1 00:00:11,600 --> 00:00:19,120 In the summer of 1348, the English could be forgiven for thinking themselves unconquerable. 2 00:00:20,240 --> 00:00:25,280 They had vanquished the old enemies, the Scots and the French. 3 00:00:27,400 --> 00:00:32,440 Their king, Edward III, seemed the most powerful ruler in Europe. 4 00:00:34,600 --> 00:00:37,160 But they WOULD be conquered 5 00:00:37,160 --> 00:00:44,000 and by a king against whom neither longbows nor warships offered any defence... 6 00:00:44,000 --> 00:00:46,520 King Death. 7 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:50,520 His weapon was plague 8 00:00:50,520 --> 00:00:57,040 and by the end of his terrible campaign, almost half the people of Britain would be dead. 9 00:00:59,200 --> 00:01:01,800 The country would survive the trauma, 10 00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:06,160 but first it had to undergo a purgatory of unimaginable misery, 11 00:01:06,160 --> 00:01:12,200 because hard on the heels of pestilence came rebellion and civil war. 12 00:01:12,200 --> 00:01:18,520 The century of plague was a pilgrimage through pain and this is the story of that journey. 13 00:01:54,320 --> 00:02:02,160 Yersinia pestis, the germ of plague, came to Britain in the guts of infected fleas. 14 00:02:03,160 --> 00:02:10,080 They were hidden away in cargoes of grain, bales of cloth and in the fur of black rats. 15 00:02:11,320 --> 00:02:16,560 The most probable point of entry was Melcombe Regis, near Weymouth. 16 00:02:16,560 --> 00:02:21,640 By the time it got to the great ports of Southampton and Bristol, 17 00:02:21,640 --> 00:02:28,680 there were already stories from traumatised cities of Italy as to how and where it had begun. 18 00:02:28,680 --> 00:02:36,000 In the east, on the plains of central Asia, another of the horrors carried on the backs of the Mongol hordes. 19 00:02:36,000 --> 00:02:42,040 The plague cut a swathe of destruction eastwards to China and India 20 00:02:42,040 --> 00:02:44,800 and westwards into Crimea and Turkey. 21 00:02:45,800 --> 00:02:51,840 At the port of Caffa, the Tartars had thrown infected bodies over the city walls, 22 00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:55,880 to hasten the surrender of the defending Genoese, 23 00:02:55,880 --> 00:03:00,120 a first in the annals of biological warfare. 24 00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:09,320 Once it arrived by sea in Italy, it spread quickly into mainland Europe. 25 00:03:10,520 --> 00:03:15,360 There had been devastating calamities before visited on Britain. 26 00:03:16,480 --> 00:03:21,320 Countless numbers died in the apocalyptic famine of 1315. 27 00:03:21,320 --> 00:03:28,440 But it was the merciless, indiscriminate swiftness of the plague's progress 28 00:03:28,440 --> 00:03:33,960 which so unhinged the cities and villages caught in its onslaught. 29 00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:37,640 No-one, rich or poor, could escape. 30 00:03:39,040 --> 00:03:43,080 This is how the Welsh poet, Euan Geffin saw it, 31 00:03:43,080 --> 00:03:48,480 waiting for his own infection which sure enough came in 1349. 32 00:03:48,480 --> 00:03:53,520 "We see death coming into our midst like foul smoke 33 00:03:53,520 --> 00:03:56,840 "A plague, which cuts off the young 34 00:03:56,840 --> 00:04:00,880 "A rootless phantom which has no mercy 35 00:04:02,000 --> 00:04:05,920 "Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit 36 00:04:05,920 --> 00:04:10,360 "It is in the form of an apple like the head of an onion 37 00:04:11,760 --> 00:04:15,280 "Great is its seething like a burning cinder 38 00:04:15,280 --> 00:04:17,840 "A grievous thing of ashy colour 39 00:04:17,840 --> 00:04:22,200 "It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste 40 00:04:23,400 --> 00:04:28,840 "They are like a shower of peas, the early ornaments of Black Death." 41 00:04:34,600 --> 00:04:38,800 It would take about six days from the bite of an infected flea 42 00:04:38,800 --> 00:04:45,920 for the tell-tale swellings, the buboes, to appear on a victim's neck, groin or armpit, 43 00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:50,280 accompanied by violent fever and agonising pain. 44 00:04:51,320 --> 00:04:55,600 The immune system would be overwhelmed within a week. 45 00:04:56,640 --> 00:05:03,480 If the infection reached the lungs, death came after just a couple of days of bloody coughing. 46 00:05:03,480 --> 00:05:10,520 Anyone who inhaled even the tiniest droplets of mucus would be doomed to suffer in their turn. 47 00:05:15,160 --> 00:05:22,720 No-one would have known it at the time, but the tightly packed streets and houses of a place like Bristol 48 00:05:22,720 --> 00:05:26,520 made a perfect factory farm for the bacillus. 49 00:05:26,520 --> 00:05:33,680 Vermin, crawling with fleas, lived alongside the crowded population of people and animals. 50 00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:44,080 The nibble of a flea was a common irritation in this lousy, ant-heap world. 51 00:05:44,080 --> 00:05:50,920 And even when the buboes appeared, there was no reason to suppose that fleas or rats were responsible. 52 00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:55,080 But there was no doubt about what would happen next. 53 00:05:55,080 --> 00:06:02,560 The youngest and the oldest and the poorest, those with least resistance, would be taken first. 54 00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:06,520 But then everyone else, too. 55 00:06:06,520 --> 00:06:13,200 In a town this ripe for infection, almost half the population would have perished in the first year, 56 00:06:13,200 --> 00:06:17,240 among them 15 of Bristol's 52 city councillors, 57 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:20,880 their names struck through as they died. 58 00:06:24,480 --> 00:06:30,520 Terrified and bewildered, the healthy abandoned the sick to their fate. 59 00:06:33,680 --> 00:06:40,840 Whole towns, villages, even families, were cruelly divided into the living and the dying. 60 00:06:42,360 --> 00:06:49,680 Husbands will have shunned their wives, fathers and mothers recoiled from contact with their children. 61 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:56,640 It's almost impossible to imagine the utter desolation and terror, 62 00:06:56,640 --> 00:07:01,440 the complete collapse of everything you've taken for granted. 63 00:07:01,440 --> 00:07:05,480 How do you find bread now the bakers are all dead? 64 00:07:05,480 --> 00:07:09,520 How do you find a physic now that none of them work? 65 00:07:09,520 --> 00:07:16,760 And at last, how do you find someone to cart away the bodies that have to be disposed of somewhere? 66 00:07:28,520 --> 00:07:32,560 The bigger the city, the greater the shock. 67 00:07:34,920 --> 00:07:39,680 In 1348, London had a population of close to 100,000. 68 00:07:44,040 --> 00:07:48,800 In the first wave of the plague, 300 died every day. 69 00:07:55,040 --> 00:08:02,080 At Spitalfields, there had long been a medieval hospital with a cemetery attached. 70 00:08:02,080 --> 00:08:08,120 Within its walls the dead were dutifully laid to rest in their individual graves, 71 00:08:08,120 --> 00:08:14,960 pointing east, so that come the Day of Judgement, they would rise again, facing towards Jerusalem. 72 00:08:14,960 --> 00:08:20,360 But in the grip of the epidemic, there was no time for such pieties. 73 00:08:20,360 --> 00:08:24,400 Recent excavations have turned up mass pits 74 00:08:24,400 --> 00:08:29,720 where bodies were pitchforked into the dirt in haste and desperation. 75 00:08:29,720 --> 00:08:37,040 Unearthed now, just the way they were dumped in, they look as if they're protesting at the indignity. 76 00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:52,480 By the summer of 1349, the plague had spread to the furthest corners of England, Wales and Scotland. 