Part 9

The adherents of Simon were to be punished by fine and not by disinheritance, so that the king could repay those who had served him faithfully without giving occasion for fresh war.

Simon was not to be proclaimed a saint (seeing he died under the excommunication of the Church), and those who spread idle tales of miracles done at his tomb were to be punished.

A complete indemnity was promised to all who accepted the ban within forty days.

For a time the ban was rejected, and it was not till the summer of 1267 that the struggle was finally over. Peace was assured by the Parliament of Marlborough in November, 1267, which re-enacted the Provisions of Westminster (1259) as a statute.

The lasting value of Simon’s work was seen in 1295, when Edward I. summoned his great representative parliament on the professed principle that “that which touches all shall be approved by all.” This assembly, by that very principle, served as “a pattern for all future assemblies of the nation.” (Stubbs.)

Had Simon of Montfort received canonization by the Church he would surely have been the patron saint of all workers in the world of politics, and of all who honestly and courageously engage in public work.

Wat Tyler and the Peasant Revolt

1381

AUTHORITIES: Walsingham; Knyghton--(Rolls Series); Wright’s _Political Songs_--(Rolls Series); Froissart; Professor Oman--_Great Revolt of 1381_, containing translation of a chronicle of the rising in the Stow MSS., first published in _English Historical Review_, 1895; André Réville--_Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs_ (1898); Dr. G. Kriehn--_American Review_, 1902; Edgar Powell--_Rising of 1381 in East Anglia_; Dr. James Gairdner--_Lollardy and the Reformation_; G. M. Trevelyan--_England in the Age of Wycliff_; J. Clayton--_Wat Tyler and the Great Uprising_.

WAT TYLER AND THE PEASANT REVOLT

1381

The Peasant Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was not only the first great national movement towards democracy, it was the first uprising of the English people in opposition to all their hitherto recognised rulers in Church and State, and it was the first outburst in this land against social injustice.[59]

The Black Death in 1349 and the pestilence that ravaged the country in 1361 and 1369 upset the old feudal order. The land was in many places utterly bereft of labour, and neither king nor parliament could restore the former state of things. Landowners, driven by the scarcity of labour, went in for sheep farming in place of agriculture, and were compelled to offer an increase of wages in spite of the Statutes of Labourers (1351–1353) which expressly forbade the same:--

“Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three-score years, and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence.”

This act remained the law until the fifth year of Elizabeth.

“Free” labourers, landless men but not serfs, wandered away to the towns or turned outlaws in the forests. Serfs--only a small number of the population, for the Church had always recommended their liberation, even while abbots and priors retained them on Church estates, and Edward III. had encouraged granting freedom in return for payment in money--escaped to those incorporated towns that promised freedom after eighteen months’ residence. Villeins and lesser tenants commuted the service due from them to their landlords by money payments, and so began the leasehold system of land tenure.

For thirty years preceding the Peasant Revolt the social changes had bred discontent, and discontent rather than misery is always the parent of revolt.

An early statute of Richard II., framed for the perpetual bondage of the serfs, heightened the discontent.

“No bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children in the world by their going into the Church.”

This same act made equal prohibition against apprenticeship in the town.

The free labourer had his grievance against the Statute of Labourers. Villeins and cottar tenants had no sure protection against being compelled to give labour service to their lords; and they, with the freehold yeomen and the town workmen and shopkeepers, hated the heavy taxation, the oppressive market tolls and the general misgovernment.

To unite all these forces of social discontent into one great army, which should destroy the oppression and establish freedom and brotherhood, was the work John Ball--an itinerant priest who came at first from St. Mary’s at York, and then made Colchester the centre of his journeyings--devoted himself to for twenty years.

Ball preached a social revolution, and his gospel was that all men were brothers, and that serfdom and lordship were incompatible with brotherhood. In our times such teaching is common enough, but in the fourteenth century, with its sumptuary laws and its feudal ranks, only in religion was this principle accepted.[60] John Ball became the moving spirit in the agitation set on foot by his teaching. He had his colleagues and lieutenants, John Wraw in Suffolk and Jack Straw in Essex--both priests like himself--William Grindcobbe in Hertford and Geoffrey Litster in Norfolk. The peasants were organised into clubs, and letters were sent by Ball far and wide to stir up revolt. In Kent and the eastern counties lay the main strength of the revolutionaries--it was in Kent that Ball was particularly active just before the rising--but Sussex, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire and Somerset were all affected, so grave and so general was the dissatisfaction, and so hopeful to the labouring people was the message delivered by John Ball.

