The King of France, Charles V., had lost no time in taking advantage of the weakness of the English government: his fleets overran the Channel, fettering commerce and seizing the British vessels; a descent was even made upon the Isle of Wight. The Parliament was convoked, and the Earl of Buckingham, the uncle of the king, was placed at the head of the naval forces; his expedition against the French fleet miscarried, and his defeat increased the discontent of the nation. The Parliament was composed chiefly of the enemies of the Duke of Lancaster, and when a kind of reconciliation had been effected between the latter and the House of Commons, that assembly demanded that two citizens of London should be entrusted to receive the money voted for the defence of the country. John of Gaunt started for France with a large army (1378).
The King of Navarre, still at war with Charles V., held a portion of Normandy; he had surrendered Cherbourg to the English. The Duke of Brittany, John de Montfort, being reduced to the last extremity by the successes of Bertrand du Guesclin, had consigned Brest to them; but these acquisitions were due to the freewill of the allies of England, and not to its arms. John of Gaunt was defeated before St. Malo; and, being pursued by Du Guesclin, was compelled to return to England, while the Scots, at the instigation of France, invaded the northern counties and took possession of Berwick Castle. A Scottish pirate, named John Mercer, devastated the coast as far as Scarborough. A London merchant, named John Philpot, on the other hand, armed a small fleet, and hastening to the encounter of Mercer, recaptured from him all the vessels which the latter had seized; captured, besides, fifteen Spanish ships, and returned triumphantly into the Thames, amid the plaudits of his fellow-citizens, and to the indignation of the council, which reprimanded the alderman for the boldness of his undertaking.
The Parliament had assembled at Gloucester, disaffected and exacting. The Commons asked to examine the accounts, which was granted to them as a favor. John de Montfort had recently taken refuge in England, banished from his dominions by King Charles V., who committed the imprudent act of officially annexing the duchy of Brittany to France. This declaration immediately rallied all the different factions against him. John de Montfort was recalled; the States-general of Brittany wrote to the King of France, asking him to authorize them to retain their independent ruler. At the same time an English army, under the command of the Earl of Buckingham, landed at Calais and ravaged the provinces of Artois, Picardy, and Champagne without ever encountering the necessity of a serious combat. The English were arriving in Brittany when King Charles V. died (1378), and the Bretons, reassured by the weakness of the young King Charles VI., began to look coldly upon their English allies. De Montfort negotiated with the French council of regency, and Buckingham was only indebted for his safety to the valor of his troops and to the provisions which he had brought. He retired in the spring of 1379. Great events were in preparation in England.
For some years a double movement, religious and social, had begun secretly to agitate the English people. A priest, John Wycliffe, born towards 1324, in Yorkshire, had attracted attention at the university of Oxford by his rare faculties, and had commenced, in the year 1356, to denounce the abuses of the papal authority; he had then attacked the mendicant monks, accusing the Church in general of greed and corruption. Summoned to appear before the Bishop of London, in the last year of the reign of Edward III., to answer for his opinions, he had been supported by the Duke of Lancaster and his friend Lord Percy; both had even insulted the bishop, which had brought about an insurrection in the city. Wycliffe had retracted some of his ideas, he had explained others; and, thanks to his powerful protectors, he had obtained the living of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, where he spent the remainder of his life, surrounded by priests, whom he brought up in truly apostolic poverty, and who subsequently spread his opinions among the people. Wycliffe is the first of the Reformers, or rather, their precursor. His doctrines acted more powerfully abroad than in his own country; it is to his books that were due the first germs of the Reformation in Bohemia; for England, his greatest work was the translation of the Bible into the vernacular. The most important of his ideas was the appeal to the private judgment of the faithful upon the very text of the Holy Scriptures. Wycliffe had shaken the traditions of submission to the clergy; he had at the same time preached a dangerous doctrine. "All possessions," he said, "come of grace, and may be forfeited by sin." The poor serfs, who possessed nothing, might be anxious to profit in their turn by the grace which insured estates. Wycliffe died peacefully at Lutterworth in 1384.
Already, for two years past, his illustrious friend, Geoffrey Chaucer, the first creator of English poetry, had been compelled to quit England, compromised by his attachment to the new ideas; he had retired into Hainault, where he lived in peace, protected by the friendship of the Duke of Lancaster. The first works of Chaucer, The Court of Love, the poem of Troilus and Cresseide, The Temple of Fame, had been published several years before, and had assured to him a reputation which had largely contributed to his fortune. The English language at this time, still largely intermixed with French, and difficult to understand at the present time, assumed, under the pen of Chaucer, a native grace to which sometimes succeeds an energy which prepared the way for Spenser and Shakespeare. Chaucer again established himself in England when John of Gaunt returned from his expedition to Castile; he lived to an advanced age, and composed in his retreat of Dumington his Canterbury Tales, written in the style of the Decameron of Boccaccio, and the only one of his books which is still read at the present day. He died in 1400, the year following the accession of Henry Bolingbroke, the son of his protector. Like Wycliffe, he had seen the commencement of the popular agitations. The poll-tax voted by the Parliament in 1379 was their first opportunity.
