TY - JOUR
AU - Dodd, Gwilym
AB - Abstract This article reconsiders the relationship between the Middle English poem Piers Plowman and the political events of the later fourteenth century. Its contention is that Piers Plowman articulates a profound sense of disappointment in the inability of the late medieval English parliament to rectify the woes of the kingdom. This disillusionment was generated not only by the reversal of the measures taken against the court in the Good Parliament of 1376, but also by a much broader context of failure by the crown to address the petitions presented in parliament by the political community. Ultimately, it was parliament's failure to deliver institutional remedies to these longstanding problems that set the conditions for the ‘direct action’ of the rebels in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. The huge significance of the middle English poem Piers Plowman and the Good Parliament of 1376 is widely recognized and well established within the literary and historical disciplines where each in turn is studied. Both the poem and the parliament were not only highly innovative, in the sense that nothing before came close to matching their achievements, but both also went far in shaping future developments within their respective literary and political fields. In the case of Piers Plowman, literary scholars have pointed to Langland's use of a new and more accessible alliterative writing style and to his audacious and expansive criticism of the moral decay of state and society as the principal features that set the poem apart from previous work of the same genre.1 Langland's literary influence can be measured by the fact that over fifty manuscripts of the poem survive, making it one of the most widely circulated and popular poems of the late middle ages. It also directly influenced poetry written in succeeding decades which adopted Langlandian images and literary techniques and which has been classified by literary scholars as belonging to a ‘Piers Plowman tradition’.2 The Good Parliament was similarly a trendsetter of immense importance.3 The assembly witnessed an unprecedented and truly remarkable attack by the Commons on unpopular courtiers and ministers. In the course of proceedings the process of impeachment and the office of Commons' Speaker emerged as key components of the Commons' assault on the government.4 In future years (in the short term, and especially in the reign of Richard II, as well as in the long term) both the Speakership and impeachment were to have a profound impact on the course and nature of parliamentary activity. And yet, in spite of the fact that the Good Parliament sat only a short time (perhaps one or two years) before the second of Langland's three main versions of Piers Plowman was probably written (that is, the B-text), the link between the poem and this assembly has never been properly explored, let alone recognized or accepted.5 The scholarship that has addressed this question ranges very narrowly between arch sceptics, such as the historian Caroline Barron, who stated that Langland ‘had only the haziest notions about [parliament]’,6 and those – mostly literary scholars – who are willing to accept some degree of topical parliamentary allusion in Langland's work (specifically in his rat fable), but who are generally disinclined to make any firmer or more detailed commitment to the idea.7 It should be stressed from the outset that the intention of this article is not to suggest that the Good Parliament was a central concern of William Langland or that Langland was a ‘political writer’, in the sense that he had a fixed idea of what the constitution of late medieval England should be and what place parliament should have in it. Nevertheless, insofar as Piers Plowman was so patently shaped by the social, political, economic and religious circumstances and controversies of the time in which it was written, there are good grounds for supposing that the more specific relationship between the poem and parliament would repay more detailed scrutiny.8 Certainly, one would think that a poem which laments at length about the crisis facing society, and which sets out to elucidate the principal reasons to account for this crisis, would be hard pressed not to make some connection (implicit or explicit) with the one forum of late medieval England where such problems were most publicly aired. The Good Parliament met in the twilight years of Edward III's reign. By 1376 Edward III was, by contemporary standards, an old man of sixty-four. For almost all his reign, Edward's rule had been characterized by the strong and vigorous application of his kingship, but by the mid thirteen-seventies the king was a sad shadow of his former self.9 Gone were the glory days of Crécy and Poitiers, when victory on the battlefield set the conditions for an unprecedented period of political consensus for the king and his policies. Now, in the thirteen-seventies, Edward had effectively withdrawn from public and political life – perhaps to spend more time in the company of his mistress Alice Perrers – leaving government increasingly in the hands of his ministers and courtiers. The result was a growing sense within the political community that government no longer served the common interest, a feeling no doubt exacerbated by some very ill-conceived policies of the middle years of the decade. These included a truce with France which, through incompetence bordering on farce, had resulted in the unnecessary loss of English-held fortresses in Brittany; an Anglo-papal concordat which allowed the papacy to levy a subsidy in England without it making any notable concessions in return; and the issuance of special licences allowing merchants (and especially alien merchants) to evade the wool staple at Calais, thereby seriously depleting the income available for garrisoning that town.10 For several years the government tried to avoid facing up to the inevitable crisis, simply by not calling a parliament, but by 1376 the head of steam had become irresistible. The result, in political terms, was an explosion of anger, criticism and condemnation in parliament aimed primarily at a dozen or so ministers and courtiers associated with the corrupt and failing government. What then followed in parliament – an attack on, and impeachment of, these unfortunate individuals – finds unmistakable resonance in the so-called rat fable that Langland incorporated as a new addition to the prologue of the B-text of Piers Plowman.11 (The fable was retained in the C-text, which was written later in the thirteen-eighties or early thirteen-nineties.) In depicting an assembly filled with rodents Langland was drawing upon a familiar allegory that can be traced back, at least in vernacular form, to the thirteen-twenties; but he, like other writers before him, modified and embellished the fable to suit his own literary (and arguably political) purposes.12 Langland's version of the fable begins when a great assembly of rats and mice convenes to discuss how they can best ensure their common safety by preventing the cruelties inflicted on them by a cat.13 A rat suggests that a bell should be fitted around the collar of the cat so as to warn the rodents of his presence; but when none of the rodents is brave enough to carry through the plan a mouse speaks up and reasons that such an act would do more harm than good because rodents are incapable of ruling themselves: they need the oppressive rule of the cat to maintain order and stability. The rodent assembly ends with nothing useful having been done. In the past, the fable has tended to be seen in one of two ways. On the one hand, scholars such as Anna Baldwin and Anthony Gross see it as a straightforward denunciation of the parliamentary system.14 The underlying purpose of the fable, according to this view, is to suggest that M.P.s are not only cowardly, but are ultimately incapable of implementing reform because their selfish interests and pursuit of private gain prevent them from ruling for the common good. Particular emphasis is placed in this interpretation on the logic expressed by the shrewd mouse who asserts that it is better to uphold the power of an unpopular ruler than to risk the lawlessness and anarchy created by empowering the people: For many mannes malt we mees wolde destruye, And also ye route of ratons rende mennes cloþes, Nere þe cat of þe court þat kan yow ouerlepe; For hadde ye rattes youre wille, ye kouþe not rule yowselue.15 The implication is that parliament represents a threat to the kingdom's welfare; if parliament takes power away from a ruler, no matter how unjust he is, it will jeopardize the common weal. Thus, according to Anna Baldwin, Langland's belling the cat fable shows ‘the inevitability and desirability of absolutism’.16 The alternative interpretation was elucidated most fully some decades ago by Elisabeth Orsten. She argued that the anti-parliament views of the mouse do not represent the views of Langland or his audience.17 Orsten suggested that Langland's version of the fable allegorizes both the Good Parliament and the so-called Bad Parliament of January 1377. This later assembly implicitly endorsed the measures that had been taken by John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, to undo the reforms instigated by the Good Parliament. Thus, the mouse represents the anti-reforming perspective of January 1377. Orsten endorsed the probability that the cat of Langland's fable represents Gaunt, so she regarded the mouse as a close ally of the cat: a ‘Gaunt-figure, out-Gaunting himself’.18 The crux of Orsten's argument rests on the reputation of the mouse. According to Orsten the choice of a mouse to persuade the rodent assembly of the impracticability of reform is highly significant because mice (unlike rats) had very negative associations in the late middle ages. The views of the mouse are therefore not intended to read as a serious commentary on the political framework of the kingdom; instead, they are intended to read ironically, as the opinions of a wholly unreliable and discredited member of the rodent community. Thus, in a rather roundabout fashion, Orsten in fact sees Langland's fable as a very upbeat and positive assertion of parliament's place and role in the polity. We have, then, two very different perspectives: one that sees Langland as a proponent of absolute monarchy in a political system which has no need of, or place for, a representative assembly; and an alternative view which sees Langland as a ‘parliamentarian’ seeking to uphold the legitimacy and validity of parliamentary criticism. Although diametrically opposed, both views do share one common trait: namely, a reluctance to read too much topicality into Langland's fable. While acknowledging the broad political context in which the B-text was written, none of these scholars has examined this context in detail, preferring instead to regard the fable in terms of its bearing on more general political or constitutional questions. And yet, as we shall see, it is arguably this very topicality that represents the key to understanding why Langland chose to add the rat fable to his B-text. This is best understood by bringing into the discussion the famous sermon of Thomas Brinton that was given in St. Paul's at the time of the Good Parliament. Although it is possible that Langland drew on earlier fourteenth-century sources for his fable (that is to say, the writings of Nicholas Bozun and John Bromyard),19 most scholars agree that the sermon delivered by Brinton was probably the most immediate inspiration for Langland's rodent allegory. But the significance of the link between Brinton and Langland has not been fully explored.20 A key passage in the sermon reads: But some will say, leave the Commons [from criticism], who, like foundations of the republic, effectually support the king and the Parliament [to speak the truth?]