Magna ChartaMAGNA CHARTAA facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.
The Great Charter is a great table of laws. It marks the beginning of written legislation, and anticipates Acts of Parliament. Unwritten laws and traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom" failed to restrain kings and barons. The Great Charter also took into account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's vassals. If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless exactions of their overlords.[12]
Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as follows:—
(1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13]
(2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against abuse. Widows—in the wardship of the Crown—are to be protected against robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.
(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.
(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids—the ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county. Forty days' notice of the meeting was to be given, and also the cause of the assembly. The action of those who obeyed the summons was to be taken to represent the action of all.[14](This last clause is never repeated in later confirmations of the Great Charter.)
(15-16) The powers of lords over their tenants are limited and defined.
(17-19) A Court of Common Pleas is to be held in some fixed place so that suitors are not obliged to follow the King's Curia. Cases touching the ownership of land are to be tried in the counties by visiting justices, and by four knights chosen by the county.
(20-23) No freeman is to be fined beyond his offence, and the penalty is to be fixed by a local jury. Earls and barons to be fined by their peers; and clerks only according to the amount of their lay property.
(24-33) The powers of sheriffs, constables, coroners, and bailiffs of the King are strictly defined. No sheriff is to be a justice in his own county. Royal officers are to pay for all the goods taken by requisition; money is not to be taken in lieu of service from those who are willing to perform the service. The horses and carts of freemen are not to be seized for royal work without consent. The weirs in the Thames, Medway, and other rivers in England are to be removed.
(34-38) Uniformity of weights and measures is directed. Inquests are to be granted freely. The sole wardship of minors who have other lords will not be claimed by the King, except in special cases. No bailiff may force a man to ordeal without witnesses.
(39-40) No free man is to be taken, imprisoned, ousted of his land, outlawed, banished, or hurt in any way save by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land. The King is not to sell, delay, or deny right or justice to anyone.
(41-42) Merchants may go out or come in without paying exorbitant customs. All "lawful" men are to have a free right to pass in and out of England in time of peace.
(44-47) An inquiry into the Forest Laws and a reform of the forest abuses are promised. All forests made in present reign to be disforested, and all fences in rivers thrown down.
(49-60) The foreign mercenaries of the King, all the detested gang that came with horses and arms to the hurt of the realm, are to be sent out of the country. The Welsh princes and the King of Scots (who had sided with the barons) are to have justice done. A general amnesty for all political offences arising from the struggle is made.
The last three articles appointed twenty-five barons, chosen out of the whole baronage, to watch over the keeping of the Charter. They were empowered to demand that any breach of the articles should at once be put right, and, in default to make war on the King till the matter was settled to their satisfaction. Finally there was the oath to be taken on the part of the King, and on the part of the barons that the articles of the Charter should be observed in good faith according to their plain meaning.
The Great Charter was signed, and then in a wild burst of rage John shouted to his foreign supporters, "They have given me five-and-twenty over-kings!"
Within a week of Runnymede the Great Charter was published throughout England, but neither King nor barons looked for peace. John was ready to break all oaths, and while he set about increasing his army of mercenaries, he also appealed to the Pope, as his overlord, protesting that the Charter had been wrested from him by force.
Langton and the bishops left for Rome to attend a general council. Pope Innocent declared the Charter annulled on the ground that both King and barons had made the Pope overlord of England, and that consequently nothing in the government could be changed without his consent. But with Langton, the bishops, and the Papal legate all away at Rome, there was no one to publish the Papal repudiation of the Charter, and the King and barons were already at civil war. Pope Innocent III. was dead in the spring of 1216, and John's wretched reign was over when the King lay dying at Newark in October.
Stephen Langton was back again at Canterbury in 1217, and for eleven more years worked with William the Marshall and Hubert of Burgh to maintain public peace and order during Henry III.'s boyhood. At Oxford, in 1223, the Charter was confirmed afresh, and two years later it was solemnly proclaimed again when the King wanted a new subsidy. As long as the great statesmen were in office Henry III. was saved from the weakness that cursed his rule in England for nearly forty years. But William the Marshall died in 1219, Archbishop Stephen in 1228, and Hubert was dismissed from the justiciarship in 1234. A horde of greedy aliens from Poitou fed at the Court of Henry and devoured the substance of England, until men arose, as Langton had arisen, to demand the enforcement of charters and a just administration of the laws.
