Shakespeare's Kings
Page 8
This is not to say that relations between the two were invariably easy, still less that Gaunt was ever popular among his countrymen. Just as he was the most powerful figure in the kingdom, he was also the most hated. With his father and elder brother both dead, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as the man most responsible for the decline in English fortunes over the past decade. Nor could his immense wealth and the ostentation of his court fail to arouse envy and mistrust in the hearts of those less fortunate than himself, nobles and commoners alike. It was well known, too, that despite the time he spent furthering his
1. The palace had been built in the thirteenth century by Peter, the future Count of Savoy and uncle of Henry Ill's Queen, Eleanor. Some idea of its size can be gained from the fact that it covered the area now occupied by the Savoy Hotel, Theatre and Chapel, the Victoria Embankment, Embankment Gardens and the west wing of Somerset House.
claim through his second wife to the throne of Castile, he in fact paid her little attention, preferring to spend his time with his daughters' governess, Katherine Swynford. Various other rumours, less well founded but a good deal more unsavoury, were also in circulation by the year preceding his nephew's accession: that Gaunt was not Edward's son at all, having been smuggled into Ghent Abbey to replace a daughter born to Queen Philippa; that he had poisoned his first wife's sister and was only awaiting his opportunity to do the same to Richard; and that he was secretly plotting with the Pope against the King.
Matters had come to a head early in 1377, when his protege John Wycliffe, the radical Oxford scholar who had already become famous as a preacher against ecclesiastical abuses, was summoned to appear before the bench of bishops on charges of heresy. Seeing this - rightly — as a challenge to himself, Gaunt had engaged four doctors of divinity to speak in Wycliffe's defence; but when he attended the inquiry in person, attended by an armed retinue, in the Lady Chapel of St Paul's, it soon became clear that he had no intention of allowing the trial to continue. After a furious shouting match between himself and the Bishop of London, William Courtenay, the proceedings broke up in confusion, though not before he had announced his intention of imposing martial law throughout the city. This, however, proved a grave mistake. Courtenay and his fellow bishops had no difficulty in stirring up the London mob at this threat to their civil liberties, and a crowd of several thousand besieged the palace of the Savoy, hung the arms of the Duchy of Lancaster, reversed as a sign of treason, in Cheapside and pursued everyone they found wearing the ducal livery all the way to Westminster. Gaunt himself was obliged to seek refuge with his sister-in-law, the widowed Princess Joan, across the river in Kennington.
Peace was restored at last, thanks largely to Bishop Courtenay. The mayor, who had played a major part in the rioting, was deposed and a marble pillar was erected in Cheapside bearing the arms of Lancaster -now right way up - on a gilded shield. But it was only after Richard's accession a few months later that the quarrel was finally settled. In the presence of a delegation of Londoners, come to request that the new King should pay a formal visit to the city and compose the unfortunate differences between themselves and the Duke of Lancaster, Gaunt fell somewhat dramatically at the
King's feet and begged him to pardon them. Richard of course did so, thereby acquiring an instant reputation as a peacemaker and ensuring an enthusiastic reception for his coronation a few days later.
All those concerned had good reason to congratulate themselves on the surprisingly happy conclusion to what had at one moment appeared a dangerous crisis; both sides, it seemed, had been taught a salutary lesson that they would not quickly forget. All too soon, however, both were to realize that the storming of the Savoy was but a pale rehearsal of the infinitely more serious confrontation which was already on its way.
The first four years of Richard's reign have been described by one of the leading historians of the period as 'dreary in the extreme'1 - which, where domestic affairs were concerned, they were. On the international scene, however, the situation was eventful enough, the death in March 1378 of Pope Gregory XI having resulted in a schism in which two rival candidates, both elected by the same body of cardinals within a few weeks of each other, were desperately struggling for recognition by the princes of Europe. The real issue at stake was whether the Papacy should move back to Rome - as Gregory had attempted to move it eighteen months before his death - or whether it should respect the wishes of the French cardinals and remain at Avignon, where it had been since 1307. Of the two candidates the first to have been elected, Urban VI, had against all expectations opted for Rome; and it was this decision, combined with the Pope's overbearing and dictatorial behaviour towards the cardinals, which had resulted in their attempt to replace him and their consequent uncanonical election of the unmistakably pro-French Clement VII. The very fact that France and Scotland supported Clement was enough to persuade England to side with Urban: by doing so it also gained a powerful new ally in the French war. At home, on the other hand, the years were marked only by inconclusive manoeuvrings on the part of the several factions circling around the throne, all jockeying for position and rendering executive decisions virtually impossible.