77 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:56,520 Now it travelled across the sea to Ireland. 78 00:08:56,520 --> 00:09:01,360 According to John Clyn, a Franciscan friar writing at Kilkenny, 79 00:09:01,360 --> 00:09:04,200 14,000 had perished in Dublin alone. 80 00:09:12,000 --> 00:09:19,520 "Since the beginning of the world, it has been unheard of for so many people to die in such a short time. 81 00:09:21,320 --> 00:09:23,880 "This pestilence was so contagious 82 00:09:23,880 --> 00:09:30,400 "that those who touched the dead or the sick were immediately infected themselves. 83 00:09:31,920 --> 00:09:38,160 "I, seeing these many ills and that the whole world is encompassed by evil, 84 00:09:38,160 --> 00:09:42,200 "waiting among the dead for death to come, 85 00:09:42,200 --> 00:09:47,120 "have committed to writing what I truly have heard and examined, 86 00:09:47,120 --> 00:09:53,680 "and I leave parchment for continuing this work, if perchance any man survive 87 00:09:53,680 --> 00:10:01,040 "and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun." 88 00:10:05,920 --> 00:10:12,000 At this point another hand has written, "Here it seems the author died." 89 00:10:14,320 --> 00:10:20,360 When the survivors recovered from the first brutal shock of the Black Death, 90 00:10:20,360 --> 00:10:23,880 they asked, inevitably, "Why us? Why now?" 91 00:10:26,200 --> 00:10:33,600 The best guess was that the plague was caused by a corruption of the atmosphere - putrefaction - 92 00:10:33,600 --> 00:10:39,080 the mark of men and beasts rising from lakes, swamps and chasms. 93 00:10:40,800 --> 00:10:44,480 This dank smog even had a name - miasma. 94 00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:53,080 If sickness grew in stench, then sweet smells were an obvious remedy. 95 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:57,320 Physicians and herbalists lost no time in devising recipes 96 00:10:57,320 --> 00:11:04,720 for pomanders and potions to guard against infection, or even to act as an antidote for the stricken. 97 00:11:06,240 --> 00:11:13,520 "Five cups of rue if it be a man, and if it be a woman, leave out the rue. 98 00:11:13,520 --> 00:11:16,960 "Five little blades of columbine, 99 00:11:16,960 --> 00:11:20,800 "a great quantity of marigold flowers. 100 00:11:20,800 --> 00:11:23,360 "An egg that is newly laid 101 00:11:23,360 --> 00:11:28,280 "and make a hole in one end and blow out all that is within, 102 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:34,920 "and lay it to the fire and roast it till ground to powder, but do not burn it. 103 00:11:34,920 --> 00:11:39,680 "Brew all these herbs with good ale, but do not strain them 104 00:11:39,680 --> 00:11:44,720 "and make the sick drink it for three evenings and mornings. 105 00:11:45,800 --> 00:11:50,360 "If they hold it in their stomach, they shall have life." 106 00:11:56,200 --> 00:12:03,240 But if God decided otherwise, all the potions in the world would be of no avail. 107 00:12:03,240 --> 00:12:09,760 The inescapable conclusion was that the pestilence had been laid on mankind 108 00:12:09,760 --> 00:12:13,800 as a chastisement for its manifold sins. 109 00:12:16,800 --> 00:12:23,920 Lewd necklines, lascivious dancing and shameless adultery had brought on the plague. 110 00:12:25,400 --> 00:12:31,440 It would end when the world was contrite, but it never seemed contrite enough. 111 00:12:31,440 --> 00:12:35,680 In the meantime, the country was laid waste. 112 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,200 Farms were abandoned, 113 00:12:40,200 --> 00:12:42,720 whole villages deserted. 114 00:12:45,480 --> 00:12:51,520 The accounts for the Bishop of Winchester's lands at Farnham in Surrey 115 00:12:51,520 --> 00:12:55,120 tell the story of a rural society in shock. 116 00:12:55,120 --> 00:13:02,160 In the first year of the Black Death, 52 households, a good third of the villagers, were wiped out. 117 00:13:02,160 --> 00:13:07,120 Given the mark, "Defectus per pestilentum". 118 00:13:08,000 --> 00:13:13,440 The Farnham rolls put names to the numbers, names like Matilda Sticker. 119 00:13:13,440 --> 00:13:17,400 She died, together with her entire family. 120 00:13:17,400 --> 00:13:24,840 Or a servant girl, Matilda Talvyn, who saw her master and his entire household succumb to the plague. 121 00:13:24,840 --> 00:13:29,880 By the time it ebbed away in 1350, 1,300 had died in Farnham. 122 00:13:29,880 --> 00:13:33,400 While the plague took, it could also give. 123 00:13:33,400 --> 00:13:40,440 In the first year of the Black Death, John Crochet, who was a minor became an orphan, but an orphan with assets, 124 00:13:40,440 --> 00:13:46,960 because he could now inherit the lots left to him by his father and another relative. 125 00:13:46,960 --> 00:13:52,040 This must have been the making of a small, but serious, village fortune. 126 00:13:52,040 --> 00:13:59,080 In another place in the rolls, we learn that the harvest had become twice as expensive to gather in. 127 00:13:59,080 --> 00:14:03,520 Twelve pence, written in Roman numerals, per acre 128 00:14:03,520 --> 00:14:08,360 because, the rolls say, of the plague and the scarcity of labour. 129 00:14:08,360 --> 00:14:14,440 Workers it seems were thin on the ground and were beginning to charge accordingly. 130 00:14:20,520 --> 00:14:24,760 The Farnham story could be repeated all through Britain. 131 00:14:24,760 --> 00:14:31,760 The countryside after the Black Death was an irreversibly altered world. 132 00:14:31,760 --> 00:14:35,280 For one thing, there were no more serfs. 133 00:14:35,280 --> 00:14:42,320 For centuries, being a serf meant being tied by custom and by birth to your local lord. 134 00:14:42,320 --> 00:14:46,720 He gave you a tiny spot of land on which you could farm 135 00:14:46,720 --> 00:14:53,240 and in return you put in hours of grinding toil, unpaid, on his very big farm. 136 00:14:53,240 --> 00:14:57,600 There were other ways, too, in which you were not free. 137 00:14:57,600 --> 00:15:03,640 You had to ask his permission to marry and you were not, repeat not, ever to leave. 138 00:15:03,640 --> 00:15:06,160 Until, that is, the Black Death. 139 00:15:06,160 --> 00:15:10,200 Now there was a desperate labour shortage. 140 00:15:10,200 --> 00:15:17,240 The laws of supply and demand meant that for the first time you could set the terms of the deal. 141 00:15:17,240 --> 00:15:23,760 He wanted some labour out of you. You could say, "Why not start by paying me something?" 142 00:15:23,760 --> 00:15:29,800 He wants you to move in to a piece of land which otherwise would go to rack and ruin, 143 00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:32,360 and you say, "OK, cut the rent." 144 00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:37,200 And if the lord then says, "Not a chance, you impertinent so and so," 145 00:15:37,200 --> 00:15:44,440 you just up sticks and find someone else who's got a more secure grip on the new economic facts of life. 146 00:15:44,440 --> 00:15:52,040 Hundreds of thousands of peasants must have done just that. There was nothing anybody could do about it. 147 00:15:56,160 --> 00:16:01,000 It was not just the social order that the plague shook loose. 148 00:16:01,000 --> 00:16:05,920 It also ate away at the sense of security offered by the Church, 149 00:16:05,920 --> 00:16:12,760 especially since the regular clergy seemed powerless to provide help for the afflicted, 150 00:16:12,760 --> 00:16:15,240 or even for themselves. 151 00:16:17,440 --> 00:16:24,240 In 1349, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, seeing that there was a serious shortage of priests, 152 00:16:24,240 --> 00:16:28,320 authorised laymen to hear the confession of the dying. 153 00:16:28,320 --> 00:16:33,440 "Or," he wrote, "even a woman if no man is available." 154 00:16:35,200 --> 00:16:42,640 The most daring took matters into their own hands, seeking redemption directly from the Scriptures. 