Urban Conflict in Late Fourteenth‐Century England: The Case of York in 1380–1

English Historical Review

Volumn 118, Issue 475, 2003, Pages

  Liddy, Christian D ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84881033477     PISSN: 00138266     EISSN: 14774534     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/ehr/118.475.1     Document Type: Article

References (167)

1. All references in this paragraph are to Rot[uli] Parl[iamentorum] (6 vols, London, 1783), iii. 96.
2. For York’s self-proclaimed status as the ‘second city’ of the kingdom in the late fourteenth century, see Y[ork] C[ity] A[rchives], D1, f. 348r.
3. Rot Parl, iii. 96.
4. For what follows, see Ibid., iii. 96–7.
5. R. B. Dobson, ‘The Risings in York, Beverley and Scarborough, 1380–1381’, in The English Rising of 1381, ed. R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 121–3.
6. C. Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford, 1906), pp. 145–6.
7. E. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, in The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Yorkshire: The City of York, ed. P. M. Tillott (Oxford, 1961), pp. 81–2; Dobson, ‘Risings’, pp. 119–24.
8. Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 114.
9. Ibid., pp. 119–20, 139. The quotation is from p. 120.
10. S. Reynolds, ‘Medieval Urban History and the History of Political Thought’, Urban History (1982), 14–23. For a powerful critique of this view, see S. Rigby, ‘Urban ‘‘Oligarchy’’ in Late Medieval England’, in Towns and Townspeople in the Fifteenth Century, ed. J. A. F. Thomson (Gloucester, 1988), pp. 62–86.
11. R. H. Hilton, English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1992), ch.6; H. Swanson, Medieval Artisans: An Urban Class in Late Medieval England (Oxford, 1989), ch.9.
12. I would like to acknowledge my debt to B. McRee, ‘Peacemaking and its Limits in Late Medieval Norwich’, ante, cix (1994), 831–66, for clarifying my thoughts on this subject.
13. Among Caroline Barron’s work, see, for example, ‘Richard Whittington: the Man behind the Myth’, in Studies in London History presented to Philip Edmund Jones, ed. A. E. J. Hollaender and W. Kellaway (London, 1969), pp. 197–248, and, most recently, ‘Richard II and London’, in Richard II: The Art of Kingship, ed. A. Goodman and J. Gillespie (Oxford, 1999), pp. 129–54. Examples of biographies of other London merchants include: A. R. Myers, ‘The Wealth of Richard Lyons’, in Essays in Medieval History presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. T. A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (Toronto, 1969), pp. 301–29, and S. O’Connor, ‘Finance, Diplomacy and Politics: Royal Service by two London Merchants in the Reign of Edward III’, Historical Research, lxvii (1994), 18–39. A notable exception to this London bias is the biography of William de la Pole of Hull: E. B. Fryde, William de la Pole, Merchant and King’s Banker (London, 1988). His career, though, was atypical.
14. The work of Lorraine Attreed is the exception, although she has been most interested in the impact of royal demands upon urban finances within the context of the debate about fifteenth-century urban decline: L. Attreed, The King’s Towns: Identity and Survival in Late Medieval English Boroughs (New York, 2001), ch.5.
15. These changes in the structure of royal borrowing are traced in W. M. Ormrod, The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327–1377 (London, 1990), pp. 183–6.
16. For example, W. M. Ormrod, Political Life in Medieval England, 1300–1450 (Basingstoke, 1995), p. 45.
17. For further discussion, see infra, pp. 14–15, 31.
18. The quotation is from M. McKisack, The Fourteenth Century 1307–1399 (Oxford, 1959), p. 422.
19. J. Kermode, Medieval Merchants: York, Beverley and Hull in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1998), p. 56.
20. For the economic background, see P. Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change in Late Fourteenth-Century London’, Past and Present, cxxiv (1989), 3–35, and J. N. Bartlett, ‘The Expansion and Decline of York in the Later Middle Ages’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, xii (1959), 17–33 at 20–7. The political consequences are outlined in Miller, ‘Medieval York’, p. 84, Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 119, and Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 25, 54, 56.
