Political Activism by 13th Century Peasants in England

There’s a common perception of peasants in the Middle Ages, especially in England, as inert people who were merely ruled over and did not possess political agency. The extent to which medieval peasants were engaged in politics is a question that occasionally comes up on this subreddit, especially in relation to the Peasants Revolt of 1381. Even among academics, discussion of peasants as a political force tends to focus on the 14th century, when the imposition of sumptuary laws (laws dictating what people of different classes could wear and eat etc.) led to greater class consciousness among peasants and in turn greater political engagement. This showed itself in popular demonstrations, peasant revolts, and satirical literature. But such questions, and discussion of the political situation after the Black Death, implies that the peasantry were not previously engaged with politics. As Rodney Hilton writes, ‘the peasantry could be considered in terms of medieval politics as a voiceless mass’. But I’m really not sure that’s the case. The evidence from the 13th century suggests the growth of peasants as a political force in the 14th century was a long time coming.

At the start of the 13th century, when English politics was increasingly concerned with the rights of tenants-in-chief (landowners who answered directly to the king, often called ‘barons’), the peasantry were stirring. Many low level landowners, who had only one or two manors to their name, were active in their local community. Although the financial separation between the lord and their peasants was a severe one, the social separation was limited. Since the reign of Henry II, local lords were expected to hold courts regularly to solve local disputes, supervise the harvest, and oversee taxation. Whilst most barons happily outsourced this work to stewards and avoided interaction with peasants, a knight with only one manor probably could not afford this. Some tried to refer matters upward to the king’s court, but that was banned by Magna Carta.

As the quarrel between the barons and King John looked set to escalate, and the rebels increasingly seized on the idea of reforming English law, many seem to have raised their hand and put forward the concerns of peasants. Some of the clauses of Magna Carta seem oddly specific, and divorced from the great questions of state that typically preoccupied the barons and the king:

Clause 5. [The local lord] will maintain the houses, parks, fishponds, ponds, mills and other things pertaining to that land…

Clause 23. No vill [an unfree peasant, basically a serf] will be forced to build bridges at river banks, except those who ought to do so by tradition and law

Clause 28. No constable or any other of our bailiffs will take any man’s corn or other chattels unless he pays cash for them…

These are a bit odd, and some early signs of peasant involvement in the politics of state. Someone had complained about being made to build a bridge by a crown official, their lord had gone ‘you have a point’ and raised the issue with the barons. That a clause that seems to only concern the bottom of society - the serfs - made it into Magna Carta suggests that many lords took the peasants in their domains seriously. Clause 5 is also particularly interesting, as it required lords to act as modern landlords do; being responsible for the maintenance of everything on the land they owned. Leaky roof? Well, now peasants had the right to nag the lord about it until they fixed it.

That being said, there weren’t many signs of peasants taking politics into their own hands at this time. They complained to their lords (or the lord’s steward), who complained to their higher-ups, who complained to the king and/or parliament, so the political influence of peasant communities depended heavily on having the ear of their lord. Whilst some were evidently happy to listen, most were not. Most weren’t even around, as they delegated tasks to others whilst they hunted, attended tournaments, went to war etc. and were too preoccupied to bother themselves with local matters.

But the legal reforms of Magna Carta had given the peasantry new ways of engaging in politics. Bailiffs and constables required their consent to act, which involved them in the justice system, often as assistants in solving crimes and witnesses to legal proceedings. The development of trial by jury also involved them as jurors. Through this exposure to the justice system, they realised they had the right to take their lord to court, and they seized the chance. Of particular note was the case of North Ashby where, in 1242, the locals sued their lord for trying to make them into serfs when they claimed to be free peasants. The matter went to the royal court at Westminster, the lord lost, and the peasants remained free. This was generally how peasants from Magna Carta onward exercised their political will; as agents of the justice system who could use that system to highlight injustices and (often successfully) assert their rights.

Half a century after Magna Carta, England began to have ideas about constitutional monarchy. John’s successor, Henry III, was not a good king, and many leading barons considered deposing him. As Henry’s long time ally (and soon to be arch-enemy) Simon de Montfort told him during an argument: ‘we should lock you up like Charles the Simple’. In 1258, armed men acting on the orders of leading barons interrupted a session of parliament and threatened to overthrow the king unless he agreed to their demands. These demands, which would become the Provisions of Oxford and then the Provisions of Westminster, were that the king could no longer exercise their own powers without the consent of a ruling council of barons and that said council was to be overseen by parliament, which was to meet three times a year. Although they had not gone so far as to actually depose Henry, they had booted him from the government and turned England into a constitutional monarchy.

Week 144

 

The essence of human relations is war.

Or so went the argument proposed and thus summarized by Giuseppe Rensi in one of his 1919 contributions for the Popolo d'Italia (Il voto e la violenza, August 4^th 1919 - “Vote and violence” - page three). The Veronese philosopher, whose ethical skepticism had progressively evolved through the last stages and immediate aftermath of the Great War into what is usually described as a “philosophy of authority” (to use the title chosen by Rensi himself for his La filosofia dell'autorità - June 1920), drove confirmation of his belief in a “pluriversality” of reason (and therefore of values – an actual “partition of reason, partition of the spirit”), in opposition to the supposed “unity” or “universality” of reason (represented most prominently by the philosophy of Kant and Rousseau, and by the subsequent rationalistic and idealistic formulations), by the observation of the increasingly conflictual nature of social and political interactions, both within and outside of the national boundaries.

