The sorrow of all sorrows Is deeper than all these, It is one day to waken And we are left alone :- No wish for love's returning, ANNALS OF AN ENGLISH ABBEY. BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE. PART III. It was not an age of newspapers or pub-| lic meetings, popular debating assemblies, or stump oratory. When the people rose they rose meaning business, in a temper which was the bursting of pent and smothered fury. Instinct pointed out to them their immediate enemies. It was the lawyer who had ruled that "a villain" could not sue his lord. It was the lawyer's parchment by which the tenantry were held as chattels, part and parcel of the soil. It was the lawyer again who lay in watch for them like some wild beast, dragging them through king's court, bishop's court or abbot's court, serving writs upon them for any trifling oath or hasty sin, or enforcing dues and fines at the pleasure of the manorial chief. * Pinched, ground and starved as they had The exactions of the spiritual courts were peculiarly hateful. The king taxeth not his men But by assent of the comminalte, Put these each yeare will ransoum them, Maisterfully more than doth he. been in the name of law, they fell at once on the instruments of their oppression. "Let us hang all lawyers," was the cry which Shakespeare places on their lips in describing the later insurrection of Jack Cade, and Cade is made to answer: "Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that the skin of an inno cent lamb should be made parchment-that parchment scribbled over should undo a man?" Shakespeare in his account of Cade was but translating (though giving life by his own touch to the dead words) from the Monk Walsingham's history of the rebellion of 1381. In those inarticulate days passion turned instantly to act. With a sharp axe (hanging had not yet come into fashion) the Kent insurgents chopped off the heads of every Her seales each yeare better be Her officers have greater fee, [Complaint of the Ploughman. and Poems, vol. i., p. 323.] Political Songs judge, lawyer or lawyer's clerk that they could catch upon their march. To be able to write was sufficient evidence of guilt. "Dost thou use to write thy name?" says Cade to a clerk who was brought before him with his implements in his satchel, "or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest, plaindealing man ?" "I thank God," the clerk answers, "I have been so well brought up that I can write my name." "Away with him," cry the mob, "he hath confessed." "Away with him," says Cade. "Hang him up with his pen and inkhorn about his neck." This is no more than a paraphrase from Walsingham. Periculosum erat agnosci pro clerico, sed multo periculosius si ad latus alicujus atramentarium inventum fuisset. Nam tales vix aut nunquam ab eorum manibus evaserunt. The abbeys and manor-houses on their route were broken open and sacked. The muniment chests were searched, and every roll and deed was taken out and burnt. Then gathering frenzy and growing savage with the taste of blood, the wild army swept on over Blackheath to London Bridge. The city had risen as they expected at the news of their approach. The counties to the west and south had taken fire, and troops of villagers were streaming up along the road from Hertfordshire and Bucks. The gentlemen, fluttered and helpless, gathered into small knots for self-protection, but, without orders from the court, knew not which way to turn. The gates on the bridge had been closed; but they were opened by the mob from within. Peasants and citizens flung themselves into each others' arms; and London and all that it contained lay at the mercy of a hundred thousand madmen. It was Corpus Christi day, the 13th of June, when Wat Tyler entered the city. The enormous multitude was parted into three divisions. Jack Straw made his head-quarters at Highbury Barn, outside the walls, on the North Road. Half the rest seized Tower Hill. The others lay at Mile End, at the head of Whitechapel Road. With method in their fury they sent separate detachments on the work of destruction. The King, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was Lord Chancellor, Sir Nicholas Wal worth, the Mayor of London, the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick and Suffolk had shut themselves into the Tower without attempting resistance. Still aiming at the lawyers, the people attacked the Temple and burnt it, They with the records which it contained.* proceeded next to destroy the Savoy Palace belonging to the Duke of Lancaster, the most beautiful house in England, and afterwards the Hospital of the Knights of Rhodes, the bloody axe beating time to their march, and every supposed enemy of popular rights that was unable to escape being dragged to the block. Another section attacked Lombard Street. There dwelt the bankers, the Flemish merchants, the money-lenders, those who fixed the rate of interest and were the representatives of the usurers, who took advantage of the poor man's necessities and ground him to grist in their mills. On these poor wretches wild vengeance alighted; scaffolds were extemporized in the streets, and their bloody heads rolled in the kennels. "So the ungracious people demeaned themselves like men enraged and wode (mad), and did much sorrow in London." The fury waxed through all that midsummer day, Thursday, the 13th of June. In the evening the tide rolled up