made Colchester the centre of his wanderings, spent twenty years organising
the revolt, and three times was excommunicated and imprisoned by the
Archbishop of Canterbury for teaching social "errors, schisms, and
scandals," but was in no wise contrite or cast down.
Chief of Ball's fellow-agitators were John Wraw, in Suffolk, Jack Straw, in
Essex--both priests these--William Grindcobbe, in Hertford, and Geoffrey
Litster, in Norfolk. In Kent lived Wat Tyler, of whom nothing is told till
the revolt was actually afire, but who at once was acknowledged leader and
captain by the rebel hosts.
From village to village went John Ball in the years that preceded the
rising, organising the peasants into clubs, and stirring the people with
revolutionary talk. It was the way of this vagrant priest to preach to the
people on village greens, and his discourses were all on the same text--"In
the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created
equal."[35] Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended:
"Good people, things will never go well in England, so long as goods be not
kept in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what
right are they whom men call lords greater folk than we? If all come from
the same father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that
they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by
our toil what they spend in their pride?
"They are clothed in velvet, and are warm in their furs and ermines, while
we are covered in rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we
oatcake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses;
we have pain and labour, the wind and rain in the fields. And yet it is of
us and of our toil that these men hold their state.
"We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are
beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who
wishes to hear us and do us justice."
The poet, William Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs
of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a
familiar couplet:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Besides the sermons, some of the rhymed letters that John Ball sent about
the country have been preserved:
"John Ball, Priest of St. Mary's, greets well all manner of men, and
bids them in the name of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to
stand together manfully in truth. Help truth and truth shall help you.
"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,
Then is our mill mis-a-dight."
Sometimes it is under the signature of John Trueman that John Ball writes:
"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."
A more definite note was struck when it seemed to Ball and his colleagues
that the time was ripe for revolution, and the word was given that appeal
must be made to the boy-king--Richard was only eleven years old when he
came to the throne in 1377.
"Let us go to the King, and remonstrate with him, telling him we must have
it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy. 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."
In another letter John Ball greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John
Carter, and bids them stand together in God's name, and beware of guile: he
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 were accepted by willing minds. John Ball
was in prison--in the jail of Archbishop Sudbury at Maidstone--in the
spring of 1381, but the peasants were organised and ready to revolt. If Wat
Tyler is the recognised leader of the rebel forces--"the one head"--John
Ball's was the work of preparing the uprising. The vagrant priest had rung
his bell to some purpose. 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."
At Whitsuntide, early in June, 1381, the great uprising began--the Hurling
time of the peasants--long to be remembered with horror by the governing
classes. A badly ordered poll-tax was the match that kindled the fire.
The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age.
Two years later it was graduated, every man and woman of the working class
being rated at 4d., and dukes and archbishops at £6 13s. 4d. More money was
still wanted by the Government, and early in 1381, John of Gaunt, the chief
man in the realm, called Parliament together at Northampton, and demanded
£160,000. Parliament agreed that £100,000 should be raised, and the
clergy--owning a third of the land--promised £60,000. But the only way of
raising the £100,000 that the Government could think of was by another
poll-tax, and this time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s. Of
course, the thing was impossible. In many parishes the mere returns of
population were not filled in; numbers evaded payment--which spelt ruin--by
leaving their homes. £22,000 was all that came to hand.
Then a man named John Legge came to the assistance of the Government, and
was appointed chief commissioner, and empowered to collect the tax.
The methods of Legge and his assistants provoked hostility, and when the
villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope, in Essex, were
summoned to meet the commissioner at Brentwood, their reply was to kill the
collectors.
The Government answered this by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to
punish the offenders, but the people drove the chief justice out of the
place, and Belknap was glad to escape with his life.
This was on Whit-Sunday, June 2nd, and two days later the revolt had spread
to Kent; Gravesend and Dartford were in tumult. In one place Sir Simon
Burley, a friend of Richard II., seized a workman, claiming him as a
bondservant, and refusing to let him go under a fine of £300; while at
Dartford a tax-collector had made trouble by gross indecency to the wife
and daughter of one John Tyler.[36]
Thereupon 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."
Now, with the fire of revolt in swift blaze, it was for the men of Kent to
see that it burned under some direction. Authority and discipline were
essential if the rising was not to become mob rule or mere anarchy, and if
positive and intolerable wrongs were to find remedies.
At Maidstone, on June 7th--after Rochester Castle had been stormed, its
prisoners set free and Sir John Newton its governor placed in safe
custody--Wat Tyler was chosen captain of the rebel hosts.
History tells us nothing of the antecedents of this remarkable man. For
eight days, and eight days only, he plays his part on the stage of national
events: commands with authority a vast concourse of men; meets the King
face to face, and wrests from sovereignty great promises of reform; orders
the execution of the chief ministers of the Crown, and then, in what seems
to be the hour of triumph, is struck to the ground, and goes to his death.
Under the accredited leadership of Wat Tyler the revolt at once took form.
Five days were spent in Kent before the peasant army marched on London. The
manor houses were attacked, and all rent rolls, legal documents, lists of
tenants and serfs destroyed. The rising was not a ferocious massacre like
the rising of the Jacquerie in France; there was no general massacre of
landlords, or reign of terror. The lawyers who managed the landowners'
estates were the enemy, and against them--against the instruments of
landlord tyranny--was the anger of the peasants directed. In the same way
John of Gaunt, and not the youthful King, was recognised as the evil
influence in government; and while a vow was taken by the men of Kent that
no man named "John" should be King of England, the popular cry was "King
Richard and the Commons," and all who joined in this were accounted friends
of the insurgent populace.
Blackheath was reached on the evening of June 12th, and early the following
morning, which was Corpus Christi Day, John Ball--released by a thousand
hands from his prison at Maidstone--preached to the multitude on the work
before them:
"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. 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 wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers--every man,
indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace
in our time and security for the future. For when the great ones have been
rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom and nobility, rank
and power shall we have in common."
Thirty-thousand men--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins, and peasants, were at
Blackheath, and these were soon joined by thousands more from Surrey.
John Wraw and Grindcobbe came to consult with Wat Tyler, and then returned
to Suffolk and Hertford to announce that the hour had come to strike.
The Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons, and the houses of ill-fame that
clustered round London Bridge, were destroyed before Wat Tyler led his army
into the city. An attempt to meet the King in conference was frustrated by
the royal counsellors. Richard came down in the royal barge as far as
Rotherhithe, but was dissuaded by Sir Robert Hales, and the Earls of
Suffolk, Salisbury, and Warwick, from "holding speech with the shoeless
ruffians."
Richard rowed back swiftly to the Tower, and Tyler and his army swept into
London. The city was in the hands of the rebel captain, but the citizens
welcomed the invaders, and offered bread and ale when Tyler proclaimed that
death would be the instant punishment for theft.
John of Gaunt's palace at the Savoy, on the river strand, was the first
place to be burnt; but Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt's son (eighteen
years later to reign as Henry IV., in place of Richard), was allowed to
pass out uninjured, and a wretched man caught in the act of stealing off
with a silver cup was promptly executed.
The Savoy destroyed, the Temple--a hive of lawyers--was the next to be
burnt, and before nightfall the Fleet Prison and Newgate had been
demolished.
Again Tyler demanded conference with the King, and Richard, lying in the
Tower with his counsellors, unable to prevent the work of conference,
boldly decided to come out and meet the rebels. Mile End was appointed for
the conference, and to Mile End Richard came with a very modest retinue.
The King was only fifteen, but he was the son of the Black Prince, and he
had both courage and cunning. He was fully aware that the people did not
lay on him responsibility for the sins of the Government. "If we measure
intellectual power by the greatest exertion it ever displays, rather than
by its average results, Richard II. was a man of considerable talents. He
possessed along with much dissimulation a decisive promptitude in seizing
the critical moment for action."[37]
At Mile End Tyler stated the grievances of the people. But first he asked
that all traitors should be put to death, and to this the King agreed.
Four positive articles of reform were put forward, and were at once
assented to by the King:--
1. A free and general pardon to all concerned in the rising.
2. The total abolition of all villeinage (forced labour) and serfdom.
3. An end to all tolls and market dues--"freedom to buy and sell in all
cities, burghs, mercantile towns, and other places within our kingdom of
England."
4. All customary tenants to become leaseholders at a fixed rental of
fourpence an acre for ever.
That all doubts might be removed, thirty clerks were set to work on the
spot to draw up charters of manumission, and banners were presented to each
county. At nightfall thousands returned home convinced that the old order
was ended, and that the Royal charters were genuine assurances of freedom.
But Tyler and the bulk of the men of Kent and Surrey remained in the city.
It seemed to Wat Tyler that better terms still were to be wrung from the
King. It looked that night as though the insurrection had triumphed
completely. Not only were the charters signed and the royal promises given,
but several in high office, whom Tyler held to be "traitors," had gone to
their doom. Sir Robert Hales, the Treasurer, Archbishop Sudbury, the
Chancellor--a gentle and kindly old man, "lenient to heretics"--John Legge,
the hated poll-tax commissioner, with Appleton, John of Gaunt's chaplain,
and Richard Lyons, a thoroughly corrupt contractor of Edward III.'s reign,
were all dragged out of the Tower and beheaded on Tower Hill on Friday,
June 15th.
