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- Herausgeber: Charles River Editors
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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THE STORY OF LIBERTY
Charles Carleton Coffin
PAPHOS PUBLISHERS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2015 by Charles Carleton Coffin
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
JOHN LACKLAND AND THE BARONS
THE MAN WHO PREACHED AFTER HE WAS DEAD
THE FIRE THAT WAS KINDLED IN BOHEMIA
WHAT LAURENCE COSTER AND JOHN GUTENBERG DID FOR LIBERTY
THE MEN WHO ASKS QUESTIONS
HOW A MAN TRIED TO REACH THE EAST BY SAILING WEST
THE NEW HOME OF LIBERTY
A BOY WHO OBJECTED TO MARRYING HIS BROTHER’S WIDOW
THE MAN WHO CAN DO NO WRONG
THE BOY WHO SUNG FOR HIS BREAKFAST
WHAT THE BOY WHO SUNG FOR HIS BREAKFAST SAW IN ROME
THE BOY – CARDINAL
THE BOY – EMPEROR
THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD
THE MEN WHO OBEYS ODERS
PLANS THAT DID NOT COME TO PASS
THE MAN WHO SPLIT THE CHURCH IN TWAIN
THE QUEEN WHO BURNED HERETICS
HOW LIBERTY BEGAN IN FRANCE
THE MAN WHO FILLED THE WORLD WITH WOE
PROGRESS OF LIBERTY IN ENGLAND
HOW THE POPE PUT DOWN THE HERETICS
THE QUEEN OF SCOTS
ST. BARTHOLOMEW
HOW THE “BEGGARS” FOUGHT FOR THEIR RIGHTS
WHY THE QUEEN OF SCOTLAND LOST HER HEAD
THE RETRIBUTION THAT FOLLOWED CRIME
WILLIAM BREWSTER AND HIS FRIENDS
THE STAR OF EMPIRE
THE HALF-MOON
STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS
The Story of Liberty
By Charles Carleton Coffin
JOHN LACKLAND AND THE BARONS
AT THE TIME WHEN THIS story begins there is very little liberty in the world. It is the 15th of June, and the grass is fresh and green in the Runnymede meadow, where the Army of God has set up its encampment. No other army like it was ever seen. All the great men of England are in its ranks—the barons and lord’s, the owners of castles who ride on noble horses, wear coats of mail, and are armed with swords and lances.
Pavilions and tents dot the meadow; flags and banners wave in the summer air; General Fitzwalter is commander. There is no hostile army near at hand, nor will there be any clashing of arms on this 15th of June, and yet before the sun goes down the Army of God will win a great victory over the King of England, John Lackland, who is in Windsor Castle, which overlooks the meadow from the south side of the river Thames, which comes down from the north-west and sweeps on to London.
The king is called John Lackland because his father did not deed him any land. His brother was Richard Coeur de Lion—the lion-hearted—who was brave, but also wicked and cruel. Be commanded the Crusaders, and fought the Saracens under Saladin, in Palestine. One day he told his cook to have some fresh pork for dinner, but the cook had no pork, nor did he know where to find a pig. He was in trouble, for if there was no pork on the table he would stand a chance of having his head chopped off. He had heard it said, however, that human flesh tasted like port:. Knowing that no pork was to be had, he killed a Saracen prisoner and cooked some of the flesh and placed it on the table.
The king praised the dinner. Perhaps, however, he mistrusted that it was not pork, for, said Richard, “Bring in the head of the pig, that I may see it.”
The poor cook knew not what to do. Now he certainly would have his head cut off. With much trembling he brought in the head of the Saracen. The king laughed when he saw it.
“We shall not want for pork as long as we have sixty thousand prisoners,” he said, not in the least disturbed to know that he had been eating human flesh. The Saracen general—Saladin—sent thirty ambassadors to Richard beseeching him not to put the prisoners to death. Richard gave them an entertainment, and instead of ornamenting the banquet with flowers, he had thirty Saracens killed, and their heads placed on the table. Instead of acceding to the request of Saladin, he had the sixty thousand men, women, and children slaughtered out on the plain east of the city of Acre.
“Tell your master that after such a fashion the Christians wage war against infidels,” said Richard to the ambassadors. Kings did as they pleased, but for everybody else there was no liberty.
When Richard died, John seized all his money, jewels, and the throne, pretending that Richard had made it will in his favor. John’s older brother, Geoffrey, who was heir to the throne, was dead; but Geoffrey had a son, Arthur, whose right to the throne was as good as John’s. Arthur was a boy, while John was thirty-two years old. The uncle seized Arthur, and put him into a dungeon in the Tower in London, and ordered the keeper, Hubert do Burgh, to put Arthur’s eyes out with a red-hot iron. Shakespeare has pictured the scene when Hubert entered one morning and showed Arthur his uncle’s order:
“Arth.Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?
Hub.Young boy, I must.
Arth. And will you?
Hub. And I will.
