Who Were the Lollards

Was Lollardy popular? Besides for Sir John Oldcastle and John Wycliffe, I mean.

Because Lollards believed that baptism and confession were not necessary for salvation, many people were drawn to Lollardy: it was comforting to know that generations of good people who were never baptized would be welcome into Heaven.

Many priests appreciated Lollardy for its egalitarian and back-to-basics nature: praying to saints and saints' images was idolatry that should be shunned. A Bible in the vernacular was important so that everyone who wished (but did not know Latin) had access to it. All the "smells and bells" trappings of the Roman Catholic Church (bells, organs, holy water, incense, grand buildings), were not Bible-based and just being grandiose for the sake of it. Clerics should not be allowed to hold positions in government and have temporal power.

Lollards did not bother with fasting or abstinence, and they challenged clerical celibacy. They did not recognize any special authority of the pope, and especially of papal pardons. Personal piety was more important than what the Church said it could do for you. This made the individual feel more responsible for and in charge of his life.

This idea of the importance of the individual rather than the importance of the "higher powers" in society was very attractive to the common people, and spilled over to their notions of the need for social and economic reform. Heavy taxation and always being made to feel that you were less important than the nobility started to be questioned. Lollardy's tenets were intimately tied to movements such as the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Not just commoners were drawn to Lollardy. There was a group of Lollard Knights in the last quarter of the 1300s. Among them were Lewis Clifford, John Clanvowe, and Richard Stury. I mention those names particularly because they were all friends of Geoffrey Chaucer, himself someone who was willing to make fun of the clergy, write about the common man, and write in English (court literature prior was usually in French).

All these men had another person in common, one far more powerful than they. That was John of Gaunt, third son of King Edward III and uncle of King Richard II. Gaunt was at one time the most powerful and influential man in England, but all things come to an end. I'd love to tell you more tomorrow.

Simon Sudbury

Simon of Sudbury, or just Simon Sudbury, was one of those people who shows up here and there, for instance during the Peasants' Revolt when he was killed by the mob. Now that I've spoiled the ending, let me go back to the beginning.

Born to the middle-class Nigel and Sarah Theobald in Sudbury, Simon studied at the University of Paris and became a priest, working for Pope Innocent VI during the Avignon Papacy. Innocent sent him to Edward III in England, where he stayed and became Bishop of London in 1362. His career flourished, and he was named Archbishop of Canterbury in 1375. After Edward III's death in 1377, it was Sudbury who crowned Richard II as the new king. In 1380 he was named Chancellor of England.

Still emotionally attached to his hometown, he had St. Gregory's Church there renovated, building a chapel at the east end of the north aisle and rebuilding the aisles. He also founded a college in Sudbury along with his brother, John of Chertsey.

Despite any good acts he may have performed, as Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England, he was representative of a government that was considered corrupt and oppressive. To be fair, he was involved in the creation of the third poll tax that pushed things over the edge. When the Peasants' Revolt occurred in 1381, he became a target. The mob damaged his properties at Canterbury and Lambeth, and then entered the Tower of London where he was celebrating Mass. There they found Sudbury and the Lord High Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales. Supposedly, the guards stood by and let the mob in, whereupon the mob dragged Sudbury and Hales out and executed them.

Sudbury's head was hacked off with a sword; the head was placed on a pole on London Bridge for six days, then taken down and sent to St. Gregory's, where it can be seen to this day (see picture above). In 2011, a scan of the skull was used by a forensic expert to make a facial reconstruction, which you can view here. The body is interred at Canterbury Cathedral, with a cannonball in place of the head.

His is one of the rare coats of arms that feature a Talbot dog.

The office of chancellor has been mentioned numerous times throughout this blog, but never explained to an audience (mostly) that did not grow up in a country that has that position. It's time we explained what a chancellor does...next time.

Attacks on Flemings

Whan Adam delf, and Eve span,
Wo was thanne a gentilman?

This was part of a sermon allegedly delivered in Blackheath the night before that group of peasants descended upon London during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Although the catalyst for the Revolt may have been a poll tax, resentments against the upper classes were always ready to boil over. Flemings were not generally a large part of the countryside peasant population.

Flemings were, however, mentioned specifically in one account of the Revolt, and it has two curious features. The account in MS Cotton Julius B.II. ends with the lines:

...and many fflemynges lost here heedes at that tyme, and namely they that koude nat say 'breede and chese", but "case en brode".

