Revolting Peasants: 1381 and All That

What do peasants, poets, and priests write about when a toxic slurry of starvation, deprivation, and taxation spill over into the largest popular insurrection in English history?  Find out as we look at the literature surrounding the Great Rising of 1381.

With regards to Contemptua X. Smugly.

Transcript

Messenger: Your Majesty!  Your Majesty!  The peasants are revolting!

King:  You can say that again!  They stink on ice!

Ahh . . . . that old joke again!  Hello and welcome to another minisode of the Classic English Literature Podcast, where rhyme gets its reason.

That little joke a few seconds is a hardy perennial.  It does, of course, rely on the dual meanings of the word “revolting”: the messenger uses it as a verb – the present participle, if you care – and indicates what the peasants are doing.  The King, however, understands it as an adjective, and confirms what the peasants are.  Some take on this wordplay has been around for ages, from L. Frank Baum (of The Wizard of Oz fame) to cartoonist Walt Kelly to comedian Mel Brooks, from whom I nicked this version, more or less.

Anyway, you should never explain jokes and, besides, I’m not interested in feeble puns today.  But I am interested in revolting peasants – peasants in rebellion.  A couple of times now, I have made reference to the greatest popular insurrection in English history: the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – now sometimes called the Great Rising of 1381, both because it turns out that merchants, landowners, and artisans were also instrumental in the rebellion, and because the soy latte drinking crowd does not wish to offend repressed peoples who have been dead for nigh on 650 years.  Dead peasants are still very touchy.

So, I’ve referred to it, but I thought it might be nice to take a bit of a look at it, especially as regards the literature surrounding it.  I mentioned that Geoffrey Chaucer may well have been at the gates of London when the insurrectionists arrived.  William Langland, while obviously very sympathetic to the complaints that sparked the action, nonetheless felt he had to revise his Vision of Piers Plowman when he discovered that it had been one of the inspirational texts.  You may remember the little episode about the mice belling the king’s cat – that’s probably one of the additions he made to distance himself from the violence and disloyalty.  And in our next full episode, the poet John Gower will cast a withering eye at the lower and middling sorts for their treachery.

So what was it all about?  Well, it’s complicated, but here’s a quick and dirty: it all started when a load of flea-infested rats decided to take a Mediterranean cruise, stopping off in Italy in 1348 for a bit of a holiday, you know, as you do.  However, when asked by customs if they had anything to declare, they completely forgot to mention that they had packed the bubonic plague. By the end of that year, through all of Europe, even in stodgy England, the plague bacillus went viral. It became staggeringly popular and absolutely everyone was doing it.  #bubo

Dear Sir,

I write, in a spirit of openness and allyship, to share my outrage on behalf of others whose voices have been marginalized.  So-called jokes about the plague are just not okay.  I know they say that comedy equals tragedy plus time, but it’s always too soon.  You need to do better.

In solidarity,

Contemptua X. Smugly

Dear Ms. Smugly,

You are quite right to take me up about the inappropriateness of my earlier remarks – they completely efface the human tragedy of the Black Death.  I will indeed do better.  In fact, if you could kindly send me the names and addresses of any 14th century plague victims you know to have suffered because of my insensitivity, I will happily and humbly send them a full letter of apology. 

Again, thank you for your most bracing reprimand.

Sincerely,

M

Anyway, by some counts England lost nearly half its population, which meant that peasants now had some economic clout: they could demand wages and could move to an employer who would pay them.  This kind of bargaining power exasperated the powers-that-beed and so Parliament passed the Statute of Laborers in 1351, freezing wages and limiting mobility: essentially restoring the feudal obligations of the pre-plague era.  Additionally, the forever war with France further depressed royal revenues, so in 1377, 1379, and (most precipitately) 1380, Parliament imposed flat poll taxes, which placed a disproportionate share of the tax burden on the poor.  The fact that the collection of these taxes were ruthlessly and often violently carried out certainly enraged the common people.  As I say, quite touchy.

From May to July of 1381, those angry, hypersensitive plebes marched out of Essex and Kent and headed for London.  They swore loyalty to the boy King Richard II, all of 14 at the time, but hurled invective and vituperation at the greedy Church officials and aristocrats who gave the fresh-faced king lousy advice.  I should say that there were risings all over the country, not just Kent and Essex – from York in the north to Somerset in the west.  Along the way, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster's palace of Savoy was burned.  Rebels broke into the Tower of London and relieved Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his treasurer of their heads.

