1369–77
The summer of 1369 was disastrous for Edward III. Charles devised an excuse to renew the war and sent troops into Aquitaine. In response, Edward hurriedly summoned parliament and secured a vote of taxes. That done, he revived his claim to the French crown and began assembling his troops. It was at this point, just as he was preparing to cross the Channel at the head of his army, that personal tragedy struck. ‘The good queen of England that so many good deeds had done in her time, and so many knights succoured, and ladies and damosels comforted, and had so largely departed of her goods to her people, and naturally loved always the nation of Hainault where she was born; she fell sick in the Castle of Windsor, the which sickness continued in her so long that there was no remedy but death.’5
The king had already formed an attachment for a mistress, Alice Perrers, but there is no evidence of a serious estrangement between Edward and Queen Philippa. From this point, Alice exercised a growing and disastrous influence over the monarch. In 1370 the Prince of Wales, who was organizing the defence of Aquitaine, fell ill. From a litter he oversaw the long siege of Limoges, and when it fell he ordered the execution of 3,000 inhabitants – men, women and children – then fired the city. But such fearsome demonstrations could not stave off defeat. The year 1372 was one of military disasters. Charles V overran much of Aquitaine, and an English fleet was defeated in the Channel. Edward’s fourth son, John of Gaunt, who had been created Duke of Lancaster in 1361, was sent to aid England’s ally, the Duke of Brittany, but instead went on a looting expedition in eastern France. He and the Black Prince were at loggerheads and vying for influence with their father. In August King Edward took ship with his army for another campaign in France but weeks of foul weather prevented him making a landing and he was forced to return home. In 1375, Pope Gregory XII mediated a truce, agreed at Bruges, between Edward and Charles. It was a humiliating climb-down after years of spectacular success, and it was very unpopular with England’s leading men.
By 1376 the Treasury was drained dry, and the government was forced to summon parliament in April. This assembly, which was held from 28 April to 10 July, became known as the ‘Good Parliament’ because, in the name of the people, the Commons attacked court corruption and maladministration. The king no longer enjoyed the respect that he had had in his heyday because, as was widely known, he was now completely controlled by Alice Perrers and John of Gaunt, both of whom were unpopular. The new parliament was determined to clean up the government, and they stripped the council of those advisers they did not like and had Edward’s mistress sent away from court. By withholding funds they imposed new councillors on the king.
The only member of the royal inner circle who still commanded respect was the Black Prince, but in June he died. Lancaster and his friends at court lost no time in dismissing the Good Parliament. They removed the new councillors from office and imprisoned one of the parliamentary ringleaders. Alice Perrers was allowed back to court.
By the end of September Edward’s body, like his mind, was failing. He survived through the autumn and winter and was able to attend the Garter ceremony in April 1377, but he died on 21 June, probably of a stroke.
RICHARD II 1377–99
The social dislocation caused by repeated visitations of the plague provides the backdrop to this troubled reign. In 1400 the population was less than half what it had been before the Black Death, and the economic hardship and psychological malaise felt at all levels of society led to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and to the emergence of Lollardy, the ‘English heresy’, in the 1390s. To these disturbances were added unfinished business in Scotland and France, renewed conflict between king and parliament, and the challenge for the crown of John of Gaunt and, later, John’s son, Henry Bolingbroke. Richard’s fate – deposition and murder – echoed that of his great-grandfather.
1377–80
Richard became king at the age of ten because both his father, the Black Prince, and his elder brother, Edward, had died. On 16 July 1377 the boy king rode in a splendid procession through London to Westminster Abbey for his coronation, thus establishing a custom that was to be maintained for 300 years. The solemn and lengthy service may well have instilled into the boy a profound sense of the sacredness of monarchy, but he had inherited a country whose international reputation had declined over the previous decade and whose diminished population was weighed down with war taxes and rising prices. In February 1377 a cash-strapped government had imposed, for the first time, a universal poll tax, which brought more people than ever before within the scope of revenue collection.
Only weeks after the coronation a French raid on the south coast from Rye to Plymouth demonstrated England’s vulnerability and military weakness. The attackers landed at several points, looting at will, and they burned Hastings and captured the prior of Lewes to hold him to ransom.
No official regent was appointed, though two of his father’s trusted companions, Sir Simon de Burley and Sir Aubrey de Vere, were appointed as knights of the household to guide the boy king. John of Gaunt, Richard’s uncle, who had dominated the political scene since the death of the Black Prince, took no official position in government, largely because of the opposition of parliament, but the king looked to him for support and guidance, and Lancaster was thought of – rightly – as the leading political figure in the country. Richard, though young, was regarded as possessing full royal power, but parliament claimed the right to appoint a council to assist him. Another factor in the dynamic of government was the king’s household. Richard was, in practice, dependent on his day-to-day companions, who came to be regarded with suspicion as ‘favourites’. Among them was Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, who was probably introduced to the court by his uncle, Aubrey, and who later emerged as Richard’s closest friend. The supervisory councils were unable to exercise effective control over the expenditure of the royal household, which, from an early date, was regarded as excessive. In 1380 parliament decreed an end to the councils that had been its own creations, and it was this muddled constitutional situation that contributed to Richard’s development of extreme opinions about the sacred nature of kingship and the absolute power wielded by the monarch.
