Terry Jones' Medieval Lives

by Alan Ereira

  The new emphasis on the validity and importance of vernacular language began to impact on the courts and even the politics of western Europe. It became important for monarchs to stake out their intellectual territory as clearly as they did the geographical boundaries of their power. So to this end they started employing intellectuals as court poets and writers.

  These new poets were decidedly sniffy about the old minstrels. In France, Eustache Deschamps said, ‘The artificial music of the minstrels could be learnt by “le plus rude homme du monde” (the most uncouth man in the world).’ Deschamps was a gentleman-usher to Charles V of France in the 1370s, and rose and fell as a courtier while producing a quantity of poetry which could hardly have been learnt by the most couth and studious man in the world – some 82,000 verses – virtually a courtly poetic diary.

  The danger faced by a court poet was not the risk faced by Taillefer, of death on a battlefield, or by a crude jongleur, of dying of penury and cold in a ditch, but the danger of his verse being seen as subversive or dangerous. Deschamps could not resist satirizing those he despised, including members of the nobility, the government and the Church, and financiers, lawyers and even women.

  His parody of a pert young lady demanding attention seems, at a distance, entertaining and nicely ironic:

  I would say that in my view

  I have good looks, a sweet face too

  And my mouth red like a rose.

  Tell me if I am fair

  My smile is sweet, my eyes like dew

  A lovely nose, hair blonde right through,

  Nice chin, my white throat shows

  Am I, am I, am I fair? . . .

  Both courteous and kind, that’s who

  If strong and bold and handsome, too

  Will win this prize so rare.

  Tell me if I am fair . . .

  Now discuss it between you

  Think of what I’ve told you true

  So ends my little song.

  Am I, am I, am I fair?

  Of course, such a poem might be satirizing some silly little girl. But it might equally well be read as an allegory in which the fair young girl is a satirical image of a nobleman fluttering his eyelashes at potential co-conspirators. Or such a nobleman, sensitized to the new delicacy of vernacular poetry, might interpret it that way.

  Deschamps ended up losing all his positions and his income.

  THE VERNACULAR IN ENGLAND

  The new, courtly vernacular came rather later to England than to the rest of Europe. This was because, until the mid-fourteenth century, England’s aristocracy had its own vernacular, which was different from that of the common people. This tongue, Norman French, was a survival of the Conquest. Although it became increasingly anglicized from the early thirteenth century, the linguistic division between nobility and commoners remained a real divide until about 1360. It was not until 1362, when the Statute of Pleading was passed, that English became the language of the law courts. But then the old Anglo-Norman French seems to have faded away quite rapidly.

  The English court in 1350 had been happy to listen to vernacular poetry but it did not regard any particular regional language as its own. In that year Edward III decided to deal once and for all with the piratical depredations of a well-connected Spanish freebooter, Don Carlos de la Cerda, who had been busy loading treasure, supplies and loot at Sluis in Flanders to be shipped back to the Basque coast. Edward obviously felt that the very survival of his kingdom depended on asserting control over the English Channel, and decided on a do-or-die challenge to Don Carlos.

  He assembled his fleet at Winchelsea, with himself on one flagship, the Thomas, and the Black Prince on another. The entire royal lineage was there, even the king’s younger son, the ten-year-old John of Gaunt. The royal ladies were lodged in a convent, from which they would be able to watch the battle.

  Waiting for the encounter, Edward prepared himself and his troops by watching his minstrels perform a German dance, and listening to a knight, Sir John Chandos, singing in French with his minstrels.*3 They were entering as full participants into the world of heroic epic battle, but this King did not see himself as particularly English.

