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.
Wat Tyler and the men of Kent, with thousands more from Surrey, at
once marched on to London Bridge, where they destroyed the houses of
ill-fame that clustered round the south side of the bridge. The prisons
had been pulled down the night before, and now the brothels were burnt
to the ground and their inmates dismissed--that the new City of God
of John Ball’s vision might be cleansed of its old foulness. These
places of infamy, rented by Flemish women, were the property of William
Walworth, the Mayor of London; and their destruction filled him with
rage against the invaders.
Walworth made some attempt to fortify London Bridge by placing iron
chains across the bridge; and he gave orders for the drawbridge to be
pulled up, in order that a passage might be prevented. But on Tyler’s
threat that he would burn the bridge if a way was not quickly made for
him, Alderman Sibley (who, with Aldermen Horne and Tonge, supported
the claims of the revolutionaries on the City Corporation) had the
chains removed and the draw-bridge lowered, and Alderman Horne met
Tyler at the city gate and bade him welcome.
Fifty thousand men followed Tyler in London, and the city was now at
the mercy of the peasant army. Walworth, who had no want of spirit,
declared to the king and his council in the Tower that 6,000 soldiers
could be raised in the city, but “fear had so fallen upon the soldiery
that they seemed half dead with fright.” Sir Robert Knolles with 600
men-at-arms guarded the Tower.
It was now that Wat Tyler’s great qualities of leadership and the good
discipline of his army were seen. With London in his hands, he warned
his followers that death would be the instant punishment for theft;
and proclaimed to the citizens, “We are indeed zealots for truth and
justice, but we are not thieves and robbers.” Every respect was to be
shown to the persons and property of the people of London, and wrath
was only to fall on John of Gaunt and the ministers of the crown, and
the lawyers--the enemies, as it seemed to Tyler, of the good estate of
England. In return, the citizens offered bread and ale freely to the
invaders, and London artisans joined their ranks in large numbers.
The archbishop’s palace at Lambeth was soon stormed, and all the
records it contained were destroyed; the building itself was left
uninjured.
At four o’clock in the afternoon the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt,
by the Strand, was in flames; and all its wealth of treasure, rich
tapestries and costly furniture, rare vessels of gold and silver,
precious stones, and art work of priceless value, heaped up on a
bonfire or ground to powder. The Duke of Lancaster’s jewelled coat,
covered with gems, was set up as a target and riddled with arrows,
before it was cut into a thousand pieces and pounded to dust. One
wretched man was caught attempting to sneak off with a silver cup;
and being taken in the act, was put to death as Tyler had decreed.
The Savoy was burnt to the ground, but no one interfered with its
inhabitants; and Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt’s son (who was
to reign in Richard’s stead as Henry IV.), passed out with all his
servants unmolested. The wine-cellar proved fatal to certain of the
host, who, drinking freely, perished, buried under the fallen building.
From the Savoy the army of destruction passed to the Temple, the
head-quarters of the Knights Hospitallers, of whom Sir Robert Hales was
president, and a hive of lawyers. The Temple was burnt, but no lives
were lost; for the lawyers, “even the most aged and infirm of them,
scrambled off with the agility of rats or evil spirits.”
At nightfall the priory of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, the prisons
at the Fleet and at Newgate, and the Manor House at Highbury, had all
been demolished; and the men of Essex, led by Thomas Faringdon, a
London baker, were at Mile End; while William Grindcobbe, with a body
of men from St. Albans, lay at Highbury.
In vain Walworth urged the king and his royal council to act. Richard
had sent to Tyler asking for a written statement of the grievances of
the commons, and had been told in reply that the king must meet his
commons face to face, and hear with his own ears their demands. In the
evening Walworth proposed that the garrison at the Tower should be
despatched against Tyler, “to fall upon these wretches who were in the
streets, and amounted to 60,000, while they were asleep and drunk. They
might be killed like flies,” Walworth added, “for not one in twenty had
arms.”
But the handful of soldiers at the Tower were in mortal terror of the
peasant host, and “all had so lost heart that you would have thought
them more like dead men than living.”
The Earl of Salisbury checked Walworth’s rash proposals. “If we begin
what we cannot carry through,” he observed, “we shall never be able to
repair matters. It will be all over with us and our heirs, and England
will be a desert.”
An open conflict with Tyler and his 60,000 was a very hazardous
proceeding. Who could be sure of escape if it came to battle? So far
Tyler had only struck at the chief ministers and the lawyers, and why
should others risk their lives in such a quarrel? Besides, it was
said that Wat Tyler and a mad priest of Kent were for doing away with
all nobles, and for making all men equal, and caution was necessary
in dealing with men who held such strange opinions. England without
its nobility would be a desert, and at all costs such an irreparable
calamity as the loss of England’s nobility must be prevented.
So Walworth got no help in his plans for resistance; and when that
night a messenger from Tyler warned the king that if he refused to meet
the commons of England in open conference, the people would seize the
Tower, Richard sent word in reply promising to meet his subjects on
the morrow at noon at Mile End, and there hear their complaints.
Tyler accepted the king’s word, and after sleeping with his men hard
by the Tower, at St. Catherine’s Wharf, was at Mile End betimes.
Here he met Grindcobbe, and hearing that the people of Hertfordshire
had trouble with the abbot at St. Albans, bade Grindcobbe return and
accomplish freedom for the abbot’s tenants and serfs.
Richard went to Mile End with no large retinue, and two of his
companions, the Earl of Kent and Sir John Holland, left him at
Whitechapel and galloped off in craven fear of the multitude that
thronged the road. Richard, though he was only fifteen, displayed
both courage and cunning when confronted with Tyler. He knew that the
discontent in the country was directed against the government, and not
against the king, and that the misrule could not fairly be laid to his
charge. Besides, he was the son of the Black Prince, and the people
showed no signs of hostility. His policy was to yield and to wait an
opportunity for regaining power.
The conference at Mile End began with a request from Richard to know
what was required of him. Tyler answered that first all traitors should
be executed, and to this demand the king agreed. Then four definite
proposals were put forward by Wat Tyler: