
1462-64

Lieutenant general of
Grand Maître des
Eaux et Forêts 1447-
52

Rouen 19 Dec. 1456;
Lemprière 1924,
155; ADSM 6 E 13,
13

Jean Poulain

Grande ordonnance

Sergeant in forest of
Lucy 1450

DLN, LXXV, 125

Guillaume
Vallée

Grande ordonnance lt

Grenêtier of Louviers
1467

BNF, fr 26090/574

Figure 5. Brézé men and royal office

Name

Brézé service

Lancastrian service

Source

Jean d’Argouges

Grande ordonnance

Demeurant; his father élu of Coutances, 1430s

BNF, PO 91
Argouges 1892/17-
18; Bougourd 1912 p. 27-28

Guy de
Briouze

See text

Official at 1448
Échiquier, Estates’ delegate of the Auge nobility, 1449

Nicolle 1920 179-
80; BL, Add ms.
11509 p. 48v°, 62v°-
66.

Jean de
Bouquetot chevalier

Grande ordonnance

Estates delegate of the
Auge nobility, 1442,
1443, 1445 and 1448; forest It in V Orbec, 1447

BNF, PO 3029
Vipart 67052/13;
PO 454 de
Bouquetot
10239/12, 13, 14;
119v°; Frondeville
1936, 249

Abraham
Fremin

Vicomte of
Maulévrier

Grant of forfeited lands in the Bailliage of
Rouen and Caux (1437);
Garde des sceaux in the
Vicomté of Harcourt et
Elbeuf 1438, 1440

DLN/14, 77; /15,
195; /5, 1

Jean Gaillon

Grande ordonnance

Son of Guillaume de
Gaillon chevalier,
captured by the French while serving under Lord
Scales 1440s; Estates delegate of the nobility of
Pontaudemer, 1449

BL, Additional ms.
11509 p. 62v°-66;
DLN74, 167, 197; /24 117

Laurens
Guedon

Bailli of Bec-Crespin

LB Gisors 1430-31;
A vocat du roi at Rouen
1444-52 and still in 1460

GR, 13078, 19122;
Rouen 25 Apr. 1460;
ADSM 1ER 1595
Comptes du Bec
Crespin 1459-60.

The
Longchamp

Ordonnance
companies

Grant of various lands by the Duke of Clarence (1420). Demeurants

DLN/3, 328

John and
Edmund
Merbury

Grande ordonnance

English renegades: their father Sir Richard was captain of Mantes, 1449

See text

Nicolas le
Normant

Conseiller/lt
of grand
sénéchal, see text

Vicomte of Domfront
1428, 1437-48, Pont-de-l’Arche 1448

DLN/13, 103;/4,
189

Jean le Prince

Maître d’hôtel. Jean le Prince le jeune was V
Bec Crespin.

Receveur des quatrièmes,
Rouen, 1442-49

BL, Add. Charters
144-45, 590, 12216,
11079, 12377,
12661; Add. ms.
11509, 101v°; BNF,
PO 2604 de Saenne
57942/2; fr
26428/17,60.

Figure 6. Ex-Lancastrians in Brézé service

Name

Military service

Brézé service

Sources

Guillaume de
Bracquemont chevalier

Ordonnance
It 1464-65

Auditeur des comptes
1463

ADSM 1ER 1596

Pierre le
Bouteiller

It of Rouen garrison; with
Brézé at
Montlhéry

Sénéchal’s lt at Rouen
1459, 1461

AC Rouen A8, 190v°;
Échiquier 1459, 99: Rouen
1 Oct. 1466.

Guy de
Briouze

Rouen garrison

See text

BN, PO 879 Coulombieres
19793/6; ADSM 1ER
1590, 1596 Comptes du
Bec-Crespin 1461 -62

Jean Gouel

Procureur general
1455-60

ADSM 1ER 1596
Comptes du Bec-Crespin,
1455-56; ADEL C 68, dossier 1459-60;

Colinet de
Longchamps

Grande ordonnance

Mentioned in estates accounts

ADSM 1ER 1590, 1595-96,
Comptes du Bec-Crespin, 1455-64; 1ER
1645, dossier Romé du
Bec, plaids 1449-65.