We recognize the common good, with the same irresistible and belligerent confidence, in a patriotic war for the expansion of political power, and in pacifism taken to the extent of submitting to foreign invasion; we recognize justice, with the same impetus of assuredness, in private property and in communism […] [Filosofia dell'autorità - page 161]

The absence of any universal reason – which is to say, the impossibility of any ultimate reconciliation of internal and external principles – left no perspective of social accommodation except for the one based on the principle of authority alone, which, in itself, by operating merely in the external sphere, could only and always represent an imposition, a constriction, and therefore an act of violence.

In recent years, Rensi's works have garnered a renewed interest, both due to the intrinsic qualities of Rensi's articulate (and quite “eclectic”) philosophical thought and due to his particular collocation in relation to both the rising fascist movement and the established Fascist Regime. The latter of the two sides (for a brief overview and additional reference, see: Gazzolo, T. - Giuseppe Rensi fascista? Note biografiche e scritti politici (1919-23) [2012] – which is also the source of many of the following excerpts, unless stated otherwise) is obviously the more relevant one to our present discussion.

It doesn't take much effort to include Rensi – a “late-late idealist” in his beginnings – and his philosophical, and especially his political thought, within that broad current (that “ocean” to be true to the metaphor) of “anti-rationalism” and “anti-absolute idealism” (to use Rensi's description of Hegelism and literal Hegelism) which flooded the plains of early XX Century Europe, inspiring a complete rejection of those principles common to both of the Enlightenment and to the subsequent attempts at an Idealist synthesis. A rejection which Rensi makes explicit in his preface to the “philosophy of authority”:

What is the rationale of a political constitution? – asked Rensi in his proemio – and what is the rational solution of political problems?

That nothing within the field of political life is accomplished by act of force, by mere imposition, by means of imperium; hence that no deliberation is made, of which those who are subject to it don't acknowledge and accept the reason; that any deliberation is, therefore, effective by means of willful consent, approval, request.

If anything is imposed and effected by means of mere force, which is to say by means of a command which is to be executed in so far as it has force at its side, but which people observe only because they fear that force at its side, while recognizing it as an arbitrary imposition, then we are in the presence of something violent and undiscerning, of a matter of brute force, that is of a matter which is, in its essential terms, irrational.

It is therefore necessary, in order for this irrationality to be removed, for there to be identity between what individual reason deems right, and therefore wishes, and what the law or the State deem right, and therefore command. Or, in other words, for there to be identity between freedom […] and law […]

The main theoreticians of this position were Rousseau and Kant. And after them, of course, the rationalist and more or less absolute idealists […]

The practical transposition of this position has been embodied by liberalism […]

With this we are certainly well within the boundaries of that widespread “feeling” of dissatisfaction with the traditional “liberal ideals” of positive imprint (as well as within a current of “anti-intellectualism” manifest in Rensi's vulgarization efforts and frequent polemics with the “academic world”), whose main proponents (in Italy, especially Croce, but also, at the time, his former student Gentile) were reluctantly and laboriously endeavoring to formulate an ideal corollary to the entrance of the masses within the life of the nation. A tendency – here not unambiguously exemplified – towards “irrationalism”, which has been highlighted by various authors (see obviously Sternhell, etc.) as the “cultural humus” (if not as the origin tout court) of Fascism (and likely not incorrectly, at least in its characterization as a “cultural” phenomenon).

At the same time, Rensi's relations with Fascism – both practical and ideological – are quite more ambivalent and conflictual than what his express apology of “fascist violence” would lead to assume at a first glance. Despite openly and actively endorsing fascism during the years of 1920-22, Rensi quickly appeared to grow dispassionate and extremely cold towards the new movement as soon as it came to power; then openly taking a distance from Fascism at the 1924-25 turn (despite a series of not indifferent career and financial perspectives for someone who was still regarded by many as a “philosopher of fascism”), both signing Croce's “manifesto of the anti-fascist intellectuals” and continuing to cross words with Giovanni Gentile, to the point of becoming himself – in his later years – a subject of surveillance (including a brief period of incarceration) and object of violent threats.

Upon a closer inspection, one comes to the realization that Rensi's philosophical arguments (and especially those exposed in his 1919-20 production), while certainly coherent with the general atmosphere and consistent with a “negative moment” of Fascism, are in their essence very difficult to reconcile with any “affirmative moment” of Fascism – that is with the Fascist attempts of transforming the State into the embodiment of that “harmonious collective” implicit in the community of the Nation (which certainly has the abstract appearance of a rational construct, a neo-idealistic synthesis), where the individuals find their complete realization in being subject to an authority exactly and in so far as they internalize it and accept it as expression of a rational principle. And that possibly even beyond the obvious and explicit distaste of Rensi for that neo-idealistic formulation, loosely identified with Gentile's “actualism”, destined to rise to the stature of “institutional” philosophical culture of the Fascist Regime.

In short – Rensi wrote in 1923, in one of his indirect polemics with Gentile (Il manganello e lo spirito, “The truncheon and the spirit”) – each one, holding the truncheon in their hand, may think it represents the spirit of actual freedom. Each one, as the others lift it over their heads, recognize it as mere constriction. If tomorrow we had a red truncheon, raised over the heads of the idealists, who are now taking the side of the fascists, would those idealists repeat still that it represents absolute freedom?

And, reading from his Filosofia dell'autorità (page 19):

[…] the law, the constitution, the State; if they have to exist, can only do so if founded on irrationality, by assuming clearly irrational elements, such as that of certain wills being overpowered by others, external, extraneous to the former, who […] accept them as a crude material fact pure and simple.