A general movement towards the enfranchisement of the lower classes manifested itself everywhere in Europe. The insurrection of the Jacquerie in France; the resistance of the Flemish citizens and artisans, first, to the conduct of Jacques van Arteveldt and afterwards to that of Philip, his son, had testified to the awakening of the serfs, the peasants, and the artisans, so long reduced to the condition of beasts of burden. The kings had been in need of money, and the taxes weighing upon all their subjects, it had been necessary to conciliate them. The soldiery had acquired a new importance; the English archers, in particular, nearly all peasants by origin, had played an important part in the wars. When the tax-collectors began in 1380 to demand payment of the poll-tax, of a people already impoverished by a long series of exactions, they met with a resistance which increased with the oppression. The tax, at first collected with leniency, was let out to some courtiers; they borrowed in advance of the Lombards and Flemings; repayment became necessary, and the revenue was exacted with great severity. The peasants became exasperated; they began to assemble and confer together; the insurrection broke out in Essex. The "Commons of England," as the insurgents styled themselves, broke into several dwelling-houses in the neighborhood; they obeyed a seditious priest who assumed the name of Jack Straw. The contagion rapidly spread into the counties of Kent, Suffolk, and Norfolk. The tax was payable only in the case of persons above fourteen years of age. A Kentish collector maintained that the daughter of a tiler had attained the specified age; her mother maintained the contrary; the collector insulted the young girl, and was brained with a hammer by the father. A knight had reclaimed a serf who thought he was entitled to enfranchisement, and had imprisoned him in Rochester Castle; the peasants attacked the castle and compelled the garrison to surrender the prisoner. The Kentish insurgents marched under the command of a chief named Wat Tyler (Wat the tiler). On the Monday of Trinity week, in 1381, they entered Canterbury, threatening death to the archbishop, who was absent. The monks of the chapter-house were compelled to swear fidelity to King Richard and the commons of England. Three wealthy burgesses were beheaded, and the crowd proceeded towards London. It is related that one hundred thousand men followed close upon the steps of Wat Tyler, when he arrived on the 11th of June at Blackheath.
The Princess of Wales, the mother of the young king, was returning from a pilgrimage. The crowd of insurgents surrounded her retinue. She was popular by reason of her husband's memory and her ransom cost her only some kisses bestowed on the more audacious of the leaders, who had not forgotten that she had formerly been called "the fair maid of Kent;" she passed by without further difficulty. The malcontents thronged round an itinerant preacher whom they had brought with them, and who displayed to them this text, now famous:—
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?"
The doctrine of equality was received with enthusiasm by these poor people, hitherto trodden under foot. The outskirts of London were laid waste when the king proceeded down the Thames, on the 12th of June, to receive the petition of the insurgents. Ten thousand men awaited his arrival at Rotherhithe; but at the sight of the royal barge they uttered "such cries," says Froissart, "that one would have thought that all the demons of hell were in their midst." The noblemen who accompanied Richard became alarmed, and dragged him with them as far as the Tower. "The Commons of England," in a state of fury, advanced along the right bank of the river as far as Lambeth, burnt down the prisons, and plundered the palace of the Archbishop. On the other side of the Thames the insurgents marched along the course of the river, and at length obtaining a passage over London Bridge, they joined their brothers of Kent. The whole city was in their power; the population of London had joined them, and the rich citizens, to please them, had thrown open their cellars to them. Hitherto, the multitude had behaved with a certain amount of order, but intoxication being once added to the joy of triumph, they could no longer be restrained; the palace of the Duke of Lancaster was invaded and burnt down; plunder was strictly forbidden; the gold was reduced to powder, and the precious stones were broken. A peasant had taken a bowl of money; he was thrown into the river with his booty. The prisons being opened and destroyed brought fresh reinforcements to the insurgents. The Temple was burnt, with all the valuable books which had been collected by the knights. The priory of St. John of Jerusalem, recently constructed by Sir Thomas Hales, a prior of the order and Chancellor of the Kingdom, was also delivered up to the flames. A thirst for blood began to take possession of the populace. Every passer-by was challenged. "For whom are you?" was asked. If the answer was not "For King Richard and the true commons," the person answering was immediately slaughtered. All the Flemings fell by the knife or the hatchet; the popular hatred sought them out even in the churches. Wine and blood flowed in the streets; the counsellors of the king resolved to try concessions.