2) HISTORICAL BACKGROUND (Pre-1500)

Of course, the struggle of the Long Parliament with the autocracy of Charles I, and Cromwell’s severe dictatorship, were prepared by the previous history of England. But this simply means that revolutions cannot be made when you want them, but are an organic product of the conditions of social evolution…

~Leon Trotsky1

Prior to 1500, three pivotal events in English history helped to transform English society and prepare the way for the success of the 17th-century revolution. The first was the early unification of England. Six hundred years before Ferdinand and Isabella completed the reconquest of Spain, Alfred the Great created a single Saxon kingdom through his military victories at Ashdown (871) and Edington (878) over the Danish Vikings, who continued to occupy the east of England.

Alfred’s peace settlement laid the basis, through later battles and royal intermarriage, for the union of Saxon and Danish territories, prior to the Norman invasion in 1066. Having won the day-long Battle of Hastings, William the Bastard obtained the entire country in one fell swoop, making his bloody imposition of a French-speaking ruling class that much simpler. The early establishment of central government united England to a degree then unknown in the countries of Western Europe, where multiple territories and jurisdictions significantly hindered their development.

The struggle between the Anglo-Norman nobility and the all-powerful and abusive monarchy took a forceful turn early in favor of the former with the Great Charter of the Barons’ Rebellion in 1215. Magna Carta is rightly remembered for its enunciation of some important democratic rights, established in law, however limited their applicability or reinterpretation by posterity.2 Earlier charters had come to naught, but what made Magna Carta different was the famous “security” clause (Article 61) which, for the first time, provided for a council of barons to “advise” the king and enforce the Charter’s provisions.3 This put a significant brake on the monarchy’s power; any transgression would presumably run up against the brick wall of the united nobility.4 Magna Carta “made it the duty of the senior nobles to discipline a king who ruled in his own interest and not those of the communem utilitatem regni” (“common utility of the realm”).5 This security clause was eliminated in later revisions, but repeated clashes of rival noble and royal factions kept the idea alive.

By the end of the 13th century (after further bloody conflicts), an operational structure for Parliament had been worked out.6 Representatives of gentry and town burgesses were eventually included, at first episodically. But beginning in 1341 they met separately as junior partners in a second, lower House of Commons.7 Thus, Parliament became “an assemblage of the ruling elite, the national synod of the gentry.”8 Parliament was not originally intended to be a legislative, but a judicial body to hear petitions, to debate and advise the king on “good” laws for him to make. This rather quickly became an established requirement of Parliamentary approval for new statutes. Later monarchs gave formal acknowledgment of Parliament’s control over finances: no tax could be imposed without the landowners’ consent (most especially on the landowners themselves). This clumsy arrangement tied King, Lords, and Commons together in an uneasy, unequal and unstable power-sharing relationship. It thereby provided a chink in the royal armor, giving initial leverage to the early 1600s radicals who, working together in and out of the House of Commons, were able to use it to their advantage.

No such modus vivendi was permanently reached on the Continent. As modern nations emerged with the recovery of commodity production and the extension of international trade, absolutism became successfully established in Spain and France. A powerful centralized government was needed to defend the emerging nations’ borders from foreign enemies, and to subdue the commercial bourgeoisie, whose growing wealth threatened the rigid social order of the feudal system itself. The rise of autocratic power also negated the political rights of the nobility, while preserving their economic privileges against peasant revolts and pressures for better terms.9

To these ends the monarchs established a standing army and a centralized state bureaucracy,10 which they used to extend their military rule or influence over much of the rest of Europe and the Americas. The result was retrograde stagnation, with a feudal political system that severely inhibited economic progress. (In the 17th century, Spain’s population fell 18%.)11 England, however, had no foreign borders (except the small one with Scotland, traditionally policed by the powerful northern lords). The twin notions of a standing royal army and an interfering central bureaucracy were anathema to the English aristocracy, who reasonably feared they would be used against themselves. The early unification of England meant they felt no imperative to make concessions to the monarchy, and they used their power in the state to prevent such developments.12 This ensured the aristocrats’ own free dominance in their localities, making the government dependent on local Justices of the Peace (JPs), invariably landowners and employers themselves, to enforce the law. The central government also relied on informers, “an unpopular and bribable class.”13

His majesty had any number of ways of controlling Parliament, which could not sit unless the king called it. He could veto its acts, and prorogue or dismiss it at will. The Good Parliament of 1376 passed several acts to curtail corruption in the government, after which the magistrates returned to their localities while the government simply carried on as before.14

Parliament, however, could place limits on the king. Foreign affairs were wholly the prerogative of the monarch, but Parliament had to authorize funds for any army.15 This did not much inhibit the crown as it could normally count on the support of the nobles especially when it came to waging war (usually in France.) This changed when money replaced land in importance, and conquering territory or plundering was no longer necessary to gain wealth. After that, Parliament’s power to authorize funds became a major detriment to the monarchy.