Jacques dit
Coppin de
Nedoucel

Flocquet’s
Grande ordonnance

Mentioned in estate accounts

ADSM 1ER 1590, 1595-
1596, Comptes du Bec-Crespin, 1455-64; 1ER
1645, dossier Romé du
Bec, plaids 1449-65.

Nicolas le
Normant

Auditeur des comptes
1455-6, for Jeanne
Crespin 1469-70

ADSM 1ER 1590, 1595,
1596 Comptes du Bec-Crespin, 1466-67, 1455-56

Jean le Prince

Rouen garrison

Maître d’hôtel; LGB
Gisors

DLN/18, 37; Rouen 18 Feb.
1451/52

Jean Ravel

Mantes garrison
1452; Rouen garrison
1455-61

Mentioned in estate accounts 1450s. Jeanne
Crespin’s maître d’hôtel 1462

ADSM 1596, Comptes du
Bec Crespin (1461-62) sub “Deniers paiez”;
AC Mantes BB5/87v

Jean de
Saâne chevalier

Grande ordonnance

Procureur général of
Jeanne Crespin, 1467-
1471

ADSM 1ER 1595,
Comptes du Bec-Crespin,
1466-67

Pierre de
Vieuxchatêl

Rouen garrison;
Northumbrian expedition
1462

Maître d’hôtel 1451; It
grande sénéchaussée
1450s; Witnessed marriage contract of
Brézé’s daughter to
Jean de Vendôme
1459; gentilhomme de
M. de Maulévrier 1463

AC Mantes BB5/95;
ADELE 161. BNF, PO
2990 de Vieuxchatel
66413/4. PO 91 Argouges
1892/179.

Figure 7. Brézé servants and witnesses to his private acts in his ordonnance companies

  • 74 The Bastard and Guillemette: Tabellionage de Rouen 28 juin 1454, 9 juillet, 9 août and 10 septembre (...)

Figure 8. A social network in the Brézé affinity74

Notes

1 P. Contamine, Guerre, État et société à la fin du Moyen Âge: études sur les armées des rois de France, 1337-1494, Paris, 1972, p. 442sq.

2 M. Greengrass, “Noble Affinities in Early Modern France: the Case of Henri I de Montmorency, Constable of France”, European History Quarterly, 16 (1986), p. 277.

3 “Hommes d’armes in Brézé musters are tabulated” in G. Prosser, After the Reduction: Re-structuring Norman Political Society between the Reduction and the Bien Public, Unpublished University of London PhD thesis, 1996, p. 261-68.

4 Papiers Dom Lenoir (AN, AB XIX 3106 to 3181, and in the Norman Archives départementales.) [Hereafter DLN], LXXV, 33.

5 DLN, IX, 314; XXIV, 101.

6 Probably Hardouin de Maillé-Brézé: Prosser, op. cit., p. 131-32; Mantes, Archives communales, BB 5, 152.

7 For le Beauvoisien see Contamine, op. cit., p. 598-99. He was a cadet of the Norman barons of Courtômer.

8 Captain of Meulan during the Bien Public, then of Amboise 1465-68: Gallia Regia ou État des oƒƒiciers royaux des bailliages et des sénéchaussées de 1328 à 1515, Paris, 1942-1961 [Hereafter GR], 15058, 507. He should not be confused with a Parlementaire homonyme. Brézé’s man was écuyer then chevalier, son of Jean Lhuillier with whom he was associated in the captaincy of Corbeil (1465): BNF, PO 574 Lhuillier 12539; GR, 16757, 16991; DLN, LXXV, 275; BNF, ms. fr. 6972, f° lv°; B. Mandrot, “Jacques d’Armagnac duc de Nemours (1433-1477)”, Revue historique, 43 (1890), p. 274-316,44 (1890), p. 280; P.-M. Perret, Notice biographique sur Louis Malet de Graville Amiral de France (144?-1516), Paris, 1889, p. 31; C. Guéry, “Les Seigneurs de Bosnormand en Roumois”, Revue Catholique de Normandie, 20 (1921), p. 71, 80 sq.