21. YCA, D1, ff. 4v.–6r.
22. Miller, ‘Medieval York’, p. 81.
23. R. H. Britnell, Growth and Decline in Colchester, 1300–1525 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 114.
24. See Statutes [of the Realm] (11 vols, London, 1810–28), i. 332–43, for future references to the Ordinance of the Staple.
25. G. Unwin, ‘The Estate of Merchants, 1336–1365’, in Finance and Trade under Edward III, ed. id. (Manchester, 1918; repr., 1962), pp. 227–33; T. H. Lloyd, The English Wool Trade in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1977), p. 206.
26. W. M. Ormrod, ‘The English Crown and the Customs, 1349–63’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, xl (1987), 27–40 at 28.
27. The town of Bristol witnessed a similar conflict, which led to the involvement of the mayor of the staple in a conspiracy to oust the town’s mayor from office: C[alendar of the] P[atent] R[olls], 1354–58, pp. 69–70, 180–2. The impact of the home staples upon other towns and cities is a subject which requires further investigation and one to which I hope to return in the near future.
28. CPR, 1324–27, pp. 269, 274; Lloyd, English Wool Trade, p. 115.
29. H. Hall in C. Gross and H. Hall (ed.), Select Cases concerning the Law Merchant (3 vols, Selden Society, xxiii, xlvi, xlix, 1908–32), iii. lxxxv; W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Origins of the Sub Pena Writ’, Historical Research, lxi (1988), 11–20 at 11–14.
30. In 1362 the criminal jurisdiction of the staple officials was removed, presumably under pressure from the urban representatives in Parliament. Henceforth, they were limited to the hearing of pleas of debt, covenant and contract and other cases involving merchandise: Statutes, ii. 270–1.
31. YCA, D1, f. 313v.
32. P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], C67/22, mems. 14–18.
33. Compare YCA, D1, f. 313v., and PRO, C67/22, passim
34. PRO, C67/22, mems. 16–18, and YCA, D1, f. 6r: ‘Et in recessu officii sui communitas ei concessit pro suo bono gestu xx li’.
35. YCA, D1, f. 6v: Wateby, Hovyngham and Graa all received additional remuneration on condition of their good behaviour. Wateby was given an extra £40 and there seems to have been serious disturbances surrounding his election in February 1365, which was delayed for a day and a half: CPR, 1364–67, p. 208.
36. For a summary of the financial costs of the war to the Crown’s subjects between 1369 and 1374, see Ormrod, Reign of Edward III, p. 34.
37. Swanson, Medieval Artisans, p. 120.
38. For this development, see S. Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration, 1354–1464’, in The Government of Medieval York: Essays in Commemoration of the 1396 Royal Charter, ed. ead., Borthwick Studies in History, iii (1997), pp. 122–3. The council of forty-eight was not, at this point, specifically representative of the crafts: Miller, ‘Medieval York’, p. 80.
39. For example, the commons were able to petition the mayor and council of twelve on issues of common concern. One such petition is discussed infra, p. 14.
40. C. D. Liddy, ‘Urban Communities and the Crown: Relations between Bristol, York, and the Royal Government, 1350–1400’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1999), Table 3.2, drawing upon, in chronological order, PRO, E401/388, 391, 407, 447, 501, 508, C[alendar of the] C[lose] R[olls], 1377–81, pp. 30–1, PRO, E401/561, 566, 608, and CPR, 1399–1401, p. 354.
41. R. E. Glasscock (ed.), The Lay Subsidy of 1334 (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, New Series, ii, London, 1975), pp. xiv–xvii.
42. In this respect I disagree with G. L. Harriss, ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences’, The Historical Journal, vi (1963), 1–19 at 6–11, who saw the ‘state’ loan as a form of substitute taxation, requested and delivered on the basis of a fixed roster.
