Parliament was summoned in September 1399 because King Richard II had been deposed by his cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, the eldest son of John of Gaunt. Parliament unanimously accepted the 33 articles of deposition on 1 October and a fortnight later Henry IV was crowned king. Effectively, Henry used parliament to validate his actions and to give authority to his reign. Of course one of the difficulties was that Richard had already by deposed so there was technically no monarch to open the so called Convention Parliament which was then recalled after the 13th October in the name of Henry IV.
Parliament increasingly recognised that it held the right to withhold new taxes. It used this power to withhold funds until it got what it wanted from the monarch and in 1414, the Commons successfully ensured that it was them rather than the Lords who held the power in voting taxes for the king or not. By the time Henry V died in 1422 there could be no taxation and no new laws without parliamentary agreement, and more importantly it was the Commons who wielded the stronger power.
As the fifteenth century progressed Parliament was often used to pass acts of attainder against either the Yorkist or Lancastrian nobility depending which side was in the ascendent and by kings to justify why they should be on the throne. The monarchy was still powerful but because of the challenges it faced during the fifteenth century parliament was growing in importance and felt more able to challenge the king, even if he was still on the throne by Divine Right. King’s validated their rule through acts of Parliament and by using acts of attainder to punish men who fought against them.
The Black Death illustrated in the Toggenburg Bible – the plague of boils.
Up until now this series has explored the king’s relationship with his barons and elite members of society. In this post, medieval peasants finally find the lever they needed for change to happen – they died in droves…
But first a reminder. Medieval society worked on the premises of feudalism – the king sits at the apex, he owns everything. In return for land, the barons swear fealty to the king – this means that they will be loyal to him and provide him with troops and a variety of feudal dues. The barons sub-let their land to their own men. These lesser nobles and knights swear loyalty to the baron who gives them parcels of land. Knights and lesser nobility offer military service and loyalty to their overlords. At the bottom of the pyramid, the peasants work the land in return for protection, food, justice and shelter. Some of them are free men. They pay the lord of the manor rent and feudal dues.
Another group of peasants, approximately 40% of them, are villeins. In return for some land of their own, they have to work for the lord and are not free to leave the arrangement if they become dissatisfied. They are tied to the manor where they were born and raised. In addition to working for the lord of the manor all peasant are obliged to pay all manner of feudal dues, fees and fines. For instance, a villein needs his lord’s permission for his daughters to get married or for any of his family to leave their village. They are also required to pay fines to inherit their family lands and rights after the senior member of their family dies – in much the same way that the heirs of barons have to pay fines to enter into their inheritances.
Essentially a villein was somewhere between a freeman and a slave – remember that the Normans did not have slaves – I’m just using slavery as an example to demonstrate where villeins sat in the social order i.e. at the bottom of feudal society. The words villein and serf are often used interchangeably. It was possible to become a freeman by paying for freedom if you could save enough money or else villeins who ran away to a town and who remained free for a year and a day could not be forced to return to their former lord.
Magna Carta, the Provisions of Oxford and the parliaments of Simon De Montfort, Henry III and Edward I offered nothing to the peasants. They were in no position to make demands of their lords.
Things changed in 1348 when the Black Death, or bubonic plague, arrived on English shores. It is estimated that a third of Britain’s population died. It originated in China during the 1300s and was carried to Europe by merchant vessels. It arrived in England in June 1348 and moved north, infecting Wales and Scotland as it went. The Scots were initially delighted with the epidemic’s effects and thought that they could use the opportunity to invade England – which was, perhaps, something of an error. The first wave of the Black Death in Britain lasted until about 1350.
After the plague came famine and even more death. Harvests were bad not only because there weren’t enough peasants to look after the fields but because of changing climate which caused a so-called Little Ice Age during the fourteenth century. Many chroniclers thought that the end of the world was on its way.
