0:00:11 > 0:00:19In the summer of 1348, the English could be forgiven for thinking themselves unconquerable.
0:00:20 > 0:00:25They had vanquished the old enemies, the Scots and the French.
0:00:27 > 0:00:32Their king, Edward III, seemed the most powerful ruler in Europe.
0:00:34 > 0:00:37But they WOULD be conquered
0:00:37 > 0:00:44and by a king against whom neither longbows nor warships offered any defence...
0:00:44 > 0:00:46King Death.
0:00:48 > 0:00:50His weapon was plague
0:00:50 > 0:00:57and by the end of his terrible campaign, almost half the people of Britain would be dead.
0:00:59 > 0:01:01The country would survive the trauma,
0:01:01 > 0:01:06but first it had to undergo a purgatory of unimaginable misery,
0:01:06 > 0:01:12because hard on the heels of pestilence came rebellion and civil war.
0:01:12 > 0:01:18The century of plague was a pilgrimage through pain and this is the story of that journey.
0:01:54 > 0:02:02Yersinia pestis, the germ of plague, came to Britain in the guts of infected fleas.
0:02:03 > 0:02:10They were hidden away in cargoes of grain, bales of cloth and in the fur of black rats.
0:02:11 > 0:02:16The most probable point of entry was Melcombe Regis, near Weymouth.
0:02:16 > 0:02:21By the time it got to the great ports of Southampton and Bristol,
0:02:21 > 0:02:28there were already stories from traumatised cities of Italy as to how and where it had begun.
0:02:28 > 0:02:36In the east, on the plains of central Asia, another of the horrors carried on the backs of the Mongol hordes.
0:02:36 > 0:02:42The plague cut a swathe of destruction eastwards to China and India
0:02:42 > 0:02:44and westwards into Crimea and Turkey.
0:02:45 > 0:02:51At the port of Caffa, the Tartars had thrown infected bodies over the city walls,
0:02:51 > 0:02:55to hasten the surrender of the defending Genoese,
0:02:55 > 0:03:00a first in the annals of biological warfare.
0:03:04 > 0:03:09Once it arrived by sea in Italy, it spread quickly into mainland Europe.
0:03:10 > 0:03:15There had been devastating calamities before visited on Britain.
0:03:16 > 0:03:21Countless numbers died in the apocalyptic famine of 1315.
0:03:21 > 0:03:28But it was the merciless, indiscriminate swiftness of the plague's progress
0:03:28 > 0:03:33which so unhinged the cities and villages caught in its onslaught.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37No-one, rich or poor, could escape.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43This is how the Welsh poet, Euan Geffin saw it,
0:03:43 > 0:03:48waiting for his own infection which sure enough came in 1349.
0:03:48 > 0:03:53"We see death coming into our midst like foul smoke
0:03:53 > 0:03:56"A plague, which cuts off the young
0:03:56 > 0:04:00"A rootless phantom which has no mercy
0:04:02 > 0:04:05"Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit
0:04:05 > 0:04:10"It is in the form of an apple like the head of an onion
0:04:11 > 0:04:15"Great is its seething like a burning cinder
0:04:15 > 0:04:17"A grievous thing of ashy colour
0:04:17 > 0:04:22"It is an ugly eruption that comes with unseemly haste
0:04:23 > 0:04:28"They are like a shower of peas, the early ornaments of Black Death."
0:04:34 > 0:04:38It would take about six days from the bite of an infected flea
0:04:38 > 0:04:45for the tell-tale swellings, the buboes, to appear on a victim's neck, groin or armpit,
0:04:45 > 0:04:50accompanied by violent fever and agonising pain.
0:04:51 > 0:04:55The immune system would be overwhelmed within a week.
0:04:56 > 0:05:03If the infection reached the lungs, death came after just a couple of days of bloody coughing.
0:05:03 > 0:05:10Anyone who inhaled even the tiniest droplets of mucus would be doomed to suffer in their turn.
0:05:15 > 0:05:22No-one would have known it at the time, but the tightly packed streets and houses of a place like Bristol
0:05:22 > 0:05:26made a perfect factory farm for the bacillus.