9 A. Du Chesne, Histoire de la maison de Dreux, Paris, 1631, p. 168 sq.; BNF, ms. fr. 20401, f°. 6, 7.

10 Tabellionage de Rouen, 17 May 1454, 7 September 1460, 24 February 1454/55, ler March 1454/55, 15 January 1456/57, 13 August 1456, 29 May 1456, 30 November 1463, 31 December 1462.

11 Prosser, op. cit., p. 392-93.

12 Tabellionage de Rouen, 3 May 1452, 10 July 1454. Rouen, Archives communales, A8, Registre des Deliberations, f° 190v°, 237-237v°.

13 G.-A. de La Roque, Histoire généalogique de la maison de Harcourt, enrichie d’un grand nombre d’armoiries… justifiée par plusieurs chartes de diverses églises, Paris, 1662, t. 2, p. 1568 sq., BNF, ms. fr. 26267, n° 429. Le Père Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, grands officiers de la couronne et de la maison du roy, Paris, 1726- 1733, vii, 818. Enguerrand de Monstrelet, La Chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet en deux livres avec pieces justificatives, 1400-1444 publiée pour la Société de l’Histoire de France. L. Douët-d’Arcq ed., Paris, 1857-1862 t. 3, p. 72; t. 4, p. 196; t. 5, p. 117. P. Le Cacheux, Rouen au temps de Jeanne d’Arc et pendant I’occupation anglaise (1419-49), Rouen, 1931, t. 2, p. 372, 335.

14 Charles was the husband of Anne des Essars, kinswoman to Desmarestz’s wife, Marie, sister of Cardin seigneur des Essars and Guyot des Essars écuyer seigneur de Croismare. In 1451 the three siblings were godparents of Charles’s son Richard: DLN, xi, 267.

15 Tabellionage de Rouen 29 may 1451; Prosser, op. cit., p. 406; Blondel, Œuvres, A. Héron ed., Rouen, 1891-93, p. 129, 324; Le Héraut Berry, Chronicques du Roi Charles VII par Gilles le Bouvier dit le Héraut Berry, Paris, 1979, p. 310-11; GR, 22527, 17139. See also R. Massey, The Lancastrian Land Settlement in Normandy and Northern France, 1417-50, Unpublished University of Liverpool PhD. thesis, 1987, p. 81-82, 121.

16 DLN, XXV, 101; II, 237.

17 Guy’s father John Affourd was a minor Lancastrian captain: BNF, PO 11 Affourde 279, 2-4. He held Briouze by 1427. Isabel died c.1445. For the wardship and souƒƒrances of homage: ibid. p. 5-9; DLN, VIII, 377; iv, 205.

18 BNF, ms. lat. 9869, f° 14; AN, K168, f° 96; cf. DLN, I, 446. Guy’s sister Margaret remained in Normandy and her husband fought Bureau’s grant in her right: Tabellionage de Rouen, 3 April 1461; Échiquier, 1454, 109; Prosser, op. cit., p. 338-9.

19 AD Seine-Maritime, Fonds d’Anquin, c IV, 44; AD Ome, 2 E 20/1 baronnie de Briouze, Inventaire des titres; 2 E 20/7 dossier contrals entre particuliers. Tabellionage de Rouen 29 January 1458-59.

20 Tabellionage de Rouen, 9 September 1462, 24 May 1463, 29 October 1463; AD Seine-Maritime, 1ER 1590; Échiquier, 1466, 62; AD Eure-et-Loir, E 161.

21 BL Additional ms. 11509 f° 42v°, 62v°-66.

22 BNF, PO 2599 de Saane 57815, 4-19; DLN, IV, 295; Beaucourt, Charles VII, t. 5, 15.

23 DLN, IX, 318; BNF, PO 2599 de Saane 57815, 16; Tabellionage de Rouen, 27 August 1456; DLN, IX, 318; BNF, PO 91 Argouges 1892, 179.

24 DLN, Ixxv, 37.

25 Prosser, op. cit., p. 411.

26 Tabellionage de Rouen 11 October 1466; DLN, IX, 318.

27 Tabellionage de Rouen, 9 September 1462.

28 Prosser, op. cit., p. 411. His son Thibault (d. c.1470) married Jeanne de Brézé (presumed a bastard): DLN, XI, 359 (1496 inquest into the wardship of the couple’s son. The boy was named for his godfather. Jacques de Brézé).

