The Last Plantagenets (11 page)

The alien residents were less fortunate. A lust for blood had risen with the flames. Many aliens from Flanders, merchants and dealers in wool and cloth, had fled to sanctuary, but the mob paid no heed to the rules of the church. They dragged these unfortunate and innocent men out from the church shadows where they cowered and butchered them in the streets.

The prisons of the Fleet and Newgate were then broken open, and the exultant brothers of the salamon welcomed their fellows who had been lying there in irons, some with limbs limp from the rack and with the mark of the white-hot branding iron on cheeks and forehead. It was a wild and desperate night in London. The citizens put up their shutters, bolted them tight, and huddled behind them, trembling for the safety of their families, while bands of drunken rioters paraded the streets, carrying the dripping heads of victims on the ends of pikes.

The final stage was to march on the Tower and to encamp in a tight
circle about it. Here, they knew, were the men whom they sought, in particular, Simon of Sudbury and treasurer Hales, who was called Hobbe the Robber in the rhyming letters of John Ball. No one inside the great Norman keep must be allowed to escape.

And so the peasants slept in the fields about the Tower, while their sentries kept close watch outside the walls. The frightened group about the king, who had not yet decided on any sound course of action, kept vigil on the battlements, watching the fires of the Savoy and the Temple slowly die down, hearing the drunken uproar in the streets, and wondering what the morning would bring.

T
HE boy Richard took matters into his youthful hands after a long discussion with his circle of advisers which lasted through several hours of that eventful night. The two men of action, Walworth and Knowles, were present. The former was strongly for an armed sortie, although the number of men-at-arms in the Tower did not exceed 600 in number. With his usual bluff confidence, he visioned the loyal citizens rallying to their support. Salisbury was too conservative to agree with this.

“If we begin what we can’t carry through,” he declared with a sober shake of head, “it will be all over with us. And with our heirs. And England will be a desert.”

If Sir Robert Knowles declared himself (one always recalls the couplet about him in the French campaigns—
Sir Robert Knowles all France Controls
), it must have been on the side of caution. He was too sound a soldier to discount the longbows he had seen on so many rebel shoulders. English yeomen with that deadly weapon could sweep the narrow streets clean of royal supporters.

Richard must have missed the friendly pressure of one hand on his shoulder during these perilous days. Sir Simon Burley, who had become the mainstay and affectionate mentor of the young monarch, was not in London. He was in Bohemia, negotiating a match for Richard with a princess of the Hungarian royal family. Lacking the guiding whisper of this friend, and finding his advisers at odds, Richard finally pronounced himself in favor of opening negotiations with the peasant leaders.

The council would consent at first to half measures only. Two knights were sent out to run the gamut of the sentry lines and get to the heads of the insurrection with an offer from the king to consider all grievances
which were submitted to him in writing. The knights got as far as St. Catherine’s Wharf on the river but their announcement, made under the light of torches, drew laughter and hoots of derision.

“Trifles and mockery!” cried the rebels. “Think you we are Anthony pigs to come snuffling and begging of ye?” An Anthony pig was an animal too diseased to be used by the butchers and which, after having its ears slit for identification, was turned loose to survive or die in the streets of London.

“Get ye back!” was the final word given the messengers, “and bring us a fair offer. The king must talk to his loyal commons face to face.”

Richard decided then to do as the peasants demanded and won the reluctant consent of his council. Word was sent back that he would ride next morning to Mile End and meet the leaders there. Mile End was an open stretch of ground outside the walls near Aldgate. Here Londoners went on holidays and Sundays to promenade and fill their lungs with fresh air. It was said later that the council consented because it might be possible to leave the Tower and even close all the city gates if the peasants marched en masse beyond the walls.

