endured for five years, and then it seemed as if nothing could save
the country from civil war. As a last resource appeal was made by both
sides to King Louis of France to arbitrate concerning the fulfilment of
the Provisions, and at Amiens, in January, 1264, the award was given.
Louis solemnly gave sentence for the king against the barons, entirely
annulling the Statutes and Provisions of Oxford, and in particular
declaring the king free to appoint his own ministers, councils, and
sheriffs, and to employ aliens. But by the award--the mise--of Amiens
the earlier charters given by the crown were to remain, and all
disputes arising out of the Parliament of Oxford were to be suppressed.
Louis gave as a reason for annulling the provisions that the pope had
already annulled them.
The appellants had turned to Louis hoping for peace. The award was the
signal for war. Many of the bishops and barons at once withdrew from
Simon, who answered the deserters by declaring, “Though all should
forsake us, I and my four sons will fight to the death in the righteous
cause I have sworn to uphold, to the honour of the Church and the good
of the realm. Many lands have I travelled, heathen and Christian, but
nowhere have I seen such bad faith and falsehood as in England.”
London was enthusiastic in its support of the barons, and the Cinque
Ports, the scholars of Oxford, and the Dominican and Franciscan friars
were all on the side of reform. Chief among Simon’s supporters were
Bishop Cantilupe, of Worcester, Gilbert, the young Earl of Gloucester,
Hugh le Despenser, the justiciar, and Roger Bigod.
War began in March, when Prince Edward captured Gloucester, joined
Henry at Oxford, and then seized Nottingham and Northampton, while
Simon and the citizens of London attacked Rochester. Henry turned
south, and encamped in full force near Lewes.
Again Simon laboured for peace, and in his own name and the name of
Gilbert of Gloucester, the Bishops of Worcester and London went as
ambassadors to Henry. Simon offered £30,000 to the king if he would
make peace and keep to the Provisions of Oxford, and assured him that
he had taken up arms not against Henry but against those who were “not
only our enemies, but yours, and those of the whole kingdom.”
The king treated the proposal with scorn, and Prince Edward added an
additional message of contempt.
On the 14th of May the battle of Lewes was fought and won by Simon,
“through a singular conjunction of skill and craft on the one side, and
rashness and panic on the other.”[47]
The Earl of Leicester went into the battle fighting for his country and
his oath, and with the exhortation to his men “to pray God, if this our
undertaking be pleasing in His sight, to give us might to fulfil the
same, serving Him as good knights.”
The stout old Bishop of Worcester blessed the troops, “who had among
them all but one faith, one will in all things, one love towards God
and their neighbour, so that they feared neither to offend the king
nor even to die for the sake of justice, rather than violate their
oaths.” (Matthew of Westminster.)
At the end of the day the defeat of the royalists was complete, and the
king, Prince Edward and his kinsmen were prisoners.
Then peace was made, Henry once more swearing to keep the charters
and articles of Oxford, to employ no aliens, to submit the Provisions
to arbitration again, to live thriftily till his debts were paid,
and to give his son Edward and his nephew Henry as hostages for good
behaviour till a permanent reform in the constitution was made. Early
in June these terms of peace were proclaimed in London, to the general
satisfaction, and on all sides the people shouted their thankfulness to
Simon.
God’s blessing on Earl Simon, his sons and followers light!
Who put their lives in jeopardy and fought a desperate fight,
Because their hearts were moved to hear their English brethren groan
Beneath the hard taskmasters’ rods, making a grievous moan,
Like Israel under Pharaoh’s yoke, in thraldom and in dread,
Their freedom gone, their lives scarce spared, so evilly they sped.
But at the last the Lord looked down and saw His people’s pain,
And sent a second Mattathias to break their bonds in twain;
Who with his sons so full of zeal for the law and for the right,
Will never flinch a single inch before the tyrant’s might.
