ABSTRACT
Dr M. E. Aston, in her study of Thomas Arundel’s career up to 1397, has noted that his elder brother Earl Richard was honest to the point of tactlessness. The earl’s outspoken criticisms of the king’s government in the royal presence at Salisbury in 1384 and his pointed attack on Lancaster in the 1394 parliament were unsupported, at least publicly, by his fellow peers. Sir John had a dazzling if brief military career, which the earl probably hoped to emulate. In 1375 royal licence was received to alienate Sussex properties to endow the chantry and in his will the elder Earl Richard ordered endowments for six chaplains and three boys to serve the chapel in a tower of Arundel Castle. In 1377 and 1380, according to Walsingham, the inhabitants of Sussex blamed Arundel for failing to defend them against enemy raids.