No surprise need be felt when it is recorded that Richard and a small chosen company rode out from the Tower at seven o’clock next morning. Men were early risers because the medieval myth still held that whereas the day belonged to God the night was the devil’s own. It was the custom for men to bolt the shutters and go to bed, concealing their heads under blankets, as soon as the sun went down and to be up with the first light of dawn. Kings were no different from ordinary men on this point. It is certain that Richard had taken a bath (he was regular in attention to the rules of cleanliness, an example which most of the nobility and even some of the Plantagenets refused to follow), dressed with meticulous care, and had partaken of a solid breakfast before getting to horse.

There was an immediate disappointment for those who had entertained the hope that Wat Tyler would lead all his men to the meeting place. The lines about the Tower opened to let the royal party ride through and then closed tightly. Guards were maintained on all the gates of London. The leaders were not to be taken in as easily as that.

It was so uncomfortably warm that the pennons with the White Hart hung limply on the spears of the outriders, and the white plume in the small hat of the boy king, which had to be buttoned under his chin, lay perfectly flat. The peasants swarmed about the horsemen, attempting to seize the king’s stirrups and reins and bawling loudly their demands for changes in the laws and the punishment of the head ministers. For a long time the horses had to be kept at a walk, and if the unwashed and
unshaven peasants felt any degree of loyalty it did not show. The ride through the city, in fact, was like a nightmare, one which might end in violence at any moment.

When they passed Aldgate, however, the horsemen had more freedom. The king’s two half brothers took advantage of this to drop out of line and then wheel their horses on to the north road, disappearing quickly from sight. These admirable young noblemen had no stomach for more of this kind of adventure.

The rebel leaders had heard much of the beauty (no other word seems to fit the case) of this king of fourteen years and, of course, they had caught fleeting glimpses of him on the royal barge. Now, for the first time, they met him face to face.

He was of good height for his years but he lacked the virility which had always been characteristic of the Plantagenets. There was almost a transparency about his slightly olive skin, and his features had a delicacy in contrast to the sharp, bold regularity of his immediate ancestors. He was elaborately attired in a coat of blue and silver, cut on the order of a tabard; and this was not wise. A better impression would have been made if he had come in plainer garb. As it was, Wat Tyler and his rough fellows must have gaped at this resplendent vision, a figure straight out of folklore.

The boy king had ridden to Mile End in a mood to conciliate the insurgents. Without taking a foot from the silver stirrups and, in spite of the heat, keeping his slender white hands in jeweled gloves, he listened to the demands of the unkempt multitudes as propounded by their leaders, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and others—but not John Ball. As no mention was made of the eloquent priest, it must be assumed that he was not there.

Richard listened with the ease of manner of a veteran. He asked questions, discussed the knottiest of the points raised, even smiled, a rare thing for one of his haughty lineage when confronted with men of such low degree. He nodded in confirmation of five important points.

1. Villeinage was to be abolished.

2. The
corvée
was to be abolished (the obligation to work for the lord of the manor on demand).

3. The peasants would have the status of tenants and pay four pence an acre per year to the owner.

4. Restrictions on buying and selling would be removed.

5. A general amnesty would be extended to all participants in the uprising.

An effort was made by the peasants to include in the agreement a promise that the ministers of the Crown who were obnoxious to the Commons
would be punished. On this point the young king, who seems to have conducted himself with dignity and firmness, refused to give in.

“There shall be due punishments,” he declared, “for those who can be proven traitors by due process of law.” Further than that he would not go.

For many hours thereafter a corps of tabellions from Westminster, thirty in all, labored at writing charters containing these agreements. A copy was to be provided for each district represented in the ranks of the seekers after freedom. A banner would accompany each charter, to be carried home as an earnest of agreement.

A feeling of confidence now permeated the rebel ranks. Their demands had been met.

But while the youthful king conferred with the rebel leaders, and everything seemed to be moving with the speed of Mercury toward the desired ends, the city was thrown into scenes as violent as on the previous day. This may have been planned by the leaders, but the more reasonable explanation was that the rank and file were now completely out of hand and that their feelings flared into murder and rapine as soon as all restraints were removed. It is affirmed that Wat Tyler returned to the city in time to lead the new riots. This is highly improbable. There was no reason at that point to doubt the honesty of the concessions made by the king. No leader with any judgment (and Tyler had displayed plenty of that quality) would risk what they had gained by an outburst of class hatred.

