英國史第五集： King Death(1348——1500)

[00:13.65]In the summer of 1348, [00:16.00] [00:16.17]the English could be forgiven for thinking themselves unconquerable. [00:20.96] [00:21.97]They had vanquished the old enemies, the Scots and the French. [00:26.64] [00:28.69]Their king, Edward III, seemed the most powerful ruler in Europe. [00:33.36] [00:36.81]But they would be conquered, [00:38.92] [00:39.09]and by a king against whom neither longbows [00:41.92] [00:42.09]nor warships offered any defence... [00:44.84] [00:46.33]King Death. [00:48.56] [00:49.29]His weapon was plague, and by the end of his terrible campaign, [00:53.96] [00:54.13]almost half the people of Britain would be dead. [00:57.91] [01:00.01]The country would survive the trauma, [01:02.31] [01:02.49]but first it had to undergo a purgatory of unimaginable misery, [01:06.96] [01:07.13]because hard on the heels of pestilence [01:09.43] [01:09.61]would come rebellion and civil war. [01:12.44] [01:12.61]The century of plague was a pilgrimage through pain, [01:16.00] [01:16.17]and this is the story of that journey. [01:19.24] [01:55.37]Yersinia pestis, the germ of plague, [01:58.68] [01:58.85]came to Britain in the guts of infected fleas. [02:02.88] [02:04.65]They were hidden away in cargoes of grain, [02:07.68] [02:07.85]bales of cloth and in the fur of black rats. [02:12.40] [02:12.57]The most probable point of entry was Melcombe Regis, near Weymouth. [02:17.28] [02:18.49]By the time it got to the great ports of Southampton and Bristol, [02:22.44] [02:22.61]there were already stories from traumatised cities of Italy [02:25.88] [02:26.05]as to how and where it had begun - [02:28.96] [02:29.13]in the East, on the plains of central Asia, [02:32.40] [02:32.57]another of the horrors carried on the backs of the Mongol hordes. [02:37.20] [02:38.21]The plague cut a swathe of destruction [02:41.32] [02:41.49]eastwards to China and India and westwards into Crimea and Turkey. [02:46.51] [02:47.01]At Caffa, the Tartars had thrown infected bodies over the city walls [02:52.56] [02:52.73]to hasten the surrender of the defending Genoese, [02:56.56] [02:56.73]a first in the annals of biological warfare. [03:01.12] [03:05.17]Once it arrived by sea in Italy, it spread quickly into mainland Europe. [03:10.48] [03:12.17]There had been devastating calamities before visited on Britain - [03:16.96] [03:17.13]countless numbers died in the apocalyptic famine of 1315 - [03:22.60] [03:24.09]but it was the merciless, indiscriminate swiftness of the plague's progress [03:29.16] [03:29.37]which so unhinged the cities and villages caught in its onslaught. [03:35.00] [03:35.17]No one, rich or poor, could escape. [03:38.92] [03:40.45]This is how Welsh poet Jeuan Gethin saw it, [03:43.80] [03:44.01]waiting for his own infection, which, sure enough, came in 1349. [03:49.56] [03:50.61]We see death coming into our midst like foul smoke. [03:54.23] [03:55.29]A plague which cuts off the young, [03:57.56] [03:57.77]a rootless phantom which has no mercy. [04:01.55] [04:03.37]Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit. [04:06.64] [04:07.57]It is of the form of an apple, like the head of an onion. [04:12.69] [04:12.85]Great is its seething, like a burning cinder. [04:15.92] [04:16.09]A grievous thing of ashy colour. [04:19.16] [04:19.33]It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste. [04:24.19] [04:24.37]They are like a shower of peas, the early ornaments of Black Death. [04:30.36] [04:36.13]It took about six days from the bite of an infected flea [04:40.32] [04:40.49]for the tell-tale swellings, the buboes, [04:43.36] [04:43.53]to appear on a victim's neck, groin or armpit, [04:47.72] [04:47.89]accompanied by violent fever and agonising pain. [04:52.04] [04:52.85]The immune system would be overwhelmed within a week. [04:56.60] [04:58.05]If the infection reached the lungs, [05:00.32] [05:00.49]death came after just a couple of days of bloody coughing. [05:04.52] [05:04.69]Anyone who inhaled even the tiniest droplets of mucus [05:08.47] [05:08.65]would be doomed to suffer in their turn. [05:11.76] [05:18.01]No one knew it at the time, but the tightly-packed streets, alleys [05:21.88] [05:22.05]and houses of a place like Bristol [05:24.35] [05:24.57]made a perfect factory farm for the bacillus. [05:27.24] [05:27.89]Vermin, crawling with fleas, [05:29.88] [05:30.09]lived alongside the crowded population of people and animals. [05:34.40] [05:39.01]The nibble of a flea was a common irritation [05:42.36] [05:42.57]in this lousy, ant-heap world. [05:44.80] [05:45.01]And even when the buboes appeared, [05:47.12] [05:47.29]there was no reason to suppose that fleas or rats were responsible. [05:51.60] [05:51.77]But there was no doubt about what would happen next. [05:55.80] [05:56.89]The youngest, the oldest and the poorest - [05:59.76] [05:59.97]those with least resistance - would be taken first... [06:03.28] [06:04.65]but then everyone else, too. [06:07.24] [06:08.01]In a town this ripe for infection, [06:10.28] [06:10.45]almost half the population would have perished in the first year. [06:14.48] [06:14.65]Among them, 15 of Bristol's 52 city councillors, [06:18.64] [06:18.81]their names struck through as they died. [06:22.24] [06:25.85]Terrified and bewildered, the healthy abandoned the sick to their fate. [06:32.08] [06:35.17]Whole towns, villages, even families, [06:38.12] [06:38.29]were cruelly divided into the living and the dying. [06:41.56] [06:43.37]Husbands would have shunned their wives, [06:46.32] [06:46.49]fathers and mothers recoiled from contact with their children. [06:51.12] [06:53.21]It's almost impossible to imagine the utter desolation and terror, [06:59.04] [06:59.21]the complete collapse of everything you've taken for granted. [07:02.80] [07:02.97]How do you find bread now the bakers are all dead? [07:06.48] [07:06.65]How do you find a physic now that none work? [07:09.68] [07:09.85]And, at last, how do you find someone to cart away the bodies [07:14.44] [07:14.61]that have to be disposed of... somewhere? [07:18.36] [07:30.65]The bigger the city, the greater the shock. [07:34.16] [07:36.21]In 1348, London had a population of close to 100,000. [07:41.28] [07:44.69]In the first wave of the plague, 300 died every day. [07:50.12] [07:57.45]At Spitalfields, [07:59.24] [07:59.41]there had long been a medieval hospital with a cemetery attached. [08:02.80] [08:03.01]Within its walls, the dead were dutifully laid to rest [08:06.84] [08:07.01]in their individual graves, pointing east, [08:09.84] [08:10.01]so that come the Day of Judgement, they would rise facing Jerusalem. [08:15.32] [08:17.13]But in the grip of the epidemic, there was no time for such pieties. [08:21.96] [08:22.13]Recent excavations have turned up mass pits [08:25.20] [08:25.37]where bodies were pitch-forked into the dirt [08:28.00] [08:28.17]in obvious haste and desperation. [08:30.44] [08:30.65]Unearthed now