  The battle was indeed heroic. The Thomas went to the bottom, as did the Black Prince’s ship, but the heroes survived and the Spanish lost 14 of their 40 ships. This was, in fact, a more dramatic and bloody victory than the better-known struggle of 1588 against the Spanish Armada. But the poem that recorded what had happened was not in German or French. It was in strikingly powerful English:

  I shall not hold back from telling, and hope to succeed in the task,

  Of men who were brave with weapons and admirable in armour

  That now are driven to the grave, and dead despite all their deeds

  They sail on the sea bed, fishes to feed

  Many fishes they feed, for all their great vaunting

  They came at the waning of the moon . . . *4

  A new literature was emerging in England, in which the English language was being used in innovative ways, and which bridged the gap between the court and the general population in the most extraordinary way. William Langland’s poem Piers Plowman, a huge allegorical work on the Christian concept of a good life, which first appeared around 1360, was copied and recopied endlessly and was evidently well known by all classes of people – lines from it were used as slogans and signals in the so-called ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ of 1381. Poetry was alive and dangerous.

  Something similar was happening in Wales, where at the beginning of the fifteenth century there was a decree that said: ‘. . . no rimers, minstrels or vagabonds, be maintained in Wales whom by their divinations, lies and exhortations are partly cause for insurrection and rebellion now in Wales.’

  But the Welsh bardic ‘rimers’ were reaching back into old heroic tradition, finding subversive nationalistic matter in the Welsh versions of Arthurian legends, and using them as sustenance for the national rebellion led by Owen Glendower. In England, the dangerous poets were new men creating a new literature in their own tongue. The old minstrels looked shabby and outdated. The situation was rather like that of the mid-twentieth century, when the old vaudeville comedians – with their distinctive repertoire of hand-me-down material culled from many years of touring music halls – found themselves displaced by the university-educated satirists of the television age who wrote their own fresh material every week.

  A DANGEROUS GAME

  Towards the end of the fourteenth century Richard II clearly saw literature as territory to be occupied by the crown as firmly as any physical territory and, having inherited a court poet from his grandfather, gave him every assistance and encouragement. His name was Geoffrey Chaucer, and he was destined to become one of the major figures in English literature – second only to Shakespeare.

  Richard’s court, like that of Charles V in France, tolerated a relaxed easy-going intellectual atmosphere in which satire and lampoons were allowed to flourish. Chaucer took advantage of this to satirize the way the Church had become corrupted and commercialized. For example, he told the tale of a friar who was taken down to hell by an angel and happily observed that he couldn’t see any friars there. He assumed this meant they were all in heaven. Oh no, said the angel, there are plenty of friars down here; and he accosts Satan.

  ‘Hold up thy tail thy Satanas’ said he

  ‘Show forth thine arse and let the friar see

  Where is the nest of friars in this place!’

  And ere that half a furlong way of space

  Right so as bees come swarming from the hive,

  Out of the devil’s arse began to drive

  Twenty thousand friars in a route.

  And throughout hell they swarmed all about

  And came again as fast as they may gone

  And in his arse they crept in every John!

  The Summoner’s Prologue

  To offer satire at court is a dangerous game, especially when one year’s patron is the next year’s out
cast. Richard II was violently overthrown. His usurper, who became Henry IV, was helped to the throne by Thomas Arundel, an archbishop of Canterbury who had been exiled by Richard, and who was determined to stamp out any criticism of the Church, especially criticisms in English, which any Tom, Dick or Harriet could read and understand. Within a year, Arundel began burning ‘heretics’ at the stake, and even banned the use of English to discuss religion. Chaucer’s writing, filled as it is with criticism of the Church in the vernacular, was exactly the sort of thing that was being stamped out.

  Which may be the explanation for one of the unnoticed mysteries of history. Chaucer, the father of English literature, disappeared without trace at about the same time that Arundel was trying to limit the use of English in literature.

  Chaucer was probably the most famous commoner in the kingdom, yet there is no record of his death, he did not leave a will and we do not even know when he died. All we have is an illegible inscription on a tomb, erected a century and a half after he disappeared, which does not mark the site of his burial and as far as we know never even contained his remains. He undoubtedly vanished quite mysteriously. It may be that he was deliberately removed.