0:05:26 > 0:05:33Vermin, crawling with fleas, lived alongside the crowded population of people and animals.
0:05:37 > 0:05:44The nibble of a flea was a common irritation in this lousy, ant-heap world.
0:05:44 > 0:05:50And even when the buboes appeared, there was no reason to suppose that fleas or rats were responsible.
0:05:50 > 0:05:55But there was no doubt about what would happen next.
0:05:55 > 0:06:02The youngest and the oldest and the poorest, those with least resistance, would be taken first.
0:06:03 > 0:06:06But then everyone else, too.
0:06:06 > 0:06:13In a town this ripe for infection, almost half the population would have perished in the first year,
0:06:13 > 0:06:17among them 15 of Bristol's 52 city councillors,
0:06:17 > 0:06:20their names struck through as they died.
0:06:24 > 0:06:30Terrified and bewildered, the healthy abandoned the sick to their fate.
0:06:33 > 0:06:40Whole towns, villages, even families, were cruelly divided into the living and the dying.
0:06:42 > 0:06:49Husbands will have shunned their wives, fathers and mothers recoiled from contact with their children.
0:06:51 > 0:06:56It's almost impossible to imagine the utter desolation and terror,
0:06:56 > 0:07:01the complete collapse of everything you've taken for granted.
0:07:01 > 0:07:05How do you find bread now the bakers are all dead?
0:07:05 > 0:07:09How do you find a physic now that none of them work?
0:07:09 > 0:07:16And at last, how do you find someone to cart away the bodies that have to be disposed of somewhere?
0:07:28 > 0:07:32The bigger the city, the greater the shock.
0:07:34 > 0:07:39In 1348, London had a population of close to 100,000.
0:07:44 > 0:07:48In the first wave of the plague, 300 died every day.
0:07:55 > 0:08:02At Spitalfields, there had long been a medieval hospital with a cemetery attached.
0:08:02 > 0:08:08Within its walls the dead were dutifully laid to rest in their individual graves,
0:08:08 > 0:08:14pointing east, so that come the Day of Judgement, they would rise again, facing towards Jerusalem.
0:08:14 > 0:08:20But in the grip of the epidemic, there was no time for such pieties.
0:08:20 > 0:08:24Recent excavations have turned up mass pits
0:08:24 > 0:08:29where bodies were pitchforked into the dirt in haste and desperation.
0:08:29 > 0:08:37Unearthed now, just the way they were dumped in, they look as if they're protesting at the indignity.
0:08:45 > 0:08:52By the summer of 1349, the plague had spread to the furthest corners of England, Wales and Scotland.
0:08:52 > 0:08:56Now it travelled across the sea to Ireland.
0:08:56 > 0:09:01According to John Clyn, a Franciscan friar writing at Kilkenny,
0:09:01 > 0:09:0414,000 had perished in Dublin alone.
0:09:12 > 0:09:19"Since the beginning of the world, it has been unheard of for so many people to die in such a short time.
0:09:21 > 0:09:23"This pestilence was so contagious
0:09:23 > 0:09:30"that those who touched the dead or the sick were immediately infected themselves.
0:09:31 > 0:09:38"I, seeing these many ills and that the whole world is encompassed by evil,
0:09:38 > 0:09:42"waiting among the dead for death to come,
0:09:42 > 0:09:47"have committed to writing what I truly have heard and examined,
0:09:47 > 0:09:53"and I leave parchment for continuing this work, if perchance any man survive
0:09:53 > 0:10:01"and any of the race of Adam escape this pestilence and carry on the work which I have begun."
0:10:05 > 0:10:12At this point another hand has written, "Here it seems the author died."
0:10:14 > 0:10:20When the survivors recovered from the first brutal shock of the Black Death,
0:10:20 > 0:10:23they asked, inevitably, "Why us? Why now?"
0:10:26 > 0:10:33The best guess was that the plague was caused by a corruption of the atmosphere - putrefaction -
0:10:33 > 0:10:39the mark of men and beasts rising from lakes, swamps and chasms.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44This dank smog even had a name - miasma.
