Wat Tyler’s men in 1381 marched on London to demand the abolition of serfdom and the repeal of the poll tax. They did not want revolution; they wanted the king to be good. The Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536 was 30,000 northerners marching under the banner of the Five Wounds of Christ to protest Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries – it was not a rebellion against the Crown but a petition to it, in arms, to reconsider. The Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 involved Cornish and Devon men refusing the new Protestant liturgy, and dying in considerable numbers for the right to pray as their fathers had. The Covenanters of Scotland fought not for novelty but for a particular understanding of the proper ordering of church and state. The Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion in 1685 was a Protestant constitutional protest dressed as a dynastic claim. The Glorious Revolution of 1688, that driest and most English of upheavals, resulted not in a republic but in a constitutional settlement – William III was invited in from the Netherlands not to overthrow the monarchy but to regularise it, to make parliament sovereign without making it supreme over everything that mattered to ordinary people. Each of these movements sought not the destruction of the existing order but its correction, its return to a lost and better version of itself.
The Chartists sit squarely in this tradition. What they wanted was not new. The rights they demanded had a genealogy that stretched back through Thomas Paine to the Levellers to the barons at Runnymede, where the Magna Carta was sealed. Each generation of the English popular movement has had to rediscover that the constitutional ground gained by one era tends, mysteriously, to be lost by the next, that the establishment has an almost geological patience in the slow work of reclaiming power from the people who briefly forced it to concede.
Should freedom lovers be concerned about this?
https://roadmap-for-modern-digital-government.campaign.gov.uk/digital-id-consultation/
The government want to “consult” us about something that they know from previous attempts is not wanted.
Didn’t all the rebellions mentioned end in brutal massacres for the people involved and very little change at the state level? For sure the ones with ordinary people. The Glorious Revolution was about the elites who didn’t like a catholic monarch and the Magna Carta, although a very important document, was largely about retaining the Baron’s power than some sort of “power to the people”. “Power to the people” is that last thing the barons wanted.
If I remember correctly, Watt Tyler was hung, drawn and quartered at Smithfield, and the leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace were treated with the usual gentleness and kindness we have come to associate with Henry VIII. For example, Margaret Stafford whose involvement was at best peripheral, was burned at the stake. And she was not offered the dignity of strangulation before the fire, she endured the full measure of it. BTW she got this punishment because the Tudors thought it terribly undignified that a woman’s nakedness should be exposed during the standard hanging. drawing and quartering. Which I think was jolly decent of them. I’m sure that avoiding that sort of embarrassment was primary in Margaret’s mind as the flames licked up her body.
In some sense these rebellions are the story of the development of a constitutional monarchy, but I think the English Civil War is a good pattern to look at. Brutal massacres in battle, and replacement of one tyrant with another. And only when the tyrant’s son was too weak to rule did things change marginally for the better. In some sense the fact that Richard Cromwell was so weak is the reason Britain is as it is today. A lot of the course of a nation’s progress is dependent on pure, dumb luck.
These revolutions are so costly because those against whom they are fought are implacable, they are defending their livelihoods and their power. They might not burn you at the stake but do not doubt the are any less vicious, cruel and relentless.
Fraser Orr, 1607 hrs local:
Just noting that here in the United States it is “Patriots’ Day”. April 19, 1775 British troops and Colonial Militia fought at Concord Bridge and Lexington Green with the result that Royalist forces retreated back to Boston. But IMHO the key point was at a place called Meriam’s Corner on the route back. There local civilians spontaneously, under arms, arrived in numbers and turned the retreat into a route.
Mere attempts to petition for change don’t seem to be effective. The American version seems to have had a greater effect. At the very least, those wanting change best not be helpless against force applied by those in power.
Subotai Bahadur
@Subotai Bahadur
Mere attempts to petition for change don’t seem to be effective. The American version seems to have had a greater effect. At the very least, those wanting change best not be helpless against force applied by those in power.
