Shakespeare's Kings (12 page)

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 gentl
eman?
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, the
y reached Black
heath, 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 under
foot 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