It was curious that Flemings were mentioned specifically. Also, contemporary references to language in the 14th century are extremely rare, so why distinguish these foreigners with a reference to their tendency to idiomatically express "bread and cheese" as "case and brode." (Modern German for cheese is still "Käse" and for bread is "Brot" with a long ō sound.)

One of the targets for destruction was the "stews" or brothels of Southwark, just south of London across the Thames. It was an area well known for prostitution, and that particular profession at that time was dominated by Flemings. One particular Fleming-run brothel was invaded and destroyed by the mob, but it was owned by the mayor of London, William Walworth, so the destruction may have been aimed at him as a representative of the upper classes—in the spirit of the first quotation above—rather than the foreigners specifically.

But it seems likely that the Revolt, as often happens, "broadened its scope" as the angry mob let its anger focus on several different targets, whether they were a rational reason for the start of the Revolt or not. Xenophobia has been a part of human culture since the beginning of human societies, I would wager, and 14th century England was no different. Distinguishing foreigners by their idiomatic expressions of everyday objects like "bread and cheese" is petty, racist, and perfectly believable.

There was, in fact, other acts of violence against Flemings on the same day of the Revolt, 13 June, as well as the following day, that are not mentioned in any chronicle of the Revolt itself, but come from the law courts. There is a pardon for a man from Holborn who killed seven Flemings just north of London, at Clerkenwell, on 13 June. On 14 June, 35 Flemings were dragged from St. Martin Vintry church and beheaded. The official London records confirm that rebels dragged Flemings from houses and churches in Vintry ward, resulting in 40 decapitated bodies in the street.

Hostility against Flemings continued in the week after the Revolt, and at various locations not connected to the Revolt. Chaucer even refers to the attacks on the Flemings. He was a likely witness to the event, since he was living in an apartment at one of the city gates at the time. In the Nun's Priest's Tale he refers to the shrill voices of the rebels as they killed Flemings.

Why the Peasants' Revolt turned into an opportunity to show extreme prejudice against Flemings particularly is unclear. Flemings would not have been the only foreigners in London, nor did they represent the upper classes, which was one of the targets of the Revolt. It may have been a case of "foreigners taking our jobs." Coastal flooding several years earlier in the Low Countries had caused many weavers from Flanders to seek a living elsewhere, and there was an influx of Flemish weavers into the English textile scene in the 1370s that caused hostility from the English weavers. This was not a new development, however: Edward III had encouraged Flemish weavers in the 1330s to settle in England. Of course his wife, Queen Philippa, was from the Low Countries, and his suggestion may have been at her suggestion.

It might also be that they wanted to help Fleming peasants who had held their own uprising a few years earlier, which we will look at next.

To be Flemish

The term "Flemish" has been used since the 1300s to refer to a certain group of people. What does it mean to be Flemish?

The word "Flemish" was first seen in print c.1325 as flemmysshe, although Flæming had been around since at least 1150, meaning "from Flanders."  Flanders was originally a small territory around Bruges, established in the 8th century. Flanders now is the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium. The Flemings currently make up about 60% of the Belgian population.

Is there a Flemish language? The Flemish language is sometimes called Flemish Dutch, or Belgian Dutch, or Southern Dutch. In the illustration of Belgium to the left, the dark green area is where Dutch is spoken, the light green area is mostly French-speaking. (There is a small German area on the far right, and the lighter spot among the dark green is Brussels itself, where both Dutch and French have official status.

In 1188, Gerald of Wales (a historian mentioned, among other places, here) described the Flemings as:

a brave and sturdy people […] a people skilled at working in wool, experienced in trade, ready to face any effort or danger at land or sea in pursuit of gain; according to the demands of time and place quick to turn to the plough or to arms; a brave and fortunate people.

Gerald knew about them not because he traveled to the continent, but because many Flemings left Flanders due to population growth and the need for more land, many ending up in Scotland. In fact, the surname Fleming is fairly common these days, mostly because of Flemish families in Western Europe.

Flemings are even mentioned in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, in a reference that raises its own set of questions, but we can talk about that tomorrow.

