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The Road Not Taken

Page 67

by Frank McLynn


  43. See the discussion by Samuel K. Cohn, ‘Florentine Insurrections, 1342–85, in Comparative Perspective’, in Hilton and Aston, English Rising, pp. 143–64 (esp. p. 160) and the same author’s Popular Protest in Late Medieval Europe (Manchester, 2004).

  44. In addition to the Cohn works cited see also A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378 (Princeton, 1962).

  45. Maurice Dommanget, La Jacquerie (Paris, 1971); Louis Raymond de Vericour, ‘The Jacquerie’, TRHS, 1 (1872), pp. 296–310.

  46. Raymond Carelles, ‘The Jacquerie’, in Hilton and Aston, English Rising, pp. 74–83.

  47. Froissart, Chronicles, pp. 151–2.

  48. Ibid., pp. 153–5. In contrast to England, where not a single chronicler supported the peasants, in France Jean de Venette and Guillaume de Nauquis were sympathetic to the jacquerie.

  49. A convenient thumbnail sketch of these events is provided in Horspool, English Rebel, pp. 140–60.

  50. M. E. Aston, ‘Lollardy and Sedition’, PP 17 (1960), pp. 1–44.

  51. I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford, 1991), p. 24.

  52. Ibid., pp. 29–30.

  53. See Colin Richmond, ed., The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century, 3 vols (2000); Helen Castor, Blood and Roses: The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century (2004).

  54. G. Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360–1461 (Oxford, 1998), p. 234.

  55. Vallance, Radical History, p. 77.

  56. P. B. Munche, Gentlemen and Poachers: The English Game Laws, 1671–1831 (Cambridge, 1981), p. 11.

  57. D. G. Watts, ‘Popular Disorder in Southern England, 1250–1450’, in B. Stapleton, ed., Conflict and Community in Southern England (1992), pp. 1–15.

  58. E. F. Jacob, The Fifteenth Century, 1399–1485 (Oxford, 1961), pp. 475–81. For Henry VI in the 1440s see B. P. Wolfe, The Reign of Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority 1422–1461 (1981).

  59. C. A. J. Armstrong, ‘Politics and the Battle of St Albans, 1455’, BIHR, 33 (1960), pp. 1–72.

  60. J. C. Wedgwood, History of Parliament: Biographies of the Members of the Commons House, 1439–1509 (1936), pp. 253–5, 744–6, 873–4.

  61. J. O. Halliwell, ed., A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of King Edward the Fourth by John Warkworth (Camden Society, 1839), p. 11. East Anglia in this context has been exhaustively studied in P. C. Maddern, ‘Violence, Crime and Public Disorder in East Anglia, 1422–1442’, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford (1984).

  62. M. G. A. Vale, Charles VII (1974), pp. 116–18; R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (2004), pp. 510–13; M. H. Keen, England in the Later Middle Ages (1973), pp. 401–3.

  63. J. Ferguson, English Diplomacy, 1422–1461 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 30–2, 100–1.

  64. J. Stevenson, ed., Narrative of the Expulsion of the English from Normandy, 1449–1450 (Rolls Series, 1863).

  65. G. L. Harriss, ‘Marmaduke Lumley and the Exchequer Crisis of 1446–9’, in J. G. Rowe, ed., Aspects of Late Medieval Government and Society (Toronto, 1986), pp. 143–78; R. Virgoe, ‘The Parliamentary Subsidy of 1450’, BIHR, 55 (1982), pp. 125–38; M. H. Keen, ‘The End of the Hundred Years War: Lancastrian France and Lancastrian England’, in M. Jones and M. Vale, eds, England and Her Neighbours, 1066–1453 (1989), pp. 297–311.

  66. J. Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, Camden Society, NS, 17 (1876) – hereinafter Gregory’s Chronicle – p. 189; J. S. Davies, ed., An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard I, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI, Camden Society, OS, 64 (1856) – hereinafter Davies Chronicle – p. 64.

  67. G. L. and M. A. Harriss, ‘John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462’, Camden Miscellany, 24, Camden Society, 4th series, 9 (1972), pp. 151–233 (at p. 197).

  68. R. Virgoe, ‘The Death of William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 47 (1965), pp. 489–502.

  69. Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 610–65.

  70. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, p. 77.

  71. Ibid., p. 111.

  72. M. Mate, ‘The Economic and Social Roots of Medieval Popular Rebellion: Sussex in 1450 to 1451’, Economic History Review, 45 (1992), pp. 661–76 (esp. p. 668).

