an honourable, conscientious statesman; but as a prelate he is noted
chiefly for his quarrels with his chapter.”--W. H. Hutton, _Social
England_.
[27] Matthew Paris.
[28] “If he was to give up all for which he had been fighting, and
fighting successfully, against the pope and the Church for the past six
years, he must make quite sure of gaining such an advantage as would be
worth the sacrifice. Mere release from excommunication and interdict
was certainly, in his eyes, not worth any sacrifice at all. To change
the pope from an enemy into a political friend was worth it, but--from
John’s point of view--only if the friendship could be made something
much more close and indissoluble than the ordinary official relation
between the pope and every Christian sovereign. He must bind the pope
to his personal interest by some special tie of such a nature that the
interest of the papacy itself would prevent Innocent from casting it
off or breaking it.... To outward personal humiliation of any kind John
was absolutely indifferent, when there was any advantage to be gained
by undergoing it. To any humiliation which the crown or the nation
might suffer in his person, he was indifferent under all circumstances.
His plighted faith he had never had a moment’s hesitation in breaking,
whether it were sworn to his father, his brother, his allies or his
people, and he would break it with equal facility when sworn to the
supreme pontiff.... There seems, in short, to be good reason for
believing that John’s homage to the pope was offered without any
pressure from Rome and on grounds of deliberate policy.”--K. Norgate,
_John Lackland_.
[29] K. Norgate, _John Lackland_.
[30] “By the intervention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, with several
of his bishops and some barons, a sort of peace (_quasi pax_) was made
between the king and the barons.”--Ralph of Coggeshall.
[31] Matthew Paris, _Greater Chronicle_, quoted by K. Norgate.
[32] “The Charter was a treaty between two powers neither of
which trusted, or even pretended to trust, the other.”--Stubbs,
_Constitutional History_. Vol. II.
[33] Luard. Preface to _Grosseteste’s Letters_. Rolls’ Series. 1861.
[34] A well-known passage in Matthew Paris, vol. v, gives the monk’s
point of view of Grosseteste, the reformer:--“At this time the Bishop
of Lincoln made a visitation of the religious houses in the diocese.
If one were to tell all the acts of tyranny he committed therein, the
bishop would seem not merely unfeeling but inhuman in his severity.
For amongst other things when he came to Ramsey he went round the
whole place, examined each one of the monks’ beds in the dormitory,
scrutinized everything, and if he found anything locked up destroyed
it. He broke open the monks’ coffers as a thief would, and if he found
any cups wrought with decoration and with feet to stand on he broke
them to pieces, though it would have been wiser to have demanded them
unbroken for the poor. He also heaped the terrible curses of Moses on
the heads of those who disobeyed his injunctions and the blessings
of Moses on those who should observe the same.... And it is believed
all this he hath done to restrain from sin those over whom he hath
authority, and for whose souls he must give account.” This was written
in 1251, when Grosseteste had been sixteen years at Lincoln.
[35] Wright, _Political Songs_. Camden Society, 1839.
[36] Grosseteste had been unable to get his way with the barons on
the question of legitimacy of children before legal wedlock. By the
old church law marriage made such children legitimate, and at the
council of Merton, in 1236, Grosseteste, with the bishops, tried to
bring the common law into union with the church view on this matter.
He was defeated, and to this day these children are illegitimate. “It
would indeed have been better if the independence exhibited by the
majority who opposed the prelates at Merton had been reserved for
another occasion; for it cannot be deemed that the perpetuation of a
law contrary to that which prevails on the subject in almost every
European country, and which still differentiates Scotland from England
by abroad, though unintelligible line of demarcation, has been open
to grave objection on grounds of public convenience, apart from any
inherent merits or demerits it may possess.”--F. S. Stevenson, _Robert
Grosseteste_.
