Chapter IV: Part 4

But in Grosseteste there was no spirit of surrender. In 1253, the very last year of his life, he was called upon by the pope to provide a nephew of his with a canonry at Lincoln, and the bishop’s letter of refusal is, perhaps, the only well remembered thing of all Grosseteste’s writings. This letter was not, as commonly stated, sent to the pope but to his representative who was also named Innocent.[38] “The pope has power to build up,” wrote Grosseteste, “but not to pull down. These appointments tend to destruction, not edification, being of man’s device and not according to the words of the Apostles or the will of Christ. By my very love and obedience to the Holy See I must refuse obedience in things altogether opposed to the sanctity of the Apostolic See and contrary to Catholic unity. As a son and a servant I decline to obey, and this refusal must not be taken as rebellion, for it is done in reverence to divine commands.”

(This letter is quoted by Matthew Paris and in the _Burton Annals_. It can be read in full in the _Epistles_, No. 128.)

When the pope heard of this answer he talked angrily of “the old madman” who dared to sit in judgment on him, and blustered about the king of England being his vassal. The cardinals, however, said frankly that Grosseteste had spoken the truth, and that he was far too good a man to be condemned. “He is Catholic,” they declared, “and of deepest holiness. More religious, and more saintly than we are, and of better life. They say that among all the bishops there is no one his equal, still less his superior. All the clergy of France and England know this. Besides, he is considered a great philosopher, thoroughly learned in Latin and Greek; and he is zealous for justice, and a man who deals in theology, a preacher to the people, a lover of chastity, and a persecutor of those who practise simony.” So they extolled him. And it is to the everlasting credit of the cardinals of the Roman See in that year 1253 that they could discern the sincerity and the great qualities of the brave old bishop who defied the pope’s unrighteous commands. There was no question at Rome of any disloyalty on Grosseteste’s part to the Holy See, no suggestion of any failing as a good Catholic.[39] And Pope Innocent IV. wisely let the matter drop, when the cardinals assured him it would never do to interfere with Grosseteste.

Before he died Grosseteste made a last appeal “to the nobles of England, the citizens of London and the community of the whole realm” on behalf of the Rights of the English Church, making a careful list of the ills to be redressed. He also solemnly charged his friend Simon of Montfort, never, as he valued his immortal soul, to forsake the cause of the English people, but to stand up even to the death, if needs be, for a true and just government, and with prophetic foresight spoke of the heavier troubles coming on the land.

On October 9th, 1253, the long life and the magnificent battling with odds were over, and the great bishop passed away. He was buried in Lincoln Cathedral, and in 1307, King Edward I. and the dean and chapter of St. Paul’s made application for his canonization, but without success. Fifty years later and Edward III.’s Statutes of Provisors, 1351, and Praemunire, 1353, by their prohibition of papal bulls and of the appointment of papal nominees to English benefices, may be accepted as the real acknowledgment of Grosseteste’s political work.

“I confidently assert (wrote Matthew Paris) that his virtues pleased God more than his failings displeased Him.”

Simon of Montfort and the English Parliament

1258–1265

AUTHORITIES: Matthew Paris; William of Rishanger; Thomas of Wykes; Adam of Marsh--_Monumenta Frascescana_, _Burton Annals_, _Annales Monastici_; Robert of Gloucester--_Royal letters of Henry III._ (Rolls Series); _Political Songs_ (Camden Society, 1839); _Chronicle of Melrose_; Stubbs--_Constitutional History_, vol. ii; and _Select Charters_; W. H. Blaauw--_The Barons’ War_; Dr. Pauli--_Simon of Montfort_ (translated by Una M. Goodwin); G. W. Prothero--_Simon of Montfort_; Dr. Shirley in _Quarterly Review_, cxix. 57.

SIMON OF MONTFORT AND THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT

1258–1265

“In the year of our Lord 1238, which was the twenty-second of his reign, King Henry held his court in London at Westminster, and there on the day after Epiphany, which was a Thursday, Simon de Montfort solemnly espoused Eleanor, daughter of King John, sister of Henry III., and widow of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. The king himself gave away the bride to the said Simon, Earl of Leicester, who received her gratefully by reason of his disinterested love for her, her own beauty, the rich honours that were attached to her, and the distinguished and royal descent of the lady, for she was the legitimate daughter of a king and queen, and furthermore was sister of a king, of an empress (the wife of Frederic II.), and of a queen (Joan, wife of Alexander II. of Scotland). Our lord the pope, too, gave him a dispensation to marry this noble lady.”

Thus Matthew Paris, when Earl Simon, then a man about thirty-seven, and “tall and handsome,” enjoyed the royal favour and stood godfather to the infant Prince Edward. Simon had only done homage as Earl of Leicester in 1232; his boyhood was passed in France, and his father was the great soldier who led the French crusade against the Albigenses. Earl Richard of Cornwall, Henry’s brother--soon to become King of the Romans--objected to the marriage, regarding it as one more victory for the foreigners whom Henry nourished at the expense of England. But Simon was no real alien. His grandmother had been sister and heiress of the Earl of Leicester, and Simon’s French training no more made him a stranger in England than did Stephen Langton’s years of study in Paris and Rome unfit him for the primacy of the English Church.