0:10:47 > 0:10:53If sickness grew in stench, then sweet smells were an obvious remedy.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57Physicians and herbalists lost no time in devising recipes
0:10:57 > 0:11:04for pomanders and potions to guard against infection, or even to act as an antidote for the stricken.
0:11:06 > 0:11:13"Five cups of rue if it be a man, and if it be a woman, leave out the rue.
0:11:13 > 0:11:16"Five little blades of columbine,
0:11:16 > 0:11:20"a great quantity of marigold flowers.
0:11:20 > 0:11:23"An egg that is newly laid
0:11:23 > 0:11:28"and make a hole in one end and blow out all that is within,
0:11:28 > 0:11:34"and lay it to the fire and roast it till ground to powder, but do not burn it.
0:11:34 > 0:11:39"Brew all these herbs with good ale, but do not strain them
0:11:39 > 0:11:44"and make the sick drink it for three evenings and mornings.
0:11:45 > 0:11:50"If they hold it in their stomach, they shall have life."
0:11:56 > 0:12:03But if God decided otherwise, all the potions in the world would be of no avail.
0:12:03 > 0:12:09The inescapable conclusion was that the pestilence had been laid on mankind
0:12:09 > 0:12:13as a chastisement for its manifold sins.
0:12:16 > 0:12:23Lewd necklines, lascivious dancing and shameless adultery had brought on the plague.
0:12:25 > 0:12:31It would end when the world was contrite, but it never seemed contrite enough.
0:12:31 > 0:12:35In the meantime, the country was laid waste.
0:12:37 > 0:12:40Farms were abandoned,
0:12:40 > 0:12:42whole villages deserted.
0:12:45 > 0:12:51The accounts for the Bishop of Winchester's lands at Farnham in Surrey
0:12:51 > 0:12:55tell the story of a rural society in shock.
0:12:55 > 0:13:02In the first year of the Black Death, 52 households, a good third of the villagers, were wiped out.
0:13:02 > 0:13:07Given the mark, "Defectus per pestilentum".
0:13:08 > 0:13:13The Farnham rolls put names to the numbers, names like Matilda Sticker.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17She died, together with her entire family.
0:13:17 > 0:13:24Or a servant girl, Matilda Talvyn, who saw her master and his entire household succumb to the plague.
0:13:24 > 0:13:29By the time it ebbed away in 1350, 1,300 had died in Farnham.
0:13:29 > 0:13:33While the plague took, it could also give.
0:13:33 > 0:13:40In the first year of the Black Death, John Crochet, who was a minor became an orphan, but an orphan with assets,
0:13:40 > 0:13:46because he could now inherit the lots left to him by his father and another relative.
0:13:46 > 0:13:52This must have been the making of a small, but serious, village fortune.
0:13:52 > 0:13:59In another place in the rolls, we learn that the harvest had become twice as expensive to gather in.
0:13:59 > 0:14:03Twelve pence, written in Roman numerals, per acre
0:14:03 > 0:14:08because, the rolls say, of the plague and the scarcity of labour.
0:14:08 > 0:14:14Workers it seems were thin on the ground and were beginning to charge accordingly.
0:14:20 > 0:14:24The Farnham story could be repeated all through Britain.
0:14:24 > 0:14:31The countryside after the Black Death was an irreversibly altered world.
0:14:31 > 0:14:35For one thing, there were no more serfs.
0:14:35 > 0:14:42For centuries, being a serf meant being tied by custom and by birth to your local lord.
0:14:42 > 0:14:46He gave you a tiny spot of land on which you could farm
0:14:46 > 0:14:53and in return you put in hours of grinding toil, unpaid, on his very big farm.
0:14:53 > 0:14:57There were other ways, too, in which you were not free.
0:14:57 > 0:15:03You had to ask his permission to marry and you were not, repeat not, ever to leave.
0:15:03 > 0:15:06Until, that is, the Black Death.
0:15:06 > 0:15:10Now there was a desperate labour shortage.
0:15:10 > 0:15:17The laws of supply and demand meant that for the first time you could set the terms of the deal.
0:15:17 > 0:15:23He wanted some labour out of you. You could say, "Why not start by paying me something?"
