POLITICAL HISTORY Black Death, to be more rigidly exacted if the land was to be tilled and the crops gathered at all. This was the grievance against the lords and squires.^ Thirdly the great dislike felt by the common people to the extortions and oppressions of certain religious houses. Lastly but not least,^ trade jealousy felt against the Flemings, who had come over to the county not long before, and the countryman's jealousy against the special privileges granted by the king to the cities. We have already seen that as early as i 3 1 2 there was an organized system of terrorism in Norwich, so that foreign merchants had ceased to resort to the city, and in I 371 the king's writ in favour of the Flemings no doubt gave great offence to the manufacturers. From the entries on pp. 32, 36, 61, 63, and 135 of Mr. Powell's Rising in East Anglia, it is clear that the rebels here lost no opportunity of murdering any Flemish who came in their way. Stow also in his Annals * speaks of the rioters in London fetching out thirteen Flemings from the Augustine Friars in London, seventeen out of another church, and thirty-two from the Vintry, all of whom they beheaded. Probably any one or two of these four causes would not have sufficed to raise so formidable a rebellion as this, but all four fomented at once by men of ability formed a mixed yeast strong enough to make the whole country rise. Mr. Powell suggests* that Richard II himself was ready to use the popular discontent against his uncle, the duke of Lancaster, and there was- certainly a widespread belief in the king's complicity.^ The most mysterious, part of the whole business is that men like Sir Roger Bacon of Baconsthorpe and Thomas de Gissing should have actively led the Norfolk insurgents. Roger Bacon was the grandson of the Thomas Bacon of Baconsthorpe (nephew, it is thought, of the ' Resolute Doctor ') who had adhered to the earl of Lancaster and had been pardoned in 131 3, and who had a hand in the death of Piers Gaveston. Thomas de Gissing was son of Sir Thomas de Gissing, M.P. for Norfolk, who was one of the Black Prince's force in Aquitaine. Neither of these was likely to espouse the cause of the peasants without some good cause. So much for the causes of the rebellion. We will now proceed to describe it. Though Geoffrey le Litester was the nominal head of the rebels, it seems that the task of riding round from 14 to 21 June, 1381, from village to village, making proclamations in his name for all men to rise in arms, was allotted to John Gentilhomme and Richard Filmond, both of Buxton.* The first blow was struck 16 June at a manor house of the duke of Lancaster at Methwold, where his court rolls were burned. The next day, under the command of Sir Roger Lister^ (it is strange we see nothing of 1 It should be remembered that little more than twenty years before there had been a similar peasants' insurrection in France. ' It is noticeable that no less than six men of the name of Lister (a dyer) were implicated in this rebellion, and there is no reason to suppose that they were related. ' Stow, Annals (Howes), 288. * Rising in East Anglia, 59. ' In Hertfordshire the rebels displayed a standard emblazoned with the royal arms. Coram Rege Roll 482, cited by Powell. ' Powell (op. cit 27) cites Anct. Indictments, i2 8,Norf South Erpingham Hundred. Buxton is a village on the Bure — one of the Rye manors, and was then held by Thomas Lord Morley, afterwards captain-general of the forces in France, 141 6, who took an active part in suppressing the rebellion. ' Is it possible that confusion arose between Sir Roger Bacon and Lister ? 483
