1381-1399 The majority among Chaucer's clergy are, however, of a very different kind. There is the parish clerk, who, when he is waving the censer in church thinks more of the pretty women there than of his duty; the monk who loves hunting, and hates work and reading; the friar who is ready to grant absolution to anyone who will give money to the friars; the pardoner, who has for sale sham relics, Though Wycliffe had failed to reform the Church there was evidently much room for a reformer. Such men as these latter did not go on pilgrimages through pure religious zeal. Villeins, indeed, were "bound to the soil," and lived and died on land which they tilled; but the classes above them moved about freely, and took pleasure in a pilgrimage, as a modern Englishman takes pleasure in a railway excursion. It was considered to be a pious work to make or repair roads and bridges, and the existence of many bridges especially was owing to the clergy. The most famous bridge in England, London Bridge, had been begun in the place of an old wooden one in 1176-in the reign of Henry II. It was completed in 1209, houses being built upon it in order that their rents might pay for keeping it in good condition. Local taxes were sometimes levied to maintain the roads. and bridges, and in default of these, it was held to be the duty of the owners of land to keep the communications open. In spite of these precautions, roads were often neglected, so that those who were not obliged to go on foot traveled almost entirely on horseback, women almost always riding astride like men. It was only at the end of the fourteenth century that a few ladies rode sideways. Kings and queens and exceedingly great people occasionally used lumbering but gorgeously ornamented carriages; but this was to enable them to appear in splendor, as this way of traveling must, at least in fine weather, have been far less agreeable than the ordinary ride. The only other wheeled vehicles in existence were the peasant's carts on two wheels, roughly made in the form of a square box either of boards or of a lighter framework. It was one of the grievances of the peasants that when the king moved from one manor to another his purveyors seized their carts to carry his property, and that though the purveyors were bound by frequently repeated statutes to pay for their hire, these statutes were often broken, and the carts sent back without payment for their use. The same purveyors often took corn and other agriculture produce, for which they paid little or nothing. 1381-1399 When the king arrived in the evening at a town his numerous attendants were billeted upon the townsmen, without asking leave. Monasteries were always ready to offer hospitality to himself or to any great person, and even to provide rougher fare for the poorest stranger in a special guest-house provided for the purpose. In castles, the owner was usually glad to see a stranger of his own rank. The halls were still furnished with movable tables, as in the days before the Conquest, and at night mattresses were placed for persons of inferior rank on the floor, which was strewn with rushes; while a stranger of high rank had usually a bed in the solar with the lord of the castle. Travelers of the middle class were not thought good enough to be welcomed in monasteries and castles, and were not poor enough to be received out of charity; and for them inns were provided. These inns provided beds, of which there were several in each room, and the guests then bought their provisions and fuel from the host, instead of being charged for their meals as is now the custom. From a manual of French conversation, written at the end of the fourteenth century for the use of Englishmen, it appears that cleanliness was not always to be found in these inns. By the roadside were alehouses for temporary refreshment, known by a bunch of twigs at the end of a pole, from which arose the saying that "Good wine needs no bush." The ale of the day was made without hops, which was still unknown in England, and ale would therefore only keep good for about five days. Besides the better class of travelers, the roads were frequented by wanderers of all kinds, quack doctors, minstrels, jugglers, beggars, and such like. Life in the country was dull, and even great lords took pleasure in amusements which are now only to be heard of at country fairs. Anyone who could play or sing was always welcome, and the verses sung were often exceedingly coarse. Tumblers and peddlers also went from place to place. The roads, indeed, were not always safe. Outlaws who had escaped from the punishment due to their crimes took refuge in the broad tracts of forest land which occupied much of the soil which has since been cultivated, shot the king's deer, and robbed merchants and wealthy travelers, leaving the poor untouched, like the legendary Robin Hood of an earlier date. Such robbers were highly esteemed by the poor, as the law from which they suffered was cruelly harsh, hanging being the penalty for thefts amounting 1381-1399 to a shilling. Villeins who fled from service could be reclaimed by their masters, unless they could succeed in passing a year in a town, and consequently were often found among vagabonds who had to live as best they might, often enough by committing fresh crimes. Prisons in which even persons guilty of no more than harmless vagabondage were confined reeked with disease, and those who were, as wanderers or drunkards, put in the stocks, had, if an unpleasant, at least a less dangerous experience than the prisoner. One means of escape, indeed, was available to some, at least, of these unfortunates. They could take refuge in the sanctuaries to be found in the churches, from which no officer of the law could take them, and, though the Church