POLITICAL HISTORY 



refused to send it unless they would pay the cost, in which case he pro- 

 mised four hundred lances. The Duke of Lancaster also, who was now 

 playing the part of Achilles sulking in his tent, left the castle of 

 Pevensey undefended, and when urged to send a force there said, ' Let 

 them destroy it to the foundations, I have power to rebuild it again.' ' 

 This treacherous supineness of the local lords was again displayed in 

 1380, when the French made a successful attack on Winchelsea, driving 

 back the Abbot of Battle, who had again come gallantly to its defence, 

 capturing one of his monks and burning the town. On this occasion 

 not only did the Earl of Arundel fail to render the assistance he could 

 have given, but he prevented those, his inferiors in power but superiors 

 in valour, who would have gone to the rescue.^ Judging from his later 

 success as admiral we may acquit the Earl of cowardice, but must con- 

 clude that he was guilty of acting from deliberate selfish policy in the 

 interests of the Duke of Lancaster, who was at this time in treasonable 

 correspondence with the enemy ,^ and whose designs may be conjectured 

 from the statement of one of the French wounded left behind after the 

 engagement at Rottingdean, that if John of Gaunt had been King of 

 England there would have been no French raids.* Nor was the 

 treachery of the nobles the only cause of weakness in the defence of the 

 coast, for the numbers of the Commons had been terribly reduced by 

 the devastations of the Black Death in 1349, and the two later out- 

 breaks of plague in 1361 and 1366, so much so indeed that nine town- 

 ships on the sea coast within the rape of Pevensey which had formerly 

 been of great assistance in repelling invasions became desolate and 

 uninhabited.^ 



The social condition of the peasantry at this time will be dealt 

 with elsewhere," but the corruption and incapability of the government 

 and the burden of taxation and especially of the inquisitorial impost of 

 the poll-tax are in themselves causes sufficient to explain the great rising 

 of June I 38 I . This began in Kent and almost simultaneously in Essex, 

 and rapidly spread to the neighbouring districts, Sussex and Bedford 

 being mentioned by Froissart as the other counties which took a leading 

 part in the movement ; and this is confirmed by the appearance of 

 Sussex as one of the five sources of the insurgents who destroyed the 

 Savoy and murdered the Chancellor.' Few details of the rising in 

 Sussex have been preserved, but they are sufficient to show that it 

 possessed the usual features of being directed against the great spiritual 

 and lay lords and especially against the Duke of Lancaster. Thus, the 

 Abbot of St. Alban's farm buildings at Coombes were burnt down,* and 

 the insurgents broke into the Earl of Arundel's castle of Lewes and 

 destroyed the windows and gates and wrecked the buildings, burning 

 rent-rolls and other muniments and appropriating ten casks of wine." 



1 Chron. Anglics a Mon. Sancti Albani (Rolls Ser.), 167-9. ^ ^^^^- ^7°- 



3 Ibid. 278. * Ibid. 168. 6 Mins. Accts. 71 17. 



« See section on ' Social and Economic History.' ' Pat. 4 Ric. II. p. 3, m. 4d. 

 B Gesta Abbatum (RoUs Ser.), iii. 363. » Pat. 6 Ric. II. p. 2, m. iid. 



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