Foundation

by Peter Ackroyd

  The first to die was a London chaplain, William Sawtreé, who had declared that the bread of the Mass remained merely bread. On 26 February 1401, he was stuffed inside a wooden barrel at Smithfield and placed upon the flames.

  In what sense did Wycliffe and the Lollards presage the general religious reformation of the sixteenth century? An affinity in certain doctrines, later promulgated both by the Lutherans and the Calvinists, no doubt exists. The detestation of the pope and the spiritual hierarchy, the denial of transubstantiation, the rejection of any worship of images and the increasing reliance on a vernacular Bible, are all part of the same general repudiation of the Catholic Church. Yet in the fourteenth century these attitudes were held only by a small minority. They did not spread very far, and were detested by a large proportion of the population. ‘I smell a Loller in the wind’, is the line given to one of the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales. It needed another set of accidental circumstances, and another cast of characters, before the Christian faith of England could be reformulated.

  In the fourteenth century, however, the religion of the vast majority of the English people remained utterly orthodox and familiar. There was no appetite for change, and no sense of an ending. The Church was part of the texture of life, as enveloping and as inescapable as the weather. England was in any case an island of saints, with the cult of English sainthood being encouraged from the twelfth century; seventeen Englishmen and Englishwomen of that century were beatified.

  This was the land of the ecclesiastical style known as the Perpendicular, a peculiarly English form of architecture that flourished in the reign of Edward III. Just as Chaucer abandoned French for English, so the great masons of the latter half of the fourteenth century renounced the Rayonnant and Flamboyant styles of France. The greatest of all these English masons, Henry Yevele, died in the same year as Chaucer himself; his early patron, John of Gaunt, was also the poet’s patron. So there is a correspondence. Yevele worked at Windsor, Westminster, Canterbury, Durham and St Paul’s as well as superintending the building of many castles, chapels and collegiate churches throughout the country.

  Perpendicular was a wholly and uniquely national style, first adumbrated in Gloucester Cathedral. The king introduced it in his rebuilding works at Windsor. It became the pattern for a myriad of parish churches, and is the dominant style for the rest of the medieval period in England. Perpendicular is plain and ordered, with soaring shafts of stone; on slender piers and high arcades there rests a vast and stately vault. The emphasis is always upon the vertical line. The effect is simultaneously one of simplicity and magnificence. It is an austere style, perhaps hastened by the more sombre mood of the country in the years succeeding the Black Death. Carving of too elaborate a nature was no longer fashionable; as the nave of Canterbury Cathedral will testify, the emphasis rested upon total effect rather than on curious detail. There was an instinct for unity.

  The 9,000 parish churches of England were the centres of all communal activity, where the living were organized and the dead were commemorated. This was the place where the parishioners were baptized, married and buried. Royal proclamations were issued from the church; local elections were held, and local accounts audited, in the nave. The prized possessions of the community were held there in chests, under lock and key. Disputes were settled and negotiations undertaken, within the walls painted with images of the saints and the apostles. The sculpted forms of angels and saints looked down on the throng from the hammerbeam roof. Assignations, and trysts, were kept by the church porch. Each church had its own brewhouse, to make ‘church ale’. Many of the parishioners joined religious guilds, by means of which an altar or a side chapel was maintained with voluntary contributions. On the days of procession the members of the parish would walk in harmony around the church, sometimes showered with flowers and unconsecrated hosts known as singing cakes. The churchyard was used for Sunday markets, and for games such as wrestling and football. But it was also a sacred and even fearful place. The key to the church door was prized as a sovereign remedy against mad dogs, and the ringing of church bells exorcized demons riding in thunder and lightning. Church liturgy itself was deemed to be a form of magical incantation, and sometimes the eucharist was preserved by those who had taken communion; the holy bread could be used to cure ailments or to ward off witches.