  DECLINE OF THE MINSTREL

  There was no possibility of undoing the changes that had begun. Traditional minstrels, the old jongleurs, were out of fashion. They went downmarket and became itinerant entertainers performing at fairs and on street corners. Unemployed, they were outside the control of rich patrons and could pretend to belong to whomever they wanted – even the king.

  It got so bad that Henry VI instigated an investigation board to clamp down on them. Any minstrel convicted of falsely claiming to have royal patronage would be fined and forced to pray for the king’s soul.

  The luckier minstrels were hired as civil servants by towns, to bolster citizens’ self-importance in civic ceremonies. In the fourteenth century towns had given short-term contracts to minstrels in the service of aristocrats when they needed a performance on a feast day or for an armed muster, but by the fifteenth it seemed the supply was drying up. For example, York Corporation had a trio – the ‘city waits’ – on retainer from the time of Henry VI. They were provided with uniforms each Christmas and performed at Easter, Corpus Christi, Christmas and on a couple of saint’s days.

  There were still court musicians, but few of them were minstrels in the old sense of being general entertainers. And in courts where sovereigns increasingly wrote poetry and performed their own songs, musicians were accepted into very polite company. This was obviously the case with a young dancer and harpsichord player, Mark Smeaton, minstrel to Henry VIII and his queen, Anne Boleyn. One spring day in 1536 he was invited to the home of Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister. There, almost certainly under torture and with a promise of immunity, he ‘made revelations’ about the queen, confessing to being her lover. It can be deduced from the general incredulity at the confession (‘How could she stoop so low?’) that Smeaton did not come from a noble family.

  He named several other men, including Anne’s brother George, Sir Henry Norris, Sir William Brereton, Sir Francis Weston and Sir Thomas Wyatt. Wyatt, a poet and songwriter whose work is as fresh today as it was 500 years ago, had told Henry before the marriage that he had been Anne’s lover.

  Blame not my Lute!

  Farewell! unknown; for though thou break

  My strings in spite with great disdain,

  Yet have I found out for thy sake,

  Strings for to string my Lute again:

  And if, perchance, this sely rhyme

  Do make thee blush, at any time,

  Blame not my Lute!

  The men named were arrested, providing the pretext that allowed Henry to dispose of Anne Boleyn and replace her with Jane Seymour. Wyatt was released; it may be that Henry had a soft spot for songwriters. He was one himself, and wrote a new arrangement and lyrics for an old tune, which he called ‘Greensleeves’.

  Alas, my love, you do me wrong,

  To cast me off discourteously.

  For I have loved you well and long,

  Delighting in your company.

  Any affection Henry might have felt for fellow-performers did not extend to Smeaton, who was tried for treason on 12 May 1536. He was not allowed to defend himself. He was hanged, cut down while still alive, his stomach was cut open and his intestines were pulled out in front of his still-conscious eyes. Then his body was butchered.

  The revels were ended, the Middle Ages had given way to the ruthless cruelty of Renaissance power.

  And what was left of the minstrels? Quite a lot; they had vanished as a class, but mutated into something far broader. The literature, poetry and drama of England now embraced and entertained the whole nation; and could weave together the most sublime and powerful emotions and delicate language, with the lowest comedy, to create a single, extraordinary experience. This was made evident later in the century, when Shakespeare’s work appeared. His colleagues in the high-minded enterprise of presenting high tragedy and sophisticated comedy included Will Kemp, a fellow-shareholder in the Globe Theatre – clown, dancer, singer, instrumentalist and a man who fully appreciated the audience appeal of a leap, a whistle and a fart.

  And the queen under whose rule they flourished, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, was said (very quietly) to bear more than a passing resemblance to Mark Smeaton.

  CHAPTER THREE

  OUTLAW

  ⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

  THE OUTLAWS OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND are still the stuff of legend. Heroes who bestrode the greenwood, fearlessly wearing only tights and little short tunics that hardly covered their bottoms – the figure of the medieval outlaw has come to represent freedom and justice for the common man.