155 00:16:42,640 --> 00:16:49,640 The Lollards, or Mumblers, took their name from their mouthing out loud of the Bible 156 00:16:49,640 --> 00:16:54,520 and encouraged others to do the same by translating it into English, 157 00:16:54,520 --> 00:16:58,600 liberating it from the obscurity of Latin. 158 00:16:59,600 --> 00:17:06,600 As few as they were, the Lollards were a dramatic threat to the authority of the Church. 159 00:17:06,600 --> 00:17:13,120 They were only saved from persecution by the protection of their most powerful patron, 160 00:17:13,120 --> 00:17:18,000 King Edward's third son, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. 161 00:17:18,000 --> 00:17:22,520 Men like him were drawn to new forms of piety and penance 162 00:17:22,520 --> 00:17:29,760 because the plague had made them acutely aware that King Death was no respecter of rank or wealth. 163 00:17:29,760 --> 00:17:35,800 Should he strike without warning, they had better be ready for a reckoning. 164 00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:40,680 They all knew the cautionary tale of the three living and the three dead. 165 00:17:44,720 --> 00:17:49,560 A trio of handsome young kings out for a decent day's sport 166 00:17:49,560 --> 00:17:54,600 suddenly find themselves confronted by three not so handsome cadavers, 167 00:17:54,600 --> 00:18:01,360 each in a different state of decomposition - the Marx Brothers from hell. 168 00:18:02,400 --> 00:18:05,800 The three living pipe up, "I'm afraid." 169 00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:09,920 "Lo, but I see," and, "Methinks these devils be." 170 00:18:09,920 --> 00:18:12,920 Back come the other three... 171 00:18:14,520 --> 00:18:17,040 "Such shall you be," 172 00:18:17,080 --> 00:18:21,600 "I was well fair," and, "For God's love, beware." 173 00:18:21,600 --> 00:18:27,280 The furthest gone of the gruesome threesome then makes a little speech. 174 00:18:28,360 --> 00:18:36,120 "Know that I was head of my tribe, princes, kings and nobles, royal and rich, rejoicing in wealth, 175 00:18:36,120 --> 00:18:41,880 "but now I am so hideous and bare that even the worms disdain me." 176 00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:54,880 This was an invasion that Plantagenet England had not prepared for. 177 00:18:54,880 --> 00:18:59,120 The invasion of the space of the living by the dead. 178 00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:06,360 The sense that the borders between backyards and boneyards had collapsed produced a sudden nervousness. 179 00:19:06,360 --> 00:19:08,920 In the face of King Death, 180 00:19:08,920 --> 00:19:15,440 neither riches nor earthly fame could buy salvation, or guarantee immortality. 181 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:24,280 This insecurity found expression in a very peculiar kind of tomb, 182 00:19:24,280 --> 00:19:29,520 the transey, which means appropriately enough, "gone off". 183 00:19:29,520 --> 00:19:36,360 In transey tombs, like this one at Canterbury Cathedral, you got remembered twice over. 184 00:19:36,360 --> 00:19:38,880 They were double-decker affairs. 185 00:19:38,880 --> 00:19:43,880 In the top deck, you were seen very much in the guise the world expected, 186 00:19:43,880 --> 00:19:48,400 as a knight in armour or a bishop in full episcopal rig. 187 00:19:50,120 --> 00:19:54,640 In the lower deck, though, there you were, a naked skeleton... 188 00:19:54,640 --> 00:19:58,760 ..the flesh fallen away from the bone. 189 00:20:16,600 --> 00:20:23,200 Now, the mindset that produced the transey tomb was a kind of reverse envy. 190 00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:30,240 A determination to fall behind the Jones's, to bow to no-one in your painful awareness 191 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:36,640 that however grand you were, pretty soon you were going to be reduced to a heap of dust and maggots. 192 00:20:36,640 --> 00:20:43,720 The idea was to contrast, as shockingly as possible, two sorts of self-consciousness. 193 00:20:43,720 --> 00:20:50,760 On the one hand, the way we should like to be remembered, dying in splendour and piety. 194 00:20:50,760 --> 00:20:54,840 And on the other hand, the way we really are... 195 00:20:56,240 --> 00:21:00,080 ..pathetic in our cadaverous mortality. 196 00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:09,680 "I was Pauper born," reads the inscription on Archbishop Chichele's tomb. 197 00:21:09,680 --> 00:21:11,920 "Then to primate raised. 198 00:21:13,040 --> 00:21:17,480 "Now I am cut down and served up for worms. 199 00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:19,880 "Behold my grave." 200 00:21:24,360 --> 00:21:29,600 Only the highest office in the land seemed to have survived unscathed. 201 00:21:30,480 --> 00:21:37,680 Edward III, once the glamorous, invincible warrior, was now an ageing father to a fragile nation. 202 00:21:37,680 --> 00:21:41,920 Still, the royal succession SEEMED secure. 203 00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:48,440 Edward's son, the Black Prince, the heir to the throne, was already a legendary hero. 204 00:21:48,440 --> 00:21:53,320 But then, against all expectation, the picture changed. 205 00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:57,400 The Black Prince succumbed to dysentery in 1376 206 00:21:57,400 --> 00:22:02,000 and a year later the old king himself finally expired. 207 00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:08,880 And so the crown passed to Edward's grandson, Richard of Bordeaux. 208 00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:15,160 A boy king, called upon before his time, Richard was ruler in name only. 209 00:22:15,160 --> 00:22:21,600 Everyone knew that his uncle, John of Gaunt, worked the real levers of power. 210 00:22:26,400 --> 00:22:32,640 Richard's coronation was orchestrated by John of Gaunt as a festival of loyalty, 211 00:22:32,640 --> 00:22:37,560 a statement of faith in the undimmed future of England's glory. 212 00:22:37,560 --> 00:22:41,600 There had been no coronation for half a century, 213 00:22:41,600 --> 00:22:48,400 but the mix of solemnity and festivity never failed to work its spell. 214 00:22:48,400 --> 00:22:54,600 Knights of the shire rode in from all over England to witness the spectacle. 215 00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:04,640 The next day in the Abbey, little Richard had his shirt taken off him behind a golden screen 216 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:09,440 and his face, hands and chest touched with the holy oil. 217 00:23:10,600 --> 00:23:17,240 As they listened to him in his little boy's voice promise to protect the Church, 218 00:23:17,240 --> 00:23:22,480 do justice and respect the laws and customs of his ancestors, 219 00:23:22,480 --> 00:23:27,000 the assembly of nobles and priests must have imagined him 220 00:23:27,000 --> 00:23:33,360 growing to fit the huge throne of his ferocious great, great grandfather, Edward I. 221 00:23:33,360 --> 00:23:39,400 Inevitably, as the long ceremony droned on in the darkness, Richard fell asleep. 222 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:47,720 As he was carried from the Abbey, his legs dangling, one of his oversized slippers fell off, 223 00:23:47,720 --> 00:23:50,520 but who could think that an ill omen? 224 00:23:50,520 --> 00:23:53,040 He was, after all, only ten. 225 00:23:56,960 --> 00:23:59,680 How was the child marked by all this? 226 00:23:59,680 --> 00:24:06,720 Twenty-two years later, did he remember this moment of anointing as a kind of apotheosis, 227 00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:11,560 a magical transformation from a little man into a little god? 228 00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:17,840 Perhaps it was just as well that Richard mistook himself for a messiah, 229 00:24:17,840 --> 00:24:25,520 since only someone with that kind of innate self-confidence could have faced down, at the tender age of 14, 230 00:24:25,520 --> 00:24:29,920 the most violent upheaval in the history of Medieval England. 