. Not so Reverend sirs, lest our Parliament be compared to the parliament of rats and mice in the fable. About this, we read that, in their assembly, they had strictly ordained that every cat should have a bell attached to its neck, so that, warned by the sound, the mice might have sufficient time to escape in safety to their holes. An ancient rat, meeting a certain mouse returning from the parliament, inquired what was the news. When the mouse had explained to him the gist of the business, the rat remarked: ‘This law is most excellent, provided someone is appointed by your Parliament to carry it into execution’. The mouse replied that no such order had been made by parliament; and so the law remained consequently useless and inoperative.21 Two main points can be made. First, it is noteworthy how much more elaborate and topical Langland's version of the fable is compared to Brinton's version. In fact, there is a fundamental difference of perspective: whereas Brinton's fable refers to parliament in generic terms (albeit in the context of the sitting of the Good Parliament), Langland's fable is intended to represent parliamentary events themselves. Brinton's fable is set away from Westminster in the localities and the rat is not an M.P. but (presumably) a constituent who anxiously enquires of news from parliament. Thus, Brinton's use of the fable generates a scene in which we are one step removed from a parliament which seems distant and remote and whose deliberations we learn about only through second-hand reportage. In Langland's fable, on the other hand, we are present within parliament itself as witnesses to the events and deliberations of the rodents as they unfold. By introducing a number of key modifications and embellishments, Langland takes a fable that has no direct bearing on current affairs and transforms it into a highly suggestive historical commentary on one (and perhaps two) of the parliamentary sessions of the mid thirteen-seventies. Two of Langland's most important embellishments lie with the characterization of the cat as a ‘cat of the court’ and of the rat as ‘a rat of renoun’, descriptions which strongly suggest a connection with the two central figures of the Good Parliament (respectively, John of Gaunt and Peter de la Mare, the Speaker of the Commons). There is also the completely novel inclusion in Langland's version of a kitten figure. The mouse says: For I herde my sire seyn, is seuen yeer ypassed, ‘Ther þe cat is a kitoun, þe court is ful elenge’. That witnesseþ Holy Writ, whoso wole it rede: Ve terre vbi puer est rex![Woe to a kingdom whose king is a child!]22 The kitten almost certainly represents Richard of Bordeaux, who was ten years old when he became king in 1377. Richard's age had been a matter of considerable anxiety when he became immediate heir to the throne in June 1376, after the death of his father the Black Prince. There was widespread suspicion that Richard's youth made the crown vulnerable to the designs of Gaunt, his eldest surviving uncle, and some time late in June the Lords and Commons asked Edward III to make Richard prince of Wales formally, thus shoring up the true line of succession.23 The identification of the kitten with Richard is further suggested by the mouse's reference to seven years' passing since he had been warned of the problems caused by the succession of a child king. This remark may have special significance because if the B-text was written in 1377 it would take us back to the year 1370 when Richard entered the direct line of royal succession after the death, in September of that year, of his elder brother Edward of Angoulême. At this point, of course, there was no prospect of minority rule, because the Black Prince was in good health, but Langland was writing with the benefit of hindsight, and the element of long-term foreboding adds greatly to the gravitas of the scene. This point also, of course, provides additional evidence in support of the dating of the B-text to the very beginning of Richard II's reign. The central figure of the fable is the cat. Indeed, the underlying purpose of the fable rests overwhelmingly on who and what we understand the cat to represent. To the first of these questions there is broad consensus that Gaunt was the target, but the answer to the second question is less straightforward. Both Baldwin and Gross place great emphasis on the view that the cat embodies royal power. For them, the cat is a king-like figure wielding unrestrained and oppressive authority over his subjects. It is this association with monarchy that underpins Baldwin's theory that the rat fable advocates an absolutist political system; while Gross sees the parallel as a representation of the repressive subjugation of free speech in parliament by late medieval English kings.24 To the extent that Gaunt was a prince of the royal blood and, from the end of 1376, was recognized as heir to the throne after Richard, some mileage can be gained from associating the cat with royal power.25 But a far more convincing case can be made for seeing the cat as an allegory of harsh and tyrannical noble authority. It seems unlikely, to say the least, that at a time when the monarchy was essentially in abeyance, either through the dotage of Edward III or the youth of Richard II, that Langland would have intended the cat to represent royal authority out of control. On the contrary, it was precisely the absence of a strong and effective king, whose authority was grounded in the legitimacy of true lineage and divine sanction, which gave the cat analogy such powerful resonance. For the cat signifies the unrepresentative and illegitimate political authority of an ‘over mighty’ subject – a nobleman who exercises, or seeks to exercise, the kind of sovereign power normally reserved only for the king. Significantly, the idea to place a bell around the cat's neck derived from a comment by the rat that men wearing ‘bei-es ful brite abouten hire nekkes’ had free rein in the city of London and that they, like the cat, needed restraining.26 This was a barely disguised reference to the scourge of maintenance.27 Its association with the cat was entirely in keeping with the contemporary image of an over-mighty subject who wielded power not by consent but through the coercion and extortion of his retainers. There may have been an especially pertinent reason to link Gaunt with the abuses of maintenance: the Lancastrian ‘SS’ collar was one of the first recorded ‘bastard feudal’ devices to be distributed in the form of a livery, during the thirteen-seventies and eighties, and Gaunt himself was one of the first noblemen to face public criticism for ‘evil maintenance’ in early 1384.28 In part, the comparison of the cat with John of Gaunt connects with the widely held medieval belief that it was only through the exercise of kingship that the common interests or common weal of the nation would be served, because only kings had the capacity to listen impartially to the advice of counsellors and make decisions that served the public interest.29 No matter how well meaning a nobleman's actions, it was almost inevitable that he and his motivations would be viewed with suspicion and mistrust if his power was perceived to overshadow that of the king. This was one reason why broadly representative continual councils were put in place during the first three years of Richard II's reign.30 Thus, even if Gaunt had been a prudent and magnanimous political leader he faced a difficult task persuading the kingdom that his assumption of executive power during the dotage of Edward III was for the common interest. But Gaunt was not prudent and, particularly to Londoners, his actions were far from restrained or constructive. At the end of 1376 and in the first part of 1377 the city of London endured a remarkable series of assaults on its constitution by the Gaunt-led government. This aggressive demonstration of the duke's power involved, at least initially, an attack on the independence of the city's Hustings Court and an attempt to extend the jurisdiction of the marshal's office over the entire city – a particularly unpopular move with its citizens.31 (Changes were also made to the city's constitution, but these had more to do with the internal politics of the capital than with interference by the crown – although the latter certainly sought to exploit these political divisions.)32 Gaunt's animosity towards London no doubt arose from the staunch support that the city had given to the actions of the Good Parliament, and from the fact that the city refused to reinstate the three London aldermen – Richard Lyons, William Latimer and Adam de Bury – who had been impeached in the assembly.33 This constituted a serious rebuttal of Gaunt's policy of re-imposing royal authority after the Good Parliament and was one of the few instances where he failed to get his way. The climax to the struggle between the city and the duke occurred during the Bad Parliament of 1377 when, on 19 February, following a number of provocations, not least Gaunt's threat to take the city into the king's hands and install a ‘captain’ in the place of the mayor, Londoners started rioting.34 Gaunt wasted little time in exacting revenge – the existing London mayor, John Stable, was deposed and replaced by Nicholas Brembre, and the city leaders were ordered to perform a series of humiliating penances. The importance of these events for the present discussion lies in the fact that, by the thirteen-seventies, Langland was a London-based poet and, as such, almost certainly witnessed the turbulent politics of the city and the heavy-handed way in which Gaunt imposed his authority on the capital's ruling élite.35 To the extent that Gaunt's actions must have appeared to Londoners to be both excessive and vindictive, Langland's imagery of the cat playing with the rodents, threatening them with harm if they demurred, probably captured the atmosphere of the city very accurately indeed. This association of Gaunt's ‘tyrannical’ rule with the specific circumstances of London politics in the aftermath of the Good Parliament makes far better historical sense because, until the Black Prince died in June 1376 and Edward III's health took a serious turn for the worse in the autumn of the same year, it is doubtful whether Gaunt's involvement in politics was sufficient to have warranted this particular charge. It is worth remembering that Gaunt, although he faced hostility and suspicion in the Good Parliament, was not (as Walsingham would have us believe)36 the principal focus of attack, and that the criticism that was directed his way did not concern his exercise of forceful, tyrannical authority but rather his association with incompetent and corrupt government.37 It is possible, then, that the rats of Langland's fable, if they are intended to represent the M.P.s of the Good Parliament, are attempting to curb the excesses of a cat who is modelled on a later, more aggressive version of Gaunt – a figure readily identifiable by the London-based readers of the B-text in the light of events between the autumn of 1376 and the spring of 1377. To this extent Langland is conflating history: he is suggesting that in 1376 the Good Parliament had an opportunity to face up to tyrannical rule, whereas in reality this was not an issue (even for London) until the months that followed the assembly. The second main point relates to the timing of Brinton's sermon. The sermon was delivered when the Good Parliament was in full session (18 May 1376); it was, therefore, a speech which aimed to alter or influence the course of events as they were unfolding at the time. Thus, at the end of his allusion to the unproductive rodent parliament, Brinton made an impassioned plea to his congregation: ‘For the love of Christ, and in defence of our country brought to straits such as this, let us be not merely talkers, but doers. Let us cast off the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light, so that our lives may be amended, and our king directed in the way of justice.’38 This was a call to action; a speech aimed at galvanizing listeners into implementing the reforms that Brinton felt were crucial for the wellbeing of the kingdom. Langland, on the other hand, wrote his B-text ex post facto. His allusion to the rat fable is not a call to action, but an account or representation of what has already occurred, and arguably not just in the Good Parliament of 