Society

The following is an extract from a contemporary record of events leading to the Peasants’ Revolt, as described in The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 edited by RB (Barrie) Dobson.

Then the bishop of Lincoln sent notice throughout his whole diocese giving general power to all priests, both regulars and seculars, to hear confessions and give absolution with full episcopal authority to all persons, except only in case of debt.

In such a case, the debtor was to pay the debt, if he were able, while he lived, or others were to be appointed to do so from his goods after his death.

In the same way the Pope gave plenary remission of all sins (once only) to all receiving absolution at the point of death, and granted that this power should last until Easter next following, and that every one might choose his own confessor at will. 

In the following autumn a reaper was not to be had for less than 8d, with his food, a mower for less than 12d, with food.

Therefore many crops rotted in the fields for lack of men to gather them. But in the year of the pestilence, as has been said above of other things, there was so great an abundance of all kinds of corn that virtually no one cared for it. 

My Thoughts On Reading The Above

What gets me is the reference to “give absolution with full episcopal authority to all persons, except only in case of debt”. What singles out debt that it cannot be absolved? And why the sticking point at the giving of absolution but “once only”. What is sacred about receiving one absolution only?

Oh pity the reluctant gunslinger, for he must fight another fight.

I call it gunslinger syndrome, the man who was a gunslinger and then saw the light and gave it up. Now he just wants to live like a normal person. But he is not a normal person; he is fast on the draw. So when the citizens need help, he is forced against his will to return to the thing he does best, and shoot down the oppressor for the sake of the citizens.

And we the audience, we want to see the fight. If there is no fight, we will feel robbed of our spectacle. There can be many other resolutions, but we want ‘our’ resolution. We want to see our man do his thing. We are the spectators and the gunfight is the Roman arena.

Our appetite for that finale is so strong that we want to see it again and again. Screenwriters have to invent whole scenarios that will make it credible and needed for that final gunfight to happen.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be guns. Japanese sword fights, boxing, martial arts, they can all work. But for a crescendo, a gunfight is hard to beat. There is space around the protagonists so that we can see the denouement and the reluctant gunslinger with perfect clarity.

James Coburn in Waterhole No. 3 violated the rule of the gunfight. Early on in the film he is called out to fight some nameless gunslinger. Coburn goes out to face the man standing way down Main Street. He is required by the law of gunfights to walk down the street to within revolver distance, and face off against his opponent.

Instead, he walks around behind his horse; pulls his rifle out of its scabbard, and uses the horse’s back as a support to shoot the other man down. What a dastardly deed! I forget what exact comment Coburn made, but it was to the effect that only a fool would stand within a few yards of another in the hope of being first on the draw.

The film Shane is the paradigm of the tale of the retired gunslinger blighted by his past. The rancher’s young son wants to be him; the rancher looks at his own life and wants the magic of being the gunslinger; and the rancher’s wife looks at Shane and wants him.

The gunslinger that Shane must face is dressed in black. He is needlessly cruel, and he is complacent in his triumph. How happy we will be when he is gunned down. How unhappy we would be if the gunfight were never to take place.

The book, Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, is full of first-hand accounts by way of diary notes, reports, articles, and reported conversations of ordinary travellers in Germany in the 1930s.

The author describes how the NSDAP used every trick on the propaganda book to blind foreign visitors to what was going on and to get the populace on board. The Party used torchlight processions, mass parades, control of the media, etc. backed up by the essential fascist tool of violence as a first resort.

Violence and antisemitism were hidden from visitors and thrust in the face of the populace. As an example, during the 1936 Berlin Olympics, antisemitic posters and signs were taken down, and then put up again after the games had finished.

Yet looking back, I cannot help but think that many people look for any excuse to behave badly. Just give them a justification. Just give them an idea onto which they can latch. Give them reason why an idea is more important than a life.

That was then. What I see now is that people are being whipped up with new tools in the propaganda armoury.

Observers say that the danger of social media and online news commenting is that the commenters can be annonymous.

That is not the danger of social media; it is the beauty of it.

People’s anger is being whipped up. They are being taught, trained, to see things as though the differences between them and those who think otherwise are separated by an unbridgeable divide.

They are being taught, trained, that there is no space in between for compromise, for unity, for community, for talking, for getting together.

The reason they are being trained is so that they become trainable.

So I was reading the book this morning, and then I read the news. I read that last night, Mark Field MP, Minister of State for Asia and the Pacific, MP for Cities of London & Westminster, attacked a climate protester who gatecrashed a dinner where the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, was speaking.

The BBC have a nice video of what happened, so there is no saying it was anything other than what it was. The MP attacked the protester, and it is clear that he did so because he thought it was OK to do so.

The protester was a woman, so he didn’t have to worry that a burly protester would floor him.

Field later apologised for ‘grabbing’ her (he didn’t grab her; he attacked her), and then made his situation worse by his patently untrue claim that he was worried the protester may have been armed.

What made his ‘instinctive grab’, his attack, on the woman seem to him to be OK and the thing to do?

I think one can make a good case for saying that thirty years ago, a little voice in his head would have restrained him. Not today. No one is immune from being trained, much less the people in the thick of it.

Cordovan is the name given to a rich burgundy colour. It gets its name from the city of Cordoba in Spain, where many workers in leather had their businesses.

Workers in leather, originally meaning workers from Cordoba who worked in goatskin, were known as a cordewans, then cordewaners, and now in English as cordwainers. Cordwainer is an alternative word for a shoemaker, mostly used in connection with a guild.

The distinction is more than academic. Cordwainers make new shoes: In contrast, cobblers repair shoes. Since the Middle Ages, craftsmen have formed guilds to regulate their trades by allowing only members to work in that field.

By having the law recognise that only guild members can carry out the work, they protect the quality of their wares and services, and their prices. Guilds also train apprentices and support members who have fallen on hard times.

The Worshipful Company of Cordwainers continues today, based in Mincing Lane in London. Although the word cordwainer refers to a maker of shoes, the guild encompasses workers in fine leather as well as shoemakers.

The term ‘worshipful’ denotes a guild as a livery company, which marks out the Cordwainers as having special status. The term ‘livery’ refers to the clothing that guild members were entitled to wear to show their status, and as of today there are over 100 livery companies in the City of London.

Senior members of livery companies have rights over the civic life of London, with local government powers. One of their special powers concerns the election of civic leaders.

Behind the scenes, the senior liverymen elect the City’s sheriffs and approve the candidates for election to the office of Lord Mayor of London.