The Three Edwards (55 page)

The toll in London grew so high there was soon no space left in cemeteries. A
toft
of land was obtained near East Smithfield and enclosed with a high wall of stone, and most of the bodies were buried there. Sir Walter
Manny, who seems to have been more charitably disposed than most military leaders, bought thirteen acres next to no man’s land, called Spittle Croft. Some reports have it that fifty thousand bodies were buried here in the first year of the plague, but this obviously is an exaggeration. Authorities place the population of London at the time very little above that figure.

The Black Death followed close on the heels of England’s greatest period of prosperity and success. The victory at Crécy had put national prestige on the highest level, the country was rich and the harvests ample. When faced with the likelihood of death, men looked at one another with wonder as well as fear. “What have we done that this punishment is visited on us?” they asked. “Have we allowed ourselves to become so proud that the wrath of God has been aroused?”

The archers had returned after Crécy with their bows on their backs and ropes of flowers around their necks. Proudly they carried the spoils of victory. They knew full well that they had won the great battle and they proclaimed the fact long and loud. So sure had they become of themselves that if Robin Hood were alive (it has never been established that he actually lived) he would have had hundreds of challenges from these new champions of the longbow, and undoubtedly would have lost some of them.

It seemed impossible that the bowmen of Crécy could die like ordinary men. They enjoyed some immunity, in addition, by living in the small villages where the plague was less likely to strike. But this loathsome disease, produced in the reeking slums of the Far East, was no respecter of locale. The stout yeomen living on the edges of cool green glades and by the clear water of streams caught the infection as quickly as other men and the loss among them ran as high as one in two.

In the larger cities, such as Bristol, Oxford, Norwich, and of course London, the victims were buried in layers in deep pits. In Yarmouth the total stood at 7,052. English statistics seem small, nevertheless, when compared with the records in continental cities. In Florence the death total ran as high as 60,000, Venice 100,000, Paris 50,000. In Marseilles 16,000 people died in one month.

The Black Death reached its peak in England in August of the following year. It subsided then but returned with somewhat lessened fury in 1361 and 1368.

There was no escape possible, even by the method of seclusion made famous by Boccaccio. To go to sea seemed the surest way to invite fate, for the contagion spread more quickly aboard ships than anywhere else. It was not uncommon to see along the southern shores of England ships under full sail being driven by the waters of the Channel, tossing about
aimlessly and making it clear that all on board had died. They would vanish finally beyond the horizon into the rough embrace of the Atlantic.

One of the most astonishing phases of what has been called the Great Emergence (the trend toward modern conditions of living) came about as a result of the Black Death. England, for the first time, began to have labor troubles.

It happened because the population of the island had been cut almost in half. Most of the great landowners had survived, by immuring themselves behind the thick stone walls of their castles, but after 1349 there were not enough laborers to go around. Much of the land remained untilled and crops were not harvested, while untended flocks and herds ran wild. It followed naturally that a competition developed for the services of the yeomen. Wages went higher and higher, but the laborers, finding such things sweet on the tongue, showed little tendency to work at the beck of the once omnipotent landlord. Labor had gained the upper hand, an extraordinary thing to happen in a country which was still feudal by instinct.

This could not continue beyond a brief, a very brief, period. The land magnates were stirred to fury, and in the cities the prominent merchants swore they could not pay such wages as were demanded. They overlooked the fact that whatever advantage the poorer classes had gained was swallowed up in the increased cost of living. Not being organized, the people could not make themselves heard at Westminster.

The solution reached by the government made it very clear that the tendency toward better conditions had not touched the minds of the ruling classes. A royal proclamation was issued making it incumbent on all unemployed to accept work at the wages which had prevailed before the plague. When this failed to have the desired effect, a Statute of Laborers was passed by Parliament which read:

Every man or woman, of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able of body, and within the age of threescore years—and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken …

This meant that the laborer was in a worse position than he had been for a century at least. While his pay went back to the low levels of previous years, the costs of living remained at the highest peak. The sorriest aspect,
however, was that again the agrarian laborer was
bound to the land
. It was specifically forbidden him to quit the parish where he lived in search of better employment. If he disobeyed, he was regarded as a fugitive and was subject to imprisonment. Later the punishment was raised to branding on the forehead with a hot iron. The free men of England had been reduced again to slavery.

If they had been organized sufficiently to hold meetings of protest in all quarters of the kingdom, they might have compelled some amelioration of this great injustice; but the day of labor unions and parties was far in the future. They lived in smoldering discontent under the conditions which had been forced upon them, growing unhappier with each passing year. This led inevitably to trouble, to the Peasants’ Revolt which occurred in the reign following that of Edward. It was a sanguinary failure from the standpoint of the leaders who died on the gallows. But it opened the way to later reforms.