On Tyler's request for another conference with Richard on the following
day, the King saw he had no choice but to yield. For the second time Wat
Tyler and Richard met face to face. The conference was held at Smithfield,
in the square outside St. Bartholomew's Priory. The King and two hundred
retainers, with Walworth the mayor, were on the east side of the square.
Tyler and his army were on the west side, opposite the Priory.
In the open space Tyler, mounted on a little horse, presented his demands;
more sweeping were the reforms now asked for than those of the previous
day.
"Let no law but the law of Winchester[38] prevail throughout the land, and
let no man be made an outlaw by the decree of judges and lawyers. Grant
also that no lord shall henceforth exercise lordship over the commons; and
since we are oppressed by so vast a horde of bishops and clerks, let there
be but one bishop in England; and let the property and goods of Holy Church
be divided fairly according to the needs of the people in each parish,
after in justice making suitable provision for the present clergy and
monks. Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all
to be free and of one condition."
Richard answered that he promised readily all that was asked, "if only it
be consistent with the regality of my Crown." He then bade the commons
return home, since their requests had been granted.
Nobles and counsellors stood in sullen and silent anger at the King's
words, but were powerless to act. Tyler, conscious of victory, called for a
draught, and when his attendant brought him a mighty tankard of ale, the
rebel leader drank good-humouredly to "King Richard and the Commons." A
knight in the royal service, a "valet of Kent," was heard to mutter that
Wat Tyler was the greatest thief and robber in all the county, and Tyler
caught the abusive words, drew his dagger, and made for the man.
Mayor Walworth, as angry as the nobles at the King's surrender, shouted
that he would arrest all who drew weapons in the King's presence; and on
Tyler striking at him impatiently, the Mayor drew a cutlass and slashed
back, wounding Tyler in the neck so that he fell from his horse. Before he
could recover a footing, two knights plunged their swords into him, and
Tyler, mortally wounded, could only scramble on to his little horse, ride a
yard or two, call on the commons to avenge him, and then drop--a dead
man.[39]
And with Wat Tyler's death the whole rebellion collapsed. Confusion fell
upon the people at Smithfield. Some were for immediate attack, but when
Richard, riding out into the middle of the square, claimed that he and not
Tyler was their King, and bade them follow him into the fields towards
Islington, the great mass, convinced that Richard was honestly their
friend, obeyed. At nightfall they were scattered.
Wat Tyler's body was taken into the Priory, and his head placed on London
Bridge.
Walworth hastily gathered troops together, and the leader of the rebels
being dead, the nobles recovered their courage.
The rising was over; the people without leaders were as sheep for the
slaughter. Jack Straw was taken in London and hanged without the formality
of a trial; and on June 22nd Tresilian, the new chief justice, went on a
special assize to try the rebels, and "showed mercy to none and made great
havock." The King's charters and promises were declared null and void when
Parliament met, and some hundreds of peasants were hanged in various parts
of the country.
John Ball and Grindcobbe were hanged at St. Albans on July 15th, John Wraw
and Geoffrey Litster suffered the same fate.
All that Wat Tyler and the peasants had striven for was lost; but the
rising was not quite in vain. For one thing, the poll-tax was stopped, and
the end of villeinage was hastened.
The great uprising was the first serious demonstration of the English
people for personal liberty. "It taught the King's officers and gentle
folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to
behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and
to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their
customary tenants, so that in a hundred years' time there were very few
bondsmen left in England."[40]
JACK CADE, CAPTAIN OF KENT, 1450
To understand the character and importance of the rising of the men of Kent
under Jack Cade in 1450, the first thing to be done is to clear the mind of
Shakespeare's travesty in _King Henry VI._, Part 2. In the play the name of
Cade has been handed down in obloquy, and all that he and his followers
aimed at caricatured out of recognition. The part that Jack Cade really
played in national affairs has no likeness to the low comedy performance
imagined by Shakespeare.
It was a popular rising in 1450, but it was not a peasant revolt. Men of
substance in the county rallied to Cade's banner, and in many parishes in
Kent the village constable was employed to enrol willing recruits in the
army of disaffection.[41]
The peasant revolt was at bottom a social movement, fostered and fashioned
by preachers of a social democracy. Cade's rising was provoked by
misgovernment and directed at political reform. It was far less
revolutionary in purpose than the revolt that preceded it, or the rising
under Ket a hundred years later.
The discontent was general when Cade encamped on Blackheath with the
commons of Kent at the end of May, 1450. Suffolk, the best hated of Henry
VI.'s ministers, had already been put to death by the sailors of Dover, and
Lord Say-and-Sele, the Treasurer, was in the Tower under impeachment.
Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, another Minister, was hanged by his
infuriated flock in Wiltshire, and Bishop Moleyns, of Chichester, Keeper of
the Privy Seal, was executed in Portsmouth by a mob of sailors. Piracy
prevailed unchecked in the English Channel, and the highways inland were
haunted by robbers--soldiers back from France and broken in the wars.
The ablest statesman of the day, the Duke of York, was banished from the
royal council, and there was a wide feeling that an improvement in
government was impossible until York was recalled.
Whether Cade, who was known popularly as "Mortimer," was related to the
Duke of York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The
charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of
evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the
character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his
followers. All we _know_ of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must
have been a man of some property in Surrey--probably a squire or yeoman.
The army that encamped on Blackheath numbered over 40,000, and included
squires, yeomen, county gentlemen, and at least two notable ecclesiastics
from Sussex, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of Lewes. The testimony to
Cade's character is that he was the unquestioned and warmly respected
leader of the host. The Cade depicted by his enemies--a dissolute,
disreputable ruffian--was not the kind of man to have had authority as a
chosen captain over country gentlemen and clerical landowners in the
fifteenth century.
The "Complaints" of the commons of Kent, drawn up at Blackheath and
forwarded to the King and his Parliament, then sitting at Westminster,
called attention in fifteen articles to the evils that afflicted the land.
These articles dealt with a royal threat to lay waste Kent in revenge for
the death of the Duke of Suffolk; the wasting of the royal revenue raised
by heavy taxation; the banishment of the Duke of York--"to make room for
unworthy ministers who would not do justice by law, but demanded bribes and
gifts"; purveyance of goods for the royal household without payment; arrest
and imprisonment on false charges of treason by persons whose goods and
lands were subsequently seized by the King's servants, who then "either
compassed their deaths or kept them in prison while they got possession of
their property by royal grant"; interference by "the great rulers of the
land" with the old right of free election of knights of the shire; the
mismanagement of the war in France. A certain number of purely local
grievances, chiefly concerned with the maladministration of justice, were
also included in the "Complaints," and five "Requests"--including the
abolition of the Statutes of Labourers--were added.
Henry and his counsellors dismissed these "Complaints" with contempt. "Such
proud rebels," it was said, "should rather be suppressed and tamed with
violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer." But when the
royal troops moved into Kent to disperse the rising, Cade's army cut them
to pieces at Sevenoaks. Henry returned to London; his nobles rode away to
their country houses; and after a fruitless attempt at negotiations by the
Duke of Buckingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury,[42] the King himself
fled to Kenilworth--leaving London at the mercy of the Captain of Kent.
On July 2nd Cade crossed London Bridge on horseback, followed by all his
army. The Corporation had already decided to offer no opposition to his
entry, and one of its members, Thomas Cocke, of the Drapers' Company--later
sheriff and M.P.--had gone freely between the camp at Blackheath and the
city, acting as mutual friend to the rebels and the citizens. All that Cade
required was that the foreign merchants in London should furnish him with a
certain number of arms and horses, "and 1,000 marks of ready money"; and
this was done. "So that it was found that the Captain and Kentishmen at
their being in the city did no hurt to any stranger."[43]
On the old London stone, in Cannon Street, Cade laid his sword, in the
presence of the Mayor and a great multitude of people, and declared
proudly: "Now is Mortimer lord of this city." Then at nightfall he went
back to his headquarters at the White Hart Inn in Southwark.
The following day Lord Say-and-Sele, and his son-in-law, Crowmer, Sheriff
of Kent, were removed by Cade's orders from the Tower to the Guildhall,
tried for "divers treasons" and "certain extortions," and quickly beheaded.
Popular hatred, not content with this, placed the heads of the fallen
minister and his son-in-law on poles, made them kiss in horrible embrace,
and then bore them off in triumph to London Bridge.
A third man, one John Bailey, was also hanged for being a necromancer; and
as Cade had promised death to all in his army convicted of theft, it fell
out that certain "lawless men" paid the penalty for disobedience, and were
hanged in Southwark--where the main body of the army lay.
Cade's difficulties began directly after Lord Say-and-Sele's execution.
London assented willingly to the death of an unpopular statesman, but had
no mind to provision an army of 50,000 men, and, indeed, had no liking for
the proximity of such a host. Plunder being forbidden, and strict
discipline the rule, the urgent question for the Captain of Kent was how
the army was to be maintained.
Getting no voluntary help from the city. Cade decided that he must help
himself. He supped with a worthy citizen named Curtis in Tower Street on
July 4th, and insisted before he left that Curtis must contribute money for
the support of the Kentish men. Curtis complied--how much he gave we know
not--but he resented bitterly the demand, and he told the tale of his
wrongs to his fellow-merchants.[44] The result was that while Cade slept in
peace as usual at the White Hart, the Mayor and Corporation took counsel
with Lord Scales, the Governor of the Tower, and resolved that at all costs
the Captain of Kent and his forces must be kept out of the city. After the
treatment of Curtis the fear was that disorder and pillage might become
common.