To Simon’s faith and faithfulness alone our peace we owe,
He raised the weak and hopeless and made the proud to bow,
He set the realm at one again and brought the mighty low.[48]
And now in the summer of 1264 Earl Simon was to show what he could do
for England, for the victory of Lewes had placed power in his hands,
and he stood indisputably the foremost man in the realm. For one short
year his counsel was to guide the destinies of England and to make that
year memorable for all time by the creation of the first representative
Parliament.
A new scheme of government was at once drawn up. Three electors chosen
by the barons were to appoint a council of nine for the guidance of
the king, and Simon of Montfort, Gilbert of Gloucester, and Stephen
Berksted, Bishop of Chichester, were speedily chosen as the three
electors. Hugh le Despenser remained justiciar, and Thomas Cantilupe,
the bishop’s nephew, became chancellor. (This Thomas subsequently
became Bishop of Hereford, died in Italy, and was canonized.)
Then in December came the issue of writs for Simon of Montfort’s
famous Full Parliament of 1265. Two knights are to be returned
from each shire, and for the first time from each city and borough
the burgesses are to send two representatives. Hitherto Parliament
had consisted of barons and clergy, and knights sent by the king’s
tenants, and the representation of the townspeople was unknown.
Simon’s earlier policy at Oxford had done nothing to extend the basis
of government or create a national responsibility for the laws. “The
provisions of 1258 restricted, the constitutions of 1264 extended the
limits of parliament.... Either Simon’s views of a constitution had
rapidly developed, or the influence which had checked them in 1258
were removed. Anyhow, he had had genius to interpret the mind of the
nation and to anticipate the line which was taken by later progress.”
(Stubbs.)
This development of Simon’s views may fairly be traced to his close
and intimate connection with the Dominican friars.[49] Simon’s father,
the warrior of the Albigensian wars, had been the warm friend of St.
Dominic. Simon himself was equally the friend of Bishop Grosseteste,
the champion of the friars. As far back as 1245 Simon had founded a
Dominican priory at Leicester. In 1263 he had been present at a General
Chapter of the Dominican Order in Holborn, London, and the Parliament
of Oxford had met in a Dominican priory in that city. All along the
friars had supported the popular movement.[50]
Now the peculiarity of the Dominican Order of Friars is its
representative form of government. Each priory sends two
representatives to its provincial chapter, and each province sends two
representatives to the general chapter of the order.
Simon of Montfort, when the opportunity came to him for striking out
a reform in the English Parliament, adopted the plan which he had
studied and seen at work amongst the Preaching Friars. “The idea of
representative government had ripened in his hand,” and his genius
interpreted the mind of the nation. In spite of all the scorn that
has been poured on popular elections and the Houses of Parliament,
in spite of all the imperfections that necessarily are attached to
any constitutional system devised by the wit of man, the idea of
representative government has become the inspiration of the nations
of the world. The failings of democracy are obvious, the weak spots
in popular electoral systems glaring; but mankind, once grasping the
idea of freedom in politics, clamours eagerly for responsibility in
law-making and the administration of justice, and refuses to rest
satisfied under any despotism or bureaucracy, benevolent or malevolent.
Suppressed by dictators, perverted by demagogues, abused by the
unscrupulous in power, there still seems nothing better in politics
for mankind than self-government. “Better is he who rules his own
temper than he who storms a city,” wrote Friar Adam of Marsh to Simon
of Montfort. “Better self-government for a people than world-wide
conquest,” the average man declares, and the opinion slowly moulds
the destinies of nations, till “patriotism” becomes the word for good
service in politics.
The verse of the thirteenth century chronicler:--
The king that tries without advice to seek his people’s will,
Must often fail, he cannot know the woes and wants they feel,
gets re-expression in the nineteenth century in Abraham Lincoln’s:
“Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Always
threatened by the personal ambition of man, often overthrown when
ambition held the sword of power, contemptible to the wise and prudent
because of the simplicity and innocence of “the people,” denounced as
dangerous by the professional expert in bureaucracy because of the
ignorance of “the people,” its inadequacy the common theme of the
disappointed--representative government survives its enemies, defies
its critics, and with its blemishes unconcealed, finds the company of
its lovers ever increasing and recruiting in its behalf. For since
that first Full Parliament of Earl Simon’s in 1265 it has never been
possible to get rid of the notion that representative government was
a key to the portals of freedom; and though the wider the freedom the
greater the responsibility, to the credit of the race at all times men
and women have pressed forward, not rejecting responsibility.