The Temple Inn

After the Knights Templar were dissolved in 1312, Pope Clement V wanted all their property turned over to the Knights Hospitallers. King Edward II of England, however, claimed their properties in England for the Crown. The Templar properties in London included several buildings along the banks of the Thames, some of which were consecrated. Edward granted those for Hospitaller use, and made them pay for the non-consecrated buildings.

The Hospitallers were not so large and expanding that they needed the space, and so it is likely that they used it as income, renting it as living/work space. Tradition says that there were lawyers living there in the 1340s, but a formal educational institution cannot be proved...although there is a recorded incident in 1339 when "a man was killed in the Temple by a servant of the apprentices of the king’s court, which suggests that they may already have formed a community there." [link] In 1388, both "Inner Temple" and "Middle Temple" are specifically named in documents. The picture above is a mezzotint from 1826 showing dinner in the hall of one of the Temples.

Another incident involving the Temple is confirmed during the Peasants Revolt in 1381 (most recently summarized here, but also found in much more detail throughout this blog). The rebels tore down the Inner Temple hall and several houses before burning down the Savoy. When the building was torn down in 1868, it was noted that the roof used 14th century construction methods that would have been unavailable to the Templars.

Wat Tyler's followers supposedly were happy to destroy all the legal records they could find. It is true that no records exist from the 1300s, but neither do any exist from the 1400s. No formal records exist for any of the Inns of Court prior to 1500, except for Lincoln's Inn whose Black Books begin in 1422. The 1500s saw significant expansion of the Inns and their population and influence on English law.

Our brief history of the Temple after it was taken from the Templars is done, but what of the Hospitallers? When did they give it up? What happened to them? Let's look at that tomorrow.

A Musician Beheaded

The Peasants Revolt of 1381 was an uprising against...let's say "government overreach." It was not a simple protest, however. The rebel crowds over the course of months murdered officials and damaged buildings, even burning some down, including the most magnificent house in London, the Savoy Palace, residence of the king's uncle, John of Gaunt.

Of course, there would be repercussions. Hundreds and hundreds were involved, but they could not all be identified and incarcerated. Principle actors, however, paid a heavy price. The chief name linked to the Revolt was that of Wat Tyler, who was struck down early on by the Mayor of London, Simon of Sudbury.

One of the few names on a list of those whose involvement was so egregious that they were to be beheaded was John Stakpull, or Stakepoll. Other than this, we really have no clues to the identity of this man; rather, we have some circumstantial clues.

An escheator record (an escheator is in charge of confiscating property on behalf of the Crown) lists the possessions of Stakpull that had been taken after his beheading. Here's the list, and the value of the items in shillings and pence:

1 red gown (3s.6d.)
1 cloak of red and green cloth (8s.)
3 hoods, 1 pair worn-out stockings (2s.6d.)
1 pair worn-out thigh-high boots (8d.)

1 overslop (covering for a chainmail headpiece) (18d.)
1 worn-out earthenware pot (6d.)
1 harp, 1 gittern (12d.)

The overslop is interesting, because it suggests that he had been a soldier. But then, lots of people had been soldiers. No, the curious items are the harp and gittern. These musical instruments, along with the very colorful garments, suggest that he was a minstrel. Could he have been the first protest singer, playing music to rally the rebels? We'll never know.

But let's go in a different direction. You might be assuming that the "gittern" is an old word for a guitar. Not quite. Let us talk about the gittern when next we meet.

The Peasants Are Revolting!

The Peasant's Revolt of 1381 was the result of several factors , first enumerated and named in A Short History of the English People (John Richard Green, 1874), and analyzed endlessly since. (You can find several posts I've made on this here.) Distrust of government, belief in corruption of royal officials, anxiety over the French raiding southern England, and a poll tax of 12 pence per adult—the third in four years—made the average rural citizen say "Enough!"

The first signs of rebellion came when collectors of the poll tax were attacked in spring. This was followed by more resistance by attacking justices in Essex in May, and then a June uprising in Essex promised to rebel against all the king's laws. People started burning property, and an escheator (official in charge of claiming property for the Crown when, for instance, the previous owner died intestate) was beheaded and his records burned. Elsewhere, houses of officials and official records were being destroyed.

A leader appeared in the records, one Wat Tyler, who led the rioters into Canterbury, executing officials and freeing prisoners, after which they approached London. The group was joined by a radical priest, John Ball, southeast of London. Meanwhile London was experiencing a sympathetic uprising of citizens who burned the grandest house in London, the Savoy Palace, and the main building of the Hospitallers.