On the evening of Sunday, July 5th, and all through the night battle waged
hotly on London Bridge, which had been seized and fortified before Cade was
awake, and by the morning the rebels, unsuccessful in their attack, were
glad to agree to a hasty truce.
The truce gave opportunity to Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York, the King's
Chancellor, to suggest a lasting peace to Cade. Messengers were sent
speedily from the Tower, where Kemp, with Archbishop Stafford, of
Canterbury, had stayed in safety, to the White Hart, urging a conference
"to the end that the civil commotions and disturbances might cease and
tranquillity be restored."
Cade consented, and when the two Archbishops, with William Waynfleet,
Bishop of Winchester, met the Captain of Kent in the Church of St.
Margaret, Southwark, and promised that Parliament should give consideration
to the "Complaints" and "Requests" of the commons, and that a full pardon
should be given to all who would straightway return home, the rising was at
an end.
Cade hesitated, and asked for the endorsement of the pardons by Parliament;
but this was plainly impossible because Parliament was not sitting. The
bulk of the commons were satisfied with their pardons, and with the promise
that Parliament would attend to their grievances. There was nothing to be
gained, it seemed, by remaining in arms. On July 8th, the rebel army had
broken up, taking the road back to the towns and villages, farms and
cottages in Kent, Sussex, and Surrey. Cade, with a small band of followers,
retreated to Rochester, and attempted without success, the capture of
Queenborough Castle. On the news that the commons had dispersed from
Southwark, the Government at once took the offensive. Alexander Iden was
appointed Sheriff of Kent, and, marrying Crowmer's widow, subsequently
gained considerable profit. Within a week John Cade was proclaimed by the
King's writ a false traitor throughout the countryside, and Sheriff Iden
was in eager pursuit--for a reward of 1,000 marks awaited the person who
should take Cade, alive or dead.
Near Heathfield, in Sussex, Cade, broken and famished, was found by Iden,
and fought his last fight on July 13th, preferring to die sword in hand
than to perish by the hangman. He fell before the overwhelming odds of the
sheriff and his troops, and the body was immediately sent off to London for
identification.
The landlady of the White Hart proved the identity of the dead captain, and
all that remained was to stick the head on London Bridge, and dispatch the
quartered body to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury and Gloucester for public
exhibition.
Iden got the 1,000 marks reward and, in addition, the governorship of
Rochester Castle at a salary of £36 a year.
By special Act of Attainder all Cade's goods, lands and tenements were made
forfeit to the Crown, and statements were published for the discrediting of
Cade's life.
No allusion was made in Parliament to the "Complaints" and "Requests," and,
in spite of Cardinal Kemp's pardons, a number of men were hanged at
Canterbury and Rochester for their share in the rising, when Henry VI. and
his justices visited Kent in January, 1451.
The revolt failed to amend the wretched misrule. It remained for civil war
to drive Henry VI. from the throne, and make Edward IV. of York his
successor.
THE NORFOLK RISING UNDER ROBERT KET, 1549
A century after the rising of the commons of Kent came the last great
popular rebellion--the Norfolk Rising, led by Ket. This insurrection was
agrarian and social, concerned neither with the fierce theological
differences of the time, nor with the political rivalries of Protector
Somerset and his enemies in Edward VI.'s Council.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century England was in the main a nation
of small farmers, but radical changes were taking place, and these changes
meant ruin to thousands of yeomen and peasants.
The enclosure, by many large landowners, of the fields which for ages past
had been cultivated by the country people, the turning of arable land into
pasture, were the main causes of the distress.[45] Whole parishes were
evicted in some places and dwelling houses destroyed, and contemporary
writers are full of the miseries caused by these clearances.
Acts of Parliament were passed in 1489 and 1515, prohibiting the "pulling
down of towns," and ordering the reversion of pasture lands to tillage, but
the legislation was ignored. Sir Thomas More, in his "Utopia" (1516),
described very vividly what the enclosures were doing to rural England; and
a royal commission, appointed by Cardinal Wolsey, reported in the following
year that more than 36,000 acres had been enclosed in seven Midland
counties. In some cases, waste lands only were enclosed, but landowners
were ordered to make restitution within forty days where small occupiers
had been dispossessed. Royal commissions and royal proclamations were no
more effective than Acts of Parliament. Bad harvests drove the Norfolk
peasantry to riot for food in 1527 and 1529. The dissolution of the
monasteries in 1536 and 1539 abolished a great source of charity for the
needy, and increased the social disorder. Finally, in 1547, came the
confiscation by the Crown of the property of the guilds and brotherhoods,
and the result of this enactment can only be realised by supposing the
funds of friendly societies, trade unions, and co-operative societies taken
by Government to-day without compensation.
All that Parliament would do in the face of the starvation and unemployment
that brooded over many parts of England, was to pass penal legislation for
the homeless and workless--so that it seemed to many that Government had
got rid of Papal authority only to bring back slavery. The agrarian misery,
the violent changes in the order of church services and social customs, the
confiscation of the funds of the guilds, and the wanton spoiling of the
parish churches[46]--all these things drove the people to revolt.
Early in 1549 the men of Devon and Cornwall took up arms for "the old
religion," and were hanged by scores. In Norfolk that same year the rising
under Ket was social, and unconcerned with religion. Lesser agrarian
disturbances took place in Somerset, Lincoln, Essex, Kent, Oxford, Wilts,
and Buckingham. But there was no cohesion amongst the insurgents, and no
organisation of the peasants such as England had seen under John Ball and
his companion in 1381.
In 1548 Somerset, the Lord Protector, made an honest attempt to check the
rapacity of the landowners, but his proclamation and royal commission were
no more successful than Wolsey's had been, and only earned for the
Protector the hatred of the landowners.
The Norfolk Rising was the one strong movement to turn the current that was
sweeping the peasants into destitution. It failed, as all popular
insurrection in England has failed, and it brought its leaders to the
gallows; but for six weeks hope lifted its head in the rebel camp outside
Norwich, and many believed that oppression and misery were to end.
The rising began at Attleborough, on June 20th, when the people pulled down
the fences and hedges set up round the common fields. On July 7th, at the
annual feast in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at Wymondham, a mighty
concourse of people broke down the fences at Hetherset, and then appealed
to Robert Ket and his brother to help them.
Both the Kets were well-known locally. They were men of old family,
craftsmen, and landowners. Robert was a tanner by trade, William a butcher.
Three manors--valued at 1,000 marks, with a yearly income of £50--belonged
to Robert Ket: church lands mostly, leased from the Earl of Warwick.
Ket saw that only under leadership and guidance could the revolt become a
revolution, and he threw himself into the cause of his poorer neighbours
with whole-hearted fervour. "I am ready," he said, "and will be ready at
all times to do whatever, not only to repress, but to subdue the power of
great men. Whatsoever lands I have enclosed shall again be made common unto
ye and all men, and my own hands shall first perform it. You shall have me,
if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain; and in the doing of
the so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a leader,
author, and principal."
Ket's leadership was at once acclaimed with enthusiasm by the thousand men
who formed the rebel band at the beginning of the rising. The news spread
quickly that Ket was leading an army to Norwich, and on July 10th, when a
camp was made at Eaton Wood, every hour brought fresh recruits. It is clear
from Ket's speeches, and from "The Rebels' Complaint," issued by him at
this time, that the aim of the leaders of the Norfolk Rising was not merely
to stop the enclosures, but to end the ascendancy of the landlord class for
all time, and to set up a social democracy.
Ket's address at Eaton Wood was revolutionary:
"Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of
possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches run into the coffers of
your landlords, while you are par'd to the quick, and fed upon pease and
oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private
benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State, wherein
while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones.
Your tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so
that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind your
necks more surely under their arms.... Harmless counsels are fit for tame
fools; for you who have already stirred, there is no hope but in
adventuring boldly."
"The Rebels' Complaint" is equally definite and outspoken. It rehearsed the
wrongs of a landless peasantry, and called on the people to end these
wrongs by open rebellion. The note of social equality is struck by Ket
throughout the rising.
"The present condition of possessing land seemeth miserable and
slavish--holding it all at the pleasure of great men; not freely, but by
prescription, and, as it were, at the will and pleasure of the lord. For as
soon as any man offend any of these gorgeous gentlemen, he is put out,
deprived, and thrust from all his goods.
"The common pastures left by our predecessors for our relief and our
children are taken away.
"The lands which in the memory of our fathers were common, those are
ditched and hedged in and made several; the pastures are enclosed, and we
shut out.
"We can no longer bear so much, so great, and so cruel injury; neither can
we with quiet minds behold so great covetousness, excess, and pride of the
nobility. We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than
endure so great cruelty.
"Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and
a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form,
and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a
life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling?
"We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the
extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for
every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the
ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have
enclosed.
"We desire liberty and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This
will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended
together."
But though the method was revolution and the goal social democracy, Ket was
no anarchist. He proved himself a strong, capable leader, able to enforce
discipline and maintain law and order in the rebel camp. And with all his
passionate hatred against the rule of the landlord, Ket would allow neither
massacre nor murder. There is no evidence that the life of a single
landowner was taken while the rising lasted, though many were brought
captive to Ket's judgment seat.