against the Tower. All night it raged about the gates-a crowd of furious men crying for the king, swearing they would not go till they had the king at their pleasure, and till they brought to his account the head of the legal profession in England, the Archbishop-Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury. Unhappy Archbishop Simon! not specially guilty above other chancellors, judges, magistrates, officers of an unjust law; but having the bad luck to be the foremost representative of all the heedless wrong which had been heaped for generations on the back of the English commons, at an hour when authority was struck down, and the forces of nature had broken loose to bring all these things to judgment. Inside the Tower there were 1,200 soldiers besides the retinues of the king and the nobles. Walworth the Mayor proposed a night-sally on the half-armed, half-drunken mass of howling frenzy. A few determined men might slay the rebels in their sleep-slay them, as was said, "like fleas." What more horrible than a murdering crowd of maniacs! What more likely than that London itself might perish, as the Savoy Palace had perished, unless order dared to assert itself? enough was on the hands of the miserable wretches. Little cause might a brave magistrate have seen to hesitate. But behind the mob lay the crimes which had kindled the Blood * Ubi plura munimenta quæ juridici in custodiâ habuerunt igne consumpta sunt. conflagration and unnerved the hands of the saviors of society. "The Earl of Salisbury and the wise men about the king said, Sir, if ye can appease them with fairness it were best and most profitable, and to grant them all that they desire; for if we should begin a thing which we could not achieve we should never recover it again, but we and our heirs ever to be disinherited.'" The earl's "counsel was taken." Another victim, the most innocent and the most illustrious, was yet necessary before the plague could be stayed. As day broke the mob again roused themselves to action. Dark gangs of workmen swarmed about the Tower archway, while a yell rose from sixty thousand throats, "Bring out the Archbishop." The gates were opened and the human torrent poured through them. The men-at-arms stood in files with their halberts and battleaxes, but with orders not to resist, and "more dead than alive." Horny hands caught the knights by their beards and stroked them. Artisans in their greasy jerkins surged into the royal apartments, flung themselves into the satin chairs and rolled on the velvet counterpanes. The Princess of Wales, the king's mother, was there. Some workman or practical preacher of equality begged a kiss from her. But for the present at least the people meant no hurt to her or the king. The cry was still for the traitor prelate, the oppressor of the commons. Where was he? They seized a servant in the archbishop's livery, a dagger was held at his heart, and he was told to lead them to his master's hidingplace. He brought them to the vaulted chapel in the central tower, where the old man was kneeling before the altar, foreseeing his fate, and impatient to have the business over, "moras eorum arguens." He rose to meet them. "Welcome, my children!" he said; "I am he that you seek, though no traitor and no oppressor." They rushed upon him. His chaplain held up the Corpus Dominicum. They flung him aside and dragged their prisoner unresisting across the court, and through the Tower gates to Tower Hill. As he appeared there rose a yell from the crowd not like any human shout, but like a scream from Satan's peacocks "—" vocibus pavonum diabolicis"-swords flashed over the venerable head. "What means this?" he said. "What have I done? If you kill me, the Pope will lay you under an interdict." 66 "Pope and interdict go to their own place," was the answer. "Thou art a false traitor. Lay down thy head." The archbishop was most eloquent-eloquent, it was said, above all Englishmen of his day. He pleaded hard, but it availed nothing. A ruffian struck at him. "Ah, ah," he cried, putting his hand to the wound in his neck, "it is the hand of the Lord." The next stroke severed his fingers and cut an artery. At last, with eight blows they hacked the head from the body, and left him in dust and blood. The story now returns to St. Alban's, where we left the townsfolk and the abbey tenants smarting under the hands of Abbot Thomas de la Mare. The news of the insurrection shot through the midland counties. The passionate cry was heard everywhere that serfdom and villanage were at an end—Englishmen were to receive at last their eternal birthright of freedom. On the same Corpus Christi day, the 13th of June, on which Wat Tyler entered London, companies of men came trooping into St. Alban's, old and young, horse and foot, from the neighboring towns. They were received with shouts of welcome, and quia totum genus humanum pro majori parte ad malum citius quam in bonum semper est proclivum, peasants, farmers, and burgesses at once addressed themselves to the abbey to demand their liberties once more. Dusty messengers were following one another from London, some from Wat inviting the commons of Hertfordshire to his standard; some to tell the abbot that London was in the insurgents' hands. The abbot proposed that a joint deputation should go up and learn the king's pleasure; what the king should order, he said that he was ready to do. The leader of