The late-medieval Mystery Plays, seen as part of England’s cultural heritage, are also
evidence of a rich vein of social and religious protest, argues John Westmoreland

The late-medieval Mystery Plays, seen as part of England’s cultural heritage, are also evidence of a rich vein of social and religious protest, argues John Westmoreland

This is an article about protest in medieval England in the fourteenth and early fifteenth century. It was a period of plague and protest from below. A pandemic loosened social ties and led to the mass rebellion known as the Peasants’ Revolt. The Revolt was suppressed by royal violence in the main, but protest continued. The article looks at the example of York, where the powerful oligarchy that ruled the city attempted to take back control after 1381. 

This year, York will be hosting the cycle of Mystery Plays once again. People will flock to watch the cycle of 48 plays that cover the history of the world as told in the Bible, from the Creation to the Last Judgement. They are rightly considered as part of our cultural heritage, and much effort goes into making them entertaining and instructive. But what is never referred to is why the cycle of plays came about after the Peasants’ Revolt in York was suppressed, nor their economic and ideological value to the ruling oligarchy.

Hopefully this article will go some way to changing that. Reference is also made to the wider protests involving Christian radicals who began to lay claim to their right to read the Bible in their own language and challenge the idolatrous ownership of religion by the ruling class.

Godly power and protest

Even when faced with terrifying repression, English radicals have persisted in speaking out, no matter the power of their oppressors. In the Middle Ages, the power they confronted was the power of God himself, which he handily passed down to his appointed secular powers, who just so happened to be heavily armed and defended.

It didn’t matter if those demanding a little free speech were Christians who aimed at the Christian project of building the kingdom of God on earth. Religious testimony was firmly in the grip of the ruling class. They decided what was and what was not the word of God, and His word could not be questioned. This was, after all, the opening statement in the Gospel of St. John. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1.1).  It was an ideology that demanded the submission to God’s chosen elite. 

Radical ideas are generated at the interface of the dominant ideology and the lived reality that confronts it. The religious ideas fed to the peasants and artisans in medieval England were aimed at hypnotising an illiterate population with magical stories that lifted them from the ceaseless monotony of their lives. Absurd stories like Christ’s mother giving birth while maintaining her virginity were understood as an example of powerful and beneficent magic, gifted by the creator of the world. The magical powers held by the Church served to put the fear of God into peasants and the labouring poor. 

The magic worked best in the villages where it offered comfort to lives that were hard and brief. But as towns grew, and trade developed, the closed world of the village started to open up. A country-wide pandemic that began in 1348 helped to release the resentments of the peasants and poor labourers too. Some estimates of mortality rates in England between 1348 and 1350 are as high as sixty per cent, and this had a number of consequences. Firstly, it brought into question why God and his secular arm allowed this to happen. Secondly, it caused an acute labour shortage that led to higher wages on the one hand, and enabled a portion of the rural poor to break out of their serfdom and achieve some independence, often by migrating to the towns. This is why surnames often referred to a person’s birthplace. For example, my namesake, John de Westmerland, a stone mason, arrived in York sometime in the 1360s and worked on the Merchants Adventurers Hall.

The feudal system relied on a static social structure with power firmly secured at the top of the pyramid. Each social layer was supposed to defer to the layer above them. So higher wages and a little social mobility, especially in towns, disturbed the God-given hierarchy and fed early religious dissent. If the hierarchy could be scaled by the economic activity of the lower orders, the rule of kings and nobles might be questioned – and it was. In 1381, during the Peasants’ Revolt, the radical preacher, John Ball, asked ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’ This was early rationalism, cleverly using a well-known Bible story to call into question the power of the ruling class. It was political protest and religious heresy.

The material changes in the lives of the lower orders in this period led to popular forms of protest that began with increased scepticism about how and why God gave power to an elite that was visibly corrupt and ungodly. In particular, the rule of the pope – one of the most powerful politicians in the world – became a subject of controversy. The discussion wasn’t confined to theologians and intellectuals, and it percolated down into the general population.

Lollards and ale wives

The period 1348-1450 was one of religious and political ferment, and the figure most often cited as the chief cause of this is John Wycliffe. Wycliffe (1328-84) was a theologian who came to question the authority of the pope. The pope was supposed to be God’s vicar on earth, but as Wycliffe pointed out, the Bible makes no mention of popes. Wycliffe’s writings also led to major doctrinal challenges. He was in favour of an English Bible, and church services in English so that ordinary people could have access to the word of God without going through the pope’s clerical intermediaries. This undermined the established clergy, who performed the magic of the mass in Latin. This form of Christian protest marked the start of Protestantism.