the way they were dumped in, [08:33.52] [08:33.73]they look as if they're protesting at the indignity. [08:36.52] [08:47.05]By the summer of 1349, the plague had spread [08:50.28] [08:50.49]to the furthest corners of England, Wales and Scotland. [08:53.52] [08:53.69]Now it travelled across the sea to Ireland. [08:57.04] [08:57.89]According to John Clynn, a Franciscan friar writing at Kilkenny, [09:02.04] [09:02.21]14,000 had perished in Dublin alone. [09:05.96] [09:12.69]Since the beginning of the world, [09:14.76] [09:14.93]it has been unheard of for so many people to die in such a short time. [09:22.00] [09:22.17]This pestilence was so contagious [09:25.76] [09:25.93]that those who touched the dead or the sick [09:29.04] [09:29.21]were immediately infected themselves. [09:32.48] [09:32.89]I, seeing these many ills [09:35.80] [09:35.97]and that the whole world is encompassed by evil, [09:39.64] [09:39.81]waiting among the dead for death to come, [09:43.32] [09:43.49]have committed to writing what I truly have heard and examined, [09:48.40] [09:48.57]and I leave parchment for continuing this work [09:51.68] [09:51.85]if, perchance, any man survive, [09:54.84] [09:55.01]and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence [09:59.40] [09:59.57]and carry on the work which I have begun. [10:02.92] [10:06.93]At this point, another hand has written, [10:09.88] [10:10.05]"Here it seems the author died." [10:13.88] [10:16.49]When the survivors recovered from the first brutal shock of the Black Death, [10:20.19] [10:20.37]they asked, inevitably, "Why us? Why now?" [10:24.60] [10:28.17]The best guess was that the plague was caused [10:30.92] [10:31.09]by a corruption of the atmosphere - [10:33.39] [10:33.57]putrefaction - the mark of men and beasts [10:36.36] [10:36.53]rising from lakes, swamps and chasms. [10:39.80] [10:41.85]This dank smog even had a name - miasma. [10:46.52] [10:49.05]If sickness grew in stench, then sweet smells were an obvious remedy. [10:53.80] [10:54.01]Physicians and herbalists lost no time [10:56.80] [10:56.97]in devising recipes for pomanders and potions [10:59.96] [11:00.13]to guard against infection, or even to act as an antidote for the stricken. [11:05.72] [11:08.21](MAN) Five cups of rue if it be a man. [11:11.68] [11:11.85]If it be a woman, leave out the rue. [11:14.23] [11:15.21]Five little blades of columbine. A great quantity of marigold flowers. [11:21.52] [11:22.77]An egg that is newly laid, and make a hole in one end [11:27.20] [11:27.37]and blow out all that is within, and lay it to the fire [11:31.28] [11:31.45]and roast it till ground to powder, but do not burn it. [11:35.64] [11:36.49]And brew all these herbs with good ale, but do not strain them. [11:41.16] [11:41.33]And make the sick drink it for three evenings and mornings. [11:47.16] [11:47.33]If they hold it in their stomach, they shall have life. [11:52.72] [11:58.49]But if God decided otherwise, [12:00.56] [12:00.73]all the potions in the world would be of no avail. [12:05.16] [12:05.33]The inescapable conclusion [12:07.32] [12:07.49]was that the pestilence was laid on mankind [12:10.08] [12:10.25]as a chastisement for its manifold sins. [12:14.48] [12:17.65]Lewd necklines, lascivious dancing [12:20.48] [12:20.69]and shameless adultery had brought on the plague. [12:24.47] [12:27.01]It would end when the world was contrite, [12:29.88] [12:30.05]but it never seemed contrite enough. [12:32.84] [12:33.65]In the meantime, the country was laid waste. [12:37.04] [12:39.37]Farms were abandoned, whole villages deserted. [12:44.23] [12:47.97]The accounts for the Bishop of Winchester's lands [12:50.40] [12:50.57]at Farnham in Surrey tell the story of a rural society in shock. [12:55.84] [12:56.01]In the first year of the Black Death, 52 households - [12:59.60] [12:59.77]a third of the villagers - were wiped out, [13:02.68] [13:02.85]given the mark "defectus per pestilentum". [13:06.39] [13:09.73]The Farnham rolls put names to the numbers, [13:12.56] [13:12.73]names like Matilda Stikker. [13:14.72] [13:14.89]She died, together with her entire family. [13:17.92] [13:18.09]Or a servant girl, Matilda Talvin, [13:20.60] [13:20.77]who saw her master and his entire household succumb to the plague. [13:25.56] [13:25.77]By the time it ebbed away in 1350, 1,300 had died in Farnham. [13:31.95] [13:32.73]While the plague took, it could also give. [13:35.08] [13:35.25]In the first year of the Black Death, John Crudchate, a minor, [13:38.72] [13:38.89]became an orphan, but an orphan with assets, [13:41.64] [13:41.81]because he could now inherit the lots left to him [13:45.43] [13:45.61]by his father and another relative. [13:47.76] [13:47.93]This must have been the making of a small but serious village fortune. [13:52.76] [13:53.33]In another place in the rolls, [13:55.44] [13:55.61]we learn that the harvest had become twice as expensive to gather in. [13:59.76] [13:59.93]Twelve pence, written in Roman numerals, per acre, [14:04.20] [14:04.37]because, the rolls say, of the plague and the scarcity of labour. [14:09.49] [14:09.65]Workers, it seems, were thin on the ground [14:12.16] [14:12.33]and were beginning to charge accordingly. [14:14.79] [14:22.45]Farnham's story could be repeated all through Britain. [14:25.92] [14:26.73]The countryside after the Black Death was an irreversibly altered world. [14:32.32] [14:32.69]For one thing, there were no more serfs. [14:35.96] [14:36.13]For centuries, being a serf meant being tied [14:39.44] [14:39.61]by custom and by birth to your local lord. [14:42.88] [14:43.05]He gave you a tiny spot of land on which you could farm, [14:47.20] [14:47.37]and in return, you put in hours of grinding toil, [14:51.24] [14:51.41]unpaid, on his very big farm. [14:54.36] [14:54.53]There were other ways, too, in which you were not free. [14:58.04] [14:58.21]You had to ask his permission to marry, [15:00.92] [15:01.09]and you were not, repeat not, ever to leave... [15:03.92] [15:04.09]until, that is, the Black Death. [15:06.84] [15:07.01]Now there was a desperate labour shortage, [15:09.36] [15:09.53]and the simple operation of the laws of supply and demand [15:13.68] [15:13.85]meant that for the first time, you could set the terms of the deal. [15:18.16] [15:18.33]He wanted labour out of you, [15:20.32] [15:20.49]well, you could say, "Why not start by paying me something?" [15:24.24] [15:24.41]He wants you to move into land which otherwise would go to rack and ruin, [15:29.92] [15:30.09]you respond by saying, "OK, cut the rent." [15:33.20] [15:33.37]And if the lord says, "No chance, you impertinent so-and-so," [15:37.56] [15:37.73]well, you up sticks and find someone who's got a more secure grip [15:42.56] [15:42.73]on the new economic facts of life. [15:45.64] [15:45.81]Well, hundreds of thousands of peasants must have done just that, [15:49.51] [15:49.69]and there was nothing anybody could do about it. [15:52.76] [15:58.41]It