Henry’s favour was short-lived. Earl Simon made friends with Earl Richard and left for the crusades, disgusted with the king’s want of honesty. So much wisdom did he show in Palestine, and so great was his prowess, that Simon might have stayed in the east as regent for the young King of Jerusalem. But he had work to do in England, and came home with Richard in 1242.

Here against all the disorder of misrule and the royal and papal extortions Simon laboured with his friend Bishop Grosseteste, and he is conspicuous at the Parliament of Westminster in 1244, and in drawing up the great protest to the pope a year later.

Then for five years (1248–53) Simon was in Gascony contending with a body of nobles whom neither Henry II. nor Richard I. had been able to make good subjects, and whose only object in making formal acknowledgment of Henry III. was to escape the rule of Louis of France. Henry gave Simon neither men nor money, and lent a willing ear to all the complaints of Simon’s enemies in Gascony and in England.[40] At his own expense the Earl of Leicester saved Gascony for the English crown, and brought peace and law and trade to that province. Henry’s return was to make Simon answer trumped-up charges of robbery, cruelty and treason brought by Gascons in 1252. The charges were not proved, although Henry sent his own commissioner to Gascony to make enquiry. Earl Richard and other nobles who knew the country were convinced of Simon’s justice, and Simon, who was in England trying to raise supplies, turned sharply on the king, reminding him of unfulfilled promises. “Keep thy agreement with me,” he went on, “or pay me the money I have spent in thy service; for it is well known I have impoverished my earldom beyond recovery for the honour of the king.” “There is no shame in breaking my word to a traitor,” the king answered angrily. At this Simon in open wrath declared the king a liar, only saved by the shelter of royalty from the penalty of his speech. “Call thyself a Christian?” said the earl. “Dost thou ever confess thy sins?” “Yes,” said the king, “I do.” “Thy confession is useless without repentance and atonement.” said the earl. The king, more angry than ever, retorted, “I repent of one thing, and that is that I made thee an earl in England, to wax fat and kick against me. Get thee to Gascony, thou who lovest strife, and take thy fill there and meet thy father’s fate.” “I go willingly, my lord,” came the answer. “And, ungrateful as thou art, I will not return till I have made these rebels thy subjects and thy enemies thy footstool.”

Simon returned to Gascony, and though Henry again undermined his authority, he kept his word, only giving up his command when the work was done.

Adam of Marsh, a Franciscan friar, the friend and correspondent of Grosseteste, often writes to Simon in those days, encouraging and advising him. “Better is patience in a man than force,” says Adam, “and better he who rules his own passions than he who storms a city.” He prays this strong upright soldier-statesman to find comfort in the frequent reading of the Holy Scriptures, “breaking through as far as you can the cares and distractions of storm and trouble,” and recommends the 29th, 30th and 31st chapters of the book of Job, “together with the delightful commentaries of St. Gregory.”

Once more back in England, the time soon came when Simon was the recognised leader of the barons in their struggle with the king. And this leadership gave England its first representative parliament.

Henry was in greater financial difficulties than ever in 1257. The mad scheme of accepting the crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund from the pope, on condition that the cost of driving out Manfred, the Emperor Frederick’s son, undertaken by the pope, was to be paid for by England, had been adopted by Henry in spite of the opposition of bishops and nobles. Henry pledged his kingdom with the pope as security for the expenditure in Sicily,[41] and at last in the parliament of 1257 had to confess his indebtedness. Fourteen thousand marks were owing to Pope Alexander, and this wretched debt, in addition to the general contempt for law and justice by the king’s judges, sheriffs and foreign favourites, drove matters to a climax. The wet summer of 1257, followed by a failure at harvest, brought famine in the winter.

The barons insisted that the time had come for constitutional amendment. “The king’s mistakes call for special treatment,” said Richard, Earl of Gloucester, at a parliament early in 1258, and Simon, closely related to the royal house as he was, agreed. The swarm of royal parasites from Poitou raised objections to any interference with Henry’s prerogative, but were swept aside. “If the king can’t do without us in war he must listen to us in peace. And what sort of peace is this when the king is led astray by bad counsellors and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?” So the barons argued.[42]

To Henry’s threat, “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,” Hugh Bigod of Norfolk had retorted briskly, “And I will send you back the heads of your reapers.”

Parliament met again in June that year at Oxford--the “Mad Parliament” it was called--and the barons came fully armed, for civil war seemed imminent. But the barons led by Richard of Gloucester and Earl Simon carried all before them and the war was postponed for five years.

The work of this parliament, well known as the Provisions of Oxford, was one more attempt to get the Great Charter honestly observed. Under this constitution:--

The king was to have a standing council of fifteen, by whose advice he was to act, and to whom the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer were to be accountable.

Parliament was to meet three times a year--February, June and October. Four knights were to be chosen by the king’s lesser freehold tenant-knights in each county.

To save expense twelve commissioners were to be chosen to represent the baronage--“and the commonalty shall hold as established that which these twelve shall do.”[43] The fifteen counsellors consisted of six of the king’s party, and nine of the barons’--the most conspicuous of the latter were Simon of Montfort, Richard of Gloucester, and Bishop Cantilupe, of Worcester.