The rebels outside London entered, invading the Tower of London. They captured and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, and others.

See my other posts for more detail, but let me say that most of the rebels were given pardons once the destruction stopped, except for the individuals who were responsible for more grievous destruction and murder. A list of "principle leaders and traitors" includes Walter Tyler (who had been killed earlier by the Mayor of London), Alan Threader, William Hawk, and John Stakpull. We know very little about John, but what we know leads to an interesting conjecture. I'll tell you about that next time.

The Plague and Social Change

The climax of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381

On the heels of the recent news article about how victims of the Bubonic Plague still exist in significant numbers today, we have this article on how the Plague in the 14th century wrought huge changes on the fabric of society.

The radical shift in the numbers of the workforce and in the population of consumers threw off the balance that a stable society requires. Some goods were in great demand, there being fewer laborers to make things. Some consumer goods were in great supply, there being fewer consumers.

What the article above, from medievalists.net (a website I strongly recommend ), has just covered this week, DailyMedieval looked at back when the Occupy movement was first going strong in the United States.

The first installment briefly explained the philosophy behind the Peasants' Revolt.
The second explained some of the other factors that ruled up the lower classes.
Part three described the prominent characters that spurred on the movement.
Part four described the destruction caused in London by the Revolt.
Part five explains how the Revolt was quelled; the illustration above shows the "death" of the movement when its leader was killed during a parlay.

Diplomat, Traitor, Victim?

Edward I receiving homage;
Lord Borchard de Herle is on the far right

Does a diplomat owe his loyalty to his monarch or his mission? Can they be different things? Would a career diplomat throw his future away by taking the other side of an issue? It happened at least once in history.

In Cornwall on 17 June, 1268, Borin and Helena de Herle had a son, Borchard. He had a difficult youth: there is a claim that his father was abusive to his sons; typhoid fever killed his father when Borchard was 12, and crippled his mother; at 17 he killed his brother (Leofric, who was 16) in a duel over their inheritance. At 18, Borchard left home to study law at Cambridge. The university education made him attractive to the crown, and at the age of 20 he became a diplomat under Edward I.

The role of a diplomat then was much the same as now: to represent your country in difficult dealings with other countries. He was sufficiently active in France that a book on the 13th century in France features him heavily. Closer to home, however, he made a political mis-step that would cost him his head.

In the century of Borchard's birth, conflicts between Scotland and England were numerous. Many wealthy Englishmen became landowners in Scotland, and treated the local Scottish workers poorly. Revolts of Scottish workers were common, and to one such revolt—in which English were taken hostage by the Scots—Borchard was sent to settle things. Arriving on 17 February, 1305, with authority to use force to end the problem, Borchard decided to take a different approach.

He negotiated with the captors to release the English hostages. Unfortunately for him, something motivated him to go further. He helped the Scottish peasants plan another rebellion that would result in the death of 10 English landowners; it was staged to look like they had gone against Borchard's advice and absolve him of responsibility.

Why did he do it? Did he promise them something else, like victory over the English in exchange for rewards to Borchard? Did they offer him some of the land? Did he "snap" because of an abusive father? We cannot know.

Returning to England on 29 March, his fortunes quickly went downhill. Another member of the diplomatic  mission, Henry de Bohun, reported Borchard's suspicious behavior to the king. These suspicions, and the second rebellion and deaths of Englishmen, gave Edward cause to declare Borchard a traitor. He was beheaded shortly after his return.

The Other Peasants' Revolts

The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was mentioned last year over a five-day span, but the events in London weren't the only expression of lower class unrest that month. Word of the rebellion in London sparked similar group actions elsewhere in the kingdom. Revolts took place in Bury St. Edmunds, Cambridgeshire, Ipswich, St. Albans, Thetford, and numerous other locales. At a time when 90% of the population was agrarian and existing in a system in which they could feel controlled and oppressed, it was easy to get large crowds stirred up. The ruling minority, on the other hand, took a little longer to muster an armed resistance capable of suppressing the rioting.

In the north of England, for instance, word of rebellion in London reached John of Gaunt on June 17 in Berwick-on-Tweed on the border of Scotland. He was too far from London to do anything about the events there, but he sent messengers to his castles in Yorkshire and Wales to be alert. By this time, Wat Tyler had been killed in London a few days before, and the Revolt there was being dispersed, but John did not know that.

