The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty

by J. S. Hamilton

  There was no regency such as there had been in 1216, perhaps because, aside from Gaunt, who was too widely mistrusted to hold such an office, there was no obvious candidate of the stature of William Marshal. Instead, Richard’s government over the next 3 years was directed by a series of ‘continual councils’ that came more and more to reflect the circle that had adhered to the Black Prince rather than the councilors of the recently deceased king. The first year of the reign proved particularly challenging, as within days of Richard’s accession the truce with France expired, leading to a reopening of hostilities for which the English were little prepared. Although the French had engaged in a major naval build-up, the English fleet had deteriorated in Edward III’s final years for want of money. So it was that, in the summer of 1377, the French admiral Jean de Vienne pillaged the Channel ports, landing with impunity and burning his way from Rye to Plymouth. A subsequent raid on the Isle of Wight found the residents there willing to pay a ransom of 1,000 marks in order to avoid the Frenchman’s wrath. The situation on the continent was little better. A French siege of Calais finally foundered, but this had more to do with wet weather than English resistance. A heavier blow fell to the south, where the duke of Anjou marched down the Dordogne virtually unopposed. The great castles at Condat, Bergerac and Castillon all fell to the French, while the seneschal of Aquitaine was taken prisoner. Bordeaux, Richard’s birthplace and the seat of his father’s short-lived principality of Aquitaine, appeared dangerously vulnerable to siege. As at Calais, however, somewhat inexplicably, the French pulled back. Nevertheless, the English duchy was much reduced. An English counter-offensive in 1378, funded by the very generous parliamentary grant of a tax of a double tenth and fifteenth, which generated as much as £100,000, came to nothing. Hampered by the lack of adequate shipping, the campaign was poorly coordinated and culminated in an unsuccessful attack on Harfleur in Normandy by the earls of Arundel and Salisbury, followed by Gaunt’s costly but equally ineffectual attempt to besiege St Mâlo.

  The continuing need for military funding led to an innovative series of taxes, which was to have tragic consequences. The first of these ‘poll taxes’ had already been levied in 1377. The parliament that had met in February had agreed that a tax of one groat (4 d) should be assessed on all laypersons of either sex aged more than 14 years old; likewise, all beneficed clergy were to pay 12 d, and the unbeneficed, like the laity, 4 d. The revenues generated thereby had gone toward the construction of a new fleet in 1377–1378, but in the aftermath of the failures at Harfleur and St Mâlo the government was soon once again in desperate straits.

  In April 1379, therefore, another parliament ‘granted a subsidy so wonderful that no one had ever seen or heard of the like’. 1 This second tax sought to address the issue of fairness, at least superficially, by introducing a sliding scale of liability.

  Once again, the laity, this time above the age of 16 years rather than 14 years, were to pay 4d per person, but the elites in society were to pay higher rates based on their occupations or office. For instance, knights and sergeants of the law were to pay £1 (20 s), whereas mayors of great towns were to pay twice that. The mayor of the greatest town of all, London, was to pay £4 (the same rate as an earl); the royal justices were to pay £5 each, whereas the dukes of Lancaster and Brittany were to pay 10 marks (£6 13 s 4 d). A similar scale applied to the clergy as well, with the unbeneficed assessed at 4 d, bishops at 6 marks, and the two archbishops at the same 10 marks as the dukes.

  Nevertheless, according to the chancellor, Richard, Lord Scrope, the second poll tax generated less than £22,000, not even one quarter of the amount expended on military activity in the previous year. Although a traditional tax of a tenth and fifteenth on movables was levied in early 1380, by later that year the government was still short of cash and sought yet another poll tax. This third poll tax in 4 years was granted in December by a parliament meeting in Northampton – it could not be held in Westminster due to popular discontent and fear of disorder in the capital. The third poll tax was set at a flat rate of 3 groats (12 d) per person on all individuals of either sex above the age of 14 years, with vague provision being made for the wealthy to assist the poor. The response to the tax was inevitable: widespread evasion. When the collectors set out to do their work, they discovered that roughly one-third of all those peasants who had paid the first poll tax in 1377 were now nowhere to be found. Some 458,356 individuals had apparently vanished, more than 100,000 of them in London and the southeast.

