Sir Thomas Erpingham (27 June 1428) was an English soldier and administrator who loyally served three generations of the House of Lancaster, including Henry IV and Henry V, and whose military career spanned four decades. After the Lancastrian usurpation of the English throne in 1399, his career in their service was transformed as he rose to national prominence, and through his access to royal patronage he acquired great wealth and influence.
Erpingham was born in the English county of Norfolk, and knighted when a young man. During the reign of Richard II he served under the King's uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, in Spain and Scotland, and was with Gaunt's son Henry Bolingbroke on crusades in Lithuania, Prussia and the Holy Land. Erpingham accompanied Bolingbroke into exile in October 1398, and was with him when he landed at Ravenspur in July 1399 to reclaim his inheritance as Duke of Lancaster, after his lands had been forfeited by Richard. Bolingbroke rewarded Erpingham by appointing him as constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports, and after ascending the throne as Henry IV he made him chamberlain of the royal household. Erpingham later helped to suppress the Epiphany Rising and was appointed guardian of Henry's second son Thomas. He was a member of the Privy Council, acting at one point as marshal of England. He attempted to have Henry le Despenser, the anti-Lancastrian bishop of Norwich, impeached as a rebel.
On becoming king in 1413, Henry IV's son Henry of Monmouth appointed Erpingham as steward of the royal household. Henry IV's reign had been marked by lawlessness, but Henry V and his administrators proved to be unusually talented, and within twelve months law and order had been re-established throughout England. In 1415 Erpingham was indentured to serve as a knight banneret, and joined Henry's campaign to recover his lost ancestral lands in France and Normandy. Erpingham presided over the surrender of Harfleur. On 25 October 1415, he commanded the archers in the Battle of Agincourt, where he was positioned alongside the king.
Erpingham married twice, but both marriages were childless. He was a benefactor to the city of Norwich, where he had built the main cathedral gate which bears his name. He died on 27 June 1428, and was buried in Norwich Cathedral.
Ancestry and early life
Thomas Erpingham was born in about 1357, the son of Sir John de Erpingham His grandfather, Sir Robert de Erpingham was recorded as holding Erpingham manor in 1316 and Erpingham and Wickmere in 1346. Sir Robert represented Norfolk in Parliaments during the 1330s and 1340s. In 1350, Sir Robert and his son Sir John de Erpingham both witnessed a deed of feoffment by Nicholas de Snyterle, rector of "Matelask" (Matlaske near Erpingham), to Philip Tynker and Maud his wife of a messuage there.
Sir John owned a house in Norwich in Conisford Lane, now King Street. Thomas, who would have known the house, was possibly born there. The identity of Erpingham's mother is not mentioned by his biographers. In September 1368 he may have travelled with his father to Aquitaine in the service of Edward the Black Prince.
His grandfather died in 1370, after 8 March but before 1 August, the date of death of the father of Thomas. On 8 March 1370 at Erpingham, Sir Robert de Erpingham and his son Sir John, both signed their names and left seals on a charter of an inescutcheon between eight martlets. In his will, Robert left legacies to all the friars of Norwich. He was buried near the south door of Erpingham church.
Revolution of 1399
The historian Helen Castor has described the Lancastrian presence in East Anglia as a "disparate collection” that lacked coherence or a single identity. Erpingham rose to become the most important of Lancaster's retainers in the region. He was appointed to a commission of peace, and given powers to preserve order in Norfolk in the aftermath of the Peasants' Revolt in the summer of 1381. He had a part in supervising the defence of Norfolk in 1385, when a French invasion seemed imminent. In 1396 Lancaster granted him the legal right to use the land within the hundred of South Erpingham, a reward for his loyal service to the Duchy of Lancaster.
thumb|alt=illustration of the 1398 trial by combat |[[Richard II stops the trial by battle between Henry, Duke of Hereford and the Duke of Norfolk (The Chronicle of England (1864))]]
In January 1398 a dispute erupted between Bolingbroke and Thomas de Mowbray, 1st Duke of Norfolk, after Mowbray had attempted to ambush and kill Lancaster, and which the King ordered be settled by a trial by battle between the two men. During the five months before 16 September, the day the trial was due to take place, Bolingbroke travelled throughout England on a tour of the Lancastrian lands. Richard stopped the contest as it was about to begin and banished Bolingbroke from the kingdom for ten years, and exiled Mowbray for life. Those assembled were told that the trial had been stopped to avoid dishonouring the loser and to prevent a feud from arising, but chroniclers (writing after Henry IV's accession) considered Richard's decision an act of revenge. Bolingbroke, as one of the five Lords Appellant, had rebelled in November 1387; for a year they maintained Richard as a figurehead with little actual power.
Erpingham was one of 17 named companions who volunteered to accompany Henry Bolingbroke into exile. He entrusted his lands and property to Sir Robert Berney and others.