London - Edward Rutherfurd [197]
The result had been Magna Carta, the great charter to which John had been forced to swear three days before at Runnymede.
In some ways it was a conservative document. Most of the conditions it placed on the king and the basic liberties it asserted for the people were no more than the long-established conventions of feudal society and old English common law. John was being put on notice that he must abide by the rules. Some improvements were made, though: widows could no longer be forced, as Ida had been, to marry. There were clauses, too, protecting men against imprisonment without trial. But one set of provisions was truly radical. Instead of the ancient council – the group of great nobles who had always expected to advise the king – the rebels now insisted there should be a named council of twenty-five men, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Mayor of London, to make sure the monarch abided by the charter. If he did not, they would depose him.
“It’s unheard of!” Silversleeves had remarked to one of the rebel barons. “No monarch has ever submitted to such a thing. “Why,” he added, “England would then be just like a commune. Your twenty-five barons would be like so many aldermen, and the king no more than a mayor!”
“I quite agree,” the nobleman replied. “It was London, my dear fellow, that gave us the idea.”
Nor was London itself left out of the charter. Strangely enough, though they were determined to preserve their privileges, the aldermen had not held out for their right to have a commune. The reason for this had been explained to Silversleeves by Bull. “It’s the taxes.” He grinned. “You see, we soon found that since a commune is treated like a single baron when it comes to taxes, the other citizens would want the richest of us to pay a bigger share. But if the king taxes each citizen individually, we aldermen don’t get hit so hard. So we don’t want the commune so much as we thought we did, after all!” But the mayor was another matter. The king’s charter confirmed him in perpetuity. “He’ll never be taken from us now,” Bull assured him. One other small clause was added. It was number thirty-three.
Henceforth all kiddles shall be completely removed from the Thames and the Medway and throughout all England, except on the sea coast.
After over forty years of waiting, Alderman Sampson Bull had triumphed over the king.
Looking for a place to shelter, Silversleeves now took a lane that led to a hamlet he had not visited before. Riding up to a cottage, he demanded entrance. Only after he had begun to dry out did he notice something rather curious about the peasant family who were his reluctant hosts: the father had a white patch in his hair. He remained with them an hour, until the shower passed; after which he paid a call upon the steward of the estate in which the hamlet lay.
When he returned to London later that day, Pentecost Silversleeves was smiling.
Life had treated Adam Ducket well. He was a member of the fishmongers company now, a modest craft guild, but nonetheless a respectable position. There had been sadness, true: his first wife had died in childbirth several years before, but his old patron Barnikel had a daughter, Lucy, of marriageable age. They were due to marry in the spring.
On a dull November afternoon a messenger with strange news arrived at the house of Adam Ducket on Cornhill. It was not merely strange, it made no sense at all.
He was summoned to appear before the Hustings court in two weeks’ time. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” he said to the messenger. “What’s it all about?” When he discovered, at the house of the mayor the next day, he could not believe his ears.
The ancient court of the Husting generally met on a Monday. The place of its meetings was a simple stone hall, of quite modest dimensions, with a steep wooden roof, that stood in the ward known as Aldermanbury,