My lord Ferrers (Eight)

Despite suffering from agonising gout, Earl Robert de Ferrers launched one of the most aggressive baronial campaigns of 1264.

After Easter, he captured a string of royalist castles including Tickhill, Bolsover, and Alton.

The Annals of Chester claim Alton was destroyed. But the Croxden Chronicle says otherwise, stating that Ferrers garrisoned it instead—suggesting a deliberate strategic move, not mere devastation.

The Croxden chronicler praised him as:‘

A most energetic knight’ and ‘wise in counsel’: a striking contrast to the hostile portrait painted by William Rishanger, whose account has shaped much modern scholarship.

Ferrers’ campaign appears to have had a clear strategic aim: weaken royalist power in the West Midlands while moving to recover his lost stronghold of Chartley.

Remarkably, he did all this while suffering from gout severe enough for contemporaries to remark upon it. Medieval physicians treated gout with bloodletting—hardly an effective remedy.

Yet Ferrers remained an active commander in the field.

Attached: James Gilray’s famous depiction of gout as a fire-breathing demon devouring a man’s foot—a fitting image for the agony Ferrers likely endured while campaigning.