Young Richard himself rode out to meet the rebels and their leader, Wat Tyler.  Tyler demanded, in the name of the people, an end to serfdom and villeinage, fixed rents, the disendowment of the Church and a redistribution of its wealth, and punishment for all the “traitors” who produced and enforced the poll tax.  The Lord Mayor of London, in a cunningly diplomatic riposte, stabbed Wat Tyler.  Check and, if you will, mate.  Rising over!  All over!  Come on, get out!  Haven’t you all got homes to go to?

I suspect that even the most casual student of literature or history will have heard perhaps the most famous bit of poetry to come out of the Great Rising.  It’s a little couplet by John Ball, the “mad priest of Kent,” who rallied the discontented thus:

When Adam delved and Eve Span

Who was then the Gentleman?

It’s a 14th century Tweet, suitable for T shirts, bumper stickers, sloganeering.  Ball makes an argument for social levelling by citing the expulsion from paradise in the book of Genesis.  Recall that, for eating of the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden and forced to labor for their bread.  So, back at the beginning of time, when Adam delved (that is, dug – farmed the land) and Eve span (that is, spun yarn for cloth), where was the aristocracy?  There were no upper classes to sponge off the work of the people.  Ergo, there shouldn’t be now.

John Ball had a bit of a gift for rhyme.  Some of his letters survive, urging the people of Essex to finish what they had begun – a pep talk – and they include what may loosely, I suppose, be called poems.

Here’s one.  By the way, I am responsible for the modern English translations here and I am a wildly incompetent translator.  I try to maintain both the style and the content of the original, but I’m sure I get much wrong.  Please do be gentle. 

Now raygneth pride in price,

Covetise is holden wise

Lechery without shame

Gluttony without blame

Envye raygneth with reason

And sloth is taken in great season

God doe boote for nowe is time.

Now reigns pride in price

Avarice is held to be wise

Lechery is without shame

Gluttony without blame

Envy reigns as reasonable

And sloth is desirable.

God make amends, for now is the time.

And here’s one from another letter:

Johan the muller hath yground smal, smal, smal,

The kynges son of heaven schal pay for al.

Be war or the be wo.

Knoweth your friend fro your foo.

Haveth ynow and seith hoo!

And do wel and bettre and fleth synne,

And seketh pees and hold yow ther-inne,

And so biddeth Johan Trewaman and alle his felawes.

John the Miller has been ground to nothing

But the King of Heaven’s son will pay ransom.

Be wary or be sorry.

Know your friend from your foe.

Be content with what you have

And do well and better and flee from sin

And seek peace and dwell therein.

So bids John Trueman and his fellows.

In the first poem we can certainly hear and feel the cadences of a hortatory sermon: those parallel phrases do much to built the tension and the dread.  A brief catalog of the time’s evils culminating in an almost apocalyptic warning: God will set all to rights – his kingdom is at hand!  And the second poem feels very like a Twitter version of Piers Plowman – here we have John Trueman, whose mill sees little work and less profit.  But fear not, for God will soon bring justice if only we remain vigilant, humble, and compassionate.  Seek peace! he says, ironically as the insurrection moves on to the Capitol, I mean to Smithfield.  And almost a direct callback to Langland’s poem in the exhortation to “do well and better.”

Incidentally, there’s a curious syntactical feature in the second line: Ball writes “the King’s Son of Heaven” and not, as we would say it, “the King of Heaven’s Son.”  I’ve seen this construction in a number of medieval texts, often Irish, for some reason, but cannot find much of a linguistics explanation for it.  It may be that the prepositional phrase “of Heaven” was not considered part of the phrase head: “King” and so you would not use the possessive or genitive marker there.  Maybe we can think of “of Heaven” as a sort of stranded apposition, modifying King without the commas we might use today.  Seems like it may have some Scandinavian origin. If you know, let me know on the back of a $20 bill.

For his trouble, Father Ball was hanged, drawn and quartered, his head set on a London Bridge pike as a warning to all those who think people should be a bit nicer to each other.  If only he had heeded the warning by this anonymous rhymester:

Man be ware and be no fool

Thenke apon the ax, and of the stool

The ax was scharp, the stool was hard

The 13th year of kynge Richard

Man, be wary and be no fool.

Think upon the ax and on the stool.

The ax was sharp and the stool was hard

In the 13th year of King Richard.

This little quatrain interests me because it seems to speak of a wary, and weary, ambivalence.  Clearly, the speaker has a grim view of the world under the young Richard II, but you can feel the horror when he warns about trying to rectify that grimness.  The language is so sparse and economical: the ax is sharp, the stool (probably the stocks, like a pillory) is hard – drawing and quartering is the penalty for treason: about as gruesome, painful, and humiliating a death as I can imagine.  But resign ourselves to injustice?  A fearful choice indeed.