Arth. Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,
I knit my handkerchief about your brows,
(The best I had, a princess wrought it me),
And I did never ask it you again
And with my hand at midnight held your head;
And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,
Still and anon cheer’d up the heavy time
Saving, What lack you? and Where lies your grief?
Or, What good love may I perform for you?
Many a poor man’s son would have lain still,
And ne’er have spoke a loving word to you;
But you at your sick service had a prince.
Nay, you may think my love was crafty love,
And call it cunning; Do, an if you will:
If Heaven be pleased that you must use me ill,
Why, then you must.—Will you put out mine eyes?
These eyes that never did, nor never shall,
So much as frown on you?
Hub.I have sworn to do it.
And with hot irons must I burn them out.”
But he did not. Arthur was so affectionate and kind that Hubert had not the heart to do it. It is not certainly known what became of Arthur, but that John had him murdered is most probable.
Before John seized the throne, he married a girl named Avisa, daughter of the Duke of Gloucester; but afterward he saw Isabella, wife of Count La Marche, in Normandy, and deserting Avisa, persuaded the foolish woman to leave her husband and marry him. When the count and his friends flew to arms, he seized them, took them over to England, thrust them into loathsome dungeons, and starved them to death, while he lived in affluence in the castle at Windsor.
There were rich Jews in London and Bristol, and John coveted their money. He seized them.
“Give up your money, or I will have your teeth palled, every one of them,” said he. Most of them gave up their money; but one man resisted. “Pull a tooth,” said the king. The tooth was pulled.
“Will you give up your money?”
“No”
“Pull another.” Out came another tooth.
“Will you comply with the king’s demands?”
“No.”
“Pull ‘em all out.” Out they came.
“Will you hand over your money?”
“No.”
“Then seize it; take all.” So the poor man lost his teeth, and his money also.
John commanded the country people to drive their cattle into camp, and supply his soldiers with food. The people in Wales, however, would not obey, whereupon he seized twenty-eight sons of the chief families, and shut them up in prison. That stirred the Welshmen’s blood, and they flew to arms; but John, instead of giving up the young men, put them to death. He is a tyrant. The barons and lords have resolved that they will no longer submit to Iris tyranny. They have organized themselves into an army, calling themselves the “Army of God.” A few months ago, they sent a deputation to the king, stating their demands.
“I will not grant them liberties which will make me a slave,” he said, swearing terrible oaths.
There is no liberty for anybody, except for this wicked and cruel tyrant. But his answer only makes the barons more determined. They resolve that if the king will not grant what they ask, they will secure it by the sword.
John can swear terrible oaths, and make a great bluster; but he is a coward, as all blusterers are, and turns pale when he finds that the Army of God is marching to seize him. He sends word to the barons that he will meet them at Runnymede on the 15th of June, and grant what they desire. The barons have written out their demands on parchment. They will have them in writing, and the agreement shall be the law of the land.
John rides down from the Castle, accompanied by a cavalcade, through Windsor forest, where the deer are feeding, and where pheasants are building their nests, and meets the barons on all island in the river. He is so frightened that he does not ask the barons to make any modification of their demands, but grants what they desire. A great piece of beeswax, as large as a saucer, and an inch thick, is stamped with John’s seal, and attached to the parchment; then the king rides back to the Castle, moody and gloomy; but as soon as he gets inside the fortress, he rages like a madman, walks the hall, smiting his fists, rolling his eyes, gnashing his teeth, biting sticks and chewing straws, cursing the barons, and swearing that he will have his revenge. What is this document to which the king’s seal has been attached? It is a paper establishing a Great Council, composed of the barons, the archbishops, bishops, and earls, whom the king is to summon from time to time by name, and the lesser barons, who are to be summoned by the sheriffs of the counties. Together, they are to be a Parliament. Hereafter the king shall not levy any taxes that he may please, or compel people to drive their cattle into camp; but Parliament shall say what taxes shall be levied. The barons may choose twenty-five of their number, who shall see that the provisions of the agreement are carried out. Another agreement is that no freeman shall be punished till after he has had a trial by his equals. There are other stipulations, but these are the most important. The agreement is called the Magna Charta, or Great Charter.
John Lackland plans his revenge. There is a powerful man in Rome, the most powerful man on earth, who will aid him—Pope Innocent III. He claims to be, and the barons and everybody else regard him as God’s representative on earth. He has all power. The people have been taught to believe that He is the only individual in the world who has the right to say what men shall believe and what they shall do, and that he can do no wrong; that what he says is right is right. He is superior to all kings and emperors. Just after the great battle of Hastings, which was fought in October, 1066, Pope Gregory VII made these declarations:
“To the Pope belongs the right of making new laws.
“All the princes of the earth shall kiss his feet.
“He has the right of deposing emperors.
“The sentence of the Pope can be revoked by none.
“He can be judged by none.
“None may dare to pronounce sentence upon any one who appeals to the Pope.
“He never has erred, nor can he ever err.
“He can lose subjects from the oath of fealty.
“The Pope is holy. He can do no wrong.”
John has already humiliated himself before the Pope, and acknowledged him as his superior in everything. He sends a copy of the Charter, that the Pope may read it, begging to be released from keeping his oath.