Wharram Percy, to the north of York, is probably the best known example of a medieval deserted village in the country. The lord of Wharram Percy died when the plague had reached Yorkshire, in 1349. A third of the village died with him. Records show that the new lord of the manor was a minor and that only 45 people survived. The village never really recovered. It continued to shrink throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. There are many other examples of deserted medieval villages around the country – though not all of the depopulation was because of the Black Death, some of it was because farming methods changed – sheep farming was not so labour intensive.
The shortage of labour after the Black Death changed the relationships between the peasants and landowners and it also changed preferred farming methods – sheep became more common, landlords such as the Duchy of Lancaster in Derbyshire chose to rent its land to tenants rather than continuing to be the ‘farmer’ – there were fewer risks that way.
Peasants who survived, both freemen and villeins, often sought new lives for themselves away from the manors that their forefathers had been tied to. Landowners began to offer better wages and conditions. This was called commutation- or the replacement of one form of payment with another. It meant the substitution of wages for labour rather than the previous feudal practices of land and protection.
The Pastons, a famous medieval family from Norfolk, began their story as villeins. Clement Paston was born in about 1350. By the end of his life he was a free man – he was able to work for wages and no lord of the manor could dictate the manner by which he lived his life. He purchased land that had belonged to men who died from the plague, on the strength of his landholdings he was able to have his son William educated. William Paston eventually became a lawyer and then a judge. His wife, Agnes, was the daughter of a knight. Their eldest son, John Paston, became an MP and held Caister Castle. By the 1470s Clement’s grandsons were knighted and part of the royal household. This would have been unthinkable before 1348. Freedom from feudal bondage gave men the chance to rise.
It didn’t take long for the barons and the king to recognise the dangers of the feudal pyramid losing its base or the problems of peasants trying to improve their lives and positions in society. During 1349, an Ordinance of Labourers was issued. This became the Statute of Labourers in 1351 and fixed wages at pre-plague rates. It also determined that villeins must remain on the manor where they were tied. It proved an ineffective law. The Black Death was not responsible for the start of the change in method of payment but the plague did speed up the process of commutation and the decline of feudalism. Be warned though that not all historians agree about the extent to which feudalism declined because of the Black Death.
Once the changes began, peasants were often able to improve their living conditions and their status. In 1363 a Sumptuary Law was passed that shows the extent to which the elite were becoming alarmed by the changes going on all around them. The act decreed the quality and colour of cloth that people at different levels of society (below the nobility) could wear. It also tried to limit what ordinary people could eat. The law was impossible to enforce, but it is useful to show that for the ordinary men and women who survived the plague there was the potential of wealth from higher wages and from holding the lands of their neighbours who had died from the plague.
So I had a nice cup of tea and a think – this is the result!
Both Magna Carta and the Great Reform Act of 1832 were landmarks in the development of democracy. Both Magna Carta and the Great Reform Act did give more people a say in the decision making process. However, in the case of Magna Carta it was only the barons and the Church who benefited from the 63 clauses that sought to limit the king’s power. In the case of the Great Reform Act, it was the wealthy middle classes who benefitted – only 1 in 7 men received the vote after 1832. The working classes were excluded from the plebiscite. Â
In both cases, the changes were a response to years of criticism about the way the system operated.  In the case of Magna Carta the barons had come to distrust King John who misused feudal dues such as scutage, the entry of heirs to their estates, and the remarriage of widows as well as other taxation to extort money from his barons, all of which is reflected in the clauses of the charter.  In addition he imprisoned  men or their families without trial and confiscated their land without redress to the law.  Infamously, in 1210 he imprisoned Matilda de Braose and her son and left them to starve to death in Corfe Castle when her husband William fell from power. Magna Carta sought to bring royal abuses to an end, limit the number of taxes levied and ensure that the barons had access to judgement according to the laws of the land administered by men qualified to be judges and juries of their equals.  New taxes were not to be levied unless they were agreed by the important men of the kingdom beforehand.  Clause 61 wanted to ensure that a council of 25 barons could monitor the king’s behaviour.  The charter limited royal power in some ways, brought greater freedom and justice the barons but it did not change the lives of the vast majority of England’s population who continued to labour in a feudal society. What it did was introduce the concept of ‘every man’ and ‘free men’ as well as the ideas of habeas corpus exemplified in clauses 39 and 40 of the charter and which are still enshrined in British law today.