The third event of moment, and one most under-appreciated, was the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381. Despite being short-lived, this uprising was as significant as the later Peasants’ War in early 16th century Germany. It covered virtually the whole of southern and eastern England, reaching as far north as southern Yorkshire.16 Despite its historical name, early artisans made up a large proportion of the peasant army, the poor of London supported it, and in some places lower clergymen or better-off yeomen provided leadership.17

In the decades before the Revolt, plague had so reduced the population that peasants often refused to provide services unless they were paid;18 the labor shortage thus undermined their feudal economic relationship with the landholders. The Revolt began in Essex and Kent, where it seems to have been well organized. As the peasantry would do again in 1642, they destroyed manor records of station, taxes, tithes — the personal information of the age.19 Having gained entrance to London, the first thing the rebel army did was proceed to the houses of the most hated government officials and, without looting them, burn them down. This conscious discipline did not last, but it shows that this was no mere mob. At every prison they came to they freed the inmates.20 The militants’ demand for freedom hastened the subsequent demise of villeinage (serfdom), freeing the villeins from bondage to the land; they now had the legal right to move if they so chose. The assertion that no connection existed between these two developments is preposterous.

The continuation of local revolts for at least a couple of decades after 1381 is well known and this in itself is evidence of the continued self-assertiveness of the English lower classes. The upper class was clearly very apprehensive about popular sedition… In spite of the strengthening of labour legislation in the statute of Cambridge of 1388, wages went up; and in spite of the threats to intensify the conditions of villeinage these were, in fact, considerably relaxed.21

As villeinage died out, a new arrangement conditioned by the peasant class struggle led to material improvements in the peasants’ well-being through copyhold: a quantity of land leased for a low money rent. Peasants were mostly no longer required to provide labor service to the lord, and could now sell any surplus they were able to produce. The lease was often for life, and their descendants had the right to inherit the copyhold upon payment of a substantial fine (fee). Thus, copyhold was a form of “customary tenure…without the taint of servility…”22 This transformed the landlord-peasant relationship from one based on medieval obligation, to one based purely on payment (rent), in essence a capitalist contractual relationship. Tenants were now given written title to the land. It gave the copyholder a substantial claim on the holding, a necessary prerequisite to opening the way for market relations to further develop.23 Consequently, by 1640, generations of the same family might, in theory, have occupied a farm for as much as two centuries.

The production of wool, England’s first and longest-lasting export, also began around 1400, facilitating aristocratic acquiescence by providing them an alternative source of income.24 “The commutation of peasant labour services…was part of the process of withdrawal by the bigger landlords from agricultural practice.”25 Copyhold was a compromise, an intermediate form of capitalist social relations at a time before a capitalist economy had become general. Copyhold stopped short of making the peasants freemen; they still had to pay a nominal rent on land they did not own outright. But a qualitative advance had taken place in their relationship to the lord. The protections they achieved had been won through struggle; for just this reason however it was a legal gray area and insecure status.26

The early decline of serfdom and labor service removed a major obstacle to the development of capitalist market relations in the countryside of England. This situation contrasted markedly with other European countries. Despite occasional peasant jacqueries on the Continent, absolutism and the seigneurial system were on the whole able to maintain feudal relations in the countryside. The implementation of copyhold in England was uneven, and terms varied, but its spread continued during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, making it the normal custom.27

At a certain point, when landlords needed to increase production of food and wool, copyholders’ rights (low rents, right of inheritance) came to place intolerable limits on market agriculture’s forward advance.28 This led to new conflicts as landlords attempted to overcome the limitations of copyhold in their own favor by attacking tenants’ rights, and throwing them off the land. As the price of wool rose in the late 15th century, a wave of land conversions from crop production to raising sheep was carried out by aristocrats for the more remunerative export of wool to Flanders. This caused government worries about what they called “depopulation” (unemployment and homelessness) and food supply. The conversion process often involved enclosure of land for larger flocks and greater efficiency.29 The enclosures cut off access to commons, land where small peasants historically pastured their few animals on which they depended to live, or sometimes flooded them with an excess number of sheep.30 (Commons were also a source of fuel and building material.)31 Either way, small peasants were forced to abandon their farms. While some might eke out a living on “waste” (unused) or forest lands where these were available further out in the country,32 most were forced to become wage workers if they were not to starve.

