John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV.
THE HEADLESS REBELLION.
HE true fascination of history, whether it be the history of a race or of an individual, of a national government or of a moral revolution, is never realised until we have made a prolonged and laborious effort to reconstruct what time has buried in the dust. When at last, with patient toil and keen imagination, the student has succeeded in reaching a point from which it is possible to see, not the sheer realities, but the types and tendencies and probabilities of a half-forgotten age, he begins for the first time to understand the satisfaction of the traveller who has struck into an unknown land, or of the explorer who has laid bare the tombs and temples of an ancient civilisation.
If we could penetrate more deeply into the historical sources of human action, and trace each visible effect back through its proper channel to the centre of its causation, how dazzling would be the light which would thus be shed on the course of every national and personal development. How interesting, for example, it would be if we could recognise the exact measure of the survival of race antagonism between the English serf and the feudal and manorial lords, who had inherited three centuries of mutual enmity. How more than interesting to mark the descent from the political philosophy of Greece—or it may be only the separate and transitory re-creation—of that idea of universal equality which was the very motive and mainspring of the Peasants' Revolt! But to pursue such inquiries as these would be a task out of proportion with the scope of the present work, much as it might help us to comprehend the last few years of Wyclif's life. It would be difficult to say for how long a period in the reign of Edward III. the serfs had been in a state of masked revolt. Oppression and over-taxation, callous injustice and blind revenge, grinding servitude and malignant hate, disorders of a hundred kinds, robbery and violence on the highways by men whose demoralisation arose out of resistance to intolerable wrongs, seditious talk and seditious plots, clamourings for leaders and abortive attempts to lead, attacks on the houses of the barons and on the King's officers, no security for innocence and no encouragement for loyalty, all the essentials of revolt short of the massing of the people for concerted action—these signs and warnings of revolution had preceded the death of Edward. But it was the poll-tax which finally exasperated the common people, and stung them into open rebellion. No doubt, as Hollinshed tells us, it was paid "with great grudging and many a bitter curse."
Early in 1381 the massing began; but even now it would be idle to speak of concerted action. The distinguishing marks of this great uprising of the serfs were its spontaneity throughout the south-eastern counties, its lack of organisation, and, so far as one can see, the complete absence of recognised leaders to whom men could look for guidance and direction. The seething irresolute mob, so recently inarticulate, if not absolutely unvocal, had raised its huge limbs without a brain to control them, and had found a voice which proclaimed that forced labour and servitude of any kind should come to an end in England. What might not a capable leader have done in that critical year, with such a host behind him, ready to carry out his behests? But indeed the thing was impossible. There was no discipline—there had been no chance of organisation. Possibly a strenuous man—some English Spartacus with a genius for command might have pitched his camp on a Kentish plain, in the neighbourhood of Maidstone or Canterbury, or even on Blackheath, and there in the course of a few weeks he might have made an army out of a mob. But the mere suggestion of the idea is enough to show its futility: the lapse of time would have enabled the authorities in London to make far more effectual preparations.
The serf, in fact, was better off without a leader, without genius, without arms or provision of any kind. His cause was enough for his need; the mute and stolid protest of these swarming thousands of self-emancipated slaves was all that was necessary—and it was necessary—to break their chains. The slaughter of the lawyers and manor stewards, the burning of the court-rolls and service-lists, the beheading of the Archbishop and Treasurer, the destruction of buildings in London—these incidents of the brief servile war were not sufficient in themselves to stamp it with the bloody mark of many a better organised revolution. The true character of the movement is seen in the perfect, almost childish, loyalty of the serfs to their King, in the admirable behaviour of the crowds which quietly dispersed when he had personally promised them redress, and in the equally admirable behaviour of the young monarch so long as he was under the influence of his mother. The plain significance of these facts was that the demands of the serfs were natural and right; and Richard and his best advisers saw them to be right.