1376. In the past scholars have debated at length why Langland should have filled his rodent assembly with two distinct elements – rats and mice. Suggestions have been made that the rats represented the parliamentary Lords and the mice the Commons, or that the rats were the knights of the shire and the mice were the burgesses. In fact, Orsten's theory that the fable spanned two parliaments seems the most plausible, although Orsten herself did not develop this idea in any detail.39 Thus, the rats represent the reformers of the Good Parliament, and the mice are the conservatives of the Bad Parliament of January 1377. This scheme would link the fable with events in parliament in the following way: at the start of the fable a rat submits a plan to limit the power of the cat who is oppressing them, just as the M.P.s of 1376 sought far-reaching reforms to the government; then, the rats prove to be too cowardly to implement this scheme, just as the reforms proposed in the Good Parliament failed to produce any meaningful change to the status quo; and finally, the mouse seeks to vindicate this inaction by pointing out that the rodent community would be better off keeping the cat to maintain order and stability within the rodent kingdom, just as the Commons of January 1377 upheld the authority of Gaunt by consenting to the measures that reversed the actions of the Good Parliament. In Langland's fable the mouse points out the inadvisability of placing a bell around the cat's neck even though, as he admitted, the latter had contributed nothing towards its cost; in January 1377 the Commons undermined everything that had been attempted in 1376, although most of their number had not attended the Good Parliament and therefore had little to do with its reform programme.40 Overall, then, this reading of Langland's rat fable makes him neither an absolutist (in the vein of Baldwin or Gross) nor a ‘closet’ parliamentarian of the sort suggested by Orsten. The fable is not a political treatise on the viability of the parliamentary system, but rather a satirized commentary on events that had recently taken place in specific parliaments. Thus, Langland was not a political writer, but he was writing about political or parliamentary events. In this sense, the fable expresses profound disappointment with the performance of M.P.s in the mid thirteen-seventies. In 1376 Bishop Brinton had thrown down a gauntlet for the political community: he had challenged those assembled before him not to be like the mice in the fable who have good ideas but fail to see them through. Writing in the light of events in January 1377, Langland was now able to muse that the parliament of Westminster and the parliament of rats and mice were one and the same thing because the Bad Parliament had shown itself to possess precisely the characteristics of the rodent-packed assembly: it too lacked unity, courage and conviction. Significantly, this was a view shared by the chronicler Thomas Walsingham, who was equally scathing about the performance of the M.P.s in the Bad Parliament. Using language that chimed closely with the imagery generated by Langland's fable, Walsingham described the M.P.s as ‘weak-minded’; he castigated them for failing to stand up for the commonalty; and he criticized them for being ‘far too subservient to the duke's wishes’ and for lacking ‘courage in their hearts’.41 Walsingham, for his part, would not have cared about offending those who held parliament in high esteem with these sentiments, but Langland's position as a London-based poet may have required more sensitivity. Perhaps this explains his apparent disclaimer at the end of the fable: (What þis metels bymeneþ, ye men þat ben murye, Deuyne ye, for I ne dar, by deere God in heuene)!42 Arguably, this was not aimed, as some have suggested, at the king and the crown, nor even at the supporters of Gaunt, but rather at those people who still retained faith in, and respect for, the institution of parliament. Perhaps these included the city clerks and lawyers whose livelihood was dependent upon the secretarial and legal business generated by parliament, and who have been identified as comprising the initial audience of Piers Plowman in the last decades of the fourteenth century.43 Langland's decision to incorporate a version of the rat fable into his B-text no doubt rested in part on the irony placed upon Brinton's sermon by the unfolding of events following the Good Parliament. The literary opportunities presented by a topical, perhaps even mischievous, reworking of a fable that had probably become very well known in London thanks to Brinton's preaching was probably too much for Langland to resist. But such a decision may also have been influenced by the sheer magnitude of the political crisis that the Good Parliament represented. Nothing like it had been witnessed since the early thirteen-forties, over thirty-five years previously and out of living memory for most people living at the time of the Good Parliament.44 For many contemporaries, the events of 1376 must have been viewed with wonderment tempered with an element of anxiety: with the king effectively out of circulation, the government was for the first time attacked and properly subdued not by a recalcitrant nobility but by late medieval ‘middle England’. This was achieved largely through the development of the process known as impeachment, which enabled the parliamentary Commons to bring the government to account on their own initiative, without initially requiring significant support or leadership from the Lords (although the latter were critical to the completion of the process, by hearing the Commons' charges and making judgements on them).45 This was uncharted water and represented a significant advance in the capacity of M.P.s for independent political action. For the first time the Commons, seemingly on their own initiative, had purged the government of a coterie of corrupt and unpopular ministers and had installed in their place an alternative administration filled with men of the Commons' own choosing.46 How far contemporaries would have read the rat fable as an allegory of parliament in the mid thirteen-seventies obviously depended on how much they were aware of what happened in parliament. However, the fact that popular songs were composed celebrating the achievements of Peter de la Mare,47 that the ex-Speaker's cause was vigorously (and violently) championed by Londoners when Gaunt had him imprisoned,48 and that the proceedings of the Lower House were for the first time set down in exhaustive detail and recorded by a chronicler based in the north of England,49 suggests that recognition of the Good Parliament's significance went well beyond the men directly involved in its proceedings, and that the assembly's aims and actions caught the imagination of a broad cross section of society. Possibly, Langland's incorporation of the fable into Piers Plowman was a response to this unprecedented surge of public interest in the workings and results of parliament. In fact, the resonance between Piers Plowman and the Good Parliament may have run far deeper than the topical allusions suggested by the rat fable. This becomes evident if we shift the focus of our investigation away from the political drama of the assembly to the common petitions that were presented in unprecedented numbers in the course of the proceedings. Common petitions were requests for favour or redress that articulated the broad interests of the community of the realm; if successful, they formed the basis of new statutory legislation. That so many were recorded on the parliament roll (in total 126 ‘stand alone’ grievances were enrolled)50 indicates that discontent with the current state of affairs was not confined to the M.P.s present at parliament and did not concern merely the actions of a handful of corrupt royal ministers, but that the malaise was felt far more widely and concerned a much larger set of issues affecting conditions in the localities.51 It also shows how tightly the Commons controlled the parliamentary agenda, a point emphasized by the fact that each petition was privileged with an answer or response that was presumably given by the reform council appointed during the assembly to ‘ordain for him [the king] and the kingdom, and remedy the trespasses which had been committed and done before this time’.52 The true significance of the common petitions of 1376, however, lies in the fact that they made no noticeable impact on the status quo. Remarkably, the Good Parliament is one of only a tiny handful of fourteenth-century parliaments to have left no mark on the statute book whatsoever. Here, then, was another significant cause for exasperation at the ineffectiveness of the parliamentary system. All the time and effort expended by the political community in the Good Parliament to rectify the many problems facing the kingdom had been for nothing. It is tempting to place all the blame for the legislative vacuum of 1376 on Gaunt, who had the reform council disbanded only a few months after parliament ended, but the fate of the petitions may already have been sealed before the Good Parliament came to an end.53 If the responses to these petitions were indeed the responsibility of the reform council then the lack of legislation was down to the council members rather than to Gaunt. A survey of the answers given to the common petitions indicates that the council members were markedly reluctant to commit to new legislation, and on some key areas, such as relations with the papacy, problems with labour and the abuse of maintenance, the responses to the petitions employed a variety of evasive or stalling strategies. In light of this it is worth speculating that Langland had these councillors in mind as much as the M.P.s representing the counties and boroughs when he cast the reformers of 1376 as well-meaning but ultimately cowardly and ineffectual rats. The ‘reform’ councillors may have had good reason to drag their feet on these petitions. Perhaps they feared the possibility of being accused of encroaching upon royal power if they committed the crown to far-reaching legislative reform. But this hardly diminished the fact that, fundamentally, they failed to deliver key changes to the running of government and the Commons returned home with nothing to offer their constituents (in relation to petitions) except for empty promises and unresolved problems. The betrayal – if one can term it such – did not stop here, however, for far from resubmitting these unresolved complaints with renewed vigour, the M.P.s of the Bad Parliament in January 1377 simply let them go, and this in spite of the fact that the assembly had made a special (and generous) grant of poll tax to the crown. Again, there may have been good reasons for the Commons to rally behind Gaunt in this new parliament (namely, Edward III's jubilee and a renewed threat of invasion by the French), but the willingness of M.P.s to abandon almost entirely the reform agenda of 1376 represented a remarkable volte-face and a real breach of faith with the cause advanced in the Good Parliament. Only one petition of January 1377 (on provisions) made any attempt to follow up the reform programme of the previous year.54 Indeed, in one important respect the Bad Parliament actually reversed the petitionary programme of the Good Parliament: the quid pro quo for taxation in January 1377 was an all-embracing General Pardon that entirely negated the law and order agenda advanced in 1376 by offering to excuse the king's subjects of all manner of crimes and misdemeanours.55 How, then, does all this tie in with Piers Plowman? First, the disappointing and inconsistent petitionary record of parliament might help us better to understand the cynicism with which Langland depicts the ‘petition scene’ in Passus IV of the poem. This is where Peace submits a bill to the king complaining about all of the misdeeds and crimes committed by Wrong.56 In the end, of course, the king's will prevails and Wrong is brought to justice, but this is not before the king faces one entreaty after another seeking to excuse Wrong of his crimes. Wisdom and Wit try to obtain