William FitzOsbert, Called Longbeard, 1196
The first serious protest came from the London workmen in the reign of Richard I.; and FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard, was the spokesman of the popular discontent.
The King wanted money, chiefly for his crusades in Palestine. He had no inclination to personal government, and the business of ruling England was in the hands of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the justiciar or King’s lieutenant. Richard left England for Normandy in 1194, and returned no more. England to him was a country where money could be raised, a subject-province to be bled by taxation. Archbishop Hubert did his best to satisfy the royal demands; and though by his inquisitions “England was reduced to poverty from one sea to the other”—it is estimated that more than £1,000,000 was sent to Richard in two years—the King was left unsatisfied. The nation generally came to hate the Archbishop’s taxation, the Church suffered by his neglect, and he was finally compelled to resign the justiciarship.
It was the London rising, under FitzOsbert’s leadership, that directly caused Archbishop Hubert’s retirement, and FitzOsbert is notable as the first of the long line of agitators.
The political importance of the capital was seen in the reigns of Cnut and William the Conqueror. It was conspicuous on the arrival of Stephen in 1135, and its influence on national politics lasted till the middle of the nineteenth century.33
By its charter London had the right of raising taxes for the Crown in its own way, and in 1196 the method proposed by the Corporation provoked the outbreak. “When the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor” (Hoveden).
The poorer citizens were voteless, and the plan of the aldermen was to levy the tallages per head, and not in proportion to the property of the inhabitants. This meant, practically, that the whole, except a very small fraction of the sum to be raised, must be paid by the working people.
Thereupon FitzOsbert protested, and the people rose in arms against the demand.
FitzOsbert was an old crusader, and he was something of a lawyer and a powerful speaker. Not a rich man by any means, FitzOsbert was yet a member of the city council when, “burning with zeal for justice and fair play, he made himself the champion of the poor.” To his enemies he was a demagogue and disreputable—so Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul’s at that time, described him. To others of more popular sympathies he was heroic and died a martyr’s death. Across the centuries he is seen as “an agitator”—the first English agitator, the first man to stand up boldly against the oppression of the common people. This palpably unjust taxation of the poor was intolerable to FitzOsbert.
Fifteen thousand men banded themselves together in London under an oath that they would stand by each other and by their leader; and FitzOsbert, after a vain journey to Normandy to arouse Richard’s attention to the wrongs of his subjects, bade open defiance to the justiciar and his tax-gatherers.
For a time the Archbishop’s men were powerless, but weakness crept in amongst the citizens, and the aldermen were naturally on the side of constituted authority. FitzOsbert’s success meant a readjustment of taxation quite unpalatable to the City Fathers.
In the end FitzOsbert was deserted by all but a handful of his followers and fled with them for sanctuary to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. Pursued by the officers of the law, FitzOsbert climbed up into the tower of the church, and to fetch him down orders were given to set the church on fire. This was done, and the only chance of life that now remained for the rebels was to get out of the church and cut their way through the ranks of their enemies.
At the church door FitzOsbert was struck down, and his little company quickly overpowered.
Heavily chained, and badly wounded, FitzOsbert was carried off to the Tower, to be tried and sentenced to a traitor’s death without delay.
A few days later—it was just before Easter—FitzOsbert was stripped naked, and dragged at the tail of a horse over the rough streets of London to Tyburn. He was dead before the place of execution was reached, but the body, broken and mangled, was hung up in chains under the gallows elm all the same; and nine of his companions were hanged with him.
The very people who had fallen away from their leader in the day of his need now counted FitzOsbert for a saint, and pieces of his gibbet and of the bloodstained earth underneath the tree were carried away and treasured as sacred relics. It was alleged that miracles were performed when these relics were touched—so wide was now the popular reverence for the dead champion of the poor.
Archbishop Hubert put a stop to this devotion by ordering sermons to be preached on FitzOsbert’s iniquities; and an alleged death-bed confession, containing an account of many evil deeds, was published. It is likely enough that an old crusader had plenty of sins to answer for, but FitzOsbert’s one crime before the law was that he had taught the people of London to stand up and resist by force of arms the payment of taxes—taxes levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.
The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed to the King and the Pope—Innocent III.—that Hubert should give up his political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert was compelled to resign the judiciarship.