The Pope is very angry when he reads the Charter, for he sees that it encroaches upon his authority, taking political affairs out of his hands. He swears a terrible oath that the barons shall be punished for daring to take such liberties. He releases John from his oath, and sends word to the barons that if they do not renounce the Charter he will excommunicate them. The barons are not frightened, however, and send back this reply:
“It is not the Pope’s business to meddle with the political affairs or the rights and liberties of Englishmen.”
The Pope excommunicates them, and aids John in stirring up the people to fight the barons. He excommunicates the Archbishop of Canterbury, the highest prelate in England, who officiates in Canterbury Cathedral, and who sides with them. The barons, seeing that the Pope and John together are too strong for them, offer the crown to Lewis, son of the King of France. The French king is quite willing to send an army to help them. John marches along the sea-coast to prevent the landing of the French, and comes to a low place when the tide is out; but the tide comes in suddenly with a rush and roar, and he loses all his carriages, treasure, baggage, regalia, and many of his soldiers, and is obliged to flee.
A few months later, broken down by fever, by disappointment, and rage, he dies at Norwich, and his son, Henry III, comes to the throne.
There are two classes of people in England—the upper and the lower class—the barons and the villains. A villain in the nineteenth century is a swindler, a cheat; but six hundred years ago a villain was a poor man who worked for his living. He was a serf, and owed allegiance to the barons. The villains could not own any land, nor could they own themselves. They had no rights nor liberties.
The barons are a few hundreds, the villains several millions. The barons, while demanding their own liberties, are not thinking of obtaining any liberties for the villains. It does not occur to them that a villain has any rights or liberties. Little do they know, however, of what will glow out of that parchment.
Six centuries and a half have passed since that 15th of June, in 1215, at Runnymede; the meadows are as fresh and green as then; the river winds as peacefully as it has through all the years. England and America have become great and powerful nations; but would they have been what they are if the Army of God had not won that victory over John Lackland? No; for out of that Charter have come the Parliament of Great Britain and the Congress of the United States, and many other things. It was the first great step of the English people toward freedom.
Not far from that verdant meadow where the army set up its encampment is a little old stone church, with ivy creeping over its walls and climbing its crumbling tower. One hundred and fifty years ago, Thomas Gray, a poet, who lived in a little hamlet nearby, used to wander out in the evening to meditate in the old church-yard, and here he wrote a sweet poem, beginning,
“The curfew tolls the knell of parting day;
The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.”
A few years after he wrote it, in 1759, one night a great fleet of English war-ships was moored in the river St. Lawrence, and an army in boats with mulled oars was silently moving along the stream. The general commanding it was James Wolfe, a young man only thirty years of age. In his army were soldiers from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York. One of General Wolfe’s officers was Colonel Israel Putnam, of Connecticut; another was Richard Montgomery, of New York, as the boats moved along the stream, the brave young general from England recited this verse of the poem:
“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth, ever gave,
Await, alike, the inevitable hour;
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“I would rather be the author of that poem than take Quebec tomorrow,” said he.
But would the poem ever have been written if the Army of God had not set up its banners? Quite likely not.
In the darkness the army under General Wolfe climbed the steep bank of the St. Lawrence—so steep and so narrow the path that only one man at a time could climb it; and in the morning the whole army stood on the Plains of Abraham, behind Quebec. Before another sunset a great battle had been fought, a great victory won. Wolfe was victor, Montcalm the vanquished; but both were dead. The flag of France, which had floated above the citadel of Quebec, the emblem of French power, disappeared forever, and the flag of England appeared in its place. From that time on there was to be another language, another literature, another religion, another civilization, in the Western World. But would the battle ever have been fought, would things in America he as they are, if the barons had not obtained that agreement in writing from John Lackland? No. That parchment, crumpled and worn and yellow with time, with the great round seal attached to it, lies in a glass case in the British Museum, London. The parchment is but a piece of sheepskin; the wax was made by the bees which hummed amidst the hawthorn hedges of old England six hundred years ago. The parchment and time wax are of very little account in themselves, but what has come from them is of infinite value. As this story goes on, it will be seen that the assembling of the Army of God in the meadow of Runnymede was the beginning of the liberty which we now enjoy.
THE MAN WHO PREACHED AFTER HE WAS DEAD
DOCTOR JOHN WICKLIF HAS BEEN dead these forty years, and his bones have been lying the while in Butterworth Church-yard; but it has been decreed by the great Council of Constance that they shall lie there no longer. A party of monks, with pick and spade, have dug them up, and now they kindle a fire, burn them to powder, and shovel the ashes into a brook which sweeps past the church-yard; and the brook bears them on to the Avon, which, after winding through Stratford meadows, falls into the Severn, and the Severn bears them to the sea. But why are the monks so intent upon annihilating the doctor’s bones? Because the doctor, who was a preacher, though he has been dead so long, still continues to preach! The monks will have no more of it; and they think that by getting rid of his bones they will put an end to his preaching. They forget that there are some things winch the fire will not burn—such as liberty, truth, justice. Little do they think that the doctor will keep on preaching; that his parish will be the world, his followers citizens of every land; that his preaching, together with that parchment and the great piece of beeswax attached to it, which the barons obtained from John Lackland, will bring about a new order of things in human affairs that thrones will be overturned; that sovereigns will become subjects, and subjects sovereigns.