a pardon for him;57 Peace succumbs to the bribery of Lady Meed and implores the king to show mercy;58 other men put pressure on Reason to counsel the king for leniency;59 and Conscience warns the king of the dangers of overreaction if he does not have the support of the common people.60 This passage suggests that, for a petition to result in justice, the king must overcome incessant pressure from his advisers to do nothing. Most remarkable of all, however, is that the king faces obstruction from the petitioner himself. The great irony of the petition scene is that Peace turns out to be a less than reliable promoter of his own cause because he sees the payment of compensation, rather than full and proper justice, as an acceptable end to the matter.61 In this, the inconsistency and fickleness of Peace mirrors the plight to befall England in January 1377 when the interests of the kingdom were ill-served by the slavishness and timidity of the political community. In the poem Peace achieves redress in spite of himself, because the king is a wise and effective ruler: in the mid thirteen-seventies no such political figure existed to save the Commons from themselves. The second link between petitioning and Piers Plowman brings us indirectly back to the reasons why Langland might have included the rat fable in the B-text. If we accept the hypothesis that the rat fable expresses a profound sense of dissatisfaction with the outcome to the Good Parliament, these sentiments are made all the more comprehensible when we consider that there is a striking correlation between many of the ‘topical’ concerns raised in the main body of Piers Plowman and some of the principal issues that were complained about and were left unresolved in the common petitions presented in the Good Parliament. This correlation can be seen by comparing columns one and two in Table 1. They show that M.P.s and the poet were at one in identifying the most dangerous threats to the peace and security of the realm. These included: the failure of the king's counsellors to provide advice that advanced the common interest; maintenance and its impact on law and order; purveyance; clerical simony; papal provisions; and an economically empowered labouring class. Table 1 Common petitions and Piers Plowman Subject . 1: Common petitions in the Good Parliamenta . 2: Piers Plowman (B-text)b . 3: Piers Plowman (A-text)b . 4: Common petition in other parliament? . Maintenance 16, 108 II, l. 54 II, l. 33 1371 II, l. 159 II, l. 124 III, l. 167 III, l. 154 IV, l. 55 IV, l. 42 Councillors (royal) 4, 9, 14 IV, l. 123 – – IV, l. 152 – X, l. 20 – Purveyance 37, 41, 67, 102, 109, 121 II, l. 171 II, l. 135 1371, 1372, 1373 IV, l. 58 II, l. 45 Sheriffs/Escheators 23, 29, 33, 38 II, l. 59 – 1368, 1371 II, l. 164 II, l. 128 III, l. 135 II, l. 124 Corruption of law 2, 20, 24, 43, 122 II, ll. 63–4 – 1371, 1372 II, l. 165 II, l. 129 III, ll. 13–19 III, ll. 13–18 III, ll. 134–41 III, ll. 123–30 III, ll. 155–62 III, ll. 145–51 IV, ll. 152–3 IV, ll. 135–6 Papacy/clergy (including provisions and simony) 40, 44–57, 61 II, l. 23 II, l. 18 1373 III, ll. 215–16 III, ll. 202–3 III, l. 128 III, l. 117 III, l. 147 III, l. 136 Disorder 104 I, ll. 94–7 I, ll. 92–5 1371 III, ll. 305–8 – IV, ll. 52–5 IV, ll. 39–2 Crown revenue 129, 132 IV, l. 174 – – X, l. 327 – XV, l. 564 – Anti-Lombard 7 V, l. 248 – – Forestalling 8 IV, l. 56 IV, l. 43 – Weights and measures 37 V, l. 221 V, l. 139 1372, 1373 Export of bullion 40, 44, 46, 47, 53, 55 IV, ll. 129–133 IV, ll. 112–16 1368, 1371 Labour 10, 58 Prologue, ll. 223–5 Prologue, ll. 102–3 1368, 1372, 1373 Passus VI Passus VI Subject . 1: Common petitions in the Good Parliamenta . 2: Piers Plowman (B-text)b . 3: Piers Plowman (A-text)b . 4: Common petition in other parliament? . Maintenance 16, 108 II, l. 54 II, l. 33 1371 II, l. 159 II, l. 124 III, l. 167 III, l. 154 IV, l. 55 IV, l. 42 Councillors (royal) 4, 9, 14 IV, l. 123 – – IV, l. 152 – X, l. 20 – Purveyance 37, 41, 67, 102, 109, 121 II, l. 171 II, l. 135 1371, 1372, 1373 IV, l. 58 II, l. 45 Sheriffs/Escheators 23, 29, 33, 38 II, l. 59 – 1368, 1371 II, l. 164 II, l. 128 III, l. 135 II, l. 124 Corruption of law 2, 20, 24, 43, 122 II, ll. 63–4 – 1371, 1372 II, l. 165 II, l. 129 III, ll. 13–19 III, ll. 13–18 III, ll. 134–41 III, ll. 123–30 III, ll. 155–62 III, ll. 145–51 IV, ll. 152–3 IV, ll. 135–6 Papacy/clergy (including provisions and simony) 40, 44–57, 61 II, l. 23 II, l. 18 1373 III, ll. 215–16 III, ll. 202–3 III, l. 128 III, l. 117 III, l. 147 III, l. 136 Disorder 104 I, ll. 94–7 I, ll. 92–5 1371 III, ll. 305–8 – IV, ll. 52–5 IV, ll. 39–2 Crown revenue 129, 132 IV, l. 174 – – X, l. 327 – XV, l. 564 – Anti-Lombard 7 V, l. 248 – – Forestalling 8 IV, l. 56 IV, l. 43 – Weights and measures 37 V, l. 221 V, l. 139 1372, 1373 Export of bullion 40, 44, 46, 47, 53, 55 IV, ll. 129–133 IV, ll. 112–16 1368, 1371 Labour 10, 58 Prologue, ll. 223–5 Prologue, ll. 102–3 1368, 1372, 1373 Passus VI Passus VI a The references in this column are to the item numbers recorded contemporaneously against the common petitions, as printed in Rot. Parl., ii. 331–60. b All references are to Schmidt's parallel text edition of Piers Plowman. Where there is a line reference in both col. 2 and col. 3 this should be taken to indicate a passage that is substantially the same in both the A- and B-texts. Open in new tab Table 1 Common petitions and Piers Plowman Subject . 1: Common petitions in the Good Parliamenta . 2: Piers Plowman (B-text)b . 3: Piers Plowman (A-text)b . 4: Common petition in other parliament? . Maintenance 16, 108 II, l. 54 II, l. 33 1371 II, l. 159 II, l. 124 III, l. 167 III, l. 154 IV, l. 55 IV, l. 42 Councillors (royal) 4, 9, 14 IV, l. 123 – – IV, l. 152 – X, l. 20 – Purveyance 37, 41, 67, 102, 109, 121 II, l. 171 II, l. 135 1371, 1372, 1373 IV, l. 58 II, l. 45 Sheriffs/Escheators 23, 29, 33, 38 II, l. 59 – 1368, 1371 II, l. 164 II, l. 128 III, l. 135 II, l. 124 Corruption of law 2, 20, 24, 43, 122 II, ll. 63–4 – 1371, 1372 II, l. 165 II, l. 129 III, ll. 13–19 III, ll. 13–18 III, ll. 134–41 III, ll. 123–30 III, ll. 155–62 III, ll. 145–51 IV, ll. 152–3 IV, ll. 135–6 Papacy/clergy (including provisions and simony) 40, 44–57, 61 II, l. 23 II, l. 18 1373 III, ll. 215–16 III, ll. 202–3 III, l. 128 III, l. 117 III, l. 147 III, l. 136 Disorder 104 I, ll. 94–7 I, ll. 92–5 1371 III, ll. 305–8 – IV, ll. 52–5 IV, ll. 39–2 Crown revenue 129, 132 IV, l. 174 – – X, l. 327 – XV, l. 564 – Anti-Lombard 7 V, l. 248 – – Forestalling 8 IV, l. 56 IV, l. 43 – Weights and measures 37 V, l. 221 V, l. 139 1372, 1373 Export of bullion 40, 44, 46, 47, 53, 55 IV, ll. 129–133 IV, ll. 112–16 1368, 1371 Labour 10, 58 Prologue, ll. 223–5 Prologue, ll. 102–3 1368, 1372, 1373 Passus VI Passus VI Subject . 1: Common petitions in the Good Parliamenta . 2: Piers Plowman (B-text)b . 3: Piers Plowman (A-text)b . 4: Common petition in other parliament? . Maintenance 16, 108 II, l. 54 II, l. 33 1371 II, l. 159 II, l. 124 III, l. 167 III, l. 154 IV, l. 55 IV, l. 42 Councillors (royal) 4, 9, 14 IV, l. 123 – – IV, l. 152 – X, l. 20 – Purveyance 37, 41, 67, 102, 109, 121 II, l. 171 II, l. 135 1371, 1372, 1373 IV, l. 58 II, l. 45 Sheriffs/Escheators 23, 29, 33, 38 II, l. 59 – 1368, 1371 II, l. 164 II, l. 128 III, l. 135 II, l. 124 Corruption of law 2, 20, 24, 43, 122 II, ll. 63–4 – 1371, 1372 II, l. 165 II, l. 129 III, ll. 13–19 III, ll. 13–18 III, ll. 134–41 III, ll. 123–30 III, ll. 155–62 III, ll. 145–51 IV, ll. 152–3 IV, ll. 135–6 Papacy/clergy (including provisions and simony) 40, 44–57, 61 II, l. 23 II, l. 18 1373 III, ll. 215–16 III, ll. 202–3 III, l. 128 III, l. 117 III, l. 147 III, l. 136 Disorder 104 I, ll. 94–7 I, ll. 92–5 1371 III, ll. 305–8 – IV, ll. 52–5 IV, ll. 39–2 Crown revenue 129, 132 IV, l. 174 – – X, l. 327 – XV, l. 564 – Anti-Lombard 7 V, l. 248 – – Forestalling 8 IV, l. 56 IV, l. 43 – Weights and measures 37 V, l. 221 V, l. 139 1372, 1373 Export of bullion 40, 44, 46, 47, 53, 55 IV, ll. 129–133 IV, ll. 112–16 1368, 1371 Labour 10, 58 Prologue, ll. 223–5 Prologue, ll. 102–3 1368, 1372, 1373 Passus VI Passus VI a The references in this column are to the item numbers recorded contemporaneously against the common petitions, as printed in Rot. Parl., ii. 331–60. b All references are to Schmidt's parallel text edition of Piers Plowman. Where there is a line reference in both col. 2 and col. 3 this should be taken to indicate a passage that is substantially the same in both the A- and B-texts. Open in new tab Such unanimity of complaint draws us inevitably to the possibility that it was parliament's failure to gain adequate redress for its petitions that prompted Langland, in the late thirteen-seventies, to take up the reforming mantle himself and air these same grievances in his poetry. Such a scenario would fit very neatly with the ideas put forward by Frank Grady, who has suggested that some Middle English poetry of the early fifteenth century was conceived partly in order to substitute for an ineffective and failing parliamentary institution.62 The intriguing thing, however, is that although the rat fable constituted an addition to the B-text of Piers Plowman, and therefore post-dated the Good Parliament, the vast majority of the issues that found resonance among the common petitions of 1376 had already been incorporated, in virtually identical form, into the A-text of Piers Plowman written some years before the Good Parliament (see column three of Table 1). If nothing else, then, it cannot be said that Langland was reacting to the issues raised by the petitions of the Good Parliament. But nor can it be said that Langland was setting the petitionary agenda for the Good Parliament, for many of the issues that cropped up in the common petitions of 1376 had already appeared in petitions presented in parliament over the course of the previous half-decade (see column four of Table 1). In short, the correlation between the common petitions of the Good Parliament and the B-text of Piers Plowman was antedated by a similar correlation between the A-text of Piers Plowman and many of the common petitions that were presented in parliament in the late thirteen-sixties and early thirteen-seventies. The close link between the poem and parliament that is suggested by this evidence is reinforced by a number of anomalies common to both contexts. As Table 1 demonstrates, concern about the deleterious impact of incompetent or corrupt counsel on the king was a concern of the Commons in 1376 and was a subject raised in the B-text of Piers Plowman, specifically in Passus IV where the hope is expressed that one day the king's council will rule for the common good. However, this scepticism is not evident in the A-text and it is not manifested in any common petitions before 1376 (although there was a purge of government personnel in 1371, this was primarily because of anti-clerical sentiment within parliament).63 A more clear-cut case can be made out of concerns for the crown's ordinary income: this was not an issue that cropped up in either the A-text of Piers Plowman or the petitions of the late thirteen-sixties or seventies. Yet, it was the subject of two common petitions in 1376 and it was referred to in several places in the B-text of Piers Plowman, notably in the context of Lady Meed's denying the king income due to him from reversions. A similar situation can be identified in the case of Lombard merchants who were the subject of complaint in a petition presented to the Good Parliament and were also mentioned as the source of criticism in the B-text, but who escaped attention in earlier parliaments and in the A-text.64 If common petitions are taken to be a measure of public opinion, then it would seem that the discontent articulated in the petitions of the earlier parliaments was a relatively sudden development, probably coinciding with the resumption of Anglo-French hostilities and the concomitant re-imposition of direct taxation. Significantly, before 1368, hardly any of the issues noted in Table 1 were the subject of complaint. Indeed, in the parliament of 1366 no common petitions were presented at all, which suggests that there was a remarkable degree of political