was not just the social order that the plague shook loose. [16:02.56] [16:02.73]It also ate away at the sense of security offered by the Church, [16:08.24] [16:08.41]especially since the regular clergy seemed powerless [16:11.68] [16:11.85]to provide help for the afflicted... or even for themselves. [16:16.68] [16:20.25]In 1349, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, [16:23.20] [16:23.37]seeing that there was a serious shortage of priests, [16:26.12] [16:26.29]authorised laymen to hear the confession of the dying. [16:29.91] [16:30.09]"Or," he wrote, "even a woman, if no man is available." [16:34.16] [16:36.93]The most daring took matters into their own hands, [16:40.32] [16:40.49]seeking redemption directly from the Scriptures. [16:44.48] [16:45.09]The Lollards- or Mumblers - [16:47.36] [16:47.53]took their name from their mouthing out loud of the Bible, [16:51.00] [16:51.17]and encouraged others to do the same by translating it into English, [16:56.16] [16:56.33]liberating it from the obscurity of Latin. [16:59.52] [17:02.57]As few as they were, the Lollards were a dramatic threat [17:06.00] [17:06.17]to the authority of the Church. [17:08.24] [17:08.41]They were only saved from persecution [17:10.56] [17:10.73]by the protection of their most powerful patron, [17:13.36] [17:13.53]King Edward III's son John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. [17:18.36] [17:18.53]Men like him were drawn to new forms of piety and penance [17:22.48] [17:22.65]because the plague made them acutely aware [17:25.03] [17:25.21]that King Death was no respecter of rank or wealth... [17:28.56] [17:30.41]and that should he strike, they had better be ready for a reckoning. [17:35.04] [17:36.37]They all knew the cautionary tale of the three living and the three dead. [17:41.39] [17:46.29]A trio of handsome young kings out for a decent day's sport [17:50.88] [17:51.05]suddenly find themselves confronted by three not-so-handsome cadavers, [17:56.28] [17:56.45]each in a different state of decomposition - [17:59.72] [17:59.89]the Marx Brothers from hell. [18:02.08] [18:04.37]The three living pipe up - "I'm afraid," "Lo, what I see" [18:08.64] [18:08.85]and "Methinks these devils be." [18:12.16] [18:12.33]Back come the other three - "Such shall you be," [18:17.60] [18:17.77]"I was well fair" and "For God's love, beware." [18:23.04] [18:24.01]The furthest gone of the gruesome threesome then makes a little speech. [18:28.00] [18:29.41]"Know that I was head of my tribe, princes, kings and nobles, [18:34.24] [18:34.41]"royal and rich, rejoicing in wealth, [18:37.32] [18:37.49]"but now I am so hideous and bare that even the worms disdain me." [18:44.28] [18:51.09]This was an invasion that Plantagenet England had not prepared for - [18:55.84] [18:56.01]the invasion of the space of the living by the dead. [19:00.16] [19:00.33]The sense that the borders between backyards and boneyards had collapsed [19:04.56] [19:04.73]produced a sudden nervousness. [19:06.92] [19:07.09]In the face of King Death, neither riches nor earthly fame [19:11.12] [19:11.29]could buy salvation or guarantee immortality. [19:16.04] [19:19.97]This insecurity found expression in a very peculiar kind of tomb - [19:25.60] [19:25.77]the transi, which means, appropriately enough, "gone off". [19:30.92] [19:31.97]In transi tombs, like this one at Canterbury Cathedral, [19:35.16] [19:35.33]you got remembered twice over. [19:37.44] [19:37.61]They were double-decker affairs. [19:39.60] [19:39.81]In the top deck, you were seen in the guise the world expected, [19:43.96] [19:44.13]as a knight in armour or a bishop in full Episcopal rig. [19:48.68] [19:51.05]In the lower deck, though, there you were, a naked skeleton, [19:55.36] [19:55.57]the flesh fallen away from the bone. [20:00.24] [20:18.89]The mindset that produced the transi tomb was a kind of reverse envy; [20:24.04] [20:24.21]a determination to fall behind the Joneses, [20:27.40] [20:27.57]to bow to no one in your painful awareness [20:31.35] [20:31.53]that however grand you were, pretty soon you'd be reduced [20:34.68] [20:34.85]to a heap of dust and maggots. [20:37.36] [20:39.49]The idea was to contrast, as shockingly as possible, [20:42.72] [20:42.89]two sorts of self-consciousness. [20:45.56] [20:45.73]On one hand, how we'd like to be remembered - in splendour and piety. [20:52.12] [20:52.29]And on the other hand, the way we really are - [20:57.00] [20:57.17]pathetic in our cadaverous mortality. [21:01.12] [21:05.09]"I was pauper-born," [21:07.08] [21:07.25]reads the inscription on Archbishop Chichele's tomb, [21:11.20] [21:11.37]"then to primate raised. [21:14.00] [21:14.17]"Now I am cut down and served up for worms. [21:18.20] [21:18.89]"Behold my grave." [21:20.52] [21:26.09]Only the highest office in the land seemed to have survived unscathed. [21:31.36] [21:31.53]Edward III, once the glamorous, invincible warrior, [21:35.23] [21:35.41]was now an ageing father to a fragile nation. [21:38.40] [21:40.53]Still, the royal succession seemed secure. [21:43.44] [21:43.61]Edward's son, the Black Prince, the heir to the throne, [21:46.92] [21:47.09]was already a legendary hero. [21:49.16] [21:50.45]But then, against all expectation, the picture changed. [21:54.04] [21:55.01]The Black Prince succumbed to dysentery in 1376, [21:58.12] [21:58.33]and a year later, the old king himself finally expired. [22:03.76] [22:05.77]And so the crown passed to Edward's grandson, Richard of Bordeaux. [22:10.76] [22:10.93]A boy-king, called upon before his time, Richard was ruler in name only. [22:17.64] [22:17.81]Everyone knew that his uncle, John of Gaunt, worked the levers of power. [22:23.20] [22:28.01]Richard's coronation was orchestrated by John of Gaunt [22:31.68] [22:31.85]as a festival of loyalty, [22:34.08] [22:34.25]a statement of faith in the undimmed future of England's glory. [22:38.28] [22:41.77]There had been no coronation for half a century, [22:44.88] [22:45.05]but the mix of solemnity and festivity [22:47.43] [22:47.61]never failed to work its spell. [22:49.88] [22:50.05]Knights of the shire rode in from all over England [22:53.16] [22:53.33]to witness the spectacle. [22:55.32] [22:59.81]The next day in the Abbey, [23:01.80] [23:01.97]little Richard had his shirt taken off him behind a golden screen [23:05.36] [23:05.57]and his face, hands and chest touched with the holy oil. [23:10.16] [23:12.17]As they listened to him in his little boy's voice [23:15.12] [23:15.29]promise to protect the Church, do justice [23:19.04] [23:19.21]and respect the laws and customs of his ancestors, [23:22.36] [23:22.53]the assembly of nobles and priests must have imagined him growing [23:27.08] [23:27.25]to fit the huge throne of his ferocious great great grandfather Edward I. [23:33.43] [23:34.49]Inevitably, as the long ceremony droned on in the darkness, [23:38.24] [23:38.41]Richard fell asleep. [23:40.56] [23:42.61]As he