  Commissioners were appointed to seek out these tax evaders in various counties – and this proved to be efficient. By the end of May, some £37,000 had been collected, but not without widespread resentment and resistance. According to theAnonimalle Chronicle, it was these commissions that were responsible for provoking the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, specifically a hearing conducted at Brentwood by John de Bampton in late May that turned violent, and which was followed by an armed attack on the commission of trailbaston headed by the Chief Justice of the Common Bench, Sir Robert Bealknap, on 2 June. Once aroused, the chronicler claims, the peasants ‘proposed to kill all the lawyers, jurors and royal servants they could find’. 2

  The Peasants’ Revolt was long seen as a spontaneous outburst that was linked to the overall economic conditions in post-plague England and the oppression of the peasantry occasioned by a refusal of the political and economic elite to recognize their changed circumstances. There is probably some validity to this, especially in accounting for the wide geographic spread of disturbances in 1381, which ranged from London and the southeast, to East Anglia, west as far as Chester and Bridgewater, and north into Yorkshire. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that there was a considerable level of coordination in the risings, particularly in the southeast, and that many of the participants in the uprising were not peasants in the old sense, but men of some standing in their local communities: stewards, bailiffs and jurymen. Two leaders, in particular, seem to have been able to energize the discontented populace and to articulate the basis of this discontent. John Ball, an itinerant radical preacher, perhaps at one time a chantry priest at St Mary’s, York, and later Colchester, had been excommunicated and arrested repeatedly from the 1360s onward to no effect. He seems, in fact, to have been incarcerated in Maidstone gaol when the revolt broke out, being freed on 11 June when the prison was stormed by the other great figure of the revolt, Wat Tyler. On the following day at Blackheath, Ball preached a famous sermon to the rebels on the text: When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then a Gentleman?

  Although this proverb was already in wide circulation, Ball’s exegesis was political dynamite, suggesting a complete overthrow of class structures, which certainly became central to the demands that would be made at Mile End and Smithfield. But if Ball gave the movement a slogan, the real practical leadership came from Wat Tyler. Like Ball, Tyler remains a largely mysterious figure. He has most frequently been associated with Kent, but Essex has also been suggested as his place of origin. It has generally been accepted that he was indeed a tiler, although it has also been suggested that he was actually a member of the gentry of Kent, Walter Culpepper.

  This latter would perhaps explain his apparent use of an alias, Jack Straw, who has sometimes been taken to have been a real person, but is so enigmatic and illusory that his actual existence separate from Tyler must be doubted. In any case, Tyler led the revolt in the southeast. There is a story, probably apocryphal and reminiscent of similar stories associated with William Wallace’s revolt against Edward I, that Tyler was driven to violence by an assault on his daughter by one of the tax collectors. Whether or not such abuse occurred, riots certainly did break out in Dartford on 4 and 5 June, and the violence soon spread to Maidstone. By 10 June, the rebels had reached Canterbury. Tyler is alleged to have seized the sheriff of Kent and forced him to produce and then burn all of his official records. By the next day, the rebels were back in Maidstone, where the gaol was opened and John Ball among others freed; but Maidstone
was merely a stopping point on the route to London. On 12 June, the rebels assembled on Blackheath, where Ball preached to them about social justice. On the next day, a meeting was arranged between the king and representatives of the rebels. Richard travelled by boat to Rotherhithe, but fearing for his safety, the royal party chose not to disembark. This triggered a violent reaction, and the peasants now forced their way into London. The Savoy Palace of the unpopular John of Gaunt was sacked, and the Fleet prison was broken open. The New Temple was also ransacked, and at Temple Church the rebels ‘seized all the books, rolls and remembrances kept in the cupboards of the apprentices of the law within the Temple, carried them into the high road and burnt them there’. 3 Yet, although written records, the proof of serfdom and other obligations, were widely destroyed, looting was largely avoided, suggesting some degree of discipline among the rebels. There was certainly bloodshed, much of it the blood of aliens, particularly Flemings. Froissart claims that Tyler himself killed the notorious Flemish financier Richard Lyons, but it is tempting to see the targeting of Flemings in the context of internal commercial rivalries within the city that had little to do with peasants from the surrounding countryside. As with any such popular rising, many longstanding personal grievances must have been settled under the guise of the present cause.