consensus. It also suggests that the political mood changed very quickly at the end of the decade. This is a point that is worth emphasizing because it may provide additional evidence in support of the hypothesis that the A-text of Piers Plowman was written at the end of the thirteen-sixties and possibly as late as the early thirteen-seventies.65 All this, of course, places a rather different complexion on the petitions of the Good Parliament and the B-text of Piers Plowman. Above all, it seems clear that the concerns raised in these later contexts were longstanding issues that had been in the public domain for at least half a decade. The M.P.s of 1376, as well as the audience of the B-text, would probably have been wearily familiar with the problems caused by illegal purveyance, maintenance, evil counsel, corruption in the legal profession, unco-operative labourers and so on. These were old and familiar complaints. So the sense of disappointment in parliament that was articulated by Langland's rat fable could well have been sharpened by the knowledge that many of the complaints submitted to the Good Parliament were old, almost perennial, grievances, that persisted either because the crown was unwilling or was unable to provide effective remedy. This was precisely the situation which Langland seems to have foretold in Passus IV of the A-text, where Wrong boasts that if he were to secure the affection of the king, Peace could petition as many times as he wanted but would never secure any favour or dispensation: 'Hadde I loue of my lord þe King, litel wolde I recche Þei Pees and his power pleynide hem euere!'66 This cynical appraisal of the petitionary system was retained in the later versions of the poem. For the M.P.s attending the Good Parliament, and for an attentive and expectant populace eagerly awaiting the results of its petitions, the hard lesson to be learnt from the period 1376–7 was that controlling parliament, and forcing through reform, counted for little if executive power remained in the hands of those who sought to resist or reverse those reforms. Time was the ally of those who held the reins of government; parliament, which was of limited duration, could dictate the political agenda only temporarily. The truth, however, may have been even harsher. In the parliament of October 1377, the first of Richard II's reign, many of the issues which had been raised in the Good Parliament and which had been dropped by the Bad Parliament, finally made it onto the statute book – no doubt in part because de la Mare had been re-elected as Speaker and a significant number of M.P.s in this assembly were veterans of the Good Parliament itself.67 At last the petitionary agenda of the Good Parliament seems to have been taken seriously and certain key areas such as purveyance, maintenance and the problem of labour were addressed by the minority government.68 But securing statutory legislation was one thing; implementing real change was quite another. Purveyance, for example, continued to be the source of disquiet in parliament throughout the thirteen-eighties, and only ceased being the subject of complaint once hostilities with France had subsided in the thirteen-nineties.69 In the fourteen-hundreds purveyance once again became a familiar theme of common petitions. Maintenance, also, was an issue that refused to go away. It was petitioned about in November 1384 and September 1388, and when, finally, in May 1390 the crown committed itself to comprehensive legislation on the matter, a vital loophole was left which rendered the statute virtually worthless.70 Nor could the parliamentary legislation of October 1377, October 1383, September 1388 or January 1390 do anything to arrest the upward movement of wages in the last decades of the fourteenth century or to alter the economic conditions that enabled labourers to dictate the terms of their employment.71 The Statute of Sheriffs belonged to a whole category of legislation aimed at regulating the conduct of royal officials in the localities, legislation which is unlikely to have made any notable impact upon the way in which these officials discharged their duties.72 The truth was that even when the Commons succeeded in influencing the statutory programme (as they did in October 1377 and in succeeding parliaments) there remained a sizeable gap between their legislative aspirations and the practical implementation and effective enforcement of these statutes. It was perhaps in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 that the full implications of this failure of the parliamentary system came to be felt. From a long-term perspective, the Peasants' Revolt could be seen as an act of deep frustration generated by a decade in which parliament had consistently shown itself incapable of addressing a range of deep-seated social, economic and political concerns. If parliament had been working effectively and had forced change on the government, it is possible that the Peasants' Revolt would not have happened. That it did, and that it involved rebels who were often respectable members of parochial society who should otherwise have had a stake in government, indicated that all faith in the parliamentary institution had evaporated. Many of the rebel leaders were prominent in the government of villages and hundreds; some almost certainly would have attended county elections where M.P.s were chosen and parliamentary petitions were formulated.73 In theory, then, parliament was accessible (albeit indirectly) to the type of people who marched on London in 1381. Yet it is striking that, in contrast to 1376, when parliament occupied centre stage in the drive for reform, and when its actions and personalities caught the popular imagination and were widely celebrated, in 1381 the institution was mentioned not once by the rebels. It is important to stress that this situation did not arise because the aims and ambitions of the rebels were incompatible with a parliamentary agenda; far from it. Although the rebels' solutions to their grievances were often extreme and unconstitutional (as one would expect in a rebellion), a remarkable number of their complaints paralleled precisely the themes which had been raised in parliament over the previous decade, and especially in the Good Parliament of 1376.74 For example, the rebels, like the Commons of 1376, were concerned about the evil counsellors who allegedly surrounded the king and whose malevolent influence was seen to be seriously damaging the welfare of the realm.75 The rebels, like the Commons, had a particular suspicion of, and dislike for, John of Gaunt, who was considered to be the chief architect of England's woes.76 The rebels targeted local officials (especially sheriffs and escheators) because they, like the Commons, regarded these men as corrupt abusers of position and power.77 The rebels had a particular disdain for men of law, believing (again like the Commons) that they were easily susceptible to bribery and coercion.78 The rebels' attacks on the Church and the Church hierarchy paralleled the persistent worries of the Commons about the abuses of Church rights, the behaviour of individual Churchmen and the inordinate wealth that the Church possessed.79 The rebels and Commons shared a dislike of foreigners, especially foreign merchants, who were targeted in the flesh by the rebels and in petitions by M.P.s.80 Both groups shared a deep conviction that parliamentary taxation was being mismanaged and squandered on non-essential and non-military costs.81 Both wished for greater levels of financial accountability by the senior officials of royal government. Similarly, they shared great anxiety about the defence of the realm and the government's ability to provide adequate protection for the coastline.82 Both the Commons of 1376 and the rebels of 1381 shared a disdain for trade monopolies which allowed minority mercantile interests to impose unreasonable prices on goods and services.83 And finally, in what is perhaps the most striking example of the overlap between the agenda of the Commons and the actions of the rebels, Richard Lyons, erstwhile victim of impeachment in the Good Parliament, was specifically targeted by the rebels in 1381, who dragged him out of his house and had him summarily executed in the street.84 In fact, Lyons was not the only victim of the Good Parliament to suffer in 1381. The two burgesses of Great Yarmouth who faced charges in the Good Parliament, William Elys and Hugh Fastolf, were also attacked by the rebels in Yarmouth, and in London Fastolf's property was looted and his wife assaulted.85 Thanks to the researches of Christopher Lawrence we can identify two other individuals whose association with the disgraced courtiers of 1376 may have been a factor in their suffering at the hands of the rebels: Sir Robert Salle, a prominent Norfolk knight who was also a close friend of Lord Latimer, was killed; and John Leicester, a probable associate of Richard Lyons in his capacity as exchanger and assayer of monies in the Tower of London (Lyons was warden of the Mint), had his property in Kent attacked and destroyed by insurgents.86 By contrast, none of the knights of the shire who had been returned to the Good Parliament from Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex is recorded to have suffered any loss or deprivation during the Revolt.87 There were, of course, some serious and irreconcilable divergences between the rebels and Commons – not least their respective views on the issue of labour and taxation – but the extent of concurrence is truly remarkable, and is a point that has been surprisingly overlooked in modern scholarship. Less neglected is the link between the Revolt (and especially John Ball's letters) and Piers Plowman. There is now a general consensus among literary scholars that the rebels (or at least some of them) probably made use of the phrases and imagery that Langland employed in Piers Plowman as a way to rally resistance against the authority of the government.88 Beyond this, however, it may also be true that Piers Plowman provided a textual point of reference for the grievances and complaints that the rebels raised in 1381. Given the close correlation between the issues raised in the B-text, in parliamentary petitions and in the rebel agenda it is certainly possible that Langland's work served to consolidate and to co-ordinate a common sense of discontent amongst the rebels. It is possible, too, that the rat fable in the prologue reinforced the rebels' conviction that parliament offered no hope or opportunity to have these grievances addressed. Such an idea seems entirely plausible if we take the assertion in the prologue that ‘Might of þe communes made hym [the king] to regne’ to mean that it was the common people rather than the parliamentary Commons who represented the true source of political support and legitimacy for a king.89 Finally, it is conceivable that Piers Plowman was also instrumental in keeping the petitionary agenda of 1376 alive, and in maintaining (or at least contributing to) a deep sense of frustration within local communities that the defects of the kingdom would never be resolved if they continued to rely upon the ineffective and weak-willed M.P.s at Westminster. Since we do not know how many rebels had a knowledge of Langland's work it is impossible to tell how much influence the poet had on their actions or ideas, but if we accept that phrases such as ‘do well and bettre’ and ‘chastise wel Hobbe þe robbere’ had a direct Langlandian provenance,90 then there is every chance that the poem's commentary on the state of government and society also helped to consolidate and inspire the agenda of reform that the rebels took to London to present to the king. The legacy of 1376 may also have been personified in the minds of the rebels by Thomas Brinton, who met the insurgents at Blackheath in order that he might listen to their grievances and convey them to the king.91 Brinton's sermons against the court and government (including, one presumes, his ‘rat’ sermon) were not just delivered in London, but were also made in his diocese of Rochester, which included the Medway area