Overthrow of the king's favourites.
Constitutional reforms.
The struggle began in the parliament of 1376, called by the
anti-Lancastrian party the "Good Parliament." Headed by the earl of
March, William Courtenay, bishop of London, and Sir Peter de la Mare,
the daring speaker of the House of Commons, the duke's enemies began
their campaign by accusing the king's ministers and favourites of
corruption. Here they were on safe ground, for the misdeeds of Lord
Latimer--the king's chamberlain, Lord Neville--his steward, Richard
Lyons--his financial agent, and Alice Perrers--his greedy and shameless
mistress, had been so flagrant that it was hard for Lancaster to defend
them. In face of the evidence brought forward the old king and his son
had to abandon their friends to the angry parliament. Latimer and Lyons
were condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods, Alice
Perrers was banished from court. Encouraged by this victory, the
parliament passed on to constitutional reforms, forced on the king a
council of twelve peers nominated by themselves, who were to exercise
over him much the same control that the lords ordainers had held over
his father, and compelled him to assent to a long list of petitions
which, if properly carried out, would have removed most of the practical
grievances of the nation. Having so done they dispersed, not guessing
that Lancaster had yielded so easily because he was set on undoing their
work the moment that they were gone.
John of Gaunt re-establishes the royal power.
Death of the Black Prince.
This, however, was the case; after the shortest of intervals the duke
executed something like a _coup d'etat_. In his father's name he
released Latimer and Lyons, dismissed the council of twelve, imprisoned
Peter de la Mare, sequestrated the temporalities of Bishop Wykeham, and
sent the earl of March out of the realm. Alice Perrers took possession
again of the king, and all his corrupt courtiers came back to him. A
royal edict declared the statutes of the "Good Parliament" null and
void. Lancaster would never have dared to defy public opinion and
challenge the constitutional party to a life-and-death struggle in this
fashion, had it not been that his brother the prince of Wales had died
while the "Good Parliament" was sitting; thus the opposition had been
deprived of their strongest support. The prince's heir was a mere child,
Richard of Bordeaux, aged only nine. It was feared by some that Duke
John might carry his ambitions so far as to aim at the throne--he could
do what he pleased with his doting father, and flaws might have been
picked in the marriage of the Black Prince and his wife Joan of Kent,
who were cousins, and therefore within the "prohibited degrees." As a
matter of fact Lancaster was a more honest man than his enemies
suspected; he hastened to acknowledge his little nephew's rights,
acknowledged him as prince of Wales, and introduced him as his
grandfather's heir before the parliament of January 1377.
Death of Edward III.
The character of this body was a proof of the great strength of the
royal name and power even in days when parliamentary institutions had
been long in existence, and were supposed to act as a check on the
crown. To legalize his arbitrary acts Duke John dared to summon the
estates together, after he had issued stringent orders to the sheriffs
to exclude his enemies and return his friends when the members for the
Commons were chosen. He obtained a house of the complexion that he
desired, and having a strong following among the peers actually
succeeded in undoing all the work of 1376. No sign of trouble or
rebellion followed, the opposition being destitute of a fighting leader.
March had left the realm; Bishop Wykeham showed an unworthy subservience
by suing for pardon through the mediation of Alice Perrers. Only Bishop
Courtenay refused to be terrorized; he chose this moment to open a
campaign against the duke's ally, John Wycliffe, who was arraigned for
heresy before the ecclesiastical courts. His trial, however, ended in a
scandalous fiasco. Lancaster and his friend Lord Percy came to St
Paul's, and so insulted and browbeat the bishop, that the proceedings
degenerated into a riot, and reached no conclusion (Feb. 19). Courtenay
dared not recommence them, and Lancaster ruled as he pleased till his
father, five months later, died. Deserted by his worthless courtiers and
plundered on his death-bed by his greedy mistress, the victor of Sluys
and Crecy sank into an unhonoured grave. It was a relief to the nation
that he was gone. Yet there was a general feeling that chaos might
follow. If Lancaster should justify the malevolent rumours that were
afloat by making a snatch at the crown, the last state of the realm
might be worse than the first.
Richard II.