  73. Bertram Wolfe, Henry VI (2001), pp. 232–5.

  74. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, pp. 78–9; Vallance, Radical History, pp. 87–8.

  75. Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 617–19.

  76. A. H. Thomas and D. Thornley, eds, The Great Chronicle of London – hereinafter Great Chronicle – (Gloucester, 1983), p. 181; Alexander L. Kaufman, The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion (Vermont 2009), p. 26.

  77. Guy Forquin, The Anatomy of Popular Rebellion in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), p. 71; R. M. Jeffs, The Poynings–Percy Dispute: An Example of the Interplay of Open Strife and Legal Action in the Fifteenth century’, BIHR, 34 (1961), pp. 148–64; N. Davis, ed., The Paston Letters, 1422–1509 (1976), I, no. 99.

  78. G. L. and M. A. Harriss, eds, ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’, p. 198; Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, p. 619.

  79. R. W. Kaueper, ed., Violence in Medieval Society (Woodbridge, 2000).

  80. M. Bohna, ‘Armed Force and Civic Legitimacy in Jack Cade’s Revolt’, EHR, 118 (2003), pp. 563–82 (at p. 576).

  81. Ibid., p. 578.

  82. Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 423–33, 504–50.

  83. Bohna, ‘Armed Force’, p. 574.

  84. Vallance, Radical History, pp. 88–9.

  85. Great Chronicle, p. 181; G. L. and M. A. Harriss, ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’, p. 199.

  86. G. L. and M. A. Harriss, ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’, p. 199.

  87. Mary Rose McLaren, ed., The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 100–3.

  88. Charles Petheridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (1905), pp. 159–60; Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 612–13, 623–4.

  89. R. Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles (1911), pp. 153–4; Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Henry Ellis (1811), pp. 622–5.

  90. Great Chronicle, pp. 182–3.

  91. Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, p. 613; Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, p. 86.

  92. Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London, p. 162.

  93. ‘Whether his conduct is egotism, bravado or megalomaniac behaviour we are unsure.’ Kaufman, Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion, p. 130.

  94. Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles, p. 54; Great Chronicle, p. 182.

  95. Kaufman, Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion, p. 189.

  96. Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles, p. 155.

  97. Kaufman, Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion, p. 130. For the confusion between serious rebellion and the traditional carnivals held at this time of the year see Craig A. Benthal, ‘Jack Cade’s Legal Carnival’, Studies in English Literature, 42 (2002), pp. 259–74; François Laroque, ‘The Jack Cade Scenes Reconsidered: Popular Rebellion, Utopia or Carnival?’ in Tetsuo Hishi et al., eds, Shakespeare and Cultural Tradition (Newark, Delaware, 1991) pp. 76–89.

  98. London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, p. 68; Six Town Chronicles, pp. 132–3; James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, Camden Society, NS, 17 (1876), p. 192.

  99. ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’, pp. 199–202; Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles, pp. 153–6; Historical Collections of a Citizen of London, pp. 190–3; Richard Jowlett, ed., ‘The Chronicle of the Grey Friars in London’, Monumenta Franciscana, Rolls Society, 4 (1982), ii, p. 173.

  100. Vallance, Radical History, pp. 92–3.

  101. ‘John Benet’s Chronicle’, p. 201.

  102. New Chronicles of England and France, pp. 624–5.

  103. Elizabeth Hallam, ed., The Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses (Surrey, 1996), p. 205.

  104. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, pp. 95–6.

  105. Gr
iffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 615–16.

  106. New Chronicles of England and France, p. 625; Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles, p. 134.

  107. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, p. 97.

  108. Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles, pp. 134–5.

  109. Vallance, Radical History, pp. 95–6.

  110. Y. M. Bercé, Revolt and Revolution in Early Modern England (Manchester, 1987), pp. 117–20.

  111. Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford, 1994), p. 89; Kaufman, Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion, pp. 92–3.

  112. R. Virgoe, ‘Some Ancient Indictments in the King’s Bench referring to Kent, 1450– 1452’, in F. R. H. Du Boulay, ed., Documents Illustrative of Medieval Kentish Society (Ashford, 1964), p. 229; Wolfe, Henry VI, p. 233. For the legal situation on pardons in general see Naomi D. Hurnard, The King’s Pardon for Homicides (Oxford, 1969).

  113. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, pp. 176, 183–5.