43. For the growth of York’s economy after the Black Death, see P. J. P. Goldberg, Women, Work, and Life Cycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire, c.1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), ch.2.
44. R. R. Sharpe (ed.), Calendar of Letter-Books . . . of the City of London (11 vols, London, 1899–1912), Letter-Book F, p. 235; CCR, 1349–54, p. 394.
45. CCR, 1369–74, pp. 109–10.
46. Report from the Lords’ Committees . . . for all Matters Touching the Dignity of a Peer (4 vols, London, 1820–9), iv. 661.
47. CCR, 1377–81, p. 32.
48. For the 1370 corporate loans, see PRO, E401/501, 11 May and 30 June (York), and 10 May and 21 June (Bristol). For Bristol’s growing fiscal importance to the Crown, see Liddy, ‘Relations between Bristol, York, and the Royal Government’, ch.3, and A. Steel, The Receipt of the Exchequer, 1377–1485 (Cambridge, 1954), p. 196.
49. PRO, E401/515, 3 August.
50. For definitions of these sailing vessels, see J. W. Sherborne, ‘English Barges and Balingers of the Late Fourteenth Century’, Mariner’s Mirror, lxiii (1977), 109–14. A balinger was a small barge, though the terms were interchangeable.
51. PRO, E403/447, 27 November.
52. Rot Parl, iii. 5–6, and CCR, 1377–81, pp. 32–3.
53. Letter-Book G, p. 304.
54. M. Sellers and J.W. Percy (ed.), Y[ork] M[emorandum] B[ook] (3 vols., Surtees Society, cxx, cxxv, clxxxvi, 1912–69), i. 32–3.
55. PRO, SC8/103/5133, 5137, and SC8/170/8457. The petitions are from the mid-1370s. Although undated, they refer to the title of Robert de Wykford as, successively, Constable of Bordeaux and Archbishop of Dublin, an appointment made in 1375: T. Runyan, ‘The Constabulary of Bordeaux: The Accounts of John Ludham (1372–73) and Robert de Wykford (1373–75)’, Mediaeval Studies, xxxvi–xxxvii, 2 parts (1974–5), I. 225–6. Unfortunately, Wykford’s accounts (II. 42–84) do not shed further light upon the history of the York barge, but I would like to thank Simon Walker for drawing these accounts to my attention.
56. CPR, 1377–81, p. 577.
57. YMB, i. 30. The ship was at sea almost continuously between May 1377 and January 1379: PRO, E101/34/25, E101/37/7, E101/37/13–15, E101/37/17–18, E101/37/25, and E101/38/18.
58. Letter-Book G, pp. 304, 311–12 (London); W. Hudson and J. C. Tingey (ed.), The Records of the City of Norwich (2 vols, Norwich, 1910), i. 81–4. Interestingly, it also seems that although the city of London was ordered to build two barges in November 1372 only one vessel was ever constructed, possibly because of the expense involved. For the Crown’s original order, see Letter-Book G, p. 302.
59. Letter-Book H, pp. 215–16, 236.
60. See PRO, SC8/103/5133, 5137, and SC8/170/8457 for evidence of the barge in Bordeaux in 1374 to purchase wine, and YMB, i. 32.
61. Records of the City of Norwich, i. 81, 83.
62. YMB, i. 32.
63. CPR, 1377–81, pp. 635–8.
64. PRO, SC8/216/10758.
65. YMB, i. 32–3.
66. The subsequent charter is in C[alendar of] C[harter] R[olls], 1341–1417, p. 248.
67. YMB, i. 1–12.
68. Ibid., i. 16–17.
69. Ibid., i. 33–4.
70. There are two copies of the petition: PRO, SC8/212/10596 and SC8/213/10637.
71. Britnell, Colchester, pp. 115–17.
72. For events in Parliament, see G. Holmes, The Good Parliament (Oxford, 1975), passim; J. S. Roskell, The Impeachment of Michael de la Pole Earl of Suffolk in 1386 (Manchester, 1984), chs.1–2; and C. Given-Wilson, The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England 1360–1413 (London, 1986), pp. 22–7.