1381
In the aftermath of the Black Death the ecclesiastical hierarchy had lost much of the respect traditionally accorded to it and widespread indignation was directed at every level of the priesthood. The papacy itself was in turmoil. From 1309 to 1378 the popes resided at Avignon as protégés of the French kings (with whom England was at war), and the following years, 1378–1417, were known as the ‘great schism’ because rival popes, based at Rome and Avignon, competed for the loyalty of Christian Europe. Wealthy bishops and abbots were resented for their ostentation and their unwillingness to share the financial burdens placed upon laymen, and many parish priests had not been forgiven for deserting their flocks during the plague years.
Fundamental to the general discontent was a widely held belief that the clergy were more interested in collecting their tithes and taxes than in fulfilling their responsibilities or setting a moral example. At the same time, there existed among many lay people a desire for a deeper, personal spirituality. John Wyclif (c.1330–84), an Oxford scholar and preacher, attacked the church hierarchy in his lectures and sermons and attracted the attention of John of Gaunt, who was campaigning against the interference of Rome on English affairs. The duke found Wyclif a valuable ally and encouraged his anticlericalism. This was the background to the emergence of what has been called the ‘English heresy’, Wycliffism or Lollardy.
In February 1377 the Bishop of London ordered John Wyclif to be examined in St Paul’s Cathedral on the content of his recent sermons. The Duke of Lancaster turned up to support his preacher, got into a furious row with the bishop and threatened to drag him down from his throne by the hair. Thus protected, Wyclif developed his beliefs in greater detail. He began to consider the doctrinal basis of the church’s institutions and to question their validity. Fundamentally, W
ycliffism was all about authority. The scholar began by reflecting on the relationship between church and state and ended by rejecting the claims of the church’s hierarchy not only to temporal authority but also to spiritual authority. The power wielded by the clergy over the laity was based on their sacerdotal function as mediators between man and God.
Priesthood set men apart from their neighbours by virtue of their ability to ‘make God’ in the mass, to hear confession and to pronounce absolution. Wyclif rejected these claims in a series of books. For the authority of the ‘Bishop of Rome’ (as Wyclif called the pope, to indicate that he had no authority in England) he substituted the Bible. ‘All Christians, and lay lords in particular, ought to know holy writ and to defend it,’ he wrote in his treatise On the Truth of Holy Scripture (1387). ‘No man is so rude a scholar but that he may learn the words of the Gospel.’ But the only Bible available in England was the Vulgate, written in Latin and accessible only to scholars and a minority of educated clergy.
By this time, Wyclif had attracted many followers. Some were his students at Oxford, men who went on to be parish clergy or royal servants. From this pool of ‘Wycliffites’ there emerged English translations of various parts of the Bible. How far Wyclif himself was involved in this process we do not know, but the English Bible, in whole and in parts, was spread in steadily widening circles, as fresh copies were made and circulated secretly in order to prevent their discovery by the church authorities.
Wyclif died in 1384, but his followers continued his work, circulating not only the Scriptures but also English versions of the master’s writings. These disciples came to be known as ‘Lollards’, a term of ridicule from a contemporary Dutch word, loller, which was applied to itinerant unorthodox preachers. The Lollards gathered in secret groups to read the Bible and discuss their ideas. They tended to marry ‘within the faith’, and by the early 15th century Lollard cells were established in London and rural areas within about a 60-mile radius of the capital. However, these people had no central organization and no agreed body of doctrine. They represented a section of the populace critical of the existing establishment, who felt free to decide, on the basis of personal Bible study, what they would believe.
The rise of Lollardy was only one manifestation of a serious social dislocation of English society. ‘In the iiii year of King Richard’s reign the commons arisen up in divers parts of the realm … the which they called the hurling time.’1 This ‘hurling’ or commotion erupted in several places. For example, at York in November 1380, ‘various malefactors among the commons’ drove the mayor, John Gysburn, out of the city, smashed their way into the guildhall with axes, seized one Simon Quixlay, forced him to become the new mayor and made all the members of the city council swear allegiance to him. Such incidents were but preludes to the rising in southeast England known as the Peasants’ Revolt. The grievances of the common people were many and acutely felt but what brought matters to a head was the poll tax, voted in 1380. ‘The Lords and Commons are agreed that … contribution should be made by every lay person in the realm … males and females alike, of whatsoever estate or condition, who has passed the age of 15 years, of the sum of three groats, except for true beggars, who shall be charged nothing.’2 However, the tax realized only two-thirds of the required sum and provoked widespread complaint. Instead of paying heed to the public mood, the government sent commissioners in May 1381 to make up the deficit.
An attempt by commissioners at Brentwood, Essex, to gather the tax sparked what appeared to be a spontaneous reaction, although it had probably been planned between malcontents in Essex and Kent. Groups gathered on both sides of the Thames, and their ugly mood indicated the profound hatred they felt for the existing regime. They armed themselves with longbows, axes and knives and were not slow to use them. Some had served in recent campaigns across the Channel, were used to violence and had no love for the ‘officer class’. They seized Rochester Castle, broke into houses and abbeys, opened jails and released the prisoners, and took grain from barns and cattle from fields to feed their swelling number. At Canterbury Cathedral they told the monks to elect a new archbishop because the days of the present incumbent, Simon Sudbury (who, as chancellor, they blamed for the tax), were numbered. Everywhere they forced people to swear an oath to ‘King Richard and the true Commons’. People who refused were murdered or had their houses burned down. One group, as a broad hint to those they met, carried three decapitated heads with them. While missionaries were despatched to carry the message to neighbouring shires, the Kentish host camped on Blackheath and sent a message to the king, who had taken refuge in the Tower, asking him to meet them.
On 13 June Richard set out across the river with a flotilla of barges filled with men-at-arms. By this time the rebels had achieved some degree of overall organization and chosen as their leader Wat Tyler of Maidstone. The shouts that went up from the thousands of rebels, though expressions of loyalty, must have been heart-chilling to the young king and his attendants, who halted their boats well offshore. Worse followed when Tyler and his lieutenants began shouting their demands: ‘Give us John of Gaunt!’ ‘Give us Sudbury!’ ‘Give us Hob the Robber!’ (Robert Hales, the treasurer). The royal party beat a hasty retreat. Exactly what the leaders of the insurgents hoped to achieve is probably impossible to know now – their demands were more a passionate denunciation of the existing order than a coherent programme of reform – but they certainly wanted Richard’s ‘evil councillors’ to be punished. The wild rhetoric of their preachers spoke of complete social levelling. Quotations from the Bible to the effect that God had created all men equal suggest possible Lollard influence.
All feudal service was to be abolished. The rebels called for free hunting and fishing rights for all, not just major landowners, the distribution of church lands among the people, the repeal of the Ordinance of Labourers and all other legislation restricting the rights of working men to sell their labour as and when they would. If acted upon, these ultimatums would have completely undermined the existing economic and social structure. The church taught that everyone should be content to remain in that station to which God had called them, and the civil authority enshrined social division in its laws. For example, a Sumptuary Law of 1363 had divided the population into seven classes and decreed what kind of clothes each was permitted to wear. Thus, for example, no one under the rank of gentleman might wear velvet or shoes having points of more than 2 inches in length, and no serving woman might have a veil costing more than 12 pence. Only by exercising rigid control could the crumbling feudal system be preserved. Without it there would be anarchy, and it was anarchy that Wat Tyler and his men were offering.
By this time many Londoners had declared support for the rebels. The city had its own problems. It housed a growing semi-criminal underclass of beggars, unemployed artisans, ex-soldiers, fanatical preachers and ‘barrack room lawyers’, who had nothing to lose by joining the insurrection, and they now opened the bridge to a detachment sent from Blackheath. Some stayed on the Surrey side to burn down the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth. On the other side of the Thames, Lancaster’s sumptuous residence was attacked by a frenzied mob, which smashed ornaments and furniture, burned tapestries, threw gold and silver plate into the river, hammered jewels into dust and then blew up the ransacked building with three barrels of gunpowder. Other orgiastic demonstrations of the protestors’ fury took place as the Kentish men marched through the city. There was nothing to stop them. John of Gaunt had an army, but it was hundreds of miles away campaigning in Scotland. No courtier-lord could have counted on the support of his tenantry as the ‘democratic’ contagion spread.
By nightfall on 13 June the Kentish rebels were camped on Tower Hill, and the Essex host was beyond the wall at Mile End. Richard and his court were, in effect, under siege, and it was by no means certain that the Tower garrison would take up arms against their own countrymen. There was only one person who had the respect of the insurgents, one person to whom they would liste
n. The nation’s fate rested on the 14-year-old king.
The next morning Richard rode out to Mile End with an armed escort. There Tyler presented the rebels’ demands and the king promised that they would be granted, demurring only at handing over his hated ministers to immediate lynch law. Richard maintained remarkable poise and dignity, but while he was calmly ‘reviewing’ the peasant host a group rode off to the Tower. They entered with no show of resistance, dragged Sudbury from the chapel in the White Tower and took him out to Tower Hill for execution in front of the crowd. According to one chronicler, the job was bungled and the archbishop did not die until he had received eight strokes in the neck and head. Other royal confidants on whom the peasants laid hands were also summarily despatched.
This bloodletting and easy success went to the rebels’ heads, and any order in their ranks broke down. They went back into the city as a rampaging rabble, intent on loot, and by so doing they forfeited the support they had hitherto enjoyed. On 15 June Richard called for another meeting at Smithfield, outside the western wall of the city. He went out to meet Tyler with a large retinue whose armour and weapons were concealed beneath their robes. The rebel leader demanded that everything they itemized was to be written in a chart and sealed by the king. Richard agreed. Then Tyler and the mayor of London, Sir William Walworth, fell into an argument. Swords were drawn, and Tyler received a mortal wound. The crowd, stunned by this departure from the script, wavered and Richard seized the initiative. ‘I am your leader,’ he shouted, ‘follow me.’ He spurred his horse and some of the rebels fell in behind him. Others did not.
The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain Page 12
