A Great and Glorious Adventure (28 page)

Despite the wishes both of the ruling council of England and of the French king Charles V for some form of truce, there were too many vested interests in mayhem and murder for fighting to stop
completely. While there were no great battles for the next few years, raids, sieges and encounters at sea went on, and, although the English no longer got the best of all these skirmishes, the
seemingly unstoppable French advance was slowed and then halted. The efforts of those wishing a permanent peace suffered a setback when the French pope Gregory XI died in 1378 and the conclave of
cardinals elected an Italian, Bartolomeo Prignano, as Urban VI. The French refused to accept his election and put forward their own candidate, Cardinal Robert of Geneva, who, although Swiss by
birth, had spent most of his time in France, and acclaimed him as Pope Clement VII. Thus began the Great Western Schism, with Urban in Rome recognized by England and Clement in Avignon supported by
France and Scotland. Previously, while the popes were regarded with great suspicion by the English, they did at least provide a forum for peace negotiations, but now with the schism that option was
gone and there was no professedly disinterested single body to act as a go-between.

Richard II was in many ways a tragic figure. As the younger son, he would not have been raised to be king, and, although his mother had considerable (and generally
beneficial) influence on his early education and subsequent development, he had little contact with his father, who was frequently away on campaign, and his senior uncle, Gaunt, was unpopular in
the country. This unpopularity was, of course, partly engendered through envy: the dukedom of Lancaster was immensely rich and in many aspects was independent of the central government. But
Gaunt’s frequent quarrels with various bishops (usually over the question of sanctuary in churches),
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his obvious disdain for public opinion, and
his lack of charisma (perhaps surprising given his genes) as a military commander did not help his reputation.

It was an unfortunate start to the reign that the truce negotiated in 1375 ran out only a few days after Richard’s accession. It was even more unfortunate that the French had used the
brief peace to prepare for war, by embarking on a major ship-building programme based in Rouen, while the English, short of money, had been much less energetic. In the summer of 1377, French
fleets, aided by the Castilian galleys of Enrique, raided the English Channel ports from Rye as far as Plymouth. They would land, loot what they could, set fire to anything that looked as if it
might burn and set sail again. They landed on the Isle of Wight and extracted a ransom before departing; attacked Southampton, where they were bloodily repulsed by local forces under Sir John
Arundel, a younger son of the third earl of Arundel; raided Poole; and tried (and failed) to effect a landing in Folkestone. On the continent, the French admiral Jean de Vienne blockaded Calais by
sea while the duke of Burgundy laid siege on land. Fortunately for the Calais garrison, commanded by Sir Hugh Calveley, although some of the outer defences fell, bad weather and heavy rains made
mining and the movement of siege engines impossible and the French withdrew, giving Sir Hugh an opportunity to sally out, attack Étaples further down the coast, and remove the large
quantities of wine stored there. Meanwhile, in the Dordogne, the duke of Anjou was steadily reducing English-held
towns. He captured the seneschal of Aquitaine, Sir Thomas
Felton, father of the Sir William who had been killed in Spain, and threatened Bordeaux, only to have to turn back when he found pro-English forces in his rear. Brest was under siege, but was
reinforced from England in January 1378, although English attempts to capture Saint-Malo and to initiate a campaign in Normandy failed.

Then, later in the year 1378, an opportunity to hit back at the French by proxy presented itself when Charles of Navarre re-entered the frame. Charles had once again fallen out with Charles V of
France, for much the same reasons as Edward III had with French monarchs over Aquitaine: Charles of Navarre was a king in his own right, but also held Navarre as a vassal of the French king, and,
when Charles of France declared Navarre forfeit, Charles of Navarre appealed to England. The council was very happy to support Charles of Navarre on the grounds that any enemy of France was a
friend of England, and contracted to send 1,000 men for a period of four months, in exchange for the port of Cherbourg. This was agreed and the English duly occupied Cherbourg.