73. See, for example, Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 123.
74. Ibid., p. 120.
75. This group included Robert de Howom, whose biography is in J. N. Bartlett, ‘Robert Holme, Citizen and Merchant of York’, Journal of the Bradford Textile Society, xcvii (1952–3), 97–100.
76. F. Collins (ed.), Register of [the] Freemen [of the City] of York (2 vols, Surtees Society, xcvi, cii, 1896, 1899), i. 39. For the large-scale nature of Gisburn’s involvement in foreign trade, see, for example, PRO, E122/59/5 (wool) and E122/59/1 (cloth). Less than two years before their dispute, Gisburn and Quixley regularly freighted the same ships to export their sacks of wool to Calais: PRO, E122/59/5. Gisburn’s cash estate at his death, amounting to £300, was one of the largest in late fourteenth-century York: Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 294–6.
77. For the dimensions of his house, see YMB, iii. 73.
78. Skaife’s Civic Officials, 3 vols, York Public Library, i. 305–6 (Gisburn), ii. 589–90 (Quixley), and iii. 810–11 (Wateby).
79. Similarly, Stephen O’Connor’s work on the careers of two London merchants, John Pyel and Adam Fraunceys, has shown how their role in national public life during Edward III’s reign was ‘founded on their ability to provide the king with money, but which in turn embraced other aspects of public service’: ‘Royal Service by two London Merchants’, p. 18. Their lending, though, was on a much greater scale than that of York merchants such as Gisburn.
80. PRO, E401/407, 9 September, and E401/410, 5 November (1351): Gisburn himself lent £30; PRO, E401/447, 29 August (1359).
81. T. Rymer (ed.), Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae et . . . Acta Publica (4 vols, London, 1816–69), iii. II. 690–1.
82. For the debate, see Unwin, ‘Estate of Merchants, 1336–1365’, p. 244, Lloyd, English Wool Trade, p. 211, and Ormrod, ‘English Crown and the Customs’, p. 38. For the organization of the Calais staple, see R. L. Baker, ‘The Government of Calais in 1363’, in Order and Innovation in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of J. R. Strayer, ed. W. C. Jordan, B. McNab and T. F. Ruiz (Princeton, 1976), pp. 205–14. For the loan, see CCR, 1377–81, pp. 30–1, and C[alendar of the] F[ine] R[olls], 1377–81, pp. 41–2, 59–60.
83. CFR, 1368–77, pp. 230, 269; CFR, 1377–83, p. 150; PRO, E101/42/22, Dignity of a Peer, iv.
84. 661; Return. Members of Parliament, i: Parliaments of England, 1213–1702 (London, 1878), p. 192.
85. This point is discussed in more detail infra, p. 23. In this respect, Gisburn had much in common with the London merchant, Richard Whittington: Barron, ‘Richard Whittington’, p. 215.
86. For an illuminating insight into the reasons individuals sought public office, see Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 16, 38, 48–50, 68.
87. For the comparison with Richard Whittington, see Barron, ‘Richard Whittington’, pp. 221–4. On the importance of land to York merchants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Kermode, Medieval Merchants, pp. 276–91.
88. The History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1386–1421, ed. J. S. Roskell et al. (4 vols, Stroud, 1993), iii. 138–41; Miller, ‘Medieval York, p. 112.
89. CPR, 1381–85, p. 50, and PRO, SC8/146/7275. This committee is one of the subjects of my recent article, ‘The Estate of Merchants in the Parliament of 1381’, Historical Research, lxxiv (2001), 331–45.
90. On this methodological issue, see the useful comments of C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), p. 8. Gisburn’s will is in B[orthwick] I[nstitute of] H[istorical] R[esearch], Probate Register 1, ff. 15v.–16r.
91. The quotation is from Barron, ‘Richard II and London’, p. 135. See, also, Jenny Kermode’s recent histoire totale of York merchants: Medieval Merchants, passim.
