10 Sep 2024
The Middle Ages were tumultuous times for St Albans. Invasion, plagues, rebellion and civil wars were to change the lives of the local people. And one event in particular was to bring, not just trouble, but terror, bitterness and brutality. It was a time when St Albans held liberty in its grasp for a few precious weeks. Then, it was gone.
The seeds of trouble were sown a few centuries earlier.
In late September 1066, an army of around 7,000 men, led by Duke William of Normandy, landed on the Sussex coast. Just over two weeks later, as dawn broke on 14th October, two armies began a fierce battle for the throne. By nightfall, the last Anglo-Saxon King of England, Harold Godwinson, lay dead. On Christmas Day, William, Duke of Normandy, was crowned King William I. For England, life would never be the same again.
The Normans brought their superb building skills, their language and their social customs.
They also brought, it’s believed, a finely honed system of feudalism – the main system of control in medieval Europe. The new King William declared himself to be the owner of every piece of his new realm. He stripped land from those who opposed him and bestowed it on Norman nobles and knights who had fought for him. In exchange, they promised loyalty and military support.
And this two-way obligation travelled on down the social ladder. Right at the bottom were the serfs. They had to provide labour on their lord’s land, workshops, mines and quarries. In return, they would receive military protection and a plot of land providing a subsistence. There were rules governing daily life. Many rules. Serfs could not leave the area – the manor – without permission. If a woman wished to marry someone from outside the manor, she had to pay a fee as compensation for her lost labour.
And in St Albans? The feudal lord of the manor here was the Abbey in the person of the Abbot.
And although the prestige and growing wealth of the Abbey brought prosperity to the town, there was also much resentment over its control. As the years passed, tensions grew, occasionally breaking out into protests and riots. Sometimes the Abbots gave token gestures of apparent self-government towards the townspeople – the establishment of trade guilds for example. But the control was always there.
Then, in late May, 1381 those long simmering embers of resentment burst into flames. Monks at the Abbey were preparing for the influx of pilgrims for St Albans Day on 22nd June. As were the inn landlords and traders of the shops and stalls in the marketplace, getting ready for the increased business the pilgrims would bring. Instead, trouble came. And it brought death.
Why now? In addition to the hatred of feudalism, 33 years earlier plague and pestilence had arrived on our shores – the Black Death. Within a year it’s said that half the population was dead, rocking the social order. For one thing, it created a labour shortage and demand for higher wages. Unsurprisingly, the ruling class didn’t want to pay more. Their answer was the Statute of Labourers which restricted wages to pre-plague levels. A long-standing grievance was created.
There were other repercussions from the plague. For the first time in English history, there were attacks on the church, in particular from John Ball, a priest who preached against social inequality.
He believed all were created equal and it was the oppression of “naughty” men which had forced people into bondage.
His words were often quoted: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” He called to people to cast off the yoke of bondage and recover their liberty.
And in 1381, the people listened.
There was another reason. A bloody and divisive war with France had been fought on and off since 1337. Wars need to be paid for, which meant taxes. By 1381, the third tax in four years had been levied on everyone over the age of 15 – men, women, rich or poor.
In late May the fire of rebellion was lit in Essex. Heavy-handed attempts to collect tax led to violence. A leader emerged, Jack Straw. The protests spread to Kent where another leader came forward, Wat Tyler. Joined by people from Hertfordshire, they all made their way to London to make their demands directly to the young King Richard II. Only 14, his youth is said to have given the rebels hope that he would be easier to convince. Some hope.
Initially denied this audience with the King, the destruction began.
And meanwhile, here in St Albans? During the early hours of 14th June the news of the rebellion reached the town and Abbey. We have an eye witness, Thomas Walsingham, the Abbey’s chronicler monk. He wrote that “Friday dawned a day of anger, of distress and trouble, of calamity and sorrow”.
The news from London created very different responses. The “common” people of St Albans gathered weapons and headed to London to seize their chance at liberty. Normally history just records the name of kings and nobles, but we know the names of the local rebel leaders. They included a miller, William Grindcobbe, and a baker from Fishpool Street, William Caddington.
Promised support from Wat Tyler, Grindcobbe led a delegation to the King to ask for a letter ordering the Abbot Thomas de la Mare to agree to their demands.
Within the Abbey meanwhile, shock and fear spread rapidly. Abbot de la Mare sent men to London to find out what was happening. The shocking news came that another group of rebels had attacked the Tower of London, dragged out the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer and other royal officials and gruesomely murdered them. Fearing for their lives, the Prior and some monks fled, abandoning Abbot de la Mare and his remaining monks to face the rebels.
Everyone in St Albans will know the Great Gateway. As well as an important entrance to the Abbey, it was also a prison. The local rebels broke through the massive doors of the gateway. They stormed the prison and released everyone except one prisoner who they beheaded.
On Saturday, 15th June, a townsman arrived hotfoot from London with the letter from the King instructing the Abbot to grant charters to the townspeople confirming the rights they wanted. They had won.
But as Sunday dawned, news was on its way from London. Wat Tyler had been killed. The King was beginning to backtrack. And by the end of June, things had fallen apart. Richard II and his government were busy taking back control.
A Royal Commissioner, Sir Walter atte Lee, summoned a jury of 12 local men to judge the St Albans rebels, but they refused to indict their fellow townsmen. And they also refused to return the charters.
And then the news came that the King himself was on his way to St Albans with an army of a thousand men. Our eye witness, Walsingham, wrote that on the day of the King’s arrival, 12th July, some townspeople came to the Abbey to sheepishly beg for pardon. And the next day, at the Moot Hall (on the site where the Museum + Gallery stands today), the trial of Grindcobbe and the other local leaders began, presided over by Chief Justice Sir Robert Tresilian.
Three days later, the verdict was in. Guilty. Grindcobbe, Caddington and 14 others were hanged. When their families retrieved their remains for burial, the young King ordered that the corpses should be hanged again as a deterrent.
But the worst punishment was reserved for the radical priest, John Ball. He was brought to St Albans for trial and sentenced to be hung, drawn and quartered. A blue plaque on the Museum + Gallery records the event. His head was then displayed on London Bridge, his body cut in four and each part sent to a different city.
What happened next? On 20th July, in the Great Court of the Abbey, the men of Hertfordshire knelt to swear loyalty to the King. The Abbot regained complete control of the town and the townspeople had to hand back those hard-won charters of liberty. They also had to promise to rebuild destroyed property and pay heavy compensation. It was over.
We may joke now about ‘revolting peasants’ but this was a rebellion, not just by serfs, but by free working men and women – farmers, millers, bakers, craftsmen and shopkeepers. It wasn’t even called the Peasants’ Revolt until the 1870s. Up to then, it was known as the Great Rising. And it ended in tragedy.
The townspeople of St Albans’ fight for liberty had lasted just six weeks. It was going to be a long wait until they were able to taste freedom from the Abbey’s feudal power. But that’s another story.
History in colour: www.stalbanstourguides.co.uk
