A Great and Glorious Adventure

by Gordon Corrigan

  Then, later in the year 1378, an opportunity to hit back at the French by proxy presented itself when Charles of Navarre re-entered the frame. Charles had once again fallen out with Charles V of France, for much the same reasons as Edward III had with French monarchs over Aquitaine: Charles of Navarre was a king in his own right, but also held Navarre as a vassal of the French king, and, when Charles of France declared Navarre forfeit, Charles of Navarre appealed to England. The council was very happy to support Charles of Navarre on the grounds that any enemy of France was a friend of England, and contracted to send 1,000 men for a period of four months, in exchange for the port of Cherbourg. This was agreed and the English duly occupied Cherbourg.

  By the time the English army arrived in Navarre, however, delayed by bad weather and shortage of shipping, the situation had been resolved. Enrique of Castile had invaded Navarre on behalf of his French ally, but, when he heard that an English army had landed in Aquitaine and was on its way, he wisely withdrew. As the English troops, under Sir Thomas Trevet, who was at this time only in his late twenties but had fought for the Black Prince at Najera, were no longer required to defend Navarre, they embarked on a foray through Castile, reducing numerous Castilian towns, damaging Enrique’s reputation considerably and acquiring large quantities of booty before returning to England. Charles of Navarre, meanwhile, made his peace with the French, who retained the Navarrese lands in Normandy. While the tactical achievements of Trevet’s expedition were minor, the acquisition of Cherbourg was a major strategic gain: along with Brest, Bayonne, Bordeaux and Calais, England now had an outpost line of strongly fortified ports with which to counter French naval ambitions and which could serve as springboards for invasions of France.

  Charles of France, having at least gained the Normandy possessions of Navarre, decided to try the same ploy in Brittany, and in 1379 declared that he was confiscating that duchy. This time he went too far and the Bretons, touchy about their independence and with no wish to be part of France, took up arms and demanded the return of Duke John from England. Having secured a promise of English military support, John returned to Brittany, where he was welcomed with acclamation at Saint-Malo. The English army to support him had been agreed at 2,000 men-at-arms supported by the same number of archers for four and a half months from 1 August, but, when the English council discovered that they could not afford to pay and transport so many, the size of the contingent was reduced to 650 of each arm.66 They were to be under the overall command of Sir John Arundel, the defender of Southampton, who had been part of the relieving force sent to Brest in 1377 and was in Cherbourg in 1378.

  The troops duly mustered at Southampton, but the weather and problems in finding troop transports delayed their departure and Sir John is said to have billeted his immediate retinue in a convent, dismissing the mother superior’s protests that the presence of such a large number of young men might lead to ‘an unforgivable sin which would bring shame and disgrace to the nunnery’.35 The unforgivable sin duly occurred. Arundel did nothing to stop it (commanders of other units in the area managed to keep their men under control), and it extended to the soldiery looting the silver from a local church and generally behaving like their modern successors on a Saturday night in a garrison town. When ships were finally found, Arundel’s men took some of the nuns along with them, no doubt to sew on buttons during the journey, and divine retribution caught up with them when a violent storm raged in the Channel. Most of the ships carrying horses sank, either off the coast of Cornwall or off Ireland, and in an effort to lighten the troop-ships the men are said to have thrown most of the nuns overboard. When that had no effect, the ladies were followed by the accumulated plunder of Hampshire. Arundel’s own vessel ran aground off Ireland in December and he was drowned. Sir Hugh Calveley and most of the other captains survived.

  While the French assault on what was left of English France had been halted, lack of coordination between the various expeditionary forces on land and at sea meant that much of the expenditure on men, ships and weapons was to no great purpose. When Edward III was alive, there was a strong king who made decisions, supported by an administration that could carry them out. Now rule was by committee, never a recipe for strong government, and, although decisions were made in the king’s name, they were too often a distillation of conflicting opinions resulting in weak compromise. Dissatisfaction with the way the war was being conducted and the tax burden imposed to pay for it eventually boiled over in 1381.

  The catalyst was the decision in June 1380 to send another expedition to help the duke of Brittany. The king’s uncle, the twenty-six-year-old duke of Buckingham, would be in command with around 5,000 soldiers, probably 3,000 men-at-arms and 2,000 archers, all to be mounted. Given the difficulty of finding enough ships and the ever-present threat of storms in the Channel, the troops would be ferried by the most direct route from Dover and Sandwich to Calais, from where they would make a chevauchée to link up with Duke John at Rennes. On 24 June, the army marched from Calais, creating the usual swathe of destruction as it went across the Somme, to Rheims, south of Paris, and then to Rennes, but without meeting a single French army, Charles V having instructed his commanders that on no account were they to offer battle. Buckingham was now running short of money, and a request was sent back to England asking for sufficient funds to maintain the army throughout the winter and to continue campaigning in the spring. At home, the treasury was empty and, after much argument, it was decided by Parliament that the government’s demand for £150,000 – to cover the expenses of Buckingham’s army and the maintenance of the fortress ports (where the garrisons had not been paid for months), with possibly a little to be secreted for John of Gaunt’s ambitions in Spain and Portugal (he intended to pursue a claim to the throne of Castile by reason of being married to Pedro the Cruel’s daughter) – was too much. They would agree to find £100,000: two-thirds from the laity and one-third from the church. And then Charles V died, Duke John came to terms with his successor, and Buckingham’s army was left high and dry with no option but to go home. It was to be the last major English expedition of the fourteenth century.