Simon’s parliament sat from January to March. Its chief business was
the confirmation of the treaty of peace at Lewes, and Henry swore as
usual to maintain the new constitution, the charters and provisions.
The government was short-lived. Danger from France, where the queen
and Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury and all Henry’s alien courtiers
planned invasion with an army collected in Holland, had passed away
at the close of the previous summer. There had been a great muster of
troops for national defence near Dover, bad weather had incapacitated
the queen’s fleet, and Louis of France agreed to negotiations in place
of war. The Cinque Ports mariners refused a landing to the pope’s
legate, who was ready to excommunicate the new government, and flung
his papal bull in the sea.[51]
Not from abroad but from within came the foes who overthrew Simon’s
government and murdered the great statesman. Earl Gilbert, of
Gloucester, like his father, grew jealous of Simon’s leadership, and
disputed his authority as to the ransom of some of the prisoners of
Lewes, and Simon’s sons added fuel to the flame by their pride and
overbearing insolence. Roger Mortimer and some of the nobles of the
Welsh marches rose for King Henry in the spring of 1265, and Gilbert
deserted the barons for the king.[52] William of Valence landed in
South Wales with a body of crossbowmen in May, and when Simon reached
Hereford to put down the rebellion, Prince Edward, who, with the king,
had been in Simon’s custody, made his escape to Mortimer and the
marches.
Edward quickly raised troops, and joined Gilbert at Ludlow, where he
took an oath to obey the laws and charters of the realm. Simon, in some
danger of being cut off by this movement on his rear, sent word to his
second son--Simon--to go to Kenilworth and join him at Evesham, and
then turned back from Wales.
The younger Simon was surprised at Kenilworth by a sudden raid by
Edward. His camp was broken up, his banners taken, and he was driven
back into the castle. Edward, fully aware that Earl Simon had only a
small force with him, hurried off to Evesham to attack him, before
young Simon could rally his scattered troops and come to his father’s
help.
On the morning of August 4th Earl Simon halted at Evesham, and at
the king’s request, for Henry was still his captive, heard mass and
dined. His son’s army, now on its way, halted for the same purpose at
Alcester. “He was now only ten miles distant and the junction of father
and son seemed secure.”[53] But Prince Edward was already between them.
“As the morning broke his army lay across the road that led northward
from Evesham to Alcester. Ere three hours had passed the corpse of the
great earl lay mangled amid a ring of faithful knights, and the ‘murder
of Evesham, for battle none it was,’ was over.”
At first Simon thought the advancing army was his son’s, for Edward
displayed the captured banners of Kenilworth, but when he saw the
standards of the prince and of Gloucester, and the well-known banner of
Mortimer, the truth was clear.
“By the arm of St. James,” cried the earl, “they come on skilfully, for
they have turned my lessons against me. God have mercy on our souls,
for our bodies are theirs! Though if Simon were to come up we might
hope yet.” He turned to his eldest son, and pointing to the banner of
Gloucester said, “See, Henry, what your pride has done.”
In vain Henry urged his father to fly while escape was possible. “I
had as lief die here in a good cause as in the Holy Land,” said the
earl, and the barons and knights standing round were equally resolute
to fight to the end--though they had but two men to every seven of
the enemy. The good Bishop of Worcester blessed the little army as he
had done at Lewes, and then the battle began. The Welsh footsoldiers
quickly lost heart and fled from Simon and the field, and the barons
were soon hemmed in. One by one they fell--Henry of Montfort, Hugh le
Despenser, the wise and upright justiciar, and Simon himself, wounded
and unhorsed, “fought on to the last like a giant for the liberties of
England.” A soldier stabbed him in the back under the mail he wore, and
then he was borne down and slain, overwhelmed by numbers rather than
conquered. “So a death full of honour ended the chivalry and prowess,
ennobled by so many deeds in so many lands.” “Thus lamentably fell
the flower of knighthood, leaving to others an example of steadfast
courage. Who can prevent the treachery of friends? Those who had eaten
his bread had raised their heels against him. Those who had spoken
words of love to him with their lips lied in their throats, for their
hearts were not right with him, and they betrayed him in his hour of
need.” (W. Rishanger.)