Again a national party arises under the leadership of Simon of Montfort, and in their victory over the King we get the beginnings of Parliamentary government and popular representation. Every step forward is followed by reaction, but the ground lost is recovered, and the next step taken marks always a steady advance. Over and over again it has seemed that all the liberties won in the past were lost, but looking back we can see that there has been no lasting defeat of liberty. Only for a time have the forces of oppression triumphed; it is soon found impossible in England to rest under tyranny, or to govern without the consent of the governed. And every fresh campaign for the restriction of kingly power brings us nearer the day of democratic government.
To-day democracy takes the form of representative government in civilised countries; and for representative government contend the nations and peoples seeking democracy.
The weak spots in all popular electoral systems are obvious, and the election of representatives is always a subject for jokes and satire. It could hardly be otherwise. For the best machinery in the world needs some sort of sympathetic intelligence in the person who manipulates it, and the machinery of popular elections can only be worked successfully with a large measure of sincerity and good will. In the hands of the ambitious, the self-seeking, and the unscrupulous, democratic politics are a machine for frustrating popular representation, and as this state of things is always prevalent somewhere, the humorist and the satirist naturally treat politics without respect.
But in spite of all its faults and failings—glaring as these are—mankind can at present devise nothing better than representative government, and the abuse of power, the cunning, roguery, and corruption that too often accompany popular elections and democratic administration, rather stir honest men to action than make them incline to dictatorship and absolutism.
The present notion about representative government is that it makes possible the expression of popular will, and can ensure the fulfilment of that will. In the thirteenth century, when we get the beginnings of representative government, there is no question of the people making positive proposals in legislation, but there is a distinct belief that the consent of the governed ought to be obtained by the ruling power. The mere legal maxim from the Code of Justinian, that "that which touches all shall be approved by all,"[15]"becomes transmuted by Edward I. into a great political and constitutional principle."[16]
More than a century earlier the first recorded appearances of town representatives are found in the Spanish Cortes of Aragon and Castile.[17]St. Dominic makes a representative form of government the rule in his Order of Preaching Friars, each priory sending two representatives to its provincial chapter, and each province sending two representatives to the general chapter of the Order.
In England, Simon of Montfort, the son of Simon, the great warrior of the Albigensian wars and the warm friend of Dominic, was in close association with the friars. Hence there was nothing so very remarkable in Earl Simon issuing writs for the Full Parliament of 1265 for the return of two burgesses from each city and borough. He had seen representative government at work among the friars in their chapters. Why should the plan be not equally useful in the government of the country?[18]There is no evidence that the summons to the burgesses was regarded as a revolutionary proposal—so lightly comes political change in England.
The name of Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, must always be associated with the beginning of representative government in England. Let us recall how it was the great Earl came to be in power in 1265.
Henry III. was always in want of money, and his crew of royal parasites from Poitou drained the exchequer. Over and over again the barons called on the King to get rid of his favourites, and to end the misrule that afflicted the country; and the King from time to time gave promises of amendment. But the promises were always broken. As long as Henry could get money he was averse from all constitutional reform. In 1258 the barons were determined that a change must be made. "If the King can't do without us in war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared. "And what sort of peace is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?"
William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling in well-known verses:
"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's wealMust often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."
"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's wealMust often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."
"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal
Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,
And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.
Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."
"The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of Gloucester.
So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory. It was called the "Mad Parliament," because the barons all came to it fully armed, and civil war seemed imminent. But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester carried the barons with them in demanding reform. Henry was left without supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.
The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas. Four knights were to be chosen by the King's lesser freeholders in each county to attend this Parliament, and the baronage was to be represented by twelve commissioners.
