CHAPTER XVII.

RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.

1377--1381.

LEADING DATES

Reign of Richard II., 1377-1399

Accession of Richard II 1377 The peasants' revolt 1381

1. =The First Years of Richard II. 1377--1378.=--"Woe to the land," quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of _Piers the Plowman_, "when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such dangers Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, however, took the lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control over the expenditure of the Crown.

2. =Wycliffe and the Great Schism. 1378--1381.=--In =1378= began the Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two. He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent forth a band of "poor priests," to preach the simple gospel which he found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on which their authority was based. In =1381= he declared his disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large numbers of his supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain, rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door.

3. =The Poll-taxes. 1379--1381.=--The disastrous war with France made fresh taxation unavoidable. In =1379= a poll-tax was imposed by Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 6_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._ required of a duke, to the groat or 4_d._, representing in those days at least the value of 4_s._ at the present day, required of the poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in =1380= exacted no less than three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried children above the age of fifteen. In =1381= a tiler of Dartford in Kent struck dead a collector who attempted to investigate his daughter's age in an indecent fashion. His neighbours took arms to protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and south of England rose in insurrection.

4. =The Peasants' Grievances.=--The peasants had other grievances besides the weight of taxation thrown on them by a Parliament in which they had no representatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to compel the acceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of Labourers (see p. 248), had attempted to help themselves in another way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been frequently commuted into a payment of money which had been its fair equivalent, but which, since the rise of wages consequent upon the Black Death, could not command anything like the amount of labour surrendered. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the old bodily service. The discontent which prevailed everywhere was fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry, had been thrown into prison. His favourite question was--

When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then a gentleman?

5. =The Peasants' Revolt. 1381.=--From one end of England to another the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the villeins' services were burnt, and lawyers and all others connected with the courts were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex 100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released John Ball from gaol and poured along the roads to London. They hoped to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey shore. Those who were with him, however, refused to allow him to land. The peasants had sympathisers in London itself, who allowed them to break into the city. Lancaster's palace of the Savoy and the houses of lawyers and officials were sacked and burnt. All the lawyers who could be found were murdered, and others who were not lawyers shared their fate. The mob broke into the Tower, and beheaded Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had, as Chancellor, proposed the obnoxious taxes to Parliament.

6. =The Suppression of the Revolt.=--The boy-king met the mob at Mile-End, and promised to abolish villeinage in England. Charters of manumission were drawn out and sealed, and a great part of the insurgents returned contentedly home. About 30,000, however, remained behind. When Richard came amongst them at Smithfield, Wat Tyler threatened him, and Walworth, the Mayor of London, slew Wat Tyler with his dagger. A shout for vengeance was raised. With astonishing presence of mind Richard rode forward. "I am your king," he said; "I will be your leader." His boldness inspired the insurgents with confidence, and caused them to desist from their threats and to return to their homes. In the country the gentry, encouraged by the failure of the insurgents in London, recovered their courage. The insurrection was everywhere vigorously suppressed. Richard ordered the payment of all services due, and revoked the charters he had granted. The judges on their circuits hanged the ringleaders without mercy. When Parliament met it directed that the charters of manumission should be cancelled. Lords and Commons alike stood up for the rich against the poor, and the boy-king was powerless to resist them, and it is possible that he did not wish to do so.

7. =Results of the Peasants' Revolt.=--The revolt of the peasants strengthened the conservative spirit in the country. The villeinage into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure long, because service unwillingly rendered is too expensive to be maintained. Men were, however, no longer in a mood to listen to reformers. Great noblemen, whose right to the services of their villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great churchmen. The propertied classes, lay and clerical, instinctively saw that they must hang together. Wycliffe's attack on transubstantiation finding little response, he was obliged to retire to his parsonage at Lutterworth, where he laboured with his pen till his death in =1384=. His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards,[22] were, however, for some time still popular amongst the poorer classes.

[Footnote 22: The name is said to have been derived from a low German word, _lollen_, to sing, from their habit of singing, but their clerical opponents derived it from the Latin _lolium_ (tares), as if they were the tares in the midst of the wheat which remained constant to the Church.]