was carried from the Abbey, his legs dangling, [23:46.04] [23:46.21]one of his oversized slippers fell off, [23:48.67] [23:48.85]but who'd think that an ill omen? [23:50.96] [23:51.13]He was, after all, only ten. [23:53.69] [23:57.89]How was the child marked by all this? 22 years later, [24:02.68] [24:02.85]did he remember this moment of anointing as a kind of apotheosis, [24:07.64] [24:07.81]a magical transformation from a little man into a little god? [24:12.28] [24:14.89]Perhaps it was as well that Richard mistook himself for a messiah, [24:19.80] [24:19.97]since only someone with that kind of innate self-confidence [24:23.12] [24:23.29]could have faced down, at the tender age of 14, [24:26.64] [24:26.81]the most violent upheaval in the history of medieval England. [24:30.64] [24:33.37]It happened with astounding, terrifying swiftness, [24:36.48] [24:36.65]and it started where you'd least expect it - [24:39.80] [24:39.97]not some destitute mud-hole in the back of beyond, [24:43.04] [24:43.21]but in the most economically developed region of rural England, [24:46.88] [24:47.05]the belt of rich, fertile country stretching from Kent, [24:50.59] [24:50.77]over the Medway and Thames, to Essex and southern East Anglia. [24:54.92] [24:55.13]The thing about the Peasants' Revolt [24:57.12] [24:57.29]is that the people who started it weren't really peasants at all. [25:01.16] [25:01.33]At any rate, they certainly weren't the straw-chewing, [25:04.60] [25:04.77]pitchfork-waving yokels of legend. [25:07.92] [25:08.09]No, they were people with something to lose - the village elite, [25:11.60] [25:11.77]men who'd served as constables and stewards and jurors, [25:15.88] [25:16.05]men who'd moved into those vacant lots [25:18.76] [25:18.93]that had been left behind by victims of the plague. [25:22.47] [25:22.65]They'd made some money and weren't about to see it go down the drain [25:27.20] [25:27.37]to line the pockets of some pen-pusher in Westminster. [25:31.96] [25:35.85]What's more, they knew how to make an army [25:38.92] [25:39.09]out of those one rung down on the social ladder, [25:43.08] [25:43.29]families just above the poverty line, [25:45.85] [25:46.01]who had to sell their labour to make ends meet. [25:50.32] [25:50.49]They were already angry at government attempts [25:53.05] [25:53.21]to peg back their steadily rising wages to pre-plague levels. [25:57.84] [25:58.01]The balance had tipped in favour of the survivors [26:01.16] [26:01.33]and they were determined to keep it that way. [26:04.95] [26:06.33]In their different ways, all these people were - [26:09.12] [26:09.29]or thought they were - up-and-comers. [26:11.92] [26:12.09]They would fight, if necessary, to prevent themselves [26:14.72] [26:14.89]from sinking into the down-and-outers. [26:17.68] [26:17.85]Was this a class war, then - [26:20.08] [26:20.25]a phrase we're not supposed to use since the official burial of Marxism? [26:24.52] [26:25.53]Yes, it was. [26:27.60] [26:29.33]The suspicion in village England was that the real power behind the throne - [26:34.56] [26:34.77]John of Gaunt, the Queen Mother, the Chancellor - [26:37.33] [26:37.49]were gathering in fresh taxes, not to finance a patriotic war in France, [26:42.24] [26:42.41]but to lavish on their own palaces and private estates. [26:47.56] [26:47.73]So when, in November 1380, parliament approved a new poll tax, [26:52.64] [26:52.81]one which for the first time took no account of individual wealth, [26:56.80] [26:56.97]the yeomen farmers must have imagined the awful prospect [27:00.20] [27:00.37]of all their hard-won gains being snatched back by a greedy government. [27:05.88] [27:07.37]There was outrage, bloody-minded fury and mass evasion, [27:10.88] [27:11.05]which quickly escalated into outright rebellion. [27:14.80] [27:16.49]Tax collectors and sheriff's men were attacked, a few killed. [27:21.51] [27:24.85]In Maidstone, they elected Wat Tyler, [27:27.48] [27:27.65]a yeoman craftsman, as their general and captain, [27:30.96] [27:31.17]and freed a Lollard anti-cleric called John Ball, [27:34.04] [27:34.21]who'd been imprisoned in the bishop's palace. [27:36.80] [27:38.65]John Ball is a recognisable type, a preaching friar [27:42.60] [27:42.81]who pushes Black Death radicalism to its logical extreme. [27:46.84] [27:47.01]"Get rid of the priesthood and the property owners," Ball argued, [27:50.63] [27:50.81]"and Christ's embrace of the poor will once again be honoured." [27:55.75] [27:56.81]Are we not descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? [28:01.04] [28:01.21]What reason can they give why they should be more masters than we? [28:06.72] [28:06.89]They are clothed in velvet and rich ermine, [28:09.40] [28:09.57]while we are forced to wear poor clothing. [28:12.52] [28:12.69]They have wines and fine spices and fine bread, [28:15.76] [28:15.93]while we have only rye and the refuse of the straw, [28:19.28] [28:19.45]and when we drink it must be water. [28:23.15] [28:23.33]We are called slaves, [28:25.32] [28:25.49]and if we do not perform our services, we're beaten. [28:28.64] [28:28.81]Let us go to the king and remonstrate with him. [28:32.56] [28:32.73]We may obtain a favourable answer. [28:35.56] [28:35.73]And if not, we must seek to amend our conditions ourselves. [28:41.80] [28:45.17]And so they marched, [28:47.16] [28:47.33]the levelling fever of the Black Death buzzing in their brains, [28:51.32] [28:51.53]slogans of equality and retribution in their mouths. [28:55.92] [28:56.09]After all, who were Wat Tyler, John Ball [28:59.56] [28:59.73]and Robert Cave of the Dartford Baker [29:01.76] [29:01.93]but the three dead confronting the spoiled, rich and mighty [29:06.44] [29:06.61]with their day of judgement. [29:09.17] [29:13.09]On the morning of the 12th June, 1381, an enormous army, at least 5,000, [29:18.08] [29:18.25]perhaps as many as 10,000 strong, [29:20.44] [29:20.61]was camped here on the fields of Blackheath, [29:23.28] [29:23.45]right on the edge of London. [29:25.44] [29:25.61]Below them, they could see the city - [29:28.36] [29:28.53]old St Paul's, the bridges crowded with shops and Westminster beyond, [29:33.08] [29:33.25]all seemingly at their mercy. [29:36.64] [29:40.33]This was not a rabble. From the outset of the revolt, [29:43.80] [29:43.97]its targets had been selected carefully to make a point - [29:47.84] [29:48.01]rich abbeys, estates belonging to tax collectors. [29:51.52] [29:51.69]Any document bearing the seal of the Exchequer [29:54.28] [29:54.45]was marked out for destruction. [29:57.04] [29:57.21]Manorial accounts were thrown on the fire. [30:00.20] [30:00.37]They knew what they were doing. [30:03.44] [30:03.61]Paradoxically, the rebels remained fervently loyal to the Crown. [30:07.80] [30:07.97]Though they had made themselves outlaws, [30:10.04] [30:10.21]they were fired by the certainty that their cause was just. [30:13.88] [30:14.05]Surely it would