If only all could have ended there—if Walworth had never cut down the defenceless spokesman of the rebels during his colloquy with the King,—if the hangings and quarterings which followed had been confined to men who were proved guilty of murder, and if Parliament had held itself pledged to grant the redress which Richard had promised, things might have gone better with England for the next hundred years, As Fuller says in his familiar way, "Jack Straw would have been John of Gold had this treason taken effect." John Ball, Jack Straw, Wat Tyler, William Grindecobbe, would have been heroes every one, and the consolidation of English society would undoubtedly have been hastened by many years. The treason of the serfs was practically summed up in their demand for the abolition of serfdom. The boon was guaranteed at Mile End, Smithfield, and the Tower, only to be cancelled (so far as that was possible) when authority got the upper hand again.
Historians have almost ceased to talk about "the rebellion of Wat Tyler." The term is quite inadequate as a descriptive title, and it was only the accidental meeting of this man with the King and his retinue in Smithfield which gave his name such undue prominence. There were, in fact, two or more Tylers amongst the leaders of the peasants, and the Tyler of Dartford who avenged his daughter on the collector of poll-tax was not the same man as Wat Tyler, or Walter Helyer (either name would be an easy corruption from the other) whom Walworth slew. The last mentioned seems to have been an Essex man, who came to Blackheath by way of Kent, who acknowledged Ball for his leader, and whose best known companions were John Straw, John Kyrkeby, Alan Threder, Thomas Scot, and Ralph Rugge.
It would be nearer to the truth if we were to speak of "the rebellion of John Ball." Harpsfield saw fit to call Wyclif the whetstone of revolt (cos hujus seditionis). That is a title to which Wyclif can lay but little claim, whilst it is very appropriate to Ball. This Yorkshire priest, who came to live at Colchester soon after the year 1360, had been excommunicated by Archbishop Islip, and was apparently four times condemned and imprisoned by Islip and his successors. Langham wrote to the Dean of Bocking to denounce "one John Ball, pretending that he is a priest,"who persisted in" preaching manifold errors and scandals." He called upon the Dean to admonish the said Ball, with "other and singular rectors, vicars, and parochial chaplains who adhered to him." Ten years after he was once more proceeded against, this time by Sudbury, and imprisoned in Maidstone jail. He was there again in the spring of 1381, when the men of Essex began the universal strike.
On the occasion of his last committal he is said to have told the Archbishop, on receiving sentence of imprisonment, that he would be set free again by twenty thousand of his friends; and it would seem to have been anything but a coincidence that the men of Kent, when they presently rose at the instigation of their brethren in Essex, marched straight to Maidstone, broke into the Archbishop's prison, and carried John Ball in triumph to Canterbury. Sudbury in the meantime had gone to London, where Ball may have seen him beheaded a few weeks later. There is no necessity to infer that Sudbury's death was in anyway due to the personal vengeance of the man whom he had subjected to ecclesiastical discipline; but all the circumstances constrain one to believe that the Colchester priest had been planning the revolt against serfdom for some time past, that he had determined to take advantage of the exasperation produced by the poll-tax, that he had been arrested and condemned in the midst of his preparations, and that he believed the strike would be begun by his friends in Essex at the time agreed upon, notwithstanding his incarceration. This would account for the course of events during the earlier days of the rising, and for the special prominence of Ball at Blackheath, whither he had marched with the men of Kent, instead of trying to cross the Thames in order to be with his more intimate associates—who would probably have started for London before he arrived at Rochester.
The English History of Walsingham fully vouches for the fact that the first massing, and the signal to move upon London, were due to personal initiation within the county of Essex. The chronicler says that "the authors and prime movers of this calamity" were Essex men; and they may doubtless be identified with John Ball and his friends. It is recorded that they sent round to every little homestead, and commanded all the men, veterans and raw lads included, to leave their occupations and their women-folk, to arm themselves in any way they could, and to assemble without fail at the appointed places, on pain of death. Accordingly some five thousand were gathered together, about the time of the spring ploughing and sowing, "of the lowest common people and the rustics," armed with sticks, rusty swords, and scythes; a few of them (probably old soldiers who had fought in France) carrying worn-out bows—many a bowman having but a single arrow, and many an arrow winged with a single feather; and "thus they went forth to conquer a kingdom." There is a poetical touch in this description which warrants us in treating it with some degree of qualification. Poor as the organisation must have been, the forces of "the Commons," as they delighted to call themselves, were probably better than the mere riff-raff of the country-side.
