The Last Plantagenet

by Thomas B. Costain

  The river banks about Greenwich were black with the peasant hordes, and to the nervous eyes on the barges it was only too clear that this was a mob completely lacking in order and discipline. Some cheers were raised for the gaily dressed king standing on the prow, but most of the voices were clamoring loudly for the heads of his unpopular ministers. Froissart says they were brandishing their weapons and “shrieking like men possessed.” It was an awesome spectacle, without a doubt. Not waiting for orders, the men in charge of the barges brought them to a standstill a considerable distance from the shore.

  Still confident of his power to control the situation, the boy king stepped close to the rail of the royal barge.

  “Sirs,” he cried, in a voice which adolescence made shrill and high, “I have come to listen. What want ye?”

  The rebels did not leave it to their leaders to answer. They began to cry out that they could not talk with him unless he came ashore. The noise was so great that Richard had no chance to make himself heard again.

  It is not on record that the king made any further efforts, but the men about him would not have permitted him to go ashore. It would be the height of folly, so ran their minds, to deliver him thus into their hands to be held as a hostage. The Earl of Salisbury called out that an audience was impossible under these circumstances. It is even said he protested that the noisy petitioners were not suitably dressed to face the king, but this, surely, is beyond belief.

  They swung the barges about and began the return trip. The oars dipped and swayed and the backs of the rowers strained at the task, while the men about the youthful king watched the crowded shores with apprehensive eyes. They knew that a single discharge of arrows from the longbows that many of the peasants carried over their shoulders would sweep the barges like a lethal hail.

  But not a bow was bent nor a single bolt launched against the cloudless sky. It was clear that the peasants were sincere in their devotion to the youthful king.

  3

  The effort to confer with Richard having failed, the men from Kent began to march in angry haste toward London Bridge. Another disaffected alderman comes into the story at this point, Walter Sibley, whose district was Billingsgate. He was posted on the bridge with a small company of men, and his instructions were to prevent the lowering of the drawbridge. Whether from fear or because he was in accord with the plans drawn up the previous night, he took one look at the multitudes assembling at the southern end and threw up his hands.

  “We can’t hold out,” he said to his supporters.

  Signaling to drop the bridge, he turned and led his company from behind in an exit from the great stone bridge.

  If a pause is permissible at this stage, something should be said about London Bridge. This miracle in stone (for in the eyes of all men it was nothing short of miraculous) had been started in 1176 by Peter of Colechurch, a charity priest. It had been built to stand for all time. Starting at the foot of Fish Street by the church of St. Magnus the Martyr, it stretched to the far shore. It was carried by twenty stone piers about which the daily tides and freshets of Father Thames roiled and protested in vain. It was no less than forty feet wide, and the citizens of London Town had quickly availed themselves of the possibilities of this broad highway, building shops and houses and even chapels on both sides. Life on the bridge had many advantages. A man in trade was afforded the chance to attract the eye of a visitor before he reached the city, and in no part of town were the apprentices more vociferous in their chorus of “What lack ye?” “Come, sir, a bolt of the best cloth?” “A pair of shoes?” “A gaud for your lady?” The mere householder enjoyed a vista of ever changing excitement: the wool barges coming down the river, the heavily weighted tin boats, the foreign ships sailing as far up the estuary as their tonnage allowed, the arrival and departure of notables. By dropping a bucket on a rope they could scoop in a quick supply of fresh water or a piece of ice in the spring.

  They probably did not count it a disadvantage that over their homes on elevated pikes were the heads of men who had died at the block, staring up the river with empty sockets (for the crows found the human eye a delectable morsel), the flesh rotting and falling off in reeking strips. It needed the elevation of a new head to win the attention of the bridge dwellers.

  Close by the central arch, which formed the drawbridge, was a chapel in which lay the bones of Peter of Colechurch. It is conceivable that he turned in his grave on this warm June morning, for never before had his great bridge witnessed anything like the passing of the peasants. Without so much as a pause at the toll booths, they came in perfect order. The leaders rode on horseback, followed by three swaying banners of the insurrection (with slogans coined, no doubt, by John Ball), and after them an endless parade of ragged and determined men, gathered into companies according to the county or town from which they came, on their now ragged tunics the medals of pilgrimage which they had purchased for themselves in Canterbury. They marched four abreast, the tramp of their feet sounding without any cessation hour after hour.