be seen that they were not mobilised [30:17.32] [30:17.49]to threaten the king, but to rescue him, [30:20.08] [30:20.25]and through him, themselves. [30:22.24] [30:26.17]The discipline of the march, however, [30:28.60] [30:28.77]did not survive contact with the big city. [30:32.04] [30:32.21]Prisons were broken open, churches looted, palaces put to the torch. [30:38.64] [30:38.81]Thirty-five Flemish merchants were decapitated on the same block, [30:42.92] [30:43.09]one after the other. [30:45.08] [30:48.09]Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury was captured [30:51.32] [30:51.49]while at his prayers in the Chapel of St John. [30:54.88] [30:55.05]The rampaging rebels hacked his head off, [30:57.43] [30:57.61]stuck it on a spike and paraded it triumphantly through the streets. [31:02.73] [31:07.61]On the evening of Thursday 13th June, [31:10.68] [31:10.85]the teenage king climbed one of the turrets in the tower, [31:14.44] [31:14.61]and what he saw ought to have broken him in terror... [31:18.36] [31:20.81]the sky red with flames, London crumbling into smoking ruins. [31:26.91] [31:31.49]But hostage to a nightmare, Richard doesn't seem to have panicked. [31:35.92] [31:36.17]When counsellors asked him to negotiate with the rebels, [31:39.00] [31:39.17]he evidently showed no hesitation. [31:41.88] [31:42.05]It was the boy who was the man of the hour. [31:46.52] [31:48.73]It was a brave front. For Richard must have thought [31:51.80] [31:51.97]there was a chance he might not survive. [31:54.40] [31:54.57]Before the meeting, he prayed at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, [31:58.64] [31:58.81]the patron saint of all the Plantagenet kings. [32:03.12] [32:03.81]Then he rode through the jostling crowds [32:06.48] [32:06.65]to meet Wat Tyler and the rest of the leaders at Smithfield. [32:11.44] [32:16.25]When he got to Smithfield, the king could see the rebels [32:19.28] [32:19.45]camped on the west side and the royal party on the east. [32:23.80] [32:23.97]Wat Tyler rode over to Richard, got off his little horse, [32:27.92] [32:28.09]knelt very briefly, not very convincingly, [32:31.32] [32:31.49]but then shakes his hand and calls him brother. [32:34.92] [32:35.09]"Why will you not go home?" Asked the king, plaintively, [32:38.76] [32:38.93]to which Tyler responded with a loud curse and a set of demands. [32:43.79] [32:43.97]The most important was for a new Magna Carta, [32:47.04] [32:47.21]this time for the ordinary people. [32:49.59] [32:49.77]It would abolish serfdom, it would liquidate the property of the Church, [32:53.76] [32:53.93]it would offer a general pardon to all outlaws, [32:57.36] [32:57.53]and if all this wasn't radical enough, [33:00.20] [33:00.37]it would make every man equal below the level of the king. [33:05.80] [33:05.97]Now, to all this, Richard answered, "Yes," [33:08.92] [33:09.09]perhaps crossing his fingers behind his back, [33:11.55] [33:11.73]and maybe Wat Tyler was so amazed by the concession, [33:14.96] [33:15.13]he didn't quite know what to do next. [33:17.59] [33:17.77]So an eerie silence settles over everybody on the field, [33:22.16] [33:22.33]broken only by Tyler asking for a flagon of ale. [33:26.28] [33:26.45]He gets it, he downs it, he gets back onto his mount - [33:30.68] [33:30.85]a big man on a little horse - [33:33.60] [33:33.77]and at that moment, history changed. [33:36.60] [33:40.37]There was someone on the king's side who had not been reading the script, [33:44.88] [33:45.05]or perhaps was just unable to take the humiliation any longer. [33:48.88] [33:51.05]It was a young esquire, someone Richard's own age, [33:54.20] [33:54.37]who shouted at Tyler that he was a thief. [33:57.60] [33:59.33]It broke the strange spell. [34:01.89] [34:03.13]Walworth, the mayor, who had always taken a hard line, [34:06.24] [34:06.41]tried to arrest Tyler. [34:08.60] [34:12.17]There was horseback fighting, [34:13.84] [34:14.01]Walworth getting in the decisive blow, [34:16.76] [34:17.97]cutting Tyler through the shoulder and neck. [34:20.35] [34:22.17]As soon as he was down, the king's men surrounded him, finishing him, [34:27.24] [34:27.41]but making sure the rebel camp could not see what was going on. [34:32.60] [34:36.65]One way or another, this was the moment of truth. [34:40.27] [34:40.45]It was also the moment when Richard himself acted, [34:43.56] [34:43.73]decisively and with amazing courage. [34:46.96] [34:47.13]He rode straight at the rebels, shouting famously, [34:51.12] [34:51.29]"You shall have no captain but me." [34:54.16] [34:57.09]The words were brilliantly chosen [34:59.08] [34:59.25]and were, of course, deliberately ambiguous. [35:02.32] [35:02.49]To the rebels, it seemed that Richard himself was now their leader, [35:06.19] [35:06.37]just as they'd always wanted. [35:08.36] [35:08.53]But the words could have been meant [35:10.91] [35:11.09]as the first reassertion of royal authority. [35:15.04] [35:15.77]Either way, it defused the immediate crisis [35:18.96] [35:19.13]and gave Mayor Walworth the opportunity to get back to London [35:23.24] [35:23.41]and mobilise armed men. [35:25.52] [35:27.01]Now the process of breaking up the leaderless rebellion could begin - [35:31.20] [35:31.37]cautiously at first, with offers of pardons and mercy, [35:34.52] [35:34.69]but then with implacable resolution. [35:38.08] [35:38.25]Just a week after the apparent concessions at Smithfield, [35:41.36] [35:41.53]another group of rebels met with Richard at Waltham in Essex, [35:45.23] [35:45.41]but they found a very different king. [35:48.36] [35:52.65]You wretches, detestable on land and sea, [35:56.40] [35:56.57]you who seek equality with lords, are unworthy to live! [36:00.40] [36:00.57]Give this message to your colleagues. [36:03.13] [36:03.29]Rustics you were and rustics you are still. [36:07.12] [36:07.29]You will remain in bondage not as before, but incomparably harsher. [36:11.80] [36:11.97]For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you, [36:16.00] [36:16.17]and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. [36:20.60] [36:20.77]However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. [36:24.92] [36:25.09]Choose now which course you want to follow. [36:29.28] [36:30.77]The rebels took the only option that was realistically open to them. [36:34.96] [36:35.13]They fell to their knees. It was all over. [36:38.36] [36:38.53]The king was literally the only one left standing. [36:43.04] [36:43.21]But what was the effect of all this on Richard? [36:46.80] [36:46.97]What did he now think he was capable of? [36:49.92] [36:51.17]My master, God omnipotent, [36:54.52] [36:54.69]is mustering in his clouds on our behalf armies of pestilence, [36:59.60] [36:59.77]and they shall strike your children yet unborn and unbegot [37:04.00] [37:04.17]that lift your vassal hands against my head [37:07.24] [37:07.41]and threat the glory of my precious