231 00:24:31,240 --> 00:24:38,560 It happened with astounding, terrifying swiftness, starting in the kind of place you'd least expect it. 232 00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,600 Not some destitute mud hole in the back of beyond, 233 00:24:42,600 --> 00:24:47,080 but in the most economically developed region of rural England. 234 00:24:47,080 --> 00:24:54,200 The belt of rich, fertile country, stretching from Kent, over the Medway and Thames to Essex and East Anglia. 235 00:24:54,200 --> 00:25:00,880 The thing about the Peasants' Revolt is that the people who started it weren't really peasants at all. 236 00:25:00,880 --> 00:25:06,920 At any rate, they weren't the straw-chewing, pitchfork-waving yokels of legend. 237 00:25:06,920 --> 00:25:11,480 No, they were people with something to lose - the village elite. 238 00:25:11,480 --> 00:25:15,520 Men who'd served as constables and stewards and jurors. 239 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:21,760 Men who'd moved into those vacant lots that had been left behind by victims of the plague. 240 00:25:21,760 --> 00:25:26,400 They'd made some money and weren't about to see it go down the drain 241 00:25:26,400 --> 00:25:31,240 in order to line the pockets of some lawyer and pen pusher in Westminster. 242 00:25:35,320 --> 00:25:42,360 What's more, they knew how to make an army out of those one rung down on the social ladder. 243 00:25:42,360 --> 00:25:49,440 Families just above the poverty line who had to sell their labour to make ends meet. 244 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:56,800 They were already angry at government attempts to peg back their steadily rising wages to pre-plague levels. 245 00:25:56,800 --> 00:26:04,200 The balance had tipped in favour of the survivors and they were determined to keep it that way. 246 00:26:04,200 --> 00:26:10,720 In their different ways, all these people were, or thought they were, up-and-comers 247 00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:17,360 and they would fight if necessary to prevent themselves from sinking into the down-and-outers. 248 00:26:17,360 --> 00:26:23,800 Was this a class war? A phrase we're not supposed to use since the official burial of Marxism. 249 00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:26,880 Yes, it was. 250 00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:33,840 The suspicion amongst the men of village England was that the real power behind the throne, 251 00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:40,400 John of Gaunt, the Queen Mother and the Chancellor, were gathering in fresh taxes, 252 00:26:40,400 --> 00:26:47,360 not to finance a patriotic war in France, but to lavish on their own palaces and private estates. 253 00:26:47,360 --> 00:26:51,880 So when, in November 1380, parliament approved a new poll tax, 254 00:26:51,880 --> 00:26:56,760 one which for the first time took no account of individual wealth, 255 00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:01,200 the yeomen farmers must have imagined the awful prospect 256 00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:06,240 of all their hard-won gains being snatched back by a greedy government. 257 00:27:06,240 --> 00:27:12,840 There was outrage, bloody-minded fury and mass evasion which escalated into outright rebellion. 258 00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:19,440 Tax collectors and sheriff's men were attacked, a few killed. 259 00:27:22,680 --> 00:27:29,200 In Maidstone, they elected Wat Tyler, a yeoman craftsman, as their general and captain 260 00:27:29,200 --> 00:27:36,080 and freed a Lollard anti-cleric called John Ball, who'd been imprisoned in the bishop's palace. 261 00:27:37,120 --> 00:27:39,680 John Ball is a recognisable type, 262 00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:46,000 a preaching friar who pushes Black Death radicalism to its logical extreme. 263 00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:51,000 "Get rid of the priesthood and the property owners," Ball argued, 264 00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:56,040 "and Christ's embrace of the poor will once again be honoured." 265 00:27:56,040 --> 00:28:00,600 "Are we not descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? 266 00:28:00,600 --> 00:28:07,000 "And what reason can they give why THEY should be more masters than ourselves? 267 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:13,160 "They are clothed in velvet and rich ermine while we are forced to wear poor clothing. 268 00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:17,160 "They have wines and fine spices and fine bread, 269 00:28:17,160 --> 00:28:23,320 "while we have only rye and the refuse of the straw and when we drink it must be water. 270 00:28:23,320 --> 00:28:28,520 "We are called slaves. If we do not perform our services, we're beaten. 271 00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:32,560 "Let us go to the king and remonstrate with him. 272 00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,120 "We may obtain a favourable answer. 273 00:28:35,120 --> 00:28:40,400 "And if not, we must seek to amend our conditions ourselves." 274 00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:50,600 And so they marched, the levelling fever of the Black Death buzzing in their brains, 275 00:28:50,600 --> 00:28:54,640 slogans of equality and retribution in their mouths. 276 00:28:54,640 --> 00:29:01,960 After all, who were Wat Tyler, John Bull and Robert Kaye of the Dartford baker, but the three dead 277 00:29:01,960 --> 00:29:07,640 confronting the spoiled, rich and mighty with their day of judgement. 278 00:29:10,720 --> 00:29:15,480 On the morning of 12th June 1381, an enormous army, 279 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:19,920 at least 5,000, perhaps as many as 10,000 strong, 280 00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:24,880 was camped here on the fields of Blackheath on the edge of London. 281 00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:27,440 Below them, they could see the city. 282 00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:33,400 Old St Paul's, the bridges crowded with shops and Westminster beyond, 283 00:29:33,400 --> 00:29:35,920 all seemingly at THEIR mercy. 284 00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:46,640 This was not a rabble. From the start of the revolt, its targets had been selected carefully to make a point. 285 00:29:46,640 --> 00:29:50,680 Rich abbeys, estates belonging to tax collectors. 286 00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:56,760 Any document bearing the Seal of the Exchequer was marked out for destruction. 287 00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:01,800 Manorial accounts were burned. They knew what they were doing. 288 00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:06,680 Paradoxically, the rebels remained fervently loyal to the crown. 289 00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:13,720 Though they had made themselves outlaws, they were fired by the certainty that their cause was just. 290 00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:21,520 Surely it would be seen that they were not threatening the king, but rescuing him as well as themselves? 291 00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:30,400 The discipline of the march, however, did not survive contact with the big city. 292 00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:36,560 Prisons were broken open, churches looted, palaces put to the torch. 293 00:30:36,560 --> 00:30:43,680 Thirty-five Flemish merchants were decapitated on the same block, one after the other. 