RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION.
1377--1381.
LEADING DATES
Reign of Richard II., 1377-1399
Accession of Richard II 1377
The peasants' revolt 1381
1. =The First Years of Richard II. 1377--1378.=--"Woe to the land,"
quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of _Piers the
Plowman_, "when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age
when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and
the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such dangers
Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was
too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council
governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, however, took the
lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so
great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control
over the expenditure of the Crown.
2. =Wycliffe and the Great Schism. 1378--1381.=--In =1378= began the
Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two
Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually
losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two.
He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent
forth a band of "poor priests," to preach the simple gospel which he
found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions
of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on
which their authority was based. In =1381= he declared his disbelief
in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests
that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them
off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement
would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large numbers of his
supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was
coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain,
rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door.
[Illustration: Richard II. and his first queen, Anne of Bohemia: from
the gilt-latten effigies on their tomb in Westminster Abbey, made by
Nicholas Broker and Godfrey Prest, coppersmiths of London, in 1395.]
3. =The Poll-taxes. 1379--1381.=--The disastrous war with France made
fresh taxation unavoidable. In =1379= a poll-tax was imposed by
Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 6_l._ 13_s._ 4_d._
required of a duke, to the groat or 4_d._, representing in those days
at least the value of 4_s._ at the present day, required of the
poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in =1380= exacted no less than
three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried
children above the age of fifteen. In =1381= a tiler of Dartford in
Kent struck dead a collector who attempted to investigate his
daughter's age in an indecent fashion. His neighbours took arms to
protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and
south of England rose in insurrection.
4. =The Peasants' Grievances.=--The peasants had other grievances
besides the weight of taxation thrown on them by a Parliament in which
they had no representatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to
compel the acceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of
Labourers (see p. 248), had attempted to help themselves in another
way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been
frequently commuted into a payment of money which had been its fair
equivalent, but which, since the rise of wages consequent upon the
Black Death, could not command anything like the amount of labour
surrendered. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to
have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the
old bodily service. The discontent which prevailed everywhere was
fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon
the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers
unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in
general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry,
had been thrown into prison. His favourite question was--
When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then a gentleman?
5. =The Peasants' Revolt. 1381.=--From one end of England to another
the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer
killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the
villeins' services were burnt, and lawyers and all others connected
with the courts were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex
100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released
John Ball from gaol and poured along the roads to London. They hoped
to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the
gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's
entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the
Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey shore. Those who were with
him, however, refused to allow him to land. The peasants had
sympathisers in London itself, who allowed them to break into the
city. Lancaster's palace of the Savoy and the houses of lawyers and
officials were sacked and burnt. All the lawyers who could be found
were murdered, and others who were not lawyers shared their fate. The
mob broke into the Tower, and beheaded Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of
Canterbury, who had, as Chancellor, proposed the obnoxious taxes to
Parliament.
6. =The Suppression of the Revolt.=--The boy-king met the mob at
Mile-End, and promised to abolish villeinage in England. Charters of
manumission were drawn out and sealed, and a great part of the
insurgents returned contentedly home. About 30,000, however, remained
behind. When Richard came amongst them at Smithfield, Wat Tyler
threatened him, and Walworth, the Mayor of London, slew Wat Tyler with
his dagger. A shout for vengeance was raised. With astonishing
presence of mind Richard rode forward. "I am your king," he said; "I
will be your leader." His boldness inspired the insurgents with
confidence, and caused them to desist from their threats and to return
to their homes. In the country the gentry, encouraged by the failure
of the insurgents in London, recovered their courage. The insurrection
was everywhere vigorously suppressed. Richard ordered the payment of
all services due, and revoked the charters he had granted. The judges
on their circuits hanged the ringleaders without mercy. When
Parliament met it directed that the charters of manumission should be
cancelled. Lords and Commons alike stood up for the rich against the
poor, and the boy-king was powerless to resist them, and it is
possible that he did not wish to do so.
7. =Results of the Peasants' Revolt.=--The revolt of the peasants
strengthened the conservative spirit in the country. The villeinage
into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure
long, because service unwillingly rendered is too expensive to be
maintained. Men were, however, no longer in a mood to listen to
reformers. Great noblemen, whose right to the services of their
villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great
churchmen. The propertied classes, lay and clerical, instinctively saw
that they must hang together. Wycliffe's attack on transubstantiation
finding little response, he was obliged to retire to his parsonage at
Lutterworth, where he laboured with his pen till his death in =1384=.
His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards,[22] were, however,
for some time still popular amongst the poorer classes.
[Footnote 22: The name is said to have been derived from a low
German word, _lollen_, to sing, from their habit of singing, but
their clerical opponents derived it from the Latin _lolium_ (tares),
as if they were the tares in the midst of the wheat which remained
constant to the Church.]
[Illustration: Portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer.]
8. =Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales.'=--A combination between the great
nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth
century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too
diversified, and each separate portion of it was too closely linked to
the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannise over
the others for any long time. What that society was like is best seen
in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Chaucer was in many ways the exact
opposite of Langland, and was the precursor of modern literature as
Wycliffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable
story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to
take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of
a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly
purity and devotion, are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald
tales; still, coarse and ribald as some of his narratives are, Chaucer
never attempts to make vice attractive. He takes it rather as a matter
of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those
who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations.
9. =The Prologue of the 'Canterbury Tales.'=--Whilst, however, there
is not one of the _Canterbury Tales_ which fails to bring vividly
before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day,
it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close
connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and
women of various classes are there represented as riding together on
a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling
the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes
part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the
reeve, who was himself a person in authority, the mere cultivator of
the soil being excluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of
society is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds
of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and
the reeve, whilst the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and
gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he
commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the
begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose
only object is to make a gain of godliness.
