The Time Travel Handbook

by James Wyllie

  RICHARD II ALMOST MEETS THE REBELS AT BLACKHEATH. THE TOWER OF LONDON IS DEPICTED BEHIND THE ROYAL BARGE.

  WEDNESDAY 13 JUNE: TYLER, THE KING AND AN EVENING OF BONFIRES

  Whether you spend the night at Blackheath or bed down in Southwark you will need to be up early this morning to JOIN WAT TYLER and around a tenth of the rebel army on the south bank of the Thames at the royal manor of Rotherhithe. Tyler should be near the two large St George flags flying above the crowd. While you are waiting for King Richard and his entourage to put in a showing, the highlight of the morning will be the sermon given by JOHN BALL, the radical preacher freed by the Kentish mob in Rochester on 6 June. Listen out for his use of the well-known proverb ‘When Adam Delved and Eve Span, who then was the Gentleman?’ It’s the kind of simple egalitarianism that sends shivers down the spine of any feudal ruling class.

  Keep your eyes to the left. KING RICHARD’S BARGE and four accompanying vessels will appear around the long curve of the Thames. The King will be accompanied by ARCHBISHOP SUDBURY, Treasurer SIR ROBERT HALES and the EARLS OF WARWICK AND SALISBURY. Expect a lot of baying and ballyhoo onshore until the royal fleet pulls up about thirty yards away and refuses to land. There will be some discussion across the water and then a flurry of activity as the rebel leaders respond to the King’s request for a WRITTEN PETITION. One man will walk out into the water with the document and hand it over. It is a long list of required reforms and specific calls for the execution of leading members of Richard’s court like John of Gaunt and Bishop Courtney of London, as well as Archbishop Sudbury and Treasurer Hales, who are on the boat. After some discussion, the royal retinue will turn around and row off upriver, leaving the Kentish rebels on the shore in a state of uproar.

  From late morning onwards, the now angry rebels will be marching from Rotherhithe and Blackheath towards Southwark and London Bridge. Look out for the BROTHEL by SOUTHWARK FISHPONDS, owned by William Walworth, Mayor of London, which will go up in flames as the rebel army passes by. Many rebels will then gather on the southern third of LONDON BRIDGE, their path blocked by its raised drawbridge. On the other side, past the shops and the chapel that line the stone bridge, a large crowd can be seen, many of whom will appear to be welcoming the arrival of the rebels. At this point it is is widely believed that they are not a mob, and that they have come only to serve notice on traitors and have promised to pay market prices for victuals in the city. It won’t quite work out that way. The drawbridge will eventually be lowered and, to cacophonic hooting and wailing, the crowd will pour across it and into the city.

  Once you are across and heading north on BRIDGE STREET, take a moment to pause at the first junction; BILLINGSGATE is on your right and THE ROPERY is on your left. Some of the crowd streaming around you will turn right down Billingsgate and head for the TOWER OF LONDON, where a large crowd will be gathering on Tower Hill taunting the royal retinue trapped inside. Some will head straight on towards Fenchurch Street and then to ALDGATE, where the massed ranks of many of the Essex rebels are waiting to enter the city. While in this part of town do look out for GEOFFREY CHAUCER, who is currently renting an apartment above Aldgate. Most of the crowd will be turning left and heading west towards Ludgate and Newgate, where once again many other rebels are encamped. The NEWGATE MOB will be making for two locations on the other side of the city walls: NEWGATE PRISON and, three-quarters of a mile north up Golden Lane, the PRIORY OF ST MARY in Clerkenwell, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller.

  By far the largest mob will be heading west towards Ludgate; follow them and keep the spire of St Paul’s Cathedral to your right. LUDGATE itself is worth a look. It has recently been rebuilt using stones taken from the houses of rich Jewish merchants (killed or expelled in the thirteenth century) and is adorned with statues of ancient Britannic monarchs – including the legendary King Lud. Beyond the gate the city will give way to the pastures, estates, orchards and grand manors of the Bishop of Salisbury and the CARMELITES, or the White Friars as they are known. Very few rebels will enter these properties, though a small detachment will turn north to break down the doors of FLEET PRISON. Nearly everyone else will be heading along Fleet Street to either THE TEMPLE or, another mile down the Strand, to the largest house of all – John of Gaunt’s SAVOY PALACE.