Ket was equally averse from civil war between the citizens of Norwich and
the peasants. When the Mayor of Norwich, Thomas Cod, refused to allow Ket's
army to cross the city on its way to Mousehold Heath, where the permanent
camp was to be made, Ket simply led his forces round by Hailsdon and
Drayton, and so reached Mousehold on July 12th without bloodshed. A week
later, and 20,000 was the number enrolled under the banner of revolt--for
the publication of "The Rebels' Complaint" and the ringing of bells and
firing of beacons roused all the countryside to action.
On Mousehold Heath, Robert Ket, with his brother William, gave directions
and administered justice under a great tree, called the Oak of Reformation.
Mayor Cod, and two other respected Norwich citizens, Aldrich, an alderman,
and Watson, a preacher, joined Ket's council, thinking their influence
might restrain the rebels from worse doings.
Twenty-nine "Requests and Demands," signed by Ket, Cod, and Aldrich, were
dispatched to the King from Mousehold, and this document gave in full the
grievances of the rebels. The chief demands were the cessation of
enclosures, the enactment of fair rents, the restoration of common fishing
rights, the appointment of resident clergymen to preach and instruct the
children, and the free election or appointment of local "commissioners" for
the enforcement of the laws. There was also a request "that all bond men
may be made free, for God made all free with His precious bloodshedding."
The only answer to the "Requests and Demands" was the arrival of a herald
with a promise that Parliament would meet in October to consider the
grievances, if the people would in the meantime quietly return to their
homes.
But this Ket would by no means agree to, and for the next few weeks his
authority was supreme in that part of the country. He established a rough
constitution for the prevention of mere disorder, two men being chosen by
their fellows from the various hundreds of the eastern half of the county.
A royal messenger, bearing commissions of the peace to certain country
gentlemen, falling into the hands of Ket, was relieved of his documents and
dismissed. Ket then put in these commissions the names of men who had
joined the rising, and declared them magistrates with authority to check
all disobedience to orders.
To feed the army at Mousehold, men were sent out with a warrant from Ket
for obtaining cattle and corn from the country houses, and "to beware of
robbing, spoiling, and other evil demeanours." No violence or injury was to
be done to "any honest or poor man." Contributions came in from the smaller
yeomen "with much private good-will," but the landowners generally were
stricken with panic, and let the rebels do what they liked. Those who could
not escape by flight were, for the most part, brought captive to the Oak of
Reformation, and thence sent to the prisons in Norwich and St. Leonard's
Hill.
Relations between Ket and the Norwich authorities soon became strained to
breaking point. Mayor Cod was shocked at the imprisonment of county
gentlemen, and refused permission for Ket's troops to pass through the city
on their foraging expeditions. Citizens and rebels were in conflict on July
21st, but "for lack of powder and want of skill in the gunners" few lives
were lost, and Norwich was in the hands of Ket the following day. No
reprisals followed; but a week later came William Parr, Marquis of
Northampton--Henry VIII.'s brother-in-law--with 1,500 Italian mercenaries
and a body of country squires, to destroy the rebels. Northampton's forces
were routed utterly, and Lord Sheffield was slain, and many houses and
gates were burnt in the city.
Then for three weeks longer Robert Ket remained in power, still hoping
against hope that some attention would be given by the Government to his
"Requests and Demands." Protector Somerset, beset by his own difficulties,
could do nothing for rebellious peasants, could not countenance in any way
an armed revolt, however great the miseries that provoked insurrection.
The Earl of Warwick was dispatched with 14,000 troops to end the
rebellion, and arrived on August 24th. For two days the issue seemed
uncertain--half the city only was in Warwick's hands. The arrival of 1,400
mercenaries--"lanzknechts," Germans mostly--and a fatal decision of the
rebels to leave their vantage ground at Mousehold Heath and do battle in
the open valley that stretched towards the city, gave complete victory to
Warwick.
The peasants poured into the meadows beyond Magdalen and Pockthorpe gates,
and were cut to pieces by the professional soldiers.
When all seemed over Ket galloped away to the north, but was taken, worn
out, at the village of Swannington, eight miles from Norwich.
More than 400 peasants were hanged by Warwick's orders, and their bodies
left to swing on Mousehold and in the city. Robert Ket and William Ket were
sent to London, and after being tried and condemned for high treason, were
returned to Norwich in December for execution. Robert Ket was hanged in
chains from Norwich Castle, and William suffered in similar fashion from
the parish church at Wymondham--to remind all people of the fate that
befall those who venture, unsuccessfully, to take up arms against the
government in power.
So the Norfolk Rising ended, and with it ended all serious popular
insurrection in England. Riots and mob violence have been seen even to our
own time, but no great, well-organised movement to overthrow authority and
establish a social democracy by force of arms has been attempted since
1549.
The characters of Robert Ket and his brother have been vindicated by time,
and the rebel leader is now recognised as a disinterested, capable,
high-minded man. Ket took what seemed to him the only possible course to
avert the doom of a ruined peasantry, and failed. But his courage and
humaneness are beyond question.[47]
The enclosures did not end with the sixteenth century, and for another one
hundred years complaints are heard of the steady depopulation of rural
England. In the eighteenth century came the second great series of
enclosures--the enclosing of the commons and waste spaces, by Acts of
Parliament. Between 1710 and 1867 no less than 7,660,439 acres were thus
enclosed.
To-day the questions of land tenure and land ownership are conspicuous
items in the discussion of the whole social question, for the relations of
a people to its land are of very first importance in a democratic state.
* * * * *
CHAPTER IV
THE STRUGGLE RENEWED AGAINST THE CROWN
PARLIAMENT UNDER THE TUDORS
The English Parliament throughout the sixteenth century was but a servile
instrument of the Crown. The great barons were dead. Henry VIII. put to
death Sir Thomas More and all who questioned the royal absolutism.
Elizabeth, equally despotic, had by good fortune the services of the first
generation of professional statesmen that England produced. These
statesmen--Burleigh, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Walter Mildmay, Sir Thomas
Smith, and Sir Francis Walsingham--all died in office. Burleigh was
minister for forty years, Bacon and Mildmay for more than twenty, and Smith
and Walsingham for eighteen years.[48]
[Illustration: SIR JOHN ELIOT]
Parliament was not only intimidated by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, its
membership was recruited by nominees of the Crown.[49] And then it is also
to be borne in mind that both Henry and Elizabeth made a point of getting
Parliament to do their will. They governed through Parliament, and ruled
triumphantly, for it is only in the later years of Elizabeth that any
discontent is heard. The Stuarts, far less tyrannical, came to grief just
because they never understood the importance of Parliament in the eyes of
Englishmen in the middle ranks, and attempted to rule while ignoring the
House of Commons.
Elizabeth scolded her Parliaments, and more than once called the Speaker of
the House of Commons to account. The business of Tudor Parliaments was to
decree the proposals of the Crown. "Liberty of speech was granted in
respect of the aye or no, but not that everybody should speak what he
listed." Bacon declared, "the Queen hath both enlarging and restraining
power; she may set at liberty things restrained by statute and may restrain
things which be at liberty."
Yet Elizabeth raised no objection to the theory that Parliament was the
sovereign power, for her authority controlled Parliament; and so we have
Sir Thomas Smith writing in 1589 that "the most high and absolute power of
the realm of England consisteth in the Parliament."
In his "Ecclesiastical Polity," Book I. (1592-3), Hooker argues that "Laws
human, of what kind soever are available by consent," and that "laws they
are not which public approbation hath not made so"; deciding explicitly
that sovereignty rests ultimately in the people.
VICTORY OF PARLIAMENT OVER THE STUARTS
When he came to the throne in 1603, James I. was prepared to govern with
all the Tudor absolutism, but he had neither Elizabeth's Ministers--Cecil
excepted--nor her knowledge of the English mind. The English Parliament and
the English people had put up with Elizabeth's headstrong, capricious rule,
because it had been a strong rule, and the nation had obviously thriven
under it.[50] But it was another matter altogether when James I. was king.
"By many steps the slavish Parliament of Henry VIII. grew into the
murmuring Parliament of Queen Elizabeth, the mutinous Parliament of James
I., and the rebellious Parliament of Charles I."
The twenty years of James I.'s reign saw the preaching up of the doctrine
of the divine right of kings by the bishops of the Established Church, and
the growing resolution of the Commons to revive their earlier rights and
privileges. If the Stuarts were as unfortunate in their choice of Ministers
as Elizabeth had been successful, the House of Commons was equally happy in
the remarkable men who became its spokesmen and leaders. In the years that
preceded the Civil War--1626-42--three men are conspicuous on the
Parliamentary side: Eliot, Hampden, and Pym. All three were country
gentlemen, of good estate, high principle, and religious
convictions[51]--men of courage and resolution, and of blameless personal
character. Eliot died in prison, in the cause of good government, in 1632;
Hampden fell on Chalgrove Field in 1643.
As in earlier centuries the struggle in the seventeenth century between the
King and the Commons turned mainly on the questions of taxation. (At the
same time an additional cause of dispute can be found in the religious
differences between Charles I. and the Parliamentarians. The latter were
mainly Puritan, accepting the Protestantism of the Church of England, but
hating Catholicism and the high-church views of Laud. The King was in full
sympathy with high Anglicanism, and, like his father, willing to relax the
penal laws against Catholics.)