0:15:23 > 0:15:29He wants you to move in to a piece of land which otherwise would go to rack and ruin,
0:15:29 > 0:15:32and you say, "OK, cut the rent."
0:15:32 > 0:15:37And if the lord then says, "Not a chance, you impertinent so and so,"
0:15:37 > 0:15:44you just up sticks and find someone else who's got a more secure grip on the new economic facts of life.
0:15:44 > 0:15:52Hundreds of thousands of peasants must have done just that. There was nothing anybody could do about it.
0:15:56 > 0:16:01It was not just the social order that the plague shook loose.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05It also ate away at the sense of security offered by the Church,
0:16:05 > 0:16:12especially since the regular clergy seemed powerless to provide help for the afflicted,
0:16:12 > 0:16:15or even for themselves.
0:16:17 > 0:16:24In 1349, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, seeing that there was a serious shortage of priests,
0:16:24 > 0:16:28authorised laymen to hear the confession of the dying.
0:16:28 > 0:16:33"Or," he wrote, "even a woman if no man is available."
0:16:35 > 0:16:42The most daring took matters into their own hands, seeking redemption directly from the Scriptures.
0:16:42 > 0:16:49The Lollards, or Mumblers, took their name from their mouthing out loud of the Bible
0:16:49 > 0:16:54and encouraged others to do the same by translating it into English,
0:16:54 > 0:16:58liberating it from the obscurity of Latin.
0:16:59 > 0:17:06As few as they were, the Lollards were a dramatic threat to the authority of the Church.
0:17:06 > 0:17:13They were only saved from persecution by the protection of their most powerful patron,
0:17:13 > 0:17:18King Edward's third son, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster.
0:17:18 > 0:17:22Men like him were drawn to new forms of piety and penance
0:17:22 > 0:17:29because the plague had made them acutely aware that King Death was no respecter of rank or wealth.
0:17:29 > 0:17:35Should he strike without warning, they had better be ready for a reckoning.
0:17:35 > 0:17:40They all knew the cautionary tale of the three living and the three dead.
0:17:44 > 0:17:49A trio of handsome young kings out for a decent day's sport
0:17:49 > 0:17:54suddenly find themselves confronted by three not so handsome cadavers,
0:17:54 > 0:18:01each in a different state of decomposition - the Marx Brothers from hell.
0:18:02 > 0:18:05The three living pipe up, "I'm afraid."
0:18:05 > 0:18:09"Lo, but I see," and, "Methinks these devils be."
0:18:09 > 0:18:12Back come the other three...
0:18:14 > 0:18:17"Such shall you be,"
0:18:17 > 0:18:21"I was well fair," and, "For God's love, beware."
0:18:21 > 0:18:27The furthest gone of the gruesome threesome then makes a little speech.
0:18:28 > 0:18:36"Know that I was head of my tribe, princes, kings and nobles, royal and rich, rejoicing in wealth,
0:18:36 > 0:18:41"but now I am so hideous and bare that even the worms disdain me."
0:18:50 > 0:18:54This was an invasion that Plantagenet England had not prepared for.
0:18:54 > 0:18:59The invasion of the space of the living by the dead.
0:18:59 > 0:19:06The sense that the borders between backyards and boneyards had collapsed produced a sudden nervousness.
0:19:06 > 0:19:08In the face of King Death,
0:19:08 > 0:19:15neither riches nor earthly fame could buy salvation, or guarantee immortality.
0:19:19 > 0:19:24This insecurity found expression in a very peculiar kind of tomb,
0:19:24 > 0:19:29the transey, which means appropriately enough, "gone off".
0:19:29 > 0:19:36In transey tombs, like this one at Canterbury Cathedral, you got remembered twice over.
0:19:36 > 0:19:38They were double-decker affairs.
0:19:38 > 0:19:43In the top deck, you were seen very much in the guise the world expected,
0:19:43 > 0:19:48as a knight in armour or a bishop in full episcopal rig.
0:19:50 > 0:19:54In the lower deck, though, there you were, a naked skeleton...
0:19:54 > 0:19:58..the flesh fallen away from the bone.
0:20:16 > 0:20:23Now, the mindset that produced the transey tomb was a kind of reverse envy.