The men of Kent, "hearing of this thing which they had so often prayed for," immediately roused the whole county, blocked the roads, and, stopping every traveller, made him swear—"That he would be loyal to King Richard and to the Commons; that he would have no King of the name of John; that he would be ready when sent for to come and join them; that he would persuade all his neighbours and acquaintance to hold with them; and that he would not agree or consent to the raising of any taxes in the kingdom thenceforth except only the fifteenths which their fathers and ancestors had known and agreed to." Then they liberated John Ball at Maidstone, as already stated, and proceeded by way of Canterbury and Rochester along the northern road to London.
The news spread to Sussex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk, and all men's minds were divided between hope and dread." Men commonly said to each other that there would be a division of the kingdom owing to these occurrences, and that England would be devastated and destroyed." And when the number of the rebels daily increased, until they were past counting, and they no longer feared resistance, they began to show what they had in their minds. "Every single man who knew anything about the law of land-holding, whether clerks or venerable justices, and all the jurators of the land whom they had any reason to fear, they slew without compunction, declaring that the land could never enjoy freedom until these had been put to death. That kind of talk pleased the rustics immensely; and, passing from small things to greater, they determined to set fire to all the rolls and ancient records in the court-houses; so that, when they had wiped out the memory of the olden time, their lords would not in future be able to establish a claim over them." They also took special care to burn the tax-rolls, on which their assessment for poll-tax was recorded.
So, for some time, the leaderless mobs hung about in their several counties, whilst the lords and men of substance concealed themselves in their dwellings, or fled to a distance, or paid ransom in one form or another. Meanwhile "the Kentishmen and the Essexmen drew together and formed an army, of about a hundred thousand common people and rustics." That is all that Walsingham can tell us of the creation of the first army which marched on London by way of Blackheath. It is probable, however, that Blackheath was simply the common rendezvous for the south-eastern counties, whilst the men of the eastern counties met at Mile End. The Essex men would naturally make direct for the eastern gate of the city, though some of them may have been drawn to Blackheath in order to meet John Ball. One of Ball's lieutenants, Jack Straw, seems to have crossed the Thames at an earlier date, with a few companions, for the purpose of rousing the southern shire and opening the gates of Maidstone jail.
On Blackheath there was a more or less orderly-muster. Wat Tyler, who had served in France, was at the head of this contingent, and seems to have kept it well in hand whilst the fiery priest from Essex harangued and inflamed it. Commissioners from the King came to hear the demands of the peasants, and they were sent back with fair treatment and a moderate request from the leaders that they might have speech with their monarch. In the Council to which this message was reported Sudbury made the fatal mistake, in which he was supported by the Treasurer—Sir Robert Hales, prior of the Hospital of St. John,—of urging that the King should not receive the representatives of the rebels. The story of the next few days need not be repeated here in detail; but so far as the spirit of the movement can be gathered from the words and acts of John Ball—who must certainly be classed as a Lollard, whether he was a professed disciple of Wyclif or not—it is worth while to take note of the general course of events.
The famous speech of Ball on Blackheath has been cited by the chroniclers and others as a distinct encouragement to violence and bloodshed. The simple question is whether we are to accept the testimony of his enemies, written down at the time when passion ran high, and by men who considered him one of the worst and most dangerous culprits. At Blackheath, the chronicler tells us, there were two hundred thousand of the people gathered together, and the excommunicated priest improvised a pulpit and preached to as many as could hear him on the standing text of communism in all ages—
"When Adam dalf, and Eve span,
Who was then a gentleman?"
For all, said he, were made equal by nature from the beginning. Servitude was brought in by the unjust oppression of wicked men, against the will of God. If God had pleased to create slaves, he could have settled from the very beginning of the world who was to be a slave and who a master. Now let them remember that at last an opportunity had been given them by God to throw off the yoke of daily servitude. The time had come for them to enjoy, if they would make up their minds, the liberty for which they had craved so long. "Be stout of heart," he said, "and, with the zeal of a good husbandman who tills his farm, rooting up and cutting down the noxious weeds which choke the crops, set to work now and do the same thing yourselves. First of all, you must kill off the great lords of England; then the lawyers,[1] the justiciaries, and jurators must be put an end to; and last of all, cast out of your land all whom you think likely to hurt the Commons hereafter. In this way you will be able to obtain peace for yourselves and safety for the future. When all the great men are carried off, there will be equal liberty for all. Everyone shall be a noble, no one shall have greater dignity than another, and the power of all shall be the same."
