Tell me about nobility

[Varamyrr]

Greetings,

As history is such an excellent source for fantasy I decided to delve deeper into European/Asian history. However something is not entirely clear to me.
At a certain point, the English king loses 'his' army and the English lords gain massive power. The actual power a king has is determined by the amount of nobles that support his cause. What I don't get is how this situation got established.

Secondly, suppose I was a lord in the high middle ages. How does my household look like? Do I also have some sort of advisor, like a king has? Is it much different than a kings household? Why would a king invite somebody to join his court?

Thx in advance!
Vara

 

[Anders Ämting]

Well, if you are a ruler and wish to command a strong army, there are different ways to approach it. There's always conscripts, or you can establish a standing professional army like the Romans did. If you have enough money to spend, you can rely on mercenaries. Then there's the feudal system.

Feudalism is based on the idea of fiefdom - the king makes the noble a vassal and then grants him land (or fief). The noble in turn lets peasants live on the land and work it. Besides paying taxes, fiefdom also came with the promise of military support. That is to say, the peasants pledged to join the nobleman's forces in times of war, and the nobleman in turn pledged to add those forces to those of the king. In certain systems, like the Japanese, a vassal's wealth was directly measured in how much food his land could produce, and thereby how many soldiers he could maintain.

Feudalism was the European nobility got started. (And also arguable other societies with a "knight" class or equivalent, like Japan.) Originally, the knights weren't a social class but basically anyone who could afford a war horse and armor. Since heavy cavalry played a very important part in wars, the monarch would reward these knights to secure their service. Eventually the system became more formal and turned into a more complex system of titles and ranks.

The obvious downside of this is of course that if a majority of the nobles didn't agree with the king, they would have enough economical and military power to depose him. That's why loyalty to the crown was considered a cardinal virtue of chivalry, but also why legitimacy was so important for medieval rulers, and why they liked to claim they were appointed by God. That wasn't just them boasting; it meant their rule was approved by the Pope, who was quite literally considered God's voice on Earth. Rebelling against the king was one thing, but nobody wanted to mess with the Church. Which is not to say that the nobles switching the king out for someone they liked better didn't happen with some frequency.

Besides, the nobility could still amass enough power to undermine the king's authority in an economical sense. There was this one Swedish noble named Bo Jonsson Grip, who essentially owned something like a quarter of Sweden and all of Finland. Just imagine being the king and having to deal with an underling who's way richer than you and who's fiefdom is large enough to constitute a nation in itself.

 

[Butterfly]

I believe that Oliver Cromwell and parliament's New Model Army established in 1645 had something to do with reducing the power of the royals. As a first, it was the first army to promote the most capable soldier to rank rather than base position on nobility. Apparently that's what made them more effective in battle. They went around tearing down castles and bastions of royalist supporters during the English Civil War.

The New Model Army

The New Model Army

A new term I recently discovered in researching it - Harquebusier Armour- the armour they wore - http://www.royalarmouries.org/learn...h/great-hall-in-littlecote-house/harquebusier

 

[ThinkerX]

At a certain point, the English king loses 'his' army and the English lords gain massive power. The actual power a king has is determined by the amount of nobles that support his cause. What I don't get is how this situation got established.

Think 'bandit alliance' with the king as the head bandit.

Secondly, suppose I was a lord in the high middle ages. How does my household look like? Do I also have some sort of advisor, like a king has? Is it much different than a kings household? Why would a king invite somebody to join his court?

Chamberlain - the noblemans right hand man. He controls direct access to the lord, and can settle trivial disputes in the lords name.

Chancellor - the guy in charge of the bureaucracy - tax collectors, inspectors, heralds, that sort of thing. Possibly also in charge of the treasury.

Justice or Judge - oversees the courts, in charge of hunting down criminals.

Plus a top military officer and a spymaster (spying being endemic and essential in feudal society)

A court priest.

Inside the castle, you'd also be looking at a steward or castlan (possibly female) in charge of all the cooking and cleaning, a stablemaster, and assorted squires.

Most of these offices would still be present even with very small or impoverished estates.

One of my big gripes with a lot of contemporary fantasy is the castles and palaces tend to be way understaffed.

 

[Varamyrr]

I believe that Oliver Cromwell and parliament's New Model Army established in 1645 had something to do with reducing the power of the royals. As a first, it was the first army to promote the most capable soldier to rank rather than base position on nobility. Apparently that's what made them more effective in battle. They went around tearing down castles and bastions of royalist supporters during the English Civil War.

Don't shoot me if I'm wrong, but didn't the king of England 'lose' his power before Cromwell was born? The English nobles gained massive power before the war of the roses.

I'm seeing it this way, and I'm probably wrong... . The English were always subject to the king. But when I look at the time of Richard Lionheart for instance, I as a non-Brit see a unified army,subject only to the king of England. The soldiers followed their kings will, not the one of their direct liege lord. Later on, you see kings who actually need their lords. More support meant more men.

 

[Graylorne]

Richard I had a unified army, because he pawned everything he owned to pay for it. Don't forget he was far more than King of England. he was Duke of Normandy, Gascogne, Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Maine, etc. first, and King last. He had been fighting his whole life and never actually reigned anywhere.

His brother, King John, had to sign the Magna Carta, that took away some of the King's absolute power and gave it to the barons.

All Kings had to play the power game. No English or French King was enough of an absolute monarch to disregard his nobles. No English King 'had' his own army. William the Bastard hired mercenaries from all over Europe to become the Conqueror, and he had to talk fast and pay heavily to get his own Norman nobles with him. A King was to most high noblemen no more than first among equals, necessary as a co-ordinator and often as a pawn in their own powerplays. Kings that got their own way were men of character and craftiness, it never came easy.

 

[Shockley]

At a certain point, the English king loses 'his' army and the English lords gain massive power. The actual power a king has is determined by the amount of nobles that support his cause. What I don't get is how this situation got established.

This really depends on what point in time you're talking about, to be honest. I tend to see the history of England as three distinct phases: The nobles love power to the centralized monarch - the monarch loses power to the merchants and cities - the merchants and the cities lose power to the masses. For example:

- William the Conqueror was an incredibly powerful, centralized king. He also had some of the strongest nobles, especially with the DeClares and other incredibly powerful families. It was this nobility, of course, that went on to murder his son and suffer mininal repercussions.

- The War of the Roses is difficult to characterize as a war between powerful nobility because most of the figures were well above 'nobility.' These were the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of kings. At the conclusion of the war, Edward IV proved himself a master of controlling his nobles, as did Richard III and Henry VII. By the time Henry VIII came to the throne, there were no powerful nobles to really speak of and they never regained that authority.

- When Charles I got his head cut off, it wasn't by the nobility. Some were involved, of course, but it was primarily a move by Parliament, the gentry and the deeply religious.

- Kings like John didn't have powerful nobles - they themselves were weak. Had John been a better general and maintained his relationship with the Pope, the military and political situation would have been in his favor.

- The most powerful nobles were often the most constrained - the marcher lords. They had larger armies, but they were also the ones responsible for fighting the Welsh and the Scots. If they had marched their armies south/east, their own lands would have been overrun by marauders.