  John Horne’s promises were borne out. The peasant army met with no opposition. The apprentices were out to welcome them, waving their clubs and screeching loudly. The brothers of the salamon (a term much in use in the cant of the crooks) had slunk out from their cellars and the dark corners of deserted mews, ready to bear a hand in breaking open the prisons and in pillaging the houses of wealthy citizens. The substantial burghers, anxious to make the best of it, offered food to these hungry seekers of justice. The peasants partook of their hospitality with voracious appetites, and it is said that a few of them paid for their meals!

  An extraordinary occasion, indeed, a day long to be remembered: June 13, when the embattled tillers of the soil took over the city of London without opposition of any kind. Not a blow struck, not a head broken.

  4

  With well-filled stomachs, the invaders turned to the pleasing prospect of revenge. They knew that John of Gaunt was away, but down the Thames stood his great palace. “To the Savoy!” was the almost unanimous cry.

  The leaders were still in control and strict orders were issued that there must be no thievery and no killing. Any man who tried to benefit from the loot of this royal structure must suffer as Achan did; Achan, the son of Israel who secreted gold and silver after the walls of Jericho fell and who was taken out on Joshua’s orders and stoned to death.

  At first these strict injunctions were obeyed. The household at the palace was permitted to leave, even Gaunt’s beautiful mistress and future wife, Katharine Swynford, who had been left there in possession with her children. The walls of the Great Hall were stripped of priceless tapestries and silver sconces, the prayer rugs from the East and the rare weapons and relics. The State Chambers were ransacked, and the Privy Suite where the duke’s red velvet bed stood. In the Avalon Chamber was the marble mantel which had taken two years to carve, the most beautiful possession of all. The mantel was hacked to pieces with furious picks. The bancas of oriental woods (a special form of bench) were carried out to the courtyard and thrown into the bonfires already blazing high. The gold and silver plate was hacked into small pieces, so small that each bit could be carried off under a belt as a souvenir of the day. One man disregarded the stern orders which had been issued. He secreted a silver goblet of rare design under his jerkin. Still conscious of the need for sobriety and honesty, and remembering the fate meted out to Achan, the rioters took this miscreant and drowned him in the river.

  Others were more successful. A group of men from Rochester got their hands on the duke’s strongbox which contained a veritable fortune, £1000 no less. They managed to smuggle it out of the grounds and vanished across the river in the direction of Southwark.

  During the looting, a ceremonial cloak belonging to Duke John was found in the Privy Suite, a handsome thing of Lancastrian blue with pearls sewn in the sleeve embroideries. This was stretched around the trunk of a tree and those who had their bows with them proceeded to fill it with arrows. No other in
cident was as significant of the depth of personal hatred the common people had conceived for this glossy son of the old king.

  As soon as the hatred of the mob had been thus vented in the destruction of the execrated duke’s treasures, they exploded some barrels of gunpowder and sent the building up in flames. By nightfall nothing was left of the magnificence which the duke had gathered about him. The fire trapped some members of the mob who had broken into the cellars and ensconced themselves before the pipes of rare wines. Their cries were not heard until the fire was out of control, and they were burned alive.

  It should be made clear that the loot of the Savoy was not the work exclusively of the peasants. Many of the lower orders of the citizenry joined in the work of destruction and were much less scrupulous in their handling of the costly contents. Many a cutpurse had rings and precious stones hidden away in secret pockets under belts. Many apprentices thereafter flaunted belts of Spanish leather and purses of velvet.

  Having thus cast discretion and sobriety to the winds, the men who had marched to London to demand justice and had turned to license proceeded to burn the Temple to the ground. They turned out the archives and threw all the state and legal papers into the bonfires. The lawyers, the Black Robes, had departed long before, being shrewd enough to know that the mobs could not be held in check, and thereby had saved their skins.

  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.

  CHAPTER X

  The Boy King Takes Hold

  1

  THE 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 sligh
tly 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.