Also on the 17th, word of the revolt came to York, inspiring the lower classes to attack the estates held by Dominicans and Franciscans. York and Scarborough were in upheaval for months until the established authorities were able to re-assert control with the help of armed men.

Ultimate Torture

We have so often heard the phrase "hanged, drawn and quartered" that we probably don't think about the details--or perhaps we simply ignore the details because our imaginations can supply them quite readily. The truth is, however, that the phrase became standard despite the fact that it could mean different things.

From the Chronica majora of Matthew Paris.

"Hanged" is pretty self-explanatory, "quartering" we can picture, but it's the "drawn" that presents confusion, since in the case of execution it can mean two things. On the one hand, it can refer to being dragged to the place of execution, either by being tied directly to a horse, or by being tied to a board that is dragged by a horse (the second method was developed so that the victim had a chance to be still alive and capable of further suffering). Matthew Paris illustrates an example of the first method in his Chronicle when he relates the story of a would-be assassin of Henry III. This story, in fact, is the earliest example we have of the multi-phase style of execution that evolved into "HDaQ." There was a second meaning of "draw" that applied to this punishment, however, for which I (thankfully) do not have an illustration: to draw out the intestines/organs of a person. We have several written accounts of this taking place, however.

Was there a distinction between HDaQ and DHaQ? That is, if the sentence was "hanged, drawn and quartered" did it always mean the convicted was disemboweled between the hanging and the quartering? Scholars disagree on this, and there is a case to be made that having "drawn" in the second position in the phrase could mean the convict was dragged, not disemboweled; it was merely mentioned second (although it might have taken place first, to get the convicted to the gallows) because it was not as significant as the hanging itself.

Whatever the case, the hanging was the trickiest part, because the goal was to strangle the victim just enough, but not kill him outright: you wanted him alive so he could suffer during the next step(s). The plan didn't always work: one victim was so hated that members of the crowd pulled down on his legs while he was hanging and hastened his death, and Guy Fawkes of Gunpowder Plot fame threw himself from the gallows platform, breaking his neck and cheating the Crown of its chance to punish him further.

Still, even if you survived the hanging and drawing—whichever definition was used—you usually weren't conscious (much less living) once the quartering started. So was the quartering essential to the process? Sure, because quartering wasn't part of the sentence for its value as torture. Quartering was important so that different body parts could be sent to different parts of the kingdom to be put on display as a warning to others who might be contemplating treason. The head, of course, was often prominently displayed on London Bridge, the major southern entrance into London, so that visitors and citizens could see it. I wonder if the mob of the Peasants Revolt saw any heads as they marched on London?

The English Bible

John Wycliffe (c.1320-1384) was politically active and a reformer whose brilliance as a theologian was originally admired widely. Eventually, as some of his ideas began to be put into practice, he became labeled a heretic. One of his greatest (and, in the church's opinion, most heretical) acts was to produce a complete translation of The Bible into English, because "it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence."*

"In ye bigynyng iwas ye word", Wycliffe Bible.

We are pretty sure that Wycliffe didn't do the whole book himself. Nor was he the first: the Bible had been translated into Old English centuries before Wycliffe, but manuscripts were rare and piecemeal. The Venerable Bede (c.673-735) and Aldhelm (c.639-709) had each translated parts of the Bible into Old English. The oldest existing manuscript we have is the Lindisfarne Gospels, a 10th century Latin text of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John with Old English translation inserted between the Latin.

Many so-called Middle English Bibles were in fact paraphrases or commentary rather than strict translations.

For Wycliffe, the Bible held more truth than the church hierarchy, and he wanted people to be able to directly study the word of God. When the church objected—the traditional approach was that the clergy were best suited to explain the Bible to the people—Wycliffe replied “Christ and his apostles taught the people in that tongue that was best known to them. Why should men not do so now?”

So he set about making a careful translation with his friend, Nicholas of Hereford. Although using familiar English words, they stuck to Latin syntax, and so a sentence that we know as "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." which is a fairly sensible translation of the Latin, came out (following Latin word order) as "And God said, Be made light, and made is light." In the years after Wycliffe's death in 1384, a follower of his (probably John Purvey) revised it, changing the word order to "And God said, Light be made, and light was made."