294 00:30:46,760 --> 00:30:53,800 Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury was captured while at his prayers in the Chapel of St John. 295 00:30:53,800 --> 00:31:01,120 The rampaging rebels hacked his head off, stuck it on a spike and paraded it triumphantly through the streets. 296 00:31:05,160 --> 00:31:12,160 On the evening of Thursday, 13th June, the teenage king climbed one of the turrets in the Tower 297 00:31:12,160 --> 00:31:16,600 and what he saw ought to have broken him in terror. 298 00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:22,360 The sky red with flames. 299 00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:25,000 London crumbling into smoking ruins. 300 00:31:29,960 --> 00:31:35,000 But hostage to a nightmare, Richard doesn't seem to have panicked. 301 00:31:35,000 --> 00:31:42,040 When the councillors asked him negotiate with the rebels, he evidently showed no hesitation. 302 00:31:42,040 --> 00:31:46,080 It was the boy who was the man of the hour. 303 00:31:46,080 --> 00:31:53,280 It was a brave front, for Richard must have thought there was a good chance he might not survive. 304 00:31:53,280 --> 00:31:55,840 Before his meeting with the rebels, 305 00:31:55,840 --> 00:32:02,880 he prayed at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, the patron saint of all the Plantagenet kings. 306 00:32:02,880 --> 00:32:09,920 Then, he rode through the jostling crowds to meet Wat Tyler and the rest of the leaders at Smithfield. 307 00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:20,280 When he got to Smithfield, the king could see the rebels camped on the west side of the field 308 00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:22,840 and the royal party on the east. 309 00:32:22,840 --> 00:32:30,160 Wat Tyler rode over to Richard, got off his little horse, knelt very briefly, not very convincingly, 310 00:32:30,160 --> 00:32:34,200 but then shakes his hand and calls him brother. 311 00:32:34,200 --> 00:32:38,760 "Why will you not go home?" asked the king rather plaintively, 312 00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:43,520 to which Tyler responded with a loud curse and a set of demands. 313 00:32:43,520 --> 00:32:49,560 The most important was for a new Magna Carta - for the ordinary people. 314 00:32:49,560 --> 00:32:53,720 It would abolish serfdom, liquidate the property of the Church, 315 00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:57,760 it would offer a general pardon to all outlaws. 316 00:32:57,760 --> 00:33:04,800 And if all this wasn't radical enough, it would make every man equal below the level of the king. 317 00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:11,240 Now to all this Richard answered, "Yes," perhaps crossing his fingers behind his back, 318 00:33:11,240 --> 00:33:17,760 and maybe Wat Tyler was so amazed by the concession, he didn't quite know what to do next. 319 00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:25,080 So an eerie silence settles over everybody on the field, broken only by Tyler asking for a flagon of ale. 320 00:33:25,080 --> 00:33:32,320 He gets it, he downs it, he gets back on to his mount, a big man on a little horse, 321 00:33:32,320 --> 00:33:35,880 and at that moment... history changed. 322 00:33:38,120 --> 00:33:43,160 There was someone on the king's side who had not been reading the script, 323 00:33:43,160 --> 00:33:48,160 or perhaps was just unable to take the humiliation any longer. 324 00:33:50,120 --> 00:33:56,520 It was a young esquire, someone Richard's own age who shouted at Tyler that he was a thief. 325 00:33:57,600 --> 00:34:00,160 It broke the strange spell. 326 00:34:00,160 --> 00:34:07,160 Walworth, the Mayor, who had always taken a hard line, tried to arrest Tyler. 327 00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,120 There was horseback fighting, 328 00:34:13,120 --> 00:34:19,640 Walworth getting in the decisive blow, cutting Tyler through the shoulder and neck. 329 00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:26,880 As soon as he was down, the king's men surrounded him, finishing him off, 330 00:34:26,880 --> 00:34:31,920 but making sure the rebel camp could not see what was going on. 331 00:34:35,240 --> 00:34:39,480 One way or another, this was the moment of truth. 332 00:34:39,480 --> 00:34:46,320 It was also the moment when Richard himself acted, decisively and with amazing courage. 333 00:34:46,320 --> 00:34:53,440 He rode straight at the rebels shouting famously, "You shall have no captain but me." 334 00:34:54,600 --> 00:35:01,120 The words were brilliantly chosen and were, of course, deliberately ambiguous. 335 00:35:01,120 --> 00:35:08,160 To the rebels, it seemed that Richard himself was now their leader, just as they'd always wanted. 336 00:35:08,160 --> 00:35:14,320 But the words could have been meant as the first reassertion of royal authority. 337 00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:18,360 Either way, it defused the immediate crisis 338 00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:25,200 and gave Mayor Walworth the opportunity to get back to London and mobilise armed men. 339 00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:29,680 Now the process of breaking up the leaderless rebellion could begin. 340 00:35:29,680 --> 00:35:36,200 Cautiously at first, with offers of pardons and mercy, but then with implacable resolution. 341 00:35:36,200 --> 00:35:40,720 Just a week after the apparent concessions at Smithfield, 342 00:35:40,720 --> 00:35:47,960 another group of rebels met with Richard at Waltham in Essex, but they found a very different king. 343 00:35:51,600 --> 00:35:58,760 "You wretches, detestable on land and sea, you who seek equality with lords, are unworthy to live. 344 00:35:58,760 --> 00:36:05,960 "Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still. 345 00:36:05,960 --> 00:36:10,880 "You will remain in bondage not as before, but incomparably harsher. 346 00:36:10,920 --> 00:36:15,760 "For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you 347 00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:20,320 "and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. 348 00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:24,760 "However we will spare your lives if you remain faithful. 349 00:36:24,760 --> 00:36:28,800 "Choose now which course you want to follow." 350 00:36:29,840 --> 00:36:34,680 The rebels took the only option that was realistically open to them. 351 00:36:34,680 --> 00:36:41,920 They fell to their knees. It was all over. The king was literally the only one left standing. 352 00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:49,200 But what was the effect of all this on Richard? What did he now think he was capable of? 353 00:36:50,200 --> 00:36:53,200 "My master, God omnipotent, 354 00:36:53,200 --> 00:36:58,320 "is mustering in his clouds on our behalf armies of pestilence 355 00:36:58,320 --> 00:37:02,960 "and they shall strike your children yet unborn and unbegot 356 00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:10,080 "that lift your vassal hands against my head and threat the glory of my precious crown." 357 00:37:11,440 --> 00:37:16,480 Though Shakespeare starts his tragedy years after the Peasants' Revolt, 358 00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:23,120 it's hard not to believe that in his portrait of a petulant, self-admiring Richard II, 359 00:37:23,120 --> 00:37:30,080 there is the sense of someone trapped in an adolescent fantasy of indestructibility. 360 00:37:30,080 --> 00:37:37,120 There's no denying that, especially at times of crisis, he was subject to unpredictable mood swings, 361 00:37:37,120 --> 00:37:42,840 between adrenaline rush feelings of omnipotence and abject fatalism. 362 00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:47,680 But it is easy to exaggerate his unfitness to rule, 363 00:37:47,680 --> 00:37:51,240 as though he were somehow suspiciously unsound. 