It was an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, "intended rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim to the character of a final arrangement."[19]
For a time things went better in England. The aliens at Henry's Court fled over-seas, and their posts were filled by Englishmen. Parliament also promised that the vassals of the nobles should have better treatment, and that the sheriffs should be chosen by the shire-moots, the county freeholders.
But Henry's promises were quickly broken, and war broke out on the Welsh borders between Simon of Montfort's friend Llewellyn and Mortimer and the Marchers. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by the Provisions of Oxford for a few years, but supported his father when the latter refused to re-confirm the Provisions in 1263. As a last resource to prevent civil war, Simon and Henry agreed to appeal to King Louis of France to arbitrate on the fulfilment of the Provisions. The Pope had already absolved Henry from obedience to the Provisions, and the Award of Louis, given at Amiens and called theMise of Amiens, was entirely in Henry's favour. It annulled the Provisions of Oxford, left the King free to appoint his own ministers, council, and sheriffs, to employ aliens, and to enjoy power uncontrolled. But the former charters of the realm were declared inviolate, and no reprisals were to take place.
To Simon and most of the barons the Award was intolerable, and when Henry returned from France with a large force ready to take the vengeance which the Award had forbidden, civil war could not be prevented. London rallied to Simon, and Oxford, the Cinque Ports, and the friars were all on the side of the barons against the King.
On May 14th, 1264, a pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief supporters of the Crown prisoners in his hands.
Peace was made, and a treaty—theMise of Lewes—drawn up and signed. Once more the King promised to keep the Provisions and Charters, and to dismiss the aliens. He also agreed to live thriftily till his debts were paid, and to leave his sons as hostages with Earl Simon.
Simon at once set about the work of reform. The King's Standing, or Privy, Council was reconstituted, and the Parliamentary Commissioners were abolished, "for Simon held it as much a man's duty to think and work for his country as to fight for it." A marked difference is seen between Simon's policy at Oxford and the policy after Lewes. The Provisions of 1258 were restrictive. The Constitution of 1264 deliberately extended the limits of Parliament. "Either Simon's views of a Constitution had rapidly developed, or the influences which had checked them in 1258 were removed. Anyhow, he had genius to interpret the mind of the nation, and to anticipate the line which was taken by later progress."[20]What Simon wanted was the approval of all classes of the community for his plans, and to that end he issued writs for the Parliament—theFull Parliament—of 1265.
The great feature of this Parliament was that for the first time the burgesses of each city and borough were summoned to send two representatives. In addition, two knights were to come from each shire, and clergy and barons as usual—though in the case of the earls and barons only twenty-three were invited, for Simon had no desire for the presence of those who were his enemies. The Full Parliament sat till March, and then two months later war had once more blazed out. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester broke away from Simon, Prince Edward escaped from custody, and these two joined Lord Mortimer and the Welsh Marchers.
On August 4th Edward surprised and routed the army of the younger Simon near Kenilworth, and then advanced to crush the great Earl, who was encamped at Evesham, waiting to join forces with his son. All hope of escape for Earl Simon was lost, and he was outnumbered by seven to two. But fly he would not. One by one the barons who stood by Simon were cut down, but though wounded and dismounted, the great Earl "fought on to the last like a giant for the freedom of England, till a foot soldier stabbed him in the back under the mail, and he was borne down and slain." For three hours the unequal fight lasted in the midst of storm and darkness, and when it was over the Grey Friars carried the mangled body of the dead Earl into the priory at Evesham, and laid it before the high altar, for the poorer clergy and the common people all counted Simon of Montfort for a saint.
"Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare and plain russet dress, bear witness to his kindly speech and firm friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause 'like a pillar that cannot be moved, and, like a second Josiah, esteemed righteousness the very healing of his soul.' As a statesman he wished to bind the King to rule according to law, and to make the King's Ministers responsible to a Full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it about."[21]
In the hour of Simon's death it might seem that the cause of good government was utterly lost, and for a time Henry triumphed with a fierce reaction. But the very barons who had turned against Simon were quite determined that the Charters should be observed, and Edward was to show, on his coming to the throne, that he had grasped even more fully than Simon the notion of a national representative assembly, and that he accepted the principle, "that which touches all shall be approved by all."
Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I. was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.—the Wonder of the World—in Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Constitution and settled for future times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.
For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great assemblies of barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model Parliament was summoned. "It is very evident that common dangers must be met by measures concerted in common," ran the writ to the bishops. Every sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each shire, two citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.
Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates—clergy, barons, and commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work—should be represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal lords.
Although the knights of the shire were of much the same class as the barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops—lords spiritual and lords temporal—and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century, lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and boroughs.
The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time, the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's Council—the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on for assistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue. The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.
Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons, And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a common grant.
"And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by the Commons, with the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after Henry IV. came to the throne, he assented to the important principle that money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or the Appropriation bill, has been passed by the House of Commons and agreed to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the House of Commons."[22]The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to signify the royal assent.
In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the assembly of Parliament, would petition for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but petitioners for legislation; and as it often happened that their petitions were not granted in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the laws did not correspond with the petitions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the request that "nothing should be enacted to the petition of the Commons contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their assent"; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to the Crown instead of petitions, leaving the King the alternative of assent or reaction.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power of Parliament was strong enough to force the abdication of two kings—Edward II. and Richard II.—but not strong enough to free the land of the turbulent authority of the nobles. This authority went down in the struggles of the Lancastrians and Yorkists.
"The bloody faction fights known as the Wars of the Roses brought the Plantagenet dynasty to a close, weeded out the older nobility, and cleared the way for a new form of monarchy."[23]
"The high nobility killed itself out. The great barons who adhered to the 'Red Rose' or the 'White Rose,' or who fluctuated from one to the other, became poorer, fewer, and less potent every year. When the great struggle ended at Bosworth, a large part of the greatest combatants were gone. The restless, aspiring, rich barons, who made the civil war, were broken by it. Henry VII. attained a kingdom in which there was a Parliament to advise, but scarcely a Parliament to control."[24]
It is important to note the ascendancy of the barons in the medieval Parliaments, and their self-destruction in the Wars of the Roses. Unless we realise how very largely the barons were the Parliament, it is difficult to understand how it came about that Parliament was so utterly impotent under the Tudors. The Wars of the Roses killed off the mighty parliamentarians, and it took a hundred years to raise the country landowners into a party which, under Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, was to make the House of Commons supreme.
"The civil wars of many years killed out the old councils (if I might so say): that is, destroyed three parts of the greater nobility, who were its most potent members, tired the small nobility and gentry, and overthrew the aristocratic organisation on which all previous effectual resistance to the sovereign had been based."[25]
To get an idea of the weakness of Parliament when the Tudors ruled, we have but to suppose at the present day a Parliament deprived of all front-bench men on both sides of the House, and of the leaders of the Irish and Labour parties, and a House of Lords deprived of all Ministers and ex-Ministers.
Before passing to the Parliamentary revival of the seventeenth century, there still remain one or two points to be considered relating to the early national assemblies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
(1)Who were the electors in the Middle Ages?—In the counties, all who were entitled to attend and take part in the proceedings of the county court had the right of electing the knight of the shire; and "it is most probable, on the evidence of records, on the analogies of representative usage, and on the testimony of later facts, that the knights of the shire were elected by the full county court."[26]
The county court or shire-moot not only elected knights for Parliament; it often enough elected them for local purposes as well. The county coroner was elected in similar fashion by the county. All the chief tenants and small freeholders were therefore the county electors; but the tenants-in-chief (who held their lands from the Crown) and the knights of the county had naturally considerably more influence than the smaller men. "The chief lord of a great manor would have authority with his tenants, freeholders as they might be, which would make their theoretical equality a mere shadow, and would, moreover, be exercised all the more easily because the right which it usurped was one which the tenant neither understood nor cared for."[27]
It is difficult to decide to what extent the smaller freeholders could take an active interest in the affairs of the county. As for the office of knight of the shire, there was no competition in the thirteenth or fourteenth century for the honour of going to Parliament, and it is likely enough that the sheriff, upon whom rested the responsibility for the elections, would in some counties be obliged to nominate and compel the attendance of an unwilling candidate.