Young Richard was badly served through this crisis. The officers at the Tower, whether through carelessness or sympathy with the uprising, neglected to raise the drawbridge after the king and his party rode off to Mile End. No defense was attempted when the peasants who had been left on watch swarmed in under the portcullis, still suspended high over the gate.

“Where are the traitors?” was the cry raised, making it clear that the archbishop and the treasurer were the chief targets of their enmity. “Where are those who plunder the people?”

They searched the rooms of the king, even peering behind the velvet curtains and under the royal bed. Next they visited the queen mother and pried with their weapons under the bed on which she was reclining. The poor lady had already seen too much of these rough men from the fields and forests and she fainted dead away. As soon as they
could, her maids dressed her and she was taken, in a state of shock, to one of the barges and rowed up the river to the Wardrobe.

It should be explained, in passing, that although London was spoken of as small and crowded, it was in reality a city of many great palaces. The large landowners, who had acquired wealth through the wool trade, had all set up establishments in the city. The de Veres, who held the earldom of Oxford, were at St. Mary Axe, the Earls of Essex on Throgmorton Street. Between Amen Corner and Ludgate Street the high tower of the Earls of Richmond stood up against the skyline. Oddly enough the great barons seemed to prefer the center of the city, in fact, the very heart of commerce. The FitzAlans lived on Botolph Lane, which was narrow and mean and much too close to the fish market. The FitzWalters were in the Poultry and the Stafford family, the Earls of Buckingham, were on Milk Street.

One writer claims that London contained more fine palaces than the Italian cities of Venice, Florence, Verona, and Genoa combined. Few of them, it must be said, had any pretensions to beauty (except the illfated Savoy), consisting of tall grim walls jutting up above the level of the parish churches and the two-storied huddles of lath and plaster where the townspeople lived. But they gave security, something which the Wardrobe lacked. That the queen mother chose it is strange because it shared the shadow of St. Paul’s Cross with Baynard’s Castle, which had come into the possession of the royal family and was an imposing structure. Perhaps it was felt that the insignificance of the Wardrobe would offer more protection than stone walls and tall ramparts.

Early in the morning, when the first rays of the sun apprised the unhappy city that God’s sway was starting again, Archbishop Simon went, on the king’s urgent advice, to the Little Water-gate where a boat was ready to take him away to safety. But an old beldam saw what was happening and raised an outcry. Realizing he could not escape from the inevitable pursuit, the prelate returned to the Tower, no doubt looking up at the sun with saddened eyes and thinking this would be his last glimpse of it.

The archbishop was saying Mass in the Tower chapel when the eruption occurred. He knew that his end was near, but his voice did not falter as he chanted the Seven Penitential Psalms and the Litany. When the door burst open and the drunken rioters (they had been drinking all night, quite clearly) filled the chapel with their shouts of “Where is the traitor?” the old man stepped forward to meet them.

“Behold the archbishop whom ye seek,” he said in a calm voice. “No traitor, no plunderer of the Commons, he.”

While he was speaking, his arms were pinioned from behind. He was then led up to the battlements where he could be seen by the cheering
crowds now filling the courtyards, and even by those who stood without the walls.

For the death sentence which the infuriated people were determined to see carried out on Tower Hill there was neither block nor executioner. A substitute for a block was found and finally one man, who came from Essex and was named John Starling, volunteered to wield the ax. The arms of the victim were unbound and he was given a few minutes to pray and to deliver any last message.

“Take heed,” he said, raising his voice, “my beloved children in the Lord, what thing ye now do. For what offense is it that ye doom to death your pastor, your prelate? Oh, take heed lest for the act of this day all England be laid under the curse of the interdict.”