by Will Durant
Meanwhile related uprisings occurred in Norfolk, Suffolk, Beverly, Bridgewater, Cambridge, Essex, Middlesex, Sussex, Hertford, Somerset. At Bury St. Edmund the people cut off the head of the prior, who had too stoutly asserted the feudal rights of the abbey over the town. At Colchester the rioters killed several Florentine merchants who were believed to be cutting in on British trade. Wherever possible they destroyed the rolls, leases, or charters that recorded feudal ownership or bondage; hence the townsfolk of Cambridge burned the charters of the University; and at Waltham every document in the abbey archives was committed to the flames.
On June 11 a rebel army from Essex and Hertford approached the northern outskirts of London; on the twelfth the Kent insurgents reached Southwark, just across the Thames. No organized resistance was offered by the adherents of the King. Richard II, Sudbury, and Hales hid in the Tower. Tyler sent the King a request for an interview; it was refused. The mayor of London, William Walworth, closed the city gates, but they were reopened by revolutionists within the town. On June 13 the Kent forces marched into the capital, were welcomed by the people, and were joined by thousands of laborers. Tyler held his host fairly well in leash, but appeased its fury by allowing it to sack the palace of John of Gaunt. Nothing was stolen there; one rioter who tried to filch a silver goblet was killed by the crowd. But everything was destroyed; costly furniture was thrown out of the windows, rich hangings were torn to rags, jewelry was smashed to bits; then the house was burned to the ground, and some jolly rebels who had drunk themselves to stupor in the wine cellar were forgotten and consumed in the flames. Thereafter the army turned on the Temple, citadel of the lawyers of England; the peasants remembered that lawyers had written the deeds of their servitude, or had assessed their holdings for taxation; there too they made a holocaust of the records, and burned the buildings to the ground. The jails in Newgate and the Fleet were destroyed, and the happy inmates joined the mob. Wearied with its efforts to crowd a century of revenge into a day, the multitudes lay down in the open spaces of the city, and slept.
That evening the King’s Council thought better of its refusal to let him talk with Tyler. They sent an invitation to Tyler and his followers to meet with Richard the next morning at a northern suburb known as Mile End. Shortly after dawn on June 14 the fourteen-year-old King, risking his life, rode out of the Tower with all of his council except Sudbury and Hales, who dared not expose themselves. The little party made its way through the hostile crowd to Mile End, where the Essex rebels were already gathered; part of the Kent army followed, with Tyler at its head. He was surprised at the readiness of Richard to grant nearly all demands. Serfdom was to be abolished throughout England, all feudal dues and services were to end, the rental of the tenants would be as they had asked; and a general amnesty would absolve all those who had shared in the revolt. Thirty clerks were at once set to work drawing up charters of freedom and forgiveness for all districts that applied. One demand the King refused—that the royal ministers and other “traitors” should be surrendered to the people. Richard replied that all persons accused of misconduct in government would be tried by orderly process of law, and would be punished if found guilty.
Not satisfied with this answer, Tyler and a selected band rode rapidly to the Tower. They found Sudbury singing Mass in the chapel. They dragged him out into the courtyard and forced him down with his neck on a log. The executioner was an amateur, and required eight strokes of the ax to sever the head. The insurgents then beheaded Hales and two others. Upon the Archbishop’s head they fixed his miter firmly with a nail driven into the skull; they mounted the heads on pikes, carried them in procession through the city, and set them up over the gate of London Bridge. All the remainder of that day was spent in slaughter. London tradesmen, resenting Flemish competition, bade the crowd kill every Fleming found in the capital. To determine the nationality of a suspect he was shown bread and cheese and bidden name them; if he answered brod und käse, or spoke with a Flemish brogue, he forfeited his life. Over 150 aliens—merchants and bankers—were slain in London on that day in June, and many English lawyers, tax collectors, and adherents of John of Gaunt fell under the axes and hatchets of indiscriminate vengeance. Apprentices murdered their masters, debtors their creditors. At midnight the sated victors again retired to rest.