Thanks for the reminder. Of course a big difference between Britain today and Boston then is that those particular patriots were just as well armed as the British regulars. In Britain it seems you can barely have a Swiss army knife without permission from the Government.
Stonyground: “The government want to “consult” us…”
Subotai Bahadur: “Mere attempts to petition for change don’t seem to be effective.”
I tend to lean towards suspicion of the motives behind government ‘consultations’ and petitions anyway.
Tyrant: “Who are these people who DARE to oppose our nefarious plottings?”
Lackey: “Well, handily, sir, they’ve given us their names and contact details…”
Lads, they called New England for a reason.
@Fraser
Hanged, please. Hanged, drawn and quartered. People are hanged, meat is hung.
I thought that would help motivate a riff on
fiddlinggrammatising whileRome burnedEngland fell.No, Clovis. OK, you are kinda right and it perhaps should be “hanged” but the popular phrase is “Hung, drawn and quartered”. Whilst this was brutal and terrible and yadda, yadda… I do think Melannie Gibson deserved it for that mullet. 😜
I live just south of Manchester (which has had it’s fair share of protests and rambuctioness over the years – some of it even justified) but… What is odd about this neck of the woods is how “New England” the place names seem. They sound straight out of Stephen King. I live quite close to the original Buxton and not the one where, nearby, in a field, under an unusual rock, Red finds his “pot of gold” left by his mate Andy.
I think red takes the bus to Buxton. I can do that! It’s the 199 and runs between Manchester airport and Buxton, Derbyshire.
Clovis:
Some of us are hung.
The Chartists implied (more than implied) that a change in the political order, giving all men (or all men who were not on the Poor Law) the vote would reduce poverty – yet they produced no evidence or rational argument as to why this would be so.
Do not mistake me – I am NOT against men, and women, having the vote – but the claim that this will, somehow, reduce poverty is dishonest.
As for Thomas Paine – first, in “The Rights of Man – Part II” he claimed that getting rid of the King and various other hangers-on would finance education for the children of the poor, and some form of old age pension (and so on) – then, when it was pointed out, that the sums just did not add up – that getting rid of the King (and those dependent on the Monarchy) would only produce a tiny (tiny) fraction of the money needed for his schemes, Mr Paine (in “Agrarian Justice”) advocated a tax on land owners – going up to 100% for large land owners.
This was at least a suggestion for how his schemes would be financed – but it was a very harmful suggestion.
As for previous revolts – against taxation (there was no serfdom in Kent for the rebels to being rebelling against) or state-imposed religious change – they broke on the rock of assuming that the King was, basically, a good person who was on the side of the people.
In reality Henry VIII, for example, was a deceitful man (who lied repeatedly and pretended to be the friend of people he intended to have murdered) who was also a sadist – as historian David Starkey has pointed out, it may sometimes be necessary to kill political opponents (politics is a rough undertaking), but Henry went beyond that – writing out, in his own handwriting, detailed instructions as to HOW he wanted various people (such as Robert Aske) killed – in ways to increase their suffering, but making it slow and agonizing.
Henry also killed people for “kicks” (as modern language has it) – for example he knew that the cook of Bishop Fisher (the same Bishop Fisher that Henry later had killed) had NOT tried to poison the Bishop – but Henry had the man boiled-alive anyway, simply so he could make the joke…..
“I cooked the cook” – having a person boiled alive just so you could make this joke, is not the act of a good person (regardless of “historical period”).
Indeed the very first thing Henry did as King (before any of the injuries and illnesses that are supposed to have undermined his character) was to have two of his father’s ministers killed – they were tax collectors and killing them would win some cheap popularity (he had no intention of actually reducing taxation).
To be blunt – Henry was a shit.
As for modern times – when a person shows you who they are, believe them.
If a man (I will avoid naming him) makes a Christmas broadcast gloating over your defeat, and (repeatedly) meets, on the most friendly terms, with your foes (with people whose religion states that they must NOT be friends with you – indeed that they are under an obligation to conquer you) – going to their places of worship and, indeed, inviting them to his home to engage in their religious rituals – he is telling you who he is, he may NOT share the religion of your foes – but he is not “on your side”.
