1 - Clientelism and the Spheres of Power

Summary

I wuld ye were ware of large yeftes and rewardes gevyng, as othere folks avyse you to do; for though ye haue need thei wull not be right redy to help you of there owyn.

John Bygge, the newly elected mayor of Canterbury, travelled to London in the spring of 1473 to petition the king on behalf of his city for the recovery of £16 13s. 4d. Edward IV had initially remitted the sum of the fee farm rent back to the citizens, but his concession was withdrawn as punishment for the support Canterbury had lent to the Lancastrian restoration during the second phase of the Wars (1469–71). Although the Canterbury civic records note that Bygge was successful in his mission, the mayor incurred significant expenses to progress his suit through the staggering bureaucracy of late medieval government. Bygge paid every clerk, valet, and usher of the royal household ‘pro amicicia sua habenda’. The mayor’s experience of the royal court speaks to its nature as an influence market. Those on the outside paid for the perks and connections enjoyed by those on the inside. The prevalence of quid pro quo exchanges was not a new development and nor did the practice escape the attention of contemporary observers of the royal court. In the fourteenth century, the purchase of favour had evoked scorn in William Langland’s satirical allegory Piers Plowman. The poet decried the sale of access and outcomes by the king’s intimate associates in a scene involving Lady Meed receiving promises of aid from several courtiers prior to her examination by the king. They assure her that they ‘wol wise [advise] þe kyng and þi wey shape’ in exchange for rewards appropriate to each man’s rank. Despite the king’s awareness of such sales and his command to the constable to ‘attachen þo Tyrauntʒ Fettreþ [Falsnesse faste] for any kynnes ʒifts’, he is swayed to pardon Lady Meed at the solicitation of his courtiers.

In his examination of clientelism and its place within the medieval territorial state, Gunner Lind found that ‘the great lord often occupied at least two of three roles: control over land and income by allodial or feudal right, central office at court, and local office in the province’. The Yorkist power-brokers successfully utilised all three capacities to construct and maintain a following by which to elevate their own standing further.