29 Prosser, op. cit., p. 147-48, 351-52.

30 On his death Brézé left 72 beds in the château: Tabellionage de Rouen, 31 December 1465.

31 Jean le Prince left Rouen for Les Andelys, selling his Rouen property: Tabellionage de Rouen, 30 April 1462.

32 Tabellionage de Rouen, 20 June 1454, 16 June 1456, 31 October 1456, 13 March 1457-58.

33 Tabellionage de Rouen, 29 May 1451,25 June 1452, 2 June, 20 June, 8 December 1454.

34 Tabellionage de Rouen, 1er October 1466. The Boisyvon marriage link antedated the Lancastrian conquest: DLN, XIII, 269-73; Marguerite daughter of Jean le Bouteiller and Marie de Boisyvon recovered her parents’ lands near Caudebec from Lancastrian grantees before Michaelmas 1450.

35 On the Dresnay see GR, 21195; G. Du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, Paris, 1881-1890, t. 5 and 6, passim; B. de Mandrot ed., Dépêches des Ambassadeurs milanais en France sous Louis XI et François Sƒorza, Paris, 1916-1923, t. IV, p. 318; II, p. 63; J. Vaesen and É. Charavay eds., Lettres de Louis XI, roi de France, Paris, 1883-1909, t. V, p. 290.

36 DLN, LXXV, 125, Tabellionage de Rouen, 11 July 1454, 21 February 1454-55.

37 BNF, PO 2437, Rat 54785, 5; AD Seine-Maritime, 1 B 5548 doss. 1470-1526; Tabellionage de Rouen, 10, 12 June 1463; V. Hunger, “Le Siège et la prise de Vire par Charles VII en 1450”, Annales de Normandie, 21 (1971), p. 111.

38 DLN, XVIII, 37; Tabellionage de Rouen 18 février 1451-52. He held land in the bailliages of Rouen and Gisors (1440s), mustered the earl of Shrewsbury’s troops (1442); and held related Rouen receiverships (1442-49): DLN, IV, 165, 181; BNF, ms. fr. 26427, f° 174, 179; BL Additional Charters 144-45, 590, 12216, 11079, 12377, 12661; Additional ms. 11509, f° 101v°; BNF, PO 2604 de Saenne 57942, 2; ms. fr. 26428, f°. 17, 60.

39 AD Seine-Maritime, 1ER 1590, unnumbered cahier, 16th century extracts; 1ER 1590, 1595-96, Comptes du Bec-Crespin, 1455-64; 1ER 1645 dossier Romé du Bec, plaids 1449-65.

40 DLN, 1xxv, 157; BNF, PO 118 Auber en Normandie 2497, 21; Tabellionage de Rouen, 23 November 1458, 14 March 1461/1462, 3 August et 15 September 1463, 21 February et 11 March 1463/1464; DLN, xiv, 167 (1462). He lost the verderie soon after Michaelmas 1466: BNF, PO 118 Auber en Normandie 2497, 22. It was nominally a royal office, but rights in the forest were shared between king, count and other lords.

41 Pierre Houel and Jacques du Moucel were hommes d’armes in the 1450s. Guillot Houel was Brézé’s procureur for tolls at Nogent: AD Eure-et-Loire, C 68, dossier 1459-1460. Jean du Moucel dit Mouchellet was fermier du pasnage for 1467, and Sandret Houel was also an official: A. Roquelet and F. de Beaurepaire eds., La Vie de laƒorêt normande à la fin du Moyen Âge: le coutumier d’Hector de Chartres, Rouen, 1984-95, t. 1, p. 137. Échiquier, 1469, 99.

42 T. Nicolle, “L’Occupation de Jersey par les comtes de Maulévrier”, Bulletin de la Société Jersiaise, 45, (1920), p. 168-88: see also R. Lempriere, “Documents relatifs à l’occupation française, 1460-1467”, Bulletin de la Société Jersiaise, 49 (1924), p. 102 sq.: other officers included André de Vieuxchâtel, marshal of the château; Pierre Nyvellet, receveur général, Guillaume Carbonnel, chevalier, Sourdeval’s lieutenant général at the château.

