1376-1377 was too weak to stand alone. At last it was rumored that when the Black Prince died his young son Richard was to be set aside, and that Lancaster was to claim the inheritance. The Black Prince awoke from his lethargy, and stood forward as the leader of the Commons. A Parliament, known as the Good Parliament, met in 1376, and, strong through the Black Prince's support, the Commons refused to grant supply till an account of the receipts and expenditure had been laid before them. The Commons obtained a new Council, in which Wykeham was included and from which Lancaster was shut out. They then proceeded to accuse before the House of Lords Richard Lyons and Lord Latimer of embezzling the king's revenue. Lyons, accustomed to the past ways of the court, packed 1,000l. in a barrel and sent it to the Black Prince. The Black Prince returned the barrel and the money, and the Lords condemned Lyons to imprisonment. Latimer was also sentenced to imprisonment, but he was allowed to give bail and regained his liberty. These two cases are the first instances of the exercise of the right of impeachment—that is to say, of the accusation of political offenders by the Commons before the Lords. Alice Perrers was next driven from court. While Parliament was still sitting the Black Prince, worn out by his exertions, died. His son, young Richard, was at once recognized as heir to the throne. Lancaster, however, regained his influence over his doting father. Alice Perrers and Lord Latimer found their way back to court. The Speaker of the House of Commons was thrown into prison. In 1377 a new Parliament, elected under Lancaster's influence, reversed all the proceedings of the Good Parliament, and showed how little sympathy the baronial party had with the people by imposing a poll tax of 4d. a head on all except beggars, thus making the payment of a laborer and a duke equal. The bishops, unable to strike at Lancaster, struck at Wycliffe, as his creature. Wycliffe was summoned to appear before an ecclesiastical court at St. Paul, presided over by Courtenay, the Bishop of London. He came supported by Lancaster and a troop of Lancaster's followers. Hot words were exchanged between them and the Bishop. The London crowd took their Bishop's part and the Duke was compelled to flee for his life. In the summer of 1377 Edward III. died, deserted by everyone, Alice Perrers making off, after robbing him of his finger-rings. Chapter XVII RICHARD II. AND THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 1377-1381 LEADING DATES REIGN OF RICHARD II., A.D. 1377-1399—ACCESSION OF RICHARD II., W TOE to the land," quoted Langland from Ecclesiastes, in the second edition of "Piers the Plowman," "when the king is a child." Richard was but ten years of age when he was raised to the throne. The French plundered the coast, and the Scots plundered the Borders. In the presence of such dangers Lancaster and Wykeham forgot their differences, and as Lancaster was too generally distrusted to allow of his acting as regent, the council governed in the name of the young king. Lancaster, however, took the lead, and renewed the war with France with but little result beyond so great a waste of money as to stir up Parliament to claim a control over the expenditure of the Crown. 66 In 1378 began the Great Schism. For nearly half a century from that date there were two Popes, one at Avignon and one at Rome. Wycliffe had been gradually losing his reverence for a single Pope, and he had none left for two. He was now busy with a translation of the Bible into English, and sent forth a band of poor priests" to preach the simple gospel which he found in it. He was thus brought into collision with the pretensions of the priesthood, and was thereby led to question the doctrines on which their authority was based. In 1381 he declared his disbelief in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and thereby denied to priests that power "of making the body of Christ," which was held to mark them off from their fellow-men. In any case, so momentous an announcement would have cost Wycliffe the hearts of large numbers of his supporters. It was the more fatal to his influence as it was coincident with social disorders, the blame for which was certain, rightly or wrongly, to be laid at his door. The disastrous war with France made fresh taxation unavoid 1379-1381 able. In 1379 a poll-tax was imposed by Parliament on a graduated scale, reaching from the 6l. 13s. 4d., required of a duke, to the groat, or 4d., representing in those days at least the value of 4s. at the present day, required of the poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in 1380 exacted no less than three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried children above the age of fifteen. In 1381 a tiler at Dartford in Kent struck dead a collector. His neighbors took arms to protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and south of England rose in insurrection. The peasants had other grievances besides the weight of taxation thrown on them by a Parliament in which they had no representatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to compel the acceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of Laborers, had attempted to help themselves in another way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been frequently commuted into a payment of money. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the old bodily service. The discontent that prevailed everywhere was fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry, had been thrown into prison. His favorite question was: When Adam delved and Eve span Who was then a gentleman? From one end of England to another the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the villeins' services. were burned, and lawyers as well as others connected with the courts. were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex 100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released John Ball from jail and poured along the roads to London. They hoped to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey shore. Those who were with him, however, refused to allow him to land. The peasants had sympathizers in London itself, who allowed them to break into the city. Lancaster's palace and the houses of law 1381-1384 yers and officials were sacked and burned. All the lawyers who could be found were murdered, and others who were not lawyers shared their fate. The mob broke into the Tower, and beheaded Simon of Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had, as Chancellor, proposed the obnoxious taxes to Parliament. The boy king met the mob at Mile-End, and promised to abolish villeinage in England. Charters of manumission were drawn out and sealed, and a great part of the insurgents returned contentedly home. About 30,000, however, remained behind. When Richard came among them at Smithfield, Wat Tyler threatened him, and the Mayor of London slew Wat Tyler with his dagger. A shout for vengeance was raised. With astonishing presence of mind Richard rode forward. "I am your king," he said; "I will be your leader." His boldness inspired the insurgents with confidence, and caused them to desist from their threats and to return to their homes. In the country the gentry, encouraged by the failure of the insurgents in London, recovered their courage. The insurrection was everywhere vigorously suppressed. Richard ordered the payment of all services due, and revoked the charters he had granted. The judges on their circuits hanged the ringleaders without mercy. When Parliament met it directed that the charters of manumission should be canceled. Lords and Commons alike stood up for the rich against the poor, and the boy king was powerless to resist them, and it is possible that he did not wish to do so. The revolt of the peasants strengthened the conservative spirit of the country. The villeinage into which the peasants had been thrust back could not, indeed, endure long, because service unwillingly rendered is too expensive to be maintained. Men were, however, no longer in a mood to listen to reformers. Great noblemen, whose right to the services of their villeins had been denied, now made common cause with the great churchmen. The propertied classes, lay and clerical, instinctively saw that they must hang together. Wycliffe's attacks on transubstantiation finding little response, he was obliged to retire to his parsonage at Lutterworth, where he labored with his pen till his death in 1384. His followers, known by the nickname of Lollards, were, however, for some time still popular among the poorer classes. A combination between the great nobles and the higher clergy might, at the end of the fourteenth century, meet with temporary success; but English society was too diversified, and each separate 1381-1399 portion of it was too closely linked to the other to make it possible for the higher classes to tyrannize over the others for any long time. What that society was like is best seen in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." Chaucer was precursor of modern literature as Wyckliffe was the precursor of modern religion. He was an inimitable story-teller, with an eye which nothing could escape. He was ready to take men as he found them, having no yearning for the purification of a sinful world. Heroic examples of manly constancy and of womanly purity and devotion are mingled in his pages with coarse and ribald tales; still, coarse and ribald as some of his narratives are, Chaucer never attempts to make vice attractive. takes it rather as a matter of course, calling, not for reproof, but for laughter, whenever those who are doing evil place themselves in ridiculous situations. He While, however, there is not one of the "Canterbury Tales which fails to bring vividly before the reader one aspect or another of the life of Chaucer's day, it is in the prologue that is especially found evidence of the close connection which existed between different ranks of society. Men and women of various classes are there represented as riding together on a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas of Canterbury, and beguiling the way by telling stories to one another. No baron, indeed, takes part in the pilgrimage, and the villein class is represented by the reeve, who was himself a person in authority, the mere cultivator of the soil being excluded. Yet, within these limits, the whole circle of society is admirably represented. The knight, just returned from deeds of chivalry, is on the best of terms with the rough-spoken miller and the reeve, while the clerk of Oxford, who would gladly learn and gladly teach, and who followed in his own life those precepts which he commended to his parishioners, has no irreconcilable quarrel with the begging friar or with the official of the ecclesiastical courts, whose only object is to make a gain of godliness. In his representation of the clergy, Chaucer shows that, like Langland, he had no reverence for the merely official clergy. His poor parson of a town," indeed, is a model for all helpers and teachers. The final character given to him is: 66 A bettre preest I trowe ther nowher non is. |