Then the oath was taken, “that neither for life nor death, for hatred or love, or for any cause whatever, would they be bent or weakened in their purpose to regain praiseworthy laws, and to cleanse the kingdom from foreigners.”

Henry and Prince Edward, his eldest son, took the oath willingly enough--though the latter soon began “to draw back from it so far as he could.” The king’s half-brothers and the rest of the aliens not only refused the oath, but swore that as long as they had breath they would never surrender their castles, revenues, or wardships.[44] Simon, who on the ground of his foreign birth had at once yielded his castles of Kenilworth and Odiham, without recompense, turned to William de Valence--who was blustering more than the rest--and said sharply, “To a certainty you shall either surrender your castles or lose your head.” The barons made it plain that they were in agreement with this, and then were the Poitevins afraid, not knowing what to do; “for if they hid themselves in their castles they would be starved out; for all the people would besiege them and utterly destroy their castles.” The aliens fled to the continent, and the new constitution was proclaimed in every county--in Latin, French, and English.[45]

Twenty years had passed since Henry had blessed Simon’s marriage with his sister Eleanor, and Simon had stood godfather to Prince Edward, and now after the Parliament at Oxford, meeting the Earl of Leicester in the Bishop of Durham’s palace on the Thames bank, the king cannot conceal his fear of the one man who held up the good cause--“like a pillar that cannot be moved.” The king had taken refuge from a thunderstorm, and to Simon’s assurance that the storm was passing, and was no longer to be feared, answered grimly, “I fear thunder and lightning a good deal, Lord Simon, but by the Head of God, I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world.”

“Everyone suspected that these astounding words broke from the king because the Earl of Leicester manfully and boldly persevered in carrying out the provisions, compelling the king and all the enemies of these provisions to assent to them, and utterly banishing his brothers, who were corrupting the whole kingdom.” (Matthew Paris.)

Manfully as the great earl might strive, he could not accomplish the carrying out of the Provisions of Oxford. Henry was quickly at his old work, obtaining from Rome a dispensation from his old promises on the ground they had been obtained by compulsion, and bringing back his foreign supporters. The barons neither held together nor made any serious effort to promote good government.

Richard of Gloucester, jealous of Simon, fell away from the national cause before his death in 1262.[46]

Prince Edward stood by his oath, but did nothing to prevent the break-up of the provisional government, and soon openly supported his father.

In spite of all this the Provisions, modified at Westminster in 1259, endured for five years, and then it seemed as if nothing could save the country from civil war. As a last resource appeal was made by both sides to King Louis of France to arbitrate concerning the fulfilment of the Provisions, and at Amiens, in January, 1264, the award was given. Louis solemnly gave sentence for the king against the barons, entirely annulling the Statutes and Provisions of Oxford, and in particular declaring the king free to appoint his own ministers, councils, and sheriffs, and to employ aliens. But by the award--the mise--of Amiens the earlier charters given by the crown were to remain, and all disputes arising out of the Parliament of Oxford were to be suppressed. Louis gave as a reason for annulling the provisions that the pope had already annulled them.

The appellants had turned to Louis hoping for peace. The award was the signal for war. Many of the bishops and barons at once withdrew from Simon, who answered the deserters by declaring, “Though all should forsake us, I and my four sons will fight to the death in the righteous cause I have sworn to uphold, to the honour of the Church and the good of the realm. Many lands have I travelled, heathen and Christian, but nowhere have I seen such bad faith and falsehood as in England.”

London was enthusiastic in its support of the barons, and the Cinque Ports, the scholars of Oxford, and the Dominican and Franciscan friars were all on the side of reform. Chief among Simon’s supporters were Bishop Cantilupe, of Worcester, Gilbert, the young Earl of Gloucester, Hugh le Despenser, the justiciar, and Roger Bigod.

War began in March, when Prince Edward captured Gloucester, joined Henry at Oxford, and then seized Nottingham and Northampton, while Simon and the citizens of London attacked Rochester. Henry turned south, and encamped in full force near Lewes.

Again Simon laboured for peace, and in his own name and the name of Gilbert of Gloucester, the Bishops of Worcester and London went as ambassadors to Henry. Simon offered £30,000 to the king if he would make peace and keep to the Provisions of Oxford, and assured him that he had taken up arms not against Henry but against those who were “not only our enemies, but yours, and those of the whole kingdom.”

The king treated the proposal with scorn, and Prince Edward added an additional message of contempt.

On the 14th of May the battle of Lewes was fought and won by Simon, “through a singular conjunction of skill and craft on the one side, and rashness and panic on the other.”[47]

The Earl of Leicester went into the battle fighting for his country and his oath, and with the exhortation to his men “to pray God, if this our undertaking be pleasing in His sight, to give us might to fulfil the same, serving Him as good knights.”

The stout old Bishop of Worcester blessed the troops, “who had among them all but one faith, one will in all things, one love towards God and their neighbour, so that they feared neither to offend the king nor even to die for the sake of justice, rather than violate their oaths.” (Matthew of Westminster.)

At the end of the day the defeat of the royalists was complete, and the king, Prince Edward and his kinsmen were prisoners.