Of course Ball did not escape censure and the penalty of law during his missionary years. He was excommunicated and cast into prison by three Archbishops of Canterbury, Islip, Simon Langham, and Simon Sudbury, for teaching “errors, schisms, and scandals against the popes, archbishops, bishops, and clergy,” and he was only released from prison, from Archbishop Sudbury’s gaol at Maidstone, by the rough hands of the men of Kent when the rising had begun. The “errors” of John Ball were civil and social rather than theological. The notion that Ball and his fellow socialists of the fourteenth century were mixed up with Wycliff and the Lollards has really no foundation in fact.[61] Wycliff’s unorthodox views on the sacraments and his attacks on the habits of the clergy were of no interest to the social revolutionists, and John of Gaunt, the steady friend of Wycliff, was hated above all other men in the realm by the leaders of the revolt. Wycliff expressed as little sympathy with the Peasant Revolt of his day as Luther later in Germany did with the Peasant War, or Cranmer with the Norfolk rising under Ket in 1549.

John Ball’s sermons were all on one text--“In the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created equal. Servitude of man to man is contrary to God’s will.” He declared that “things will never go well in England so long as goods are not kept in common, and so long as there are villeins and gentlefolks.” He harped on the social inequalities of his age, quoting freely from Langland’s _Piers the Plowman_, and enlarging on the famous couplet:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

As years went by and the time grew ripe for revolt, there is a definite call to rise in Ball’s letters and speeches. “Let us go to the king, and remonstrate with him,” he declares, “telling him we must have it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy.”

Richard II. was but eleven when he came to the throne in 1377. “He is young. If we wait on him in a body, all those who come under the name of serf or are held in bondage will follow us, in the hope of being free. When the king shall see us we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then ourselves seek to amend our condition.”

Some of the rhymed letters Ball sent out, bidding his hearers “stand together manfully in the truth,” urge preparation for the coming conflict:

John Ball greeteth you all, And doth to understand he hath rung your bell. Now with right and might, will and skill, God speed every dell.

John the miller asketh help to turn his mill right: He hath ground small, small, The King’s Son of Heaven will pay for it all, Look thy mill go right, with its four sails dight.

With right and with might, with skill and with will, And let the post stand in steadfastness, Let right help might, and skill go before will, Then shall our mill go aright. But if might go before right, and will go before skill, This is our mill mis-a-dight.

Beware ere ye be woe, Know your friend from your foe, Take enough and cry ‘Ho!’ And do well and better and flee from sin, And seek out peace and dwell therein, So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows.

In other letters he greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John Carter, and bids them stand together in God’s name; and bids Piers Plowman “go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir Robert Hales, the king’s treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more.”

These letters and the preaching did their work; the peasants were organised; men of marked courage and ability were found in various counties; and “the one head and no more” was ready in Kent to lead the army of revolt to the king when the signal should be given. Litster, Grindcobbe, and Wraw were at their posts. In every county from Somerset to York the peasants flocked together, “some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with only one feather.”

John Ball had rung his bell, and at Whitsuntide, at the end of May, 1381, came the great uprising, the “Hurling-Time of the Peasants.” The fire was all ready to be kindled, and a poll-tax, badly ordered, set the country ablaze.

The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age. Two years later it was graduated, from 4d. on every man and woman of the working class to £6 13s. 4d. on a duke or archbishop. Even this with a further tax on wool was found insufficient.

So early in 1381 John of Gaunt called the parliament together at Northampton, and declared that £160,000 must be raised. Parliament refused to find more than £100,000, and the clergy, owning at that time one-third of the land, promised £60,000. Again a poll-tax was demanded. This time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s., but in districts where wealthy folks lived it was held sufficient that the amount collected in every parish averaged 1s. per head; only the rich were not to pay less than £1 per household, nor the poor less than 8d. In parishes where all were needy the full shilling was demanded without exception. It soon appeared that the money was not to be raised. In many parts the returns as to the population liable to the tax were not even filled in with any attempt at accuracy, and numbers avoided liability by leaving their homes--to escape a tribute, which to the struggling peasant meant ruin. Of the £100,000 required only £22,000 was forthcoming.

Then one John Legge undertook to supply the deficit, if he had the authority of the crown to act as special commissioner to collect the tax. The appointment was made, with the result that the methods of the tax-collectors provoked revolt, and Legge lost his life over the business.