8. =Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'=--A combination between the great nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too diversified, and each separate portion of it was too closely linked to the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannise over the others for any long time. What that society was like is best seen in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Chaucer was in many ways the exact opposite of Langland, and was the precursor of modern literature as Wycliffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly purity and devotion, are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald tales; still, coarse and ribald as some of his narratives are, Chaucer never attempts to make vice attractive. He takes it rather as a matter of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations.

9. =The Prologue of the 'Canterbury Tales.'=--Whilst, however, there is not one of the _Canterbury Tales_ which fails to bring vividly before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day, it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and women of various classes are there represented as riding together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the reeve, who was himself a person in authority, the mere cultivator of the soil being excluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of society is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and the reeve, whilst the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose only object is to make a gain of godliness.

10. =Chaucer and the Clergy.=--In his representation of the clergy, Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely official clergy. His "poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for all helpers and teachers. The parson is regardless of his own comfort, ever ready to toil with mind and body for his parishioners, and, above all, resolved to set them an example, knowing

That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo? For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste, No wondur is a lewid man to ruste.[23]

[Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these faults?]

The final character given to him is:--

A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. He waytud after no pompe ne reverence, Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24] But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve.

[Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is none.]

[Footnote 25: Followed.]

The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints, if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest widow. He would not, he said, work with his hands like the apostles. He wanted to have money, wool, cheese, and wheat at other people's expense. Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently much room for a reformer.

11. =Roads and Bridges.=--Such men as these latter did not go on pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge, had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in =1176=--in the reign of Henry II.--by a priest, Peter Colechurch, who obtained gifts for the purpose from notable people of all kinds. It was completed in =1209=, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open.

12. =Modes of Conveyance.=--In spite of these precautions, roads were often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot travelled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendour, as this way of travelling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in existence were the peasants' carts on two wheels, roughly made in the form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The same purveyors often took corn and other agricultural produce, for which they paid little or nothing.

13. =Hospitality and Inns.=--When the king arrived in the evening at a town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as in the days before the Conquest (see p. 76), and at night mattresses were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was strewn with rushes; whilst a stranger of high rank had usually a bed in the solar (see p. 245) with the lord of the castle. Travellers of the middle class were not thought good enough to be welcomed in monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be received out of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds, of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found in these inns. "William," one traveller is supposed to say to another, "undress and wash your legs, and rub them well for the love of the fleas, that they may not leap on your legs; for there is a peck of them lying in the dust under the rushes.... Hi! the fleas bite me so, and do me great harm, for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood flows."

14. =Alehouses.=--By the roadside were alehouses for temporary refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from which arose the saying that "Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the day was made without hops, which were still unknown in England, and ale would therefore only keep good for about five days.

15. =Wanderers.=--Besides the better class of travellers the roads were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels, jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be heard of at country fairs. Any one who could play or sing was always welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coarse. A tumbler who could stand on his head or balance a heavy article at the end of a stick balanced on his chin, or the leader of a performing bear, was seldom turned away from the door, whilst the pedlar went from place to place, supplying the wants which are now satisfied in the shop of the village or the neighbouring town.

16. =Robbers and Criminals.=--The roads, indeed, were not always safe. Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed merchants and wealthy travellers, leaving the poor untouched, like the legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting to a shilling. Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters, unless they could succeed in passing a year in a town, and consequently were often found amongst vagabonds who had to live as best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons, in which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were confined, reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed, was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could take refuge in the sanctuaries to be found in churches, from which no officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were either innocent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for their slight offences.

17. =Justices of the Peace.=--Even harshness is less dangerous than anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against anarchy. Before the Conquest order had been kept by making either the kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III. persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to see that order was kept, and at the accession of Edward III. these officials were established for a time by Act of Parliament as conservators of the peace. In =1360=, the year of the Treaty of Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric.[26] They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of crime. The king named these justices, but he had to name all of them except the lawyer from amongst the local landowners. In every way, in the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming prominent. The kings attempted to govern with their help, both in Parliament and in the counties.

[Footnote 26: Many clerics took one of the minor orders so as to secure the immunities of the clergy, without any intention of being ordained a deacon or a priest.]