Then peace was made, Henry once more swearing to keep the charters and articles of Oxford, to employ no aliens, to submit the Provisions to arbitration again, to live thriftily till his debts were paid, and to give his son Edward and his nephew Henry as hostages for good behaviour till a permanent reform in the constitution was made. Early in June these terms of peace were proclaimed in London, to the general satisfaction, and on all sides the people shouted their thankfulness to Simon.

God’s blessing on Earl Simon, his sons and followers light!
Who put their lives in jeopardy and fought a desperate fight,
Because their hearts were moved to hear their English brethren groan
Beneath the hard taskmasters’ rods, making a grievous moan,
Like Israel under Pharaoh’s yoke, in thraldom and in dread,
Their freedom gone, their lives scarce spared, so evilly they sped.
But at the last the Lord looked down and saw His people’s pain,
And sent a second Mattathias to break their bonds in twain;
Who with his sons so full of zeal for the law and for the right,
Will never flinch a single inch before the tyrant’s might.
To Simon’s faith and faithfulness alone our peace we owe,
He raised the weak and hopeless and made the proud to bow,
He set the realm at one again and brought the mighty low.[48]

And now in the summer of 1264 Earl Simon was to show what he could do for England, for the victory of Lewes had placed power in his hands, and he stood indisputably the foremost man in the realm. For one short year his counsel was to guide the destinies of England and to make that year memorable for all time by the creation of the first representative Parliament.

A new scheme of government was at once drawn up. Three electors chosen by the barons were to appoint a council of nine for the guidance of the king, and Simon of Montfort, Gilbert of Gloucester, and Stephen Berksted, Bishop of Chichester, were speedily chosen as the three electors. Hugh le Despenser remained justiciar, and Thomas Cantilupe, the bishop’s nephew, became chancellor. (This Thomas subsequently became Bishop of Hereford, died in Italy, and was canonized.)

Then in December came the issue of writs for Simon of Montfort’s famous Full Parliament of 1265. Two knights are to be returned from each shire, and for the first time from each city and borough the burgesses are to send two representatives. Hitherto Parliament had consisted of barons and clergy, and knights sent by the king’s tenants, and the representation of the townspeople was unknown. Simon’s earlier policy at Oxford had done nothing to extend the basis of government or create a national responsibility for the laws. “The provisions of 1258 restricted, the constitutions of 1264 extended the limits of parliament.... Either Simon’s views of a constitution had rapidly developed, or the influence which had checked them in 1258 were removed. Anyhow, he had had genius to interpret the mind of the nation and to anticipate the line which was taken by later progress.” (Stubbs.)

This development of Simon’s views may fairly be traced to his close and intimate connection with the Dominican friars.[49] Simon’s father, the warrior of the Albigensian wars, had been the warm friend of St. Dominic. Simon himself was equally the friend of Bishop Grosseteste, the champion of the friars. As far back as 1245 Simon had founded a Dominican priory at Leicester. In 1263 he had been present at a General Chapter of the Dominican Order in Holborn, London, and the Parliament of Oxford had met in a Dominican priory in that city. All along the friars had supported the popular movement.[50]

Now the peculiarity of the Dominican Order of Friars is its representative form of government. Each priory sends two representatives to its provincial chapter, and each province sends two representatives to the general chapter of the order.

Simon of Montfort, when the opportunity came to him for striking out a reform in the English Parliament, adopted the plan which he had studied and seen at work amongst the Preaching Friars. “The idea of representative government had ripened in his hand,” and his genius interpreted the mind of the nation. In spite of all the scorn that has been poured on popular elections and the Houses of Parliament, in spite of all the imperfections that necessarily are attached to any constitutional system devised by the wit of man, the idea of representative government has become the inspiration of the nations of the world. The failings of democracy are obvious, the weak spots in popular electoral systems glaring; but mankind, once grasping the idea of freedom in politics, clamours eagerly for responsibility in law-making and the administration of justice, and refuses to rest satisfied under any despotism or bureaucracy, benevolent or malevolent. Suppressed by dictators, perverted by demagogues, abused by the unscrupulous in power, there still seems nothing better in politics for mankind than self-government. “Better is he who rules his own temper than he who storms a city,” wrote Friar Adam of Marsh to Simon of Montfort. “Better self-government for a people than world-wide conquest,” the average man declares, and the opinion slowly moulds the destinies of nations, till “patriotism” becomes the word for good service in politics.

The verse of the thirteenth century chronicler:--

The king that tries without advice to seek his people’s will,
Must often fail, he cannot know the woes and wants they feel,

gets re-expression in the nineteenth century in Abraham Lincoln’s: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Always threatened by the personal ambition of man, often overthrown when ambition held the sword of power, contemptible to the wise and prudent because of the simplicity and innocence of “the people,” denounced as dangerous by the professional expert in bureaucracy because of the ignorance of “the people,” its inadequacy the common theme of the disappointed--representative government survives its enemies, defies its critics, and with its blemishes unconcealed, finds the company of its lovers ever increasing and recruiting in its behalf. For since that first Full Parliament of Earl Simon’s in 1265 it has never been possible to get rid of the notion that representative government was a key to the portals of freedom; and though the wider the freedom the greater the responsibility, to the credit of the race at all times men and women have pressed forward, not rejecting responsibility.