(2)Payment of Parliamentary Representatives.—The fact that Members of Parliament were paid by their constituents in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries[28]made certain small freeholders as anxious not to be included in the electorate as others were anxious not to be elected to Parliament. It was recognised as "fair that those persons who were excluded from the election should be exempt from contribution to the wages. And to many of the smaller freeholders the exemption from payment would be far more valuable than the privilege of voting."[29]But the Commons generally petitioned for payment to be made by all classes of freeholders, and when all allowance has been made for varying customs and for local diversities and territorial influence, it is safe to take it that the freeholders were the body of electors.
In 1430, the eighth year of Henry VI., an Act was passed ordering that electors must be resident in the country, and must have free land or tenement to the value of 40s. a year at least; and this Act was in operation till 1831.
The county franchise was a simple and straightforward matter compared with the methods of electing representatives from the boroughs. All that the sheriff was ordered to do by writ was to provide for the return of two members for each city or borough in his county; the places that were to be considered as boroughs were not named. In the Middle Ages a town might have no wish to be taxed for the wages of its Parliamentary representative, and in that case would do its best to come to an arrangement with the sheriff. (It was not till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a considerable increase of boroughs took place. The Tudors created "pocket" and "rotten" boroughs in order to have the nominees of the Crown in Parliament.) The size of the borough bore no relation to its membership till the Reform Act of the nineteenth century, and as the selection of towns to be represented was arbitrary, so the franchise in the towns was equally unsettled. One or two places had a wide franchise, others confined the vote to freemen and corporation members. But in spite of the extraordinary vagaries of the borough franchise, and the arbitrary selection of towns to be represented, these early medieval Parliaments really did in an imperfect way represent the nation—all but the peasants and artisans.
"Our English Parliaments wereunsymmetrical realities. They were elected anyhow. The sheriff had a considerable licence in sending writs to boroughs, that is, he could in part pick its constituencies; and in each borough there was a rush and scramble for the franchise, so that the strongest local party got it whether few or many. But in England at that time there was a great and distinct desire to know the opinion of the nation, because there was a real and close necessity. The nation was wanted to do something—to assist the sovereign in some war, to pay some old debt, to contribute its force and aid in the critical juncture of the time. It would not have suited the ante-Tudor kings to have had a fictitious assembly; they would have lost their solefeeler, their only instrument for discovering national opinion. Nor could they have manufactured such an assembly if they wished. Looking at the mode of election, a theorist would say that these Parliaments were but 'chance' collections of influential Englishmen. There would be many corrections and limitations to add to that statement if it were wanted to make it accurate, but the statement itself hits exactly the principal excellence of these Parliaments. If not 'chance' collections of Englishmen, they were 'undesigned' collections; no administrations made them, or could make them. They were bona fide counsellors, whose opinion might be wise or unwise, but was anyhow of paramount importance, because their co-operation was wanted for what was in hand."[30]
(3)The political position of women in the Middle Ages.—Abbesses were summoned to the convocations of clergy in Edward I.'s reign. Peeresses were permitted to be represented by proxy in Parliament. The offices of sheriff, high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31](A survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women to present clergy to benefices in the Church of England.)
In the towns women were members of various guilds and companies equally with men, and were burgesses and freewomen. Not till 1832 was the word "male" inserted before "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion."
The years of Simon of Montfort and Edward I., which saw the beginnings of a representative national assembly, were not a time of theoretical discussion on political rights. The English nation, indeed, has ever been averse from political theories. The notion of a carefully balanced constitution was outside the calculations of medieval statesmen, and the idea of political democracy was not included among their visions.