  114. See, e.g., J. R. Landor, Conflict and Stability in Fifteenth Century England (1969), p. 72; R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster (1967), pp. 61–8; John L. Watts, ‘Polemic and Politics in the 1450s’, in Margaret Lucille Kekewich, The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Books (Phoenix Mill, 1995), pp. 3–42.

  115. 2 Henry VI, Act III, Scene 1, ll, 356–81.

  116. Ibid., Act IV, Scene 2, ll, 61–6.

  117. For a study of Shakespeare’s Cade see Thomas Cartelli, ‘Jack Cade in the Garden: Class Consciousness and Class Conflict in Henry VI, Part 2’, in Richard Burt and John Milland Archer, eds, Enclosure Act: Sexuality and Property and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY, 1994), pp. 48–67.

  118. Watts, ‘Polemic and Politics’, pp. 3–42 (at pp. 7–17).

  119. J. Day, ‘The Great Bullion Famine in the Fifteenth Century’, PP 79 (1978), pp. 3–54; P. Spufford and P. Woodhead, ‘Calais and its Mint: Part One’, in N. J. Mayhew, ed., Coinage in the Low Countries, 880–1500 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 171–202; J. Munro, ‘Bullion Flows and Monetary Contraction in Late Medieval England and the Low Countries’, in J. F. Richards, ed., Precious Metals in the Later Medieval and Early Modern World (Durham, NC, 1985), pp. 97–158.

  120. Moffat and Wolff, Ongles Bleues, pp. 276–7.

  121. M. Mate, ‘Pastoral farming in South-East England’, Economic History Review, 40 (1987), pp. 523–36; Mate, ‘Economic and Social Roots’, pp. 661–76.

  122. Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, p. 304.

  123. Mate, ‘Economic and Social Roots’, pp. 663–4.

  124. For this crucial point see Griffiths, Reign of Henry VI, pp. 628–40; Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, pp. 186–91; P. Slack, Rebellion, Popular Protest and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 1–15; Y. M. Bercé, Revolt and Revolution, pp. 3–33; P. Zagorin, Rebels and Rulers (Cambridge, 1982), I, pp. 22–4; John L. Watts, ‘Ideas, Principles and Politics’, in A. J. Pollard, ed., The Wars of the Roses (NY, 1995), pp. 110–33 (esp. pp. 110–11).

  125. For pre-industrial revolts see Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (1959) and George Rudé, The Crowd in History (2005). Engels’s animadversions are in his The Peasant War in Germany (Moscow, 1956), pp. 55–60.

  126. Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, Ch. 13.

  4 The Pilgrimage of Grace

  1. There have been numerous biographies of Henry VIII, but J. J. Scarisbrick, Henry VIII (1968), still holds the field.

  2. The estimate in Robert Hutchinson, The Last Days of Henry VIII (2005). Christopher Haigh’s estimate is mild: ‘Henry VIII disposed of the Pope, the monasteries, four of his wives and two of his closest advisers’. Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (1993), p. 295.

  3. See Peter Gwynn, The King’s Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (1992).

  4. Robert Hutchinson, Thomas Cromwell: The Rise and Fall of Henry VIII’s Most Notorious Minister (2007).

  5. G. W. Bernard, The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church (2005).

  6. G. W. Bernard, Anne Boleyn: Fatal Attractions (2005) argues for her probable guilt. Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (2004) and David Starkey, The Six Wives of Henry VIII (2003) believe the charges were trumped up.

  7. For this view see A. G. Dickens, The English Reformation (1991), p. 13. Also, more generally, Ann Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffe Texts and Lollard History (1988); Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Image and Literacy in Late Medieval England (1984); Joseph R. Block, Factional Politics and the English Reformation (1993); J. F. Davis, Henry and the Reformation in the South-East of England, 1520–1589 (1983); David Loads, Revolution in England: The English Reformation, 1530–1570 (1992); Rosemary O’Day, The Debate of the English Reformation (1986).

  8. Eamonn Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Transitional Religion in England c.1400–c.1580 (Yale, 1992), pp. 479–81; Robert Whiting, The Blind Devotion of the People: Popular Religion and the English Reformation (1989). The ultimate in scepticism is expressed in Christopher Haigh, English Reformation: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (1993): ‘There may have been no Reformation; indeed, there barely was one’, p. 455.

