Part 17

The leaders of the insurgents were Wat the Tyler, who had been a soldier, John Ball, a priest and preacher of democratic and socialistic doctrines, and one known as Jack Straw. They made their way to London. "It ought to have been easy to keep them out of the city, as the only approach to it was by London Bridge, and the mayor and chief citizens proposed to defend it. But the Londoners generally, and even three of the aldermen, were well inclined to the rebels, and declared that they would not let the gates be shut against their friends and neighbours, and would kill the mayor himself if he attempted to do it. So on the evening of Wednesday, June 13, the insurgents began to stream in across the bridge, and next morning marched their whole body across the river, and proceeded at once to the Savoy, the splendid palace of the Duke of Lancaster. Proclamation was made that any one found stealing the smallest article would be beheaded; and the place was then wrecked and burned with all the formalities of a solemn act of justice. Gold and silver plate was shattered with battle-axes and thrown into the Thames; rings and smaller jewels were brayed in mortars; silk and embroidered dresses were trampled under feet and torn up. Then the Temple was burned with all its muniments. The poet Gower was among the lawyers who had to save their lives by flight, and he passed several nights in the woods of Essex, covered with grass and leaves and living on acorns. Then the great house of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell was destroyed, taking seven days to burn." The young king (Richard II.) and his court and council had taken refuge in the Tower. The insurgents now threatened to storm their stronghold if the king did not come out and speak to them. The king consented and appointed a rendezvous at Mile End. He kept the appointment and met his turbulent subjects with so much courage and tact and so many promises, that he persuaded a great number to disperse to their homes. But while this pacific interview took place, Wat Tyler, John Ball, and some 400 of their followers burst into the Tower, determined to find the archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert de Hales, who were the most obnoxious ministers. "So great was the general consternation that the soldiers dared not raise a hand while these ruffians searched the different rooms, not sparing even the king's bedroom, running spears into the beds, asked the king's mother to kiss them, and played insolent jokes on the chief officers. {817} Unhappily they were not long in finding the archbishop, who had said mass in the chapel, and was kneeling at the altar in expectation of their approach." The Lord Treasurer was also found, and both he and the archbishop were summarily beheaded by the mob. "Murder now became the order of the day, and foreigners were among the chief victims; thirteen Flemings were dragged out of one church and beheaded, seventeen out of another, and altogether it is said 400 perished. Many private enmities were revenged by the London rabble on this day." On the next day, June 15, the king, with an armed escort, went to the camp of the insurgents, at Smithfield, and opened negotiations with Tyler, offering successively three forms of a new charter of popular rights and liberties, all of which were rejected. Finally, Tyler was invited to a personal conference, and there, in the midst of the king's party, on some provocation or pretended provocation in his words or bearing, the popular leader was struck from his horse and killed. King Richard immediately rode out before the ranks of the rebels, while they were still dazed by the suddenness and audacity of the treacherous blow, crying "I will be your leader; follow me." The thoughtless mob followed and soon found itself surrounded by bodies of troops whose courage had revived. The king now commanded the trembling peasants "to fall on their knees, cut the strings of their bows, and leave the city and its neighbourhood, under pain of death, before nightfall. This command was instantly obeyed." Meantime and afterwards there were many lesser risings in various parts of the country, all of which were suppressed, with such rigorous prosecutions in the courts that 1,500 persons are said to have suffered judicially.

_C. H. Pearson, English History in the Fourteenth Century, chapter 10._

The Wat Tyler insurrection proved disastrous in its effect on the work of Church reform which Wyclif was then pursuing. "Not only was the power of the Lancastrian party, on which Wyclif had relied, for the moment annihilated, but the quarrel between the Baronage and Church, on which his action had hitherto been grounded, was hushed in the presence of a common danger. Much of the odium of the outbreak, too, fell on the Reformer. ... John Ball, who had figured in the front rank of the revolt, was claimed as one of his adherents. ... Whatever belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this moment all plans for the reorganization of the Church were confounded in the general odium which attached to the projects of the socialist peasant leaders."