By the time the English army arrived in Navarre, however, delayed by bad weather and shortage of shipping, the situation had been resolved. Enrique of Castile had invaded Navarre on behalf of
his French ally, but, when he heard that an English army had landed in Aquitaine and was on its way, he wisely withdrew. As the English troops, under Sir Thomas Trevet, who was at this time only in
his late twenties but had fought for the Black Prince at Najera, were no longer required to defend Navarre, they embarked on a foray through Castile, reducing numerous Castilian towns, damaging
Enrique’s reputation considerably and acquiring large quantities of booty before returning to England. Charles of Navarre, meanwhile, made his peace with the French, who retained the
Navarrese lands in Normandy. While the tactical achievements of Trevet’s expedition were minor, the acquisition of Cherbourg was a major strategic gain: along with Brest, Bayonne, Bordeaux
and Calais, England now had an outpost line of strongly fortified ports with which to counter French naval ambitions and which could serve as springboards for invasions of France.

Charles of France, having at least gained the Normandy possessions of Navarre, decided to try the same ploy in Brittany, and in 1379 declared
that he was confiscating
that duchy. This time he went too far and the Bretons, touchy about their independence and with no wish to be part of France, took up arms and demanded the return of Duke John from England. Having
secured a promise of English military support, John returned to Brittany, where he was welcomed with acclamation at Saint-Malo. The English army to support him had been agreed at 2,000 men-at-arms
supported by the same number of archers for four and a half months from 1 August, but, when the English council discovered that they could not afford to pay and transport so many, the size of the
contingent was reduced to 650 of each arm.
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They were to be under the overall command of Sir John Arundel, the defender of Southampton, who had been
part of the relieving force sent to Brest in 1377 and was in Cherbourg in 1378.

The troops duly mustered at Southampton, but the weather and problems in finding troop transports delayed their departure and Sir John is said to have billeted his immediate retinue in a
convent, dismissing the mother superior’s protests that the presence of such a large number of young men might lead to ‘an unforgivable sin which would bring shame and disgrace to the
nunnery’.
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The unforgivable sin duly occurred. Arundel did nothing to stop it (commanders of other units in the area managed to keep their
men under control), and it extended to the soldiery looting the silver from a local church and generally behaving like their modern successors on a Saturday night in a garrison town. When ships
were finally found, Arundel’s men took some of the nuns along with them, no doubt to sew on buttons during the journey, and divine retribution caught up with them when a violent storm raged
in the Channel. Most of the ships carrying horses sank, either off the coast of Cornwall or off Ireland, and in an effort to lighten the troop-ships the men are said to have thrown most of the nuns
overboard. When that had no effect, the ladies were followed by the accumulated plunder of Hampshire. Arundel’s own vessel ran aground off Ireland in December and he was drowned. Sir Hugh
Calveley and
most of the other captains survived.

While the French assault on what was left of English France had been halted, lack of coordination between the various expeditionary forces on land and at sea meant that much of the expenditure
on men, ships and weapons was to no great purpose. When Edward III was alive, there was a strong king who made decisions, supported by an administration that could carry them out. Now rule was by
committee, never a recipe for strong government, and, although decisions were made in the king’s name, they were too often a distillation of conflicting opinions resulting in weak compromise.
Dissatisfaction with the way the war was being conducted and the tax burden imposed to pay for it eventually boiled over in 1381.

The catalyst was the decision in June 1380 to send another expedition to help the duke of Brittany. The king’s uncle, the twenty-six-year-old duke of Buckingham, would be in command with
around 5,000 soldiers, probably 3,000 men-at-arms and 2,000 archers, all to be mounted. Given the difficulty of finding enough ships and the ever-present threat of storms in the Channel, the troops
would be ferried by the most direct route from Dover and Sandwich to Calais, from where they would make a
chevauchée
to link up with Duke John at Rennes. On 24 June, the army
marched from Calais, creating the usual swathe of destruction as it went across the Somme, to Rheims, south of Paris, and then to Rennes, but without meeting a single French army, Charles V having
instructed his commanders that on no account were they to offer battle. Buckingham was now running short of money, and a request was sent back to England asking for sufficient funds to maintain the
army throughout the winter and to continue campaigning in the spring. At home, the treasury was empty and, after much argument, it was decided by Parliament that the government’s demand for
£150,000 – to cover the expenses of Buckingham’s army and the maintenance of the fortress ports (where the garrisons had not been paid for months), with possibly a little to be
secreted for John of Gaunt’s ambitions in Spain and Portugal (he intended to pursue a claim to the throne of Castile by reason of being married to Pedro the Cruel’s daughter) –
was too much. They would agree to find £100,000: two-thirds from the laity and one-third from the church. And then Charles V died, Duke John came to terms with his successor, and
Buckingham’s army was left high and dry with no
option but to go home. It was to be the last major English expedition of the fourteenth century.

