My lord Ferrers (5)

In early 1264 the tide of civil war rolled into the March. Lord Edward and his new ally, Prince Dafydd of Wales, set about trying to split the rebel barons in control of Gloucester and Worcester. 

Dafydd and William de la Zouche, Edward’s justiciary of Chester, led a raid into Staffordshire. This was meant to divert Robert de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, from joining the Montfortians camped at Gloucester.

They captured Robert’s castle at Chartley, burnt the town of Stone, and plundered churches. An attempt to storm Stafford was driven back - ‘repulsed thence by the barons’. 

Meanwhile Edward seized the Bohun castles of Hay and Huntingdon and gave them to his other ally on the March, Roger Mortimer. He then sped back to Gloucester and gained access to the castle by commandeering boats on the Severn.

He was about to attack the barons in the town, when word arrived of Robert’s approach. The diversion had failed, and the earl of Derby was now bringing his full power to bear.

Two chronicle accounts describe Edward’s terror: he was ‘exceedingly afraid’ of the size of the baronial host that now confronted him. According to Robert of Gloucester, he was afraid of Ferrers himself - ‘of no man was he more sore adread’. 

To get out of this fix, Edward proposed a truce. The baronial commander, Henry de Montfort, agreed despite the protests of his advisers. As soon as the rebel army was gone, Edward broke the truce, imprisoned many of the citizens and imposed a heavy ransom on the city. 

Robert was infuriated by Henry’s bungling - however, contrary to traditional accounts, he did not desert the Montfortian cause. A document in London’s Metropolitan Archives, discovered by Ian Stone in 2014, contains a copy of an oath of mutual aid sworn between prominent Montfortians and the commune of London in March 1264.

The oath lists Robert fourth on the list of baronial witnesses. Despite the devastation of his lands and castles in Staffordshire, he stayed true to the baronial confederacy. 

Source: Rebel without a Cause? Robert de Ferrers III and the Barons’ War in the Midlands, 1263–1265 by Luke Foddy.