  The Mass was part of village life; as it was performed before the altar in the chancel, behind the rood screen, the people would gossip and yawn and whisper. The chancel was maintained by the priest, while the nave was the responsibility of the parishioners. The rood screen itself, between the nave and the chancel, was a highly decorated wooden panel on which were painted or sculpted images of the Crucifixion or of the Day of Doom. The service was accompanied by a continual murmur of voices, except at the holy time of the consecration of the eucharist, and by occasional laughter. There was little, if any, preaching and very few pulpits.

  Dogs and chickens wandered among the people, who stood or kneeled on the rushes or straw strewn over the earth floor. Sometimes the churchgoers just walked around, staring at the statues of the Virgin or the saints. Some attempt was made at seating in the thirteenth century, but pews did not become a familiar aspect of the church interior until the fifteenth century. Disputes over status were frequent. Who should first go forward for communion? Some of the congregation played chess, or even gambled with dice. Women brought in their needlework. Arguments might erupt, and fights might break out, in the course of the Mass. A bargain might be sealed with a handshake. Thus proceeded the vigorous and ebullient religious life of the fourteenth century, in which earth and heaven were inseparable.

  25

  The commotion

  Richard of Bordeaux was ten years old at the time of his coronation as Richard II. He was the son of the Black Prince and thus closest in blood to the dead king. In the summer of 1377 he was led to Westminster Abbey under a canopy of blue silk borne on spears of silver, and he lay prostrate before the altar as the choir sang the litany. By the end of the long ceremony the boy was exhausted, and was taken to a private apartment in Westminster where he might rest. On the following morning the prelates and the magnates met in a great assembly to choose twenty-four of their number to form a minority council. It might have been thought that the young king’s eldest surviving uncle, John of Gaunt, would have taken precedence; but, having ensured that some of his supporters were part of the council, he withdrew with his followers to Kenilworth Castle. He may have been awaiting events.

  The boy king assumed the crown at a time of murmuring and dissatisfaction. The shortage of labour, as a result of the pestilence, meant that the great landlords were trying to exact as much work as they could from their unfree tenants; the legislation prohibiting any rise in wages, although only intermittently effective, was still the cause of much complaint. General discontent had also been aroused at the heavy burden of taxation; war supplies were always needed as a result of unsettled business with the French. Only a few days before the coronation, the forces of King Charles V had plundered Rye and burnt down Hastings.

  Yet the king’s first real test came four years later, when he was confronted by the greatest rebellion in English history. At a meeting of parliament in Northampton, in November and December of 1380, ‘a great and notorious rumour’ spread among the Commons about a ‘dreadful thing’ that had taken place in York; a group of rebels, armed with swords and axes, had broken their way into the guildhall of that city and driven out the mayor. They were protesting about the level of taxes imposed upon them by the royal court.

  Nevertheless, the Northampton parliament decreed a poll tax three times more exacting than the last. It was the third such tax in four years. A poll tax, literally a tax on every ‘poll’ or head, was a wholly inequitable mode of taxation; rich and poor paid the same alike, with the proviso that the richer people had the means and opportunity of evasion. So the greater burden fell upon the poor. Widespread unrest followed, naturally enough, and judicial offici
als were sent to the more disobliging areas in order to ensure collection. The commissioners in London declined to carry on their unwelcome work, for the good reason that it had become too dangerous.

  The men of Essex were the first who refused to pay; on 30 May 1381, at Brentwood, a royal official was attacked and driven off. The revolt quickly spread to Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hertfordshire, encompassing some 340 villages. It is pertinent that these were the counties most affected by the pestilence; they were the areas most likely to feel the effects of economic instability and insecurity in the wake of the vast mortality. Change, in medieval society, was always unsettling. In Essex and Kent, also, the labour laws were most strictly imposed. Here, if anywhere, are the causes of rebellion.