364 00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:57,000 He was built the usual Plantagenet way. 365 00:37:57,000 --> 00:38:01,040 Six foot tall with long, flowing, blond hair. 366 00:38:01,040 --> 00:38:05,280 But unlike his grandfather, he failed to keep mistresses 367 00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:09,800 and seemed, oddly enough, to want to be faithful to his wife Anne. 368 00:38:09,800 --> 00:38:16,840 Real Plantagenets tore at their meat and slurped the drippings. Richard not only insisted on using a spoon, 369 00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:20,480 but inflicted it on the rest of the court. 370 00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:25,800 Real Plantagenets won blood-soaked victories over France and Scotland. 371 00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:30,040 Richard brought England the pocket handkerchief. 372 00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:33,800 Real Plantagenets built fortresses. 373 00:38:33,800 --> 00:38:41,440 Richard instead wanted a great ceremonial space in Westminster Hall with a spectacular hammer-beam roof. 374 00:38:44,480 --> 00:38:49,320 The rows of angels symbolised the king's divine right to rule. 375 00:38:56,640 --> 00:39:01,000 The angels in turn are supported by carved stone plinths, 376 00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:05,040 bearing Richard's own emblem, the white hart. 377 00:39:06,280 --> 00:39:10,840 But the alien strangeness attributed to Richard seems a lot less strange 378 00:39:10,840 --> 00:39:14,440 if you think of him as a Renaissance prince 379 00:39:14,440 --> 00:39:20,480 for whom the idea of the civilised life was not necessarily a mark of being un-English. 380 00:39:22,120 --> 00:39:28,640 The Wilton Diptych is the clearest illustration of his exalted vision of kingship. 381 00:39:29,800 --> 00:39:34,560 Richard instinctively felt he belonged in the company of saints, 382 00:39:34,560 --> 00:39:37,120 so here he is with three of them. 383 00:39:37,120 --> 00:39:39,560 John the Baptist, 384 00:39:39,560 --> 00:39:42,080 Edward the Confessor 385 00:39:42,080 --> 00:39:44,880 and the Saxon martyr king, Edmund. 386 00:39:49,080 --> 00:39:53,920 The other panel reveals him to be in the even more exalted company 387 00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:57,760 of angels, the Christ Child and the Virgin. 388 00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:03,040 He is her appointed lieutenant. 389 00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:07,080 She is receiving his kingdom as her dowry 390 00:40:07,080 --> 00:40:12,000 and in return will bestow on it her special protection and favour. 391 00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:18,040 Ceremonial style was not, the king decided, just an affectation, 392 00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:20,560 the window-dressing of power, 393 00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:25,640 it was at the heart of its mystery, its capacity to make men obey. 394 00:40:25,680 --> 00:40:33,000 This is what Richard had in mind when, for the first time in the history of the British monarchies, 395 00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:40,480 the king let it be known he should like to be addressed as "Majesty" and "Highness", 396 00:40:40,480 --> 00:40:43,040 a kind of mystical elevation. 397 00:40:46,000 --> 00:40:49,440 But what seemed like refinement to Richard, 398 00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:56,520 to the barons was evidence that the king had lost touch with their common interests. 399 00:40:58,960 --> 00:41:06,240 Richard's refusal to continue the war with France was an obvious source of irritation for the nobility. 400 00:41:06,240 --> 00:41:08,880 They prospered from foreign campaigns 401 00:41:08,880 --> 00:41:15,960 and built spectacular castles, like this one at Bodium, to guard against a French invasion. 402 00:41:15,960 --> 00:41:21,120 But it was the king's high-handedness that finally stung them into action. 403 00:41:22,120 --> 00:41:26,160 By issuing royal decrees, Richard could bypass parliament. 404 00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:31,320 He lavished favours on his closest friends and advisers, 405 00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:38,800 men like Sir Simon Burleigh and Robert de Vere who was absurdly promoted to be Duke of Ireland. 406 00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:43,640 The lords retaliated with their only available weapon, parliament. 407 00:41:44,360 --> 00:41:48,200 In February 1388, five of the king's favourites 408 00:41:48,200 --> 00:41:53,600 were charged with "abusing his youth and innocence to promote their own ambitions." 409 00:41:53,600 --> 00:42:00,120 All were found guilty of treason, by what became known as "the merciless parliament". 410 00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:04,160 Robert de Vere, the most hated of the king's confidants, 411 00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:11,200 escaped before sentence of execution could be carried out, but Simon Burleigh was not so lucky. 412 00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:15,440 Richard's queen pleaded on her knees for Burleigh's life, 413 00:42:15,440 --> 00:42:17,960 but to no avail. 414 00:42:19,640 --> 00:42:26,400 Richard may have crushed the Peasants' Revolt, but peers of the realm were another matter. 415 00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:32,440 Chastened by the humiliation, the king withdrew into autocratic solitude. 416 00:42:32,440 --> 00:42:38,960 And yet he had enough of the Plantagenet about him to harbour desires for retribution. 417 00:42:38,960 --> 00:42:42,800 He held his peace for nearly ten years, 418 00:42:42,800 --> 00:42:49,320 but when his beloved Queen Anne died of plague, Richard lost his only restraining influence 419 00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:54,160 and he reasserted himself in an extraordinary storm of revenge. 420 00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:58,600 Using the pretext of an aristocratic plot, 421 00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:05,120 he brutally disposed of the ringleaders of the "merciless parliament" a decade earlier. 422 00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:10,880 The Earl of Arundel was executed, the Earl of Warwick was exiled 423 00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:18,560 and the Duke of Gloucester, Richard's own uncle, was murdered, smothered in his bed on the king's orders. 424 00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:25,760 The old scores had been settled at last. 425 00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:30,640 You would think that Richard would contain his sense of triumph, 426 00:43:30,640 --> 00:43:34,680 if only in the interest of self-preservation. 427 00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:40,920 But now that Richard II discovered that people were, for the first time, frightened of him, 428 00:43:40,920 --> 00:43:44,440 he also discovered he rather liked it. 429 00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:49,200 He drank it in and lashed out at anybody he thought was disloyal, 430 00:43:49,200 --> 00:43:52,720 replacing them with yes-men and toadies, 431 00:43:52,720 --> 00:43:59,360 eating, sleeping and travelling surrounded by a private army, as if he were some sort of Roman emperor. 432 00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:07,600 Beneath these delusions of omnipotence, though, Richard remained neurotically insecure. 433 00:44:07,600 --> 00:44:10,120 On the merest suspicion of treason, 434 00:44:10,120 --> 00:44:16,160 he rashly condemned John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, to ten years in exile, 435 00:44:16,160 --> 00:44:20,000 without even the pretence of a show trial. 