"By the ancient laws and liberties of England it is the known birthright
and inheritance of the subject that no tax, tallage, or other charge shall
be levied or imposed but by common consent in England, and that the
subsidies of tonnage and poundage are no way due or payable but by a free
gift and special Act of Parliament."
In these memorable words began the declaration moved by Sir John Eliot in
the House of Commons on March 2nd, 1629. A royal message ordering the
adjournment of the House was disregarded, the Speaker was held down in his
chair, and the key of the House of Commons was turned against intrusion,
while Eliot's resolutions, declaring that the privileges of the Commons
must be preserved, were carried with enthusiasm.
Charles answered these resolutions by dissolving Parliament and sending
Eliot to the Tower.
For eleven years no Parliament was summoned. Eliot refused altogether to
make any defence for his Parliamentary conduct. "I hold that it is against
the privilege of Parliament to speak of anything which is done in the
House," was his reply to the Crown lawyers. So Sir John Eliot was left in
prison, for nothing would induce this devoted believer in representative
government to yield to the royal pressure, and three years later, at the
age of forty-two, he died in the Tower.
It was for the liberties of the House of Commons that Eliot gave his life.
Wasted with sickness, health and freedom were his if he would but
acknowledge the right of the Crown to restrain the freedom of Parliamentary
debate; but such an acknowledgment was impossible from Sir John Eliot. For
him the privilege of the House of Commons in the matter of free speech was
a sacred cause, to be upheld by Members of Parliament, even to the death--a
cause every whit as sacred to Eliot as the divine right of kings was to the
Stuart bishops.
Charles hoped to govern England through his Ministers without interference
from the Commons, and only the need of money compelled him to summon
Parliament.
John Hampden saw that if the King could raise money by forced loans and
other exactions, the days of constitutional government were over. Hence his
memorable resistance to ship-money. London and the seaports were induced to
provide supplies for ships in 1634, on the pretext that piracy must be
prevented. In the following year the demand was extended to the inland
counties, and Hampden refused point blank to pay--though the amount was
only a matter of 20s.--falling back, in justification of his refusal, on
the Petition of Right--acknowledged by Charles in 1628--which declared that
taxes were not to be levied without the consent of Parliament. The case was
decided in 1636, and five of the twelve judges held that Hampden's
objection was valid. The arguments in favour of non-payment were circulated
far and wide, so that, in spite of the adverse verdict, "the judgment
proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the
King's service."[52]
The personal rule of Charles and his Ministers, Laud and Strafford, came to
an end in the autumn of 1640, when there was no choice left to the King but
to summon Parliament, if money was to be obtained. Earlier in the year the
"Short Parliament" had met, only to be dissolved by the folly of the King
after a sitting of three weeks, because of its unwillingness to vote
supplies without the redress of grievances.
The disasters of the King's campaign against the Scots, an empty treasury,
and a mutinous army, compelled the calling of Parliament. But the temper of
the men who came to the House of Commons in November was vastly different
from the temper of the "Short Parliament."[53] For this was the famous
"Long Parliament" that assembled in the dark autumn days of 1640, and it
was to sit for thirteen years; to see the impeachment and execution of Laud
and Strafford, the trial and execution of the King, the abolition of
monarchy and the House of Lords, the establishment of the Commonwealth; and
was itself to pass away finally only before Cromwell's military
dictatorship.
Hampden was the great figure at the beginning of this Parliament. "The eyes
of all men were fixed upon him, as their _patriæ pater_, and the pilot that
must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. I
am persuaded (wrote Clarendon) his power and interest at that time were
greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man
of his rank hath had at any time; for his reputation of honesty was
universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or
private ends could bias them."
Politically, neither Hampden nor Pym was Republican. Both believed in
government by King, Lords, and Commons; but both were determined that the
King's Ministers should be answerable to Parliament for the policy of the
Crown, and that the Commons, who found the money for government, should
have a definite say in the spending of that money. As for the royal claim
of "Divine right," and the royal view that held passive obedience to be the
duty of the King's subjects, and saw in Parliament merely a useful
instrument for the raising of funds to be spent by the royal pleasure
without question or criticism--these things were intolerable to Hampden,
Pym, and the men of the House of Commons. The King would not govern through
Parliament; the House of Commons could govern without a King. It was left
to the Civil War to decide the issue between the Crown and Parliament, and
make the House of Commons supreme.
Things moved quickly in the first year of the Long Parliament. The Star
Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. Strafford was impeached
for high treason, and executed on Tower Hill. Archbishop Laud lay in
prison, to be executed four years later. The Grand Remonstrance of the
House of Commons was presented to Charles in December, 1641. The demands of
the Commons in the Remonstrance were not revolutionary, but they stated,
quite frankly, the case for the Parliament. The main points were the need
for securities for the administration of justice, and an insistence on the
responsibility of the King's Ministers to the Houses of Parliament. The
Grand Remonstrance was only carried by eleven votes in the House of
Commons, 159 to 148, after wild scenes. "Some waved their hats over their
heads, and others took their swords in their scabbards out of their belts,
and held them by the pummels in their hands, setting the lower part on the
ground." Actual violence was only prevented "by the sagacity and great
calmness of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech."
Charles promised an answer to the deputation of members who waited upon him
with the Grand Remonstrance, and early in the new year came the reply. The
King simply demanded the surrender of five members--Pym, Hampden, Holles,
Strode, and Hazlerig--and their impeachment on the charge of high treason.
All constitutional law was set aside by a charge which proceeded personally
from the King, which deprived the accused of their legal right to a trial
by their peers, and summoned them before a tribunal which had no pretence
to a justification over them. On the refusal of the Commons to surrender
their members, Charles came in person to Westminster with 300 cavaliers to
demand their arrest. But the five members, warned of the King's venture,
were well out of the way, and rested safely within the City of London--for
the citizens were strongly for the Parliament. "It was believed that if the
King had found them there (in the House of Commons), and called in his
guards to have seized them, the members of the House would have endeavoured
the defence of them, which might have proved a very unhappy and sad
business."
As it was, Charles could only retire "in a more discontented and angry
passion than he came in." The step was utterly ill-advised. Parliament was
in no mood to favour royal encroachments, and the citizens of London were
at hand, with their trained bands, to protect forcibly members of the House
of Commons.
War was now imminent. "The attempt to seize the five members was
undoubtedly the real cause of the war. From that moment, the loyal
confidence with which most of the popular party were beginning to regard
the King was turned into hatred and suspicion. From that moment, the
Parliament was compelled to surround itself with defensive arms. From that
moment, the city assumed the appearance of a garrison.
"The transaction was illegal from beginning to end. The impeachment was
illegal. The process was illegal. The service was illegal. If Charles
wished to prosecute the five members for treason, a bill against them
should have been sent to a grand jury. That a commoner cannot be tried for
high treason by the Lords at the suit of the Crown, is part of the very
alphabet of our law. That no man can be arrested by the King in person is
equally clear. This was an established maxim of our jurisprudence even in
the time of Edward the Fourth. 'A subject,' said Chief Justice Markham to
that Prince, 'may arrest for treason; the King cannot; for, if the arrest
be illegal, the party has no remedy against the King.'"[54]
Both King and Parliament broke rudely through all constitutional precedents
in their preparations for hostilities.
The King levied troops by a royal commission, without any advice from
Parliament, and Pym got an ordinance passed, in both Houses, appointing the
Lords-Lieutenant of the counties to command the Militia without warrant
from the Crown.
A last attempt at negotiations was made at York, in April, when the
proposals of Parliament--nineteen propositions for curtailing the power of
the Monarchy in favour of the Commons--were rejected by Charles with the
words: "If I granted your demands, I should be no more than the mere
phantom of a king."
By August, Charles had raised the royal standard at Nottingham, and war was
begun.
Five years later and Charles was a prisoner, to die in 1649 on the
scaffold. That same year monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished by
law; the Established Church had already fallen before the triumphant arms
of the Puritans.
Then, in 1653, the House of Commons itself fell--expelled by Cromwell; and
the task of the Lord Protector was to fashion a constitution that would
work.[55] What happened was the supremacy of the army. Parliament,
attenuated and despised, contended in vain against the Protector. On
Cromwell's death, and the failure of his son, Richard, the army declared
for Charles II., and there was an end to the Commonwealth.
THE DEMOCRATIC PROTEST--LILBURNE
In all these changes the great mass of the people had neither part nor lot;
and the famous leaders of the Parliamentary Party, resolute to curtail the
absolutism of the Crown, were no more concerned with the welfare of the
labouring people than the barons were in the time of John. The labouring
people--generally--were equally indifferent to the fortunes of Roundheads
and Cavaliers, though the townsmen in many places held strong enough
opinions on the matters of religion that were in dispute.[56]
That the common misery of the people was not in any way lightened by
Cromwell's rule we have abundant evidence, and it cannot be supposed that
the substitution of the Presbyterian discipline for episcopacy in the
Church, and the displacement of Presbyterians by Independents, was likely
to alleviate this misery.
Taxation was heavier than it had ever been before, and in Lancashire,
Westmorland, and Cumberland the distress was appalling.