Duke John, however, was a better man than his enemies supposed. He was
loyal to the crown according to his lights, and showed a chivalrous
self-denial that had hardly been expected from him. He saluted his
little nephew as king without a moment's hesitation, though he was aware
that with the commencement of a new reign his own dictatorship had come
to an end. The princess of Wales, in whose hands the young Richard II.
was placed, had never been his friend, and was surrounded by adherents
of her deceased husband, who belonged to the constitutional party.
Disarmed, however, by the duke's frank submission they wisely resolved
not to push him to extremes, and the first council which was appointed
to act for the new monarch was a sort of "coalition ministry" in which
Lancaster's followers as well as his foes were represented. For that
very reason it was lacking in strength and unity of purpose, and proved
lamentably incapable of dealing with the problems of the moment.
The French war.
Of these the most pressing was the renewal of the French war; the truce
had expired a few weeks before the death of Edward III., and the new
reign began with a series of military disasters. The French fleet landed
in great force in Sussex, burnt Rye and Hastings and routed the shire
levies. Simultaneously the seneschal of Aquitaine was defeated in
battle, and Bergerac, the last great town in the inland which remained
in English hands, was captured by the duke of Anjou.
First parliament of Richard. Reforms.
The first parliament of Richard II. met in October under the most gloomy
auspices. It showed its temper by taking up the work of the "Good
Parliament." Lancaster's adherents were turned out of the council; the
persons condemned in 1376 were declared incapable of serving in it;
Alice Perrers was sentenced to banishment and forfeiture, and the little
king was made to repudiate the declaration whereby his uncle had quashed
the statutes of 1376 by declaring that "no act of parliament can be
repealed save with parliament's consent." John of Gaunt bowed before the
storm, retired to his estates, and for some time took little part in
affairs of state.
Unfortunately the new government proved wholly unable either to conduct
the struggle with France successfully or to pluck up courage to make a
humiliating peace--the only wise course before them. The nation was too
proud to accept defeat, and persevered in the unhappy attempt to reverse
the fortunes of war. An almost unbroken series of petty disasters
marked the first three years of King Richard. The worst was the failure
of the last great devastating raid which the English launched against
France. Thomas of Woodstock, the youngest son of Edward III., took a
powerful army to Calais, and marched through Picardy and Champagne, past
Orleans, and finally to Rennes in Brittany, but accomplished nothing
save the ruin of his own troops and the wasting of a vast sum of money.
Meanwhile taxation was heavy, the whole nation was seething with
discontent, and--what was worst--no way was visible out of the miserable
situation; ministers and councillors were repeatedly displaced, but
their successors always proved equally incompetent to find a remedy.
The Great Revolt of 1381.
This period of murmuring and misery culminated in the Great Revolt of
1381, a phenomenon whose origins must be sought in the most complicated
causes, but whose outbreak was due in the main to a general feeling that
the realm was being misgoverned, and that some one must be made
responsible for its maladministration. It was actually provoked by the
unwise and unjust poll-tax of one shilling a head on all adult persons,
voted by the parliament of Northampton in November 1380. The last
poll-tax had been carefully graduated on a sliding scale so as to press
lightly on the poorest classes; in this one a shilling for each person
had to be exacted from every township, though it was provided that "the
strong should help the weak" to a certain extent. But in hundreds of
villages there were no "strong" residents, and the poorest cottager had
to pay his three groats. The peasantry defended themselves by the simple
device of understating the numbers of their families; the returns made
it appear that the adult population of England had gone down from
1,355,000 to 896,000 since the poll-tax of 1379. Thereupon the
government sent out commissioners to revise the returns and exact the
missing shillings. Their appearance led to a series of widespread and
preconcerted riots, which soon spread over all England from the Wash to
the Channel, and in a few days developed into a formidable rebellion.
The poll-tax was no more than the spark which fired the mine; it merely
provided a good general grievance on which all malcontents could unite.
In the districts which took arms two main causes of insurrection may be
differentiated; the first and the most widespread was the discontent of
the rural population with the landowners and the Statute of Labourers.
