Joseph Clayton

“ There was no room for the egotism that loves power, the vaulting ambition that o’erleaps itself, or even the self-deception that persuades a man holding to high position at sacrifice of principle that his motive is disinterested, in St. Thomas of Canterbury. More than once England was to see in later years men who strove vainly to serve with equal respect the Christian religion and the royal will—the service always ended in the triumph of the latter. ”

“ The king that tries without advice to seek his people’s weal
Must often fail, he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.
The Parliament must tell the king how he may serve them best,
And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.
A king should seek his people’s good and not his own sweet will,
Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill. ”

“ Suppressed by dictators, perverted by demagogues, abused by the unscrupulous in power, there still seems nothing better in politics for mankind than self-government. “Better is he who rules his own temper than he who storms a city,” wrote Friar Adam of Marsh to Simon of Montfort. “Better self-government for a people than world-wide conquest,” the average man declares, and the opinion slowly moulds the destinies of nations, till “patriotism” becomes the word for good service in politics. ”

“ THE GREAT CHARTER 1207–1228 When Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury—the old Justiciar of Richard I.—ended his long life of public service on July 12th, A.D. 1205, King John exclaimed, with frank satisfaction, “Now for the first time I am King of England!” As long as Hubert was alive there was one man strong enough to restrain the king, and the primate and William the Marshall together had done something to guard England against the foulest and most ruthless tyranny of all its kings. ”

“ Chartist preacher, put the case as he, a typical agitator of the day, saw it in 1839: “The principle of the People’s Charter is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his happiness. The question of universal suffrage is after all a knife-and-fork question. It means that every workman has a right to have a good hat and coat, a good roof, a good dinner, no more work than will keep him in health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty.”—See R. G. Gamage, History of the Chartist Movement. ”

“ But though Thomas, canonised by the pope on the prayers of the people of England, could be struck out of the calendar of the Church of England by the arbitrary will of King Henry VIII., as an enemy of princes, and his shrine destroyed, it is beyond the power of a king to reverse the sentence of history or to blast for ever the fame of a great and courageous champion of the poor of this land. Time makes little of the insults of Henry VIII. Thomas of Canterbury died for the religion that in his day protected the people against the despotism of the crown. ”

“ With London in his hands, he warned his followers that death would be the instant punishment for theft; and proclaimed to the citizens, “We are indeed zealots for truth and justice, but we are not thieves and robbers.” Every respect was to be shown to the persons and property of the people of London, and wrath was only to fall on John of Gaunt and the ministers of the crown, and the lawyers—the enemies, as it seemed to Tyler, of the good estate of England. In return, the citizens offered bread and ale freely to the invaders, and London artisans joined their ranks in large numbers. ”

“ The great uprising brought out the desire for personal liberty in the labouring people of England that has never since been utterly quenched. It was the first insistence that peasants and serfs were men of England. “It taught the king’s officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years’ time there were very few bondsmen left in England.” ”

“ And now England was to see what sort of archbishop it was Pope Innocent had sent to Canterbury. With a king as cruel as he was vigorous, and as astute as he was unscrupulous, with barons who knew neither loyalty nor patriotism. Archbishop Stephen, out of such materials, was to win for his native land the Great Charter, and to have it written in black and white that all who would might read the several duties of king and people. ”

“ Henry allowed the bishops to stand apart from the judgment, and demanded sentence from the barons, and Earl Robert of Leicester advanced as the spokesman of the council to where the archbishop was sitting. The earl began to speak of the judgment of the court, when Thomas rose and refused to hear him.
“What is this you would do?” he cried. “Would you pass sentence on me? Neither law nor reason permit children to pass sentence on their father. You are nobles of the palace, and I am your spiritual father. I will not hear this sentence of the king, or any judgment of yours. ”

“ Henry, Bishop of Winchester, at last, on the king’s order, pronounced the sentence.
Thomas protested. “If I were silent at such a sentence posterity would not be. This is a new form of sentence, no doubt in accordance with the new laws of Clarendon. Never has it been heard before in England that an Archbishop of Canterbury has been tried in the King’s Court for such a cause. The dignity of the Church, the authority of his person, the fact that he is the spiritual father of the king and of all his subjects, require that he should be reverenced by all.” ”

“ Supremacy of King, or supremacy of Commons,—seed time and harvest remain, and the labourer and the artizan must needs do their day’s work.
Not till the deposing of the Stuarts—forty-five years after John Hampden’s death—is the supremacy of parliament over the crown arrived at by general consent, to become a recognized and settled thing in British politics. By the middle of the nineteenth century the House of Commons is unmistakably the ruling power in the constitution, and the labours of Eliot, Hampden and Pym are vindicated. ”

“ It was when he was archbishop, and was riding one day from Windsor to Hayes that a hare chased by the dogs of some of his company took refuge under the feet of his horse. Anselm at once pulled up and forebade the hare to be molested, and when his escort laughed gleefully at the capture, the archbishop said: “You may laugh, but it is no laughing matter for this poor unhappy creature, which is like the soul of a departing man pursued by evil spirits. Mortal enemies attack it, and it flies to us for its life: and while it turns to us for safety we laugh.” ”

“ Wat Tyler emerges from the obscurity of history to become a strong democratic leader. For eight days he commands a vast army of men; he confronts the king as an equal; orders the execution of the chief ministers of the crown; and wrests from the king promises of fundamental social importance. Then, in the very hour of victory, an unexpected blow from an enemy strikes him down, and death follows. ”