the St. Alban's rising was a burgess named William Grindcobbe,* who had been educated at the abbey school. His experience of the monks, either then or afterwards, had not disposed him to look favorably on them, and the dislike was mutual. There had been a quarrel between the abbey and the town about the limits of the abbey precincts. Grindcobbe's house, it was pretended, encroached on the abbot's premises. The abbot had sent officials to inspect; Grindcobbe had beaten them, and had been excommunicted in consequence, and been compelled to do penance naked in the presence of the assembled convent. It was now Grindcobbe's turn. The required respite was conceded, and the next morning (Friday, the day of the archbishop's murder) he started with a few hundred of his best-armed followers to see how matters were going. * Patriotism ran in the family. The name of another Grindcobbe appears on the charter granted by Abbot Hugh, among the signatures of the burgesses. He found Wat holding his ragged court at Mile End. The king, despairing of immediate assistance, had conceded every request that was presented to him. He had abolished serfdom so far as an act of the crown could abolish it. He had granted charters to all who asked for them. He had pardoned all the murderers. In a word, the English peasantry were free, and multitudes of the countrypeople, supposing their object gained, were trailing back to their homes. Wat himself, who knew the difference between paper grants and real victories, intended to take more substantial guarantees, and had determined to remain till he got them. It may be that he had views for himself too. For a leader who had climbed to so high an eminence, there was no easy or safe descent. Grindcobbe was admitted to an interview, and told the story of the abbot of St. Alban's misdoings. Wat sent him on to Richard. The king gave him a letter to the abbot, and promised, as he was pressing to be gone, to send a charter after him. Wat undertook to see that the promise should be kept, bade Grindcobbe return in peace and tell the abbot that unless justice was done immediately he would go to St. Alban's himself with twenty thousand men and shave the monks' beards for them. With this message, and the king's promise, Grind- | cobbe rode back in the gloaming. The news of the murder of the archbishop in the morning had gone before him. The prior who managed the estates, and knew himself to be specially hated, seeing how things were going, had slipped out at a postern with his attorney and his clerks, and had ridden for his life to the North. The following morning, Saturday, June 15th, St. Alban's was early astir to assert its regained rights. Every gentleman and commoner residing within the liberties of the abbey had been ordered by the delegates of the people to attend on pain of death. So had commanded Wat Tyler, champion of England's freedom. The inhabitants marshalled in procession, moved once more upon the detested fences which shut them out from their woods and meadows. Swearing first a solemn oath to stand by each other, they leveled the walls and paling. A rabbit starting from its seat among them, they speared it, carried it on a lance-point into the market-place, and set it up there as a symbol of free warren. "Wherefore," comments the chronicler, characteristically, "because they had infringed Christ's patrimony, their leaders were afterwards dragged over those meadows and through those woods, and then hanged ac cording to their demerits, as shall be hereafter told." Christ's patrimony was the abbot's game preserve; so thought the monk Thomas of Walsingham. Under such convictions are serious, well-intentioned men permitted to live and act, and sow the seeds of revolutions to come, as history has also to tell. The impaled rabbit thus duly being set on high, Grindcobbe led his company to the abbey once more. The abbot's order was to make no resistance, and to leave the gate open. The first step was to break the door of the abbey jail and release the prisoners. Most of them probably were, like Nicholas Tybbeson, confined for non-payment of questionable exactions. One unhappy wretch, for an unnamed reason, perhaps because he was a real criminal, who had claimed benefit of clergy, the mob decided to lynch. A block and axe were extemporized-they struck his head off under the abbot's windows and set it beside the rabbit's. So far they had gone when a horn was heard, and a company of horse galloped up with the royal standard flying. It was Richard of Wallingford, one of the chief burgesses, who had accompanied Grindcobbe to London the day before, and had been left behind to receive the king's letter, which he was now bringing with him. The standard was planted; the people were directed to remain by it, and Grindcobbe, Richard, and other delegates, entered the church and sent to the abbot to come to them. The abbot had been sitting in sad chapter with the convent. He had said that he would rather die than yield the Church's rights. The brethren had told him that his death would not help the situation. The people would either have their way or would kill them all and burn the abbey. Thus pressed, the abbot repaired to the insurgent leaders. Richard of Wallingford placed in his hand a command from the king to restore the charters which had been granted by Abbot Hugh; to grant a complete release of all rights over wood and meadow; all rights of corn-mill and fulling-mill, ceo que lei et reson le requeront-as law and reason required. This done, all grudges should be thenceforth removed. The abbot said, feebly, that although it was true his predecessors had granted such a charter, it had been afterwards surrendered. Richard of Wallingford answered that times were changed. The people were now masters, and the people meant to have their way. "There stand," he continued, as he saw the abbot still hesitating, "a thousand men Cade's mouth was to be its parliament.