The Last Plantagenets (9 page)

In point of time it is possible to be completely accurate. The revolt of the peasants, from the day when the groat collector yanked the kirtle from the shoulders of Wat the Tyler’s daughter to the time when the last of them turned their backs on the capital city and began the homeward march, lasted a little over fourteen days, certainly the most grim and fateful fortnight in the history of England.

Allowing for such limitations, it was still a mighty throng which reached Blackheath and settled down there as a preliminary step to the occupation of London. It was said they came from both sides of the river but this seems impossible unless the bands from East Anglia commandeered boats to ferry them across the Thames; and again the law of logistics sets a limit to the number that could be accommodated in this way. Most of the expectant multitude which filled to overflowing the broad and bare strip of commons known as Blackheath came, therefore, from Kent and Sussex.

In those days Blackheath was a chalky stretch of empty land which adjoined the southern edge of the gardens around the royal demesne of Greenwich. In later centuries it would serve a variety of purposes. It would become a popular dueling ground. Highwaymen would lurk among the few scrub trees and hide in the yellow gorse and bracken. John Wesley would preach there to crowds which sometimes exceeded ten thousand. Gradually the tide of expansion would submerge it, first with lordly houses but later with the close-packed homes of poorer citizens. But in the days of the revolt Blackheath was no more than a place of rendezvous, a halting point for trade caravans and a playground for venturesome boys.

Here the marching peasants halted while their leaders strove to establish contact with the national officers who were known to have gathered about the young king in the Tower of London. As the unshaved and bone-weary men drew in their belts and stretched themselves out to sleep in such comfort as the heather provided, the word passed from mouth to mouth that on the next day John Ball would preach to them.

They were noisy when they rose in the morning. In anticipation of
success they called to one another, waving their bills and staves above their heads, their eyes gleaming with excitement. Banners had been erected in all parts of the huge field and there was enough breeze to set them rustling. It has been said that John Ball stationed himself on a convenient stump, but no trees of any size had ever grown on this dreary stretch of rock and chalky soil. More likely he chose the highest hummock he could find. Whether stump or hummock, an altar was erected around it with cross and candles, and on each side the tallest of the banners were planted. While the men of Kent went down on their knees, a Mass was celebrated.

Then John Ball came forward and gazed about him in silence at the sea of upturned earnest faces, his own eyes filled with the love he felt for these brave fellows massed in front of him and waiting for his message. It is clear that his main purpose in speaking to them at this point was to strengthen their morale for the serious days ahead of them. In addition he saw the need to stiffen their backs so they would approach the men who ruled this land, where the laws of caste were so tightly and cruelly drawn, not as serfs creeping to the feet of their masters, but as men created in the image of God, with the courage to demand their rights. It is possible that he wanted to instill in them the will to behave with sobriety, to set aside their hates and their prejudices, to think only of the honest objectives which had brought them here.

He seems, at any rate, to have passed by the immediate problem of the groat tax, plunging at once into the broader questions of the laws and rules under which they lived.

“Good people,” he began, his voice reaching to the farthest corner of the commons, “things will never be well in England as long as goods are not held in common. And as long as there are villeins and gentlemen.”

A cheer was raised at this bold utterance, but the arm of the hedge priest cut it short by gesturing for silence.

“Why,” he demanded, “do they hold us in serfage?” Another uncontrollable cheer and again the demanding sweep of the arm. “They go clothed in velvet and warm in their furs and their ermines while we are covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fine bread; and we have oat cake and straw and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; and we have pain and labor, the rain and the wind in the fields.” How well he knew what it meant to lack a roof over his head and a bed, this pilgrim of twenty years! “And yet,” he added, “it is of us and of our toil that these men hold their state.”

The crowd kept their feelings in check while he enlarged on the injustices under which they suffered, and under which their children and their children’s children would live if they themselves did not now stand out for change. Sometimes a cry would be wrung from an emotional
listener, but for the most part the peasants listened in silence. Much of what he said they had heard before, when he had preached at a village cross or declared himself boldly in the comparative safety of a forest glade. But now for the first time a voice was proclaiming their beliefs so openly that all England would come to hear.

Finally the eloquent priest reached a pause before delivering his concluding passage. His eyes swept over the closely packed audience, taking in the roads and the low roofs of the suburb to the west, and reaching as far as the gray stone of the royal walls. The morning sun was climbing back of him and flooding the field with light, as though to cast all possible illumination on this memorable moment in history. Raising his voice to its highest pitch, as John Wesley would do centuries later in speaking to the sober thousands who gathered about him, John Ball expressed his concluding thought in a couplet which has come down the ages and will never be forgotten.

For a moment there was silence and then his listeners realized that he had reached an end, and a mighty shout went up which could be heard far beyond the privileged gardens of Greenwich. They cried out with one voice that no one else would they accept as head of the church in England but John Ball, and that none else should sit in Westminster in the courts of the chancellery to administer the laws.

John Ball does not appear much in the records after this, not at least until the tragic concluding scenes. He is mentioned once as being seen in London when the rioting and the burning and the slaying began. There is no mention of him in the highly dramatic contacts between court and mob, and this is strange because his presence and his voice, after the speech at Blackheath, would seem inevitable and essential. If all had been going well he would have stood beside Wat the Tyler when the young king rode out to face the peasants.