_J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 5, section 3._

"When Parliament assembled it proved itself as hostile as the crown to the conceding any of the demands of the people; both were faithful to all the records of history in similar cases; they would have belied all experience if, being victorious, they had consented to the least concession to the vanquished. The upper classes repudiated the recognition of the rights of the poor to a degree, which in our time would be considered sheer insanity. The king had annulled, by proclamation to the sheriffs, the charters of manumission which he had granted to the insurgents, and this revocation was warmly approved by both Lords and Commons, who, not satisfied with saying that such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent, added, that they would never give that consent, even to save themselves from perishing altogether in one day. There was, it is true, a vague rumour about the propriety and wisdom of abolishing villanage; but the notion was scouted, and the owners of serfs showed that they neither doubted the right by which they held their fellow-creatures in a state of slavery, nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the laws affecting them. They now passed a law by which 'all riots and rumours, and other such things were turned into high treason'; this law was most vaguely expressed, and would probably involve those who made it in inextricable difficulties. It was self-apparent, that this Parliament acted under the impulses of panic, and of revenge for recent injuries. ... It might be said that the citizens of the municipalities wrote their charters of enfranchisement with the very blood of their lords and bishops; yet, during the worst days of oppression, the serfs of the cities had never suffered the cruel excesses of tyranny endured by the country people till the middle of the fifteenth century. And, nevertheless, the long struggles of the townships, despite the bloodshed and cruelties of the citizens, are ever considered and narrated as glorious revolutions, whilst the brief efforts of the peasants for vengeance, which were drowned in their own blood, have remained as a stigma flung in the face of the country populations whenever they utter a word claiming some amelioration in their condition. Whence the injustice? The bourgeoisie was victorious and successful. The rural populations were vanquished and trampled upon. The bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its poets, historians, and flatterers, whilst the poor peasant, rude, untutored, and ignorant, never had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his lamentable sorrows and sufferings."

_Prof. De Vericour, Wat Tyler (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, number 8, volume 2)._

ALSO IN: _G. Lechler, John Wiclif, chapter 9, section 3._

_C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 2, chapter 1._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1383. The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade in Flanders.

See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1388. The Merciless or Wonderful Parliament.

See PARLIAMENT, THE WONDERFUL.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1399. Accession of King Henry IV.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1399-1471. House of Lancaster.

This name is given in English history to the family which became royal in the person of Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who deposed his cousin, Richard II., or forced him to abdicate the throne, and who was crowned king (Henry IV.), Oct. 11, 1399, with what seemed to be the consent of the nation. He not only claimed to be the next in succession to Richard, but he put forward a claim of descent through his mother, more direct than Richard's had been, from Henry III. "In point of fact Henry was not the next in succession. His father, John of Gaunt [or John of Ghent, in which city he was born], was the fourth son of Edward III., and there were descendants of that king's third son, Lionel Duke of Clarence, living. ... At one time Richard himself had designated as his successor the nobleman who really stood next to him in the line of descent. This was Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the same who was killed by the rebels in Ireland. This Roger had left a son Edmund to inherit his title, but Edmund was a mere child, and the inconvenience of another minority could not have been endured."

_J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 2._

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As for Henry's pretensions through his mother, they were founded upon what Mr. Gairdner calls an "idle story," that "the eldest son of Henry III. was not king Edward, but his brother Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, who was commonly reputed the second son; and that this Edmund had been purposely set aside on account of his personal deformity. The plain fact of the matter was that Edmund Crouchback was six years younger than his brother Edward I.; and that his surname Crouchback had not the smallest reference to personal deformity, but only implied that he wore the cross upon his back as a crusader." Mr. Wylie (History of England under Henry IV., volume 1, chapter 1) represents that this latter claim was put forward under the advice of the leading jurists of the time, to give the appearance of a legitimate succession; whereas Henry took his real title from the will and assent of the nation. Henry IV. was succeeded by his vigorous son, Henry V. and he in turn by a feeble son, Henry VI., during whose reign England was torn by intrigues and factions, ending in the lamentable civil wars known as the "Wars of the Roses," the deposition of Henry VI. and the acquisition of the throne by the "House of York," in the persons of Edward IV. and Richard III. It was a branch of the House of Lancaster that reappeared, after the death of Richard III. in the royal family better known as the Tudors.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1400-1436. Relations with Scotland.

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1400-1436.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1402-1413. Owen Glendower's Rebellion in Wales.

See WALES: A. D.1402-1413.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1403. Hotspur's Rebellion.