  The Temple had originally served as the headquarters of the Knights Templar in the twelfth century but after their dissolution has fallen into the hands of Knights Hospitaller. They in turn had then leased the whole place out to the London legal profession, providing lodgings for trainee lawyers and repositories for legal documents. Around 4pm the grounds will be stormed by the rebels, some of whom will actually dismantle the outbuildings, while a gigantic BONFIRE of rolls, remittances, books and case notes will go up in flames in the gardens.

  Attention will then turn to the Strand, the continuation of Fleet Street heading west. Here you will find the great houses of the Bishops of Exeter, Bath, Llandaff, Coventry and Worcester, but more opulent than any of these is the SAVOY PALACE standing on the south side of the Strand about halfway between the City and Westminster. There will most likely be a considerable crowd here by the time you arrive and the large gates in the palace’s formidable stone walls will already be off their hinges. Still true to their original intent of punishing but not looting, the sack of the Savoy Palace is strangely ordered. Its napery, clothes and cloth will be burned to a cinder. Jewels will be ground to dust rather than being pocketed; gilt plate, both silver and gold, will be beaten out of shape rather than stolen. One attempt, mid-evening, by a rebel to pilfer some of the palace’s plate will result in an impromptu court and punishment. Please don’t be tempted inside the building by the sounds of the drunk laughing or the righteous calling; the small fires already lit inside the palace will be turning into a raging conflagration when three barrels of gunpowder inside are accidentally ignited.

  EVENING

  Towards evening, the action turns to CHEAPSIDE, which should be approached with some caution. This rare public space, right in the heart of the city, has long been a place of preaching, public punishments, and general milling about. It sits at the intersection of Milk Street, Bread Street and Wood Street and can be easily identified by its ELEANOR CROSS, a structure made of four hexagonal stone steps crowned by six statues of the late Queen Eleanor (it was built by Edward I, mourning the journey of his dead wife’s body from Lincoln to Westminster Abbey). This evening, and for the next few days, it is going to be a site of EXECUTIONS by clumsy beheadings. The mob will be looking for a variety of known tax collectors and questermongers all over the city, and in particular the notorious ROGER LEGETT. Legett will be cornered by the mob at the church of St Martins le Grand on Newgate Street, a traditional place of sanctuary. The mob, however, will be having none of it. Legett will be dragged out of the church, and down West Cheap to Cheapside and his doom.

  Alternatively you can join the crowds heading north along the Holborn river towards the open fields of CLERKENWELL. En route, the mob will be burning a series of properties owned by Legett, but the main prize is the PRIORY OF ST JOHN OF JERUSALEM – the home of the Knights Hospitaller, a fabulously wealthy military order. The entire complex will be torched and the remains will burn for over a week.

  If you need to get away from the claustrophobia of the city streets or the mania of large-scale arson, head west toward the TOWER OF LONDON. In addition to the gathering on Tower Hill, you will now find a REBEL VILLAGE forming on the fields of the HOSPITAL OF ST KATHARINE on the far eastern side of the Tower. Late in the evening two ROYAL KNIGHTS will arrive at St Katherine’s with a parchment bearing the King’s own seal. One man among the crowd will stand on a hastily provided chair and read out their message, which is to the effect that ‘everyone will be pardoned if they’d just go home now and then could they all to put their complaints in writing’. This will elicit a very strong reaction from the overwhelmingly illiterate crowd, who have been burning written records for the last week. Some of them will set
off back to the City this evening to burn the houses and papers of lawyers and recorders.

  Travellers who can’t face the walk back to their rooms in Southwark or Leadenhall might like to bed down here for the night. Tower Hill and St Katharine’s will be peaceful and well provisioned with wine and food, much of it intercepted on the way to the Tower and the rest given to them by Londoners. The party will go on all night long.

  THURSDAY 14 JUNE: THE KING AT MILE END AND STORMING THE TOWER

  Today you will need to choose one of three locations to focus on in the morning: HIGHBURY, MILE END or the TOWER OF LONDON.

