His trial took place as soon as Parliament met. There were thirty-nine charges brought against him as one of the King’s Council. He asked for delay to prepare his reply. This being refused, he offered wager of battle. All the Lords and Commons present threw down their gauntlets, but it was ruled that it was not a case for the ordeal by battle.
The trial was resumed the following day, the King, who was present, showing himself entirely in favour of the prisoner. The case was placed in the hands of a commission of Lords, who brought in a verdict of not guilty. But they were not going to allow Brembre to escape. They sent for the Mayor and Aldermen. Thus (I quote R. R. Sharpe):—
“One would have thought that with Nicholas Exton, his old friend and ally, to speak up for him, Brembre’s life would now at least be saved, even if he were not altogether acquitted. It was not so, however. The Mayor and Aldermen were asked as to their opinion (not as to their knowledge), whether Brembre was cognisant of certain matters, and they gave it as their opinion that Brembre was more likely to have been cognisant of them than not. Turning then to the Recorder, the lords asked him how stood the law in such a case? To which he replied, that a man who knew such things as were laid to Brembre’s charge, and knowing them failed to reveal them, deserved death. On such evidence as this, Brembre was convicted on the 20th February, and condemned to be executed. He was drawn on a hurdle through the City to Tyburn, showing himself very penitent, and earnestly desiring all persons to pray for him. At the last moment he confessed that his conduct towards Northampton had been vile and wicked. Whilst craving pardon of Northampton’s son, ‘he was suddenly turned off, and the executioner cutting his throat, he died.’” (London and the Kingdom, vol. i. p. 237.)
RICHARD II. CONSULTING WITH HIS FRIENDS IN CONWAY CASTLE
MS. Harl. 1319.
The history of Brembre shows that he was a strong man, at least, and fearless in a time when charges of treason were easily concocted and ruthlessly applied, when the King, his protector, was young and weak, and when the other side, which had with them the craftsmen of London, was strong and well-organised.
In looking upon the long struggle of the craftsmen against their employers, there are certain considerations which we must not forget.
It was really inevitable that the masters, the employers, would have the control, such as I have pointed out, in every trade. The men, quite ignorant of the very rudest principles of political economy, living from week to week, asking at most nothing but the weekly wage and cheap food, presently began to question. Why should the masters rule everything? Why should not the men command their own wages and their own hours? The questions, which we hear all around us at the present day, were asked six hundred years ago. The working men formed combinations, or unions, of their own; they kept on trying to form these combinations; the number of cases that have been recorded, which were certainly not the whole number, or anything like it, prove a deep and widespread discontent, and a sullen resolve of the working men to take, if possible, the management of their work into their own hands. They failed, however, and their failure was absolute and complete. They were brought before the Mayor and Aldermen; their combinations were dissolved; they were sent back to their company; no union, or association, or combination of working men was permitted to London outside the company. Let me take one case in illustration, that of David Brekenhof. This man, with half-a-dozen others, was brought before the Mayor, charged with rebellion against employers. They had broken off from the company; they had left the dwelling-places assigned to them; they had taken a house in another parish; here they had set up workshops for themselves; they called assemblies of other working men; they settled their own wages; they hustled and wounded one of the masters who went to expostulate with them; they rescued their companions from arrest when they were seized by the serjeants of the City. This, you will observe, was a very determined effort, coupled with assemblies of other working men, and backed by the appeal to arms. The sentence of the Mayor shows how seriously the danger was regarded. He did not dare to arouse a spirit of revenge among the working men. These offenders were left unpunished; they were simply told to give up their house; to go back to their company, and to resume work in obedience. And so David Brekenhof and his rebels vanish again and we hear no more of them. And until the nineteenth century there were no more combinations of working men in London.
With the ideas of the present day, this refusal to allow the craftsmen to combine seems tyrannical. We must go back, however, to the ideas of the thirteenth century. The assumption, the theory, the belief, that the working classes ought to have any voice in the management of their own affairs, if it lingered anywhere in London of the thirteenth century, was a survival of the Folk Mote, the Citizens’ Parliament, of Paul’s Cross. The Folk Mote still continued; it was used for party purposes; it had no real power, but it kept alive the memory of power. It ceased to be held after the thirteenth century; it died out when a Court of Common Council was formed, and it is significant that when the old Folk Parliament ceased to meet we hear no more of the revolt of working men against the companies.