  On 14 June, Richard II once again agreed to meet with the rebels, this time at Mile End. There, the king agreed to their demands as far as he was able, but meanwhile (rather than subsequently, as some chronicles report), another group of the rebels entered the Tower of London. The high officials whom they considered ‘traitors’ were seized and summarily executed. Both Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, and Sir Richard Hales, the treasurer, were brutally beheaded on Tower Hill: reputedly, it required eight imprecise strokes of the sword before Sudbury was finally decapitated. Beyond that, the queen mother’s apartment was broken into. According to Froissart, ‘these gluttons entered into the princess’s chamber and brake her bed, whereby she was so sore affrayed that she swooned’. 4 Walsingham claims that ‘they arrogantly lay and sat on the king’s bed while joking; and several asked the king’s mother to kiss them’. 5 Also present in the Tower during this chaotic disturbance was Richard’s cousin (and future usurper as Henry IV), Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt. How did he feel, one wonders, not to have accompanied the armed troop of his royal cousin, but rather to have been left behind, seemingly a lamb thrown to the wolves, lucky to escape with his life?6

  On the night of 14 June, back in the Tower, Richard could view the smouldering ashes of manors and houses burned out across the city. Action was obviously needed, and a council was held, but it is unclear exactly what course of action was decided. The next day, Richard prayed at the shrine of St Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey before riding out to meet the peasants yet again, this time at Smithfield. This may very well have been the basis for a lifelong devotion to the saint and his church. At Smithfield, Richard and Wat Tyler met face to face.

  Tyler addressed the king with impudent informality as ‘Brother’, and went on to list his demands. These included the abolition of outlawry; the abolition of lordship except for that of the king himself; a division of all the goods of the church among the people; a single bishop for the realm of England; the abolition of villeinage and serfdom; and a universal annual land rent of 4 d per acre. To all these requests, the king gave his assent, ‘saving the regality of the crown’.

  The climax of this meeting remains controversial to this day, with different chronicles offering different interpretations of events. Tyler seems to have behaved uncouthly, asking for water and then rinsing his mouth in front of the king. He also showed disrespect for the king throughout their interview by leaving his head covered. Finally, insults were exchanged between Tyler and members of the royal party, perhaps spontaneously, perhaps by design in order to draw Tyler into a fight. Blows were struck. The Mayor of London, William Walworth, attempted to arrest Tyler, who slashed at Walworth with a dagger, which failed to pierce his armour. Tyler, however, had no armour, and Walworth wounded him in the neck. Tyler fell from his horse and was at once mortally wounded, perhaps by Ralph Standish, the king’s sword-bearer. At this crucial moment, with the dying Tyler calling for his supporters to avenge his death, Richard II rose to the occasion, saying ‘I am your leader, follow me’, 7 and deliberately led the assembled rebels away from the field. Meanwhile, Walworth had raised the London militia, which now dispersed the remnant of the disorganized rebels. The young king cannot but have been struck by the rebels’ sense of his power. He must also have learned, in part through Walworth’s sudden attack on Wat Tyler, and equally through the eventual revocation of the promises made at Mile End and Smithfield, the politics of expediency. The other leader of the revolt in London, John Ball, fled after Tyler’s death but proved unable to sustain the movement. He was arrested at Coventry and tried at St Albans before Sir Robert Tresilian, the most vindictive of Richard II’s judges, on 12 July. Three days later, he was hanged, drawn and quartered, signalling the final collapse and failure of the revolt.

