Robert Annys: Poor Priest. A Tale of the Great Uprising

by Annie Nathan Meyer

IX

The low-roofed tavern at Bury Saint Edmunds was a favorite place for the men to gather together at the close of their day's work. It was a place of good cheer, not alone because there was ale in plenty—none of your cheap, thin, penny ale either, such as is brewed for the day-laborer's dole, but good strong ale of the best and brownest brew—nor alone from the sense of comradeship that reigned, but also because there was warmth and comfort within, while without it was dark with usually a high northeast wind racing about one's ears, if one but ventured forth. And, moreover, there was light here, while at home one would have to go straightway to bed; for artificial light, even of the home-made candles of rushes dipped in grease, was entirely too expensive a luxury to be wasted. Here at the tavern, although the flaring rushlights, stuck high up over the oak wainscoting, gave a rather uncertain light; yet it was easy to distinguish one's neighbors, and it was as good as one could expect outside of the church. The church was the one place where hundreds of candles at a time, of purest wax, blazed with a superb indifference to cost. There was also some illumination from the glowing logs which burned in the centre of the floor, sending a slender pillar of smoke up to the hole in the roof which served as a vent. When the door of the tavern was opened, the wind drove the smoke about the room into every crack and cranny, but none coughed or complained of the smarting of the eyes, for this was a discomfort to which they were well accustomed.

One night there were seated about the long oaken table that ran the length of the room, a goodly number of men. Those at one end of the table kept their voices low and discussed and planned matters of grave import, while from some roisterers at the other end of the table came frequent bold oaths and hoarse cries of "Pass the ale" and "Who holds the bowl?"

Among the serious ones was a great, powerfully built fellow whom they called Ralph Rugge, and on whom they looked as the leader of the men of the Bury. And there were Tim the needle-maker, Thomas Pye the wagon-maker, Jack the smith, and Robert Annys just arrived. There were one or two others, noticeable among them all a youthful giant called Richard Meryl, towards whose frank, handsome face the poor priest's eyes constantly wandered.

After Annys had taken the edge off his hunger, doing full justice to the food that was placed before him on a neatly scraped trencher of hard oak, Rugge turned to him and said, "Hast any news from John Ball?"

"I bear with me a letter from him," was the reply.

"What, from gaol?"

"Yea, from Maidstone gaol hath he sent it by trusty messengers."

A look of interest ran from man to man, and they edged their stools closer about him. Annys read the letter to them with many misgivings, for he felt that it but fed their angry passions, and that it was like a spark to a pile of dried fagots.

"Good people," the letter began, "things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we call lords greater folk than we? On what grounds have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in serfage? If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and Eve, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, if it be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what they spend in their pride? They are clothed in velvet and warm in their furs and their ermines, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair bread; and we have oat-cakes and straw and water to drink. They have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labor, the rain and the wind in the fields."