A century has passed since the Magna Charta was obtained, but not much liberty has come from that document as yet. The people are still villains. The Icing and the barons plunder them; the monks, friars, bishops, and archbishops—a swarm of men live upon them. They must pay taxes to the king, to the barons, and to the priests; and they have no voice in saying what or how much the taxes shall be. They are ignorant. They have no books. Not one man in a thousand can read. The priests and the parish clerks, the bishops, rich men, and their children are the only ones who have an opportunity of obtaining an education. There are no schools for the poor.
The priests look sharply after their dues. Be it a wedding, a funeral, the saying of mass for the dead, baptizing a child, granting absolution for sin, or any other service, the priest must have his fee. The country is overrun with monks and friars—Carmelites, who wear white gowns; Franciscans, dressed in gray; Augustinians and Dominicans, who wear black. They live in monasteries and abbeys, shave their crowns, and go barefoot. They have taken solemn vows to have nothing to do with the world, to spend their time in fasting and praying; but, notwithstanding their vows, none of the people—none but the rich men—can spread such bountiful tables as they, for the monasteries, abbeys, nunneries, convents, and bishoprics hold half the land in England, and their revenues are greater than the king’s. In the monastery larders are shoulders of fat mutton, quarters of juicy beef, haunches of choice venison. In the cellars are casks of good old wine from the vineyards of Spain and the banks of the Rhine, and yet the friars are the greatest beggars in the country. They go from house to house, leading a donkey, with panniers lashed to the animal’s sides, or else carry a sack on their backs, begging money, butter, eggs, cheeses, receiving anything which the people may give; and in return invoking the blessings of the saints upon their benefactors, and cursing those who refuse to give. They have relics for sale: shreds of clothing which they declare was worn by the Virgin Mary; pieces of the true cross; bones of saints—all very holy.
They have a marvelous story to relate, of St. Dunstan, who was a blacksmith, and very wicked, but afterward became a good man, and was made Archbishop of Canterbury. One day the devil came and looked into the window where the saint was at work, trying to tempt him, whereupon St. Dunstan seized his red-hot tongs and clapped them upon the devil’s nose, which made the fiend roar with pain; but the saint held him fast till he promised to tempt him no more.
The people are very ignorant. There are no schools; there are none to teach them except the priests, monks, and friars, who have no desire to see the people gaining knowledge, for knowledge is power, and ignorance weakness. The people are superstitious, as ignorant people generally are. They believe in hobgoblins and ghosts. They have startling stories to relate of battles between brave knights and dragons that spit fire, and are terrible to behold. St. George, the patron saint of England, had a fierce encounter with a dragon, and came off victorious. The peasants relate the stories by their kitchen fires; the nobles narrate them in their castles; the poets rehearse the exploits of the brave knights in verses, which the minstrels sing from door to door. Although no one ever has seen a dragon, yet everybody believes that such creatures exist, and may make their appearance at any moment.
The people believe in witches. Old women who are wrinkled and bent with age are supposed to sell themselves to the devil, and he gives them power to come and go through the air at will, riding a broomstick, at night, bent on mischief; with power to fly into people’s houses through the keyholes, to bewitch men, women, children, horses, dogs, cattle, and everything. If a horse is contrary, the people say old Goody So-and-so has bewitched it; if the butter will not come in the churn, the cream is bewitched; if anything happens out of the usual course, the witches are the mischief.
“There is mischief in the air.”
King, priest, nor people will not suffer witches to live, for the Bible commands their destruction, say the prelates of the Church, who alone have the Bible; and many a poor, innocent woman is put to death.
The monks and friars having been recognized by the Pope, and holding their authority directly from him, assert their right to preach in the churches, crowding out the parish priests.
Little good does their preaching do. It is mostly marvelous stories about the saints, and what happened to people who did not feed them; or about the wonderful miracles performed by relics. They sell pardons for sins committed or to be committed; and they have indulgences absolving men from all penalties in this life, as well as after death. The monks drive a thrifty trade in the sale of relies. The good people who believe all the stories of their wonderful power to care diseases, to preserve them from harm, bow down before the bits of bone, and pieces of wood, and rusty nails, and rags which they exhibit; but there are so many relics that some of the people begin to see the tricks which the monks are playing upon them, for it is discovered that John the Baptist had four shoulder-blades, eight arms, eleven fingers, besides twelve complete hands, thirteen skulls, and seven whole bodies—enough almost for a regiment! It is discovered that some of St. Andrew’s bones once belonged to a cow; that St. Patrick had two heads—one small, preserved when he was a boy, and the other large, the one he wore when he became a man!