  9. ‘There is no evidence of a loss of confidence in the old ways, no mass disenchantment’, J. J. Scarisbrick, The Reformation and the English People (1984), p. 12. For further exploration of the view that the Reformation was carried out by a small group of heretics – who succeeded purely because they controlled the government – and the vitality of the old religion, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 338–45. See also C. A. Haigh, Reformation and the Resistance in Tudor Lancashire (Cambridge, 1975); C. S. L. Davies, ‘Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson, eds, Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 58–91; C. S. L. Davies, ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace Reconsidered’, PP 41 (1968), pp. 54–75.

  10. A. G. Dickens, ‘Secular and Religious Motivation in the Pilgrimage of Grace’, Studies in Church History, 4 (1967), pp. 39–64.

  11. Stanford E. Lehmberg, The Reformation Parliament, 1529–1536 (Cambridge, 1970).

  12. Jasper Ridley, Thomas Cranmer (Oxford, 1962), pp. 113–15.

  13. William Holdsworth, ‘The Political Causes Which Shaped the Statute of Uses’, Harvard Law Review, 26 (1912), pp. 108–29; E. W. Ives, ‘The Genesis of the Statute of Uses’, EHR, 82 (1967), pp. 673–97.

  14. C. S. L. Davies, ‘Popular Religion and the Pilgrimage of Grace’, in A. Fletcher and J. Stevenson, eds, Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (1986), pp. 58–91 (at p. 90).

  15. For full details see Anne Ward, The Lincolnshire Rising, 1536 (1986).

  16. Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–7; The Rebellion that Shook Henry VIII’s Throne (2003), p. 47.

  17. M. E. James, ‘Obedience and Dissent in Henrician England: The Lincolnshire rebellion, 1536’, PP 48 (1970), pp. 3–78; S. J. Gunn, ‘Peers, Commons and Gentry in the Lincolnshire Revolt of 1536’, PP 123 (1989), pp. 52–79.

  18. James Gairdner and R. H. Brodie, eds, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, XI, July–December 1536 (1888) – hereinafter LP – no. 585.

  19. Eric Ives, ‘Will the Real Henry VIII Please Stand Up?’, History Today, 56 (2006), pp. 28–36.

  20. As argued in James, ‘Obedience’.

  21. M. Bowker, ‘Lincolnshire 1536: Heresy, Schism or Religious Discontent’, Studies in Church History, 9 (1972), pp. 200–1.

  22. Michael A. R. Graves, ‘Howard, Thomas, 3rd Duke of Norfolk (1473–1554), Magnate and Soldier’, ODNB (2004).

  23. G. W. Bernard, The Power of the Early Tudor Nobility: A Study of the Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury (Brighton, 1985); see also A. F. Pollard, ‘George Talbot, 4th Earl of Shrewsbury’, DNB (1898), 55, pp. 313–14; J. A. Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 3 vols (1870), i
ii, p. 109.

  24. David Starkey, Rivals in Power: Lives and Letters of the Great Tudor Dynasties (1990), p. 178. See also Steven J. Gunn, Charles Brandon, Duke of Norfolk c.1485–1545 (Williston, 1988).

  25. For the refusal to make concessions see M. E. James, Politics and Culture (1986), pp. 188–269 (at pp. 266–7).

  26. A. Fletcher and B. McCulloch, Tudor Rebellions (1997), p. 31; M. L. Bush, ‘“Up for the Commonweal”: The Significance of Tax Grievances in the English Rebellion of 1536’, EHR, 106 (1991), pp. 299–318 (at p. 303).

  27. LP, XI, no. 569.

  28. R. W. Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s (Oxford, 2001), pp. 25, 67, 159, 407.

  29. M. H. and R. Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, 1536–1537, and the Exeter Conspiracy, 1538, 2 vols (1915), i, p. 98.

  30. ‘That Henry’s scratch forces were never put to the test was their extreme good fortune.’ Hoyle, Pilgrimage, p. 171.

  31. M. Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of October 1536 (Manchester, 1996), p. 166.

  32. Ibid., p. 172.

  33. Ibid., p. 139.

  34. R. B. Smith, Land and Politics in the England of Henry VIII (Oxford, 1970), p. 173; R. R. Reid, The King’s Council in the North (1975), pp. 133–4.

  35 ‘Aske, Robert’, ODNB (2004), 2, pp. 707–12.

  36. Respectively, Hoyle, Pilgrimage, pp. 192–5, and Mary Bateson, ed., ‘The Pilgrimage of Grace and Aske’s Examination’, EHR, 5 (1890), pp. 330–48 and 550–78 (at pp. 333–4).

 

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