0:20:23 > 0:20:30A determination to fall behind the Jones's, to bow to no-one in your painful awareness
0:20:30 > 0:20:36that however grand you were, pretty soon you were going to be reduced to a heap of dust and maggots.
0:20:36 > 0:20:43The idea was to contrast, as shockingly as possible, two sorts of self-consciousness.
0:20:43 > 0:20:50On the one hand, the way we should like to be remembered, dying in splendour and piety.
0:20:50 > 0:20:54And on the other hand, the way we really are...
0:20:56 > 0:21:00..pathetic in our cadaverous mortality.
0:21:03 > 0:21:09"I was Pauper born," reads the inscription on Archbishop Chichele's tomb.
0:21:09 > 0:21:11"Then to primate raised.
0:21:13 > 0:21:17"Now I am cut down and served up for worms.
0:21:17 > 0:21:19"Behold my grave."
0:21:24 > 0:21:29Only the highest office in the land seemed to have survived unscathed.
0:21:30 > 0:21:37Edward III, once the glamorous, invincible warrior, was now an ageing father to a fragile nation.
0:21:37 > 0:21:41Still, the royal succession SEEMED secure.
0:21:41 > 0:21:48Edward's son, the Black Prince, the heir to the throne, was already a legendary hero.
0:21:48 > 0:21:53But then, against all expectation, the picture changed.
0:21:53 > 0:21:57The Black Prince succumbed to dysentery in 1376
0:21:57 > 0:22:02and a year later the old king himself finally expired.
0:22:03 > 0:22:08And so the crown passed to Edward's grandson, Richard of Bordeaux.
0:22:08 > 0:22:15A boy king, called upon before his time, Richard was ruler in name only.
0:22:15 > 0:22:21Everyone knew that his uncle, John of Gaunt, worked the real levers of power.
0:22:26 > 0:22:32Richard's coronation was orchestrated by John of Gaunt as a festival of loyalty,
0:22:32 > 0:22:37a statement of faith in the undimmed future of England's glory.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41There had been no coronation for half a century,
0:22:41 > 0:22:48but the mix of solemnity and festivity never failed to work its spell.
0:22:48 > 0:22:54Knights of the shire rode in from all over England to witness the spectacle.
0:22:57 > 0:23:04The next day in the Abbey, little Richard had his shirt taken off him behind a golden screen
0:23:04 > 0:23:09and his face, hands and chest touched with the holy oil.
0:23:10 > 0:23:17As they listened to him in his little boy's voice promise to protect the Church,
0:23:17 > 0:23:22do justice and respect the laws and customs of his ancestors,
0:23:22 > 0:23:27the assembly of nobles and priests must have imagined him
0:23:27 > 0:23:33growing to fit the huge throne of his ferocious great, great grandfather, Edward I.
0:23:33 > 0:23:39Inevitably, as the long ceremony droned on in the darkness, Richard fell asleep.
0:23:40 > 0:23:47As he was carried from the Abbey, his legs dangling, one of his oversized slippers fell off,
0:23:47 > 0:23:50but who could think that an ill omen?
0:23:50 > 0:23:53He was, after all, only ten.
0:23:56 > 0:23:59How was the child marked by all this?
0:23:59 > 0:24:06Twenty-two years later, did he remember this moment of anointing as a kind of apotheosis,
0:24:06 > 0:24:11a magical transformation from a little man into a little god?
0:24:11 > 0:24:17Perhaps it was just as well that Richard mistook himself for a messiah,
0:24:17 > 0:24:25since only someone with that kind of innate self-confidence could have faced down, at the tender age of 14,
0:24:25 > 0:24:29the most violent upheaval in the history of Medieval England.
0:24:31 > 0:24:38It happened with astounding, terrifying swiftness, starting in the kind of place you'd least expect it.
0:24:38 > 0:24:42Not some destitute mud hole in the back of beyond,
0:24:42 > 0:24:47but in the most economically developed region of rural England.
0:24:47 > 0:24:54The belt of rich, fertile country, stretching from Kent, over the Medway and Thames to Essex and East Anglia.
0:24:54 > 0:25:00The thing about the Peasants' Revolt is that the people who started it weren't really peasants at all.