436 00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:26,600 If such summary justice made the English nobility uneasy, what happened next left them stunned. 437 00:44:26,600 --> 00:44:32,760 When John of Gaunt finally died, Richard decided to increase Bolingbroke's sentence 438 00:44:32,760 --> 00:44:37,200 to banishment for life and seized the young Duke's inheritance, 439 00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:42,040 the valuable Lancastrian estates, in the name of the crown. 440 00:44:44,280 --> 00:44:52,160 The magnates of England must have looked at this and said, "He's got to be stopped, or it's my turn next." 441 00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:58,080 Richard was one blunder away from disaster. 442 00:44:58,080 --> 00:45:01,840 The final, fatal distraction was Ireland. 443 00:45:02,880 --> 00:45:07,240 He had decided to bring the Irish princes to heel, 444 00:45:07,240 --> 00:45:12,280 but he took with him enough soldiers to leave himself defenceless at home 445 00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:15,960 and not enough to cow the Irish nobles. 446 00:45:15,960 --> 00:45:19,800 And before he could finish his business there, 447 00:45:19,800 --> 00:45:25,840 he heard news that Henry Bolingbroke had landed with an army on the Yorkshire coast 448 00:45:25,840 --> 00:45:30,480 and the alienated English lords had flocked to his banner. 449 00:45:30,480 --> 00:45:33,040 By the time Richard returned, 450 00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:39,280 Bolingbroke was in command of the southern and eastern heartland of England. 451 00:45:39,280 --> 00:45:46,320 The odd thing is that Richard seemed to be one step ahead of his enemies in fatalistic pessimism, 452 00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:48,880 so that when he got the bad news 453 00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:54,920 that many of his most trusted supporters and allies had switched to the other side, 454 00:45:54,920 --> 00:45:59,680 his reaction was not to dig in his heels, make a fight of it, 455 00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:04,640 but rather to flee at night across the country, disguised as a priest, 456 00:46:04,640 --> 00:46:09,560 bewailing his misfortunes and as usual blaming them on everybody else. 457 00:46:09,560 --> 00:46:16,200 At some point in his uncontested march towards Richard, Bolingbroke's aims changed, 458 00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:20,760 from simply getting his lands back to overthrowing the king. 459 00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:25,000 "Now I can see my end," Shakespeare has Richard say, 460 00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:28,840 a neat little piece of Lancastrian propaganda 461 00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:33,080 which solved the embarrassing problem of a deposition 462 00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:37,520 by making Richard seem as though he had resigned the crown, 463 00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:42,200 rather than having it snatched from his desperate grip. 464 00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:48,360 It took a month of painful negotiations 465 00:46:48,360 --> 00:46:53,400 to get Richard, now a prisoner in the Tower, to give up the throne. 466 00:46:53,400 --> 00:46:58,440 Three times they asked him to surrender, three times he refused, 467 00:46:58,440 --> 00:47:02,120 before finally bowing to the inevitable. 468 00:47:02,120 --> 00:47:08,160 On 30th September, a report of the king's renunciation was read to parliament, 469 00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:12,880 gathered under the angels of Richard's magnificent roof. 470 00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:19,920 The lords were asked to acclaim Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, Duke of Lancaster, as King Henry IV 471 00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:24,480 which they did to cries of, "Yes, yes, yes." 472 00:47:35,000 --> 00:47:42,040 Richard, the divine prince no longer, was spirited away and imprisoned in Pontefract Castle. 473 00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:46,400 Most likely he was starved to death, a horrible way to end. 474 00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:53,440 It ensured there'd be no compromising marks of assault on his body when it was given a public burial. 475 00:47:53,440 --> 00:47:58,360 Now, oddly enough, it was Henry who orchestrated this big funeral, 476 00:47:58,360 --> 00:48:02,240 a pre-emptive strike against any conspirators 477 00:48:02,240 --> 00:48:08,280 who might imagine that Richard could be rescued and restored to the throne. 478 00:48:09,400 --> 00:48:16,400 It was Bolingbroke's son, Henry V, who had the body of King Richard buried in Westminster Abbey. 479 00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:23,080 Perhaps Henry wanted to put the charge of murder, as well as its victim, to rest. 480 00:48:23,080 --> 00:48:29,920 He must have hoped that, in his reign, the wounds of the contending parties might be healed. 481 00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,160 But it was not to be. 482 00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:41,960 Despite his victory at Agincourt, Henry V remains a might-have-been, dead at 35 from dysentery. 483 00:48:41,960 --> 00:48:49,480 So neither he nor his son, Henry VI, could prevent what the stealing of Richard's crown had made inevitable, 484 00:48:49,480 --> 00:48:55,720 a long and bloody war between the competing wings of the Plantagenet family. 485 00:48:57,960 --> 00:49:04,800 For 30 years, the houses of York and Lancaster slogged it out in a roll call of battles 486 00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,360 we know as the Wars of the Roses. 487 00:49:08,800 --> 00:49:13,640 There are only two ways to feel about the Wars of the Roses. 488 00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:18,280 Either the endless chronicle of violent seizures of the crown 489 00:49:18,280 --> 00:49:25,200 makes you thrill to one of the great English epics, or it leaves you feeling slightly numbed. 490 00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:28,240 If you're one of the dazed and confused, 491 00:49:28,240 --> 00:49:35,280 the temptation is to write off the whole sorry mess as the bloody bickering of overgrown schoolboys 492 00:49:35,280 --> 00:49:41,040 whacking each other senseless at Towton, Barnet and Bosworth. 493 00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:46,560 But there was something at stake in all the mayhem - 494 00:49:46,560 --> 00:49:51,400 the sense of needing to make the English monarchy credible again. 495 00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,960 To re-solder the chains of allegiance 496 00:49:53,960 --> 00:50:01,120 which had once stretched all the way from Westminster, out to the constables and justices in the shires 497 00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:05,960 and which had been so badly broken by the fate of Richard II. 498 00:50:08,720 --> 00:50:13,560 To understand the way in which lawlessness, violence and chaos 499 00:50:13,560 --> 00:50:17,600 did make an impact on 15th-century England, 500 00:50:17,600 --> 00:50:24,640 we have something incomparably richer than the list of battlefields and barons, kings and king makers. 501 00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:32,000 We have the letters of the Paston family of Norfolk, the very first private correspondence in English, 502 00:50:32,000 --> 00:50:35,040 the authentic voice of middling folk. 503 00:50:35,040 --> 00:50:39,040 Farmers, lawyers, would-be gentry, social climbers. 