“ But with all the differences of character, one common quality binds these men whose stories are here retold—a resolute hatred of oppression. And one common work, successful or unsuccessful, was theirs—to labour for the liberties of England and the health of its people. The value of each man’s work can only be stated approximately: it is difficult to make full allowance for the vastly different parts our heroes, statesmen and rebels alike, were called to play. ”

“ The great contention of Ernest Jones and the Chartists that political liberty should precede the granting of reforms by parliament, that the people should have the power to control and direct the deliberations of parliaments still has its advocates; but government is passing—almost unnoticed—once more into the hands of an executive, for that “eternal vigilance” which is the price of political liberty is oftentimes relaxed. ”

“ The new form of government bears evidence of its origin; it is intended rather to fetter the king than to extend or develop the action of the community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of select committees, betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat irksome duty of attendance in parliament rather than to share the central legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. ”

“ If the rich still hold fast to this propriety of Mine and Thine, let them labour their own lands with their own hands. And let the common people, that say the earth is ours, not mine, let them labor together, and eat bread together upon the commons, mountains, and hills.
For as the enclosures are called such a man’s land, and such a man’s land, so the Commons and Heath are called the common people’s. And let the world see who labor the earth in righteousness, and those to whom the Lord gives the blessing, let them be the people that shall inherit the earth. ”

“ He slipped back the iron bar himself, and the angry knights rushed in with cries of “Where is the traitor? Where is the archbishop?”
It was five o’clock and a dark winter’s night. Had Thomas chosen, he could easily have escaped death by concealing himself in the crypt or in one of the many hiding places in the cathedral. But he felt his hour had come and met it without faltering. John of Salisbury and the rest of the monks and clerks vanished away and hid themselves, leaving only Edward Grim, Robert of Merton and William FitzStephen with the archbishop. ”

“ But forty years of repression did their work, and a generation arose which only knew Catholicism as the faith of a proscribed and unpatriotic sect, who denied the absolute sovereignty of the crown and had another sovereign at Rome—the religion of Spain—popery, in short: a faith worse than Mahomedanism or heathenism—the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse—according to the fierce Puritan expounders of the Bible, and not to be counted as Christianity. ”

“ For the earth is the Lord’s; that is the spreading Power of Righteousness, not the inheritance of covetous proud flesh that dies. If any man can say that he makes corn or cattle, he may say, That is mine. But if the Lord made these for the use of His creation, surely then the earth was made by the Lord to be a Common Treasury for all, not a particular treasury for some.
Leave off dominion and lordship one over another; for the whole bulk of mankind are but one living earth. ”

“ And with him were nine of his followers hanged.
So died William, called Longbeard, son of Osbert, “for asserting the truth and maintaining the cause of the poor.” And since it is held that to be faithful to such a cause makes a man a martyr, people thought he deserved to be ranked with the martyrs. For a time multitudes—the very folk who had fallen away from their champion in the hour of battle and need—flocked to pay reverence to the ghastly, bloodstained corpse that hung at Tyburn, and pieces of the gibbet and of the bloodstained earth beneath were carried off and counted as sacred relics. ”

“ Both these movements—the agitation of the Labour Party for a fuller and more abundant life for wage-earners, and the agitation of the women337 for political enfranchisement are proceeding in our midst—a guarantee that the centuries of struggle for freedom are not fruitless.
“The battle of freedom is never done and the field never quiet,” and while ever sun and moon endure and man seeks to dominate his neighbour, so long in England shall men and women be found to resist such dominance. ”

“ Added to the common wrongs of Henry’s wretched misrule were the papal extortions, directly encouraged by the king. In return for papal mandates directing churchmen to supply the king with money, what could Henry—himself the most devoted servant of the papacy—do but help the pope to get what he could out of England? The wealth of England was held to be of fabulous amount at Rome, and popes beset by fierce ungodly emperors naturally turned to it in their need as to a treasury. ”

“ The freedom of conscience Thomas More claimed for himself he most willingly allows to others. Just as the education he valued for himself he extends to all his children.
Standing largely aloof from the violent controversies Luther had started, hating the bitter intolerance and savage abuse of theological strife, refusing to be drawn into the deadly discussion of Henry VIII.’s divorce, Sir Thomas More is content to live in loyal devotion to his religion and to the service of the state, if haply he may. ”

“ A broken man, worn and famished, friendless and alone, he still had his sword. The spirit of Mortimer, Captain of Kent, flickered up in the presence of his enemies—it were better to die sword in hand fighting for freedom than to perish basely by the hangman. So Cade fought his last fight in the Sussex garden, and fell mortally wounded, overpowered by the sheriff and his men. ”

“ All England knew that Major Cartwright was a single-minded and high-principled man, in whose heart was neither guile nor malice, a man who had proved his loyalty and patriotism over and over again, and was no more seditious than he was evil-minded or disaffected. ”

“ We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than endure so great cruelty.
Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form, and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling?
We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for every man into the common pasture. ”

“ John Wraw, of Suffolk, and William Grindcobbe, of St. Albans, come to him for advice; and it is not till Tyler moves on London with his army that the rising becomes national. He is plainly marked out as a great leader of masses of men. Skilful, courageous, humane, Wat Tyler is proved to be; firm, clear-headed, downright in manner, and yet large-hearted, jovial and brotherly—equally at home with king or beggar. There is nothing of the fanatical doctrinaire about this first great leader of the English people. ”

“ It is impossible to gaze without reverence on the earliest monument of English freedom which we can see with our own eyes and touch with our own hands, the Great Charter to which from age to age patriots have looked back as the basis of English liberty. ”