43 BNF, PO 509 Brézé 11513, 48.

44 Tabellionage de Rouen, 5, 7 October 1462: Antoine Crespin witnessed the contracts. Brézé ceded his wife 300 livres rent, with more to come. The sale was a disguised credit transaction with the lands as security, but in the event they remained in the hands of the Patriarch, and were bequeathed by him to his nephew Louis Havart.

45 They notarised a succession settlement: Tabellionage de Rouen, 17 September 1462.

46 Le Bouteiller foreclosed on the sequestrated fief. Brézé and his wife registered their prior claim, which brought procedural advantages and intensified pressure on the Leschamps. Ultimately, Brézé bought out their rights for 500 ecus: Tabellionage de Rouen, 1e December 1458.

47 Échiquier 1462, 229v°; Tabellionage de Rouen, 19 April 1461.

48 Tabellionage de Rouen, 18 January 1456-57, 19 July 1456; Prosser, op. cit., p. 145.

49 Tabellionage de Rouen, 7 July 1456.

50 Tabellionage de Rouen, 13 July 1461.

51 Tabellionage de Rouen, 13 May 1463.

52 BNF, PO 91 Argouges 1892, 179.

53 Hozier’s genealogies are unreliable. La Roque believed that the family divided in the generation around 1400 into the lineages of Brevans, Chassegay, Canisy and Heuqueville (perhaps recte Naqueville). This is plausible but the lines subsequently intermarried to the confusion of historians: La Roque, op. cit., t. 2, p. 1258.

54 DLN, III, 360, 182, 204; XXVI, 93. Caries is the sobriquet of Richard Carbonnel écuyer seigneur de Barneville and Mesnil-Auber: La Roque, op. cit., t. 1, p. 114.

55 DLN, III, 302; BNF, PO 594 Carbonnel 13863, n° 2; DLN, ix, 250.

56 DLN, IV, 207, 223. C. T. Allmand and C. A. J. Armstrong eds., English suits before the Parlement of Paris, London, 1982, p. 103-108. DLN, IX, 86; IV, 161 and 197 (souƒƒrances of homage etc., 1445-47). Échiquier 1453, 38, 179, and especially 122; 1454, 146. Numerous family members were litigating at the 1448 Échiquier: Prosser, op. cit., p. 153.

57 Échiquier 1462, 231; 1463, 228; AD Seine-Maritime, IB 38, Registre des Appointements (1463), 2 and, 9v°. La Roque, op. cit., t. 1, p. 114. The inference depends on the hypothesis that the litigious fief was don de mariage of Jeanne Carbonnel, widow of Jean Carbonnel chevalier, who was summoned to guarantee an earlier sale. Cérences assumed her obligations as eldest heir of her side of the family, making him her nephew by a late brother. Sourdeval was perhaps her brother and Cérences’ uncle. Her sons Guillaume and Jean were also involved: DLN, XI, 287; VI, 87.

58 Histoire de Gaston IV, comte de Foix, par Guillaume Leseur, chronique médiévale du xve siecle, ed. H. Courteault, Paris, 1893, t. 2, p. 198; C. de Mérindol, Les fêtes de chevalerie à la cour du roi René, Paris, 1993, p. 138; BNF, PO 594 Carbonnel 13863, 26, 27, 28; DLN, XXIV, 93. DLN, XXIV, 441; BNF, ms. nouv. acq. fr. 8607, 53; ms. fr. 21496, 85, 94, 109; Clairambault 234, 81. Charles VII ratified the exchange (March 1452): DLN, XXV, 93.

59 BNF, PO 1167 de Floques 26583, 14; A. Plaisse, Un Chef de guerre du xve siecle, Robert de Flocques, bailli royal d’Évreux, Évreux, 1984, p. 37-38, 50 sq.

60 Plaisse, Robert de Flocques, p. 73, 87-9. Ibid., p. 113 sq. and sources there cited on the conquest of the Évrecin. It was determined by the clearance of remaining Lancastrian strongholds in the Île-de-France.

