Part 38

In order to raise money, the government resolved to levy a new form of tax,--a poll or head tax,--which had been tried on a small scale during the last year of the previous reign. The apttempt had been made to assess it on all classes, from laborers to lords.

The imposition was now renewed in a much more oppressive form. Not only every laborer, but every member of a laborer's family above the age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages of an able-bodied man for at least several days' work.

The tax on laborers and their families varied from four to twelve pence each, the assessor having instructions to collect the latter sum, if possible. The wages of a day laborer were then about a penny, so that the smallest tax for a family of three would represent the entire pay for nearly a fortnight's labor. See Pearson's "England in the Fourteenth Century."

We have already seen that, owing to the ravages of the Black Death, and the strikes which followed, the country was on the verge of revolt (SS244, 245). This new tax was the spark that caused the explosion. The money was roughly demanded in every poor man's cottage, and its collection caused the greatest distress. In attempting to enforce payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of a workman named Wat Tyler. The indignant father, hearing the girl's cry for help, snatched up a hammer, and rushing in, struck the ruffian dead on the spot.

Tyler then collected a multitude of discontented laborers on Blackheath Common, near London, with the determination of attacking the city and overthrowing the government.

John Ball, a fanatical priest, harangued the gathering, now sixty thousand strong, using by way of a text lines which were at that time familiar to every workingman:

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

"Good people," he cried, "things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins (S113) and gentlemen. They call us slaves, and beat us if we are slow to do their bidding, but God has now given us the day to shake off our bondage."

251. The Great Uprising of the Laboring Class, 1381.

Twenty years before, there had been similar outbreaks in Flanders and in France. This, therefore, was not an isolated instance of insurrection, but rather part of a general uprising. The rebellion begun by Tyler and Ball (S250) spread through the southern and eastern counties of England, taking different forms in different districts. It was violent in St. Albans, where the peasants, and farm laborers generally, rose against the exactions of the abbot, but it reached its greatest height in London.

For three weeks the mob held possession of the capital. They pillaged and then burned John of Gaunt's palace (SS247, 249). They seized and beheaded the Lord Chancellor and the chief collector of the odious poll tax (S250). They destroyed all the law papers they could lay hands on, and ended by murdering a number of lawyers; for the rioters believed that the members of that profession spent their time forging the chains which held the laboring class in subjection.

252. Demans of the Rebels; End of the Rebellion.

The insurrectionists demanded of the King that villeinage (S113) should be abolished, and that the rent of agricultural lands should be fixed by Parliament at a uniform rate in money. They also insisted that trade should be free, and that a general unconditional pardon should be granted to all who had taken part in the rebellion.

Richard promised redress; but while negotiations were going on, Walworth, mayor of London, struck down Wat Tyler with his dagger, and with his death the whole movement collapsed almost as suddenly as it arose. Parliament now began a series of merciless executions, and refused to consider any of the claims to which Richard had shown a disposition to listen. In their punishment of the rebels, the House of Commons vied with the Lords in severity, few showing any sympathy with the efforts of the peasants to obtain their freedom from feudal bondage.

The uprising, however, was not in vain, for by it the old restrictions were in some degree loosened, so that in the course of the next century and a half, villeinage (S113) was gradually abolished, and the English laborer acquired that greatest yet most perilous of all rights, the complete ownership of himself.

In Scotland, villeinage lasted much longer, and as late as 1774, in the reign of George III, men working in coal and salt mines were held in a species of slavery, which was finally abolished the following year.

So long as he was a serf, the peasant could claim assistance from his master in sickness and old age; in attaining independence he had to risk the danger of pauperism, which began with it,--this possibility being part of the price which man must everywhere pay for the inestimable privilege of freedom.

253. The New Movement in Literature, 1390 (?).

The same spirit which demanded emancipation on the part of the working classes showed itself in literature. We have already seen (S246) how, in the previous reign, Langland, in his poem of "Piers Plowman," gave bold utterance to the growing discontent of the times in his declaration that the rich and great destroyed the poor.

In a different spirit, Chaucer, "the morning star of English song," now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket in Canterbury (S170).

There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life, and sure of his yearly allowance of money and daily pitcher of wine from the royal bounty. Yet, with all his mirth, there is a vein of playful satire in his description of men and things. His pictures of jolly monks and easy-going churchmen, with his lines addressed to his purse as his "saviour, as down in this world here," show that he saw beneath the surface of things. He too was thinking, at least at times, of the manifold evils of poverty and of that danger springing from religious indifference which poor Langland had taken so much to heart.

254. Wycliffe; the First Complete English Bible, 1378.

But the real reformer of that day was John Wycliffe, rector of Lutterworth in Leicestershire and lecturer at Oxford (S246). He boldly attacked the religious and the political corruption of the age. The "Begging Friars," who had once done such good work (S208), had now grown too rich and lazy to be of further use.

Wycliffe, whose emaciated form concealed an unconquerable energy and dauntless courage, organized a new band of brothers known as "Poor Priests." They took up and pushed forward the reforms the friars had dropped. Clothed in red sackcloth cloaks, barefooted, with staff in hand, they went about from town to town preaching "God's law," and demanding that Church and State bring themselves into harmony with it.

Compare Chaucer's "A good man ther was of religioun, That was a poure persone [parson] of a town." Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales" (479)

The only complete Bible then in use was the Latin version. The people could not read a line of it, and many priests were almost as ignorant of its contents. To carry on the revival which he had begun, Wycliffe now began to translate the entire Scriptures into English, 1378. When the great work was finished it was copied and circulated by the "Poor Priests."

But the cost of such a book in manuscript--for the printing press had not yet come into existence--was so high that only the rich could buy the complete volume. Many, however, who had no money would give a load of farm produce for a few favorite chapters.

In this way Wycliffe's Bible was spread throughout the country among all classes. Later, when persecution began, men hid these precious copies and read them with locked doors at night, or met in the forests to hear them expounded by preachers who went about at the peril of their lives. These things led Wycliffe's enemies to complain "that common men and women who could read were better acquainted with the Scriptures than the most learned and intelligent of the clergy."