He is not your friend, he has shown that to you – so do not appeal for aid from him.
Are societies where most men have the vote always places where the government does lots of things “for the poor” – it is fashionable today to say “yes”, but in 1848 this was NOT so. Neither the northern American States where most men had the vote (and which were NOT based on slavery) or the Swiss Cantons were famous for Big Government – quite the reverse, they were famous for small government.
In France when most men got the vote they did not vote for the socialists – they voted for Louis Napoleon to be President, he made himself Emperor (his reign was mixed – but it is a fact that the France of 1869 was less statist than France had ever been before and less statist than it ever would be again, the 2nd Empire was a period of both, relatively, limited government and cultural, and artistic, achievement).
Had most men been given the vote in Britain in 1848 would they have followed the ideas of (long dead) Thomas Paine, or the limited government ideas very much alive President Martin Van Buren?
The truth is that we just do not know.
But it is clear that democracy does NOT automatically mean the destruction of liberty – indeed the first great supporter of democracy (in the sense of the people having a right to remove the government and choose a new one) on this island, James Buchanan (the tutor that King James reacted AGAINST) who was active long before John Locke, did not advocate Big Government – indeed most of Scotland did not even have a Poor Law tax till 1845.
France did not have such taxation till well into the 20th century.
It is often forgotten that there were, before the Reform Act of 1832, a few constituencies in England where most men DID have the vote.
The so called “pot walloper” places (where anyone who had a pot on the fireplace could vote).
Did these constituencies produce Members of Parliament who supported wild government spending?
I do not believe they did.
@Clovis Sangrail
Hanged, please. Hanged, drawn and quartered. People are hanged, meat is hung.
In isolation you are correct, but in this particular idiom either seems to be used. Here is a Google ngram which compares usage through history in a large corpus of English literature. The hung version seems to be preferred, but both are used.
It is a curiosity of the English language. My thought with a bit of speculation. In early English both hanged and hung were used interchangeably for all cases, but over time the patrician class tended to prefer hanged and the commoners hung (I guess because hanged is more aligned with the French approach of suffixes rather than the Anglo Saxon approach of modifying vowels? Maybe? I don’t know.) And since judges and lawyers came from that patrician class then in legal situations the “hanged” form came to be preferred. However, of course it was the common class more likely to suffer the fate (patricians tended to have the privilege of beheading for treason.) So I imagine one could see that “hanged” was preferred in this idiom by the lawyers and “hung” by the poor souls receiving it. Though I suppose there is a Darwinian argument that would suggest that that would mean that “hung” would go extinct.
So, how do you make sure the hanged/hung person is still alive enough to enjoy the drawing part where the four horse teams pull their limbs off? If they’re dead by then it would seem like a waste of time.
(Y’all had some nasty punishments back then.)
“Hanged” is correct, but in this case only, it’s pronounced “hung”.
@bobby b
So, how do you make sure the hanged/hung person is still alive enough to enjoy the drawing part where the four horse teams pull their limbs off? If they’re dead by then it would seem like a waste of time.
They hung them without a drop so the rope strangled them and blocked their carotid arteries, which takes ten or fifteen minutes to kill you. So they let them hang for a while then cut them down. Drawing doesn’t refer to being pulled apart by horses, that isn’t something they did much in England. Instead what they did is cut off is manhood, then cut open their abdomen. The “drawing” is actually the pulling out of the intestines and other visceral, sometimes burning them in front of the condemned. Quartering would be dividing the corpse up into four parts plus the head. He head would be put on a spike, often on London bridge, and the four quarters sent to four cities around the country as a warning to other potential traitors.