Informed of these events, the King returned from Mile End and went, not to the Tower, but to his mother’s rooms near St. Paul’s. Meanwhile a large number of the Essex and Hertford contingents, rejoicing in their charters of freedom, dispersed toward their homes. On June 15 the King sent a modest message to the remaining rebels asking them to meet him in the open spaces of Smithfield outside Aldersgate. Tyler agreed. Before keeping this rendezvous, Richard, fearing death, confessed and took the Sacrament; then he rode out with a retinue of 200 men whose peaceful garb hid swords. At Smithfield Tyler came forward with only a single companion to guard him. He made new demands, uncertainly reported, but apparently including the confiscation of Church property and the distribution of the proceeds among the people.62 A dispute ensued; one of the King’s escort called Tyler a thief; Tyler directed his aide to strike the man down; Mayor Walworth blocked the way; Tyler stabbed at Walworth, whose life was saved by the armor under his cloak; Walworth wounded Tyler with a short cutlass, and one of Richard’s squires ran Tyler through twice with a sword. Tyler rode back to his host crying treason, and fell dead at their feet. Shocked by what seemed to them plain treachery, the rebels set their arrows and prepared to shoot. Though their numbers were reduced, they were still a substantial force, reckoned by Froissart at 20,000; probably they could have overwhelmed the King’s retinue. But Richard now rode out bravely toward them, crying out, “Sirs, will you shoot your king? I will be your chief and captain; you shall have from me that which you seek. Only follow me into the fields without.” He rode out slowly, not sure that they would heed or spare him. The insurgents hesitated, then followed him, and most of the royal guard mingled in their midst.
Walworth, however, turned sharply back, galloped into the city, and sent orders to the aldermen of its twenty-four wards to join him with all the armed forces they could muster. Many citizens who at first had sympathized with the revolt were now disturbed by the murders and pillage; every man who had any property felt his goods and his life to be in peril; so the Mayor found an impromptu army of 7,000 men rising at his command as if out of the earth. These he led back to Smithfield; there he rejoined and surrounded the King, and offered to massacre the rebels. Richard refused; the rebels had spared him when he was at their mercy, and he would not now show himself less generous. He announced to them that they were free to depart in safety. The Essex and Hertford remnants rapidly melted away; the London mutineers disappeared into their haunts; only the Kent contingent stayed. Their passage through the city was blocked by Walworth’s armed men, but Richard ordered that no one should molest them; they marched off in safety, and filed back in disorder along the Old Kent Road. The King returned to his mother, who greeted him with tears of happy relief. “Ah, fair son, what pain and anguish have I had for you this day!” “Certes, Madam,” the boy answered. “I know it well. But now rejoice and praise God, for today I have recovered my heritage that was lost, and the realm of England too.” 63
Fig. 1—POL DE LIMBURG: The Month of October, a miniature from Les Très Riches Heures du Due de Berry. Musée Condé, Chantilly
Fig. 2—CLAUS SLUTER: Moses. Museum, Dijon
Fig. 3—HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK: The Virgin, detail from The Adoration of the Lamb. Church of St. Bavon, Ghent
Fig. 4—HUBERT AND JAN VAN EYCK: The Adoration of the lamb. Church of St. Bavon, Ghent
Fig. 5—King’s College Chapel (interior), Cambridge
Fig. 6—Chapel of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey, London
Fig. 7—House of Jacques Cœur, Bourges
Fig. 8—ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN: Portrait of a Lady. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (Mellon Collection)
Fig. 9—MATTHIAS
GRÜNE-WALD: The Crucifixion, detail from the Isenheim Altarpiece. Museum, Colmar
Fig. 10—ALBRECHT DÜRER: Portrait of Hieronymus Holzschuher. Kaiser Friedrich Museum, Berlin
Fig. 11—HANS HOLBEIN THE YOUNGER: Erasmus. Louvre, Paris
Fig. 12—ALBRECHT DÜRER: The Four Apostles (at left: John and Peter; at right: Mark and Paul). Haus der Kunst, Munich
Fig. 13—LUCAS CRANACH: Martin Luther. The John G. Johnson Art Collection, Philadelphia
Fig. 14—Luther Memorial, Worms
Fig. 15—ALBRECHT DÜRER: Philip Melanchthon. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Fig. 16—RENÉ BOYVIN: Calvin. Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire, Geneva
Fig. 17—Reformation Monument, Geneva
Fig. 18—Chateau of Francis I, Chambord
Fig. 19—Gallery of Francis I, Fontainebleau
Fig. 20—Church of St. Maclou, Rouen
Fig. 21—TITIAN: Charles V at Mühlberg. Prado, Madrid