Whitelocke, writing in 1649,[57] notes "that many families in Lancashire
were starved." "That many in Cumberland and Westmorland died in the
highways for want of bread, and divers left their habitations, travelling
with their wives and children to other parts to get relief, but could find
none. That the committees and Justices of the Peace of Cumberland signed a
certificate, that there were 30,000 families that had neither seed nor
bread-corn, nor money to buy either, and they desired a collection for
them, which was made, but much too little to relieve so great a multitude."
Cromwell, occupied with high affairs of State, had neither time nor
inclination to attend to social reform. Democracy had its witnesses;
Lilburne and the Levellers made their protest against military rule, and
were overpowered; Winstanley and his Diggers endeavoured to persuade the
country that the common land should be occupied by dispossessed peasants,
and were quickly suppressed.
Lilburne was concerned with the establishment of a political democracy,
Winstanley with a social democracy, and in both cases the propaganda was
offensive to the Protector.
Had Cromwell listened to Lilburne, and made concessions towards democracy,
the reaction against Puritanism and the Commonwealth might have been
averted.[58]
John Lilburne had been a brave soldier in the army of the Parliament in the
early years of the Civil War, and he left the army in 1645 with the rank of
Lieutenant-Colonel (and with £880 arrears of pay due to him) rather than
take the covenant and subscribe to the requirements of the "new model."
The monarchy having fallen, Lilburne saw the possibilities of tyranny in
the Parliamentary government, and at once spoke out. With considerable
legal knowledge, a passion for liberty, clear views on democracy, an
enormous capacity for work, and great skill as a pamphleteer, Lilburne was
not to be ignored. The Government might have had him for a supporter; it
unwisely decided to treat him as an enemy, and for ten years he was an
unsparing critic, his popularity increasing with every fresh pamphlet he
issued--and at every fresh imprisonment.
Lilburne urged a radical reform of Parliament and a general manhood
suffrage in 1647, and the "Case for the Army," published by the Levellers
in the same year, on the proposal of the Presbyterian majority in
Parliament that the army should be disbanded, demanded the abolition of
monopolies, freedom of trade and religion, restoration of enclosed common
lands, and abolition of sinecures.
Both Cromwell and Ireton were strongly opposed to manhood suffrage, and
Cromwell--to whom the immediate danger was a royalist reaction--had no
patience for men who would embark on democratic experiments at such a
season.
Lilburne and the Levellers were equally distrustful of Cromwell's new
Council of State. "We were ruled before by King, Lords, and Commons, now by
a General, Court-martial, and Commons; and, we pray you, what is the
difference?" So they put the question in 1648.
To Cromwell the one safety for the Commonwealth was in the loyalty of the
army to the Government. To Lilburne the one guarantee for good government
was in the supremacy of a Parliament elected by manhood suffrage. He saw
plainly that unless steps were taken to establish democratic institutions
there was no future for the Commonwealth; and he took no part in the trial
of Charles I., saying openly that he doubted the wisdom of abolishing
monarchy before a new constitution had been drawn up.
But Lilburne overestimated the strength of the Leveller movement in the
army, and the corporals who revolted were shot by sentence of
courts-martial.[59]
In vain the democratic troopers argued, "the old king's person and the old
lords are but removed, and a new king and new lords with the commons are in
one House, and so we are under a more absolute arbitrary monarchy than
before." The Government answered by clapping Lilburne in the Tower, where,
in spite of a petition signed by 80,000 for his release, he remained for
three months without being brought to trial. Released on bail, Lilburne,
who from prison had issued an "Agreement of the Free People," calling for
annual parliaments elected by manhood suffrage and the free election of
unendowed church ministers in every parish, now published an "Impeachment
for High Treason against Oliver Cromwell and his son-in-law, James Ireton,"
and declared that monarchy was preferable to a military despotism. At last,
brought to trial on the charge of "treason," Lilburne was acquitted with "a
loud and unanimous shout" of popular approval.[60] "In a revolution where
others argued about the respective rights of King and Parliament, he spoke
always of the rights of the people. His dauntless courage and his power of
speech made him the idol of the mob."[61]
Lilburne was again brought to trial, in 1653, and again acquitted, with
undiminished enthusiasm. But "for the peace of the nation," Cromwell
refused to allow the irrepressible agitator to be at large, and for two
years Lilburne, "Free-born John," was kept in prison. During those years
all power in the House of Commons was broken by the rule of the Army of the
Commonwealth, and Parliament stood in abject submission before the Lord
Protector. Only when his health was shattered, and he had embraced Quaker
principles, was Lilburne released, and granted a pension of 40s. a week.
The following year, at the age of 40, Lilburne died of consumption--brought
on by the close confinement he had suffered. A year later, 1658, and
Cromwell, by whose side Lilburne had fought at Marston Moor, and against
whose rule he had contended for so many a year, was dead, and the
Commonwealth Government was doomed.
WINSTANLEY AND "THE DIGGERS"
The "Digger" movement was a shorter and much more obscure protest on behalf
of the people than Lilburne's agitation for democracy; but it is notable
for its social significance.
While Lilburne strove vigorously for political reforms that are still
unaccomplished, Gerrard Winstanley preached a revolutionary gospel of
social reform--as John Ball and Robert Ket had before him. But Winstanley's
social doctrine allowed no room for violence, and included the
non-resistance principles that found exposition in the Society of Friends.
Hence the "Diggers," preaching agrarian revolution; but denying all right
to force of arms, never endangered the Commonwealth Government as Lilburne
and the Levellers did.
Free Communism was the creed of more than one Protestant sect in the
sixteenth century, and the Anabaptists on the Continent had been
conspicuous for their experiments in community of goods and anarchist
society.
Winstanley confined his teaching and practice to common ownership of land,
pleading for the cultivation of the enclosed common lands, "that all may
feed upon the crops of the earth, and the burden of poverty be removed."
There was to be no forcible expropriation of landlords.
"If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and Thine, let them
labour their own lands with their own hands. And let the common people,
that say the earth is _ours_, not _mine_, let them labour together, and eat
bread together upon the commons, mountains, and hills.
"For as the enclosures are called such a man's land, and such a man's land,
so the Commons and Heath are called the common people's. And let the world
see who labour the earth in righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives
the blessing, let them be the people that shall inherit the earth.
"None can say that their right is taken from them. For let the rich work
alone by themselves; and let the poor work together by themselves."[62]
With the common ownership and cultivation of land, an end was to be made of
all tyranny of man over his fellows.
[Illustration: JOHN HAMPDEN
_After the Engraving by G. Houbraken._]
"Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the whole bulk of
mankind are but one living earth. Leave off imprisoning, whipping, and
killing, which are but the actings of the curse. Let those that have
hitherto had no land, and have been forced to rob and steal through
poverty; henceforth let them quietly enjoy land to work upon, that everyone
may enjoy the benefit of his creation, and eat his own bread with the sweat
of his own brow."
Winstanley's argument was quite simple:
"If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may say, _That is
mine_. But if the Lord made these for the use of His creation, surely then
the earth was made by the Lord to be a Common Treasury for all, not a
particular treasury for some."
Two objections were urged against private property in land:
"First, it hath occasioned people to steal from one another. Secondly, it
hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil
action, and then kills them for doing it." It was a prolific age for
pamphlets, the seventeenth century; the land teemed with preachers and
visionaries, and Winstanley's writings never attracted the sympathy that
was given to the fierce controversialists on theological and political
questions.
Only when Winstanley and his Diggers set to work with spade and shovel on
the barren soil of St. George's Hill, in Surrey, in the spring of 1649, was
the attention of the Council of State called to the strange proceedings.
The matter was left to the local magistrates and landowners, and the
Diggers were suppressed. A similar attempt to reclaim land near
Wellingboro' was stopped at once as "seditious and tumultuous." It was
quite useless for Winstanley to maintain that the English people were
dispossessed of their lands by the Crown at the Norman Conquest, and that
with the execution of the King the ownership of the Crown lands ought to
revert to the people; Cromwell and the Council of State had no more
patience with prophets of land nationalisation than with agitators of
manhood suffrage. Indeed, the Commonwealth Government never took the
trouble to distinguish between the different groups of disaffected people,
but set them all down as "Levellers," to be punished as disturbers of the
peace if they refused to obey authority.
Winstanley's last pamphlet was "True Magistracy Restored," an open letter
to Oliver Cromwell, 1652, and after its publication Gerrard Winstanley and
his Diggers are heard of no more.
To-day both Lilburne and Winstanley are to be recalled because the
agitation for political democracy is always with us, and the question of
land tenure is seen to be of profound importance in the discussion of
social reform. No democratic statesman in our time can propose an
improvement in the social condition of the people without reference to the
land question, and no social reformer of the nineteenth century has had
more influence or been more widely read and discussed than Henry
George--the exponent of the Single Tax on Land Values.
Winstanley was very little heeded in his own day, but two hundred and fifty
years later the civilised countries of the earth are found in deep debate
over the respective rights of landowners and landless, and the relation of
poverty to land ownership. State ownership, taxation of land values,
peasant proprietorship, co-operative agriculture--all have their advocates
to-day, but to Winstanley's question whether the earth was made "for to
give ease to a few or health to all," only one answer is returned.