The Bible was popular—over 250 copies exist—but the church objected to it and to Wycliffe's increasing influence on the common people, especially after the Peasants' Revolt and the increasingly vocal and active Lollard movement. The early 1400s saw some extremely strict censorship laws put into place to prevent any more unauthorized translations. The problem was that, since the Wycliffe Bible had been translated from the Latin (whether carefully or not) without editorializing, it was not easily distinguishable from "authorized" translations. This may be why so many copies survived. Of course, 1453 and Gutenberg were just a couple generations away, which meant that the production of "unauthorized" texts was about to become frighteningly easy.

*N.B.: "sentence" in the Middle Ages did not mean just a collection of words expressing a complete thought. From the Latin sententia, it signified concepts such as "meaning" or "thought" or "opinion."

Wycliffe the Reformer

John Wycliffe (c.1324-1384), first discussed yesterday, started his career as a respectable Oxford scholar and theologian. His religion and study taught him that wealth was not needed for a Christian life, and not appropriate for the clergy. This was not a radical idea, or new—Francis of Assissi had been preaching and embodying the ascetic life almost 200 years earlier*—however, his arguments and his public presence and patronage made him notorious.

It was after the conference at Bruges (mentioned briefly in the above link) that he seems to have decided he needed to make a more overt defense of his views. Wycliffe might have been fine keeping his views in the rather private academic arena, but when he was denounced and challenged in public by William Bynham of Wallingford Priory in Oxford, Wycliffe decided to go public with his Summa Theologiae in which he explained why the church should not have temporal authority, and that the king was above the pope in earthly matters. He followed this with De civili dominio (On civil lordship), in which he stated that if the church should abuse any of its temporal holdings, the king should take those holdings away; not to do so would be remiss. It was the strongest argument (and the most welcome, to members of the nobility) for the king's authority over the church.

The monastic orders, who benefited from the feudal system of rents and tenants, were understandably threatened by this, especially considering the patronage Wycliffe enjoyed from men like John of Gaunt, who was effectively the ruler of England during Edward III's decline. When Wycliffe was summoned before Bishop William Courtenay of London, he was accompanied by John of Gaunt, the Earl Marshal Henry Percy, other nobles, and even some friars of the orders that rejected personal possessions. Gaunt's presence cowed the bishop, and the gathering broke up without immediate consequence for Wycliffe. This pattern, of attempts to chastise or reign in Wycliffe being overwhelmed by his supporters, would be repeated more than once in the years to come.

In fact, Wycliffe's views were so popular in England that they sparked the anti-establishment movement called "Lollardy" about which it was supposedly said at the time "Every second man that you meet is a Lollard." It is certain that the citizens involved in the Peasants' Revolt were familiar with his views on equality, although he disapproved of their violence. It is ironic that Wycliffe's most powerful patron, Gaunt, was also one of the chief targets of the mob because of his aristocratic standing. It was not long after the Revolt that Wycliffe was officially being denounced as a heretic, which complicated his life but didn't stop him from writing. As well as other tracts and letters, he had one more major work he wished to produce that would shake the church to its foundations. He decided to do what had never been done before: translate the entire Bible into English.

*Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is remembered as a murder mystery set in 1327 by many readers who have forgotten that one of the central themes is the philosophical debate on the topic of the church and material wealth.

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 5 (of 5)

...and he's only 14!

So...

Tens of thousands have damaged London and remain a threat. King Richard goes out to calm them down and promise them he will treat them well, but while he's doing that, they storm the Tower of London and behead the Archbishop of Canterbury (who is also Chancellor) and the Lord Treasurer—and at the same time they hassle the king's mother. But he meets with them the next day anyway—king's word is his bond, right? The rebel leader acts like a jerk (so we're told, by the guys on the opposite side of the argument), and is killed. The front of the line of rebels—standing far back—see him go from his horse to the ground. They suspect treachery, and start to raise weapons and get loud.