of Kent (one of the first regions to rise in 1381).92 This may have provided an additional source for continuity between the respective political programmes of the Good Parliament and the Revolt. The fundamental difference between 1376 and 1381, then, was that in 1376 it was thought possible to promote change and reform by working within the system; in 1381 such faith had evaporated and the only course of action that the rebels felt to be open to them was direct representation to the king, working outside the normal channels of medieval government. The Commons in parliament had singularly failed to address and reform the failings of the kingdom; now it was the turn of the common people to achieve the same ends, necessarily by using force and intimidation. Perhaps it was this perceived inadequacy of parliament, and of the M.P.s within it, which informed the rebels' decision to use the watchword ‘Wyth kynge Richarde and wyth the trew communes’.93 The phrase has usually been taken to affirm the rebels' allegiance and loyalty to the king, but it could equally have been adopted as a specific rebuff to the parliamentary Commons who, by implication, could now be regarded as the ‘false’ commons. Thus, the common people were the ‘true’ commons because it was only through their loyal counsel and advice that the king could learn of the lamentable state of the kingdom (and do something about it). The parliamentary Commons on the other hand were false because they kept such truths from the king, who was therefore unable to implement the reforms necessary to restore peace and stability to the realm. The purpose of the rebels in marching on London was to cut out these ineffective intermediaries so that the king could hear directly what was required to address the people's concerns. Perhaps it is not without significance that this was achieved by the rebels' presenting petitions to Richard outlining their grievances.94 Formal petitioning would have provided the rebels with an air of political legitimacy and it would have reinforced their claim to be part of the political community engaging in solemn political dialogue. At the same time, the poignancy of their engaging in a process that was so closely associated with parliament – that is to say, the presentation of grievances in the name of the community of the realm – cannot have been lost on contemporaries, and probably went far to reinforce the idea that parliament had had its day and it was now the turn of the people to represent themselves. In November 1381 parliament was called to settle the kingdom after the tumultuous events of the summer. The ensuing proceedings had two notable characteristics: on the one hand, the Commons demonstrated a remarkably conciliatory attitude towards the rebels, petitioning that all who had participated in the Revolt should be pardoned and given the king's full grace;95 on the other, the Commons reflected deeply on the causes of the Revolt and seemed genuinely concerned to establish what had precipitated the uprising, even if this meant asking some awkward questions of government and its servants. In a series of petitions the Commons proposed far-reaching reforms to the main departments of central government.96 These were subsequently enacted. In December 1382, shortly after the second parliament of that year, significant reforms were made to the commissions of the peace, which included measures that limited the influence of local landed interests on membership and the furnishing of J.P.s with powers to hear and determine cases of maintenance.97 Various suggestions have been made to explain why the Commons in 1381 should have adopted this placatory standpoint. Tuck, for example, suggested that by attaching blame for the Revolt on the malpractice of royal ministers and officials, the Commons hoped to deflect attention away from the more explosive issue of manumission.98 He also pointed out that unrest continued late into 1381 and therefore it would have been unwise for the Commons to have risked exacerbating the situation by pressing for more repressive measures.99 Ormrod, on the other hand, has suggested that the Revolt served the Commons' purpose by strengthening their case for reform to the departments of central government. In other words, the Commons used the discontent manifested in the Revolt as leverage to force their own reformist agenda upon an isolated and beleaguered government.100 While each of these explanations is plausible, a more straightforward explanation is that the Commons' drive for leniency derived from the simple fact that they identified closely with much of what the rebels had stood for. Support for the government's wish to repress and punish the rebels, in a manner reminiscent of the French crown's suppression of the Jacquerie, probably would have made many M.P.s feel immensely uncomfortable, because such a strategy would arguably have represented a betrayal of the very agenda for which they had fought in many earlier parliaments. The last thing that the Commons wished to do was to pretend that there was nothing wrong in the kingdom, when a decade of unsuccessful parliamentary complaint about many of the same issues had shown that this was clearly not the case. A harsh crack down on the rebels could also have been politically self-defeating, for it ran the risk of outlawing political dissension and making any future parliamentary agitation difficult and potentially dangerous. The affiliation of the Commons with the rebels was explicitly articulated by the Commons' Speaker of 1381, Sir Richard Waldegrave, who cited maintenance, purveyance, the corruption of the legal system, the malpractice of royal officials and the provision of inadequate defence as the main reasons to explain the rebellion.101 Far from condemning these grievances for being untrue or exaggerated, Waldegrave reiterated them, warning the government that if proper remedies for the ‘outrageous oppressions and mischiefs’ inflicted on the ‘poor commons’ were not found, the realm would face even greater calamity than had been experienced in the summer of 1381. This was little short of acknowledging that the rebels had been perfectly justified in taking up arms against the ‘evils’ which had been inflicted on them by a failing government. This was an extraordinary twist on the events of 1381. What the Commons seemed to be saying was that it was the rebels who were the principal victims, and it was the ‘evil officers and counsellors’ of the king who were the principal perpetrators of tyranny and oppression. The Commons did not wish to punish the rebels; instead they wished the retribution to be directed against failing government ministers and bureaucratic systems. Thus, if the Commons hoped to capitalize on the events of 1381 it was not at the expense of the rebel manifesto; it was in pursuance of shared aims. The starting point for this discussion was the intention to draw links between Piers Plowman and the Good Parliament of 1376, to be achieved by reconsidering the topical allusions of the rat fable, on the one hand, and the connections between the common petitions of 1376 and similar complaints that were present in the B-text, on the other hand. This article has, however, gone further than this by demonstrating several other important connections, namely, that between the A-text of Piers Plowman and the parliaments of the late thirteen-sixties and early thirteen-seventies, and those between the poem and parliament on the one hand, and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 on the other. These connections demonstrate the scope for interdisciplinary study and the advantages to be gained by using and comparing different types of evidence to shed light on common historical events. A consideration of the topical allusions in Piers Plowman, of petitions presented in parliament, and of the demands made by the rebels of 1381 demonstrates that these were not disconnected phenomena, but that each shared common threads that informed, and perhaps even influenced, the way in which they were conceived. Above all, the argument of this article demonstrates the existence of an agenda of complaint that was shared by a broad cross section of the population. The close correlation between the parliamentary agenda and the rebel demands of 1381 holds particular historical significance, for it suggests that the political dynamic of the rebellion was far more complicated than has been credited in modern scholarship. In particular, it reinforces the notion that the rebels were not fighting against political society because they saw themselves as members of it: they shared many of the political grievances of the Commons and they had just as much interest in ensuring the successful implementation of government. What separated the rebels from the Commons, and what fundamentally explains why the rebellion broke out, was that unlike the landed and urban élites, who had access to central government through membership of parliament or direct association with the king and the nobility, the rebels had no outlet through which they could express their discontent with the status quo and articulate demands for change; they had a stake in how government at the centre worked, but they had no means of influencing or accessing it. They were disenfranchised members of the political community. The Peasants' Revolt was thus an expression of absolute political frustration by those who knew what problems faced the realm but who knew no other way of making their voice heard. And it is here that Piers Plowman becomes so useful, for it provides a wonderful insight into the mood of political despondency which gripped the country following the reversals of the Good Parliament, and which ultimately set the conditions for rebellion in 1381. We have hints from historical sources, notably the chronicles, that the betrayal of the Good Parliament's achievements caused widespread anger and disappointment within the political community, but Langland's version of the rat fable reveals an altogether different reaction to the turbulent events of the mid thirteen-seventies. In the rat fable the recrimination is directed not against the authority figure of the cat, who probably represents John of Gaunt, but is instead aimed at the cowardly and inconsistent members of the rodent community who fail to seize the moment and push through the reform that is so badly needed. This is not an attack on the institution of parliament, but on the individuals who attended parliament in the thirteen-seventies and who failed to represent adequately the interests of the community of the realm. To this extent, Piers Plowman articulates a late fourteenth-century crisis of representation: there was a common body of complaint and there was a perfectly adequate forum for this complaint to be addressed (that is, parliament), but the system was failing and the kingdom therefore continued to suffer and endure hardship. Perhaps it was parliament's failure to address this common complaint which in part explains the durability of Piers Plowman and Langland's predilection for revising his texts. There is not the space to develop this idea in detail, but it is interesting to note how the appearance of the C-text of Piers Plowman– if this occurred in the late thirteen-eighties – coincided with another period of acute political instability when parliament once again became the focus of reformist hopes and disappointments.102 We have seen already how legislation was ineffective against the abuse of maintenance and the problem of labour. The Merciless Parliament of 1388, however, saw a much more direct dismissal of the community's concerns and grievances when a common petition presented during that assembly was completely ignored by the Appellant regime and suppressed from the parliament roll.103 Among the issues that it raised were familiar themes: the state of law and order; the corruption of local officials; the abuse of maintenance; and the parlous state of the kingdom's defence. In a clear echo of the sentiments expressed by the Commons in the parliament of 1381, the petitioners of 1388 expressed their belief that these defects had caused