If John Ball had been an agitator in the present century, and this account of his speech had been put into circulation by his enemies, he would have been able to write to the newspapers and challenge its accuracy or its veracity. As it was, he had no opportunity of checking the reports which were given of his sermons and speeches. If such opportunity had been allowed him in the Archbishop's court, he had learnt too surely that his levelling theories were opposed to the political and religious orthodoxies of his day, and that the more logically and even moderately they were put, the more insidious and dangerous they would appear. In that sense the "mad priest" was hopelessly out of court, born before his time, and (according to the ideas of his day) rightfully condemned. But it is only fair to him to say that there is no trustworthy evidence that he incited any man to slaughter, or that he intended the march on London to be anything more than an overwhelming demonstration of the popular grievances, which (he fondly thought) was to secure the triumph of right without striking a blow. That the mobs in many instances broke from the control of their leaders is perfectly true; and it is equally true that the leaders did what they could to restrain the violent. Thus when Lancaster's palace at the Savoy, which had narrowly escaped four years before, was set on fire, the peasants seized a pillager who was making off with his booty and flung him into the blazing pile. "We have no mind to be thieves," they are reported to have said. Hate was far stronger in their breasts than greed. It is recorded that they pounded the Duke's jewels in mortars, trampled on his cloth of gold and embroidered silks, smashed the gold and silver plate, the spoils of many a hard fight, and hurled them into the Thames.
The Duke himself at this time was at the head of his troops in Scotland, and it is therefore inexact to say that he had fled before the storm. The facts connected with the death of Archbishop Sudbury and the Treasurer Hales are by no means clear; but the beheading on Tower Hill may be supposed to have been intended as an assertion by the "sovereign people" of its right to execute summary justice.
In the wallet of one of the Essex men, who suffered for his part in the great disturbance, a letter was found which was manifestly the composition of John Ball.
"John Schep, som tyme Seynt Marie prest of Yorke, and nowe of Colchestre, greteth welle Johan Nameles, and Johan the Mullere, and Johan Cartere, and biddeth hem that thei ware of gyle in borugh. And stondeth togiddir in Goddis name, and biddeth Peres Ploughman go to his werke, and chastise Hobbe the robber, and taketh with you Johan Trewman, and alle his felaws, and no mo, and loke scharpe you to on heved and no mo [obey one head and no more].
"Johan the Muller hath ygrownde smal, smal, smal;
The Kyngis sone of hevene shall pay for alle.
Be ware or ye be wo,
Knoweth your frende fro youre foo,
Haveth ynowe, and seythe 'Hoo':
And do welle and bettre, and fleth synne,
And seketh pees, and holde therynne.
And so biddeth Johan Trewman, and alle his felavves."
It may be said that in bidding Piers Ploughman to chastise Hobbe the robber, Ball was inciting to violence and even to bloodshed. But clearly the prevailing note of the significant document above quoted is one of peace and moderation—of course pre-supposing the intention to march on London and demand redress. The comparative elevation and morality of this and other appeals from the demagogue priest, which must have circulated in great numbers for some time before the outbreak, have been recognised in every generation. Ball did not always disguise his name. Here is one of his missives.
"John Ball greeteth you all,
And doth for to understand he hath rung your bell.
Now right and might,
Will and skill,
God speed every dele."
And another:
"Help truth, and truth shall help you.
Now reigneth pride in price,
And covetise is counted wise,
And lechery withouten shame,
And gluttony withouten blame.
Envy reigneth with treason,
And sloth is take in great season.
God do bote, for now is tyme."
Jack Miller, Jack Carter, Piers Ploughman, John Trewman, appear again and again in these moving appeals; and perhaps some of them, if not all, stood for the names of men who were familiar in the country-side. The parable of the mill was manifestly a favourite one amongst the rebels.