Simon’s parliament sat from January to March. Its chief business was the confirmation of the treaty of peace at Lewes, and Henry swore as usual to maintain the new constitution, the charters and provisions. The government was short-lived. Danger from France, where the queen and Archbishop Boniface of Canterbury and all Henry’s alien courtiers planned invasion with an army collected in Holland, had passed away at the close of the previous summer. There had been a great muster of troops for national defence near Dover, bad weather had incapacitated the queen’s fleet, and Louis of France agreed to negotiations in place of war. The Cinque Ports mariners refused a landing to the pope’s legate, who was ready to excommunicate the new government, and flung his papal bull in the sea.[51]

Not from abroad but from within came the foes who overthrew Simon’s government and murdered the great statesman. Earl Gilbert, of Gloucester, like his father, grew jealous of Simon’s leadership, and disputed his authority as to the ransom of some of the prisoners of Lewes, and Simon’s sons added fuel to the flame by their pride and overbearing insolence. Roger Mortimer and some of the nobles of the Welsh marches rose for King Henry in the spring of 1265, and Gilbert deserted the barons for the king.[52] William of Valence landed in South Wales with a body of crossbowmen in May, and when Simon reached Hereford to put down the rebellion, Prince Edward, who, with the king, had been in Simon’s custody, made his escape to Mortimer and the marches.

Edward quickly raised troops, and joined Gilbert at Ludlow, where he took an oath to obey the laws and charters of the realm. Simon, in some danger of being cut off by this movement on his rear, sent word to his second son--Simon--to go to Kenilworth and join him at Evesham, and then turned back from Wales.

The younger Simon was surprised at Kenilworth by a sudden raid by Edward. His camp was broken up, his banners taken, and he was driven back into the castle. Edward, fully aware that Earl Simon had only a small force with him, hurried off to Evesham to attack him, before young Simon could rally his scattered troops and come to his father’s help.

On the morning of August 4th Earl Simon halted at Evesham, and at the king’s request, for Henry was still his captive, heard mass and dined. His son’s army, now on its way, halted for the same purpose at Alcester. “He was now only ten miles distant and the junction of father and son seemed secure.”[53] But Prince Edward was already between them. “As the morning broke his army lay across the road that led northward from Evesham to Alcester. Ere three hours had passed the corpse of the great earl lay mangled amid a ring of faithful knights, and the ‘murder of Evesham, for battle none it was,’ was over.”

At first Simon thought the advancing army was his son’s, for Edward displayed the captured banners of Kenilworth, but when he saw the standards of the prince and of Gloucester, and the well-known banner of Mortimer, the truth was clear.

“By the arm of St. James,” cried the earl, “they come on skilfully, for they have turned my lessons against me. God have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are theirs! Though if Simon were to come up we might hope yet.” He turned to his eldest son, and pointing to the banner of Gloucester said, “See, Henry, what your pride has done.”

In vain Henry urged his father to fly while escape was possible. “I had as lief die here in a good cause as in the Holy Land,” said the earl, and the barons and knights standing round were equally resolute to fight to the end--though they had but two men to every seven of the enemy. The good Bishop of Worcester blessed the little army as he had done at Lewes, and then the battle began. The Welsh footsoldiers quickly lost heart and fled from Simon and the field, and the barons were soon hemmed in. One by one they fell--Henry of Montfort, Hugh le Despenser, the wise and upright justiciar, and Simon himself, wounded and unhorsed, “fought on to the last like a giant for the liberties of England.” A soldier stabbed him in the back under the mail he wore, and then he was borne down and slain, overwhelmed by numbers rather than conquered. “So a death full of honour ended the chivalry and prowess, ennobled by so many deeds in so many lands.” “Thus lamentably fell the flower of knighthood, leaving to others an example of steadfast courage. Who can prevent the treachery of friends? Those who had eaten his bread had raised their heels against him. Those who had spoken words of love to him with their lips lied in their throats, for their hearts were not right with him, and they betrayed him in his hour of need.” (W. Rishanger.)

For nearly three hours the unequal battle was fought, in the midst of storm and darkness. So dark was it that King Henry, who had been forced to remain with Simon’s knights, had difficulty in saving his life, and was actually wounded by a javelin before he was recognized by Edward’s soldiers.

The monks of Evesham carried the bodies of some of the barons into the abbey for burial, and after horrible mutilations by the victors the remains of the great earl were reverently interred by the side of Hugh le Despenser, before the high altar.

“Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare and plain russet dress, bearing witness to his kindly speech and firm friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause ‘like a pillar that cannot be moved, and like a second Josiah esteemed righteousness the very healing of his soul.’ As a statesman he wished to bind the king to rule according to law, and to make the king’s ministers responsible to a full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it about.” (F. York Powell.)

