The Medieval Town in England 1200-1540 by Richard Holt Gervase Rosser

Author:Richard Holt, Gervase Rosser [Richard Holt, Gervase Rosser]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317899808
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2014-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Editorial suggestion for further reading

Britnell R. H., Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300-1525 (Cambridge, 1986).

Chapter Nine

Ralph Holland and the London Radicals, 1438-1444

Caroline M. Barron

from A History of the North London Branch of the Historical Association, together with Essays in Honour of its Golden Jubilee (London, 1970)

It is rare to find detailed records of a major factional dispute affecting the ruling body of a town. The relatively well-documented events which are lucidly presented in this article by Caroline Barron may usefully be compared with another celebrated case, of a generation later: that of Laurence Saunders in Coventry. It is perhaps significant that on both occasions popular discontent was channelled through a dissident member of the oligarchy. This would seem to reinforce Susan Reynolds's view that lesser burgesses everywhere saw the wealthy men of their town as a natural aristocracy. According to this theory, inferiors might question the particular judgement of their social betters, but never their right to govern. Alternatively, we may suspect that the mechanisms by which the oligarchy maintained its power were normally such as to stifle opposition from below. Only unusual circumstances - such as a charismatic leader, or a split in the oligarchy - could enable a serious protest movement to develop. In the case of Holland (as of Saunders) it would seem that these were precisely the circumstances that had arisen.

'The prosperity of the City of London depends not upon the merchants but upon the artisans.' So declared the tailor John Bale in 1443. He spoke for a large group of Londoners, many of whom were excluded from active participation in the government of the City and whose sense of injustice and grievance, while firmly rooted in the kind of company demarcation dispute which was common in the period, extended to the whole fabric of civic government.

The basic conflict arose between the Tailors and the Drapers and this was symptomatic of the fundamental rift in City life: the rift between the artisans and the merchants. The artisan companies might be ancient, but in wealth and power they lagged some considerable way behind the merchant companies who controlled the City government and so also gained the royal ear. The opposition which the ruling merchant oligarchy encountered in these years fed upon a variety of grievances, but its unity and driving force depended upon one man, a tailor called Ralph Holland. By his personal ability he articulated the artisans grievances, and out of the original dispute between the Tailors and Drapers there developed an organised opposition party in the city. This party first attacked the method of electing the Mayor and then, in 1443, resisted the new London charter which gave the Mayor and Aldermen powers as Justices, over and above their existing powers as Guardians of the Peace. When its attempts at reform within the existing framework of City government failed, the opposition party resorted to an attempt at an armed uprising. The failure of this in the autumn of 1443 marked the triumph of the conservative

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