[37] “Grosseteste, then, may be regarded in a threefold aspect; first,
as a reformer who sought to reform the Church from within and not
from without, by the removal of existing abuses, by the encouragement
he gave to the great religious revival of the early part of the 13th
century, and by the example of unflinching fearlessness and rectitude
which he set in his performance of the episcopal office; secondly,
as the teacher who guided the rising fortunes of the University of
Oxford; and thirdly, as the statesman who, applying to new conditions
the policy associated with the name of Stephen Langton, endeavoured to
combine into one effort the struggle of the clergy for the liberties
of the Church with the struggle of the laity for the liberties of
the nation, imbued Simon de Montfort with principles of ‘truth and
justice’ which went far beyond the mere maintenance of the privileges
of his own order, and at the same time, by his effort to reconcile him
with his sovereign, and by the whole tenour of his actions, showed
that had he lived a few years longer, his influence would have been
directed to the task of achieving by peaceful means the constitutional
advance brought about by those who, taking the sword, perished by the
sword.”--Stevenson, _Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln_.
[38] See recent article on “Grosseteste” in _Catholic Encyclopædia_.
[39] Yet out of this letter and out of his great knowledge and love
of the Scriptures a notion has been current that Grosseteste was a
forerunner of Protestantism, and “a harbinger of the Reformation.” “If
this implies that he had any tendency towards the doctrinal changes
brought about in the Church at the Reformation, or that he evidenced
any idea of a separation of the Church of England from that of Rome, a
more utterly mistaken statement has never been made.”--Luard, Preface
to _Grosseteste’s Letters_. (Rolls Series.)
As for Grosseteste’s Scriptural knowledge, “The thorough familiarity
with the Old Testament is, perhaps, only what we might expect; but the
use which is made of the actions of all the characters of Scripture,
and the forced and sometimes outrageous way in which they are
introduced to illustrate his argument, show how thoroughly ‘biblical’
the age was, and how completely the Old Testament history was regarded
rather as the guide of men’s conduct in Christian times, than as a mere
historical record of past events.”--_Ibid._
[40] “The king acted as if he had sent him abroad simply to ruin his
fortunes and wreck his reputation.”--Stubbs.
[41] Matthew Paris.
[42] Rishanger, the chronicler for St. Albans, puts the case for the
national party:--
“The king that tries without advice to seek his people’s weal
Must often fail, he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
The Parliament must tell the king how he may serve them best,
And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
A king should seek his people’s good and not his own sweet will,
Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill.
For they that keep the king from sin serve him the best of all,
Making him free that else would be to sin a wretched thrall.
True king is he, and truly free, who rules himself aright,
And chooses freely what he knows will ease his people’s plight.
Think not it is the king’s goodwill that makes the law to be,
For law is steadfast, and a king has no stability.
No! law stands high above the king, for law is that true light
Without whose ray the king would stray and wander from the right.
When a king strays he ought to be called back into the way
By those he rules, who lawfully his will may disobey
Until he seeks the path, but when his wandering is o’er,
They ought to help and succour him and love him as before.”
(Translated by F. York Powell.)
[43] “The new form of government bears evidence of its origin; it is
intended rather to fetter the king than to extend or develop the action
of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself
as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the
expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions
of select committees, betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and
somewhat irksome duty of attendance in parliament rather than to share
the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of
the people. It must however be remembered that the scheme makes a very
indistinct claim to the character of a final arrangement.”--Stubbs.
[44] A board of twenty-four--half chosen by the king and half by the
barons--had laid a body of resolutions before the Oxford Parliament,
and the first of these resolutions declared that all castles and
estates alienated from the crown should be at once resumed.
[45] “The first time, as far as we know, English was used in any public
document.”--Blaauw, _The Barons’ War_.
[46]
“End, O Earl of Gloster, what thou hast begun!
Save thou end it fitly, we are all undone.
Play the man, we pray thee, as thou hast promised,
Cherish steadfastly the cause of which thou wast the head.
He that takes the Lord’s work up, and lays it down again,
Shamed and cursed may he be, and all shall say Amen.
Earl Simon, thou of Montfort, so powerful and brave,
Bring up thy strong companies thy country now to save,
Have thou no fear of menaces or terrors of the grave,
Defend with might the nation’s cause, naught else thine own
needs crave.”
--Rishanger, _Political Songs_.
[47] Stubbs.
[48] “The Song of Lewes”--_Political Songs_.
[49] I am indebted to my friend Fr. Bede Jarrett, O.P., for this
interesting and, I believe, hitherto unpublished suggestion.
[50] It was to a Dominican Convent at Montargis that Simon’s widow, the
Princess Eleanor, retired after the fatal battle of Evesham.