Some of the monks spend their time in writing books—printing the letters with a pen; but many of them are lazy. The abbots and bishops are fond of hunting foxes, and ride with the country gentlemen after the hounds, and sit down to good dinners in the barons’ halls. The parish priests, for the most part, are ignorant. Their sermons on Sunday are narratives of monkish traditions, stories of the saints, with commands to attend mass. They get up spectacles called “miracle plays,” acting them as dramas. They ask the women and girls indecent questions when they come to confession, and their lives are very far from being pure. They are so debased that they drink themselves drunk in the village ale-house.
If the monks, or priests, or bishops commit a crime, even though it be murder, the king cannot arrest them, for the bishops have their court, and a man who enters the priesthood is not amenable to civil law. They are let off with a light penance, and then may go on saying mass, and absolving the people from their sins. But if one of the people commits murder, he will have his head chopped off by one of the king’s executioners.
The priests, however, are not all of them wicked. There are some who, instead of spending their time in the ale-houses, or in plundering their parishioners, look kindly after their welfare. Some are learned men, educated at Oxford or Cambridge, who exhort the people to lead honest lives. The man whose bones the monks are burning was a good priest, a learned man. We may think of him as attending school, when a boy, at Oxford, graduating from one of the colleges; and, after graduating, he studies theology, and becomes a priest, and preaches in the Oxford churches. He is so learned and eloquent that the people come in crowds to hear him. There are students at Oxford from all over Europe—from France, Rolland, Switzerland, Germany, and Bohemia—thirty thousand or more—who listen to his preaching. His fame reaches London; the king (Edward III) sends for him, and he preaches to the court.
A girl, who is as good as she is beautiful—Anne, the daughter of the King of Bohemia—comes to England to be the wife of the Prince of Wales, Richard II. She listens to Doctor Wicklif, and becomes his friend. With her come many of the nobles of Bohemia, and learned men. One of them is Professor Faulfash, who has been to the universities of Heidelberg, in Bavaria; Cologne, on the banks of the Rhine; and to Paris. He listens with great pleasure to the eloquent young preacher, and, when he goes back to Bohemia, carries with him some of the books which Doctor Wicklif has written.
Let us not forget Professor Faulfash, for we shall see him again by-and-by.
Doctor Wicklif is a good man, and preaches against the immoral practices of the monks and friars. He does not arraign them before the Bishops’ Court for their extortion, drunkenness, or infamous living; but he arraigns them at the bar of public opinion, and that is a great offence in the eyes of the monks, who say that the people have no right to have an opinion. The Pope decrees that men must believe in religion as he believes. There is no appeal from his decree. If a man believes differently, he shall be thrown into prison, tortured till he makes confession, and then he is burned to death, and all his property confiscated. Who gave the popes this authority? No one; they took it, and, having taken it, they intend to authority? No one; keep it.
The Pope commissions a set of men to hunt for heretics. They are Inquisitors, or men who ask questions, and have power to put men to death, to torture, to confiscate property. We shall fall in with them farther along in the story.
Notwithstanding the Pope professes to be holy and incapable of doing wrong, Doctor Wicklif informs the people that the priests, the monks, the bishops, and the Pope himself, are sinful, like other men. He maintains that the king is superior to the Pope in his own realm, and that he has a right to put a stop to all the swindling and extortions of the monks, and to punish men who commit crime. They cannot tolerate such preaching, for it makes the king greater than the Pope. It is the exercise of an individual opinion, the beginning of individual liberty. “Doctor Wicklif is a heretic!” they cry. That is a terrible accusation. A heretic is a fellow who does not believe as they believe. A man who does not believe that the Pope can do no wrong, that he is not superior to kings, is worthy of death. He ought to be burned. It is the duty of the Pope, the bishops, and the priests to prevent the spread of such opinions. If a man is afflicted with a cancer, is it not the duty of the physicians to cut it out, to burn it with fire? The Pope and the bishops are God’s physicians, and they must destroy all heretics: so they reason. But who gave them this authority over the beliefs of men? No one. They took it, and have exercised it so long that they honestly believe that they truly are God’s agents, and that it is their duty to exercise it, and to exterminate all who do not believe as they do. So at this period the intellects and consciences of men are in slavery.
Doctor Wicklif is summoned to appear before the Bishops’ Court, in the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a great building which stands on the bank of the Thames, in Lambeth Parish, London. On a day in January, 1375, the bishops, in their flowing robes, sit in the Connell Chambers to try the man who has preached such obnoxious doctrines. All London is astir. People come in boats and on foot, filling the streets. Nobles and great men are there; one is the powerful Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. Many of the people and the duke alike are determined that no harm shall come to the man who has preached so fearlessly, and whom they love. Anne of Bohemia sends word that he must be protected. The bishops do not dare to put him in prison; but they report him to the Pope, and the Pope sends a bull—not an animal with four legs and two horns, and ferocious, but a piece of parchment, with a ribbon and a round piece of lead attached to it, which is called a bulla. The Pope’s seal is stamped upon the lead, ordering Wicklif to make his appearance in Rome to answer the charges preferred against him. The Pope cannot allow a parish priest to set up his opinions unchallenged, for to permit Doctor Wicklif to go on will be the subversion of all the authority and power of the Pope, bishops, and priests, and in time the whole fabric of ecclesiastical government will tumble to the ground.
