122 RENTS AND SERVICES
see that the men of Pentirik, who were villeins, were bound to
follow their lord to war when called upon.1 Again, in 1325, John
Beaucosin, the hayward of Littleport, was convicted by a jury in
the Bishop of Ely's court of having taken a bribe of two shillings
from one of the lord's villeins "by saying that he was elected to
serve the King in the parts of Scotland, and that for the said
sum he (John) would protect him against having to go there ",2
Many other cases could be quoted to uphold the view that the
serf was never certain that it might not be his fate to go to the
wars, although like most others he had little desire so to do.
But someone had to go: the King's needs were imperative, and
compulsion, whether to a greater or lesser degree, was applied.
In the first place it would have been very difficult for men to
withstand the pressure which their lord could bring to bear on
them if he so desired. We have seen how the custom of the manor
forced the men of Pentirik to march at their lord's call, and, on
many other manors, although this duty may not have been so
clearly defined, it was doubtless operative. Smyth, in his Lives
of the Berkeley Family, notes that the personal retinue of Lord
Thomas Berkeley touched 200 foot archers, and adds, "at this
time it is collected by the Musters that each great captain had for
the most part their own tenants with themselves".3 Again, the
cry of the widows of Painswick in Gloucestershire is suggestive.
They beseech their lord, Sir John Talbot, to hear their cry, for
when "he had been beyond the sea in the King's wars he had
sixteen men out of Painswick, of the which there were eleven
slain".4 As a result "since some of them were his bondmen they
had not only lost their husbands, but also their holdings".
Apart from manorial compulsion there was always the possi-
bility that the King's officers might insist on exercising the great
powers which their Commission gave to them. It is true that on
many occasions the King ordered his officers to explain his needs
to possible recruits in the "most loving and courteous manner ",5
and at times he even offered to grant foot soldiers "such gratuity
beyond their fixed wages when they come as shall content them
in reason".6 But behind all these fair words we constantly find
1 Inquis. Post Mortem, iv, 295. * Selden See. IV, 141.
8 Op. cit. in, 22.
4 S. Rudder, History of Gloucestershire, 594; cf. History of Painswick, 100.
6 Calendar of Close Rolls (1296-1302), 79. * Ibid. 372, 375.