0:25:00 > 0:25:06At any rate, they weren't the straw-chewing, pitchfork-waving yokels of legend.
0:25:06 > 0:25:11No, they were people with something to lose - the village elite.
0:25:11 > 0:25:15Men who'd served as constables and stewards and jurors.
0:25:15 > 0:25:21Men who'd moved into those vacant lots that had been left behind by victims of the plague.
0:25:21 > 0:25:26They'd made some money and weren't about to see it go down the drain
0:25:26 > 0:25:31in order to line the pockets of some lawyer and pen pusher in Westminster.
0:25:35 > 0:25:42What's more, they knew how to make an army out of those one rung down on the social ladder.
0:25:42 > 0:25:49Families just above the poverty line who had to sell their labour to make ends meet.
0:25:49 > 0:25:56They were already angry at government attempts to peg back their steadily rising wages to pre-plague levels.
0:25:56 > 0:26:04The balance had tipped in favour of the survivors and they were determined to keep it that way.
0:26:04 > 0:26:10In their different ways, all these people were, or thought they were, up-and-comers
0:26:10 > 0:26:17and they would fight if necessary to prevent themselves from sinking into the down-and-outers.
0:26:17 > 0:26:23Was this a class war? A phrase we're not supposed to use since the official burial of Marxism.
0:26:23 > 0:26:26Yes, it was.
0:26:26 > 0:26:33The suspicion amongst the men of village England was that the real power behind the throne,
0:26:33 > 0:26:40John of Gaunt, the Queen Mother and the Chancellor, were gathering in fresh taxes,
0:26:40 > 0:26:47not to finance a patriotic war in France, but to lavish on their own palaces and private estates.
0:26:47 > 0:26:51So when, in November 1380, parliament approved a new poll tax,
0:26:51 > 0:26:56one which for the first time took no account of individual wealth,
0:26:56 > 0:27:01the yeomen farmers must have imagined the awful prospect
0:27:01 > 0:27:06of all their hard-won gains being snatched back by a greedy government.
0:27:06 > 0:27:12There was outrage, bloody-minded fury and mass evasion which escalated into outright rebellion.
0:27:14 > 0:27:19Tax collectors and sheriff's men were attacked, a few killed.
0:27:22 > 0:27:29In Maidstone, they elected Wat Tyler, a yeoman craftsman, as their general and captain
0:27:29 > 0:27:36and freed a Lollard anti-cleric called John Ball, who'd been imprisoned in the bishop's palace.
0:27:37 > 0:27:39John Ball is a recognisable type,
0:27:39 > 0:27:46a preaching friar who pushes Black Death radicalism to its logical extreme.
0:27:46 > 0:27:51"Get rid of the priesthood and the property owners," Ball argued,
0:27:51 > 0:27:56"and Christ's embrace of the poor will once again be honoured."
0:27:56 > 0:28:00"Are we not descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve?
0:28:00 > 0:28:07"And what reason can they give why THEY should be more masters than ourselves?
0:28:07 > 0:28:13"They are clothed in velvet and rich ermine while we are forced to wear poor clothing.
0:28:13 > 0:28:17"They have wines and fine spices and fine bread,
0:28:17 > 0:28:23"while we have only rye and the refuse of the straw and when we drink it must be water.
0:28:23 > 0:28:28"We are called slaves. If we do not perform our services, we're beaten.
0:28:28 > 0:28:32"Let us go to the king and remonstrate with him.
0:28:32 > 0:28:35"We may obtain a favourable answer.
0:28:35 > 0:28:40"And if not, we must seek to amend our conditions ourselves."
0:28:43 > 0:28:50And so they marched, the levelling fever of the Black Death buzzing in their brains,
0:28:50 > 0:28:54slogans of equality and retribution in their mouths.
0:28:54 > 0:29:01After all, who were Wat Tyler, John Bull and Robert Kaye of the Dartford baker, but the three dead
0:29:01 > 0:29:07confronting the spoiled, rich and mighty with their day of judgement.