504 00:50:39,040 --> 00:50:45,480 Like many an anxious wife and mother, the Wars of the Roses worried Margaret Paston 505 00:50:45,480 --> 00:50:51,800 because they were making England a bad place to make and keep a little fortune. 506 00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:54,360 "God, for his mercy give grace, 507 00:50:54,360 --> 00:51:00,880 "for I never heard say of so much robbery and manslaughter in this country as is now. 508 00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:05,160 "And as for gathering of money, I never saw a worse season." 509 00:51:06,320 --> 00:51:13,360 To Margaret, the Kingdom of England might be up for grabs, but the real disaster was shopping. 510 00:51:13,360 --> 00:51:20,400 "As for cloth for my gown, I pray that you will vouchsafe to do buy for me three yards and a quarter 511 00:51:20,400 --> 00:51:24,440 "of such as it pleaseth you that I should have. 512 00:51:24,440 --> 00:51:30,480 "For I have done all the draper's shops in this town and here is right feeble choice." 513 00:51:30,480 --> 00:51:37,000 The founder of the Paston dynasty, Clement, is described as a plain husbandman, 514 00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:39,520 which is to say a peasant, 515 00:51:39,520 --> 00:51:46,680 but a peasant who took advantage of the Black Death to scramble right up the social ladder of the village. 516 00:51:46,680 --> 00:51:51,720 Clement Paston was shrewd enough to send his son William to law school. 517 00:51:51,720 --> 00:51:58,960 Clever enough, that is, to understand that it was going to be through learning, as much as through land, 518 00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:04,000 that the fortunes of the Pastons would be utterly transformed. 519 00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:10,240 Clement's son did indeed become a lawyer, and married into money. 520 00:52:10,240 --> 00:52:17,280 So did his grandson John, who acquired Caister castle, completing the meteoric rise of the Pastons 521 00:52:17,280 --> 00:52:21,640 from peasantry to landed gentry in just two generations. 522 00:52:23,240 --> 00:52:30,280 "John Jenney informed me, and I've verily learned since, you're to be made a knight at this coronation. 523 00:52:30,280 --> 00:52:37,120 "Considering the comfortable tidings aforesaid, 'twere time the necessary gear be purveyed for." 524 00:52:38,840 --> 00:52:41,400 But nothing's ever this easy, is it? 525 00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:48,360 As the Pastons became influential and rich, so they also were bound to attract enemies. 526 00:52:48,360 --> 00:52:55,680 While they were nobodies, the great bloody tides of the Wars of the Roses were going to happen somewhere else. 527 00:52:55,680 --> 00:53:00,680 But now that they became owners of lands and manors and castles, 528 00:53:00,680 --> 00:53:07,720 they also became prime targets for the heavies and no-one was heavier than the Duke of Norfolk. 529 00:53:07,720 --> 00:53:13,720 He'd always coveted Caister Castle. In September 1469, he came to get it. 530 00:53:13,720 --> 00:53:19,160 Margaret wrote in some anguish to her son, "I greet you well, 531 00:53:19,160 --> 00:53:26,200 "letting you know that your brother and his fellowship stand in great jeopardy at Caister." 532 00:53:26,200 --> 00:53:31,160 Well, she was clearly desperate, but she was also extremely angry. 533 00:53:31,160 --> 00:53:34,800 A few lines later, she lets her son, John, 534 00:53:34,800 --> 00:53:39,360 feel the rough edge of her tongue which is extremely rough indeed. 535 00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:46,400 "Every man in this country marvels that you suffer them to be for so long in great jeopardy. 536 00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:50,720 "They be like to lose both their lives and the place. 537 00:53:50,720 --> 00:53:55,320 "The greatest rebuke to you that ever came to any gentleman." 538 00:53:55,320 --> 00:53:58,120 John immediately writes back... 539 00:53:59,840 --> 00:54:06,640 "Mother, if I had need to be woken up by a letter at this time, I would indeed be a sluggish fellow. 540 00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:13,480 "I have heard ten times worse tidings since the siege began than any letter that you wrote me. 541 00:54:13,480 --> 00:54:20,160 "But I assure you that those within have no worse rest than I have, nor fear more danger." 542 00:54:24,200 --> 00:54:31,840 Faced with the might of the Duke of Norfolk's army, the Pastons had no choice but to surrender their castle. 543 00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:37,840 But once again the law would bring about the transformation of their fortunes. 544 00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:42,680 It took a seven-year legal battle and an appeal to the king, 545 00:54:42,680 --> 00:54:46,720 but they were eventually reinstated at Caister, 546 00:54:46,720 --> 00:54:51,640 although for the eldest of Margaret's brood, the triumph was short lived. 547 00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:56,840 Three years later, John Paston died of the plague. 548 00:54:58,960 --> 00:55:06,000 The Pastons had got over all these bumps in the road to become a settled presence in their county. 549 00:55:06,000 --> 00:55:11,080 The same would be true for countless other English men and women. 550 00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:13,640 Essentially they were survivors. 551 00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:19,680 They'd survived the plague, they'd survived dethronement, they'd survived civil war. 552 00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:26,720 Kings came and went, but the men of the village, the same sort of men who'd marched on London in 1381, 553 00:55:26,720 --> 00:55:31,560 who'd been revolutionaries and desperados, were becoming squires. 554 00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:38,880 They knew what the worst could be. They knew that the plague could come and carry off babies and children. 555 00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:43,720 They knew that the knights from over the hill might go on a rampage, 556 00:55:43,720 --> 00:55:50,760 but they also knew that with an equal measure of prudence and prayer, they would get through it. 557 00:55:55,320 --> 00:56:01,880 So come to an English village like this, far from the mayhem, say around 1480, 558 00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:04,440 and you'd see what you'd expect. 559 00:56:04,440 --> 00:56:09,040 A church built in the economic elegance of the perpendicular style. 560 00:56:10,040 --> 00:56:14,680 A village ale house with a name like The Swan or The Frog. 561 00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:21,720 And at the heart, a grand and handsome dwelling for the biggest tenant farmer in the area. 562 00:56:21,720 --> 00:56:25,600 Not a wattle and daub single-roomed glorified hut, 563 00:56:25,600 --> 00:56:31,880 but a miniature manor with its own hall and servants to wait on the master and mistress. 564 00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:36,840 A buttery, a cellar and private retiring chambers. 565 00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:48,240 One shouldn't be too complacent about the condition of Britain at the end of its first century of plague. 566 00:56:48,240 --> 00:56:53,160 The end of the road through trauma was not all buttercups and beer, 567 00:56:53,160 --> 00:56:57,200 there was still grinding poverty alongside plenty. 568 00:56:57,200 --> 00:57:01,440 But all the same, the improbable HAD happened. 569 00:57:01,440 --> 00:57:08,960 Out of the fires of pestilence and bloodshed had emerged that most unlikely example of survivor, 570 00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:11,560 the English country gent. 571 00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:44,160 There's much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC History website.