92. A. F. Johnston and M. Rogerson (ed.), Records of Early English Drama: York (2 vols, Manchester, 1979), i. 3.
93. See the complaint in 1399 that the pageants should be performed at their customary locations, the third of which was ‘ad ostium Johannis de Gyseburne’: YMB, i. 51.
94. The most detailed study of these arrangements is D. J. F. Crouch, ‘A Medieval Paying Audience: the Stationholders on the Route of the York Corpus Christi Play in the Fifteenth Century’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of York, 1990), esp. pp. 12–14.
95. The identity of the other merchants is explored in ibid., pp. 15–18.
96. The first recorded instance of the commons’ involvement in the electoral process is in 1369, when William Sauvage died in office and Roger de Selby was elected and sworn in with the assent of the ‘whole community’ assembled in the guildhall: YCA, D1, f. 7r. From this time it would seem that while the outgoing mayor selected two or three candidates from the council of twelve, it was the responsibility of the commons gathered in the guildhall to elect the incoming mayor: YMB, ii. 255, and Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration’, p. 135.
97. YMB, i. 13–14.
98. Ibid., iii. 1. There seems little doubt that YCA, The York Memorandum Book, B/Y was compiled initially as part of the same creative impulse which inspired the formulation of the February 1371 civic ordinances: it contains both deeds and wills and on f. 4v., refers to itself as the ‘registrum communitatis’, which echoes the language used to describe the register in the ordinance concerning the enrolment of wills.
99. I have found the work of D. J. S. O’Brien on the socio-political background to the compilation of York’s civic registers very useful: ‘‘‘The Verray Registre of all Trouthe’’: The Content, Function, and Character of the Civic Registers of London and York c.1274–c.1482’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1999), ch.4.
100. YMB, i. 14.
101. See PRO, KB27/482, mem. 35r.–v. for all future references to the judicial record.
102. See, for example, T. A. Green, Verdict According to Conscience: Perspectives on the English Criminal Jury Trial (Chicago, 1985), ch.2. It is clear that it was when Gisburn, having been appointed to every commission of the peace for the city of York from 1377, was finally removed from the bench in May 1381, serious complaints were heard against him: CPR, 1374–77, p. 490 (February 1377), and CPR, 1377–81, pp. 45 (July 1377), 514–15 (May 1380), 572 (February and May 1381), 631 (March 1381).
103. For what follows, see D. M. Metcalf, ‘The Evidence of Scottish Coin Hoards for Monetary History, 1100–1600’, in Coinage in Medieval Scotland (1100–1600), ed. id., British Archaeological Reports, xlv (1977), pp. 4–15, and R. Nicholson, ‘Scottish Monetary Problems in the 14th and 15th Centuries’, in ibid., p. 103.
104. Rot Parl, ii. 318.
105. See, for example, CPR, 1358–61, p. 87: Gisburn was given a safe-conduct to go to Scotland to buy wool for export.
106. J. Craig, The Mint (Cambridge, 1953), chs.4–5.
107. PRO, SC8/146/7275. The committee is also discussed supra, pp. 17–18.
108. CPR, 1374–77, p. 453; and Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 111–13.
109. This factionalism is discussed briefly in Holmes, Good Parliament, pp. 180–1, and more fully in Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change’, pp. 3–35.
110. C. Barron, Revolt in London 11th to 15th June 1381 (London, 1981), pp. 13–14.
111. YCA, D1, ff. 7v.–8r.
112. Ibid., D1, f. 8r.: ‘Johannes de Gysburn electus est in maiorem Eboracum et juratus est eodem die in Gilda Aula per presens fuit ibidem et capiet pro feodo suo xl li et duo dolia vini sub bono gestu suo’.
113. CPR, 1348–50, p. 584.
114. The best account remains that by Miller, ‘Medieval York’, pp. 38–40, 68–9. For the mounting violence against the abbey, see CPR, 1307–13, pp. 470–1, CPR, 1313–17, pp. 692–3, CCR, 1343–6, pp. 96–7, CPR, 1348–50, pp. 496–7, 530, 584, and CPR, 1350–54, pp. 292, 471.