[51] An appeal was lodged at Rome by several English bishops against
the threatened excommunication, but the papal legate himself became
pope early in 1265, and, as Pope Clement V., was the strongest enemy of
Simon and the national cause. It was only after Evesham and the death
of Simon that Clement urged a wise policy of mercy on Henry and the
royalists.
[52] “In this year, while Edward, the king’s son, was still held in
ward in the Castle of Hereford, dissension arose between Simon, Earl of
Leicester, and Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester....
“For which cause the old friendship was turned into hate, so much so
that neither the consideration of his oath nor former devotion could
thenceforth pacify the said Gilbert.... An endeavour was made by
certain prelates to restore the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester to
their former union; but they could in no wise succeed.”--W. Rishanger.
[53] J. R. Green, “The Ban of Kenilworth,” _Historical Studies_.
[54] “The triumph over Earl Simon had been a triumph over the religious
sentiment of the time, and religion avenged itself in its own way.
Everywhere the earl’s death was viewed as a martyrdom, and monk and
friar, however they might quarrel on other points, united in praying
for the souls of the dead as for ‘soldiers of Christ.’”--J. R. Green,
“The Ban of Kenilworth,” _Historical Studies_.
[55] _Chronicles of Melrose._
[56] _Ibid._
[57] Wright, _Political Songs_.
[58] See J. R. Green, “Annals of Osney and Wykes,” _Historical Studies_.
[59] “The project was clearly to set up a new order of things
founded on social equality--a theory which in the whole history of
the Middle Ages appears for the first time in connection with this
movement.”--Gairdner.
[60] It may be said that to-day the idea of political and social
equality is generally accepted and that of brotherhood denied. In
the fourteenth century brotherhood was esteemed, but equality was a
strange, intruding notion.
[61] “The bias of Wyclif in theory and practice is secular, and
aristocratic, and royalist: it is not really socialistic or politically
revolutionary,”--Figgis, _Studies of Political Thought_. Nevertheless,
many writers have tried to discredit Lollardy by associating it with
social revolt, just as others have tried to discredit John Ball by
making him out a “heretic,” and a follower of Wycliff.
[62] Froissart seems to be mainly responsible for the belief that this
John Tyler became the great leader of the movement, confusing him with
Wat Tyler, of Maidstone, the real leader. Several writers allege the
indecency of the tax-collectors.
[63] “Tyler, according to Walsingham, was a man of ready ability and
good sense. Save in some excesses, which, perhaps, were politic,
possibly unavoidable, and certainly exaggerated, the rebels under him
are admitted to have kept good order, and to have readily submitted to
discipline.”--Thorold Rogers. To Froissart Tyler appears merely as “a
bad man, and a great enemy of the nobility.”
[64] “Fearful lest their voyage should be prevented, or that the
populace should attack them, they heaved their anchors and with some
difficulty left the harbour, for the wind was against them, and put to
sea, when they cast anchor for a wind.”--Froissart.
[65] Two names at least have been preserved--Squire Bertram Wilmington
of Wye and John Corehurst of Lamberhurst.
[66] Seven years later this Earl of Salisbury, fleeing from Henry
Bolingbroke, was hanged in the streets of Cirencester at the hands of
the people.
[67] This law of Winchester was the statute of Edward I., 1285, which
authorised local authorities to appoint constables and preserve the
peace. Tyler’s aim was to strengthen local government in the counties,
making them as far as possible self-governing communes.
[68] “It was in the preaching of John Ball that England first listened
to the knell of feudalism, and the declaration of the rights of
man.”--J. R. Green.
[69] “Observe how fortunate matters turned out, for had the rebels
succeeded in their intentions they would have destroyed the whole
nobility of England, and after their success other countries would have
rebelled.”--Froissart.
[70] See Durrant Cooper--_John Cade’s Followers in Kent_.
[71] “These two bishops were wonder covetous men, evil beloved among
the common people and holden suspect of many defaults; assenting and
willing to the death of the Duke of Gloucester, as it were said.”--(_A
Chronicle of Henry VI_). According to Gasgoigne--_Loci e Libro
Veritatum_--the people said of Ayscough: “He always kept with the king
and was his confessor, and did not reside in his own diocese of Sarum
with us, nor maintain hospitality.”