The news of Simon’s death was received with general mourning as it spread over the land. He was acclaimed by the people as a saint and martyr, and miracles were said to be worked by his relics.[54] The Franciscan friars drew up a service in his honour--“consisting of lessons, responses, verses, hymns, and other matter appertaining to the honour and respect due to a martyr.”[55] But the pope who had excommunicated Simon was not likely to hear of canonization, and “as long as Edward lives the service compiled in Simon’s honour cannot gain acceptance to be chanted within the church of God, which was hoped for.”[56]

The “Lament of Earl Simon,”[57] compared the mighty statesman with Thomas of Canterbury:

For by his death Earl Simon hath
In sooth the victory won,
Like Canterbury’s martyr he
There to the death was done.
Thomas the good, that never would
Let holy church be tried;
Like him he fought, and flinching not,
The good earl like him died.

_Refrain:_

Now low there lies the flower of price
That knew so much of war;
The Earl Montfort, whose luckless sort,
The land shall long deplore.

Death did they face to keep in place
Both righteousness and peace;
Wherefore the saint from sin and taint
Shall give their souls release.
They faced the grave that they might save
The people of this land;
For so his will they did fulfill
As we do understand.

_Refrain._

Sir Simon now, that knight so true,
With all his company,
Are gone above to joy and love
In life that cannot die;
But may our Lord that died on rood
And God send succour yet
To them that lie in misery,
Fast in hard prison set.

_Refrain._

The good cause for which Simon had fought might well have seemed lost, when Edward’s knights were hacking the dead body of the great earl to pieces at Evesham. But it was not exactly a “Royalist victory,” for the very men who stood victors over the mangled corpse of Earl Simon were men as resolute as he was to enforce the Great Charter and its results against the king.[58]

In the hour of triumph Henry struck hard, and a mad reaction of terror ensued. But the movement Simon had led could not be turned back, and the very savage extravagance of the royalist party defeated its own ends. A general sentence of disinheritance against all who had fought with Simon drove the disinherited barons to keep up the fight. The siege of Kenilworth, where Sir Henry of Hastings defied the whole royal army, lasted from June to December, 1266, and was only ended by Parliament insisting on the king appointing a board of twelve, who made a just award concerning the disinherited. By this award, called the Ban of Kenilworth:--

The royal obligation to keep the charters was required.

The acts of Simon were annulled, and the full prerogatives of the crown declared.

The freedom of the Church was demanded.

Justice was to be done according to the laws and customs of the realm.

The adherents of Simon were to be punished by fine and not by disinheritance, so that the king could repay those who had served him faithfully without giving occasion for fresh war.

Simon was not to be proclaimed a saint (seeing he died under the excommunication of the Church), and those who spread idle tales of miracles done at his tomb were to be punished.

A complete indemnity was promised to all who accepted the ban within forty days.

For a time the ban was rejected, and it was not till the summer of 1267 that the struggle was finally over. Peace was assured by the Parliament of Marlborough in November, 1267, which re-enacted the Provisions of Westminster (1259) as a statute.

The lasting value of Simon’s work was seen in 1295, when Edward I. summoned his great representative parliament on the professed principle that “that which touches all shall be approved by all.” This assembly, by that very principle, served as “a pattern for all future assemblies of the nation.” (Stubbs.)

Had Simon of Montfort received canonization by the Church he would surely have been the patron saint of all workers in the world of politics, and of all who honestly and courageously engage in public work.

Wat Tyler and the Peasant Revolt

1381

AUTHORITIES: Walsingham; Knyghton--(Rolls Series); Wright’s _Political Songs_--(Rolls Series); Froissart; Professor Oman--_Great Revolt of 1381_, containing translation of a chronicle of the rising in the Stow MSS., first published in _English Historical Review_, 1895; André Réville--_Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs_ (1898); Dr. G. Kriehn--_American Review_, 1902; Edgar Powell--_Rising of 1381 in East Anglia_; Dr. James Gairdner--_Lollardy and the Reformation_; G. M. Trevelyan--_England in the Age of Wycliff_; J. Clayton--_Wat Tyler and the Great Uprising_.

(_From the Panel Painting in the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey._)]

WAT TYLER AND THE PEASANT REVOLT

1381

The Peasant Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was not only the first great national movement towards democracy, it was the first uprising of the English people in opposition to all their hitherto recognised rulers in Church and State, and it was the first outburst in this land against social injustice.[59]

The Black Death in 1349 and the pestilence that ravaged the country in 1361 and 1369 upset the old feudal order. The land was in many places utterly bereft of labour, and neither king nor parliament could restore the former state of things. Landowners, driven by the scarcity of labour, went in for sheep farming in place of agriculture, and were compelled to offer an increase of wages in spite of the Statutes of Labourers (1351–1353) which expressly forbade the same:--

“Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three-score years, and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence.”

This act remained the law until the fifth year of Elizabeth.

“Free” labourers, landless men but not serfs, wandered away to the towns or turned outlaws in the forests. Serfs--only a small number of the population, for the Church had always recommended their liberation, even while abbots and priors retained them on Church estates, and Edward III. had encouraged granting freedom in return for payment in money--escaped to those incorporated towns that promised freedom after eighteen months’ residence. Villeins and lesser tenants commuted the service due from them to their landlords by money payments, and so began the leasehold system of land tenure.

For thirty years preceding the Peasant Revolt the social changes had bred discontent, and discontent rather than misery is always the parent of revolt.

An early statute of Richard II., framed for the perpetual bondage of the serfs, heightened the discontent.