115. PRO, C49/7/25.
116. YCA, D1, ff. 6r.–8r. For an economic explanation of the annual rotation of the mayoral office after 1363, see Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration’, pp. 133–4.
117. At the centre of the disturbances leading up to the February 1372 election were the two mayoral candidates, John de Gisburn and John de Langton: CCR, 1369–74, p. 275.
118. YMB, i. 16.
119. The quotation is from McRee, ‘Peacemaking and its Limits’, p. 864.
120. The description of Gisburn belongs to Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 120. On the difficulty of refusing a Crown’s request for a loan, see Harriss, ‘Aids, Loans and Benevolences’, 16–17.
121. YCA, D1, f. 9v.
122. A biography of Frost is in House of Commons, 1386–1421, iii. 138–41. On 3 February 1397, the date of Frost’s second successive election as mayor, the February 1393 ordinance was revoked and Frost was rewarded with a £100 bonus for his efforts in securing the chartered grant of county status: YCA, D1, f. 9v., and R. B. Dobson (ed.), York City Chamberlains’ Account Rolls, 1396–1500 (Surtees Society, cxcii, 1978–9), p. 6. Re-elected mayor in 1401, Frost was recompensed for his exertions (‘pro magno labore’) on the city’s behalf to secure the repayment of £1,000 which York had lent to the new regime in 1399 and 1400 and was granted 6d. of every pound repaid by the Crown: YCA, D1, f. 10r.
123. Barron, ‘Richard Whittington’, pp. 211, 205.
124. YMB, i. 30, and YCA, D1, f. 7r.–v.
125. The following section draws upon the city’s copies of legal proceedings before the royal court of exchequer in the spring of 1381 and before a commission of oyer and terminer appointed to Yorkshire in August 1382: YMB, i. 120–31. For the original record of the 1382 commission, see PRO, JUST1/1138, mem. 3r.–v.
126. A. Raine, Mediaeval York (London, 1955), p. 185.
127. M. Kowaleski, Local Markets and Regional Trade in Medieval Exeter (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 193–4.
128. According to the final concord between David le Lardener and the city of York in 1253, David, in return for 20 marks, released his right to 1d. from every butcher offering meat for sale in the city to the mayor and citizens: YMB, i. 117–19.
129. Ibid., i. 127.
130. For the weight of royal taxation between 1377 and 1381, see the figures in E. B. Fryde’s introduction to C. Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (2nd edn, Oxford, 1969), pp. xi–xxxii.
131. I would like to thank Caroline Barron for this suggestion. For the situation in York, see Swanson, Medieval Artisans, p. 14. London butchers were also perceived to be prospering: Barron, ‘Richard II and London’, p. 143. For the wider context, see C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England c.1200–1520 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 199–202.
132. CPR, 1377–81, p. 458; YMB, i. 151–4; and, for evidence of their peacekeeping duties, ibid., ii. 260–1.
133. Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 120.
134. YCA, D1, ff. 7v.–8r. The significance of the timing has also been noted by Rees Jones, ‘York’s Civic Administration’, n. 12, p. 111.
135. I follow here the suggestion of Maud Sellers: YMB, i. xv–xvi.
136. For this and what follows, see Rot Parl, iii. 88–90, and M. Jurkowski et al., Lay Taxes in England and Wales 1188–1688 (Kew, 1998), pp. 60–2. For the background, see N. Saul, Richard II (London, 1997), pp. 53–4.
137. An excellent example of both the speed with which news travelled between York and Parliament and the informal channels of communication between centre and locality is provided by the petitions delivered in person by five of Gisburn’s supporters in the 1381 Parliament. All five petitioners claimed that Simon de Quixley and his faction had accused them of being the authors of a commons’ petition presented in the same Parliament which successfully sought the annulment of bonds and recognisances made under compulsion during the recent troubles: PRO, SC8/103/ 5140–4, and Rot Parl, iii. 114. For a more detailed discussion of the subject, see Liddy, ‘Relations between Bristol, York, and the Royal Government’, ch.5.
