1381 by Barker Juliet R. V.;

Author:Barker, Juliet R. V.; [Juliet Barker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2014-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

According to Froissart, Richard’s two half-brothers and Jean, lord of Gommegnies, a soldier of fortune who had been in Gaunt’s service since 1369, left the king’s company before it arrived at their destination because they ‘dare not show themselves to the populace at Mile End’. (The fact that no one else made use of this means of escape from the Tower also suggests that those left behind considered it a safer option.)41 Richard rode into the open fields at Mile End preceded by Aubrey de Vere carrying his sword of state and accompanied by his most experienced military advisers, the earls of Salisbury, Warwick and Oxford, Sir Thomas Percy and Sir Robert Knolles, together with the mayor William Walworth and ‘many knights and esquires’; his mother came too, riding in a carriage. Bizarre though it seems that she should have been there, the princess of Wales was widely respected, especially by Londoners, as a conciliator: Gaunt had notably fled to her in the crisis of 1377 and she had sued for peace between him and the rioting citizens of London.42

The so-called Mile End conference was a seminal moment in the revolt and an extraordinary one in the course of English history because, having listened to their demands, the king granted the rebels all their requests. In so doing he made concessions which would have radically altered the very fabric of English society. Yet we know next to nothing about what happened: not the time of the meeting, how long it lasted, what form it took or even who acted as spokesman or spokesmen on behalf of the rebels. Froissart, Knighton and the monk of Westminster refer in vague terms only to Richard granting freedom from bondage ‘for the sake of peace’; Walsingham does not mention the meeting at all but says the king offered the rebels ‘peace’ if they stopped burning and killing and went home. The London letter-book’s ‘official’ version has a unique take designed to divert blame away from its own citizens for the murders at the Tower, stating that ‘all the men from Kent and Essex . . . together with some of the perfidious persons of the city’ gathered at Mile End where ‘our lord the king granted that they might take those who were traitors against him and slay them, wheresoever they might be found’.43 Though the crowd was probably predominantly made up of people from Essex, since Mile End was their appointed meeting-place, the presence of Kentishmen is confirmed by the indictment of Thomas Noke from the Sittingbourne area who ‘feloniously killed’ James French ‘at Milende in the county of Middlesex’.44 The most detailed account of what happened occurs in the Anonimalle:

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