Bonville–Courtenay feud
The Bonville–Courtenay feud of 1455 engendered a series of raids, sieges, and attacks between two major Devon families, the Courtenays and the Bonvilles, in south west England, in the mid-fifteenth century.
Although in the short term it resulted in Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon's, incarceration, the Bonville–Courtenay feud did not come to an effective end until the protagonists were all killed in the early years of the civil wars.
[3] In 1966, historian R. L. Storey suggested that the civil wars which racked England for much of the fifteenth century had their origins in the breakdown of both the king's ability to govern, and law and order in the localities, and gave the Courtenay–Bonville feud as one such example.
On 22 May 1455, at the First Battle of St Albans they captured the king and retook their places in government, while York's and the Nevilles' rivals, the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Northumberland, and Lord Clifford were killed.
[12] Professor Ralph A. Griffiths places the fault for the feud between the Courtenays and Bonvilles firmly in the lap of King Henry VI, through whose "thoughtless liberality and government carelessness ... personal jealousies in the west country had been exacerbated.
"[13] However, more recently, Martin Cherry warned against seeing the feud as the same as the later civil wars writ small; they were, he says, "qualitatively" different, resulting in the ultimate disintegration of the earl's affinity, rather than symptomatic of his violence.
[15] Cherry has also suggested that the main cause of the Bonville–Courtenay dispute was the desperation of the earl to "gain access to crown patronage for himself and his clients" – something he was gradually failing to do in the face of competition.
[17] Although the earl was both the greatest landowner and the highest ranking nobleman in the county, he had in recent years seen members of the lesser gentry and nobility (such as William Bonville) receive advancement in his stead.
[18] Bonville had also furthered his own advancement by successively marrying into the lower nobility (a daughter of the Lord Grey of Ruthin) and then to an aunt of the Earl of Devon himself.
[20] In 1441 the stewardship was returned to the Earl of Devon, although Radford questions whether Bonville actually ever physically surrendered the office, as in November that year an arbitration took place between them to "end all [of their] differences.
"[17] There followed a four-year period of peace; but this could simply be accounted for by the fact that Bonville spent that time in service in Gascony, which, it has been suggested, may have been one of the conditions of the arbitration.
[20] It was, though, only a temporary peace for the region as by 1449 the earl besieged Bonville (now promoted to the baronage in recognition of his success in France)[21] in his castle of Taunton for a year.
This treason resulted in him forfeiting his royal offices in the south west, including not only the stewardship of the duchy – which was finally granted to Bonville for life – but Lydford Castle, the Forest of Dartmoor, and the Water of Exe.
This time, the Earl of Devon was accompanied by his sons, and, bringing a force of men into Exeter in April 1455, he attempted to ambush Bonville.
[26] From October 1455, Devon and his sons were committing acts of social disorder, seemingly intending to disrupt the administrative machinery of the county (of which Bonville, of course, was a part), for instance by preventing the local justices of the peace from holding quarterly sessions by force; they then proceeded to raise a small army at Tiverton under the leadership of Devon's eldest son, Thomas Courtenay.
[30] Devon subsequently dispatched a force to the chapel where Radford's body was; they performed, says Storey, a "mock inquest, one of them acting as coroner and others, with assumed names, as jurors.
"[30] They then forced Radford's servants to convey his corpse as if he had been a heretic to the graveyard, where it was deposited unceremoniously into an open grave; the stones laid ready to build his memorial were then dropped on the body, crushing it.
[33] Martin Cherry has pointed to the lack of references to any martial expenses on the earl's behalf in the extant accounts, as indicating that his campaign effectively paid for itself.
Although difficult to assess the extent to which the engagement can be described as a battle (one chronicler estimated the dead at twelve men)[38] it does appear to have been decisive in Devon's favour.
[41] The weeks preceding the battle had been accompanied by what has been called "exchange[s] of formal declarations of war disguised in the chivalric mode of challenges to a duel.
This could have been, he suggests, indicative of York's "waning" position, as the protectorate was soon to come to an end:[51] Cherry has said that the king's resumption of personal power in February 1456 must have come as "a considerable relief" to the earl.
[52] He seems to have taken the Yorkists' eclipse as a further opportunity to continue the feud, which provoked governmental admonishment in March, when his son John Courtenay, with 500 armed men, again prevented the Exeter justices of the peace from sitting, and evicted them.
[53] Although Bonville presented a long list of offences committed by Devon to the council (whilst mitigating his own involvement), the crown "was obviously unimpressed" by this, and eventually not only restored Devon to commission of the peace (12 September 1456) but also pardoned him and his sons for any involvement in the murder of Radford, eventually even appointing him to the lucrative office of keeper of the forest and park of Clarendon.
[52] The region subsequently remained quiet; Bonville was of advanced age and Devon was possibly unwell, as he died in Abingdon within eighteen months.