I think it is from these types of punishment that the 1689 English Bill of Rights as part of the Glorious Revolution first used that phrase “cruel and unusual punishments”. It strikes me that this phrase has been a major source of hallucination for the US Supreme court subsequent to its inclusion in the US Bill or Rights. Cruel has a plain meaning — namely deliberately designed to inflict pain, and the word unusual is self evident in its meaning. However, the US Supreme court over the past two hundred years has taken this phrase to mean “capital punishments we don’t agree with” rather than the plain meaning of the words. FWIW, I have never really understood the desire by states to execute prisoners by a whole variety of unusual punishments like electrocution, the gas chamber lethal injection and various others. The standard was hanging, and I suppose firing squad. Methods of execution that are not at all unusual, and when performed correctly (and let’s face it, they aren’t rocket science) inflict instant unconsciousness and unawareness and rapid death. And they don’t suffer from all the practical difficulties of these novel methods. Bullets and rope can be bought at the local hardware store.
Whether we should empower the feckless, corrupt morons in our government to perform such a final punishment is a whole other question.
Oh I should say there is a little controversy over the meaning of “drawn”. Some historical sources say that the “drawing” was in fact that the prisoner was attached to a hurdle on the back of a horse and “drawn” or dragged to the site of execution from their prison. But like I say, from what I understand historically the word “drawing” seems to have referred to both at different times. However, what I described is what happened on the gallows.
It should be said that sometimes they hung the prisoner until they were dead and only did the cutting up of the body post mortem, as some sort of mercy, or perhaps to disgust the crowd a little less (of course all these executions were public.)
There is a heavily censored version of it at the end of Braveheart. One of the very few historically accurate parts of this movie. Except of course the prisoner would be in no state to squeak never mind yell “Freedom” at the top of his lungs.
No horses? Oh, then, quite civilized. 😉
We know that morphine and fentanyl and the like will knock you out and kill you quickly and painlessly. Even dreamily. Cheap, plentiful, and known.
But apparently we want people we are executing to KNOW that we hate them. So we constantly run this knife blade between painful and TOO painful (or maybe too ugly to do and still preserve our self-respect.)
(P.S. If the “drawing ” is the pulling of the condemned to the gallows, why isn’t it called “drawn, hanged and quartered”?)
Two different venues, Bobby.
Very interesting podcast by Dan Carlin about changing attitudes to public execution and cruelty. Well worth a listen.
FWIW, I don’t really agree that people are looking for painful vengeance during executions. I think the various novelties are an attempt to provide a painless death, even though, executed as they are by unqualified people and the feckless morons who run the government, it often has the opposite effect. Though, FWIW, the electric chair has its own special history.
Where I do see a thirst for violent retribution against convicted felons in so called “prison justice”. The idea that some categories of prisoner such as child molesters, are deserving of horrendous pain, rape, continual violence etc. And somehow we, as a society, delegate that responsibility to the thugs, gang bangers and murders in prison. If we as a society thing that violence against these people is a requirement of justice then we should do it as part of the justice system: corporal punishment has been part of justice systems since time immemorial. We should not delegate its capricious application to the very worst people in society. For sure here in the United States it would be unconstitutional, but constitutions can be changed if people really want this.
To be clear, I am not in favor of this, but talk to a lot of the population and the relish the idea of prison justice.
I heard this today, and I suspect that it could possibly eventually be a trigger for the revolt we were talking about earlier. If the link to the British paper I saw earlier today is right [keeping in mind that the media frequently lies] a bill has passed your Parliament making the sale of tobacco illegal to anyone born after 2008. Noting that nicotine is one of the most addictive substances out there; this does not seem feasible. We had an experiment like that with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States from 1919-1933. After the mass criminal activities and corruption involved in bootlegging, we had to give it up. What makes Parliament think it would be possible to avoid the same problems in Britain?
And just because I have a dark sense of humor, let me ask another question. In Britain apparently Islamic gangs can engage in criminal activity [including the rape and murder of children] with no fear of prosecution. What happens if those gangs start bootlegging tobacco? Are Crown Prosecutors going to go after them for that?
Subotai Bahadur