  The Kentish rioters occupied Canterbury and released all the prisoners held in the archbishop’s prison, among them a cleric known as John Ball. The rebels went on to burn the rolls of the county on which the estimates for taxation were written. On the following day the crowd broke open Maidstone Prison and freed its inmates. They already had a clarion call. ‘John Ball greets you all and gives you to understand, that he has rung your bell.’

  The movement grew much more dangerous when, on 11 June, the rebels of the various regions agreed to march or ride upon London. That was the centre of their woes, the home of the lawyers and the royal officials. It has been estimated that some 30,000 men were now on the road. The men of Kent, always the most fierce, went northwards, while the men of Essex came from the east and the rebels of Hertfordshire from the north. The Hertfordshire men made a camp at Highbury, while the men of Essex rested and waited at Mile End. It was at this point that they were informed of risings all over England. Riots erupted in Norwich and in St Albans, in Winchester and in York, in Ipswich and in Scarborough.

  The Kentish men, under the leadership of Wat Tyler or Wat the tiler, gathered on Blackheath on 12 June. The king had retreated to the Tower of London for safety, but on 13 June he and his most trusted councillors agreed to meet the main body of protesters on the heath. The royal party sailed in four barges down the Thames in order to land at Rotherhithe, but too many rebels were clustered on the south bank to allow a safe landing. The young king could now quite clearly hear the terrible shrieks and cries that would soon echo through the streets of London. A chronicler reported that the rebels ‘made such a great clamour that it really seemed as if the devil himself had joined their company’. The barge returned to the Tower.

  The royal retreat inflamed the rebels. Tyler now led his people to the city itself. They stormed the Marshalsea, in Southwark, and freed its prisoners. Another party burned the tax records held at Lambeth Palace. Then they made their way across London Bridge. The people of London refused to allow the city gates to be closed against them; they sympathized with the cause. They, too, were oppressed by royal exactions on behalf of an unpopular war. The crowd surged along Fleet Street, opening the Fleet Prison and pillaging the lawyers’ quarter of New Temple. The Londoners, now invigorated by their example, burned down the residence of John of Gaunt, the Savoy Palace, and killed many of his officials. As the leading nobleman of England, during the minority of the king, Gaunt was the most hated.

  The young king surveyed the scene of looting and burning from a window of the Tower, and asked what should be done. No one knew. But at fourteen he was old enough to think for himself; he would ride out to Mile End and address all of the rebels. He hoped that this would draw them from the city into the eastern suburb, and thus allow his court and household to escape from the Tower. In this, he was only partially successful.

  On Friday, 14 June, he made the short journey to Mile End on his horse. He was accompanied by the mayor of London, William Walworth, and some of the household knights. He was already showing signs of personal courage worthy of a king. When the royal party approached the rebels knelt upon the ground, and some of their number shouted, ‘Welcome, King Richard. We wish for no other king but you.’ Richard then asked them what else they wanted. They wanted ‘the traitors’, by which they meant the officials who had taxed them and harassed them beyond measure. They wanted to remove a government of scoundrels. The king replied that he would surrender to them any men who were convicted of treachery according to the law. It was a convenient answer to turn away wrath. One of their other demands was that all serfs should be given their freedom, and that land should be rented at fourpence per acre (0.4 hectares). Richard agreed to these proposals. Certain ‘traitors’, however, were already being summarily despatched. A group of rebels had entered the Tower, in the king’s absence, and had dragged out the archbishop of Canterbury and other officials who were sheltering there. All of them were beheaded on Tower Hill, the site of public execution.

  More blood was to be shed in this fortnight’s storm. The people of London and the suburbs were confronted by groups of rebels and asked ‘With whom holdest thou?’ If they did not reply, ‘With King Richard and the commons’, they were beaten up or even beheaded. The rebels declared that they would have no king with the name of John, a clear reference to John of Gaunt. All over England the manors of lords were now being pillaged, and their inhabitants killed. Lawyers and justices were seized, and tax records burned. The proceedings of one manorial court are typical; the heading of one page reads curia prima post rumorem et combustionem rotulorum: ‘this is the first court after the revolt and the burning of the rolls’.