0:29:10 > 0:29:15On the morning of 12th June 1381, an enormous army,
0:29:15 > 0:29:19at least 5,000, perhaps as many as 10,000 strong,
0:29:19 > 0:29:24was camped here on the fields of Blackheath on the edge of London.
0:29:24 > 0:29:27Below them, they could see the city.
0:29:27 > 0:29:33Old St Paul's, the bridges crowded with shops and Westminster beyond,
0:29:33 > 0:29:35all seemingly at THEIR mercy.
0:29:39 > 0:29:46This was not a rabble. From the start of the revolt, its targets had been selected carefully to make a point.
0:29:46 > 0:29:50Rich abbeys, estates belonging to tax collectors.
0:29:50 > 0:29:56Any document bearing the Seal of the Exchequer was marked out for destruction.
0:29:56 > 0:30:01Manorial accounts were burned. They knew what they were doing.
0:30:01 > 0:30:06Paradoxically, the rebels remained fervently loyal to the crown.
0:30:06 > 0:30:13Though they had made themselves outlaws, they were fired by the certainty that their cause was just.
0:30:13 > 0:30:21Surely it would be seen that they were not threatening the king, but rescuing him as well as themselves?
0:30:23 > 0:30:30The discipline of the march, however, did not survive contact with the big city.
0:30:31 > 0:30:36Prisons were broken open, churches looted, palaces put to the torch.
0:30:36 > 0:30:43Thirty-five Flemish merchants were decapitated on the same block, one after the other.
0:30:46 > 0:30:53Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury was captured while at his prayers in the Chapel of St John.
0:30:53 > 0:31:01The rampaging rebels hacked his head off, stuck it on a spike and paraded it triumphantly through the streets.
0:31:05 > 0:31:12On the evening of Thursday, 13th June, the teenage king climbed one of the turrets in the Tower
0:31:12 > 0:31:16and what he saw ought to have broken him in terror.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22The sky red with flames.
0:31:22 > 0:31:25London crumbling into smoking ruins.
0:31:29 > 0:31:35But hostage to a nightmare, Richard doesn't seem to have panicked.
0:31:35 > 0:31:42When the councillors asked him negotiate with the rebels, he evidently showed no hesitation.
0:31:42 > 0:31:46It was the boy who was the man of the hour.
0:31:46 > 0:31:53It was a brave front, for Richard must have thought there was a good chance he might not survive.
0:31:53 > 0:31:55Before his meeting with the rebels,
0:31:55 > 0:32:02he prayed at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, the patron saint of all the Plantagenet kings.
0:32:02 > 0:32:09Then, he rode through the jostling crowds to meet Wat Tyler and the rest of the leaders at Smithfield.
0:32:13 > 0:32:20When he got to Smithfield, the king could see the rebels camped on the west side of the field
0:32:20 > 0:32:22and the royal party on the east.
0:32:22 > 0:32:30Wat Tyler rode over to Richard, got off his little horse, knelt very briefly, not very convincingly,
0:32:30 > 0:32:34but then shakes his hand and calls him brother.
0:32:34 > 0:32:38"Why will you not go home?" asked the king rather plaintively,
0:32:38 > 0:32:43to which Tyler responded with a loud curse and a set of demands.
0:32:43 > 0:32:49The most important was for a new Magna Carta - for the ordinary people.
0:32:49 > 0:32:53It would abolish serfdom, liquidate the property of the Church,
0:32:53 > 0:32:57it would offer a general pardon to all outlaws.
0:32:57 > 0:33:04And if all this wasn't radical enough, it would make every man equal below the level of the king.
0:33:04 > 0:33:11Now to all this Richard answered, "Yes," perhaps crossing his fingers behind his back,
0:33:11 > 0:33:17and maybe Wat Tyler was so amazed by the concession, he didn't quite know what to do next.
0:33:17 > 0:33:25So an eerie silence settles over everybody on the field, broken only by Tyler asking for a flagon of ale.
0:33:25 > 0:33:32He gets it, he downs it, he gets back on to his mount, a big man on a little horse,
0:33:32 > 0:33:35and at that moment... history changed.
0:33:38 > 0:33:43There was someone on the king's side who had not been reading the script,
0:33:43 > 0:33:48or perhaps was just unable to take the humiliation any longer.