THE RESTORATION
Under the Commonwealth the landowners were as powerful as they had been
under the monarchy. Enclosures continued. Social reform was not
contemplated by Cromwell nor by Councils of State; democracy was equally
outside the political vision of government. Church of England ministers
were dispossessed in favour of Nonconformists, Puritanism became the
established faith, Catholicism remained proscribed.
The interest in ecclesiastical and theological disputes was considerable,
and Puritanism was popular with large numbers of the middle-class. But to
the mass of the people Puritanism was merely the suppression of further
liberties, the prohibition of old customs, the stern abolition of Christmas
revels and May-day games.
Lilburne did his best to get Cromwell to allow the people some
responsibility in the choice of its rulers. Winstanley proposed a remedy
for the social distress. To neither of these men was any concession made,
and no consideration was given to their appeals.
Hence the bulk of the nation, ignored by the Commonwealth Government, and
alienated by Puritanism, accepted quite amiably--indeed, with
enthusiasm--the restoration of the monarchy on the return of Charles II.,
and was unmoved by the royalist reaction against Parliamentary Government
that followed on the Restoration.
The House of Commons itself, when Monk and his army had gone over to the
side of Charles, voted, in the Convention Parliament of 1660, "that
according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this Kingdom, the
government is, and ought to be, by King, Lords, and Commons," and Charles
II. was received in London with uproarious enthusiasm.
The army was disbanded; a royalist House of Commons restored the Church of
England and ordered general acceptance of its Prayer Book. Puritanism,
driven from rule, could only remain in power in the heart and conscience of
its adherents.
To the old Commonwealth man it might seem, in the reaction against
Puritanism, and in the popularity of the King, that all that had been
striven for in the civil war had been lost, in the same way as after the
death of Simon of Montfort it might have appeared that "the good cause" had
perished with its great leader. In reality the House of Commons stood on
stronger ground than ever, and was to show its strength when James II.
attempted to override its decisions. In the main the very forms of
Parliamentary procedure were settled in the seventeenth century, to remain
undisturbed till the nineteenth century. "The Parliamentary procedure of
1844 was essentially the procedure on which the House of Commons conducted
its business during the Long Parliament."[63]
With Charles II. on the throne the absolutism of the Crown over Parliament
passed for ever from England. Cromwell had set up the supremacy of the army
over the Commons: this, too, was gone, never to be restored.
Henceforth government was to be by King, Lords, and Commons; but
sovereignty was to reside in Parliament. Not till a century later would
democracy again be heard of, and its merits urged, as Lilburne had urged
them under the Commonwealth.
* * * * *
CHAPTER V
CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT--ARISTOCRACY TRIUMPHANT
GOVERNMENT BY ARISTOCRACY
For nearly two centuries--from 1660 to 1830--England was governed by an
aristocracy of landowners. Charles II. kept the throne for twenty-five
years, because he had wit enough to avoid an open collision with
Parliament. James II. fled the country after three years--understanding no
more than his father had understood that tyranny was not possible save by
consent of Parliament or by military prowess. At the Restoration the royal
prerogative was dead, and nothing in Charles II.'s reign tended to diminish
the power of Parliament in favour of the throne. Charles was an astute
monarch who did not wish to be sent on his travels again, and consequently
took care not to outrage the nation by any attempt upon the liberties of
Parliament. Only by the Tudor method of using Parliament as the instrument
of the royal will could James II. have accomplished the constitutional
changes he had set his heart upon. In attempting to set up toleration for
the Roman Catholic religion, and in openly appointing Roman Catholics to
positions of importance, James II. set Parliament at defiance and ranged
the forces of the Established Church against himself. The method was doomed
to failure. "None have gone about to break Parliaments but in the end
Parliaments have broken them."[64] In any case the notion of restoring
political liberty to Catholics was a bold endeavour in 1685. Against the
will of Parliament the project was folly. To overthrow the rights of
corporations and of the Universities, and to attempt to bully the Church of
England, after Elizabeth's fashion, at the very beginning of a pro-Catholic
movement, was to provoke defeat.
Parliament decided that James II. had "abdicated," when, deserted by
Churchill, he fled to France, and William and Mary came to the throne at
the express invitation of Parliament. The Revolution completed the work of
the Long Parliament by defining the limits of monarchy, and establishing
constitutional government. It was not--this Revolution, of 1688--the first
time Parliament had sanctioned the deposing of the King of England and the
appointment of his successor,[65] but it was the last. Never again since
the accession of William and Mary have the relations of the Crown and
Parliament been strained to breaking point; never has the supremacy of
Parliament been seriously threatened by the power of the throne.
The full effects of the Revolution of 1688 were seen in the course of the
next fifty years. Aristocracy, then mainly Whig, was triumphant, and under
its rule, while large measures of civil and religious liberty were passed,
the condition of the mass of labouring people was generally wretched in the
extreme. The rule of the aristocracy saw England become a great power among
the nations of the world, and the British Navy supreme over the navies of
Europe; but it saw also an industrial population, untaught and uncared for,
sink deeper and deeper into savagery and misery. For a time in the
eighteenth century the farmer and the peasant were prosperous, but by the
close of that century the small farmer was a ruined man, and with the
labourer was carried by the industrial revolution into the town. The worst
times for the English labourer in town and country since the Norman
Conquest were the reign of Edward VI. and the first quarter of the
nineteenth century.
The development of our political institutions into their present form; the
establishment of our Party system of government by Cabinet, and of the
authority of the Prime Minister; the growth of the supreme power of the
Commons, not only over the throne but over the Lords also: these were the
work of the aristocracy of the eighteenth century, and were attained by
steps so gradual as to be almost imperceptible. No idea of democracy guided
the process; yet our modern democratic system is firm-rooted upon the
principles and privileges of the Constitution as thus established. Social
misery deepened, without check from the politicians; and the most
enlightened statesmen of the Whig regime were very far from our present
conceptions of the duties and possibilities of Parliament.
CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY
James II. was tumbled from the throne for his vain attempt to establish
toleration for Catholics and Nonconformists without consent of Parliament.
Yet the Whig aristocracy which followed, while it did nothing for
Catholics, laid broad principles of civil and religious liberty for
democracy to build upon.[66]
The Declaration of Right, presented by Parliament to William and Mary on
their arrival in London, was turned into the Bill of Rights, and passed
into law in 1689. It stands as the last of the great charters of political
liberty, and states clearly both what is not permitted to the Crown, and
what privileges are allowed to the people.
Under the Bill of Rights the King was denied the power of suspending or
dispensing, of levying money, or maintaining a standing army without
consent of Parliament. The people were assured of the right of the subject
to petition the Crown, and of the free election of representatives in
Parliament, and of full and free debate in Parliament. Any profession of
the Catholic religion, or marriage with a Catholic, disqualified from
inheritance to or possession of the throne.
So there was an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, and four
hundred non-juring clergymen--including half-a-dozen bishops--of the Church
of England were deprived of their ecclesiastical appointments for refusing
to accept the accomplished fact, and acknowledge William III. as the lawful
King of England. By making William King, to the exclusion of the children
of James II., Parliament destroyed for all future time in England the
belief in the sacred character of kingship. The King was henceforth a part
of the constitution, and came to the throne by authority of Parliament, on
conditions laid down by Parliament.
William resented the decision of Parliament not to allow the Crown a
revenue for life, but to vote an annual supply; but the decision was
adhered to, and has remained in force ever since. The Mutiny Act, passed
the same year, placed the army under the control of Parliament, and the
annual vote for military expenses has, in like manner, remained.
The Toleration Act (1689) gave Nonconformists a legal right to worship in
their own chapels, but expressly excluded Unitarians and Roman Catholics
from this liberty. Life was made still harder for Roman Catholics in
England by the Act of 1700, which forbade a Catholic priest, under penalty
of imprisonment for life, to say mass, hear confessions, or exercise any
clerical function, and denied the right of the Catholic laity to hold, buy
or inherit property, or to have their children educated abroad. The
objection to Roman Catholics was that their loyalty to the Pope was an
allegiance to a "foreign" ruler which prevented their being good citizens
at home. Against this prejudice it was useless to point to what had been
done by Englishmen for their country, when all the land was Catholic, and
all accepted the supremacy of the Pope. It was not till 1778 that the first
Catholic Relief Bill was carried, a Bill that "shook the general prejudice
against Catholics to the centre, and restored to them a thousand
indescribable charities in the ordinary intercourse of social life which
they had seldom experienced."
The last Roman Catholic to die for conscience' sake was Oliver Plunket,
Archbishop of Armagh, who was executed at Tyburn, when Charles II. was
King, in 1681. After the Revolution, Nonconformists and Catholics were no
longer hanged or tortured for declining the ministrations of the
Established Church, but still were penalised in many lesser ways. But the
spirit of the eighteenth century made for toleration, and the Whigs were as
unostentatious in their own piety as they were indifferent to the piety of
others.
The killing of "witches," however, went on in Scotland and in England long
after toleration had been secured for Nonconformists. As late as 1712 a
woman was executed for witchcraft in England.[67]
GROWTH OF CABINET RULE
William III. began with a mixed ministry of Whigs and Tories, which
included men like Danby and Godolphin, who had served under James II. But
the fierce wrangling that went on over the war then being waged on the
Continent was decidedly inconvenient, and by 1696 the Whigs had succeeded
in driving all the Tories--who were against the war--out of office. Then
for the first time a united ministry was in power, and from a Cabinet of
men with common political opinions the next step was to secure that the
Cabinet should represent the party with a majority in the House of Commons.