Then, in the summer of 1381, something occurred which shook English society to its foundations: almost simultaneously, in Kent, Essex
1. Anthony Steel, Richard II, p. 44.
and East Anglia, in Hampshire and Somerset, in Northamptonshire, Yorkshire and the Wirral, the peasantry rose in revolt. To find the reasons we have to go back some thirty-five years to the Black Death, which had resulted in an acute shortage of labour. In former times the average villein or serf had remained on the land where he had been born, working the holding which had been allowed him and frequently suffering cruel, even inhuman exploitation. Not only was he bound to give service to his lord; he was also subject to a number of crippling extortions whose very names are today almost forgotten: merchet, on the marriage or pregnancy of his daughter; lairwite, as a penalty for adultery; heriot, on any form of inheritance. On his death the lord took his best animal and best garment; when his wife died he forfeited her best dress and their best bed, the second best going to the Church. With the outbreak of the plague, the situation was changed entirely. Instead of living at the mercy of his master he found himself a marketable commodity, potentially mobile and able to sell his labour to the highest bidder.
At least in theory: in practice things were not so easy. Wages and prices began, inevitably, to spiral; and in a desperate attempt to hold them down and to prevent a complete breakdown of the accepted social order, successive parliaments had introduced increasingly strict legislation to ensure that the peasantry remained, in both senses of the word, in its place. This legislation had begun as early as 1351 with the Statute of Labourers, which effectively made it illegal to travel from one town or district to another in search of increased pay. Subsequent laws strengthened these provisions still further: after 1360-61 such offences were even punishable by branding.
Not surprisingly, the peasants found these new measures intolerable: having for the first time come to some understanding of their true worth, they were now forbidden to turn it to their own advantage. In protest, many of them began to form leagues — precursors of our modern trades unions - and to withhold their traditional service. The landlords, faced with what was essentially a series of strikes, had little alternative but to meet their demands. The new laws proved impossible to enforce; and there consequently grew up in the 1360s and 70s a whole new class of wandering labourers able to fix their own pay and conditions of work and, after a few years, to buy leases on their own account. The yeoman farmer was born - independent, conscious of his rights, no longer prepared to be victimized. In the words of the already popular saw:
When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?1
It was an interesting question, but not one which greatly exercised the English parliament when in 1379, to defray the continuing expense of the war, it authorized a poll tax, to be
collected from every lay member of the adult population. Such a measure was bound to raise an outcry; but the tax was at least graduated in such a way that the burden fell less heavily upon the poor, and in the end it was grudgingly accepted. The difficulty was that the collectors found it almost impossible to apply the necessary means test; there was large-scale evasion and the money was slow in coming in. The parliament of the following year, therefore, still more desperate for funds, trebled the basic amount of the tax from one groat per head to three - and demanded it indiscriminately from rich and poor alike.
It was a disastrous mistake. By the spring of 1381 there was evidence of widespread discontent in many parts of the country, particularly in the south-east; and on 1 June the storm broke. At Brentwood in Essex a commission of inquiry into non-payment of taxes headed by Sir Robert Belknap, Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was spontaneously set upon. In the ensuing struggle three jurors were killed; Sir Robert himself was seized, and was lucky to escape with his life. He was eventually released only after he had promised never to preside over another session. Meanwhile the revolt spread quickly throughout the county and across the river into Kent, where on 6 June insurgents from Gravesend stormed Rochester Castle and freed all its prisoners. Much the same occurred at Maidstone, where among the liberated was a fire-breathing priest named John Ball, who had been imprisoned by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, for his inflammatory preaching. At Maidstone too there appeared for the first time the man who was to assume the direction of the entire revolt, Wat Tyler - 'a
1. This couplet was long attributed to John Ball, one of the leaders of the revolt; it is in fact a good deal older, being commonly found in sermons of the early fourteenth century.
tiler of roofs', Froissart is careful to specify, 'and a wicked and nasty fellow.' Under Tyler's leadership - he seems to have had some military background - and with John Ball as a sort of spiritual adviser, the rebels marched on the capital, looting the Archbishop's Palace at Canterbury on the way. Covering seventy miles in two days, they reached Blackheath, on the eastern outskirts of London, on Wednesday 12 June.
The fourteen-year-old King, meanwhile, had hurried from Windsor to London, where he had prudently settled in the Tower;1 but although fully aware of the gravity of the situation he does not seem to have been unduly alarmed. As the rebels had made clear from the outset, their quarrel was not with him but with his ministers: with officers of state such as Archbishop Sudbury (who was also Chancellor of England), the Treasurer Sir Robert Hales and John Legge, a royal serjeant-at-arms and administrator of the poll tax in Kent. By extension they also resented the entire body of churchmen, lawyers and the rich - above all men like John of Gaunt, who could have paid the poll tax for half a dozen counties without noticing it but who preferred to make an arrogant exhibition of his wealth, which they found not only unjust but insulting. Right, they had no doubt, was on their side. Even their looting had been done in the name of equality: like the already legendary Robin Hood, they had robbed the rich only to help the poor. Their consciences were clear. Their slogan was 'King Richard and the Communes', their purpose to petition their sovereign to right their wrongs - something which could be achieved, they thought, with a stroke of his pen. Once this was done, they would happily disperse to their homes.