The rising began in Essex, when the villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope were summoned to meet the tax-commissioner at Brentwood. Unable to pay, they fell upon the collectors and killed them. The government met this assault by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to punish the offenders. But as the judge merely had for escort a certain number of legal functionaries, and as the blood of the people was up, Belknap was received with open contempt, and, forced to swear on the Bible that he would hold no other session in the place, was glad to escape from the town without injury. And with this defiance and overpowering of the king’s officers the signal was given, the beacon of revolt well lighted.

It was June 2nd, Whit Sunday, when the Chief Justice was driven out of Brentwood; two days later Kent had risen at Gravesend and Dartford.

At Gravesend Sir Simon Burley, the friend of Richard II., seized a workman in the town, claiming him as a bondsman of his estate, and clapped him in Rochester Castle, refusing to hear of release unless £300 was paid.

At the same time word went about that the tax-collector at Dartford was insulting the women, and that, in especial, the wife and daughter of one John Tyler had been abused with gross indecency.

Whereupon this John Tyler, “being at work in the same town tyling of an house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff, so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.”[62]

Robert Cave, a master baker of Dartford, led the people straight off to Rochester; and the castle having been stormed, and all its prisoners released, Sir John Newton, the governor of the castle, was retained in safe custody.

And now the time had come for good generalship and discipline in the ranks, if the fire of revolt was to burn aright. Accordingly at Maidstone, on June 7th, Wat Tyler is chosen captain of the host; and proof is quickly given that the rising is not for mob rule or general anarchy, but to redress positive and intolerable wrongs. (Five Tylers are mentioned in the records of the Peasant Revolt: Wat Tyler, of Maidstone; John Tyler, of Dartford, who slays the tax-collector, and is not heard of again; Walter Tyler, of Essex; and two Tylers of the City of London--William, of Stone Street, and Simon, of Cripplegate.)

In every respect was this Wat Tyler a man of remarkable gifts. Chosen as leader by the voice of his neighbours in Kent, his authority is at once obeyed without dispute, and his influence is seen to extend beyond the borders of his own county. Jack Straw acts as his lieutenant; John Wraw, of Suffolk, and William Grindcobbe, of St. Albans, come to him for advice; and it is not till Tyler moves on London with his army that the rising becomes national. He is plainly marked out as a great leader of masses of men. Skilful, courageous, humane, Wat Tyler is proved to be; firm, clear-headed, downright in manner, and yet large-hearted, jovial and brotherly--equally at home with king or beggar. There is nothing of the fanatical doctrinaire about this first great leader of the English people. He could order the execution of “traitors,” but he is not the man for bloodshed in England if the revolution he and John Ball aimed at can be accomplished by peaceful means. After more than 500 years the reputation of Wat Tyler stands out untarnished and unshaken.[63]

Yet for eight days--and eight days only--does history allow us to follow the career of this remarkable man. On June 7th Wat Tyler was chosen by the men of Kent to lead the revolt; on June 15th he was dead. Of his antecedents we know nothing. Parentage, birth-place, age, height, and personal appearance, are all unrecorded. His trade alone we can infer, and we know that his contemporaries trusted him to the full: for no suggestion has been made of any kind of rivalry or jealousy amongst the leaders, or of criticism or grumbling amongst the rank and file.

Wat Tyler emerges from the obscurity of history to become a strong democratic leader. For eight days he commands a vast army of men; he confronts the king as an equal; orders the execution of the chief ministers of the crown; and wrests from the king promises of fundamental social importance. Then, in the very hour of victory, an unexpected blow from an enemy strikes him down, and death follows. Surely to few men is it awarded to achieve an immortal reputation in so brief a public life.

No sooner is Tyler acclaimed as leader at Maidstone than the commons of Kent are flocking to the standard of revolt. The cry is for “King Richard and the Commons,” and it goes hard with any who refuse to take the oath. John of Gaunt is the enemy. John of Gaunt is held to be responsible for all the mischief wrought on the coast towns of Kent by the privateer fleets of the Scots and the French, for the raiding of Rye and Winchelsea. (Only in the previous year these fleets had invaded the Thames as far as Gravesend.) John of Gaunt is the head and front of the misrule that bled the land with poll-taxes. John of Gaunt is the incarnation of the landlord rule that would keep the labourer in bondage for ever. So bitter is the feeling against John of Gaunt, and so acute the fear that he is aiming at the crown, that a vow is taken by the men of Kent that no man named “John” shall be King of England.