"Even the scholastic writers, amid their calculations of all possible combinations of principles in theology and morals, well aware of the difference between the 'rex politicus' who rules according to law, and the tyrant who rules without it, and of the characteristics of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, with their respective corruptions, contented themselves for the most part with balancing the spiritual and secular powers, and never broached the idea of a growth into political enfranchisement. Yet, in the long run, this has been the ideal towards which the healthy development of national life in Europe has constantly tended, only the steps towards it have not been taken to suit a preconceived theory."[32]
Each step towards democracy has been taken "to suit the convenience of party or the necessities of kings, to induce the newly admitted classes to give their money, to produce political contentment."
The only two principles that are apparent in the age-long struggles for political freedom in England, that are recognised and acknowledged, are: (1) That that which touches all shall be approved by all; (2) that government rests on the consent of the governed. Over and over again these two principles may be seen at work.
Popular insurrection has never been successful in England; a violent death and a traitor's doom have been the lot of every leader of the common people who took up arms against the Government. The Civil War that brought Charles I. to the scaffold, and the Revolution that deposed James II. and set William of Orange on the throne, were the work of country gentlemen and Whig statesmen, not of the labouring people.
But if England has never seen popular revolution triumphant and democracy set up by force of arms, the earlier centuries witnessed more than one effort to gain by open insurrection some measure of freedom for the working people of the land.
No other way than violent resistance seemed possible to peasants and artisans in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, if their wrongs were to be mitigated and their rulers to be called to account.
Langton and Simon of Montfort had placed some check on the power of the Crown, had laid the foundations of political liberty, and marked the road to be travelled; but the lot of the labouring people remained unheeded and voiceless in the councils of the nation. What could they do but take up arms to end an intolerable oppression?
The first serious protest came from the London workmen in the reign of Richard I.; and FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard, was the spokesman of the popular discontent.
The King wanted money, chiefly for his crusades in Palestine. He had no inclination to personal government, and the business of ruling England was in the hands of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the justiciar or King's lieutenant. Richard left England for Normandy in 1194, and returned no more. England to him was a country where money could be raised, a subject-province to be bled by taxation. Archbishop Hubert did his best to satisfy the royal demands; and though by his inquisitions "England was reduced to poverty from one sea to the other"—it is estimated that more than £1,000,000 was sent to Richard in two years—the King was left unsatisfied. The nation generally came to hate the Archbishop's taxation, the Church suffered by his neglect, and he was finally compelled to resign the justiciarship.
It was the London rising, under FitzOsbert's leadership, that directly caused Archbishop Hubert's retirement, and FitzOsbert is notable as the first of the long line of agitators.
The political importance of the capital was seen in the reigns of Cnut and William the Conqueror. It was conspicuous on the arrival of Stephen in 1135, and its influence on national politics lasted till the middle of the nineteenth century.[33]
By its charter London had the right of raising taxes for the Crown in its own way, and in 1196 the method proposed by the Corporation provoked the outbreak. "When the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor" (Hoveden).
The poorer citizens were voteless, and the plan of the aldermen was to levy the tallages per head, and not in proportion to the property of the inhabitants. This meant, practically, that the whole, except a very small fraction of the sum to be raised, must be paid by the working people.
Thereupon FitzOsbert protested, and the people rose in arms against the demand.
FitzOsbert was an old crusader, and he was something of a lawyer and a powerful speaker. Not a rich man by any means, FitzOsbert was yet a member of the city council when, "burning with zeal for justice and fair play, he made himself the champion of the poor." To his enemies he was a demagogue and disreputable—so Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's at that time, described him. To others of more popular sympathies he was heroic and died a martyr's death. Across the centuries he is seen as "an agitator"—the first English agitator, the first man to stand up boldly against the oppression of the common people. This palpably unjust taxation of the poor was intolerable to FitzOsbert.
Fifteen thousand men banded themselves together in London under an oath that they would stand by each other and by their leader; and FitzOsbert, after a vain journey to Normandy to arouse Richard's attention to the wrongs of his subjects, bade open defiance to the justiciar and his tax-gatherers.
For a time the Archbishop's men were powerless, but weakness crept in amongst the citizens, and the aldermen were naturally on the side of constituted authority. FitzOsbert's success meant a readjustment of taxation quite unpalatable to the City Fathers.