recent disturbances in the realm among people who ‘know no other remedy’.104 Perhaps ultimately, however, it was not representation but government itself that generated the crisis of the late fourteenth century. Can we necessarily blame the Commons for failing to achieve change when the implementation of statutory legislation and its effective enforcement in the localities depended overwhelmingly on the government? But then, if we absolve the Commons, should we necessarily place all the blame on the government? Should we assume that behind the failure of legislation was wilful obstruction and deceit on the part of the crown? In a period when maintenance was intrinsic to the organization of society, when royal administration depended for its operation upon the service of large numbers of unpaid amateurs, when the crown's ordinary income had shrunk to a level which inevitably made it difficult to pay its own way and when, above all, no effective, adult king sat on the throne to provide strong and resourceful leadership, should we necessarily sympathize with the sentiments of Langland or the rebels of 1381? Both Langland and the rebels had much to say by way of criticism about the status quo, but neither really offered a viable solution to the basic weakness of government in this period. Both looked to authoritative kingship to save the kingdom, but this simply did not tally with the reality of political life in the thirteen-seventies and eighties, when the king was either too old or too young to offer strong political leadership. There is no doubting that, in the thirteen-seventies and eighties, there were genuine issues that caused real concern, but perhaps the underlying reason for a fundamental sense of dissatisfaction with government in general and parliament in particular was that these were institutions struggling to overcome a series of problems and challenges which only a fully functioning adult king could reasonably be expected to address successfully. Disillusionment with politics and political institutions was, therefore, fundamentally a product of acute anxiety caused by the vacuum of power at the very apex of the political hierarchy. Footnotes * The author is grateful to Christopher Dyer for commenting on an earlier draft of this article. A version of this article was given at the Third International Conference on Piers Plowman held at Birmingham in July 2003, where the author greatly benefited from the feedback offered by delegates. 1 The literature is vast, but for a useful summary, see K. Kerby-Fulton, ‘Piers Plowman’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. D. Wallace (Cambridge, 1999). 2 Kerby-Fulton, p. 536. See also The Piers Plowman Tradition, ed. H. Barr (1993). 3 The standard work on this parliament is G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975). 4 On Speakers, see J. S. Roskell, The Commons and their Speakers in English Parliaments 1376–1523 (Manchester, 1965). On impeachment, see C. G. C. Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart England (1974). 5 For a summary of the arguments to date the B-text to the late 1370s, see G. Kane, ‘The text’, in A Companion to ‘Piers Plowman’, ed. J. A. Alford (Berkeley, Calif., 1988), pp. 184–5. 6 C. Barron, ‘William Langland, a London poet’, in Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context, ed. B. A. Hanawalt (Minneapolis, Minn., 1992), p. 95. 7 E.g., see E. T. Donaldson, Piers Plowman: the C-Text and its Poet (1949), pp. 115–16. 8 See A. P. Baldwin, ‘The historical context’, in Alford; and H. Jewell, ‘Piers Plowman– a poem of crisis: an analysis of political instability in Langland's England’, in Politics and Crisis in 14th-Century England, ed. J. Taylor and W. R. Childs (Gloucester, 1990), pp. 59–80. 9 The standard work is W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–77 (New Haven, Conn., 1990). 10 See Holmes, pp. 37–55, 79–90. 11 The edition used is William Langland, Piers Plowman: a Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C, and Z Versions, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (1995). All references to Piers Plowman are to the B-text, unless otherwise stated. 12 E. M. Orsten, ‘The ambiguities in Langland's rat parliament’ , Mediaeval Studies , xxiii ( 1961 ), 216 – 39 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 221. 13 Langland describes the assembly as a ‘council’ rather than a parliament, but no great significance should be attached to this. Parliament still incorporated the council, and petitions were routinely addressed to the king and council in parliament. It is quite plausible that contemporaries still thought of parliament as a form of council, albeit on a grand scale. Langland may have used the word to make the link between his fable and the parliament of Westminster not quite so blatant. 14 A. P. Baldwin, The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 16–18; A. Gross, ‘Langland's rats: a moralist's view of parliament’ , Parliamentary Hist. , ix ( 1990 ), 286 – 301 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , esp. p. 293. 15 Piers Plowman, prologue, ll. 198–201. 16 Baldwin, Theme of Government, p. 18 (author's emphasis). 17 Orsten, passim. 18 Orsten, p. 237. 19 Orsten, pp. 220–3. 20 J. Taylor, ‘The Good Parliament and its sources’, in Taylor and Childs, pp. 81–96, at pp. 91–3. 21 F. A. Gasquet, The Old English Bible and Other Essays (1908), p. 74. 22 Piers Plowman, prologue, ll. 194–6. 23 See M. Bennett, ‘Edward III's entail and the succession to the crown, 1376–1471’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , cxiii ( 1998 ), 580 – 609 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , esp. pp. 586–7. 24 Baldwin, Theme of Government, pp. 17–18; Gross, pp. 290–1. 26 Piers Plowman, prologue, l. 161. 25 Bennett, p. 583. 27 Baldwin, Theme of Government, p. 17. 28 N. Saul, ‘The Commons and the abolition of badges’ , Parliamentary Hist. , ix ( 1990 ), 302 – 15 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 308. 29 These are issues discussed at length by J. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), ch. 2. 30 A. Tuck, Richard II and the English Nobility (1973), pp. 34–48. 31 Holmes, p. 182. For a general account, see R. Bird, The Turbulent London of Richard II (1949), chs. 1–2. 32 This involved the annual election of aldermen, the election to the Common Council of the city from the crafts rather than wards and electoral reform to the office of mayor. These changes were instigated by a faction of drapers, mercers and goldsmiths led by John of Northampton. Their aim was to gain greater influence than the staplers of the city in order to restore the city's franchise. The best account is provided by P. Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, crafts and constitutional change in late 14th-century London’ , Past & Present , cxxiv ( 1989 ), 3 – 35 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , esp. pp. 5–24. Note the arguments put forward by J. Simpson that Langland sympathized with the reforms advocated by Northampton (J. Simpson, ‘“After Craftes Conseil clotheth yow and fede”: Langland and London city politics’, in England in the 14th Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. N. Rogers (Stamford, 1993), pp. 109–27). 33 Holmes, pp. 193. 34 Holmes, pp. 189–90. The other immediate provocation was the confrontation between Gaunt and William Courtenay, bishop of London, over the trial of John Wycliffe. Courtenay was very popular with the Londoners (see J. Dahmus, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1381–96 (University Park, Pa., 1966), ch. 3). 35 Barron, ‘William Langland’, pp. 91–109; D. Pearsall, ‘Langland's London’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor and Authorship, ed. S. Justice and K. Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia, Pa., 1997), pp. 185–207. 36 The St. Albans Chronicle, i: 1376–94, ed. and trans. J. Taylor, W. R. Childs and L. Watkiss (Oxford, 2003) (hereafter St. Albans Chronicle), pp. 10–15. 37 A. Goodman, John of Gaunt: the Exercise of Princely Power in 14th-Century Europe (Harlow, 1992), pp. 55–7. See also J. Taylor, English Historical Literature in the 14th Century (Oxford, 1987) p. 75. 38 Gasquet, p. 74. 39 Orsten merely comments that Langland ‘reflects the average view which saw the Parliament of 1376 as Good, and the Parliament of January 1377 as Bad’ (p. 231); and she suggests that the mouse ‘represents the 1377 view of 1376’ (p. 237). 40 K. L. Wood-Legh, ‘The knights' attendance in the parliaments of Edward III’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , xlvii ( 1932 ), 398 – 413 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . Only eight M.P.s of the Bad Parliament had also been returned to the Good Parliament. Note Walsingham's comment that ‘The duke [Gaunt] had endeavoured with all his might to have all the knights of the last parliament, who had stood firmly for the commons, removed’ (St. Albans Chronicle, pp. 69–71). 41 St. Albans Chronicle, pp. 99–101. 42 Piers Plowman, prologue, ll. 209–10. 43 See, most recently, K. Kerby-Fulton and S. Justice, ‘Langlandian reading circles and the civil service in London and Dublin, 1380–1427’, in New Medieval Literatures I, ed. W. Scase, R. Copeland and D. Lawton (Oxford, 1997), pp. 59–83. 44 Ormrod, Edward III, p. 59. 45 T. F. T. Plucknett, ‘The impeachments of 1376’ , Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. , 5th ser., i ( 1951 ), 153 – 64 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 46 It is uncertain how far the Commons were directed by individual members of the Upper House, such as the Black Prince (while he was alive), Edmund Mortimer, earl of March and William Wykeham, bishop of Winchester. It is true that it may have served the purpose of these individuals for the Commons to front their own opposition against Gaunt and his associates. However, there is no denying the self-sufficiency and enterprise of the Commons in pressing home their attack against the government whether or not they enjoyed support from the Upper House. This was demonstrated when the Commons assumed the role of accusers in the impeachment of William Latimer because no one amongst the Lords was willing to take the responsibility (see Plucknett, pp. 161–2). 47 Chronicon Angliae 1328–88, ed. E. M. Thompson (Rolls series, lxiv, 1874), p. 392. 48 Holmes, p. 190. 49 Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–81, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester, 1927). For the significance of the Anonimalle Chronicle, see A. F. Pollard, ‘The authorship and value of the “Anonimalle” Chronicle’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , liii ( 1938 ), 577 – 605 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close ; and Taylor, ‘Good Parliament and sources’, pp. 88–91. 50 Some petitions were divided into a series of separate, but related, supplications. In these cases, they have been counted as single requests. Examples include two separate petitions (with many sub-clauses) against the pope, cardinals and clergy (Rotuli Parliamentorum, ii. 337–40) and two petitions from the stannaries of Devon and Cornwall (Rot. Parl., ii. 343–45). The overall figure also does not include the petitions from the clergy and from Calais that were included at the end of the roll (Rot. Parl., ii. 357–60). It should be noted that the contemporary enumeration on the roll does not take these factors into account and consequently records a total of 140 separate items. This discrepancy notwithstanding, the numerical sequence on the parliament roll is still the best way of identifying particular petitions (see Table 1). 51 Common petitions were not necessarily drafted by the Commons. In fact the vast majority of common petitions presented in 1376 were probably forwarded to parliament by constituents as private petitions, to be ‘adopted’ as common petitions by M.P.s. This point is overlooked by Gross (pp. 294–5) whose ensuing discussion on the ‘selfishness’ of the Commons is therefore open to question. 