The pandemic of 1348, often referred to retrospectively as the Black Death, created a layer of poor priests, receptive to Wycliffe’s ideas. Senior clergy tended to flee to areas free of plague, leaving parish priests, who administered to the dead, liable to contract the plague and die. The desertion of their flock led to the collapse of organised religion in some areas. Around Selby in Yorkshire, churches were being used as pens for animals and as places to practice archery.

The poor priests who replaced the dead clerics lacked theological training and proved to be a poor defence for papal authority. Poor priests were closer to their parishioners who were angry that their path to Heaven had been sequestered by the rich. A major grievance was the role played by chantry priests. The wealthy could build a chantry chapel, often within the church, and pay priests to pray for their souls and thus wealthy patrons could avoid spending too much time in purgatory. The poorer priests, to an extent unwittingly, preached a more evangelical message that entry to Heaven could, and should, be gained by living a Christian life. This was done to win back those congregants who had lapsed, but it also fed the sense of injustice in the parishes where social injustice was increasingly fused with religious protest. 

There was clearly a shift in Christian attitudes to authority at parish level in this period but it is difficult to quantify it. Nevertheless, it helps to explain the events of 1381. For example, historians have puzzled over the fact that the Peasants’ Revolt broke out at different places across the country at more or less the same time. It is possible that the layer of poor priests may hold the answer. They were not tied to the land, and formed a network, often outside the control of the Church, that connected towns and cities. John Ball was one of them.

The demand for an English Bible, and the repudiation of chantry priests, fed into other demands. Wycliffe had called into question transubstantiation, which was the dogma that stated that the bread and wine used in the Mass, was turned (literally) into the actual flesh and blood of Christ, simply by saying some Latin words over the Host. The protest against transubstantiation was articulated at parish level by a group of radicals known to history as the Lollards. The term was pejorative. It implied that their Christian observations were in a mumbled foreign tongue (not Latin).

The Lollards were viciously punished but showed incredible bravery and persistence. John Badby, a tailor from the West Midlands, denied transubstantiation. He was tried at St Pauls for saying that Christ did not distribute his own flesh and blood at the Last Supper. Furthermore, he insisted that ‘if every Host consecrated at the altar were the Lord’s body, then there [would] be 20,000 Gods in England’. He was sentenced to be put in a barrel and burned at Smithfield, and even though he was given the opportunity to recant, he refused it.

Historians that have studied the Lollards have obviously had to rely on the records of their trials to gain a sense of what they were about. This has had the effect of narrowing our understanding of the scale of religious dissent in the period because it implies that Lollards only existed at the places where trials took place, and where certain criteria of dissent were met in the eyes of the Church. Beyond Lollard dissent, there were many others who committed the sin of discussing the Bible, and protesting the power of the Pope. And with some accuracy, the authorities thought women were largely responsible for undermining Christian orthodoxy.

It is well known that some of the Lollards who were sent to trial were women. Hawise Mone was tried in Norfolk for organising meetings to discuss the teachings of the Lollard preacher William White who had been executed in 1428. Mone was accused of teaching ‘schools of heresy’ at her home. Female Lollard preachers were reviled by the authorities for stepping outside the control of their husbands and the Church. Women faced religious oppression as ‘daughters of Eve’, temptresses who led men astray. In the event of disturbances in cities, the authorities often drove prostitutes from the city as a first response.

The main forum in which women turned honest men away from the true faith was the pub. Ale wives were seen as being outside the control of male supervision. They could meet men from all professions in a social setting, pass on information and potentially indulge in their own school of heresy. Not only that, they exhibited some economic independence from the feudal hierarchy. The Church and civic authorities responded to the threat of uncontrolled women by promoting the mother of Christ as an exemplar of true womanhood. 

From as early as the twelfth century, the Church promoted excessive veneration for the Virgin Mary. Cities like York dedicated churches, chapels, halls and streets to the Virgin. Our Lady’s Row still stands in Goodramgate. The powerful mercers’ guild was founded in 1356 in the name of ‘Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Mary’. The Merchant Adventurers Hall in Fossgate has been described as a national centre for the cult of the Virgin, and there is little doubt that a reason for this is the large number of independent female traders known as femmes sols. As the cult of the Virgin blossomed, so did the preponderance of ‘wicked wife’ tales, which suggests the existence of a radical subculture, denigrated as it was as ‘gossipings and wantonness’.

Chaucer’s Wife of Bath gives us a hint of how dangerous an intelligent and confident woman could be to the magical thinking of the medieval establishment, mocking the ideal of virginity as the highest expression of womanhood:

‘Had God commanded maindenhood to all, Marriage would be condemned beyond recall, And certainly if seed were never sown, However could virginity be grown?’