  By 1381, Richard II was perhaps Europe’s most eligible bachelor. In the 1370s, matches had been considered with daughters of a host of the crowned heads of Europe: Charles V of France, Charles of Navarre, Robert II of Scotland, and Bernabò Visconti, duke of Milan. But, in the end, the choice for Richard’s bride fell upon Anne, eldest daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. This union had the advantage of detaching the house of Luxembourg from a traditional alliance with Valois France, and perhaps more immediately it served the purposes of Pope Urban VI who faced a papal rival in Avignon (Clement VII) following the outbreak of the Great Schism in 1378. The archbishop of Ravenna, Pileo de Prata, had been sent to Prague by the pontiff to advance negotiations as early as spring 1379; there, he was soon joined by English envoys, Michael de la Pole and John Burley. In the following year, Richard’s council agreed to the proposed match and began final negotiations, culminating in a treaty sealed in London on 2 May 1381 and ratified in Prague on 1 September.

  Anne’s passage to England was surprisingly slow, and she only reached Dover on 18 December. There, she was met by the king’s eldest uncle, John of Gaunt, who conducted her to Leeds Castle where she spent her first English Christmas and New Year. On 18 January, she entered London with the king, to be treated to the same sort of spectacle as Richard had enjoyed 4 years earlier, London once again transforming itself into the ‘City of Heaven’ to receive her. On 20 January, Richard and Anne were wed in Westminster Abbey, and 2 days later the queen was crowned. The English chroniclers saw little value in an impoverished German princess who arrived with no dowry and an expensive following of aliens. Much like the Savoyard relatives of Eleanor of Provence, Anne’s Bohemian kinsmen were awarded generous annuities and pensions, while her ladies in waiting married knights and esquires of the king’s household, and her clerks were presented to valuable English benefices. Beyond this initial flurry of activity, however, Anne does not seem to have engaged deeply in politics. She did, of course, act as an intercessor, most famously with the Appellants at the trial of Simon Burley in 1388 (when she failed) and with her husband on behalf of the citizens of London in 1392 (when she succeeded).

  Anne was born on 11 May 1366, and thus was of an age with her husband who was just 8 months her junior. Both were 15 years old at the time of their marriage and they seem to have developed a deep affective bond from the outset.

  Throughout the first decade of their marriage, Anne regularly accompanied Richard on his royal itineraries. She died very young, on 7 June 1394, at Sheen. The cause of death was not childbirth, as was so often the case with both royal and non-royal women in the middle ages, but possibly the plague. Richard, famously, ordered the palace at Sheen to be destroyed as he could no longer face the memories it contained. Both her funeral and the slightly later double tomb in Westminster that houses the remains of both Anne and Richard, were magnificent and speak to Richard’s deep emotional
bond to his first wife. That Anne produced no children has been a puzzlement for six centuries. Was she barren? Or was Richard himself infertile? Both are possibilities. But there is also another intriguing possibility that may shed light on both king and queen as well as their time. It is possible that the marriage was never consummated and that Richard and Anne shared in a devout lay celibacy. Anne’s piety is well attested, as is Richard’s devotion to the cult of Edward the Confessor, whose chaste marriage to Edith was well known. Such chaste unions were not unknown in the late fourteenth century, but would be a remarkable commitment for a royal couple to enter upon. Without question, the lack of a male heir throughout his reign greatly exacerbated the difficulties that Richard faced in dealing with his political adversaries, leading most modern critics to doubt that his childlessness was a matter of choice.

  It is difficult to know what to make of criticism of Richard’s kingship in the early 1380s. John of Gaunt certainly thought that he had a natural right to advise his nephew, both as the eldest surviving son of Edward III, and also as hereditary steward of England. Other magnates, such as Richard Fitzalan, earl of Arundel, having been appointed by parliament in November 1381 ‘to advise and govern’ the king, had a similar outlook. The king, however, in the aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt and with the recognition of his maturation embodied in his marriage, increasingly sought to develop his own circle of friends and advisors.