In England, the imposition of yet another poll tax caused widespread discontent. It had last been levied in 1377, when the amount was graded according to rank and ability to pay, with the basic
rate being one groat or four pence. Now it was to be a flat rate of one shilling – three times as much and with no concessions according to income. Since the death of Edward III, there had
been a number of levies but with very little to show for them: English possessions in France were being whittled away, the seas were no longer safe, and, despite the huge reduction in population
caused by the various outbreaks of plague, many magnates were insisting on the imposition of manorial rights and duties that were no longer relevant nor seen to be fair. When the time came to
collect the tax, there was widespread avoidance, evasion and fraud, with householders hiding their wives and children or taking to the woods to avoid the commissioners or simply refusing to pay. In
May, a commissioner was set upon in Essex, and, when the Chief Justice of Common Pleas was sent to investigate, he too was set upon. By the end of the month, widespread rioting had broken out in
Essex and in early June it had spread to Kent. There had often been outbreaks of local indiscipline in the past, but they had always been contained; this time it was serious, the most serious
attack on authority in England of the fourteenth century. As usual the rebels were blaming the king’s evil counsellors and, under the watchword ‘King Richard and the True
Commons’, they demanded the heads of those they called traitors. With the army still away in France or on the Scottish borders, it was a good time to stage a revolt, and the government was
slow to react.

Although these events are known to history as the Peasants’ Revolt, the name is misleading. While many of those who embarked on widespread hooliganism were indeed peasants – probably
the majority – a great number were tenant farmers, small-holders, owners of land in their own right and local government officials – jurors, reeves, bailiffs and constables. There must
also have been large numbers of demobilized archers in their ranks. The fact that the various rebel groupings were able to communicate with each other and were reasonably well disciplined would
indicate that there were enough men of education
and accustomed to leadership to provide a cadre of officers of sorts.

As disorder and rebellion spread, the king, the royal family and the king’s counsellors took refuge in the Tower. One of the party was the king’s cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, son of
John of Gaunt, who was the same age as the king and who would eventually supplant him and rule as Henry IV. The king was persuaded to meet the rebels, who were now in the London suburbs with the
gates of the city closed against them, and on 13 June the king left the Tower by barge and was rowed downriver to Rotherhithe. There he addressed the rebels from the boat, his advisers having
considered that it was too dangerous for him to disembark. The demands of the rebels were presented to the king: the heads of John of Gaunt, the Chancellor (the archbishop of Canterbury), the Chief
Justice and the Treasurer – to which the king gave the diplomatic reply that they should have whatever heads they liked subject to the law, whereupon he was rowed back to the Tower.

The rebels were now running out of supplies and the obvious place for them to get them was London. Moving along south of the river, they looted the archbishop’s palace at Lambeth and
released the occupants of Southwark prison. Then, despite the orders of Lord Mayor Walworth, somebody lowered the drawbridge over London Bridge and opened the gate. The rebels poured in and –
their movements clearly organized – looted John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace and the lawyers’ offices at the Temple, released prisoners from the Fleet and Newgate, and, almost
inevitably, slaughtered any foreigners (mainly Flemings) who could be found. The king could only watch form the Tower as the plumes of smoke rose over the city. By this time, the acknowledged
leader of the revolt was Walter the Tiler, or Wat Tyler, whose origins are obscure. He may have been from Kent or from Essex, his home may have been in Maidstone or in Colchester, and he was
probably indeed a tiler, although there are suggestions that he may have been of the Kentish gentry.