52 Anonimalle Chronicle (trans. in Taylor, English Historical Literature, p. 312); Holmes, p. 105. The new council was made up of peers who were sympathetic to the Commons' agenda: three prelates (Sudbury, Courtenay and Wykeham); three earls (Arundel, March and Stafford); and three barons (Henry Percy, Guy Brian and Roger Beauchamp). 53 According to Ranulf Higden the reform council lasted for approximately three months after the end of the Good Parliament (Polychronicon, ix, ed. J. R. Lumby (Rolls ser., xli, 1886), p. 385). 54 Papal provision was the only really contentious issue of 1376 that was taken up by the Commons of January 1377, but this was probably because the government itself had hardened its policy towards the papacy and had actually invited views on the subject at the very start of the assembly (Rot. Parl., ii. 363 (item 13); 367 (item 36)). 55 Rot. Parl., ii. 364–5 (item 24); Statutes of the Realm (11 vols., 1810–28), i. 396–7 (item 3). 56 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 47–60. 57 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 67–77. 58 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 94–5. 59 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 110–12. 60 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 182–3. 61 Piers Plowman, IV, ll. 98–103. 62 F. Grady, ‘The generation of 1399’, in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. E. Steiner and C. Barrington (Ithaca, N.Y., 2002), pp. 202–29. 63 See W. M. Ormrod, ‘An experiment in taxation: the English parish subsidy of 1371’ , Speculum , lxiii ( 1988 ), 58 – 82 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 60. 64 Italian merchants appear to have become the focus of hostility from 1371 onwards (Holmes, pp. 118–21). 65 Baldwin, ‘Historical context’, p. 67. 66 Piers Plowman, A-text, IV, ll. 51–2. 67 At least 22 knights of the shire in the parliament of Oct. 1377 had been returned to the Good Parliament ( N. B. Lewis, ‘Re-election to parliament in the reign of Richard II’ , Eng. Hist. Rev. , xlviii ( 1933 ), 364 – 94 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , Table A). 68 Statutes of the Realm, ii. 1–5 (items 3, 4, 6, 7, 11). 69 C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King's Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1413 (New Haven, Conn., 1986), pp. 113–14. 70 For 1384, see Rot. Parl., iii. 200 (items 17, 18); for 1388, see The Westminster Chronicle 1381–94, ed. and trans. L. C. Hector and B. F. Harvey (Oxford, 1982), p. 357; for the statute of May 1390, see Statutes of the Realm, ii. 74–5. The statute of May 1390 allowed nobles to retain men provided that they were retained for life or they were familiars residing in their household (R. L. Storey, ‘Liveries and commissions of the peace 1388–90’, in The Reign of Richard II: Essays in Honour of May McKisack, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay and C. M. Barron (1971), esp. pp. 146–7). 71 Statutes of the Realm, ii. 2–3 (item 6); 32 (item 5); 56–8 (items 3–9); 63 (item 8). E. B. Fryde, Peasants and Landlords in Later Medieval England, c.1380–c.1525 (Stroud, 1996), pp. 118–19; C. Given-Wilson, ‘The problem of labour in the context of English government, c.1350–1450’, in The Problem of Labour in 14th-Century England, ed. J. Bothwell, P. J. P. Goldberg and W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, 2000), pp. 85–90. 72 For the crown's determined, but ultimately futile, attempts to crack down on shrieval corruption, see R. Gorski, The 14th-Century Sheriff: English Local Administration in the Late Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 113–25. 73 For the profile of the rebels, see C. Dyer, ‘The social and economic background to the rural revolt of 1381’, in The English Rising of 1381, ed. R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 9–42, at pp. 15–19. For the role of the county court, see J. R. Maddicott, ‘The county community and the making of public opinion in 14th-century England’ , Trans. Royal Hist. Soc. , 5th ser., xxviii ( 1978 ), 27 – 43 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close . For the profile of county electors, see (most recently), S. J. Payling, ‘County parliamentary elections in 15th-century England’ , Parliamentary Hist. , xviii ( 1999 ), 237 – 59 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at pp. 241–2. 74 Anthony Saul makes this point but does not develop it (A. Saul, ‘Local politics and the Good Parliament’, in Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English History, ed. A. J. Pollard (Gloucester, 1984), p. 166). For the rebels' aims, see R. H. Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising of 1381 (1973), ch. 9. 75 As the rebels approached London the king sent a messenger to them asking why they had risen up. The rebels replied that ‘they had risen to save him and to destroy traitors to him and the kingdom’ (Anonimalle Chronicle (cited in The Peasants' Revolt of 1381, ed. R. B. Dobson (2nd edn., 1983), p. 129). 76 One of the rebels' initial rally cries was that ‘they would accept no king who was called John’ (Thomas Walsingham, Historia Anglicana (cited in Dobson, p. 133)). The burning of Gaunt's London residence, the Savoy Palace, by the rebels is well documented. 77 In both Essex and Kent the sheriffs and escheators were specifically targeted and captured by the rebels. In Essex the escheator, John Ewell, was killed (N. Brooks, ‘The organization and achievements of the peasants of Kent and Essex in 1381’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davies, ed. H. Mayr Harting and R. I. Moore (1985), pp. 260–2). 78 See A. Harding, ‘The revolt against the justices’, in Hilton and Aston, pp. 165–93. 79 The Anonimalle Chronicle gives the most detail on Wat Tyler's list of demands made to the king at Smithfield. These included a demand that ‘the goods of the Holy Church should not remain in the hands of the religious’, and that ‘there should be only one bishop in England and only one prelate, and all the lands and tenements of the possessioners should be taken from them and divided among the commons’ (cited in Dobson, pp. 164–5). 80 The massacre of Flemings in London was widely recorded by contemporary chroniclers. Lombards also felt the wrath of the rebels, although they seem to have escaped the worst excesses (see Anonimalle Chronicle (cited in Dobson, p. 162); Walsingham, Historia Anglicana (cited in Dobson, p. 175); Jean Froissart, Chroniques (hereafter Chroniques) (cited in Dobson, p. 188); and Westminster Chronicle (cited in Dobson, p. 201)). 81 According to Froissart, when the rebels reached the Tower of London they told the king that they would not depart until ‘they would ask accounts of the chancellor of England, to know where all the good was become that he had levied through the realm [during the last five years], and without he made a good account to them thereof, it should not be for his profit’ (Chroniques (cited in Dobson, p. 189)). The Anonimalle Chronicle blamed the outbreak of the Revolt on the ‘exceptionally severe’ taxes that had been granted which ‘did nothing for the profit of the kingdom but were spent badly and deceitfully to the great impoverishment of the Commons’ (cited in Dobson, p. 123). 82 E. Searle and R. Burghardt, ‘The defence of England and the Peasants' Revolt’ , Viator , iii ( 1972 ), 365 – 88 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 83 For the dispute over trading privileges in the Good Parliament, see Saul, ‘Local politics’. The Commons in 1376 successfully overturned a charter allowing Yarmouth to monopolize the herring trade, although this was soon reversed once parliament had ended. At Mile End, the rebels secured the promise that the king's subjects should be allowed to buy and sell freely in all the cities, boroughs and market places in the kingdom (E. B. Fryde and N. Fryde, ‘Peasant rebellion and peasant discontents’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, iii: 1348–1500, ed. E. Miller (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 744–819, at p. 779). This directly echoed the sentiments of a common petition presented in the parliament of Nov. 1380 (Rot. Parl., iii. 94 (item 39)). 84 This is recorded by Knighton (cited in Dobson, p. 185). Significantly, Knighton can think of no reason for Lyons to be murdered other than his involvement in the Good Parliament: ‘Lyons had been convicted in one of Edward III's parliaments for serious fraud towards the king and queen as well as other lords and ladies of the kingdom in his dealings with precious stones and other jewels. Accordingly parliament had sentenced him to perpetual imprisonment … [but he was then] freed by favour.’ 85 Saul, ‘Local politics’, p. 167. 86 C. Lawrence, ‘“Who was then a gentleman?” The East Anglian gentry and the Peasants' Revolt of 1381’ (unpublished University of Birmingham M.Phil thesis, 1995), pp. 69–71. Thanks are due to the author for permission to cite his work. 87 Lawrence, pp. 67–8. Note that Thomas Gissing, son of Sir Thomas Gissing, M.P. for Norfolk in 1376, actually joined the rebels in 1381. Interestingly, this situation did not extend to the M.P.s returned to the Good Parliament for Kent, Sir Thomas Cobham and Sir Thomas Fogg: Cobham was taken hostage by the rebels and Fogg had his property ransacked (The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell, L. Clark and C. Rawcliffe (4 vols., Stroud, 1993), ii. 608–9, iii. 95–7). 88 A. Hudson, ‘The legacy of Piers Plowman’, in Alford, pp. 251–66, at pp. 251–2; R. Green, ‘John Ball's letters: literary history and historical literature’, in Hanawalt, pp. 176–200; A. Hudson, ‘Piers Plowman and the Peasants' Revolt: a problem revisited’ , Yearbook of Langland Studies , viii ( 1994 ), 85 – 106 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close ; S. Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley, Calif., 1994), ch. 3. 89 Piers Plowman, prologue, l. 113. For the arguments that the term ‘communes’ in Piers Plowman does not have parliamentary connotations, see Donaldson, pp. 95–106. 90 See Hudson, ‘Piers Plowman and the Peasants' Revolt’, pp. 87–8. 91 Eulogium Historiarum (cited in Dobson, p. 206). 92 A point made by C. Barron, Revolt in London: 11th to 15th June 1381 (1981), p. 2. 93 Anonimalle Chronicle (cited in Dobson, p. 130). 94 Anonimalle Chronicle (cited in Dobson, pp. 130, 161); Knighton's Chronicle (cited in Dobson, p. 186). 95 Rot. Parl., iii. 100 (item 17). 96 Rot. Parl., iii. 101–2 (items 19–26). 97 E. Powell, ‘The administration of criminal justice in late-medieval England: peace sessions and assizes’, in The Political Context of Law: Proceedings of the 7th British Legal History Conference, ed. R. Eales and D. Sullivan (1987), pp. 49–59, at pp. 54–5. 98 J. A. Tuck, ‘Nobles, Commons and the Great Revolt of 1381’, in Hilton and Aston, pp. 194–212, at p. 206. Interestingly, Tuck argues that the Commons did not object to the policy of manumission on a point of principle, but rather on the technicality that it had not been done with parliamentary consent (pp. 202–3). 99 Tuck, ‘Nobles, Commons and the Great Revolt’, p. 208. 100 W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Peasants' Revolt and the government of England’ , Jour. British Studies , xxix ( 1990 ), 1 – 30 Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close , at p. 23. 101 Waldegrave, as M.P. for Kent, was well placed to comment on the main causes of the Revolt. 102 The link between the C-text and the Cambridge parliament of 1388 has been examined at length in A. Middleton, ‘Acts of vagrancy: the C version “autobiography” and the Statute of 1388’, in Justice and Kerby-Fulton, pp. 208–317. 103 The petition was recorded by the chronicler Henry Knighton (see Knighton's Chronicle 1337–96, ed. and trans. G. H. Martin (Oxford, 1995), pp. 442–51). 104 Martin, p. 445. © The Author(s) 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Institute of Historical Research. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - A parliament full of rats? Piers Plowman and the Good Parliament of 1376
JO - Historical Research
DO - 10.1111/j.1468-2281.2005.00237.x
DA - 2006-02-01
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EP - 49
VL - 79
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DP - DeepDyve
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