138. For example, W. M. Ormrod, ‘The Politics of Pestilence: Government in England after the Black Death’, in The Black Death in England, ed. W. M. Ormrod and P. G. Lindley (Stamford, 1996), pp. 166–7.
139. For what follows, see Rot Parl, iii. 96.
140. Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1956–), ‘auk-ward’ (adv.), (b).
141. For a similar suggestion, see W. Scase, ‘‘‘Strange and Wonderful Bills’’: Bill-Casting and Political Discourse in Late Medieval England’, in New Medieval Literatures. Volume 2, ed. R. Copeland et al. (Oxford, 1998), p. 242.
142. The absence of both an extant election return and writs de expensis means that York’s MPs at the November 1380 Parliament cannot be identified.
143. Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 123, first suggested that there might have been a connection between the schamel toll dispute and the 1380 uprising.
144. CCR, 1377–81, p. 421, and Register of Freemen of York, i. passim.
145. Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 139. For a similar view, see Kermode, Medieval Merchants, p. 57.
146. PRO, SC8/103/5139.
147. Rigby, ‘Urban ‘‘Oligarchy’’’, p. 66.
148. For evidence of the distribution of liveries by Gisburn and his supporters, see PRO, KB27/482, mem. 35v. The petition from John Bret, York’s former attorney at the royal exchequer, indicates that it was when Quixley became mayor that he started to recruit support, clearly because he was concerned to shore up his own position in response to the threat from Gisburn: PRO, SC8/103/5138.
149. Ibid., SC8/103/5140–4.
150. CCR, 1377–81, p. 421; and CPR, 1381–85, p. 137. For the timing of the attacks, see Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 121.
151. The fourteenth century saw the expansion of several ecclesiastical fees within the city of York, notably that of St Leonard’s Hospital, whose claims for the exemption of its tenants from the burden of civic taxation and the city’s fiscal contributions to the Crown brought the institution into conflict with the city on several occasions: CPR, 1292–1301, p. 625, and CPR, 1307–13, pp. 129–30. For the broader context, see S. R. Rees Jones, ‘Property, Tenure and Rents: Some Aspects of the Topography and Economy of Medieval York’ (2 vols, unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of York, 1987), i. 168–86.
152. YMB, i. 40.
153. For what follows, see P. J. P. Goldberg, ‘Urban Identity and the Poll Taxes of 1377, 1379, and 1381’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, xliii (1990), 194–216 at 205–6.
154. PRO, E359/8B, rots. 9r. and 12v.
155. Ibid., E401/561, 19 August, and E401/566, 27 October and 3 November.
156. Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 132, and Nightingale, ‘Capitalists, Crafts and Constitutional Change’, 34.
157. Ormrod, Political Life, p. 45.
158. See, for example, R. B. Dobson (ed.), The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (2nd ed., London, 1983) pp 13–14.
159. Dobson, Peasants’ Revolt, pp. 284–5.
160. See the admission in Dobson, ‘Risings’, p. 121.
161. PRO, SC8/103/5140–4.
162. Dobson, ‘Risings’, pp. 120, 135, 140.
163. Ormrod, ‘Politics of Pestilence’, p. 167, argues that ‘governance, in the widest sense of the term . . . had the most profound influence on the origins, the course, and indeed the aftermath’ of the Peasants’ Revolt.
164. See supra, pp. 14–15.
165. Rot Parl, iii. 73–4; YMB, i. 30–3, 35; and YCA, D1, f. 7r.
166. YMB, i. 207, 214–16, and YCA, The York Memorandum Book, A/Y, ff. 83r.–84v., 93r.–98v., 99v.–126r., 135r.–140r.
167. T. F. Tout, ‘The English Parliament and Public Opinion, 1376–88’, in Historical Studies of the English Parliament, ed. E. B. Fryde and E. Miller (2 vols, Cambridge, 1970), i. 298–315.