The Red Prince by Helen Carr

Author:Helen Carr [Carr, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780861540839
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2021-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

The Rising of 1381 was cataclysmic for England. It polarised towns and villages and exposed the divisive alliances that tore communities, even families, in two. There was no simple ‘side’, for men and women from various backgrounds and social classes banded together to advocate for change. For some it was a revel, an opportunity for anarchy, and for others it was a revolution. For some it was peaceful and, for others, exceptionally violent.

The year began with the first round of harsh tax collection, as initiated by Gloucester’s November Parliament. Bailiffs and sheriffs around the country were charged with the unrewarding task of extracting extraordinary sums from labourers. By March, the first wave of collection had not achieved the expected sum. The government still desperately needed income so a new treasurer was appointed – Robert Hales, Master of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, a military-religious order based in London. It was soon decided that tax collection would no longer be split between January and June, as previously agreed. The entirety would be taken in one crippling deduction, enacted by specially appointed tax collectors around the country. The people were under immense financial pressure, and when they began to avoid the tax collectors, the government dispatched commissioners of enquiry to extort funds by brutal interrogation and threats. With this aggressive strategy, it was not long before the collectors faced backlash and, by April, London sheriffs were refusing to conduct collections, in terror for their lives.

Despite the stirrings of trouble, the nobility continued its daily lives without change or marked concern. John of Gaunt spent a large part of early 1381 mustering an army, to be led by his brother Edmund of Langley, Earl of Cambridge, to aid the Portuguese against the Spanish in an ongoing Iberian war. Gaunt had previously floated the idea of a Portuguese alliance as a way of protecting the English coastline and Brittany, for the Portuguese would be in a position to block any French or Spanish warship from heading through the Straits of Morocco and up towards the English Channel. With the constant threat of attack from the French and Spanish, who had already spent Richard’s reign intimidating the English coastline, an alliance with the Portuguese was of considerable benefit. If Castile could then be taken by Gaunt’s forces, England would be in a powerful position. John of Gaunt soon mustered his military retainers, to ‘serve the Duke in peace and war, and to go with him to war wherever he wishes suitably arrayed for war’. Their payment would be ten marks a year.5

This campaign was Gaunt’s opportunity – sanctioned and funded by the Crown – to claim Castile with the support of the Portuguese; this alliance was crucial to his ambition. The military force assembled for his campaign accounted for a large part of the country’s debt, as exposed by Archbishop Sudbury in the November Parliament. The labouring classes were essentially paying for John of Gaunt’s pursuit of the Castilian throne. Gaunt was enormously

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