Their aim was to abolish all villein-service, and to wring from their
lords the commutation of all manorial customs and obligations for a
small rent--fourpence an acre was generally the sum suggested. But there
was a simultaneous outbreak in many urban districts. In Winchester,
London, St Albans, Canterbury, Bury, Beverley, Scarborough and many
other places the rioting was as violent as in the countryside. Here the
object of the insurgents was in most cases to break down the local
oligarchy, who engrossed all municipal office and oppressed the meaner
citizens; but in less numerous instances their end was to win charters
from lords (almost always ecclesiastical lords) who had hitherto refused
to grant them. But it must not be forgotten that there was also a tinge
of purely political discontent about the rising; the insurgents
everywhere proclaimed their intention to destroy "traitors," of whom the
most generally condemned were the chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and
the treasurer, Sir Robert Hailes, the two persons most responsible for
the levy of the poll-tax. Often the rebels added the name of John of
Gaunt to the list, looking upon him as the person ultimately responsible
for the mismanagement of the war and the misgovernment of the realm. It
must be added that though the leaders of the revolt were for the most
part local demagogues, the creatures of the moment, there were among
them a few fanatics like the "mad priest of Kent," John Ball, who had
long preached socialist doctrines from the old text:
"When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then the gentleman?"
and clamoured for the abolition of all differences of rank, status and
property. Though many clerics were found among the rebels, it does not
seem that any of them were Wycliffites, or that the reformer's teaching
had played any part in exciting the peasantry at this time. No
contemporary authority ascribes the rising to the Lollards.
Wat Tyler.
The riots had begun, almost simultaneously in Kent and Essex: from
thence they spread through East Anglia and the home counties. In the
west and north there were only isolated and sporadic outbreaks, confined
to a few turbulent towns. In the countryside the insurrection was
accompanied by wholesale burnings of manor-rolls, the hunting down of
unpopular bailiffs and landlords, and a special crusade against the
commissioners of the poll-tax and the justices who had been enforcing
the Statute of Labourers. There was more arson and blackmailing than
murder, though some prominent persons perished, such as the judge, Sir
John Cavendish, and the prior of Bury. In many regions the rising was
purely disorderly and destitute of organization. This was not, however,
the case in Kent and London. The mob which had gathered at Maidstone and
Canterbury marched on the capital many thousands strong, headed by a
local demagogue named Wat Tyler, whom they had chosen as their captain;
his most prominent lieutenant was the preacher John Ball. They announced
their intention of executing all "traitors," seizing the person of the
king, and setting up a new government for the realm. The royal council
and ministers showed grievous incapacity and cowardice--they made no
attempt to raise an army, and opened negotiations with the rebels. While
these were in progress the malcontent party in London, headed by three
aldermen, opened the gates of the city to Tyler and his horde. They
poured in, and, joined by the London mob, sacked John of Gaunt's palace
of the Savoy, the Temple, and many other buildings, while the ministers
took refuge with the young king in the Tower. It was well known that not
only the capital and the neighbouring counties but all eastern England
was ablaze, and the council in despair sent out the young king to parley
with Tyler at Mile End. The rebels at first demanded no more than that
Richard should declare villeinage abolished, and that all feudal dues
and services should be commuted for a rent of fourpence an acre. This
was readily conceded, and charters were drawn up to that effect and
sealed by the king. But, while the meeting was still going on, Tyler
went off to the Tower with a part of his horde, entered the fortress
unopposed, and murdered the unhappy chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, the
treasurer, and several victims more. This was only the beginning of
massacre. Instead of dispersing with their charters, as did many of the
peasants, Tyler and his confederates ran riot through London, burning
houses and slaying lawyers, officials, foreign merchants and other
unpopular persons. This had the effect of frightening the propertied
classes in the city, who had hitherto observed a timid neutrality, and
turned public opinion against the insurgents. Next day the rebel leaders
again invited the king to a conference, in the open space of Smithfield,
and laid before him a programme very different from that propounded at
Mile End. Tyler demanded that all differences of rank and status should
cease, that all church lands should be confiscated and divided up among
the laity, that the game laws should be abolished, and that "no lord
should any longer hold lordship except civilly." Apparently he was set
on provoking a refusal, and thus getting an excuse for seizing the
person of the king. But matters went otherwise than he had expected;
when he waxed unmannerly, and unsheathed his dagger to strike one of the
royal retinue who had dared to answer him back, the mayor of London,
William Walworth, drew his cutlass and cut him down. The mob strung
their bows, and were about to shoot down the king and his suite. But
Richard--who showed astounding nerve and presence of mind for a lad of
fourteen--cantered up to them shouting that he would be their chief and
captain and would give them their rights. The conference was continued,
but, while it was in progress, the mayor brought up the whole civic
militia of London, who had taken arms when they saw that the triumph of
the rebels meant anarchy, and rescued the king out of the hands of the
mob. Seeing such a formidable body of armed men opposed to them, the
insurgents dispersed--without their reckless and ready-witted captain
they were helpless (June 15, 1381).