  In England, the imposition of yet another poll tax caused widespread discontent. It had last been levied in 1377, when the amount was graded according to rank and ability to pay, with the basic rate being one groat or four pence. Now it was to be a flat rate of one shilling – three times as much and with no concessions according to income. Since the death of Edward III, there had been a number of levies but with very little to show for them: English possessions in France were being whittled away, the seas were no longer safe, and, despite the huge reduction in population caused by the various outbreaks of plague, many magnates were insisting on the imposition of manorial rights and duties that were no longer relevant nor seen to be fair. When the time came to collect the tax, there was widespread avoidance, evasion and fraud, with householders hiding their wives and children or taking to the woods to avoid the commissioners or simply refusing to pay. In May, a commissioner was set upon in Essex, and, when the Chief Justice of Common Pleas was sent to investigate, he too was set upon. By the end of the month, widespread rioting had broken out in Essex and in early June it had spread to Kent. There had often been outbreaks of local indiscipline in the past, but they had always been contained; this time it was serious, the most serious attack on authority in England of the fourteenth century. As usual the rebels were blaming the king’s evil counsellors and, under the watchword ‘King Richard and the True Commons’, they demanded the heads of those they called traitors. With the army still away in France or on the Scottish borders, it was a good time to stage a revolt, and the government was slow to react.

  Although these events are known to history as the Peasants’ Revolt, the name is misleading. While many of those who embarked on widespread hooliganism were indeed peasants – probably the majority – a great number were tenant farmers, small-holders, owners of land in their own right and local government officials – ju
rors, reeves, bailiffs and constables. There must also have been large numbers of demobilized archers in their ranks. The fact that the various rebel groupings were able to communicate with each other and were reasonably well disciplined would indicate that there were enough men of education and accustomed to leadership to provide a cadre of officers of sorts.

  As disorder and rebellion spread, the king, the royal family and the king’s counsellors took refuge in the Tower. One of the party was the king’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, who was the same age as the king and who would eventually supplant him and rule as Henry IV. The king was persuaded to meet the rebels, who were now in the London suburbs with the gates of the city closed against them, and on 13 June the king left the Tower by barge and was rowed downriver to Rotherhithe. There he addressed the rebels from the boat, his advisers having considered that it was too dangerous for him to disembark. The demands of the rebels were presented to the king: the heads of John of Gaunt, the Chancellor (the archbishop of Canterbury), the Chief Justice and the Treasurer – to which the king gave the diplomatic reply that they should have whatever heads they liked subject to the law, whereupon he was rowed back to the Tower.

  The rebels were now running out of supplies and the obvious place for them to get them was London. Moving along south of the river, they looted the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth and released the occupants of Southwark prison. Then, despite the orders of Lord Mayor Walworth, somebody lowered the drawbridge over London Bridge and opened the gate. The rebels poured in and – their movements clearly organized – looted John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace and the lawyers’ offices at the Temple, released prisoners from the Fleet and Newgate, and, almost inevitably, slaughtered any foreigners (mainly Flemings) who could be found. The king could only watch form the Tower as the plumes of smoke rose over the city. By this time, the acknowledged leader of the revolt was Walter the Tiler, or Wat Tyler, whose origins are obscure. He may have been from Kent or from Essex, his home may have been in Maidstone or in Colchester, and he was probably indeed a tiler, although there are suggestions that he may have been of the Kentish gentry.

  The king agreed to meet the rebels again, at Mile End on 14 June, and now their demands went way beyond just the heads of those whom they disliked. There were political issues too: the abolition of serfdom and villeinage, a fixed rent of fourpence an acre for land, equality of all men below the king (abolition of the lords and knights) and an amnesty for all involved in the revolt. The king announced that he would grant all the demands and returned to the Tower, to discover that during his absence another group of rebels had forced entrance, dragged out the Chancellor, Archbishop Sudbury, and the Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, and beheaded them both on Tower Hill. Henry Bolingbroke was fortunate not to have suffered the same fate. Whether the murders were at the instigation of Tyler, who may or may not have been present at Mile End, we do not know. Most of the rebels now dispersed and began to make their way home, satisfied that the king had granted their demands, but a hard core including Tyler remained, and the king agreed to meet them the next day at Smithfield.

