POLITICAL HISTORY 



Black Death, to be more rigidly exacted if the land was to be tilled and the 

 crops gathered at all. This was the grievance against the lords and squires.^ 



Thirdly the great dislike felt by the common people to the extortions 

 and oppressions of certain religious houses. 



Lastly but not least,^ trade jealousy felt against the Flemings, who had 

 come over to the county not long before, and the countryman's jealousy 

 against the special privileges granted by the king to the cities. We have 

 already seen that as early as i 3 1 2 there was an organized system of terrorism 

 in Norwich, so that foreign merchants had ceased to resort to the city, and in 

 I 371 the king's writ in favour of the Flemings no doubt gave great offence 

 to the manufacturers. From the entries on pp. 32, 36, 61, 63, and 135 of 

 Mr. Powell's Rising in East Anglia, it is clear that the rebels here lost no 

 opportunity of murdering any Flemish who came in their way. Stow also 

 in his Annals * speaks of the rioters in London fetching out thirteen Flemings 

 from the Augustine Friars in London, seventeen out of another church, and 

 thirty-two from the Vintry, all of whom they beheaded. 



Probably any one or two of these four causes would not have sufficed to 

 raise so formidable a rebellion as this, but all four fomented at once by men 

 of ability formed a mixed yeast strong enough to make the whole country 

 rise. Mr. Powell suggests* that Richard II himself was ready to use the 

 popular discontent against his uncle, the duke of Lancaster, and there was- 

 certainly a widespread belief in the king's complicity.^ The most mysterious, 

 part of the whole business is that men like Sir Roger Bacon of Baconsthorpe 

 and Thomas de Gissing should have actively led the Norfolk insurgents. Roger 

 Bacon was the grandson of the Thomas Bacon of Baconsthorpe (nephew, it 

 is thought, of the ' Resolute Doctor ') who had adhered to the earl of 

 Lancaster and had been pardoned in 131 3, and who had a hand in the death 

 of Piers Gaveston. Thomas de Gissing was son of Sir Thomas de Gissing, 

 M.P. for Norfolk, who was one of the Black Prince's force in Aquitaine. 

 Neither of these was likely to espouse the cause of the peasants without 

 some good cause. 



So much for the causes of the rebellion. We will now proceed to 

 describe it. 



Though Geoffrey le Litester was the nominal head of the rebels, it 

 seems that the task of riding round from 14 to 21 June, 1381, from 

 village to village, making proclamations in his name for all men to rise in 

 arms, was allotted to John Gentilhomme and Richard Filmond, both of 

 Buxton.* The first blow was struck 16 June at a manor house of the duke 

 of Lancaster at Methwold, where his court rolls were burned. The next 

 day, under the command of Sir Roger Lister^ (it is strange we see nothing of 



1 It should be remembered that little more than twenty years before there had been a similar peasants' 

 insurrection in France. 



' It is noticeable that no less than six men of the name of Lister (a dyer) were implicated in this 

 rebellion, and there is no reason to suppose that they were related. 



' Stow, Annals (Howes), 288. * Rising in East Anglia, 59. 



' In Hertfordshire the rebels displayed a standard emblazoned with the royal arms. Coram Rege 

 Roll 482, cited by Powell. 



' Powell (op. cit 27) cites Anct. Indictments, i2 8,Norf South Erpingham Hundred. Buxton is a village 

 on the Bure — one of the Rye manors, and was then held by Thomas Lord Morley, afterwards captain-general 

 of the forces in France, 141 6, who took an active part in suppressing the rebellion. 



' Is it possible that confusion arose between Sir Roger Bacon and Lister ? 



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