preserved some guilty ones from just punishment, she also saved many who were either innocent or who were exposed to punishments far too severe for their slight offenses. Even harshness is less dangerous than anarchy, and from time to time measures were taken to provide against anarchy. Before the Conquest order had been kept by making either the kindred or the township liable to produce offenders, and this system was maintained by the Norman kings. In the time of Richard I. all men were required to swear to keep the peace, to avoid crime, and to join in the hue and cry in pursuit of criminals. In the time of Henry III. persons called guardians of the peace were occasionally appointed to see that order was kept, and at the accession of Edward III. these officials were established for a time by Act of Parliament as conservators of the peace. In 1360, the year of the Treaty of Bretigni, they were permanently continued, and the name of Justices of the Peace was given to them. They were to keep the peace in each county, and their number was to be made up of a lord, three or four gentlemen, and a lawyer, who was in those days always a cleric. They were to seize and imprison, and even to try persons accused of crime. The king named these justices, but he had to name all of them except the lawyer from among the local landowners. In every way, in the fourteenth century, the chief local landowners were becoming prominent. The kings attempted to govern with their help, both in Parliament and in the counties. Chapter XVIII RICHARD II. AND THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION I 1382-1399 LEADING DATES REIGN OF RICHARD II., A.D. 1377-1399-THE IMPEACHMENT OF SUF- N 1382 Richard at the early age of fifteen was married to at all events old enough to be accused of disasters which he could not avoid. Not only was the war with France not prospering, but English influence was declining in Flanders, and that country in 1383 fell under the control of France. In 1385 Richard, indeed, invaded Scotland, ravaged the country and burned Edinburgh, though without producing any permanent result. In 1386 a French fleet and army was gathered at Sluys, and an invasion of England was threatened. When the king returned from Scotland in 1385 he made a large creation of peers. His Chancellor, Suffolk, was an able and apparently an honest administrator, who upheld the king's prerogative against the encroachments of Parliament. Oxford, his favorite, was a gay and heedless companion of Richard's pleasures, who encouraged him in unnecessary expense, and thereby provoked to resistance those who might have put up with an extension of the royal authority. That resistance, however, was to a great extent due to causes not of Richard's own making. Though the French in 1386 abandoned their attempt at invasion, the preparations to resist them had been costly, and Englishmen were in an unreasonable mood. Things, they said, had not gone so in the days of Edward III. A cry for reform and retrenchment, for more victories and less expense, was loudly raised. The discontented found a leader in Gloucester, the youngest of the king's uncles. Wealthy, turbulent, and ambitious, he put himself at the head of all who had a grievance against the king. 1386-1388 Lancaster had just sailed for Spain to prosecute a claim in right of his second wife to the throne of Castile, and as York was without ambition, Gloucester had it all his own way. Under his guidance a Parliament demanded the dismissal of Richard's ministers, and, on his refusal, impeached Suffolk. Suffolk, though probably innocent of the charges brought against him, was condemned and driven from power, and commissioners of regency were appointed for a year to regulate the realm and the king's household, as the Lords Ordainers had done in the days of Edward II. In one way the commissioners of regency satisfied the desire of Englishmen. In 1387 they sent the Earl of Arundel to sea, and Arundel won a splendid victory over a combined fleet of French, Flemings, and Spaniards. Richard, on the other hand, fearing that they would prolong their power when their year of office was ended, consulted upon the legality of the commission with the judges in the presence of Suffolk and others of his principal supporters, among whom was the Duke of Ireland. With one voice the judges declared that Parliament might not put the king in tutelage. Richard then made preparations to prevent by force the renewal of the commission, and to punish as traitors those who had originated it. His intention got abroad, and five lords, the Duke of Gloucester, the Earls of Arundel, Nottingham, Warwick, and Derby, the latter being the son of the absent Lancaster, appeared at the head of an overwhelming force against him. The five lords appellant, as they were called, appealed, or accused of treason five of Richard's councilors before a Parliament which met at Westminster in 1388, by flinging down their gloves as a token that they were ready to prove the truth of their charge in single combat. The Parliament, called by its admirers the Wonderful, and by its opponents the Merciless Parliament, was entirely subservient to the lords appellant, who, instead of meeting their antagonists in single combat, accused them before the House of Lords. The Duke of Ireland, Suffolk, Chief Justice Tresilian, and Brember, who had been Mayor of London, were condemned to be hanged. The two first named had escaped to the Continent, but the others were put to death. The fifth councilor, the Archbishop of York, escaped with virtual deprivation by the Pope. Four other knights were also put to death. Richard was allowed nominally to retain the crown, but in reality he was subjected to a council in which Gloucester and his adherents were supreme. |