To be a household knight under Edward III was, with few exceptions, to be a soldier. Individuals such as Walter Mauny, whose military career began at Dupplin Moor in 1332 and lasted well into the 1360s, and Reginald Cobham, who distinguished himself during the opening years of the Hundred Years War, are synonymous with Edward's wars, and each was a household knight for more than a decade. Establishing a link between household knights and military service is not revelatory: Michael Prestwich first cemented the prominence of household knights in late thirteenth-century warfare some forty years ago. Nevertheless, there remains a great deal as yet unknown about the military role of household knights in the fourteenth century. The so-called ‘infantry revolution’ that took place in military tactics during the first half of the fourteenth century means that many of Prestwich's conclusions need reassessing for this later period. The decline of the mass cavalry charge on the battlefield (broadly speaking) – an area in which Prestwich saw Edward I's household knights as dominant – forced household knights, and the English knighthood more widely, to reinvent themselves in order to remain relevant to military campaigning. This saw their involvement in the increasingly frequent chevauchées of Edward III's reign – swift raids designed to cause localised destruction and incite an opposing army into pitched battle – grow markedly. It is the purpose of this chapter to examine what impact these developments had on the place of household knights in fourteenth-century warfare, assessing in turn the role that household knights played in leading troops as part of royal campaigns, in set-piece battles, and the reputation that their actions in these areas won them.

On Campaign

Service on military campaign was expected of all Edward's household knights. For the Roxburgh campaign of 1334–1335, only William Clinton, who was serving on an embassy to France, Thomas Lucy, and William Frank were not present with the army, out of a total of forty-five household knights. For the offensive of 1335, meanwhile, only two household knights were missing: Giles Beauchamp and Thomas Ros. Such a high turnout can be seen right across Edward's reign. Prior to the emergence of the chamber knights in the 1360s, roughly 95 per cent of Edward's household knights accompanied him on any given campaign. This is not to say there were not instances in which household knights were prevented from campaigning with the king.