  The village of HIGHBURY lies to the the north of the city and is home to a number of estates owned by Treasurer Hales. From early morning a very large band of rebels, led by JACK STRAW, will have been systematically torching their great houses and stone barns. This group will be joined by a large body of townspeople from St Albans, alerted to the rebellion in London, and heading south to join it. Straw will later gather them together and ask them to collectively swear the rebel oath of allegiance ‘To King Richard and the Commons’. Note that it is a three-mile hike to Highbury from the City: leave through Aldersgate and head north along Aldersgate Road and then Goswell Road.

  The main political action of the day will be taking place just east of the city on the open fields of MILE END. After a night-long war council, KING RICHARD has decided to continue with his strategy of appeasement, and will be sending out messages to every quarter of the city to meet him at Mile End this morning. He will be riding out with a small retinue, including the Earls of Warwick and Oxford, his half-brothers, Thomas and John Holland, Sir Aubrey de Vere who will be carrying the King’s sword, his leading soldiers Sir Robert Knolles and Sir Thomas Percy, and Mayor Walworth. QUEEN JOAN will be bringing up the rear in a whirligig. Look out for the London captain THOMAS FARRINGDON, who accosts the King on a number of occasions, grabs the reins of his horse, and calls for the execution of Treasurer Hales – ‘That false traitor the prior.’ If you want to beat the crowds, head out before dawn through Aldgate and get yourself to Mile End, where most of the rebel army and much of the London mob will be gathering. Look out for two enormous books looted in Essex from the library of Admiral Edmund de la Mare; they will be carried around the field on the prongs of pitchforks, serving as strange rebel totems.

  The choreography of the morning will be as follows. A small number of REBEL LEADERS WILL APPROACH KING RICHARD, initially addressing him on bended knee. They will make a long list of requests and complaints, generally concerning conditions of serfdom and work, and calls for an end to feudal fines and manorial controls. After a certain amount of this Richard will say ‘Yes’ to all that, and call for the mob to line up in two long ranks so that he can confer a new charter of liberties on them. The King, at this point, for no obvious good reason, will loudly proclaim that, in addition to the freedom charters, the rebels are now free to go and catch traitors all across the realm of England, who they should then bring to him for trial according to the due process of the law. Quite how much of that everyone hears is a moot point. You will find that within minutes most rebels have decided either to go home or, ignited by the Royal Command, are baying to go and catch traitors in London. The due process of law will have to wait.

  The news that King Richard has asked the rebels to seek out traitors will reach the TOWER OF LONDON by around 9.30am, and a large number of rebels will arrive there soon after from Mile End. The Tower, although appearing impregnable, will be captured by the rebels over the next hour; we have reports of the drawbridge being voluntarily lowered, the guards abandoning their positions on sighting a Royal Standard of England amongst the mob, and sympathisers within the Tower opening secret doors to the rebels.

  Visitors may join the STORMING OF THE TOWER, but bearing in mind how easy it is to get lost in its maze of corridors and rooms, and how unsavoury it is going to be, it might be better to sit this one out. If you do go in, you are not, on any account, to reveal the hiding place of HENRY BOLINGBROKE, son of John of Gaunt, who in eighteen years is going to be crowned Henry IV of England. Over the next couple of hours rebel forces will reappear with four important prisoners: Archbishop of Canterbury SIMON OF SUDBURY, Royal Treasurer SIR ROBERT HALES, the King’s Sergeant-at-Arms JOHN LEGGE and the Franciscan friar WILLIAM APPLETON, physician to John of Gaunt. All will be beheaded on Tower Hill. Sudbury’s execution will be particularly cack-handed, requiring eight blows from an axe to sever his head from his body.

  Look out later on in the morning for QUEEN JOAN escaping on on a barge to join the rest of the royals at their bolthole, CASTLE BAYNARD, in the west of the city.