  War and plague had done their work. At approximately the same moment of the fourteenth century, popular rebellions emerged in neighbouring nations. In Flanders the commons had rebelled against their count, Louis, and swept him out of the country; the Jacquerie, in France, unleashed a wave of riot and bloodshed in Paris, Rouen and the surrounding countryside. In Florence a popular revolt of the wool carders and other workers, the ciompi, destroyed the political structure of the city.

  The morning after the young king’s ride to Mile End, on 15 June, Richard came to parley with the rebels at Smithfield. Wat Tyler waited for him there at the head of 20,000 insurgents. As soon as Tyler saw Richard, he rode up to him and began to converse with him. There is a hint that at this point he seemed to be threatening the king, or at least treating him disrespectfully. He began to play with his dagger, and then laid his hand on the bridle of the king’s horse. At this point, fearing treason, the mayor of London stabbed a short sword into Tyler’s throat. Tyler rode a little way, fearfully wounded, and was taken to the hospital of St Bartholomew beside Smithfield.

  The rebels were shocked and angered at the event; some of them drew their bows. The young king galloped up to the front line of archers. ‘What are you doing?’ he called out to them. ‘Tyler was a traitor. Come with me, and I will be your leader.’ He did literally lead them a little way north into Islington, where 1,000 armed men had been summoned by the mayor. It seems likely that the rebels had walked into a hastily improvised trap. The leaders fell to their knees, and begged for pardon. Some of the court wished to punish them on the spot, but the king wisely desisted. He ordered the rebels to return to their homes, and forbade any stranger from spending the night in the city. Soon afterwards Tyler was taken from the hospital of St Bartholomew and beheaded in Smithfield itself.

  A few days later Richard revoked the charter of emancipation he had granted to the crowd at Mile End, on the ground that it had been extorted from him by violence. He travelled to Essex in order to observe the aftermath of the now extinguished revolt. A group of villagers there asked him to remain faithful to the pledges he had made to them a few days before. His retort, as described by one contemporary chronicler, is worth recording for the insight it shows into the temperament of the king. ‘You wretches’, he said, ‘are detestable both on land and on sea. You seek equality with the lords, but you are unworthy to live. Give this message to your fellows: rustics you are, and rustics you will always be. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example to post
erity.’ A parliament was called later in the year, where it was proposed that the state of bondage known as villeinage should be abolished. The Lords and the Commons, their vital interests as landlords at stake, unanimously voted against any such action. This marked the essential conclusion of the rebellion.

  In some areas, such as the recalcitrant county of Essex, the punishments were harsh. The leaders of the rebels were beheaded. John Ball was arrested in St Albans, where he was hanged, drawn and quartered. Wat Tyler had gone before him. After their deaths, they were enshrined as heroes in folk memory. Yet in other regions the reaction of the authorities was more moderate than might have been expected. It is clear that they did not wish to inflame a still dangerous situation.

  The unsuccessful rebellion has been called in retrospect ‘the peasants’ revolt’, suggesting that the rebels came from the lowest agricultural class. But the court records show that the participants were generally the leaders of village life, and acted as bailiffs, constables and jurors in their neighbourhoods. It can be argued that these men, far from being accidental or opportunistic rebels, were in fact enunciating real and important grievances. They were of course protesting against the judicial commissions set up to claim the poll tax, but they were also objecting to the corruption of justice by the local magnates. The ordinances and statutes concerning labour, after the Black Death, had materially changed the role of law. It was no longer an instrument of communal justice; it had instead become the machinery of exaction designed to control and discipline the lower classes. The rebels were also protesting against an increasingly futile war, for which they had to pay. They were denouncing greedy landlords. They were violently opposed to a noble class that had shown little interest in the condition of the countryside.