The fourteen-year-old king spurs his horse forward, right up to the rebels, alone. He asks them if they really wish to shoot at their king. In the embarrassed confusion that follows, he raises his sword and says "You shall have no leader but me!" He tells them that all is well, Tyler has in fact just been knighted (which pleases the crowd, although it is completely counter to the idea of social equality behind which they marched), and that they should follow Richard to an open area outside of London. The crowd, enthralled that this boy, king by divine right, is willing to be their leader, follows him into open fields, which allows the nobles with 7000 militia (pulled together in the previous 48 hours) to surround them. The rebels are combed through to find the leaders. The followers are easily dispersed. The concessions offered by the king are revoked.

Jack Straw and John Ball are found (according to Froissart) hiding in an old house, thinking they had escaped. John Ball is executed on July 15; presumably, Jack Straw is also executed around the same time.

Other revolts against the upper classes took place in Europe, and statutes intended to restrict workers for the good of society were enacted several times over the next few centuries, but the Peasants' Revolt stands out in England for how quickly it surged, and how easily and quickly it was quelled.

(And then Richard went on to invent the handkerchief.)

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 4 (of 5)

June 12th

Wat Tyler and thousands of middle- and lower-class followers reached Blackheath by June 12th, and heard John Ball's famous sermon. Stirred with egalitarian fervor, they marched to London, crossing London Bridge unopposed the next day. Meanwhile, Jack Straw's Essex group had also arrived. They did not engage in widespread or mindless looting: their targets were symbolic of what they thought was wrong with the country. Only certain buildings were attacked.

John of Gaunt would have been a target, had he been present. The king's uncle and a shrewd and powerful politician, Gaunt was thought by the crowd to be undermining the authority of the 14-year-old monarch. What the crowd likely did not know was that the same Lollard tendencies toward social equality and against church corruption that motivated John Ball were also of great interest to John of Gaunt. Fortunately for Gaunt--and history--Gaunt was patrolling the border of Scotland at the time.

Still, the rebels found a target in Gaunt's home, the Savoy on the banks of the Thames, considered the grandest home in London. It was looted before being burned, and anything precious found therein was destroyed or thrown into the river. Legend says that a rebel who tried to keep a silver cup for himself was set upon by his comrades and killed.

On June 13th, King Richard II addressed the rebels himself, offering them several concessions. Something in the quality of the bold young boy (he was 14) calmed them, and a parlay was agreed upon. Unfortunately, while Richard was addressing one group, another large group entered the Tower of London complex. There they found who they considered to be two of the architects of their troubled land: the Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury, and the Lord Treasurer Robert Hales. Both were dragged to Tower Hill and beheaded.

On June 14th, Richard and the Lord Mayor of London,William Walworth, along with a contingent of soldiers, met the rebels at Smithfield to discuss the end of the revolt. Wat Tyler rode alone to address the king, but he was so insolent (so say reports) that Walworth hacked at Tyler's neck with his sword, whereupon a knight, Sir John Cavendish, killed Tyler by running him through with his sword.

...and then it got really interesting.

[to be continued]

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 3 (of 5)

Wat Tyler & Jack Straw

The Peasants' Revolt was not just the result of a stirring sermon by John Ball. All of the counties of Kent and Essex were stirred up by an incident that started May 30, 1381. One of the king's servants went to the village of Fobbing and attempted to collect the poll tax that had been announced in 1379. He was refused any money, which prompted a visit by Chief Justice Robert Belknap to investigate and punish the villagers. He was attacked on June 2nd at the village of Brentwood.

Walter "Wat" Tyler (we call him "Tyler" because he worked in the roofing trade) comes into the story as an outraged father who killed a tax collector who had molested Tyler's daughter. There is some confusion, caused by the presence of more than one Tyler in the crowd. A recently discovered account from the time suggests that, the rebels already having been stirred up in Kent, they chose a "Wat Tyler" from Maidstone to lead them on or after June 7th, after those rebels took Rochester Castle.

Jack Straw is known even less, but he was one of the leaders of the rebels. Some historians think he was simply a pseudonym for Wat Tyler, but Froissart (who may not have observed the events, but was alive at the time and knew people close to the situation), makes it clear that Straw and Tyler were different people. Thomas Walsingham, a monk who wrote down much of the history of England during the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV and Henry V, claims Straw was a priest and led a group of rebels from Bury St. Edmunds and Mildenhall to London.

There was also a John Wrawe, who had been a vicar in Suffolk and led a group from that county.

A majority of the rebels on the move--mostly the large group from Kent led by Wat Tyler—met at Blackheath and heard the sermon from John Ball with the famous line "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" By June 12th, these groups were either listening to John Ball or approaching London from a different direction. Tempers were rising, and the lower classes were ready to make a statement.