In York, the rebels of 1381 escaped the drastic punishments that happened elsewhere, largely because the rebels there were led by people of considerable social standing such as Simon de Quixley. Nevertheless, the events in York sent a strong warning to the oligarchy that ran the city, and saw them go on an offensive to win a turbulent city to the righteous (as they saw it) path.

Power and protest in medieval York

York was a city that, despite the ravages of plague in the fourteenth century, continued to grow. The reason for York’s growth was economic. York was a centre for the manufacture and export of woollen cloth, and it was a form of economic activity that continued to bring powerful religious figures into conflict with York’s working population.

Upstream from York were some great Cistercian monasteries like Fountains Abbey and the estates of major lords like the Percy and Mowbray families. These powerful figures built houses in York and endowed churches. When the Peasants Revolt of 1381 hit York, the target of popular anger was aimed at the favoured mayor of the elites, the extremely wealthy John of Gisburn.

Gisburn was charged by the rebels as being ‘a thief, a friend of thieves and a coiner of false money’ and was driven out of the city. He was a merchant who dealt in the wool and lead produced by the monks upstream, and this explains his powerful backers. He was linked by trade to powerful elites at both ends of the operation and was an indispensable player in York’s economy. He provided the lead for New College Oxford, and was commissioned by the king to visit Scotland on his business.

Gisburn became mayor of York once more after the revolt was ended. Gisburn passed a number of ordnances on behalf of the oligarchs, such as stopping debts being bequeathed to the Church instead of endowments, and played a decisive role in setting up the cycle of plays that we celebrate today. This was a conscious attempt to bring order to York’s rebellious elements. Although church plays and plough plays were already part of York’s cultural life, the mystery plays were a much more organised and ambitious attempt to assert religious orthodoxy and put an end to the ‘gossipings and clamours’ that had led to revolt. 

The initiatives taken by Gisburn were well thought out and aimed to bring about a more regulated economic order as well as return York to obedient and worshipful demeanour. 

York’s growth in the fourteenth century had led to something of a building boom, and with it came new ways of making money, outside the control of the city council. Selling food, ale and clothes was an obvious part of it, but some enterprising labourers went further. For example, laying foundations didn’t have to be done by stone masons – semi-skilled labourers could do it at a price. Making the louvres that acted as chimneys didn’t have to be done by carpenters either, and a thriving trade was developing in semi-skilled joinery. These semi-skilled labourers were making money, but were outside the control of the craft guilds, and the oligarchy saw this as something that needed to be brought under control. Women got in on the act too. The butchers’ wives in the Shambles were found to be making tallow candles, generating wealth and revealing themselves as independent business women. 

The answer that the oligarchs came up with was to enrol all these free trades into established guilds, and for them to pay part of their wealth into the production of the yearly pageant of mystery plays, with each guild performing a play suitable to their trade. Tax and obedience were demanded in equal measure. However, the trick was to make the guilds feel a sense of pride in being able to act out important Biblical stories to the benefit of their fellow guildsmen. The plays were intended to be enjoyable and a celebration that would generate as much enthusiasm as possible. The players would have to learn the part written for them, and communicate it to a public audience accurately and persuasively. Learning the word of God would also take men away from feasting, playing games and gambling.

The plays were performed on carts dragged around the city, with a performance at various stations where the great and the good could sit and oversee the plays. For example, one of the stages was outside the house of John of Gisburn in Micklegate, and the next one was performed in front of the Abbot of Fountains Abbey. The whole spectacle was to cover the history of the world as told in the Bible. The last station was where the powerful merchants sat outside All Saints church in Pavement, with their invited guests. The last play was Doomsday, or the Last Judgement. It was performed by the mercers’ guild and was the only play allowed to be performed by paid actors. The pronouncement of the Last Judgement by the city’s oligarchy was clearly designed to terrify and assert their power. 

The oligarchy in York, as elsewhere, were also determined to force the magic of transubstantiation into the people. This was the responsibility of the aristocratic members of the Corpus Christie guild. The Host (the supposedly real flesh and blood of Christ) was kept in the council chamber on Ouse Bridge in a gold casket. The Host was in the trust of the oligarchs and, by association, they were invested with all the magical attributes it possessed. The difficulty was getting the people to go along with it, as we shall see. But first it is important to look at some of the ideological intentions in the plays, where the verses are still available to us.

The oligarchs’ feudal power was asserted in the play of Cain and Abel performed by the glovers’ guild. The dialogue fuses the religious and social obligation to pay tithes. The obligation is given as an instruction from God himself as a payment for his act of creation. The message from God is therefore delivered by an angel who tells the crowd:

‘Then [God] made man in his likeness, That place of pride to restore, And since he showed him such kindness, Somewhat will he require therefore. The tenth to tithe he asks, no more.’