[72] “He himself asserted that he had been a captain under the Duke
of York, and that his real name was Mortimer, which may possibly have
been true, for there were several illegitimate branches of the house of
March.”--Professor Oman, _Political History of England_.
[73] “A young man of a godly nature and right pregnant of
wit.”--Holinshed. Shakspeare’s farcical account of the rising in _King
Henry VI._, Part II., is, of course, entirely misleading.--See the
author’s _True Story of Jack Cade_.
[74] See the letter of John Payn in the _Paston Letters_. But Payn
wrote fifteen years afterwards, and seems to have been a person of no
very scrupulous honesty.
[75] A special act of parliament was passed in 1452 to cancel all that
Cade had accomplished.
[76] Cocke was a well-known supporter of Henry VI. and a man of note.
He was sheriff of London 1453, alderman in 1456, and mayor and M.P.
1462–3. Knighted by Henry in 1465, he fell from his high estate when
Edward IV. was king, and languished in prison on a charge of high
treason, only escaping with his life on payment of £8,000.
[77] “What answer to this demand was returned I find not, but like
it is the same was granted and performed; for I find not the said
captain and Kentishmen at their being in the city to have hurt any
stranger.”--Stow.
[78] When, by order of the Privy Council, the Exchequer seized all
Cade’s goods, these jewels were sold with the rest. They fetched £114,
and a payment of £86 7s. was subsequently made to the Duke of York.
So the crown made some profit on the transaction, but Malpas was
unrecompensed.--See Devon’s _Exchequer Rolls_.
[79] “Whereof he lost the people’s favour and hearts. For it was to be
thought if he had not executed that robbery he might have gone far and
brought his purpose to good effect.”--Fabyan.
[80] This church has long been pulled down. It was absorbed into St.
Saviour’s parish the following year. St. Margaret’s Hill is now part of
High Street, Borough, and the present St. George’s Church stands near
the site of old St. Margaret’s Church.
[81] _Acts of Privy Council_, 1451.
[82] “In the interests of truth, I must declare at the outset that
I cannot find the very slightest foundation for the assertion of
Stapleton, copied by Cresacre More and many others, that in the course
of time their friendship cooled. Abundant proofs of the contrary will
appear.”--Rev. T. E. Bridgett, _Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More_.
[83] “Indeed, it was he who pushed me to write the _Praise of Folly_,
that is to say, he made a camel frisk.”--Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten,
1519.
[84] “He had a purpose to be a priest, yet God had allotted him for
another estate, not to live solitary, but that he might be a pattern
to married men: how they should carefully bring up their children,
how dearly they should love their wives, how they should employ their
endeavour wholly for the good of their country, yet excellently perform
the virtues of religious men, as piety, charity, humility, obedience
and conjugal chastity.”--Cresacre More.
[85] Erasmus to Ulrich von Hutten.
[86] “It is clear that Sir Thomas had a little Utopia of his own in his
family. He was making an experiment in education, and he was delighted
with its success. The fame of his learned daughters became European
through the praises of Erasmus, and was so great in England that in
1529, when they were all married ladies, they were invited by the
king to hold a kind of philosophical tournament in his presence....
More will ever stand foremost in the ranks of the defenders of female
culture.”--Rev. T. E. Bridgett, _Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More_.
[87] “He most warily retired from every opposition but that which
conscience absolutely required. He displayed that very peculiar
excellence of his character, which, as it showed his submission to be
the fruit of sense of duty, gave dignity to that which in others is apt
to seem to be slavish.”--Sir James Mackintosh, _Life of More_.
[88] “Parliament is discussing the revocation of all synods and other
constitutions of the English clergy, and the prohibition of holding
synods without express license of the king. This is a strange thing.
Churchmen will be of less account than shoemakers, who have the power
of assembling and making their own statutes.”--Chapuys, _Letters and
Papers of Henry VIII._ (Rolls Series).
[89] Chapuys, _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._ (Rolls Series).
[90] _Lives of the Chancellors._
[91] _Letters and Papers of Henry VIII._ (Rolls Series).
[92] Roper.