It seems possible that he had realized the sorry truth that leaders of popular causes have to face sooner or later; that an issue, based on idealistic reasoning, cannot hold men together for any great length of time. Few are capable of holding to a faith without any concern for personal satisfaction or gain. A certain proportion of every mass recruited to demand a change or to further a cause will seize the opportunity
offered for looting and thievery. Still more will let their emotions involve them in uncontrollable excesses, in the destruction of property and the massacre of those who stand in their way. It was too much to expect that all of these many thousands of angry peasants could be held for long on a tight rein or under any form of discipline. John Ball, being a zealot and a dreamer of dreams, had not realized how quickly the men who had rallied to the ringing of the bell would get out of hand. An effort was made to enforce discipline, as will be evident later in the story of what happened at the Savoy, and it is not unreasonable to believe that this was the work of John Ball. It proved, unfortunately, as futile a gesture as Canute’s airy demand to the tides to turn back and leave the sands dry for the soles of his royal feet.

It is certain that the eloquent priest was disillusioned and saddened by the madness of the forces he had unleashed. With the prescience of a true leader, he must have seen what the ending would be.

It is quite probable, however, that he did nothing to prevent the first large-scale riot which resulted in the burning of Southwark. Clustering thickly on the southern banks of the Thames, Southwark was at this time the home of the very poor and the unfortunate, living in misery and in close proximity to the evil and the criminal. It was natural perhaps that many prisons had been established here—the Marshalsea, the King’s Bench, the Compter, and the Clink. The name “clink” may have come from the sound of the turning of a key. At any rate, it seemed so appropriate that it was used later for prisons elsewhere, generally for ones which were small and mean. The district contained as well the Stews, which included the Street of the Women. The peasants overran Southwark, broke open the prisons, released the prisoners, and burned the Street of the Women to the ground.

Across the river the citizens of London watched the sack of Southwark with a rising sense of fear. Would the city itself meet the same fate at the hands of the savage peasantry? Among the watchers was William Walworth, the mayor of London, who had the best of reasons for anger and dismay. He leased the land on which the Stews stood from the Bishop of Winchester and undoubtedly the revenue he derived from it was large. A shrewd man of business, he was said to have filled the houses with young women from Flanders, who were plump and blonde and attracted a good clientele. Was not the largest of the houses called the Sign of the Cardinal’s Hat?

Walworth saw his investment south of the river go up in a blaze much redder than any form of clerical headgear, and his feeling against the rioting countrymen ran deep and strong. Turn again, Walworth (to borrow from an incident in the century following), lord mayor of London;
and observe the end which often comes to ventures of this kind.

William Walworth is an enigma, even in this period when men’s motives were likely to be mixed. He was shrewd and bold in a crisis and he had no fear in him. He was free-handed in civic matters. Knighted for his part throughout this forbidding fortnight, there still clings to his name the halo of historical praise. Portraits of him were hung in prominent places, such as the Fishmongers Hall, and he was often represented in pageants and civic ritual. But in assessing the man it is impossible to overlook his control of the Stews.

T
HE queen mother came creaking in her red and gilt carriage across London Bridge and into the Tower well ahead of the peasants. The report she gave was a terrifying one: the countryside inundated with invaders, men without hats, with glaring eyes, with heavy beards, men who talked a strange lingo and who laughed and sang strange songs. They had followed close on her heels and would soon be pounding on London’s gates for admittance. The young king and his advisers heard her story with pale, set faces. The danger was more imminent than they had supposed. What was to be done?

It is hard to understand why the group about the king had neglected to take any vigorous steps to meet this crisis. And yet perhaps not; they were, it must be said, a weak lot. The royal uncles were all away: John of Gaunt in Scotland, Edmund of Cambridge with the fleet on a mission to Portugal (which proved a futile one), and Thomas of Woodstock on some business or other in the Marcher country. Not that they were missed particularly; none had the judgment and force of character to control this situation with a firm hand. The group also included Simon of Sudbury in his dual capacity as archbishop and chancellor, and Hales, the treasurer, who was blamed for the poll tax. Richard’s half brothers on the Holland side were there, neither of whom had the right kind of heart or mind, a proud, quarrelsome, swaggering pair. The king’s cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, was in the group. He was to play a leading part in the tragedy of Richard’s life; but at this stage he was a fast-growing stripling of fifteen years. Three members of the baronage completed the number: the youthful Earl of Oxford and two veteran earls of the French campaigns, Warwick and Salisbury. All of them heard the queen mother’s story without volunteering any opinion.

The aging archbishop was the first to make a move. He placed the Great Seal of England on the table and begged to be allowed to retire at once from public office. It was not from fear that he acted but because he did not feel himself capable of coping with the situation. The others stared at him with stony eyes, but did not move. Ordinarily there was not a man in England who would not have welcomed the chance to take the seals of office, but under the circumstances not a soul in the room wanted to assume the responsibility.

There were two men in London with enough vigor and decision to break through this inertia in official circles. One was Mayor William Walworth, who did not want to see the city fall into destructive hands. The other was Sir Robert Knowles, who had been counted in the French wars as second only to that amazing soldier Old John Hawkwood as a leader of the
condottiere
. Knowles had a mansion in London large enough to house the garrison of 120 trained soldiers he still kept about him. If the royal council, that inept and fumbling lot, had seen fit to transfer all authority to the old soldier, he would have handled the situation with vigor and decision.

Walworth had already taken one step. As soon as the queen mother’s conveyance had crossed London Bridge, he had raised the drawbridge between two of the central piers and so made it impossible for the rebels to take the only easy way into London. When summoned to appear before the palefaced group about the king, he declared he could arm and throw into action a force of 6000 men. The members of the council looked at him with doubt in their eyes. Was he certain the Trained Bands would follow him? Walworth, the type of man who was always sure, said yes, they could be depended on to serve under him. He had a high opinion of the importance of his office, this Mayor Walworth. Once the Sergeants of the Coif had tried to seat ahead of him at a public dinner a member of the nobility below the rank of earl, which was against the recognized rules of procedure. His eyes blazing above his forked beard, Walworth had stamped out of the hall. But he failed to convince this solemn and almost impotent group. They were very doubtful of London’s loyalty.