Although the Pope sends his summons, Doctor Wicklif does not obey it, for he is getting to be an old man, and, besides, there are two popes just now—one in Rome, and one at Avignon, in France. There is a great division in the Church. The people compare the two popes to the dog Cerberus, which, according to the old Greeks, sat at the gate leading to the infernal regions. The popes are fighting each other. The King of Castile recognizes the French Pope, whereupon the Roman Pope sends word to the people of Castile that if they do not obey him they will be forever accursed. The Roman head, to obtain money, sells the offices of the Church. Anybody can be a bishop, archbishop, or cardinal by paying for it. He sells the offices over and over; and if those whom he has cheated complain, he can laugh in their faces: he has their money, and they may help themselves if they can. He suspects that some of the cardinals are corresponding with the other Pope: that is a terrible offence, in his eyes. He puts them to torture to wring a confession from them, and then puts them to death. He curses all who oppose him, swears fearful oaths, and takes his revenge upon some priests who offend him by sewing them up in sacks, taking them out to sea, and pitching them overboard!
Doctor Wicklif reasons wisely that it will not do for him to make his appearance in Rome before such a Pope, and he is more than ever of the opinion that the Pope commits sin, as well as other men. He remains in England, preaching to the good people of Lutterworth. Sometimes he preaches in London, at the preaching-place erected in time streets. He has great crowds to hear him on Sunday, and works hard through the weeks, translating a book from the Latin into the English language—the Bible. The only Bibles in England are in the libraries of Oxford, Cambridge, abbeys and monasteries, and some of the churches. They are all in Latin or Hebrew, written on parchment. Scarcely one person in ten thousand has ever read a Bible. Doctor Wicklif believes that the people have a right to read it, although the Pope has forbidden its reading by any except the priests, monks, and bishops, and other prelates of the Church. But into what dialect shall he translate it? for there is no uniform language in England. In the Eastern counties—the East Midland section, as it is called, where the Saxons first landed and obtained a foothold—the language is almost wholly Saxon; in the Southern counties—all along the South shore, where the Normans landed—the language is largely Norman. In the Western and Northern counties are other dialects, so unlike that of the East or South that a man from the old town of Boston, on the East coast, or a man from Plymouth, on the South coast, would hardly be able to make himself understood by a countryman from York or Lancaster.
Doctor Wicklif selects the East Midland—his own native dialect—which is spoken by a majority of the people; besides, it is strong, vigorous, and expressive. Many other preachers believe that the people have a right to read the Bible, and clerks are set to work making copies of the translation, which are placed on desks in the churches, and chained, so that no one can take them away.
The people listen to the reading with wonder and delight. They begin to think; and when men begin to think, they take a step toward freedom. They see that the Bible gives them rights which hitherto have been denied them—the right to read, to acquire knowledge. Schools are started. Men and women, who till now have not known a letter of the alphabet, learn to read: children teach their parents. It is the beginning of a new life—a new order of things in the community—the beginning of liberty.
One of Doctor Wicklif’s friends is Geoffrey Chaucer, a poet, who helps on the cause of freedom mightily in another way. He is a learned man, and has been to Genoa and Florence on an embassy for the king, and has made the acquaintance of many renowned men. He is a short, thick-set man, with a pleasant countenance, and laughing eyes. He is witty and humorous. The king thinks so much of him that he directs his butler to send the poet a pipe of his best wine every year. The Princess of Wales (Anne, from Bohemia) is pleased to call him her friend, and the poet dedicates a poem to her, entitled “The Legend of a Good Woman.” He sets himself also to write some stories in verse, which he calls “The Canterbury Tales;” but while he is writing them, let us see what is going on in England.
In 1377, Richard II is made king. The barons complain to him that the villains—the people who owe them service—do not give it; that they are banding themselves to throw off the service altogether, claiming that freedom is their right. Doctor Wicklif’s books and preaching have set them to thinking, and preachers are going here and there telling the people that the barons have no claim upon them. One of the agitators is a fellow named John Bull, who sings sarcastic ballads. In one of them he rehearses this couplet:
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
The people ask the question over and over, and make up their minds that they, as well as the men who live in castles, have some natural rights.
One day a baron arrests a burgher, and imprisons him in Rochester Castle, claiming that he is his slave, whereupon the people seize their arms, surround the castle, and set the prisoner at liberty.
Every individual in the kingdom is taxed—every child, every man and woman. A child must pay so much, a grown person more. A tax-collector comes to John Walter’s house. Walter earns a living by laying tiles on the roofs of houses. The people call him the Tiler, or Tyler, and instead of pronouncing his full name—John Walter, the tiler—call him Wat Tyler. He has a daughter, just growing to womanhood.
“She must pay a full tax,” says the collector.
“No; she is not a woman yet,” the mother replies.