[Illustration: A gentleman riding out with his hawk: from the Luttrell
Psalter.]
10. =Chaucer and the Clergy.=--In his representation of the clergy,
Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely
official clergy. His "poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for
all helpers and teachers. The parson is regardless of his own comfort,
ever ready to toil with mind and body for his parishioners, and, above
all, resolved to set them an example, knowing
That if gold ruste, what schulde yren doo?
For if a prest be foul, on whom we truste,
No wondur is a lewid man to ruste.[23]
[Footnote 23: _i.e._, if a priest, who is like gold, allow himself
to rust, or fall into sloth or sin, how can he expect the 'lewid
man' or layman, who is as iron to him, to be free from these
faults?]
The final character given to him is:--
A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is.
He waytud after no pompe ne reverence,
Ne maked him a spiced conscience;[24]
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve,
He taught, and ferst he folwed[25] it himselve.
[Footnote 24: A nice conscience; to see offence where there is
none.]
[Footnote 25: Followed.]
The majority amongst Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very
different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the
censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his
duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the
friar who is ready to grant absolution to any one who will give money
to the friars; who has a word and a jest for every man, and presents
of knives and pins for the women; who takes a farthing where he cannot
get a penny, but turns aside from those who have not even a farthing
to give; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics--a piece of the
sail of the ship which carried St. Peter on the sea of Galilee, and a
glass of pigs' bones, which he was ready to sell as bones of saints,
if he could thereby extract something even from the poorest widow. He
would not, he said, work with his hands like the apostles. He wanted
to have money, wool, cheese, and wheat at other people's expense.
Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently
much room for a reformer.
[Illustration: Carrying corn--a cart going uphill: from the Luttrell
Psalter.]
11. =Roads and Bridges.=--Such men as these latter did not go on
pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound
to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the
classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a
pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway
excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair
roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was
owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge,
had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in =1176=--in the
reign of Henry II.--by a priest, Peter Colechurch, who obtained gifts
for the purpose from notable people of all kinds. It was completed in
=1209=, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay
for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to
maintain the roads and bridges, and in default of these, it was held
to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open.
[Illustration: State carriage of the fourteenth century: from the
Luttrell Psalter.]
12. =Modes of Conveyance.=--In spite of these precautions, roads were
often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot
travelled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding
astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century
that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly
great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented
carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendour, as this
way of travelling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less
agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in
existence were the peasants' carts on two wheels, roughly made in the
form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It
was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved
from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry
his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently
repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often
broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The
same purveyors often took corn and other agricultural produce, for
which they paid little or nothing.
13. =Hospitality and Inns.=--When the king arrived in the evening at a
town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without
asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to
himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for
the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the
purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of
his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as
in the days before the Conquest (see p. 76), and at night mattresses
were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was
strewn with rushes; whilst a stranger of high rank had usually a bed
in the solar (see p. 245) with the lord of the castle. Travellers of
the middle class were not thought good enough to be welcomed in
monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be received out
of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds,
of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought
their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for
their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French
conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use
of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found
in these inns. "William," one traveller is supposed to say to another,
"undress and wash your legs, and rub them well for the love of the
fleas, that they may not leap on your legs; for there is a peck of
them lying in the dust under the rushes.... Hi! the fleas bite me so,
and do me great harm, for I have scratched my shoulders till the blood
flows."
14. =Alehouses.=--By the roadside were alehouses for temporary
refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from
which arose the saying that "Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the
day was made without hops, which were still unknown in England, and
ale would therefore only keep good for about five days.
15. =Wanderers.=--Besides the better class of travellers the roads
were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels,
jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and
even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be
heard of at country fairs. Any one who could play or sing was always
welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coarse. A tumbler
who could stand on his head or balance a heavy article at the end of a
stick balanced on his chin, or the leader of a performing bear, was
seldom turned away from the door, whilst the pedlar went from place to
place, supplying the wants which are now satisfied in the shop of the
village or the neighbouring town.
[Illustration: Bear-baiting: from the Luttrell Psalter.]
16. =Robbers and Criminals.=--The roads, indeed, were not always safe.
Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took
refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the
soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed
merchants and wealthy travellers, leaving the poor untouched, like the
legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly
esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly
harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting to a shilling.
Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters,
unless they could succeed in passing a year in a town, and
consequently were often found amongst vagabonds who had to live as
best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons, in
which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were
confined, reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or
drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less
dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed,
was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could
take refuge in the sanctuaries to be found in churches, from which no
officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved
some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were
either innocent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for
their slight offences.
[Illustration: West end of the nave of Winchester Cathedral: begun by
Bishop Edington (who built the great window) between 1360 and 1366:
carried on by Bishop William of Wykeham from 1394 to 1416, and finally
completed after his death.]
17. =Justices of the Peace.=--Even harshness is less dangerous than
anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against
anarchy. Before the Conquest order had been kept by making either the
kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system
was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men
were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join
in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III.
persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to
see that order was kept, and at the accession of Edward III. these
officials were established for a time by Act of Parliament as
conservators of the peace. In =1360=, the year of the Treaty of
Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of
the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each
county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four
gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric.[26]
They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of
crime. The king named these justices, but he had to name all of them
except the lawyer from amongst the local landowners. In every way, in
the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming
prominent. The kings attempted to govern with their help, both in
Parliament and in the counties.
[Footnote 26: Many clerics took one of the minor orders so as to
secure the immunities of the clergy, without any intention of being
ordained a deacon or a priest.]