* This, and all nations which deserve the name, can exist only where there is settled order and settled rule, and where fools and knaves submit to let wise men guide them; yet with this condition also laid down in the Eternal Statute-Book, that the wise shall also be just,— or red republics will rise and again rise, and mad socialisms, and reigns of terror, and archbishops must be shot on barricades, or have their heads hacked from their shoulders by the swords of clowns. Wat Tyler's work was done. The bloody lesson had been read, and a small step gained for suffering mankind. Nature or destiny was for the time satisfied, and the tools with which she had worked were flung away. This same Saturday morning, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and Ball lay with twenty thousand of their followers in Smithfield. They were meditating, it was said, a general confiscation of property. London was to be plundered and the spoil divided. The king's person was then to be secured, and the new triumvirs were to govern England in his name on communist principles. Richard-so the story goes-was intending to escape, if possible, from London, and with the mayor and forty gentlemen about him left the town and rode past the skirts of the mob. If he had really meant to fly, it is singular that he should have chosen the route which exposed him most certainly to interruption. At all events he appeared in Smithfield. Wat Tyler, on horseback, placed himself in the king's path, struck at one of the equerries, Sir John Newton, and then insolently addressed the king. Walworth, the mayor, coming up at the moment with a party of horse, rode in upon the rebel leader and bore him to the ground. One of the king's attendants sprung off and ran him through the body with his sword, and at once all was confusion. Tyler had been the life of the insurgents. The sudden blow upon the head stunned and stupefied them. Other parties of gentlemen with armed servants were riding in from the cross streets, likely enough with preconcerted purpose. The king, with a courage which promised a better future for him than he lived to realize, rode forward and spoke Wat before your gate waiting your answer. Either yield, or we send word to Wat Tyler, who will burn your abbey to the ground." "Alas! alas!" exclaimed the abbot. "For these thirty-two years I have been your father. I have injured none of you; and now without cause will you destroy your kind master ?" It was to no purpose. Richard of Walingford said he must have a yes or no. Abbas librans pericula yielded. He gave up the charters, and certain bonds with them into which the burgesses had entered to submit for the future. The bonds were carried off and burnt at the market-cross under the rabbit's and the prisoner's head. Another charter was promised de libertatibus villanorum, setting the "villains" free. One more piece of justice, this time an innocent one, the people executed for themselves. The millstones in the floor of the "parlor" were torn up and broken, and the fragments distributed through the town "as if they had been pieces of holy bread." The abbey was now left to itself. The citizens withdrew. The monks went to dinner, which they ate in sorrow, "mixing their meat with tears and their drink with lamentations." Here was a change. Richard the clockmaker's work all undone again. The master down, the servants up, the abbey likely to be burnt, and their very lives in the hands of clowns. At night the mob were at the gates again crying for the promised emancipation charter. Five hundred peasants bivouacked under the walls, threatening to break in at any moment, and were only kept in good humor by bread and beer from the buttery. All persons who had claims on the abbey were invited to bring them in for settlement. "An abbey tenant, who himself owed us money, came and demanded a hundred marks, of which he said the prior had robbed him. The wretch at last accepted twenty pounds, saying he would gladly lose all if he could but catch the prior and settle scores with him." The night wore away in misery. The monks were meditating flight and meant to be off in the morning. The day when it came brought news that the tide had turned. Not this time, nor for many an age to come, was England to be a commonwealth after Wat Tyler's pattern. Commonwealth indeed on such terms it could never be, but only a pile of units without power or coherence, ready at the first blast of wind to be scattered like dust. It would be no very excellent England when a Wat Tyler's or a * DICK.—I have a suit to your lordship: that the laws of England may come out of your mouth. CADE. I have thought upon it. It shall be so. Burn all the records of the realm. "My mouth shall be the parliament of England." Wat Tyler declared, says Walsingham, "that all things should be in common, and the laws should come out of his lips." |