Crown. [37:11.44] [37:13.29]Though Shakespeare's tragedy starts years after the Peasants' Revolt, [37:17.24] [37:17.41]it's hard not to believe that in his portrait of a petulant, [37:21.19] [37:21.37]self-admiring Richard II, [37:23.48] [37:23.65]there is the sense of someone trapped [37:26.16] [37:26.33]in an adolescent fantasy of indestructibility. [37:29.80] [37:31.01]There's no denying that, especially at times of crisis, [37:34.08] [37:34.25]he was subject to unpredictable mood swings, [37:37.79] [37:37.97]between adrenaline-rush feelings of omnipotence and abject fatalism. [37:43.88] [37:44.05]But it is easy to exaggerate his unfitness to rule, [37:48.91] [37:49.09]as though he were somehow suspiciously unsound. [37:51.96] [37:55.49]He was built the usual Plantagenet way, [37:58.05] [37:58.21]six foot tall, with long, flowing, blond hair. [38:01.83] [38:02.01]But unlike his grandfather, he failed to keep mistresses [38:05.32] [38:05.49]and seemed, oddly enough, to want to be faithful to his wife Anne. [38:10.43] [38:10.97]Real Plantagenets tore at their meat and slurped the drippings. [38:15.16] [38:15.33]Richard not only insisted on using a spoon, [38:17.79] [38:17.97]but inflicted it on the rest of the court. [38:20.68] [38:20.85]Real Plantagenets brought you blood-soaked victories [38:24.04] [38:24.21]over the ancestral enemies in France and Scotland, [38:26.92] [38:27.09]Richard brought England the pocket handkerchief. [38:30.63] [38:32.41]Real Plantagenets built fortresses. [38:35.20] [38:35.37]Richard instead wanted a great ceremonial space in Westminster Hall [38:40.12] [38:40.29]with a spectacular hammer beam roof. [38:43.16] [38:45.21]The rows of angels symbolised the king's divine right to rule. [38:50.44] [38:57.73]The angels, in turn, are supported by carved stone plinths [39:01.64] [39:01.81]bearing Richard's own emblem, the white hart. [39:07.00] [39:07.21]But the alien strangeness attributed to Richard [39:10.20] [39:10.37]seems a lot less strange if you think of him as a Renaissance prince [39:14.96] [39:15.13]for whom the civilised life [39:17.12] [39:17.29]was not necessarily a mark of being un-English. [39:21.20] [39:23.01]The Wilton diptych is the clearest illustration [39:26.24] [39:26.41]of his exalted vision of kingship. [39:29.36] [39:30.73]Richard instinctively felt he belonged in the company of saints, [39:35.24] [39:35.41]so here he is with three of them: [39:38.32] [39:39.65]John the Baptist, Edward the Confessor [39:42.36] [39:42.53]and the Saxon martyr king Edmund. [39:45.28] [39:50.57]The other panel shows him in the even more exalted company of angels, [39:55.43] [39:55.61]the Christ child and the Virgin. [39:58.48] [40:01.49]He is her appointed lieutenant. [40:04.05] [40:04.21]She is receiving his kingdom as her dowry [40:07.32] [40:07.49]and in return will bestow on it her special protection and favour. [40:12.72] [40:14.97]Ceremonial style was not, the king decided, just an affectation - [40:18.96] [40:19.13]the window dressing of power - [40:21.28] [40:21.45]it was at the heart of its mystery, its capacity to make men obey. [40:26.39] [40:28.61]Richard had this in mind [40:30.60] [40:30.77]when, for the first time in the history of the British monarchies, [40:35.52] [40:35.69]the king asked to be addressed as "Majesty" and "Highness", [40:40.28] [40:40.45]a kind of mystical elevation. [40:43.08] [40:46.81]But what seemed like refinement to Richard, [40:49.60] [40:49.77]to the barons was evidence that the king had lost touch [40:53.47] [40:53.65]with their common interests. [40:56.08] [41:00.29]Richard's refusal to continue the war with France [41:03.40] [41:03.57]was an obvious source of irritation for the nobility. [41:06.96] [41:07.17]They had positively prospered from foreign campaigns [41:10.24] [41:10.41]and built spectacular castles, like this one at Bodiam, [41:13.64] [41:13.81]to guard against a French invasion. [41:16.24] [41:17.37]But it was the king's high-handedness that finally stung them into action. [41:21.84] [41:23.29]By issuing royal decrees, Richard could bypass parliament, [41:26.83] [41:27.05]and he went out of his way to lavish favours on friends and advisers, [41:32.36] [41:32.53]men like Sir Simon Burley and Robert de Vere, [41:35.48] [41:35.65]who was absurdly promoted to be Duke of Ireland. [41:39.40] [41:40.25]The lords retaliated with their only available weapon - parliament. [41:44.60] [41:44.77]In February 1388, five of the king's favourites [41:48.39] [41:48.57]were charged with abusing his youth and innocence [41:51.40] [41:51.57]to promote their own ambitions. [41:53.87] [41:55.01]All were found guilty of treason [41:57.00] [41:57.17]by what became known as "the Merciless Parliament". [41:59.84] [42:01.17]Robert de Vere, the most hated of the king's confidants, [42:04.36] [42:04.53]escaped before sentence of execution could be carried out, [42:08.00] [42:08.17]but Simon Burley was not so lucky. [42:11.00] [42:12.57]Richard's queen pleaded on her knees for Burley's life, but to no avail. [42:18.88] [42:21.41]Richard may have crushed the Peasants' Revolt, [42:24.08] [42:24.25]but peers of the realm were another matter. [42:26.81] [42:26.97]Chastened by the humiliation, [42:28.96] [42:29.17]the king withdrew into autocratic solitude, [42:33.20] [42:33.37]and yet he had enough of the Plantagenet about him [42:36.56] [42:36.73]to harbour desires for retribution. [42:39.64] [42:39.81]He held his peace for nearly ten years, [42:42.24] [42:42.41]but when his beloved Anne died of plague, [42:44.97] [42:45.13]Richard lost his only restraining influence [42:48.12] [42:48.29]and he reasserted himself in an extraordinary storm of revenge. [42:54.00] [42:56.41]Using the pretext of an aristocratic plot, [42:59.32] [42:59.53]he brutally disposed of the ringleaders [43:01.80] [43:01.97]of the Merciless Parliament a decade earlier. [43:05.40] [43:07.29]The Earl of Arundel was executed. [43:10.36] [43:10.53]The Earl of Warwick was exiled, [43:12.72] [43:12.93]and the Duke of Gloucester, Richard's own uncle, was murdered, [43:16.92] [43:17.09]smothered in his bed on the king's orders. [43:20.08] [43:22.25]The old scores had been settled at last. [43:25.68] [43:26.93]Well, you would think, that Richard could contain his sense of triumph, [43:32.36] [43:32.53]if only in the interests of self-preservation. [43:35.48] [43:35.65]But now that Richard II discovered that people were, for the first time, [43:40.12] [43:40.29]frightened of him, he also discovered he rather liked it. [43:44.32] [43:44.49]He drank it in and lashed out at anybody he thought to be disloyal, [43:49.84] [43:50.01]replacing them with yes-men and toadies, [43:53.63] [43:53.81]eating, sleeping and travelling surrounded by a private army, [43:57.08] [43:57.25]as if he were some Roman emperor. [44:00.08] [44:01.93]Beneath these delusions of omnipotence, though, [44:04.68] [44:04.85]Richard remained neurotically