“I’ll soon find out whether she is a woman or not,” the tax-collector answers, and rudely insults the girl.
“Help! help!” The mother shouts the words, and her husband comes in with a club.
“What do you mean by insulting my daughter?”
The collector is a ruffian; having insulted the daughter, he lifts his hand to give the father a blow, when down comes the cudgel upon the fellow’s head, crashing the skull, and scattering his brains about the room. The news spreads. The people join the Tyler. They are ready for insurrection. They seize their swords, bows and arrows, and clubs.
“Let us march to London and see the king,” they shout. From all the towns of Kent they come, one hundred thousand or more. They attack the houses of the knights, lords, and nobles. They swarm into Canterbury, and pillage the palace of the archbishop, who lives in great state, and to whom a large portion of the taxes are paid. There is great excitement in London. The young king, his mother, and many of the nobles take refuge in the Tower, for the news has reached them that the insurgents are arresting all the high-born men and women they can find. They seize Sir John Newton, threaten him with death if he will not do as they command, and send him to the king, desiring Richard to meet them at Blackheath, just out of London. The king is brave. He will go and see them. He leaves the Tower in his barge, with the barons. The boatmen pull at the oars, and in a short time they reach the multitude, who, upon seeing the barge, set up a great shout.
“I have come at your request. What do you desire?” the king asks.
There is a great outcry—all speaking at once; and the barons, fearing an archer may draw his bow and shoot the king, advise him to return to the Tower. This angers the crowd. “To London! to London!” they shout; and the multitude, barefooted, bareheaded, armed with clubs, surge on toward Southwark. They are on the south side of the river, while the largest part of the city is on the north side, and there is only one bridge. The citizens raise the draw, and the excited rabble cannot cross the Thames. The rich merchants of London own beautiful villas on the south side, and the hungry, ragged, excited multitudes ransack the houses, destroying property, and committing great havoc. The people of London sympathize with the people of Kent, for they, too, are groaning under the taxes.
“We will let down the drawbridge, and permit them to come into the city. We will show them that we are their friends, and then they will be quiet,” the Londoners say to each other.
The drawbridge is lowered, and the great black crowd pones across the bridge. The people give bread and wine and liquor, which excite the insurrectionists all the more. They rush to the Palace of Savoy, owned by the Duke of Lancaster, bring out all the furniture—the tables, chairs, the silver plate—heap all in a pile, and set it on fire. They do not steal the silver. One man undertakes to secrete a silver cup, but the others pitch him upon the fire.
“We are here in the cause of truth and righteousness, not as thieves,” they say.
What shall the king do? He cannot fight the insurgents, for he has only four thousand troops. This is what his councilors advise him:
“It is better to appease them by making a show of granting what they desire than to oppose them; for if you oppose them, all the common people of England will join them, and we shall be swept away.”
The next morning the king meets Wat Tyler and some of the leaders at Mile End, in a meadow, and grants what they desire. He sets his clerks to making out, charters for the towns, abolishing taxes, and granting privileges never before enjoyed. Most of the people are satisfied, and return to their homes; but some, still thirsting for revenge against the Archbishop of Canterbury, make their way to the Tower, seize the archbishop and some of the priests, drag them into the Tower yard, and chop off their heads, which they place upon poles, and carry them, dripping with blood, through the streets.
Richard hears of what is going on, mounts his horse, and rides out to meet the rioters. He rides boldly up to Wat Tyler, who draws a knife; but before he can use it, the Mayor of London whips out his sword and runs it through Wat’s body, and the rioter tumbles to the ground. Wat’s followers rush up, but Richard looks them calmly in the face.
“Come, my friends, I will be your leader,” he says.
It is a brave speech for a boy of fifteen to make; but the men of Kent like Richard’s pluck, and lower their spears. The king’s troops come galloping upon the field, ready to draw their swords.
“You must not harm them. Let them go peacefully to their homes,” says Richard; and the people, feeling that the young king is their friend, return to their homes.
But the barons are determined that the people shall not have their freedom. The bishops are angry over the death of the archbishop, and demand that punishment shall be meted out, not to those who were instrumental in putting him to death, but upon all the people—in the revoking of the charters which Richard has just granted. What can the boy do? Are not the barons, lords, bishops, and great men wiser than himself? He cannot stand alone against them; he complies with their demands, but recommends Parliament to give the people their freedom.
“Give them their freedom!” the barons exclaim. “Never will we be deprived of the service which they owe us.”
“Doctor Wicklif’s pernicious doctrines are at the bottom of all this,” the bishops, the monks, and friars exclaim.
The Lords pass a law, which the bishops think will put an end to the mischief, in which the sheriffs are ordered to put all heretics in prison until they justify themselves before the bishops. The only appeal from the Bishops’ Court is to the Pope, who is sewing men up in sacks and casting them into the sea. The Commons will not consent to such a law, and so the Magna Charta begins to protect the people.