  On Sunday, 15 June, the king rode out from the Tower, escorted by 200 mounted men-at-arms, some of his household and the Lord Mayor. At Smithfield, the king’s party lined up at one end of the field and the rebels at the other. Tyler was summoned to speak to the king and rode across the field on horseback. What happened then is disputed and depends on which chronicler you believe. Tyler may or may not have got off his horse. He may have seized the king’s hand, called him ‘brother’ and failed to remove his hat. He may have added to the previous day’s demands the disestablishment of the church and the abolition of the offence of outlawry, and he may have demanded a flagon of wine to quench his thirst. He may have drawn a dagger and threatened the Lord Mayor, or he may have been accused of being a thief and a knave by a squire of the king’s household. Alternatively, it may have been the intention all along to arrest or kill Tyler, a plan to which the king may or may not have been privy. What is not in dispute, though, is that Tyler was stabbed, probably by Mayor Walworth, and fell to the ground. Some of his men, former army archers, seeing their leader felled, strung their bows, whereupon the young king, showing considerable courage (or perhaps, given he was a spoilt child, it never occurred to him that he might be in danger and he simply had no fear), cantered over to them, drew his sword, and invited them to look upon him as their captain and to follow him to Clerkenwell, where he would grant them all that they had asked. The rebels set off to Clerkenwell and the king and his escort made their own way, while Mayor Walworth may or may not have galloped back to the city and called out any available soldiers, knights and citizens accustomed to bearing arms. The resulting group, numbering 1,000 according to Walsingham but probably several hundred, set out for Clerkenwell, where they may or may not have surrounded the rebels and forced them to drop their weapons, or the rebels may have simply been persuaded to go home and escorted to the city gates by knights of the king’s household. What is not in doubt is that the dying Tyler was rushed to Tyburn and hanged under the auspices of the Lord Mayor.

  With the death of Tyler and the dispersal of the rebel armies that had converged on London, the revolt collapsed, although mopping up took a little longer. Initially, it was the government’s intention to promote reconciliation. There were few executions and, as a result of legal arguments over what exactly defined treason, those that were carried out were mainly for felony, until there was a renewed flaring up in Essex. This time, there would be no mercy and anyone remotely suspected of rebellion was tried and hanged or beheaded. The king did not, of course, keep any of his promises to the rebels, and the lesson of successful deceit was not lost on him, nor did he fail to notice the rebels’ touching faith in him personally. Although the king avoided having to grant concessions on this occasion, later in his reign there was some reform of the administration, forced upon him by the members of Parliament and the money-granting power that they and they alone had, one which they guarded jealously.

  In France, too, there was revolt caused by excessive taxation, but ruthless and immediate action by the duke of Burgundy put it down. However much some elements in both countries wanted to continue the war, neither could afford to do more than engage in inconclusive skirmishes at sea, and a threatened French invasion of England in 1386 was called off because of bad weather and an exaggerated French view of the reception that they might get.67 While a continuance of the war by England would undoubtedly have been attractive to her soldiers, who saw it as the only way to make a name and a fortune, it had cost the treasury dear: shipments of wool or wine could now only be carried in armed convoys, which made them hideously expensive, and the pay of the garrisons in English France was reduced to an extent that the men had to rely on ransoms and extortion to survive. That ransoms and extortion were a good source of income is evidenced by the fact that desertions and mutinies as a result of the reduction in pay were very few.

  Richard II was now growing up and increasingly resenting the control exercised by the various councils established to govern the realm. When his uncle Gloucester and the earl of Arundel demanded the sacking of the chancellor Richard de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, because of his disastrous foreign policy – one which had failed to prevent the French gaining control of Flanders and had lost England the support of John of Brittany – the king arrogantly said that he would not dismiss a scullion from his kitchen on their say-so. When Gloucester reminded the king that monarchs had been deposed before and pointed to the case of his own grandfather, Edward II, Richard then overreached himself by saying that his subjects were in rebellion against him and he would ask his brother the king of France’ to aid him. But, rather than instigate outright opposition, Richard now backtracked; Suffolk was dismissed and impeached, and a new council with Gloucester and Arundel as leading members was installed. Nonetheless, Richard’s insistence on the appointment of court favourites to lucrative offices and his failure to prosecute the confli
ct with France very nearly led to civil war, with Gloucester, Arundel and their associates and armed retinues on one side and the king and soldiers paid by him personally on the other.

  The Lords Appellant,68 as the opposition termed themselves, won the only battle, at Radcot Bridge in December 1387, and the following year the so-called Merciless Parliament sentenced five of the king’s friends to suffer the death of traitors, with the full panoply of drawing, hanging and quartering. However much they may have deserved it, theirs was judicial murder all the same and the king would have his revenge – but not just yet. His first move came the following year, 1389, when he announced that henceforth he would reign in his own right, which, at the age of twenty-two, he was fully entitled to do. He was crafty enough not to change many of the court appointments that the Lords Appellant had forced upon him, nor to upset the lords themselves. With the national coffers empty, the crown jewels pawned, large loans due to be called in and Scottish raids on the increase, Richard desperately needed to bring the war with France to a close. He needed peace and genuinely seems to have wanted it, and this view was shared on the other side of the Channel. So, in 1389, a temporary truce was agreed while negotiations for something more permanent could take place. England gave up Cherbourg and Brest, which brought murmurings from the Lords Appellant but did not disturb a sort of peace that endured for the next few years. During this time, Richard made his court as glorious – and as expensive to finance – as any in Europe and quietly began to recruit soldiers, mainly from Cheshire, who wore his livery of the white hart badge rather than the accepted English cross of St George.