 In the case of the Great Reform Act of 1832, there had been many years of criticism about the electoral system which was neither fair nor representative, a bill passed in 1831 by the House of Commons was rejected by the lords and the Tory prime minister, the Duke of Wellington. As a consequence there were riots across the country.  In some ways  the discontent and its longevity were a reminder of the discontent prior to the First Barons War and certainly an echo of fears experienced by Britain’s elite associated with the French Revolution of 1789. The Reform Act which became law a year after the riots sought to reform electoral abuses. It removed rotten boroughs, like Old Sarum, which only had a few voters but two MPS, increased the number of constituencies to reflect the change in population in places like Manchester and Birmingham which previously had no representation and extended the franchise to men who held land worth more than £10 a year. This included tenant farmers, small land holders and shopkeepers – so that more people had a say.
Like Magna Carta, the Reform Act was also significant for what did not change.  Only 1 in 7 men were allowed to vote because of the land holding qualification. Women were formally excluded as voters were now defined as being male. The vote was still not a secret which meant that men could still be intimidated or their votes brought (voting only became secret in 1872 with the passing of the Ballot Act).  Just as Magna Carta did not answer the needs of everyone and King John’s son, King Henry III, failed to abide by the charter leading to further resentment among the aristocracy and the Second Barons War, so the working classes were denied the franchise by the 1832 Reform Act. This led to further unrest and the growth of the Chartist movement during the late 1830s and more demands for reform.
Note for any G.C.S.E. students – plebiscite is a really good word for this unit of study – it means the direct vote of all the members of the electorate. Franchise – the right to vote.
Part of the GCSE syllabus is a module focusing on power and the people. We tend to think of Magna Carta as our starting point but nothing happens in a vacuum, so without getting too carried away we need to head back to 2 August 1100. William Rufus, the king of England is hunting in the New Forest. After a rather rocky relationship with his elder brother, Robert Curthose, Duke of Normandy, the two brothers have come to an agreement. If one dies the other will inherit his throne. Unfortunately for Curthose, when Rufus has a hunting accident on the 2 August, it’s their younger brother Henry who is on the scene.
Henry dashes off to Winchester, leaving William’s body where it lays, in order to secure the royal treasury. Three days later he is crowned King of England. Curthose is still on his way back from the crusades, having stopped en route to marry Sybilla of Conversano, a wealthy heiress whose dowry will go some way to paying his debts. (Curthose was eventually beaten by Henry at the Battle of Tinchbray in 1106 and spent the rest of his life in captivity. He’s buried in Gloucester Cathedral.)
Henry has claimed the throne but now he needs to keep it.
King Henry I’s hold on the throne relies on the support of the Church and his barons. In order to bind them to him he issues a coronation charter, sometimes called the Charter of Liberties, that promises the church and individuals certain rights. Henry was an admirer of Edward the Confessor, he sought to make Edward’s law the common law of England (with a Norman firm hand) and to tell his new subjects that he was returning to the ways of his own father – ie he would be a strong king and there would be peace in the realm…or else. But that also the corruption of William Rufus were at an end. Henry was promising a return to the good old days.
Of course, Henry ignored his own coronation charter but the point had been made and the promises it contained would be the precedent for Magna Carta. King’s after Henry issued similar coronation charters to Henry I. His successor, King Stephen issued a similar ‘deal’ between king, people and Church. A copy can be found at Exeter Cathedral.
Key words: coronation charter, Charter of Liberties