  Outlaws inhabit a kind of border territory in our medieval myth, crossing back and forth between the pantomime vision of a jolly and well-ordered medieval kingdom and the dark image of horribly violent and barbaric lawlessness. Taking a cool look at reality not only reveals the truth and falsehood in both these images, but also clarifies what has emerged as a central theme of this whole book; the way in which medieval lives in England became different from those in the rest of Europe, as a distinct national society emerged.

  Perhaps the most surprising example of that distinctiveness is that in England, uniquely in Europe, bold robber outlaws were necessary for the effective functioning of the kingdom.

  This will all be explained as we investigate whether bandits like Robin Hood really existed, whether the forest was truly a place of freedom and escape, and, of course, the key question, did outlaws never wear trousers?

  There certainly were plenty of outlaws in the Middle Ages, in fact, more than one might imagine. By the end of the period, historians tell us, practically everyone got outlawed at some stage of their lives. It had become a minor inconvenience – a bit like having your credit card stopped.

  It is true that there were some other outlaws whose violence blighted society, but even there things are often not quite what one might expect.

  Take the drama that engulfed the little village of Teigh, in Rutland, one afternoon in 1340.

  A REAL-LIFE OUTLAW GANG

  A gang of armed men broke into the church, and the rector, whose place of worship it had been for twenty years, was dragged outside into the street and beheaded. The twist, however, is that the gang of armed men who slew the man of God weren’t the outlaws. It was the rector who was the outlaw. His name was Richard Folville and he was one of six brothers who made up the notorious Folville Gang.

  A generation after their deaths, the Folvilles were celebrated as the kind of outlaws who righted wrongs. One chronicle tells how they: ‘took the law in to their own hands’ and rode out to right injustice with the force of arms. ‘Folville’s Laws’ became a synonym for ‘justified robbery’. They killed a widely-hated judge in the court of the Exchequer, and kidnapped a justice of the King’s Bench whom a contemporary poem indicted as corrupt.

  So were the Folv
illes the real-life Robin Hoods? It would be exciting to report that they were, but they weren’t.

  The Folvilles were the younger sons of minor aristocracy, who drifted into a life of crime to support themselves in the style to which they were accustomed. They weren’t robbing from the rich to give to the poor, they were simply robbing, raping, beating, kidnapping and killing as a livelihood.

  And yet they were still held in some esteem in later years. They were acquitted on charges of murder when brought to trial and the justice of the peace who rid the world of Richard Folville, the rector, was forced to do penance – touring the local parishes and being beaten at each church.

  It seems that people in the Middle Ages may have had an ambivalent attitude not simply to the Folvilles but to outlaws in general and to the very question of bold robbers. Maybe that’s how one of our most popular legends came about.

  THE REAL ROBIN HOOD?

  If there ever was a real Robin Hood, he’s surprisingly hard to pin down. There is confusion over where he lived (Nottinghamshire? Yorkshire?), when he lived (the twelfth century, in the age of Bad King John and Good King Richard? The fourteenth century?) and even whether he lived (the occasional record referring to a criminal called Robin Hode or Hood may be the origin of the story or the perpetuation of a legend).

  But the medieval landscape would clearly be incomplete without him. Robin Hood somehow represents a fundamental image of English identity. Partly, of course, this is the bizarre English pantomime-identity of innocent transvestite jollity, but he also carries a message of political morality. A victim of injustice and of a corrupt, self-seeking sheriff, hiding out in the forest with his company of rogues, he is a symbol of natural justice, admired by the poor and hated by the fat cats of medieval England.

  PRIDE IN ROBBERS

  The strange fact is that the English always have been, and still are, proud of their outlaw robbers – not just fictional ones, but real robbers like the Folvilles. They regarded them as unique. Outlaws in other countries may have had codes of honour among themselves, but they were not regarded as stout bold fellows as they clearly were in England. There was felt to be the world of difference between an honourable robber and the mugger who makes a sneak attack. In much medieval writing about outlaws there is a presumption that their activities are honourable if robbery is performed boldly, face to face. In fact, it seems to be treated much like trial by ordeal: if God were not on the robber’s side he would be defeated by his victim.