"Jack Miller asketh help to turn his mill aright.
He hath grounden small, small;
The king's son of heaven he shall pay for all.
Look thy mill go aright with the four sails, and the post stand with steadfastness.
With right and with might,
With skill and with will;
Let might help right,
And skill go before will,
And right before might,
So goeth our mill aright."
Unfortunately for the peasants, or at any rate for the victims on whom the worst of the vengeance was to fall, they could not or did not follow the advice of John Schep on all points. They did not stand together; guile overtook them in the borough, and they could not tell their friends from their foes. The vast majority of them unquestionably "sought peace and held therein," but the few who became violent—and the turbulent citizens were perhaps more responsible for the violence than the rustics themselves—gave some sort of warrant for the repudiation of the terms which had been granted by Richard, and on the faith of which so many thousands of the serfs had gone quietly home.
There are but slight traces of generosity in the treatment of the peasants when all danger was at an end, and authority had renewed its sway. The strong course would have been to confirm the amnesty and the emancipation, to compensate those who had suffered from mob violence, to keep the word of the King, and to maintain the supremacy and impartiality of the law. Richard's Council acted fairly enough in suggesting to Parliament that the serfs should have their liberty. The land-owners would not listen to it, wrongly supposing that things could be put back on their old footing, and urging that the King had no right to take away their chattels without their consent—which, said they, "we have never given, and never will give, if we were all to die on the same day." That was at the beginning of the autumn session of 1381; and though many members came up prepared to think more of redress than of vengeance, the majority were bent on a policy of stern repression. It was determined that the promises extorted from the King by force were not binding, and ought not to be kept. Amongst these promises were a large number of individual manumissions, and some half-dozen charters of emancipation and pardon to the serfs of different counties, drawn up in the following terms:
"Richard by the grace of God King of England and France, and Lord of Ireland, to all his stewards and trusty servants to whom this present letter may come, greeting. Know ye that by our special grace we have manumitted all our lieges and bondmen of the county of, and we have freed them from all bondage, themselves and each of them, and do satisfy them by these presents; and moreover we pardon the same our lieges and bondmen all their felonies, betrayals, transgressions and extortions of whatsoever kind, committed or perpetrated by themselves or others, as well as any outlawry, if any such shall have been pronounced against them, or any of them, in consequence of these events; and furthermore we grant them, and each of them, absolute peace. In testimony whereof we have caused these our letters patent to be drawn up. As witness our hand, at London, on the fifteenth day of June, in the fourth year of our reign."
It was on the faith of these charters that the men of Essex, Hertford, and other counties left London without striking a blow. Some at least of the King's promises were made of his own accord, when he bravely faced the seething crowds, before there had been any violence in the streets. At no time was he himself in duress or danger; and to contend that he ought not to keep terms with his subjects, when it would have been a point of honour to do so with a foreign enemy, was no more reasonable than it was to urge that a Plantagenet King in the later feudal age was not entitled to insist on the emancipation of the serfs.
The King's attendants and the City authorities,who had lost their nerve in presence of the immense crowds of rustics, seem to have taken heart again as soon as they had seen the dead body of Tyler, and the last contingent of the rebels had disappeared from the capital. The worst was over; henceforth the marshal could answer at any rate for the streets of London; and, if there were to be further troubles in the counties, they could be dealt with in detail by the royal forces. It must have been patent to everybody that the strength of the rebellion was broken; and no man would see this more plainly than John Ball, who knew his countrymen so thoroughly. Even if he had faith to believe that the serfs had not struck their blow for freedom utterly in vain, he must have felt that he and his immediate friends had nothing to expect from the clemency of their enemies. He fled without delay to his native town of Coventry, and after a few days, probably recognised and betrayed by some one who knew him, the "mad priest" was captured in an old ruin—so Froissart tells us—and taken before the King at St. Albans. The unfortunate man had a short shrift; he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and the sentence was carried out in Richard's presence on the 15th of July.
- ↑ So in Shakspeare's Henry VI., Part 2, Dick the Butcher says to Cade: "The first thing we do, let 's kill all the lawyers."