Fig. 22—MICHEL COLOMBE: St. George and the Dragon. Louvre, Paris
Fig. 23—JEAN GOUJON: Water Nymphs, from Fountain of the Innocents. Louvre, Paris
Fig. 24—JEAN CLOUET: Francis L Louvre, Paris
Probably under the prodding of the Mayor who had saved him, Richard on that same June 15 issued a proclamation banishing from London, on pain of death, all persons who had not lived there for a year past. Walworth and his troops searched streets and tenements for such aliens, caught many, killed several. Among these was one Jack Straw, who confessed, presumably under torture, that the men of Kent had planned to make Tyler king. In the meantime a deputation from the Essex insurgents arrived at Waltham and demanded of the King a formal ratification of the promises he had made on June 14. Richard replied that these had been made under duress, and that he had no intention of keeping them; on the contrary, he told them, “Villeins you are still, and villeins you shall remain”; and he threatened dread vengeance on any man who continued in armed rebellion.64 The angry deputies called upon their followers to renew the revolt; some did, but these were cut down with great slaughter by Walworth’s men (June 28).
On July 2 the embittered King revoked all charters and amnesties granted by him during the outbreak, and opened the way to a judicial inquiry into the identity and actions of the main participants. Hundreds were arrested and tried; 110 or more were put to death. John Ball was caught at Coventry; he fearlessly avowed his leading role in the insurrection, and refused to ask pardon of the King. He was hanged, drawn, and quartered; and his head, with those of Tyler and Jack Straw, replaced those of Sudbury and Hales as adornments of London Bridge. On November 13 Richard laid before Parliament an account of his actions; if, he said, the assembled prelates and lords and commons wished the serfs to be freed, he was quite willing. But the members were nearly all landowners; they could not admit the right of the King to dispose of their property; they voted that all existing feudal relations should be maintained.65 The beaten peasants returned to their plows, the sullen workers to their looms.
IV. THE NEW LITERATURE
The English language was becoming by slow stages a fit vehicle for literature. The Norman invasion of 1066 had stopped the evolution of Anglo-Saxon into English, and for a time French was the official language of the realm. Gradually a new vocabulary and idiom formed, basically Germanic, but mingled and adorned with Gallic words and turns. The long war with France may have spurred the nation to rebel against this linguistic domination by an enemy. In 1362 English was declared to be the language of law and the courts; and in 1363 the chancellor set a precedent by opening Parliament with an English address. Scholars, chroniclers, and philosophers (even till Francis Bacon) continued to write in Latin to reach an international audience, but poets and dramatists henceforth spoke the speech of England.
The oldest drama extant in English was a “mystery”—a dramatic representation of a religious story—performed in the Midlands, about 1350, under the title of The Harrowing of Hell, which staged a duel in words, at the mouth of hell, between Satan and Christ, In the fourteenth century it became customary for the guilds of a town to present a cycle of mysteries: a guild would prepare a scene, usually from the Bible, carry the setting and the actors on a float, and act the scenes on temporary stages built at populous centers in the city; and on successive days other guilds would present later scenes from the same Biblical narrative. The earliest such cycle now known is that of the Chester mysteries of 1328; by 1400 similar cycles were presented in York, Beverly, Cambridge, Coventry, Wakefield, Towneley, and London. As early as 1182 the Latin mysteries had developed a variety called the “miracle,” centering around the miracle or sufferings of some saint. About 1378 another variety appeared—the “morality”—which pointed a moral by acting a tale; this form would reach its peak in Everyman (c. 1480). Early in the fifteenth century we hear of still another dramatic form, doubtless then already old: the interlude, not a play between plays but a ludus—a play or show—carried on between two or more actors. Its subject was not restricted to religion or morality, but might be secular, humorous, profane, even obscene. Minstrel troupes played interludes in baronial or guild halls, in town or village squares, or in the courtyard of a frequented inn. In 1348 Exeter raised the first-known English theater, the first European building, since classic Roman structures, specifically and regularly devoted to dramatic representations.66 From the interludes would evolve the comedies, and from the mysteries and moralities would develop the tragedies, of the lusty Elizabethan stage.