  AFTERNOON AND EVENING

  The day is going to turn ever more gruesome. The anti-foreigner feeling among the London mob, in particular, will be given free rein. The ITALIAN BANKERS gathered around Lombard Street will be battening down the hatches, but by far the worst fate awaits the FLEMINGS or Flemish who are concentrated in the Vintry Ward, in the lanes south of Trinity Street running down to the Thames. At the junction of Queen Street and Upper Thames Street, you will find the mob gathering. They will eventually break down the church doors of the St Martin in the Vintry, where over forty Flemings will be hiding, and then they will behead them all. Another victim of the mob in the Vintry this afternoon will be the fabulously wealthy London merchant RICHARD LYONS, who will be snatched from his house and dragged through the streets of the Cordwainer Ward to the north before being beheaded on Cheapside. Look out for what one contemporary describes as, a man ‘Very fair and large, with his hair rounded by his ears and curled, a little beard forked, a gown, girt to him down to his feet, of branched damasks, wrought with the lines of flowers, a large purse on his right side, hanging in a belt from his left shoulder: a plain hood about his neck, covering his shoulders and hanging back behind him.’

  The heads of a number of those decapitated at Tower Hill in the morning will make their way across town to the ELEANOR CROSS in the hamlet of CHARRING, where rebel leaders will be orchestrating their display. Archbishop Sudbury, his red mitre nailed to his head, will be on show, joined by Sir Robert Hales, Roger Legget, William Appleton and the juror Robert Somenour, all of them atop high spears or lances. In the late afternoon you can follow a raucous TOUR OF THE FIVE HEADS to Westminster and then back to the city finishing at London Bridge, where they will be left on display.

  FRIDAY 15 JUNE: WESTMINSTER ABBEY AND THE DEATH OF WAT TYLER

  Early birds and royal watchers might like to base themselves in Westminster from dawn on Friday morning. RICHARD IMWORTH, the keeper of the King’s Bench Prison in Southwark, is one of the main targets of the rebels still abroad. He has fled his Southwark estates and taken refuge in WESTMINSTER ABBEY. At approximately 9am a large detachment of rebels will approach and enter the Abbey and will head for the High Altar, where Imworth will be hiding – and is taken captive. You can then follow the crowd back to Cheapside where Imworth will be beheaded in the early afternoon.

  THIS REALLY IS SIMON OF SUDBURY – OR AT LEAST A RECONSTRUCTION OF HIS HEAD, CREATED BY A FORENSIC ARTIST FROM THE ARCHBISHOP’S SKULL, SIX HUNDRED YEARS AFTER IT PARTS COMPANY WITH HIS BODY.

  As you approach Bread Street on your return, look out for the unfortunate JOHN OF GREENFIELD, a valet who has apparently spoken well of John of Gaunt’s physician William Appleton (who was beheaded yesterday). For this, he will be dragged by the mob down to Queenhithe and the banks of the Thames before being dragged back up to Cheapside, where he will be executed.

  If you decide to stay in Westminster, await the ARRIVAL OF KING RICHARD. He and his retinue of over 200 will be met by a procession of the canons from St Stephen’s Church, who will then accompany the King to Westminster Abbey for private prayers in the shrine of Edward the Confessor. Entry to the Abbey will not be possible, and we recommend that you join the tail of the royal retinue when they depart an hour later for Smithfield.

  EVENING

  Visitors who choose to be
gin the day in the city centre should keep their ears open for the news that King Richard has called the rebels to a third meeting, which today is designated at SMITHFIELD – a large open space north of the city commonly used for fairs, festivals and public executions. After lunch you will find a steady flow of people walking up to Newgate and Aldersgate – follow them. By around 5pm most of the remaining rebel forces in London will have gathered on Smithfield, and you will notice that WAT TYLER is once again on horseback and in command.

  The royal retinue will arrive and assemble at some distance from the rebel army, in front of the hospital and the large stone Priory of St Bartholomew. You are unlikely to be able to get very close to the action to come, certainly not near enough to hear it, so a certain amount of interpreting body language will be required to make sense of events. You should be able to see Wat Tyler ride out towards Richard and his retinue. At distance it is hard to see, but Tyler does appear to treat the King with a degree of contempt. There will be no bended knee this time; an over-firm handshake with the royal glove follows, and then you should see a long barracking during which Tyler purportedly outlines a UTOPIAN VISION OF ENGLAND in which much of the legal and spiritual apparatus of Plantagenet feudalism is dismantled. At some point here there will be an altercation between Mayor Walworth and Tyler, daggers will be drawn and used, and then, after further commotion, one of the royal retinue, RALPH STANDISH, will run Tyler through with a sword.