61 DLN, XXV, 75.

62 For their bargain with Thomassin le Mareschal, Lancastrian élu of Évreux and “un des principaulx moyens” of their entry, at risk of his life and great expense, see DLN, XXV, 77.

63 Plaisse, Robert de Flocques, p. 116. The comital title implied enjoyment of the demesne, which Plaisse believed worthless. Flocquet received the proceeds of taxes imposed for the upkeep of the walls: A. Plaisse, La Vie municipale à Évreux pendant la guerre de Cent ans, Évreux, 1978, p. 145, 272-74. Brézé ceded Flocquet other revenues and his rights in a royal debt of 1,200 écus in 1450; BNF, PO 1167 de Floques 26583, nos 32-34. DLN, XXV, 75; AN, JJ 200, n° 129 (Louis XI’s confirmation of their 1445 provisions in May 1467, printed Ordonnances, XVI, 572-75). This was the background to Guillaume de Flocques’s vexed election as bishop of Évreux in 1443: Gallia Christiana, t. XI, col. 604.

64 Plaisse, Vie municipale, p. 136; Beaucourt, op. cit., t. 5, p. 17; Héraut Berry, p. 409.

65 Héraut Berry, p. 409; AD Eure-et-Loir, E 161 (4 novembre 1459).

66 Tabellionage de Rouen, 16 June 1456; 8 February 1456/1457; La Roque, op. cit., t. 1, p. 114.

67 BNF, PO 594 Carbonnel 13863, 34, 133. At Sandwich Guillaume Carbonnel shared command of the Admiral’s men with Guillaume du Périer. Héraut Berry, p. 407, 409. The Sourdeval and Bueil companies are tabulated in Prosser, op. cit., p. 267-8, 287-90.

68 For biographical notices and references, see Prosser, op. cit., p. 309-10, 439-41, 435-6, 398.

69 Tabellionage de Rouen, 5, 7 October 1462.

70 The Brézé and Carbonnel remained allied into the 16th century: Jacques Carbonnel de Cérences was ensign of the cent gentilhommes de l’hôtel du roi under Louis de Brézé in 1510: BNF, ms. nouv. acq. fr. 21838, 668, citing Clairambault titres scellées 145, 3201.

71 M. Hicks, Bastard Feudalism, London 1995, p. 43-68; J. M. W. Bean, From Lord to Patron. Lordship in Late Medieval England, Manchester; 1989, p. 10-33 and passim; G. Prosser, ‘ “Decayed Feudalism’ and ‘Royal Clientèles’: Royal Office and Magnate Service in the Fifteenth Century”, C. T. Allmand ed., War, Government and Power in Late Medieval France, Liverpool, 2000, p. 174-189.

72 S. Carroll, “The Guise Affinity During the Wars of Religion”, French History, 9 (1995), p. 53-88.

73 For Brézé lands as they existed in the 1470s and 1480s, see L. Douet d’Arcq, “Procès criminel intenté contre Jacques de Brézé grand sénéchal de Normandie au sujet du meurtre de sa femme”, Bibliothéque de l’École des Charles, 5 (1848).

74 The Bastard and Guillemette: Tabellionage de Rouen 28 juin 1454, 9 juillet, 9 août and 10 septembre 1464; Échiquier 1469, 99-103. Valens: Tabellionage de Rouen 4 mai, 6 juin 1463, 9 juillet 1464; H. de Frondeville, Les Conseillers du Parlement de Normandie au xvie siècle (1499-1594) (Rouen/Paris, 1960), p. 36; Échiquier 1464, 45v°. The Houel: DLN XXV, 141; XIII, 265; Mancel CCCIV (1) sub 29 Sep. 1454; ADEL C 68 dossier 1459-60. Bosseau and Pinguet: Tabellionage de Rouen, 24 décembre 1456.

Table des illustrations

Légende Figure 1. Brézé lands and office
URL http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/74754/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 68k
Légende Figure 8. A social network in the Brézé affinity74
URL http://books.openedition.org/psorbonne/docannexe/image/74754/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 50k

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Research Associate, VICODI Project, University of Newcastleupon-Tyne.

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