Here’s a final poem that similarly steers away from John Ball’s sloganeering toward a more complex appraisal of the social crisis.  It’s called “The Course of Revolt,” though surely that title is the product of much later editors.  A curious poem – it’s written in what’s called macaronic verse.  That is, in more than one language.  Yes, the term macaronic comes from the same Italian root as macaroni – it means dumpling, which becomes pasta, which was regarded as vulgar peasant food.  So, originally, mixing two languages, especially Latin with some churlish vernacular, was seen as rather unrefined.

And speaking of unrefined pasta – were we?  I say it’s time to restore the humble elbow to its rightful place as the prince of pastas.  We’ve so many choices and styles now – the cavatappi, the farfalle, the orecchiette – all fine and suitable for elegant cuisine.  But I say “Hurrah” for the workmanlike elbow – hearty, unpretentious, dependable.

“Hey hey ho ho, I wanna eat a bowl of elbows! Hey hey ho ho, I wanna eat a bowl of elbows!”

This poem mixes Middle English with Latin and the rhyme pattern here is interesting, too.  The English lines end in what we still call, unbelievably, masculine rhymes – single syllable rhymes: all, small, fall, ran, man, and so on.  Sturdy, unbreakable – masculine.  The Latin lines employ feminine rhymes: two or more syllables.  So validorum, cupidorum, dolorum, and malorum.  The result of the two playing off each other is a lilting, swaying feel – there’s something of the lamentable about the rhythm and the rhyme, which fits well with a poem that mourns the violence of the Rising, but understands, and even sympathizes with, the suffering that occasioned it.

I’ll give you the first stanza in the original languages, but then I’ll read the whole poem in my rather rickety translation (with some help from the editors of the Longman Anthology, who glossed the Latin):

The taxe hath tened us alle

Probat hoc mors tot validorum

The Kyng thereof had smalle,

Ffuit in manibus cupidorum,

Yt had ful hard hansell,

Dans causam fine dolorum,

Vengeance nedes most fall,

Propter peccata malorum.

The tax hath harmed us all,

This death tests many of the mighty;

The King thereof had small,

It was in the hands of the greedy.

It was a terribly bad omen,

Giving birth to an end to sorrow;

Vengeance needs must fall

Because of the sins of the wicked.

In Kent the troubles began,

People attacking the potentates;

In crowds those rascals ran

Bearing their shameful weapons.

Fools, they feared no man,

Neither the king nor the nobles;

Churls became their captains,

Unnaturally rising above their station.

These churls laughed loudly,

Shouting in their loud voices,

The bishop then they slew

And many gentle people.

They threw down the manor houses,

The best in the kingdom.

Of dire deeds they did enough,

For they had free rein.

Jack Straw swaggered along

With a captain’s munificence,

And said that all should bow down to them,

Us, the real Englishmen!

Sturdily they shouted

And beat the olive branch of pity,

Those who used to shirk,

To despise the plow and handle.

Hales, that doughty knight,

In whom all England shone,

Dolefully was he cut down

When removed from peace by fools

To where he could not fight,

Nor make his prayer to Christ.

The beautiful Palace of Savoy

Was given over to the torch.

But they did better than Arcan

And threatened those with force,

Death would be the due debt,

If anyone looted its goods.

Our king could have no rest,

While others hid in caves;

To ride he was by duty pressed,

Remembering his father’s deeds.

Jack Straw, down they cast him, 

At Smithfield with superior strength.

God, as thou deem best,

Defend and govern our kingdom.

The end here, like Ball’s poem from the first letter, ends with an invocation of God, but here it’s a petition, not a warning.  The speaker admits that the taxation of the poor is unjust, yet does not blame the King (a good move if you want to remain intact) but his evil counselors.  However, the speaker also calls the insurrectionists “rascals . . . with shameful weapons.”  They are “fools” who blindly follow “churls” who have no right to command. He condemns the (fictional) Jack Straw’s demagoguery and laments the destruction of Savoy Palace, though he keenly points out that no looting would be tolerated.  Good King Richard behaved nobly to restore order.

So, there’s a little taste of an event so influential on late medieval literature.  All the great writers of the day commented upon or responded to it and it’s great that we still have some texts from the lower and middling sorts to provide a rather complex “ground up” perspective.

Thank you very much for listening to the Classic English Literature Podcast.  Please feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions.  Tag along on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.  If you would be so kind, please take a moment to rate the show on whatever platform you're listening.  This increases the show’s visibility and attracts more listeners.  It’s the best thing you can do to help the podcast grow.  Of course, I also accept cash, so consider a donation if you have a bit of spare change.

Right, till next time, keep calm and carry on!

“Hey hey ho ho, I wanna eat a bowl of elbows! Hey hey ho ho, I wanna eat a bowl of elbows!”