Suppression of the rising.
This was the turning-point of the rebellion; within a few days the
council had collected a considerable army, which marched through Essex
scattering such rebel bands as still held together. Kent was pacified at
the same time; and Henry Despenser, the warlike bishop of Norwich, made
a separate campaign against the East Anglian insurgents, defeating them
at the skirmish of North Walsham, and hanging the local leader Geoffrey
Lister, who had declared himself "king of the commons" (June 25, 1381).
After this there was nothing remaining save to punish the leaders of the
revolt; a good many scores of them were hanged, though the vengeance
exacted does not seem to have been greater than was justified by the
numerous murders and burnings of which they had been guilty; the fanatic
Ball was, of course, among the first to suffer. On the 30th of August
the rough methods of martial law were suspended, and on the 14th of
December the king issued an amnesty to all save certain leaders who had
hitherto escaped capture. A parliament had been called in November; it
voted that all the charters given by the king at Mile End were null and
void, no manumissions or grants of privileges could have been valid
without the consent of the estates of the realm, "and for their own
parts they would never consent to such, of their own free will nor
otherwise, even to save themselves from sudden death."
Decline of the manorial system.
The rebellion, therefore, had failed either to abolish villeinage in the
countryside or to end municipal oligarchy in the towns, and many lords
took the opportunity of the time of reaction in order to revindicate old
claims over their bondsmen. Nevertheless serfdom continued to decline
all through the latter years of the 14th century, and was growing
obsolete in the 15th. This, however, was the result not of the great
revolt of 1381, but of economic causes working out their inevitable
progress. The manorial system was already doomed, and the rent-paying
tenant farmers, who had begun to appear after the Black Death, gradually
superseded the villeins as the normal type of peasantry during the two
generations that followed the outbreak that is generally known as "Wat
Tyler's rebellion."
Wycliffe and the Lollards.
King Richard, though he had shown such courage and ready resources at
Smithfield, was still only a lad of fourteen. For three years more he
was under the control of tutors and governors appointed by his council.
Their rule was incompetent, but the chief danger to the realm had passed
away when both Charles V. of France and his great captain Du Guesclin
died in 1380. The new king at Paris was a young boy, whose councils were
swayed by a knot of quarrelsome and selfish uncles; the vigour of the
attack on England began to slacken. Nevertheless there was no change in
the fortune of war, which continued to be disastrous, if on a smaller
scale than before. The chief domestic event of the time was the attack
of the clerical party on Wycliffe and his followers. The reformer had
begun to develop dogmatic views, in addition to his old theories about
the relations of Church and State. When he proceeded to deny the
doctrine of transubstantiation, to assert the all-sufficiency of the
Scriptures as a rule of life, to denounce saint-worship, pilgrimages,
and indulgences, and to declare the pope to be Antichrist, he frightened
his old supporter John of Gaunt and the politicians of the anti-clerical
clique. They ceased to support him, and his followers became a sect
rather than a political party. He and his disciples were expelled from
Oxford, and ere long the bishops began to arrest and try them for
heresy. Wycliffe himself, strange to say, was not molested. He survived
to publish his translation of the Bible and to die in peace in December
1383. But his followers were being hunted, and imprisoned or forced to
recant, all through the later years of Richard II. Yet they continued to
multiply, and exercised at times considerable influence; though they had
few supporters among the baronage, yet among the lesser gentry and still
more among the burgher class and in the universities they were strong.
It was not till the next reign, when the bishops succeeded in calling
in the crown to their aid, and passed the statute _De heretico
comburendo_, that Lollardy ceased to flourish.
Richard's personal rule.