It is probably incorrect to say that the laboring classes lacked all organization. Delving into the records of the day, one is likely to stumble over certain odd circumstances which suggest that there were stirrings continuously under the surface. These seem to trace back to one man, a friar named John Ball, who had the habit of assembling the people in the market place after they had heard mass, and haranguing them about their wrongs. He was called the Mad Priest by Froissart, but instead he was a man of a fine and high courage and with such an eloquent tongue that no one could hear him without being persuaded to believe. Twice he was thrown into Canterbury Prison by the archbishop, but word of him got about through all the shires by a system of whispers. “The angel of the Lord will open the prison as he did for Peter” and “Be of good cheer for soon the bell will be rungen by John Ball.” It was clear that the men of the soil waited for a signal which was to come from the wandering priest, and this was known and planned for whenever the plowmen got together in secret.

The signal came in time, but that is a story in the future and does not belong here.

The Black Death brought many changes in conditions, mostly for the worse. Farm laborers who refused to accept the hard laws imposed on them formed themselves into bands and lived by waylaying those who passed on the highways. So many priests had died that many churches were closed and people fell easily into immoral ways. The ownership of lands became so involved by death that the number of lawyers increased by leaps and bounds. In one district the number of wills for probate rose from 22 to 222 in a single year.

One circumstance is cited as a great boon. Fecundity in women became
most pronounced, and the birth rate began to increase as soon as the Black Death had passed. Twins and even triplets became almost commonplace. Thus, according to medical authorities who had shown a complete ignorance about everything else, did nature find a remedy for the evils of the plague.

T
HROUGH all these years of strife the king had one aide on whom he could always depend, his cousin, Henry of Lancaster. This nobleman was not only a fine soldier but a man of great courage, honesty, and tolerance; a scholar of sorts, moreover, and deeply religious. Having raised him to the rank of duke, Edward sent this cousin on a mission to Avignon in 1353 to discuss with Pope Innocent VI the possibility of a lasting peace between England and France.

The duke had two hundred men-at-arms in his party, and when he arrived on Christmas Eve he was met by such a host of churchmen and soldiers, not to mention curious townspeople, that it was difficult to cross the bridge into the papal city. Lancaster had seen the need to make friends and, with a prodigality worthy of Edward himself, had ordered that one hundred casks of wine be ready in the building he was to make his headquarters. After seven weeks of fruitless discussion, there was nothing left in any of them but a hollow sound.

The first impression gained of Avignon by this urbane ambassador was that the term “Babylonish captivity” was a complete misnomer. It should have been called the “French captivity,” for the papal court at Avignon was overrun with Frenchmen. There were French cardinals everywhere he turned, favoring him with sharp looks out of the corners of their eyes and questioning him to find what he proposed to say to the pontiff. French officials of all kinds were doing the same with the members of his train. Outside there were French architects, French builders, French sculptors, French merchants of Eastern goods, all trying to get their share of the enormous wealth which had been left by John XXII, so much of which had already been spent on the Palace of the Popes.

“Peace?” said Innocent VI. “That will depend on the terms you bring me.”

BATTLE OF POICTIERS 1356

Innocent was a man of impartial and judicial mind, although he had been born Étienne Aubert at Mons in Limousin. He wanted above everything to stop the war, but he knew the temper of French royalty too well to see any chance when he heard the terms that Edward was proposing: to give up his claim to the throne of France in return for having his possessions in that country confirmed to him in full sovereignty. The wise Pope knew this would not be acceptable, so it was clear from the start that the mission would not succeed.

The popes at Avignon had all been Frenchmen, and all of them, even the present incumbent with his real desire to be impartial, had found it necessary to favor the French cause. The miraculous victories won by the English had begun to suggest to quizzical and irreverent minds that the Lord on high was not in accord with His vicar on earth. The court at Avignon, where rumor and tattle were always rife, had fallen into the habit of discussing this in sly whispers. Even bits of doggerel were coined and passed from ear to ear. One of these was current when Lancaster paid his visit. A translation into English runs as follows:

The only result was that at Avignon Lancaster met Charles, the King of Navarre. The Navarrese king was young but he had already earned the name of Charles the Bad. It was well deserved, for Charles of Navarre was crafty, unscrupulous, cruel, and notoriously unfaithful in affairs of the heart. Although he was married to Joan, a daughter of the King of France, he was on the worst of terms with that monarch. His royal cousin, he informed Lancaster, meaning his father-in-law, had an eye on his possessions in Normandy which were strategically important. He proposed to the English ambassador an alliance between England and Navarre, with a promise on his part to join any army of invasion they sent into France. This alliance was confirmed later.

In the meantime King Philip had died, with no one to lament his passing. He had not been a success as a king; a glum, proud, and bitterly suspicious figure, whose defeat at Crécy had left France prostrate. He had been succeeded by his son John, who is known in history as John the Good for no visible reason except perhaps his personal bravery in battle. Otherwise he was credulous, vain, and cruel, and with all the incapacity to rule wisely which his father had displayed. One of his first acts was to behead the constable of France, a brave and loyal man named Raoul, Count of Eu. The new king showed Raoul a letter and demanded to know if he had ever seen it before. When the constable protested he knew
nothing about it, the king cried, “Ha, wicked traitor, you have well deserved death!” So the constable went to the block without the formality of a trial and not knowing what the letter had contained.

John, it seems, liked only one man in his train, a naturalized Castilian called Charles of Spain. When he gave to this favorite some of the Norman properties of Charles of Navarre, the latter had the Castilian murdered in his bed. This led at once to hostilities.