[to be continued]

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 2 (of 5)

The Peasants' Revolt--Other Causes

The lower classes were not just worked up by a sermon about social equality, or the statutes that tried to maintain wages at lower levels.

Poll Tax
At a time when annual taxation was unknown, the unexpected declaration of any tax could be a cause for concern: a tax that did not seem equitable was especially unwelcome. The Poll Tax of 1377 was a flat rate of 4 pence, and was do-able. Another poll tax in 1379, however, was not a flat rate, nor so small. Some of the poor were given reduced rates, but others had to pay the full rate of 12 pence, three times the rate of just two years earlier.

The King
Edward III died in 1377, leaving the throne to his grandson Richard II, aged 10. In 1381, the king being only 14, the country was still being run by regents who were considered unpopular, including the Archbishop of Canterbury (Simon Sudbury) who was considered the embodiment of a corrupt church, and the Lord Treasurer (Sir Robert Hales), who instituted the poll taxes. The air of majesty that surrounded a king still existed for the masses, and they considered the authority of these other lords (who included the king's uncle, John of Gaunt) improper.

These factors were already reflected in some acts of social unrest taking place in the spring and summer of 1381. More on them tomorrow.

Occupy (Medieval) London! Part 1 (of 5)

The Peasants' Revolt of 1381

The statutes that attempted to restrict the peasant workforce to pre-Plague levels of wages, etc., did not please the lower classes. Social unrest needs a nucleus, however, a focus, and one was found in John Ball.

John Ball (c.1338-1381) was a priest and a "Lollard." (Lollardy, among other things, rejected the idea that the aristocracy were "better.") Ball's traveling roadshow of social equality did not please the Archbishop of Canterbury, who imprisoned Ball in the archbishop's palace in Kent, 30 miles southeast of London. This did not sit well with Ball's many fans, who broke him out of prison. He and they traveled toward London, and in a field in Blackheath, he preached an open-air sermon to a large crowd on a topic that became a motto for the lower class:

When Adam dalf [delved, digged], and Eve span, who was thanne a gentilman? From the beginning all men were created equal by nature, and that servitude had been introduced by the unjust and evil oppression of men, against the will of God, who, if it had pleased Him to create serfs, surely in the beginning of the world would have appointed who should be a serf and who a lord... 

He concluded with exhortations to root out those who brought harm to the community: the lords of the realm, and the lawyers and justices and jurors. The crowd, roused to a frenzy, began the five-mile march to London.

[to be continued]

Peasants

"Free"dom isn't "free"

Before discussing the first "Occupy" movement--the Peasants' Revolt of 1381--I thought I would first briefly address the topic of peasants.

One unexpected facet to life as a peasant in Medieval England was that you could be either free or unfree. There were, in fact, several levels of "free"dom represented by various terms:

• sokeman
• villan/villein
• bordar
• cottar/cottager
• slave

Being "free" had disadvantages as well as benefits. The unfree peasant was tied to a lord and that lord's domains. His fate and his family's was bound to that place, and he worked for the lord. The benefit, however, was that he had a place to live, and the lord was obligated to make sure his tenants thrived (or else he would lose his workforce).

You could free yourself by marrying a freeman, or else by running away and living elsewhere for a year without being discovered and dragged back (and likely punished with fines, etc.). Finding employment as a runaway peasant wasn't that easy, however.

Something curious arises from a study of inheritance records: medieval English peasants often had saved sufficient funds to purchase their freedom; purchasing their freedom is rare, however, as evidenced by how much money they leave to their inheritors. Why would this be?

The free peasant could rent land from a lord, or purchase and work his own land; his obligations to the lord (in the form of taxes/tithes) was less than that of the unfree peasant. The freeman could uproot and travel to greener pastures, if they were available. The lord, however, had no obligation to take pity on the freeman if the harvest was bad. Being free meant being free to sink or swim on your own. The unfree peasant had stable expectations for what he owed the lord that did not change from year to year and could be planned for. The lord could raise the rent on the freeman, if he felt like it. The unfree peasant was a dependent on whom the lord himself depended for labor. This symbiotic relationship lasted for centuries, until thrown off-kilter by the Bubonic Plague.