It is worth noting that this is pitched as a fair request and a transaction that the money-minded folks would understand, and this indicates how far control had slipped from the grasp of the oligarchs.

It is possible to see the blatant political interests of the city’s elites in some of the plays. The shipwrights’ guild had to perform the play of Noah and the Arc and it is one of the most political plays in the cycle. The shipwrights are reminded early on that their skills were given to them by God, and it was God who instructed Noah how to go about building a ship. Clearly this is a warning against the arrogance of a worker taking credit (and making too much money) for their own skills and ingenuity. Funnily enough, God was pretty keen on the shipwrights making sure all the seams were well caulked and that the planks were well nailed too. Perhaps he could envisage the bales of woollen cloth heading down to Hull on the Ouse. The play also provided an excellent opportunity to have a go at the kind of women who were likely to lead honest men astray.

When God tells Noah about the coming flood and how to prepare for it, Noah then tells the family so that his sons can help him to get cracking. Up pipes Noah’s wife, who sees beyond God’s instructions and starts to apply a bit of outside-the-box thinking. She chides Noah for not including her in the discussion with God, and warns him that without her steadying influence, he has got himself a ‘bad bargain’. She tells her husband that while he is boat-building, she had better go and inform her sister and the neighbours about the flood. The dialogue brings out the fear that rational discourse inspired in the elites. Although, of course, the play serves the purpose of making the wife irrational, impious and wicked, so that she needs to suffer accordingly.

Noah and his sons try to explain that God has not asked for her opinion, and her ‘wantonness’ threatens the whole project. One of Noah’s sons then knocks her on the head and carries her onto the Arc, thereby asserting the duty of men to control women and uphold God’s word. No doubt it got a laugh as was the intention but it also reveals just how worried the elites were about the free expression of ideas in their city. The audience didn’t always take to the intended ideological manipulation though.

The stone masons sought permission from the city council to abandon their pageant because it was heckled so strongly that they felt they couldn’t perform. The play they were given to perform was ‘Feargus’, the name given to the Jew who sacrilegiously laid his hand on the bier of the Virgin Mary and was punished by becoming stuck to it. The story of Feargus is depicted in a stained glass panel in York Minster where Jews are depicted as monkeys (the panel is known as the ‘monkeys funeral’) and the play therefore was of some importance to the oligarchs. The heckling of this one play shows an audience that is informed about the Bible and that the story of Feargus is surely apocryphal. However, the angriest protests were directed at the Corpus Christi procession. 

The Corpus Christi procession was attacked so strongly that it had to be separated off from the main pageant after 1426. John Wycliffe had denounced transubstantiation and cultus hostie as idolatry. It was an unchristian ritual that had provoked the heroic and rational protest of people like John Badby. In 1419, men from the Carpenters’ and Cordwainers’ guilds attacked the Corpus Christi procession and smashed the torches carried in front of the Host with ‘carlile axes’. This was clearly premeditated. It seems that one of the objections to Corpus Christi was that the pope granted indulgences to those who took part, which was more evidence of a two-tier and two-faced religious orthodoxy that stirred the passions of the excluded. Public disorder at the time of the procession continued to grow over the next years, and, in 1426, matters came to a head and a full-scale riot seems to have occurred with the result that the guild lost the indulgences granted to them by Pope Urban IV. The Corpus Christi procession was thereafter separated from the main pageant, with the plays performed on the eve of Corpus Christi. Of course, religious commentators at the time and since put the disorder down to ‘feastings, drunkenness, clamours, gossipings and other wantonness’, but it was only the idolatrous part of the pageant that was attacked.

In response, the city council was forced to climb down, and responded in their time-honoured fashion. Sunday trading was banned and prostitutes (that probably included women who were seen as trouble makers) were driven out of the city.

Conclusion

The climax of Protestantism was yet to come when these events took place. When the climax came in the sixteenth century, it was far more dramatic and noteworthy than the events in Medieval England in general and York in particular. 

And, it’s not as if the events recalled here led to some explosion of protest down the road. The Peasants’ Revolt was crushed. John Wycliffe was declared heretic in 1415; his works were publically burned and his body was exhumed from consecrated ground. York’s economic heyday passed too, when the woollen cloth trade passed to Wakefield and the towns with fast flowing rivers in the West Riding.

But every great act of rebellion is proceeded by myriad smaller rebellions, whose impact, though hard to measure, still has to be counted in the balance. The discussions that took place on the streets and in the taverns of York had an impact. They forced the authorities to engage with the rational discussion that can be seen in the verses of the plays, and the oligarchs had to retreat over the Corpus Christi celebrations. Small victories perhaps, but an omen of things to come.