“No bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children in the world by their going into the Church.”

This same act made equal prohibition against apprenticeship in the town.

The free labourer had his grievance against the Statute of Labourers. Villeins and cottar tenants had no sure protection against being compelled to give labour service to their lords; and they, with the freehold yeomen and the town workmen and shopkeepers, hated the heavy taxation, the oppressive market tolls and the general misgovernment.

To unite all these forces of social discontent into one great army, which should destroy the oppression and establish freedom and brotherhood, was the work John Ball--an itinerant priest who came at first from St. Mary’s at York, and then made Colchester the centre of his journeyings--devoted himself to for twenty years.

Ball preached a social revolution, and his gospel was that all men were brothers, and that serfdom and lordship were incompatible with brotherhood. In our times such teaching is common enough, but in the fourteenth century, with its sumptuary laws and its feudal ranks, only in religion was this principle accepted.[60] John Ball became the moving spirit in the agitation set on foot by his teaching. He had his colleagues and lieutenants, John Wraw in Suffolk and Jack Straw in Essex--both priests like himself--William Grindcobbe in Hertford and Geoffrey Litster in Norfolk. The peasants were organised into clubs, and letters were sent by Ball far and wide to stir up revolt. In Kent and the eastern counties lay the main strength of the revolutionaries--it was in Kent that Ball was particularly active just before the rising--but Sussex, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire and Somerset were all affected, so grave and so general was the dissatisfaction, and so hopeful to the labouring people was the message delivered by John Ball.

Of course Ball did not escape censure and the penalty of law during his missionary years. He was excommunicated and cast into prison by three Archbishops of Canterbury, Islip, Simon Langham, and Simon Sudbury, for teaching “errors, schisms, and scandals against the popes, archbishops, bishops, and clergy,” and he was only released from prison, from Archbishop Sudbury’s gaol at Maidstone, by the rough hands of the men of Kent when the rising had begun. The “errors” of John Ball were civil and social rather than theological. The notion that Ball and his fellow socialists of the fourteenth century were mixed up with Wycliff and the Lollards has really no foundation in fact.[61] Wycliff’s unorthodox views on the sacraments and his attacks on the habits of the clergy were of no interest to the social revolutionists, and John of Gaunt, the steady friend of Wycliff, was hated above all other men in the realm by the leaders of the revolt. Wycliff expressed as little sympathy with the Peasant Revolt of his day as Luther later in Germany did with the Peasant War, or Cranmer with the Norfolk rising under Ket in 1549.

John Ball’s sermons were all on one text--“In the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created equal. Servitude of man to man is contrary to God’s will.” He declared that “things will never go well in England so long as goods are not kept in common, and so long as there are villeins and gentlefolks.” He harped on the social inequalities of his age, quoting freely from Langland’s _Piers the Plowman_, and enlarging on the famous couplet:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

As years went by and the time grew ripe for revolt, there is a definite call to rise in Ball’s letters and speeches. “Let us go to the king, and remonstrate with him,” he declares, “telling him we must have it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy.”

Richard II. was but eleven when he came to the throne in 1377. “He is young. If we wait on him in a body, all those who come under the name of serf or are held in bondage will follow us, in the hope of being free. When the king shall see us we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then ourselves seek to amend our condition.”

Some of the rhymed letters Ball sent out, bidding his hearers “stand together manfully in the truth,” urge preparation for the coming conflict:

John Ball greeteth you all,
And doth to understand he hath rung your bell.
Now with right and might, will and skill,
God speed every dell.

John the miller asketh help to turn his mill right:
He hath ground small, small,
The King’s Son of Heaven will pay for it all,
Look thy mill go right, with its four sails dight.

With right and with might, with skill and with will,
And let the post stand in steadfastness,
Let right help might, and skill go before will,
Then shall our mill go aright.
But if might go before right, and will go before skill,
This is our mill mis-a-dight.

Beware ere ye be woe,
Know your friend from your foe,
Take enough and cry ‘Ho!’
And do well and better and flee from sin,
And seek out peace and dwell therein,
So biddeth John Trueman and all his fellows.

In other letters he greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John Carter, and bids them stand together in God’s name; and bids Piers Plowman “go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir Robert Hales, the king’s treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more.”

These letters and the preaching did their work; the peasants were organised; men of marked courage and ability were found in various counties; and “the one head and no more” was ready in Kent to lead the army of revolt to the king when the signal should be given. Litster, Grindcobbe, and Wraw were at their posts. In every county from Somerset to York the peasants flocked together, “some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with only one feather.”

John Ball had rung his bell, and at Whitsuntide, at the end of May, 1381, came the great uprising, the “Hurling-Time of the Peasants.” The fire was all ready to be kindled, and a poll-tax, badly ordered, set the country ablaze.

The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age. Two years later it was graduated, from 4d. on every man and woman of the working class to £6 13s. 4d. on a duke or archbishop. Even this with a further tax on wool was found insufficient.