insecure. [44:08.32] [44:08.85]On the merest suspicion of treason, [44:11.00] [44:11.17]he rashly condemned John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, [44:14.60] [44:14.77]to ten years in exile without even the pretence of a show trial. [44:19.84] [44:20.57]If such summary justice made the English nobility uneasy, [44:24.08] [44:24.29]what happened next left them stunned. [44:27.32] [44:28.85]When John of Gaunt finally died, [44:30.96] [44:31.13]Richard decided to increase Bolingbroke's sentence [44:33.48] [44:33.69]to banishment for life, and seized the young Duke's inheritance, [44:38.40] [44:38.57]the valuable Lancastrian estates, in the name of the Crown. [44:42.88] [44:45.53]The magnates of England must have looked at this and said, [44:49.60] [44:49.77]"He's got to be stopped or it's my turn next." [44:53.76] [44:55.29]Richard was one blunder away from disaster. [44:59.07] [44:59.25]The final, fatal distraction was Ireland. [45:02.84] [45:04.49]He had decided to bring the Irish princes to heel, [45:08.03] [45:08.21]but he took just enough soldiers to leave himself defenceless at home [45:12.56] [45:12.73]and not enough to cow the Irish nobles. [45:16.20] [45:17.25]And before he could finish his business there, [45:20.00] [45:20.17]he heard that Bolingbroke had landed with an army on the Yorkshire coast, [45:25.48] [45:25.65]and the alienated English lords had flocked to his banner. [45:30.56] [45:32.01]By the time Richard returned, Bolingbroke was already in command [45:35.36] [45:35.53]of the southern and eastern heartland of England. [45:38.96] [45:40.21]The odd thing is that Richard actually seemed [45:42.92] [45:43.09]to be one step ahead of his enemies in fatalistic pessimism, [45:47.56] [45:47.73]so that when he got the bad news [45:50.29] [45:50.45]that many of his most trusted supporters and allies [45:53.28] [45:53.45]had switched to the other side, [45:55.44] [45:55.61]his reaction was not to dig in his heels, make a fight of it, [46:00.28] [46:00.45]but rather to flee at night across the country, [46:03.40] [46:03.57]disguised as a priest, bewailing his misfortunes [46:06.84] [46:07.01]and as usual blaming them on everybody else. [46:11.00] [46:11.17]At some point in his uncontested march towards Richard, [46:15.04] [46:15.21]Bolingbroke's aims changed, from simply getting his lands back [46:18.91] [46:19.09]to overthrowing the king. [46:21.88] [46:22.05]"Now I can see my end," Shakespeare has Richard say - [46:26.36] [46:26.53]a neat little piece of Lancastrian propaganda, [46:29.44] [46:29.61]which solved the embarrassing problem of a deposition [46:33.64] [46:33.81]by making Richard seem as though he had resigned the crown, [46:38.20] [46:38.37]rather than having it snatched from his desperate grip. [46:42.92] [46:46.01]In fact, it took a month of painful negotiations to get Richard, [46:50.44] [46:50.61]now a prisoner in the Tower, to give up the throne. [46:54.23] [46:54.41]Three times they asked him to surrender, three times he refused, [46:58.84] [46:59.01]before finally bowing to the inevitable. [47:02.79] [47:03.45]On 30th September, [47:05.44] [47:05.61]a report of the king's renunciation was read to parliament, [47:09.31] [47:09.49]gathered under the angels of Richard's magnificent roof. [47:13.60] [47:13.81]The lords were asked to acclaim Henry Bolingbroke, [47:16.56] [47:16.73]Earl of Hereford, Duke of Lancaster, as King Henry IV, [47:20.40] [47:20.57]which they did to cries of, "Yes, yes, yes." [47:25.04] [47:36.21]Richard, the divine prince no longer, was spirited away [47:40.68] [47:40.85]and imprisoned in Pontefract Castle. [47:43.31] [47:43.49]Most likely he was starved to death, a horrible way to end, [47:47.68] [47:47.85]but one which ensured no compromising marks of assault on his body [47:52.56] [47:52.73]when it was given a public burial. [47:54.92] [47:55.09]Now, oddly enough, it was Henry who orchestrated this big funeral, [48:00.24] [48:00.41]a pre-emptive strike against any conspirators out there [48:03.92] [48:04.09]who might imagine that Richard could be rescued [48:06.84] [48:07.01]and restored to the throne. [48:09.00] [48:11.09]It was Bolingbroke's son, Henry V, [48:13.52] [48:13.69]who had the body of King Richard buried in Westminster Abbey. [48:17.84] [48:18.65]Perhaps Henry wanted to put the charge of murder, [48:21.52] [48:21.69]as well as its victim, to rest. [48:24.25] [48:24.41]He must have hoped that in his reign, [48:27.12] [48:27.29]the wounds of the contending parties might be healed, [48:31.40] [48:31.57]but it was not to be. [48:34.68] [48:35.93]Despite his famous victory at Agincourt, [48:38.49] [48:38.65]Henry V remains a might-have-been, [48:40.92] [48:41.09]dead at 35 from dysentery. [48:43.80] [48:43.97]So neither he nor his son, Henry VI, [48:46.56] [48:46.73]could prevent what the stealing of Richard's crown had made inevitable - [48:50.88] [48:51.05]a long, bloody war between competing wings of the Plantagenet family. [48:56.44] [48:58.37]For 30 years, the houses of York and Lancaster slogged it out [49:02.36] [49:02.57]in a roll call of battles we know as the Wars of the Roses. [49:08.00] [49:11.77]There are only two ways to feel about them. [49:14.96] [49:15.13]Either the endless chronicle of violent seizures of the Crown [49:18.32] [49:18.49]makes you thrill to a great English epic, [49:21.48] [49:21.65]or else it leaves you feeling slightly numbed. [49:25.00] [49:26.93]If you're in the dazed and confused camp, [49:29.52] [49:29.69]the temptation is to write off the whole sorry mess [49:33.16] [49:33.33]as the bloody bickering of overgrown schoolboys, [49:36.00] [49:36.17]whacking each other senseless [49:38.16] [49:38.33]on the fields of Towton, Barnet and Bosworth. [49:41.76] [49:44.33]But there was something at stake in all the mayhem, [49:47.84] [49:48.01]and that was the need to make the English monarchy credible again; [49:52.36] [49:52.53]to re-solder the chains of allegiance, [49:54.72] [49:54.89]which had once stretched all the way from Westminster [49:57.76] [49:57.93]out to the constables and justices in the shires, [50:01.44] [50:01.61]and which had been so badly broken by the fate of Richard II. [50:06.55] [50:09.53]To understand the way in which lawlessness, violence and chaos [50:13.00] [50:13.17]did make an impact on the not-so-rosy world of 15th-century England, [50:18.08] [50:18.25]we have something incomparably richer [50:20.63] [50:20.81]than the list of battlefields and barons, [50:23.24] [50:23.41]kings and kingmakers. [50:25.87] [50:26.45]We have, in the letters of the Paston family of Norfolk, [50:29.96] [50:30.17]the very first private correspondence in English, [50:32.92] [50:33.09]the authentic voice of middling folk - [50:35.76] [50:35.97]farmers, lawyers, would-be gentry, social climbers. [50:40.16] [50:40.33]Like many an anxious wife and mother, [50:42.92] [50:43.09]the Wars of the Roses worried