John of Gaunt was the common enemy. But John of Gaunt was far away on the Scottish border, and there were enemies near at hand to be dealt with. The manor-houses of Kent were attacked; in a few cases, where their owners were notoriously bad landlords, were burnt. The main thing, however, was to obtain the rent-rolls, the lists of tenants and serfs, and all the documents of the lawyers. These papers were seized and destroyed by the peasants, for no assurance of freedom was possible while such evidence of service could be produced. These documents were the legal instruments of landlord rule; and as the people had risen to end this rule, a beginning had to be made by destroying the machinery. There was no general reign of terror in the country; there was nothing of the ferocity of the Jacquerie in France; no slaughter of landlords; and no common destruction of property.

The nobility seemed to expect judgment at the hands of the people, and those who were at Plymouth making preparation for their invasion of France put to sea as quickly as possible when news came of the rising.[64] But the people had risen not for blind vengeance or for civil war, and the class who suffered badly at the rising were the lawyers rather than the landlords. It was the lawyer’s hand that the peasants saw and felt, and not the mailed fist, for the lawyer was not only the land agent of the lord of the manor, he was also the judge in matters of dispute between landlord and tenant, and it was he who kept the lists of villeins and serfs, and in the service of his lord did not scruple to manipulate those lists.

In those first days of the rising, when yeomen and more than one landholder joined the army of revolt,[65] and all who were willing to cry “King Richard and the Commons” were counted as supporters, the worst that the landlord suffered (except in extreme cases) was the loss of his papers, but the lawyer who clung to his office was often hanged without mercy, as a scourge to the commonwealth.

Tyler was at Canterbury on Monday, June 10th, and here Archbishop Sudbury’s palace was ransacked for papers, and his tenant-rolls burnt. Beyond this, and a rough exhortation to the monks to prepare to elect a new archbishop, no injury was done. The following day Tyler was back at Maidstone, and his men burst open the archbishop’s prison and released John Ball, with all others who had incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. This accomplished, with John Ball, the people’s poor priest, in the midst of them, 30,000 men of Kent--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins and peasants--set out for London under Wat Tyler’s command.

Blackheath was reached at nightfall on Wednesday, June 12th, and a camp fixed; but a few indefatigable rebels hastened on to Southwark that same night to burst open the Marshalsea and King’s Bench prisons. John Wraw was at Blackheath, and after a short conference with Wat Tyler, hastened back to Suffolk to announce that the hour of rising had struck.

Near Eltham Tyler had overtaken the young king’s mother, the widow of the Black Prince, returning from a pilgrimage, and had promised that no harm should befall her or her women from his host. Reassured, the princess and her company went on their way in safety to the Tower of London, where Richard and his council were assembled, and told of the great uprising.

Judges had already been despatched into Kent at the first news of the disorders, but had turned back before reaching Canterbury, not liking the look of things.

Early on Thursday morning, June 13th, the camp at Blackheath was astir. It was Corpus Christi day and a solemn festival. After mass had been said before all the people, John Ball preached on his old theme of equality and brotherhood. “For if God had intended some to be serfs and others lords He would have made a distinction between them at the beginning.” He went on to speak of the work to be taken in hand at once.

“Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom they have always desired. Wherefore let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. Now the tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with them all--the evil lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers, every man indeed who is dangerous to the common good. Then should we all have peace for the present and security for the future. For when the great ones have been rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom, all will have common nobility, rank and power.”

The sermon was received with bursts of cheers, and the people shouted that John Ball should be archbishop, “for that the present archbishop and chancellor, Simon Sudbury, was but a traitor.”

Later that morning Sir John Newton arrived at the Tower with a message from Tyler, asking for an audience with the king. All along it was the belief of the commons that the king had but to hear the tale of their wrongs and redress would be speedily obtained.

“Hold no speech with the shoeless ruffians,” was the advice of Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer. But Richard agreed to an interview, and presently rowed down the Thames in the royal barge as far as Rotherhithe with the Earl of Suffolk (President of the Council), and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick.

The river bank was crowded with the commons of Kent, and Wat Tyler and John Ball urged the king to land and listen to the message his subjects brought. They were promptly rebuked by the Earl of Salisbury[66] for their boldness:

“Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor are you in a fit condition for the king to talk to you.”

Instead of landing, Richard listened to the counsels of fear and pride, and the royal barge was turned and rowed back swiftly to the Tower.