The earl of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy, called "Hotspur," had performed great services for Henry IV., in establishing and maintaining him upon the throne. "At the outset of his reign their opposition would have been fatal to him; their adhesion ensured his victory. He had rewarded them with territory and high offices of trust, and they had by faithful services ever since increased their claims to gratitude and consideration. ... Both father and son were high-spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who entertained an exalted sense of their own services and could not endure the shadow of a slight. Up to this time [early in 1403] not a doubt had been cast on their fidelity. Northumberland was still the king's chief agent in Parliament, his most valued commander in the field, his Mattathias. It has been thought that Hotspur's grudge against the king began with the notion that the release of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer [taken prisoner, the year before, by the Welsh], had been neglected by the king, or was caused by Henry's claim to deal with the prisoners taken at Homildon; the defenders of the Percies alleged that they had been deceived by Henry in the first instance, and only needed to be persuaded that Richard lived in order to desert the king. It is more probable that they suspected Henry's friendship, and were exasperated by his compulsory economies. ... Yet Henry seems to have conceived no suspicion. ... Northumberland and Hotspur were writing for increased forces [for the war with Scotland]. ... On the 10th of July Henry had reached Northamptonshire on his way northwards; on the 17th he heard that Hotspur with his uncle the earl of Worcester were in arms in Shropshire. They raised no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed themselves the vindicators of national right: their object was to correct the evils of the administration, to enforce the employment of wise counsellors, and the proper expenditure of public money. ... The report ran like wildfire through the west that Richard was alive, and at Chester. Hotspur's army rose to 14,000 men, and not suspecting the strength and promptness of the king, he sat down with his uncle and his prisoner, the earl of Douglas, before Shrewsbury. Henry showed himself equal to the need. From Burton-on-Trent, where on July 17 he summoned the forces of the shires to join him, he marched into Shropshire, and offered to parley with the insurgents. The earl of Worcester went between the camps, but he was either an impolitic or a treacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in mutual exasperation. On the 21st the battle of Shrewsbury was fought; Hotspur was slain; Worcester was taken and beheaded two days after. The old earl, who may or may not have been cognizant of his son's intentions from the first, was now marching to his succour. The earl of Westmoreland, his brother-in-law, met him and drove him back to Warkworth. But all danger was over. On the 11th of August he met the king at York, and submitted to him."

_W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 18, section 632._

ALSO IN: _J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry IV., volume 1, chapter 25._

_W. Shakespeare, King Henry IV., part 1._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1413. Accession of King Henry V.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1413-1422. Parliamentary gains under Henry V.

"What the sword had won the sword should keep, said Henry V. on his accession; but what was meant by the saying has its comment in the fact that, in the year which witnessed his victory at Agincourt, he yielded to the House of Commons the most liberal measure of legislation which until then it had obtained. The dazzling splendour of his conquests in France had for the time cast into the shade every doubt or question of his title, but the very extent of those gains upon the French soil established more decisively the worse than uselessness of such acquisitions to the English throne. The distinction of Henry's reign in constitutional history will always be, that from it dates that power, indispensable to a free and limited monarchy, called Privilege of Parliament; the shield and buckler under which all the battles of liberty and good government were fought in the after time. Not only were its leading safeguards now obtained, but at once so firmly established, that against the shock of incessant resistance in later years they stood perfectly unmoved. Of the awful right of impeachment, too, the same is to be said. It was won in the same reign, and was never afterwards lost."

_J. Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays, volume 1, page 207._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1415-1422. Conquests of Henry V. in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1415; and 1417-1422.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1422. Accession of King Henry VI.

ENGLAND: A. D. 1431-1453. Loss of English conquests and possessions in France.

See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453, and AQUITAINE: A. D. 1360-1453.

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ENGLAND: A. D. 1450. Cade's Rebellion.

A formidable rebellion broke out in Kent, under the leadership of one Jack Cade, A. D. 1450. Overtaxation, the bad management of the council, the extortion of the subordinate officers, the injustice of the king's bench, the abuse of the right of purveyance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the illegitimate control of elections were the chief causes of the rising of 1450. "The rising was mainly political, only one complaint was economical, not a single one was religious. We find not a single demand for new legislation. ... The movement was by no means of a distinctly plebeian or disorderly character, but was a general and organized rising of the people at large. It was a political upheaval. We find no trace of socialism or of democracy. ... The commons in 1450 arose against Lancaster and in favor of York. Their rising was the first great struggle in the Wars of the Roses."

_Kriehn, Rising in 1450, Chapter IV., VII._

Cade and his rebels took possession of London; but they were beaten in a battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some followers continued to be turbulent and soon afterwards he was killed.

_J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 7, section 6._

ALSO IN: _C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 3d series, chapter 7._

ENGLAND: A. D. 1455. Demoralized state of the nation. Effects of the wars in France.