Our present system of Cabinet rule, dependent on the will of the majority
of the Commons, is found in full operation by the middle of the eighteenth
century. The fact that William III., George I., and George II. were all
foreigners necessitated the King's ministers using considerable powers. But
George III. was English, and effected a revival in the personal power of
the King by his determination that the choice of ministers should rest with
the Crown, and not with the House of Commons. He succeeded in breaking up
the long Whig ascendancy, and so accustomed became the people to the King
making and unmaking ministries, that on George IV.'s accession in 1820 it
was fully expected the new King would turn out the Tories and put in Whigs.
William IV. in 1835 did what no sovereign has done since--dissolved
Parliament against the wish of the government.
From 1696 to 1701 the Whigs were in office. Then on the death of William
and the accession of Anne, Tory ministers were included in the government,
and for seven years the Cabinet was composite again. But Marlborough and
Godolphin found that if they were to remain in power it must be by the
support of the Whigs, who had made the support of the war against France a
party question; and from 1708 to 1710 the ministry was definitely Whig. By
1710 the war had ceased to be popular, and the general election of that
year sent back a strong Tory majority to the House of Commons, with the
result that the Tory leaders, Harley (Earl of Oxford) and Henry St. John
(Bolingbroke) took office. The Tories fell on the death of Anne, because
their plot to place James (generally called the Chevalier or the old
Pretender), the Queen's half-brother, on the throne was defeated by the
readiness of the Whig Dukes of Somerset and Argyll to proclaim George,
Elector of Hanover, King of England. By the Act of Settlement, 1701,
Parliament had decided that the Crown should pass from Anne to the heirs of
Sophia, Electress of Hanover and daughter of James I.; and the fact that
the Chevalier was a Catholic made his accession impossible according to
law, and the policy of Bolingbroke highly treasonable.
George I. could not speak English, and relied entirely on his Whig
ministers. Bolingbroke fled to the Continent, but was permitted to return
from exile nine years later. Oxford was impeached and sent to the Tower.
The Whigs were left in triumph to rule the country for nearly fifty
years--until the restiveness of George III. broke up their dominion--and
for more than twenty years of that period Walpole was Prime Minister.
Cabinet government--that is, government by a small body of men, agreed upon
main questions of policy, and commanding the confidence of the majority of
the House of Commons--was now in full swing, and in spite of the monarchist
revival under George III., no King henceforth ever refused consent to a
Bill passed by Parliament.
The Whigs did nothing in those first sixty years of the eighteenth century
to make the House of Commons more representative of the people. They were
content to repeat the old cries of the Revolution, and to oppose all
proposals of change. But they governed England without oppression, and
Walpole's commercial and financial measures satisfied the trading classes
and kept national credit sound.
WALPOLE'S RULE
Walpole remained in power from 1720 to 1742 by sheer corruption--there was
no other way open to him. He laughed openly at all talk of honesty and
purity, and his influence lowered the whole tone of public life.[68] But he
kept in touch with the middle classes, was honest personally, and had a
large amount of tact and good sense. His power in the House of Commons
endured because he understood the management of parliamentary affairs, and
had a genius for discerning the men whose support he could buy, and whose
support was valuable.
George III. went to work in much the same way as Walpole had done, and only
succeeded in breaking down the power of the Whig houses by using the same
corrupt methods that Walpole had employed. The "King's friends," as they
were called, acted independently of the party leaders, and in the pay of
the King were the chief instrument of George III.'s will.
THE CHANGE IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS
But George III. not only turned the Whigs out of office, he altered
permanently the political complexion of the House of Lords. From the time
of the Revolution of 1688 to the death of George II. in 1760, the Lords
were Whiggish, and the majority of English nobles held Whig principles.
They were, on the whole, men of better education than the average member of
the House of Commons, who was in most cases a fox-hunting squire, of the
Squire Western type. The House of Lords stood in the way of the Commons
when, in the Tory reaction of 1701, the Commons proposed to impeach Somers,
the Whig Chancellor, a high-minded and skilful lawyer, "courteous and
complaisant, humane and benevolent," for his share in the Second Partition
Treaty of 1699, and this was the beginning of a bitter contest between the
Tory Commons and the Whig Lords. An attempt was made by the Commons to
impeach Walpole on his fall in 1742, but the Lords threw out a Bill
proposing to remit the penalties to which his prosecutor might be liable,
and the King made Walpole a peer. George III., by an unsparing use of his
prerogative, changed the character and politics of the Upper House. His
creations were country gentlemen of sufficient wealth to own "pocket"
boroughs in the House of Commons, and lawyers who supported the Royal
prerogative.[69]
From George III.'s time onward there has always been a standing and
ever-increasing majority of Tory peers in the House of Lords. And while the
actual number of members of the Upper House has been enlarged enormously,
this majority has became enlarged out of all proportion. Liberal and Tory
Prime Ministers were busy throughout the nineteenth century adding to the
peerage--no less than 376 new peers were created between 1800 and 1907; but
comparatively few Liberals retained their principles when they became
peers, and two of the present chiefs of the Unionist Party in the House of
Lords--Lords Lansdowne and Selborne--are the sons of eminent Liberals.
So it has come about that while the House of Commons has been steadily
opening its doors to men of all ranks and classes, and in our time has
become increasingly democratic in character, the House of Lords, confined
in the main to men of wealth and social importance, has become an enormous
assembly of undistinguished persons, where only a small minority are active
politicians, and of this minority at least three-fourths are Conservatives.
This change in the House of Lords began, as we have seen, in the reign of
George III., when the Whig ascendancy in Parliament had passed. But the
Whigs did nothing during their long lease of power to bring democracy
nearer, and were entirely contemptuous of popular aspirations. At the very
time when the democratic idea was the theme of philosophers, and was to be
seen expressed in the constitution of the revolted American colonies, and
in the French Revolution, England remained under an aristocracy, governed
first by Whigs, and then by Tories. It is true democracy was not without
its spokesmen in England in the eighteenth century, but there was no
popular movement in politics to stir the masses of the people, as the
preaching of the Methodists stirred their hearts for religion. Democratic
ideas were as remote from popular discussion in the eighteenth century as
they had been made familiar by Lilburne for a brief season in the
seventeenth century.
"WILKES AND LIBERTY"
A word must be said about John Wilkes, a man of disreputable character and
considerable ability, who for some ten years--1763-73--contended for the
rights of electors against the Whig Government. The battle began when
George Grenville, the Whig Prime Minister, had Wilkes arrested on a general
warrant for an article attacking the King's Speech in No. 45 of the _North
Briton_, a scurrilous newspaper which belonged to Wilkes. Chief Justice
Pratt declared the arrest illegal on the ground that the warrant was bad,
and that Wilkes, being at the time M.P. for Aylesbury, enjoyed the
privilege of Parliament. A jury awarded Wilkes heavy damages against the
Government for false imprisonment, and the result of the trial made Wilkes
a popular hero. Then, in 1764, the Government brought a new charge of
blasphemy and libel, and Wilkes, expelled from the House of Commons, and
condemned by the King's Bench, fled to France, and was promptly declared an
outlaw. He returned, however, a year or two later, and while in prison was
elected M.P. for Middlesex. The House of Commons, led by the Government,
set the election aside, and riots for "Wilkes and Liberty" broke out in
London. The question was: Had the House of Commons a right to exclude a
member duly elected for a constituency?--the same question that was raised
over Charles Bradlaugh, a man of very different character, in the
Parliament of 1880. Again and again in 1768 and 1769 Wilkes was re-elected
for Middlesex, only to be expelled, and finally the House decided that
Wilkes' opponent, Colonel Luttrell, was to sit, although Luttrell was
manifestly not chosen by the majority of electors. The citizens of London
replied to this by choosing Wilkes for Sheriff and Alderman in 1770, and by
making him Lord Mayor four years later. The Government gave up the contest
at last, and Wilkes was allowed to take his seat. Besides vindicating the
right of constituencies against the claim of Parliament to exclude
undesirable persons, Wilkes did a good deal towards securing that right of
Parliamentary debating which was practically admitted after 1771.
But the "Wilkes and Liberty" movement was no more than a popular enthusiasm
of the London mob for an enemy of the Government, and a determination of
London citizens and Middlesex electors not to be brow-beaten by the
Government. Wilkes himself always denied that he was a "Wilkesite," and he
had no following in the country or in Parliament.
* * * * *
CHAPTER VI
THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEA
THE WITNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES
The idea of constitutional government has its witnesses in the Middle Ages,
democratic theories are common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
but it is not till the eighteenth century that France, aflame to realise a
political ideal, proves that democracy has passed from the books of
schoolmen and philosophers, and is to be put in practice by a nation in
arms.
In the thirteenth century the friars rallied to Simon of Montfort and
preached, not democracy, but constitutional liberty.[70] Thomas Aquinas,
the great Dominican doctor, became the chief exponent of political theory,
and maintained that sovereignty expressed in legislative power should be
exercised for the common good, and that a mixed government of monarch,
nobles, and people, with the Pope as a final Court of Appeal, would best
attain that end.[71]