In the end FitzOsbert was deserted by all but a handful of his followers and fled with them for sanctuary to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. Pursued by the officers of the law, FitzOsbert climbed up into the tower of the church, and to fetch him down orders were given to set the church on fire. This was done, and the only chance of life that now remained for the rebels was to get out of the church and cut their way through the ranks of their enemies.
At the church door FitzOsbert was struck down, and his little company quickly overpowered.
Heavily chained, and badly wounded, FitzOsbert was carried off to the Tower, to be tried and sentenced to a traitor's death without delay.
A few days later—it was just before Easter—FitzOsbert was stripped naked, and dragged at the tail of a horse over the rough streets of London to Tyburn. He was dead before the place of execution was reached, but the body, broken and mangled, was hung up in chains under the gallows elm all the same; and nine of his companions were hanged with him.
The very people who had fallen away from their leader in the day of his need now counted FitzOsbert for a saint, and pieces of his gibbet and of the bloodstained earth underneath the tree were carried away and treasured as sacred relics. It was alleged that miracles were performed when these relics were touched—so wide was now the popular reverence for the dead champion of the poor.
Archbishop Hubert put a stop to this devotion by ordering sermons to be preached on FitzOsbert's iniquities; and an alleged death-bed confession, containing an account of many evil deeds, was published. It is likely enough that an old crusader had plenty of sins to answer for, but FitzOsbert's one crime before the law was that he had taught the people of London to stand up and resist by force of arms the payment of taxes—taxes levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.
The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed to the King and the Pope—Innocent III.—that Hubert should give up his political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert was compelled to resign the judiciarship.
The great uprising of the peasants in 1381 was a very different matter from the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted in the Great Charter.
The Peasant Revolt was national. It was carefully prepared and skilfully organised, and its leaders were men of power and ability—men of character. It was not only a definite protest against positive evils, but a vigorous attempt to create a new social order—to substitute a social democracy for feudal government.[34]
The old feudal order had been widely upset by the Black Death in 1349, and the further ravages of pestilence in 1361 and 1369. The heavy mortality left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on. In vain Parliament passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an advance. These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of Parliament.
Discontent was rife in those years of social change. The Statutes of Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom alive. The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give labour-service to their lords. Freehold yeomen, town workmen, and shopkeepers were irritated by heavy taxation, and vexed by excessive market tolls. All the materials were at hand for open rebellion, and leaders were found as the days went by to kindle and direct the revolt.
John Ball, an itinerant priest, who came from St. Mary's, at York, and then made Colchester the centre of his wanderings, spent twenty years organising the revolt, and three times was excommunicated and imprisoned by the Archbishop of Canterbury for teaching social "errors, schisms, and scandals," but was in no wise contrite or cast down.
Chief of Ball's fellow-agitators were John Wraw, in Suffolk, Jack Straw, in Essex—both priests these—William Grindcobbe, in Hertford, and Geoffrey Litster, in Norfolk. In Kent lived Wat Tyler, of whom nothing is told till the revolt was actually afire, but who at once was acknowledged leader and captain by the rebel hosts.
From village to village went John Ball in the years that preceded the rising, organising the peasants into clubs, and stirring the people with revolutionary talk. It was the way of this vagrant priest to preach to the people on village greens, and his discourses were all on the same text—"In the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created equal."[35]Inequalities of wealth and social position were to be ended:
"Good people, things will never go well in England, so long as goods be not kept in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom men call lords greater folk than we? If all come from the same father and mother, Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride?
"They are clothed in velvet, and are warm in their furs and ermines, while we are covered in rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread, and we oatcake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labour, the wind and rain in the fields. And yet it is of us and of our toil that these men hold their state.
"We are called slaves; and if we do not perform our services, we are beaten, and we have not any sovereign to whom we can complain, or who wishes to hear us and do us justice."
The poet, William Langland, in "Piers Plowman," dwelt on the social wrongs of the time; Ball was fond of quoting from Langland, and of harping on a familiar couplet: