The Leading Facts of English History Part 22

The money was roughly demanded in every poor man's cottage, and its collection caused the greatest distress. In attempting to enforce payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of a workman named Wat Tyler. The indignant father, hearing the girl's cry for help, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a hammer, and rushing in, struck the ruffian dead on the spot.

Tyler then collected a mult.i.tude of discontented laborers on Blackheath Common, near London, with the determination of attacking the city and overthrowing the government.

John Ball, a fanatical priest, harangued the gathering, now sixty thousand strong, using by way of a text lines which were at that time familiar to every workingman:

"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?"

"Good people," he cried, "things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins (S113) and gentlemen. They call us slaves, and beat us if we are slow to do their bidding, but G.o.d has now given us the day to shake off our bondage."

251. The Great Uprising of the Laboring Cla.s.s, 1381.

Twenty years before, there had been similar outbreaks in Flanders and in France. This, therefore, was not an isolated instance of insurrection, but rather part of a general uprising. The rebellion begun by Tyler and Ball (S250) spread through the southern and eastern counties of England, taking different forms in different districts.

It was violent in St. Albans, where the peasants, and farm laborers generally, rose against the exactions of the abbot, but it reached its greatest height in London.

For three weeks the mob held possession of the capital. They pillaged and then burned John of Gaunt's palace (SS247, 249). They seized and beheaded the Lord Chancellor and the chief collector of the odious poll tax (S250). They destroyed all the law papers they could lay hands on, and ended by murdering a number of lawyers; for the rioters believed that the members of that profession spent their time forging the chains which held the laboring cla.s.s in subjection.

252. Demans of the Rebels; End of the Rebellion.

The insurrectionists demanded of the King that villeinage (S113) should be abolished, and that the rent of agricultural lands should be fixed by Parliament at a uniform rate in money. They also insisted that trade should be free, and that a general unconditional pardon should be granted to all who had taken part in the rebellion.

Richard promised redress; but while negotiations were going on, Walworth, mayor of London, struck down Wat Tyler with his dagger, and with his death the whole movement collapsed almost as suddenly as it arose. Parliament now began a series of merciless executions, and refused to consider any of the claims to which Richard had shown a disposition to listen. In their punishment of the rebels, the House of Commons vied with the Lords in severity, few showing any sympathy with the efforts of the peasants to obtain their freedom from feudal bondage.

The uprising, however, was not in vain, for by it the old restrictions were in some degree loosened, so that in the course of the next century and a half, villeinage (S113) was gradually abolished, and the English laborer acquired that greatest yet most perilous of all rights, the complete ownership of himself.[1]

[1] In Scotland, villeinage lasted much longer, and as late as 1774, in the reign of George III, men working in coal and salt mines were held in a species of slavery, which was finally abolished the following year.

So long as he was a serf, the peasant could claim a.s.sistance from his master in sickness and old age; in attaining independence he had to risk the danger of pauperism, which began with it,--this possibility being part of the price which man must everywhere pay for the inestimable privilege of freedom.

253. The New Movement in Literature, 1390 (?).

The same spirit which demanded emanc.i.p.ation on the part of the working cla.s.ses showed itself in literature. We have already seen (S246) how, in the previous reign, Langland, in his poem of "Piers Plowman," gave bold utterance to the growing discontent of the times in his declaration that the rich and great destroyed the poor.

In a different spirit, Chaucer, "the morning star of English song,"

now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury (S170).

There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life, and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine from the royal bounty. Yet, with all his mirth, there is a vein of playful satire in his description of men and things. His pictures of jolly monks and easy-going churchmen, with his lines addressed to his purse as his "saviour, as down in this world here," show that he saw beneath the surface of things. He too was thinking, at least at times, of the manifold evils of poverty and of that danger springing from religious indifference which poor Langland had taken so much to heart.

254. Wycliffe; the First Complete English Bible, 1378.

But the real reformer of that day was John Wycliffe, rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire and lecturer at Oxford (S246). He boldly attacked the religious and the political corruption of the age. The "Begging Friars," who had once done such good work (S208), had now grown too rich and lazy to be of further use.

Wycliffe, whose emaciated form concealed an unconquerable energy and dauntless courage, organized a new band of brothers known as "Poor Priests." They took up and pushed forward the reforms the friars had dropped. Clothed in red sackcloth cloaks, barefooted, with staff in hand, they went about from town to town[1] preaching "G.o.d's law," and demanding that Church and State bring themselves into harmony with it.

[1] Compare Chaucer's "A good man ther was of religioun, That was a poure persone [parson] of a town."

Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" (479)

The only complete Bible then in use was the Latin version. The people could not read a line of it, and many priests were almost as ignorant of its contents. To carry on the revival which he had begun, Wycliffe now began to translate the entire Scriptures into English, 1378. When the great work was finished it was copied and circulated by the "Poor Priests."

But the cost of such a book in ma.n.u.script--for the printing press had not yet come into existence--was so high that only the rich could buy the complete volume. Many, however, who had no money would give a load of farm produce for a few favorite chapters.

In this way Wycliffe's Bible was spread throughout the country among all cla.s.ses. Later, when persecution began, men hid these precious copies and read them with locked doors at night, or met in the forests to hear them expounded by preachers who went about at the peril of their lives. These things led Wycliffe's enemies to complain "that common men and women who could read were better acquainted with the Scriptures than the most learned and intelligent of the clergy."

255. The Lollards; Wycliffe's Remains burned.

The followers of Wycliffe were nicknamed Lollards, a word of uncertain meaning but apparantly used as an expression of contempt. From having been religious reformers denouncing the wealth and greed of a corrupt Church, they seem, in some cases, to have degenerated into socialists or communists. This latter cla.s.s demanded, like John Ball (S250), --who may have been one of their number,--that all property should be equally divided, and that all rank should be abolished.

This fact should be borne in mind with reference to the subsequent efforts made by the government to suppress the movement. In the eyes of the Church, the Lollards were heretics; in the judgment of many moderate men, they were destructionists and anarchists, as unreasonable and as dangerous as the "dynamiters" of to-day.

More than forty years after Wycliffe's death (1384), a decree of the Church council of Constance[1] ordered the reformer's body to be dug up and burned (1428). But his influence had not only permeated England, but had pa.s.sed to the Continent, and was preparing the way for that greater movement which Luther was to inaugurate in the sixteenth century.

[1] Constance, in southern Germany. This council (1415) sentenced John Huss and Jerome of Prague, both of whom may be considered Wycliffites, to the stake.

Tradition says that the ashes of his corpse were thrown into the brook flowing near the parsonage of Lutterworth, the object being to utterly destroy and obliterate the remains of the arch-heretic. Fuller says: "This brook did conveeey his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow sea, and that into the wide ocean. And so the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over."[2]

[2] Thomas Fuller's "Church History of Britain." Compare also Wordsworth's "Sonnet to Wycliffe," and the lines, attributed to an unknown writer of Wycliffe's time: "The Avon to the Severn runs, The Severn to the sea; And Wycliffe's dust shall spread abroad, Wide as the waters be."

256. Richard's Misgovernment; the "Merciless Parliament."

Richard had the spirit of a tyrant. He declared "that he alone could change and frame the laws of the kingdom."[3] His reign was unpopular with all cla.s.ses. The people hated him for his extravagance; the clergy, for failing to put down the Wycliffites (SS254, 255), with the doctrines of whose founder he was believed to sympathize; while the n.o.bles disliked his injustice and favoritism.

[3] W. Stubb's "Const.i.tutional History of England," II, 505.

In the "Merciless Parliament" (1388) the "Lords Appellant," that is, the n.o.blemen who accused Richard's counselors of treason, put to death all of the King's ministers that they could lay hands on. Later, that Parliament attempted some political reforms, which were partially successful. But the King soon regained his power, and took summary vengeance (1397) on the "Lords Appellant." Two influential men were left, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Hereford, whom he had found no opportunity to punish. After a time they openly quarreled, and accused each other of treason.

A challenge pa.s.sed between them, and they prepared to fight the matter out in the King's presence; but when the day arrived, the King banished both of them from England (1398). Shortly after they had left the country Bolingbroke's father, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, died. Contrary to all law, Richard now seized and appropriated the estate, which belonged by right to the banished n.o.bleman.

257. Richard deposed and murdered. (1399).

When Bolingbroke, now by his father's death Duke of Lancaster, heard of the outrage, he raised a small force and returned to England, demanding the rest.i.tution of his lands.

Finding that the powerful family of the Percies were willing to aid him, and that many of the common people desired a change of government, the Duke boldly claimed the crown, on the ground that Richard had forfeited it by his tyranny, and that he stood next in succession through his descent from Henry III. But in reality Henry Bolingbroke had no claim save that given by right of conquest, since the boy Edmund Mortimer held the direct t.i.tle to the crown.[1]

[1] See Genealogical Table, under No. 3 and 4, p. 140

The King now fell into Henry's hands, and events moved rapidly to a crisis. Richard had rebuilt Westminster Hall (S156). The first Parliament which a.s.sembled there deposed him on the ground that he was "altogether insufficient and unworthy," and they gave the throne to the victorious Duke of Lancaster. Shakespeare represents the fallen monarch saying in his humiliation:

"With mine own tears I wash away my balm,[2]

With mine own hand I give away my crown."

[2] "Richard II," Act IV, scene i. The balm was the sacred oil used in anointing the King at his coronation.

After his deposition Richard was confined in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire, where he found, like his unfortunate ancestory, Edward II (S233), "that in the cases of princes there is but a step from the prison to the grave." His death did not take place, however, until after Henry's accession.[1] Most historians condemn Richard as an unscrupulous tyrant. Froissart, who wrote in his time, says that he ruled "fiercely," and that no one in England dared "speak against anything the King did." A recent writer thinks he may have been insane, and declares that whether he "was mad or not, he, at all events acted like a madman." But another authority defends him, saying that Richard was not a despot at heart, but used despotic means hoping to effect much-needed reforms.[2]

[1] Henry of Lancaster was the son of John of Gaunt, who was the fourth son of Edward III; but there were descendents of that King's THIRD son (Lionel, Duke of Clarence) living, who, of course, had a prior claim, as the following table shows:

Edward III [Direct descendant of Henry III]

1 2 3 | 4 5 --------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | | Edward, the William, d. Lionel, Duke John of Gaunt, Edmund Black Prince in childhood. of Clarence Duke of Lancaster Duke of | | | York Richard II Philippa, m. Henry Bollinger Edmund Mortimer Duke of Lancaster, | afterward Roger Mortimer Henry IV d. 1398-1399 | Edmund Mortimer (heir presumptive to the crown after Richard II)

[2] See Gardiner, Stubbs, and the "Dictionary of English History."