The English Peasant. Richard Ford Heath
young prince England has possessed since the Conquest. That the reign of Edward the Sixth commenced more wickedly than that of Rehoboam was due to the rabid greediness of the new aristocracy. "Covetousness," as Gilpin told the King, "had brought the nation to such a pass that every man scraped and pilled from others, every man would suck the blood of others, every man encroached upon another;" and of the truth of this, there was no more flagrant example than that given by the men who, at Henry the Eighth's death, seized on power, helping themselves to great titles and to the public wealth.
It is a fact that ought not to be hid, because it throws a flood of light on the present condition of England, that the same authority that gave this country the Common Prayer Book enacted the most atrocious law against its Poor that has ever disgraced the Statute Book.
By the 1 Edward VI., c. 3, Men or Women able to work, and who lived idly for three days, were to be branded with a red-hot iron on the breast with a letter V, and to be slaves for two years to the informer. The master was to feed his slave with bread and water, with small drink, and such refuse meat as he thought proper, and to cause his slave to work by beating, chaining, or otherwise, in any work or labour however vile it might be. If the slave ran away from his master for the space of fourteen days he was to be his slave for life, and to be branded on the forehead or cheek with the letter S; if he ran away a second time he was to suffer pains of death as a felon. The master could put a ring of iron on the neck, arm, or leg of his slave; he could sell, bequeath, or let out his slave after the like sort or manner he might do with any other of his movable goods or chattels. Any attempt to maim or wound such masters or mistresses either during or after the time of slavery, or any conspiracy to burn their houses or corn was to be deemed felony unless some person would take such offender as a slave for ever.
Any child above five years and under fourteen, found wandering with or without such vagabonds, might be seized by any person, and being taken before a justice of the peace, could be adjudged the servant or apprentice of the apprehender; if a girl until twenty years of age, if a boy until twenty-four; and if such child ran away he was to be treated as a slave, and punished with irons, or otherwise.
Well might the pious young king clasp his hands, and lift up his eyes to heaven, at the response in the Order for Daily Prayer: "O Lord, save Thy people!"
Robbed of their wages, and reduced to semi-serfdom by the Statutes of Labourers; robbed of their legal provision in unforeseen distress, or unprotected old age, by the confiscation of Church property for the benefit of the aristocracy; robbed by the commercial greed of the new gentry of their little farms and of the common land, the English poor were met by an atrocious law which condemned all who did not yield submissively to their fate to feel the hot iron plough into their own breasts, and into those of their wives and children, to be reduced to the vilest form of slavery, and to find no relief except in a felon's doom.
Such wrongs could only be met by insurrection, and the people rose in the East, and in the West, and in the Midland counties. The rulers of England, the men who had done the people these horrible wrongs, now maintained their power by the aid of Italian and German mercenaries, scourges of whom the German proverb said, "Rather the Turk than the Landsknecht."
Let anyone read the story of the rebellion of the Peasants in Norfolk, as given by Holingshed, whose sympathies may be judged from the fact that he describes his poor countrymen as "vile wretches and cruel traitors " for slaying an Italian mercenary; and such reader must be very blind, or prejudiced, if he does not see that the Norfolk men had a better cause than any that English troops were ever employed to defend; and that these 16,000 "ungratious unthrifts," conducted the struggle with admirable order, and displayed at last an obstinate gallantry worthy of the Highlanders at Waterloo.
The insurgents demanded a removal of the King's evil councillors, a prohibition of enclosures, and a redress of the wrongs of the poor. They associated three or four middle class persons of approved respectability (one was the Mayor of Norwich,) with Robert Ket, their leader, and gave them a certain obedience as representatives of the King, whom throughout they professed to serve. They had also for chaplain the Vicar of St. Mary's, in Norwich, who offered up prayers morning and evening that they might have prosperous speed. Preaching went on every day from the Oak of Reformation, and the insurgents even listened to preachers who tried to induce them to give up their enterprise. They had a small parliament of their own, two deputies being chosen from every hundred, twenty-six different hundreds being represented. Contributions were levied on the gentry in the neighbourhood after the manner of more orthodox armies, they manacled some of the more unpopular gentlemen and put them in prison, and took possession of Norwich, where they had many friends.
Parr, Marquis of Northampton, was sent against them; but though he got into Norwich, they defeated him and his Italians, and in the melée Lord Suffield was slain. At last the Earl of Warwick, the most unscrupulous of the whole set of adventurers who called themselves the King's Council, came down to Norwich with a thousand German landsknechts in his army. He got possession of Norwich, but could hardly keep it, the people constantly getting in and slaying his men. For three days the fighting was desperate; he meanwhile killing his prisoners, and sending herald after herald to offer pardon to all who would lay down their arms. This the Peasantry obstinately refused to do, not trusting the herald's word. At last they risked all on a pitched battle, and were defeated, 2,000, according to King Edward, being slain. The remainder entrenched themselves and determined to die fighting. Warwick sent heralds again and again, but they would not believe them; at last he offered to come himself and pledge his word. Then, and then only, these sturdy rebels threw down their arms.
Warwick, we suppose, hung none of this final batch of prisoners, but of the others he choose nine of the leaders to be hanged on the Oak of Reformation. Forty-five others were drawn, hanged, and quartered in the market-place at Norwich, and their quarters exposed to inspire terror. Robert Ket, the leader, was hanged in chains on the top of Norwich Castle, and his brother on the top of Wymondham steeple; these high places being no doubt chosen for the same reason. Altogether three hundred persons are said to have been executed. Some would have persuaded Warwick to put to death a great number more, but he replied, "What shall we then do? hold the plough ourselves, play the carters, and labour the ground with our own hands?"
The annals of the Poor are nearly always lost or distorted. They have no friendly scribes to chronicle their doings, but what comes down to posterity, even when honest, is full of misconception through want of sympathy. Thus the chroniclers of the Norfolk insurrection leave unexplained its suddenness, its unity of purpose, its order, its persistent courage, above all its religiousness. Holingshed gives us a hint when he tells us that they were misled by "certain vain prophets which they had among them." And again, that of the nine hung on the Oak of Reformation two were prophets. This word prophets leads us back to the preachers of the Gospel of the Poor, who with hardly an exception were believers in the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It was the time when Anabaptist doctrine was held by thousands of the poor in Holland and Germany. Their preachers were ardent propagandists, travelling over Europe to disseminate their doctrine. We have several records of Dutchmen arrested in England, some of whom were burnt for Anabaptist opinions. East Anglia, from its traditional connection with the Low Countries, was exactly the place to which they were most likely to come, and the poor disinherited sons of toil would be just the men to whom they would communicate their message, and by whom it would be received.
The immediate result of this insurrection and of those in other parts of England was the repeal of the atrocious law against so-called vagabonds and their children, passed in the first year of Edward VI., and a return to the more gentle legislation of which Henry VIII. was himself the author.[3]
What that tenderness was may be judged from the fact that Harrison in his description of England tells us that during Henry the Eighth's reign 72,000 great and petty thieves were put to death! This heroic surgery, however, did not extirpate the disease. It recommenced and became worse than ever. The same Chronicle tells us that in Elizabeth's reign rogues were trussed up apace, and there was not one year commonly wherein 300 or 400 of them were not devoured and eaten up by the gallows in one place or another. Adding to these numbers those who suffered under the reigns of Henry VII., Edward VI., and Mary, there can hardly have