So early in 1381 John of Gaunt called the parliament together at Northampton, and declared that £160,000 must be raised. Parliament refused to find more than £100,000, and the clergy, owning at that time one-third of the land, promised £60,000. Again a poll-tax was demanded. This time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s., but in districts where wealthy folks lived it was held sufficient that the amount collected in every parish averaged 1s. per head; only the rich were not to pay less than £1 per household, nor the poor less than 8d. In parishes where all were needy the full shilling was demanded without exception. It soon appeared that the money was not to be raised. In many parts the returns as to the population liable to the tax were not even filled in with any attempt at accuracy, and numbers avoided liability by leaving their homes--to escape a tribute, which to the struggling peasant meant ruin. Of the £100,000 required only £22,000 was forthcoming.

Then one John Legge undertook to supply the deficit, if he had the authority of the crown to act as special commissioner to collect the tax. The appointment was made, with the result that the methods of the tax-collectors provoked revolt, and Legge lost his life over the business.

The rising began in Essex, when the villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope were summoned to meet the tax-commissioner at Brentwood. Unable to pay, they fell upon the collectors and killed them. The government met this assault by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to punish the offenders. But as the judge merely had for escort a certain number of legal functionaries, and as the blood of the people was up, Belknap was received with open contempt, and, forced to swear on the Bible that he would hold no other session in the place, was glad to escape from the town without injury. And with this defiance and overpowering of the king’s officers the signal was given, the beacon of revolt well lighted.

It was June 2nd, Whit Sunday, when the Chief Justice was driven out of Brentwood; two days later Kent had risen at Gravesend and Dartford.

At Gravesend Sir Simon Burley, the friend of Richard II., seized a workman in the town, claiming him as a bondsman of his estate, and clapped him in Rochester Castle, refusing to hear of release unless £300 was paid.

At the same time word went about that the tax-collector at Dartford was insulting the women, and that, in especial, the wife and daughter of one John Tyler had been abused with gross indecency.

Whereupon this John Tyler, “being at work in the same town tyling of an house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff, so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.”[62]

Robert Cave, a master baker of Dartford, led the people straight off to Rochester; and the castle having been stormed, and all its prisoners released, Sir John Newton, the governor of the castle, was retained in safe custody.

And now the time had come for good generalship and discipline in the ranks, if the fire of revolt was to burn aright. Accordingly at Maidstone, on June 7th, Wat Tyler is chosen captain of the host; and proof is quickly given that the rising is not for mob rule or general anarchy, but to redress positive and intolerable wrongs. (Five Tylers are mentioned in the records of the Peasant Revolt: Wat Tyler, of Maidstone; John Tyler, of Dartford, who slays the tax-collector, and is not heard of again; Walter Tyler, of Essex; and two Tylers of the City of London--William, of Stone Street, and Simon, of Cripplegate.)

In every respect was this Wat Tyler a man of remarkable gifts. Chosen as leader by the voice of his neighbours in Kent, his authority is at once obeyed without dispute, and his influence is seen to extend beyond the borders of his own county. Jack Straw acts as his lieutenant; John Wraw, of Suffolk, and William Grindcobbe, of St. Albans, come to him for advice; and it is not till Tyler moves on London with his army that the rising becomes national. He is plainly marked out as a great leader of masses of men. Skilful, courageous, humane, Wat Tyler is proved to be; firm, clear-headed, downright in manner, and yet large-hearted, jovial and brotherly--equally at home with king or beggar. There is nothing of the fanatical doctrinaire about this first great leader of the English people. He could order the execution of “traitors,” but he is not the man for bloodshed in England if the revolution he and John Ball aimed at can be accomplished by peaceful means. After more than 500 years the reputation of Wat Tyler stands out untarnished and unshaken.[63]

Yet for eight days--and eight days only--does history allow us to follow the career of this remarkable man. On June 7th Wat Tyler was chosen by the men of Kent to lead the revolt; on June 15th he was dead. Of his antecedents we know nothing. Parentage, birth-place, age, height, and personal appearance, are all unrecorded. His trade alone we can infer, and we know that his contemporaries trusted him to the full: for no suggestion has been made of any kind of rivalry or jealousy amongst the leaders, or of criticism or grumbling amongst the rank and file.

Wat Tyler emerges from the obscurity of history to become a strong democratic leader. For eight days he commands a vast army of men; he confronts the king as an equal; orders the execution of the chief ministers of the crown; and wrests from the king promises of fundamental social importance. Then, in the very hour of victory, an unexpected blow from an enemy strikes him down, and death follows. Surely to few men is it awarded to achieve an immortal reputation in so brief a public life.

No sooner is Tyler acclaimed as leader at Maidstone than the commons of Kent are flocking to the standard of revolt. The cry is for “King Richard and the Commons,” and it goes hard with any who refuse to take the oath. John of Gaunt is the enemy. John of Gaunt is held to be responsible for all the mischief wrought on the coast towns of Kent by the privateer fleets of the Scots and the French, for the raiding of Rye and Winchelsea. (Only in the previous year these fleets had invaded the Thames as far as Gravesend.) John of Gaunt is the head and front of the misrule that bled the land with poll-taxes. John of Gaunt is the incarnation of the landlord rule that would keep the labourer in bondage for ever. So bitter is the feeling against John of Gaunt, and so acute the fear that he is aiming at the crown, that a vow is taken by the men of Kent that no man named “John” shall be King of England.