The Pope sells a fat office to an Italian. The office is an abbot’s position in the bishopric of Wells; but the bishop of that diocese does not relish it, nor do the other bishops, for the next ship may bring other Italian vagabonds to plunder the people. They join in declaring that the right of appointment belongs to the king, and not to the Pope, whereupon the Pontiff, who pitches offending priests into the sea, excommunicates them; that is, he threatens to shut them out of heaven if they do not ask his pardon. Perhaps the bishops think that a man who tortures cardinals to death because he suspects that they are working against him, who sells offices in the Church to the highest bidder, even though he be Pope, may not, after all, hold the keys of heaven, for they persuade Parliament to pass this law:
“All persons who recognize the Pope at Rome as being in authority superior to the king shall forfeit their lands and all their property, and have no protection from the king.”
The bishops are members of Parliament, and by obtaining the passage of such a law array the nation on their side. Little do they dream of what will come from this action of theirs. They do not mistrust that when a century has rolled away, a king, Henry VIII, will pick up this act, and use it as a sword against the Pope, and strike a blow which will split the Church in twain. We shall see by-and-by how it came about.
The people are fast becoming heretics, or Lollards, as the monks and friars call them—comparing them to tares, or lolium, in a field of wheat. The poet Geoffrey Chaucer is sowing tares very effectively in a quiet way. He has completed his story in verse, and the people are reading it. He has written it in the East Midland dialect, adding some Norman words to give it grace and beauty. It describes a party of pilgrims who meet at the Tabard Tavern, in London, on their way to the shrine of Thomas Becket, in Canterbury Cathedral. Becket was a priest, arrogant, self-willed, who refused to acknowledge the superior authority of the king, Henry II, and who was put to death by some of the king’s friends; but the Pope humbled the monarch, who was obliged to kneel naked before Becket’s tomb, while the monks lashed his bare back with a bundle of sticks. He found that the Pope was more powerful than himself.
To make a pilgrimage to somebody’s tomb, to say Pater-nosters and Ave-Marias over the bones of a dead monk or nun, is supposed to be a meritorious act, and so all over England—over Europe—men and women are making pilgrimages. Among the pilgrims who travel from London to Canterbury are a priest, a monk, a friar, a pardoner, and a summoner. The pardoner has pardons for sale; the summoner is the sheriff, who brings offenders before the Bishops’ Court. Although the monks and friars have vowed to wear coarse clothes and live on mean fare, none are better dressed than they, none live so luxuriously. The poet is one of the pilgrims, and describes his fellow-travelers:
“A monk there was of skill and mastery proud,
A manly man—to be an abbot able—
And many a noble horse had the in stable.
I saw his large sleeves trimmed above the hand
With fur—the finest in the land.
His head was bald, and shone like polished glass,
And so his face, as it had been anoint,
While he was very fat and in good point.
Shining his boots; his horse right proud to see,
A prelate proud, majestic, grand was he;
He was not pale, as a poor pining ghost;
A fat goose loved he best of any roast.
A friar there was, a wanton and a merry,
Licensed to beg, a wondrous solemn man,
His pockets large—he stuffed them full of knives,
And pins, or presents meant for handsome wives.
The biggest beggar he among the brothers.
He took a certain district as his grant,
Nor would he let another come within his haunt.
“A summoner there was, riding on apace,
Who had a fire-red cherubim’s large face;
Pimpled and wrinkled were his flabby cheeks,
Garlic he much loved, onions too, and leeks.
Strong wine he loved to drink—as red as blood;
Then would he shout and jest as he were mad.
Oft down his throat large draughts he poured;
Then, save in Latin, he would not speak a word.
Some sentences he knew—some two or three
Which he had gathered out of some degree.
No wonder, for he heard it all the day;
And surely, as you know, a popinjay
Can call out ‘War!’ as well as any pope.
“You could not such another pardoner trace.
For in his pack he had a pillow-case,
Which, as he said, was once the Virgin’s veil.
He also had a fragment of the sail
St. Peter had when, as his heart misgave him
Upon the sea, he sought the Lord to save him.
He had a golden cross—one set with precious stones;
And in a case—what carried he? Pig’s bones!
He, in a single day, more money got
Than the poor parson in a year, I wat.
And thus with flattery, feints, and knavish japes
He made the parson and the people apes.”
So the poet holds these pilgrims up to ridicule. The monks and friars are very angry, and lay a plan to kill Chaucer, who is obliged to flee to Holland, the land of the windmills; but, after a time, he returns to find that the people are fast becoming Lollards. The reading of the Bible in English has set the people to thinking about the monks, while the “Canterbury Tales” have set the community to laughing at them. From thinking and laughing the people begin to act, refusing to give to the beggars, who are so angry with the poet that he has to flee a second time; but he returns once more to London, where he dies a peaceful death in the year 1400, having done a great deal to advance human freedom.
When Doctor Wicklif selected the Midland dialect for his translation of the Bible, and when Geoffrey Chaucer used it in writing his Canterbury stories, they little knew that they were laying the foundations, as it were, of the strongest and most vigorous language ever used by human beings for the expression of their thoughts; but it has become the English language of the nineteenth century—the one aggressive language of the world—the language of Liberty.