Margaret Paston [50:45.80] [50:45.97]because they were making England a bad place [50:48.48] [50:48.65]to make and keep a little fortune. [50:51.64] [50:52.29](WOMAN) God, for his mercy, give grace, [50:54.88] [50:55.05]for I never heard say of so much robbery and manslaughter [50:58.32] [50:58.49]in this country as is now. [51:00.72] [51:00.89]And as for gathering of money, I never saw a worse season. [51:05.88] [51:07.33]Seen through Margaret's eyes, England might be up for grabs, [51:11.44] [51:11.61]but the real disaster was shopping. [51:14.07] [51:15.37]As for cloth for my gown, [51:17.36] [51:17.53]I pray that you will buy for me three yards and a quarter [51:21.12] [51:21.29]of such as it pleaseth you that I should have. [51:24.00] [51:24.17]For I have done all the drapers shops in this town, [51:27.48] [51:27.65]and here is right feeble choice. [51:30.16] [51:31.45]The founder of the Paston dynasty was Clement. [51:34.60] [51:35.05]Clement's described as a plain husbandman, [51:38.04] [51:38.21]which is to say a peasant, [51:40.24] [51:40.41]but a peasant who took advantage of the Black Death [51:43.60] [51:43.77]to scramble right up the social ladder of the village. [51:47.55] [51:47.73]Clement Paston was shrewd enough to send his son William to law school, [51:53.00] [51:53.17]clever enough to understand that it was going to be through learning, [51:58.36] [51:58.53]as much as through land, that the fortunes of the Pastons [52:02.07] [52:02.25]would be utterly transformed. [52:04.71] [52:06.73]Clement's son did indeed become a lawyer and married into money. [52:11.12] [52:11.29]So did his grandson John, who acquired Caister Castle, [52:15.36] [52:15.53]completing the meteoric rise of the Pastons [52:18.48] [52:18.65]from peasantry to landed gentry in just two generations. [52:22.35] [52:25.41](MAN) John Jenney informed me, and I've verily learned since, [52:29.52] [52:29.69]you're to be made a knight at this coronation. [52:32.40] [52:32.57]Considering the comfortable tidings aforesaid, [52:35.16] [52:35.33]to attain the necessary gear be prayed for. [52:39.03] [52:39.77]But nothing's ever this easy, is it? [52:42.92] [52:43.09]As the Pastons became influential and rich, [52:46.24] [52:46.41]so they also were bound to attract enemies. [52:49.80] [52:49.97]As long as they were obscure nobodies, [52:52.56] [52:52.73]the bloody tides of the Wars of the Roses would happen somewhere else. [52:57.32] [52:57.49]But now that they became owners of lands and manors and castles, [53:01.32] [53:01.49]they also became prime targets for the heavies, [53:04.96] [53:05.13]and no one was heavier than the Duke of Norfolk. [53:08.60] [53:08.77]He'd always coveted Caister Castle, and now, in September 1469, [53:12.96] [53:13.13]he came to get it. [53:15.20] [53:15.37]Margaret wrote in some anguish to her son... [53:19.24] [53:19.41]"I greet you well, letting you know that your brother and his fellowship [53:23.80] [53:23.97]"stand in great jeopardy at Caister." [53:27.48] [53:27.65]Well, she was clearly desperate, but she was also extremely angry, [53:32.20] [53:32.37]and she lets her son John feel the rough edge of her tongue, [53:37.88] [53:38.05]which is extremely rough indeed. [53:40.08] [53:41.01]Every man in this country marvels that you suffer them [53:44.36] [53:44.53]to be for so long in great jeopardy. [53:47.56] [53:47.73]They be like to lose both their lives and the place, [53:51.27] [53:51.45]the greatest rebuke to you that ever came to any gentleman. [53:56.04] [53:57.25]John immediately writes back. [53:59.76] [54:00.77]Mother, if I had need to be woken up by a letter, [54:04.28] [54:04.45]I would indeed be a sluggish fellow. [54:07.01] [54:07.17]I have heard ten times worse tidings since the siege began [54:10.60] [54:10.77]than any letter that you wrote me, [54:13.12] [54:13.29]but I assure you that those within have no worst rest than I have, [54:18.12] [54:18.29]nor fear more danger. [54:20.64] [54:25.57]Faced with the might of the Duke of Norfolk's army, [54:28.72] [54:28.89]the Pastons had no choice but to surrender their castle. [54:32.56] [54:34.09]But once again, the law would transform their fortunes. [54:38.00] [54:39.93]It took a seven-year legal battle and an appeal to the king, [54:43.88] [54:44.05]but they were, eventually, rightfully reinstated at Caister, [54:48.20] [54:48.37]although for the eldest of Margaret's brood, the triumph was short-lived. [54:53.52] [54:53.69]Three years later, John Paston died of the plague. [54:58.44] [55:01.29]The Pastons got over these bumps in the road [55:04.24] [55:04.41]to become a settled presence in their county, [55:07.76] [55:07.93]and that would be true for countless other English people just like them. [55:12.40] [55:12.57]Essentially, they were survivors. [55:14.80] [55:14.97]They'd survived the plague, they'd survived dethronement, [55:17.76] [55:17.93]they'd survived civil war. [55:19.92] [55:20.09]Kings came and went, but the village men - [55:23.04] [55:23.21]the same sort of men who'd marched on London in 1381, [55:27.08] [55:27.25]who'd been revolutionaries and desperados - [55:30.20] [55:30.37]were now on their way to becoming squires of the village. [55:33.76] [55:33.93]These people knew what the worst could be. [55:36.31] [55:36.49]They knew that the plague could carry off babies and children. [55:40.36] [55:40.53]They knew that local knights might go on a rampage, [55:44.00] [55:44.17]but they also knew that with an equal measure of prudence and prayer, [55:48.92] [55:49.09]they would get through it. [55:51.55] [55:56.73]So come to an English village like this, far from the mayhem, [56:01.12] [56:01.29]say around 1480, and you'd see what you'd expect - [56:05.04] [56:05.21]a church built in the economic elegance of the perpendicular style... [56:08.36] [56:10.53]For the first time, an ale house called "The Swan" or "The Frog". [56:15.39] [56:16.13]And at the heart, a handsome dwelling [56:19.00] [56:19.17]for the biggest tenant farmer in the area. [56:22.64] [56:22.81]No longer just a wattle and daub single-roomed glorified hut, [56:26.32] [56:26.53]but a miniature manor with its own hall [56:29.56] [56:29.73]and servants to wait on the master and mistress. [56:32.60] [56:33.41]A buttery, a cellar and private retiring chambers. [56:37.56] [56:42.73]One shouldn't be too complacent about the condition of Britain [56:46.64] [56:46.81]at the end of its first century of plague. [56:50.04] [56:50.21]The end of the road through trauma was not all buttercups and beer. [56:54.40] [56:54.57]There was still grinding poverty alongside plenty. [56:58.80] [56:58.97]But all the same, the improbable had happened. [57:02.20] [57:02.37]Out of the fires of pestilence and bloodshed [57:05.88] [57:06.05]had emerged that most unlikely example of survivor - [57:10.28] [57:10.45]the English country gent. [57:13.24]

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