For nearly three hours the unequal battle was fought, in the midst of
storm and darkness. So dark was it that King Henry, who had been forced
to remain with Simon’s knights, had difficulty in saving his life, and
was actually wounded by a javelin before he was recognized by Edward’s
soldiers.
The monks of Evesham carried the bodies of some of the barons into the
abbey for burial, and after horrible mutilations by the victors the
remains of the great earl were reverently interred by the side of Hugh
le Despenser, before the high altar.
“Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol
his prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple
fare and plain russet dress, bearing witness to his kindly speech and
firm friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and
unjust men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such
that neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside
from keeping the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause
‘like a pillar that cannot be moved, and like a second Josiah esteemed
righteousness the very healing of his soul.’ As a statesman he wished
to bind the king to rule according to law, and to make the king’s
ministers responsible to a full Parliament; and though he did not live
to see the success of his policy, he had pointed out the way by which
future statesmen might bring it about.” (F. York Powell.)
The news of Simon’s death was received with general mourning as it
spread over the land. He was acclaimed by the people as a saint and
martyr, and miracles were said to be worked by his relics.[54] The
Franciscan friars drew up a service in his honour--“consisting of
lessons, responses, verses, hymns, and other matter appertaining to
the honour and respect due to a martyr.”[55] But the pope who had
excommunicated Simon was not likely to hear of canonization, and “as
long as Edward lives the service compiled in Simon’s honour cannot gain
acceptance to be chanted within the church of God, which was hoped
for.”[56]
The “Lament of Earl Simon,”[57] compared the mighty statesman with
Thomas of Canterbury:
For by his death Earl Simon hath
In sooth the victory won,
Like Canterbury’s martyr he
There to the death was done.
Thomas the good, that never would
Let holy church be tried;
Like him he fought, and flinching not,
The good earl like him died.
_Refrain:_
Now low there lies the flower of price
That knew so much of war;
The Earl Montfort, whose luckless sort,
The land shall long deplore.
Death did they face to keep in place
Both righteousness and peace;
Wherefore the saint from sin and taint
Shall give their souls release.
They faced the grave that they might save
The people of this land;
For so his will they did fulfill
As we do understand.
_Refrain._
Sir Simon now, that knight so true,
With all his company,
Are gone above to joy and love
In life that cannot die;
But may our Lord that died on rood
And God send succour yet
To them that lie in misery,
Fast in hard prison set.
_Refrain._
The good cause for which Simon had fought might well have seemed lost,
when Edward’s knights were hacking the dead body of the great earl to
pieces at Evesham. But it was not exactly a “Royalist victory,” for the
very men who stood victors over the mangled corpse of Earl Simon were
men as resolute as he was to enforce the Great Charter and its results
against the king.[58]
In the hour of triumph Henry struck hard, and a mad reaction of terror
ensued. But the movement Simon had led could not be turned back, and
the very savage extravagance of the royalist party defeated its own
ends. A general sentence of disinheritance against all who had fought
with Simon drove the disinherited barons to keep up the fight. The
siege of Kenilworth, where Sir Henry of Hastings defied the whole
royal army, lasted from June to December, 1266, and was only ended by
Parliament insisting on the king appointing a board of twelve, who made
a just award concerning the disinherited. By this award, called the Ban
of Kenilworth:--
The royal obligation to keep the charters was required.
The acts of Simon were annulled, and the full prerogatives of the crown
declared.
The freedom of the Church was demanded.
Justice was to be done according to the laws and customs of the realm.
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_.
[Illustration: KING RICHARD II.
(_From the Panel Painting in the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey._)]
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.