1 “Mr. Baldwin and ‘Gradualness,’” in Leon Trotsky on Britain (New York: Monad Press, 1925, 1973), 45

2 See Charles Rembar, The Law of the Land: The Evolution of Our Legal System (New York: Touchstone, 1981), 167-171

3 “Magna Carta 1215,” Yale Law School, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/magframe.asp Accessed 1 June 2017; “The Articles of the Barons,” British Library, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/the-articles-of-the-barons Accessed 17 September 2018; “A Brief History of Magna Carta,” House of Lords, UK Parliament, 8-9, 14, researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/LLN-2015-001/LLN-2015-001.pdf Accessed 7 May 2015

4 Rachel Foxley, “‘More precious in your esteem than it deserveth?’ Magna Carta and seventeenth-century politics,” in Magna Carta: History, Context and Influence, ed. Lawrence Goldman (London: University of London Press, 2018), 68, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv5136sc.12 Accessed 1 December 2018.

5 David Rollison, “The Specter of the Commonalty: Class Struggle and the Commonweal in England before the Atlantic World,” The William and Mary Quarterly 63, no. 2 (April 2006): 233, 245, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3877352 Accessed 31 December 2018

6 “A Brief History of Magna Carta,” 16-17

7 Rollison, “The Specter of the Commonalty,” 225-226; “Rise of the Commons,” UK Parliament, http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/evolutionofparliament/originsofparliament/birthofparliament/overview/riseofcommons/ Accessed 3 July 2016

8 Zaller, “The Concept of Opposition,” 229

9 Perry Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London: Verso, 1974), 19-20, 22-24; Christopher Hill, “Land in the English Revolution,” Science & Society 13, no. 1 (Winter 1948/1949): 24, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40399929 Accessed 15 December 2016

10 Anderson, Absolutist State, 52-53, 65-66, 86-87, 95-96, 100-102

11 Anderson, Absolutist State, 82

12 Anderson, Absolutist State, 121 fn. 11, 122-123, 125, 127

13 Hill, Century, 23; Reformation, 31

14 George M. Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe 1368-1520 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1899, 1963), 30-31

15 Conrad Russell, “Parliament and the King’s Finances,” in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1973), 91-92

16 Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, 254-255 (map)

17 Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free (Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Routledge, 1973, 2003), 154, 158-160, 173-174, 181-185; Rollison, “The Specter of the Commonalty,” 234-235

18 Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, 193

19 Mark O’Brien, When Adam Delved and Eve Span: A History of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 (London: Bookmarks Publications, 2016), 45-46

20 O’Brien, When Adam Delved, 60, 62, 64

21 Hilton, Bond Men Made Free, 206; Rollison, “The Specter of the Commonalty,” 236-238.

22 Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom, 44

23 Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 807; Rodney Hilton, “Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism,” History Workshop, no. 1 (Spring 1976): 20-21, http://www.jstor.com/stable/4288032 Accessed 3 July 2020. Reprinted as “Introduction,” in The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism.

24 Hill, “Land in the English Revolution,” 23

25 Rodney Hilton, “The Content and Sources of English Agrarian History before 1500,” The Agricultural History Review 3, no. 1 (1955), 14-15, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40272749 Accessed 13 April 2020

26 Hill, Reformation, 54-55; Marx, Capital Vol.3, 798-799

27 Mark Bailey, “The transformation of customary tenures in southern England, c.1350 to c.1500,” The Agricultural History Review 62, no. 2 (2014): 220, http://www.jstor.com/stable/43697978 Accessed 11 August 2020; Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom, 48-51

28 Hill, 1640, 35; Century, 127; Hilton, The Decline of Serfdom, 58-59

29 Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1973), 718-720. “It was a commonplace of the age that English commerce was overwhelmingly dependent upon the Low Countries and that economically London was a satellite of Antwerp.” F. J. Fisher, “Commercial Trends and Policy in Sixteenth-Century England,” The Economic History Review 10, no. 2 (November 1940): 97, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2590787 Accessed 24 February 2017

30 Joan Thirsk, Tudor Enclosures (London: The Historical Association, 1959), 13-14

31 Brian Manning, The English People and the English Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1978), 133, 134; Marx, Capital Vol. 1, 717; Hill, Reformation, 70

32 Brian Manning, 1649: The Crisis of the English Revolution (London: Bookmarks, 1992), 77, 99; Thirsk, Tudor Enclosures, 7-8