London - Edward Rutherfurd [256]
The great cataclysm of 1381 took Geoffrey Ducket by surprise. But then very few people in England saw it coming either. The spring of that year had passed rather quietly. If Fleming had seemed subdued, the youth, knowing nothing of his master’s addiction to alchemy, thought little of it. He visited Tiffany once or twice, and heard in the Bull household that Silversleeves was seen by the whole family with ever-increasing favour.
True, he heard the stories of discontent in the countryside. The new and outrageous poll tax was causing problems. The peasants were furious; there was widespread evasion, especially in the eastern counties. But this did not affect him much.
In March the poll tax returns were inadequate. And this time, the boy king’s council was determined to act. Ducket heard the news one morning. “They’re sending the tax collectors back into Kent and East Anglia.” Rich and sturdy Kent, close to the capital, shared much of the robust London spirit. But East Anglia, besides its ancient independence, had a particular problem with the poll tax. For whereas in the more feudal counties, most villages had a lord of the manor who might, out of kindness or self-interest, help the poorer peasants with the tax, in East Anglia, with its pattern of small independent homesteads, there were fewer manorial lords and the peasants were hit hard.
During April and May, reports of the collectors’ activities came frequently. The city of Norwich had been hit: six hundred furious tax evaders had been found within the walls of this one town. Out in the East Anglian countryside, over twenty thousand had been caught and forced to pay – more than one adult in ten!
At the start of June, the reports became more ominous. “They’ve killed three tax collectors in Essex.” A day later: “There are five thousand peasants on the move. They’re sending messengers across to Kent.” And sure enough, before sundown the rumour ran along the stalls in the Cheap: “Kent is rising.” On the morning of 7 June, Ducket heard a report that the rebels had attacked Rochester Castle. He did not believe it; but seeing Bull in the street later on, he asked him. “True, I’m afraid,” the merchant grimly confirmed. “I’ve just heard that half the peasants from around Bocton have gone down there. They’ve elected a leader too,” he grunted. “Some fellow called Wat Tyler.”
England’s great Peasant Revolt had begun.
While the men of Essex were massing, and the rest of East Anglia preparing to rise, Wat Tyler led his men swiftly down the old road to Canterbury. The archbishop, whom they blamed for the poll tax, was not there, so they sacked his palace and broke open his prison. Then Tyler turned them round. It was time to go to the boy king.
Besides giving Tyler a chance to organize his men, the march to Canterbury had had one other important effect. At the archbishop’s prison they had liberated a preacher named John Ball, who had long been in trouble with the Church for his inflammatory and unorthodox preaching in the countryside. No scholar like Wyclif, who would have abhorred him, he agitated for radical reform of the whole kingdom and to many of Tyler’s followers he was a folk hero. With Tyler as general and Ball as prophet, the enterprise was becoming a peasant crusade.
And now London began to tremble, for the twin forces approaching from the east were formidable: from the north side of the Thames Estuary came the men of Essex; up the south side, Tyler’s men. Each horde numbered tens of thousands. The boy king and his council joined the frightened archbishop in the safety of the Tower; but they had no troops that could handle such huge numbers of rebels. The archbishop, hopelessly out of his depth, begged to resign the chancellorship, and no one else knew what to do.
Ducket and Fleming were just closing the stall on Wednesday afternoon when the word came. “They’ve arrived. The Essex men are going to camp at Mile End.” This was only two miles outside the Aldgate entrance to the city. “Tyler’s at Blackheath.” About the same distance on the