The first major poem—one of the strangest and strongest poems—in the English language called itself The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. Nothing is known of the author except through his poem; assuming that this is autobiographical, we may name him William Langland and place his birth near 1332. He took minor orders, but never became a priest; he wandered to London and earned something short of starvation by singing Psalms at Masses for the dead. He lived dissolutely, sinned with “covetousness of eyes and concupiscence of the flesh,” had a daughter, perhaps married her mother, and dwelled with them in a hovel in Cornhill. He describes himself as a tall, gaunt figure, dressed in a somber robe befitting the gray disillusionment of his hopes. He was fond of his poem, issued it thrice (1362, 1377, 1394), and each time spun it out to greater length. Like the Anglo-Saxon poets, he used no rhyme, but alliterative verse of irregular meter.
He begins by picturing himself as falling asleep on a Malvern hill, and seeing in a dream a “field full of folk”—multitudes of rich, poor, good, bad, young, old—and amid them a fair and noble lady whom he identifies with Holy Church. He kneels before her and begs for “no treasure, but tell me how I may save my soul.” She replies:
When all treasures are tried, Truth is best....
Whoso is true of his tongue, and telleth naught but that,
And doeth the works therewith, and willeth no man ill,
He is a god by the gospel...and like to Our Lord.67
In a second dream he visions the Seven Deadly Sins, and under each head he indicts the wickedness of man in a powerful satire. For a time he abandons himself to cynical pessimism, awaiting an early end of the world. Then Piers (Peter) the Plowman enters the poem. He is a model farmer, honest, friendly, generous, trusted by all, working hard, living faithfully with his wife and children, and always a pious son of the Church. In later visions William sees the same Piers as the human Christ, as Peter the Apostle, as a pope, then as vanishing in the Papal Schism and the advent of Antichrist. The clergy, says the poet, are no longer a saving remnant; many of them have become corrupt; they deceive the simple, absolve the rich for a consideration, traffic in sacred things, sell heaven itself for a coin. What is a Christian to do in such a universal debacle? He must, says William, go forth again, over all intervening institutions and corruptions, and seek the living Christ Himself.68
Piers the Plowman contains its quota of nonsense, and its obscure allegories weary any reader who lays upon authors the moral obligation to
be clear. But it is a sincere poem, flays rascals impartially, pictures the human scene vividly, rises through touches of feeling and beauty to a place second only to the Canterbury Tales in the English literature of the fourteenth century. Its influence was remarkable; Piers became for the rebels of England a symbol of the righteous, fearless peasant; John Ball recommended him to the Essex insurgents of 1381; as late as the Reformation his name was invoked in criticizing the old religious order and demanding a new.69 In ending his visions, the poet returned from Piers the pope to Piers again the peasant; if all of us, he concluded, were, like Piers, simple, practicing Christians, that would be the greatest, the final revolution; no other would ever be needed.
John Gower is a less romantic poet and figure than the mysterious Langland. He was a rich landowner of Kent who imbibed too much scholastic erudition, and achieved dullness in three languages. He, too, attacked the faults of the clergy; but he trembled at the heresies of the Lollards, and marveled at the insolence of peasants who, once content with beer and corn, now demanded meat and milk and cheese. Three things, said Gower, are merciless when they get out of hand: water, fire, and the mob. Disgusted with this world, worried about the next, “moral Gower” retired in old age to a priory, and spent his closing year in blindness and prayer. His contemporaries admired his morals, regretted his temper and his style, and turned with relief to Chaucer.