[93] “To More a heretic was neither a simple man erring by ignorance,
nor a learned man using his freedom in doubtful points: he was a man
whose heart was ‘proud, poisoned, and obstinate,’ because he denied
the Divine guidance of the Church while he claimed special Divine
inspiration for himself.”--Rev. T. E. Bridgett.
[94] More’s _English Works--Apology_. It is only thirty years after his
death that Foxe suggests More as a persecutor. All the evidence is in
the opposite direction.
[95] Sir James Mackintosh, _Life of More_.
[96] See Dr. Jessop, _The Great Pillage_.
[97] _See State Papers, Domestic, Edward VI._
[98] The common lands engrossed in the 15th and 16th centuries were the
farm lands cultivated in common by the peasants. The enclosure of the
commons was left to a later date, and took place between 1760 and 1830.
[99] This Flowerdew had distinguished himself at the destruction of
the abbey at Wymondham by Henry VIII., by tearing off the lead from
the roof of the church and pulling down the choir, for the sake of the
stones, after the people had raised a large sum of money for the king
in order to save the church.
[100] “By bearing a confident countenance in all his actions the
vulgars took him (Ket) to be both valiant and wise and a fit man to be
their commander.”--Sir John Hayward, _Life of Edward VI._
“This Ket was a proper person to be a ringleader of mischief, for he
was of a bold, haughty spirit, and of a cankered mind against the
Government.”--John Strype, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_.
[101] These two “were partly fain to agree, lest they being out of
favour and place, others might come to bring all out of frame that
now might partly be well framed, and the rather they assented to keep
the people in better order during answer from the prince.”--Nicholas
Sutherton.
[102] “That a populous and wealthy city like Norwich should have been
for three weeks in the hands of 20,000 rebels, and should have escaped
utter pillage and ruin speaks highly for the rebel leaders.”--W. Rye,
_Victoria County History of Norfolk_.
[103] A few years later, and John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, now
Duke of Northumberland, again visited East Anglia to proclaim his
daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England. No one rose at his
call. Neither peasant nor landowner responded to the proclamation;
and John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, died, as
his father before him had died, convicted of treason, beheaded by the
executioner’s axe on Tower Hill. It was August 22nd, 1553, just four
years after the suppression of the peasants’ rising in Norfolk when
Northumberland was put to death.
[104] “Robert Ket was not a mere craftsman: he was a man of substance,
the owner of several manors: his conduct throughout was marked by
considerable generosity: nor can the name of patriot be denied to him
who deserted the class to which he might have belonged or aspired, and
cast in his lot with the suffering people.”--Canon Dixon, _History of
the Church of England_.
In 1588 a grandson of Robert Ket was burnt as a Nonconformist heretic
by order of Elizabeth.
[105] The three were Oxford men. Sir John Eliot was at Exeter (1607),
Hampden at Magdalen (1609) and Pym at Broadgate Hall, afterwards called
Pembroke (1599).
[106] “In Eliot’s composition there was nothing of the dogmatic
orthodoxy of Calvinism, nothing of the painful introspection of the
later Puritans. His creed, as it shines clearly out from the work of
his prison hours, as death was stealing upon him--_The Monarchy of
Man_--was the old heathen philosophic creed, mellowed and spiritualised
by Christianity. Between such a creed and Rome there was a great gulf
fixed. Individual culture and the nearest approach to individual
perfection for the sake of the State and the Church, formed a common
ground on which Eliot could stand with the narrowest Puritan.”--S. R.
Gardiner.
[107] Eliot’s argument “was a claim to render ministerial
responsibility once more a reality, and thereby indirectly to make
parliament supreme.”--S. R. Gardiner.
[108] “He (Eliot) was to the bottom of his heart an idealist. To him
the parliament was scarcely a collection of fallible men, just as the
king was hardly a being who could by any possibility go deliberately
astray. If he who wore the crown had wandered from the right path, he
had but to listen to those who formed, in more than a rhetorical sense,
the collective wisdom of the nation.”--S. R. Gardiner.
[109] “His (Hampden’s) distinction lay in his power of disentangling
the essential part from the non-essential. In the previous
constitutional struggle he had seen that the one thing necessary was to
establish the supremacy of the House of Commons.”--S. R. Gardiner.
[110] Clarendon.