Bastard feudalism as well as recruiting local gentry into their affinities. By offering money instead of land, lords could afford to retain more followers. In return for becoming retainers, the gentry would expect to rely on their lord's influence in local and national politics. This practice was known as "maintenance". The retainer might wear his lord's livery badge or the grander form, a livery collar, which could be very useful in a courtroom. Under a weak king, such as Henry VI (reigned 1422–1461 and 1470–1471), the rivalries of magnates might spill over from the courtroom to armed confrontations, thereby perverting justice. Since
Black Death in England to recover, since it disproportionately affected infants and young men. This was also the case with the next occurrence, in 1369, where the death rate was around 10−15 percent. Over the following decades the plague would return on a national or a regional level at intervals of five to 12 years, with gradually dwindling death tolls. Then, in the decades from 1430 to 1480, the disease returned in force. An outbreak in 1471 took as much as 10–15 percent of the population, while the death rate of the plague of 1479–80 could have been as high as 20 percent. From