In the circumstances, therefore, there was nothing very surprising in the King's decision on the morning of 13 June to cross the river to Greenwich, where Tyler and his friends were waiting, and to enter into direct negotiations; but neither can we wonder that, as the royal party approached the further bank and Sudbury, Hales and their colleagues saw the size and temper of the crowd gathered to receive them, they lost their nerve and refused to allow their master to land. It would have been better had they never set out. The sudden about-turn of the state barge and its hasty return to the Tower both infuriated the rebels and encouraged them; nothing could now stop them launching a major
1. The Tower of London was in those days a fortified palace as well as a prison.
assault on London. At first, still unable to cross the river, they sacked St Mary's, Southwark - now the Cathedral - and unlocked the gates of the Marshalsea prison before going on to Lambeth, where they burnt the Chancery records. Only then did they swing round once more and head for London Bridge - which, possibly through treachery on the part of those to whom it was entrusted but more probably because it was impossible to defend against such numbers, was opened to them.
The capital now lay at their mercy. The Fleet prison was stormed, and its prisoners released; the New Temple, property of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, was sacked, together with Hales's house nearby. The rebels then moved on along Fleet Street to the Savoy, where the people of London had seen the opportunity they had long been awaiting and were already getting to work. In a veritable orgy of destruction, the contents of the greatest private house in the kingdom were destroyed, trampled underfoot or flung into the Thames; the building itself was burnt to ashes. This time, we are told, there was no looting, on Tyler's specific orders: one man who tried it was himself thrown into the flames. Gaunt himself was fortunately away in the north, negotiating with the Scots; had he been found in the palace it is unlikely that he would have survived.
The rebels then turned north again to the headquarters of the Knights at Clerkenwell and destroyed it — palace, church and hospital;1 it burnt, we are told, for seven days. Meanwhile a separate band of insurgents under a man calling himself Jack Straw had arrived from Essex, and somewhere on the outskirts of London had been reinforced by a further detachment from Hertfordshire. This combined force had then marched independently along the north bank of the Thames, taking possession of Highbury and Mile End, where Straw had finally ordered a halt. It was for the King to make the next move. Accordingly on the evening of the 13 th Richard himself, speaking from the walls of the Tower, addressed the crowd on the Green below and summoned all those concerned to meet him at Mile End on the following day. In view of
1. Of the church, part of the twelfth-century chancel and crypt still survive. The existing gatehouse, which forms a bridge over St John's Lane, dates from 1504. After the dissolution of the English Order of the Knights of St John by Henry VIII it fulfilled various functions, and at one point during the reign of Elizabeth I provided offices for the Master of the Revels, who was also licenser of plays. Shakespeare himself must have visited it on innumerable occasions.
the panic which had overtaken his ministers only a few hours before, the probability is that this decision was made on his own initiative; even if it were not, it argues considerable courage on the part of a delicate and inexperienced boy of fourteen.
Thus it was that on the morning of Friday 14 June the young King, having advised Sudbury and his friends to try to escape by water, rode out of London with the mayor, William Walworth, to confront the insurgents. As he approached, several of his followers drew back; but he himself rode confidently forward to the rebels' camp. He found them reasonable, but determined. Their leaders knelt and bade him welcome, assuring him that they sought no other sovereign but himself; they demanded, however, that 'the traitors' should be surrendered to them at once. Richard replied that no man was a traitor until he was tried by due process of law; but if anyone were found guilty after such process, they were welcome to do with him as they liked. They then presented the King with a petition for the abolition of villeinage, and another for the right to sell their labour instead by free and open contract and to rent land at an annual cost of fourpence an acre. These requests he instantly granted, promising to confirm them with letters bearing his Great Seal, and to send a royal banner, as an additional token of his good faith, to each of their towns of origin. Soon afterwards he bid them a friendly farewell. He had capitulated on almost every point; but he had at least established friendly relations with them and there seemed no reason why, having obtained all that they demanded, they should not now disperse.
Thus, as Richard rode homeward, he was in all pro
bability well satisfied with what he had achieved. He was not to remain so for long. He returned to find that the mob had forced its way into the Tower. How it managed to do so we shall never know. The garrison, we are told, numbered 600 men-at-arms and the same number of archers, all tried and trusted men; had they resisted, there can be little doubt that they would have been more than a match for the largely unarmed and untrained rabble outside. Yet for some reason they seem to have made no effort to protect those who were in their care. Sudbury, Hales, Legge and John of Gaunt's doctor, a friar named William Appleton, had been seized in the chapel where they were at their devotions, dragged out to Tower Hill and executed on the spot, after which their heads were paraded through the city and set up on pikes at London