> In what world does the king have a rightful claim to the Despensers money? As a noble house, how do you think the Despensers got their money? It's patronage

> In what world does the king have a rightful claim to the Despensers money? As a noble house, how do you think the Despensers got their money? It's patronage all the way down, a monarch in the past granted land and title which the contemporaries inherited, and the contemporary monarch inherited the right to take stuff back if they ended up warring with him. It's gangster inasmuch as the royal state itself descended from warlordism, but the rules of the game would've been very clear to the Despensers and everyone else at the time. e: The more I think about this the funnier and more apt it is! I imagine you imagining the Despensers as laudable entrepeneurs who built their wealth up from scratch with nothing but their own ingenuity and toil, as if the power structure that let them own all their manors and extract rent from all their tenants simply sprang perfect and fully formed into being out of nowhere, with the king a totally uninvolved interloper. Just as, no doubt, the power structure that lets you earn your money sprang perfect and fully formed into being out of nowhere, with society and taxation a totally uninvolved interloper.