0:33:50 > 0:33:56It was a young esquire, someone Richard's own age who shouted at Tyler that he was a thief.
0:33:57 > 0:34:00It broke the strange spell.
0:34:00 > 0:34:07Walworth, the Mayor, who had always taken a hard line, tried to arrest Tyler.
0:34:10 > 0:34:13There was horseback fighting,
0:34:13 > 0:34:19Walworth getting in the decisive blow, cutting Tyler through the shoulder and neck.
0:34:20 > 0:34:26As soon as he was down, the king's men surrounded him, finishing him off,
0:34:26 > 0:34:31but making sure the rebel camp could not see what was going on.
0:34:35 > 0:34:39One way or another, this was the moment of truth.
0:34:39 > 0:34:46It was also the moment when Richard himself acted, decisively and with amazing courage.
0:34:46 > 0:34:53He rode straight at the rebels shouting famously, "You shall have no captain but me."
0:34:54 > 0:35:01The words were brilliantly chosen and were, of course, deliberately ambiguous.
0:35:01 > 0:35:08To the rebels, it seemed that Richard himself was now their leader, just as they'd always wanted.
0:35:08 > 0:35:14But the words could have been meant as the first reassertion of royal authority.
0:35:14 > 0:35:18Either way, it defused the immediate crisis
0:35:18 > 0:35:25and gave Mayor Walworth the opportunity to get back to London and mobilise armed men.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29Now the process of breaking up the leaderless rebellion could begin.
0:35:29 > 0:35:36Cautiously at first, with offers of pardons and mercy, but then with implacable resolution.
0:35:36 > 0:35:40Just a week after the apparent concessions at Smithfield,
0:35:40 > 0:35:47another group of rebels met with Richard at Waltham in Essex, but they found a very different king.
0:35:51 > 0:35:58"You wretches, detestable on land and sea, you who seek equality with lords, are unworthy to live.
0:35:58 > 0:36:05"Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still.
0:36:05 > 0:36:10"You will remain in bondage not as before, but incomparably harsher.
0:36:10 > 0:36:15"For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you
0:36:15 > 0:36:20"and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity.
0:36:20 > 0:36:24"However we will spare your lives if you remain faithful.
0:36:24 > 0:36:28"Choose now which course you want to follow."
0:36:29 > 0:36:34The rebels took the only option that was realistically open to them.
0:36:34 > 0:36:41They fell to their knees. It was all over. The king was literally the only one left standing.
0:36:41 > 0:36:49But what was the effect of all this on Richard? What did he now think he was capable of?
0:36:50 > 0:36:53"My master, God omnipotent,
0:36:53 > 0:36:58"is mustering in his clouds on our behalf armies of pestilence
0:36:58 > 0:37:02"and they shall strike your children yet unborn and unbegot
0:37:02 > 0:37:10"that lift your vassal hands against my head and threat the glory of my precious crown."
0:37:11 > 0:37:16Though Shakespeare starts his tragedy years after the Peasants' Revolt,
0:37:16 > 0:37:23it's hard not to believe that in his portrait of a petulant, self-admiring Richard II,
0:37:23 > 0:37:30there is the sense of someone trapped in an adolescent fantasy of indestructibility.
0:37:30 > 0:37:37There's no denying that, especially at times of crisis, he was subject to unpredictable mood swings,
0:37:37 > 0:37:42between adrenaline rush feelings of omnipotence and abject fatalism.
0:37:42 > 0:37:47But it is easy to exaggerate his unfitness to rule,
0:37:47 > 0:37:51as though he were somehow suspiciously unsound.
0:37:52 > 0:37:57He was built the usual Plantagenet way.
0:37:57 > 0:38:01Six foot tall with long, flowing, blond hair.
0:38:01 > 0:38:05But unlike his grandfather, he failed to keep mistresses
0:38:05 > 0:38:09and seemed, oddly enough, to want to be faithful to his wife Anne.
0:38:09 > 0:38:16Real Plantagenets tore at their meat and slurped the drippings. Richard not only insisted on using a spoon,
0:38:16 > 0:38:20but inflicted it on the rest of the court.
0:38:20 > 0:38:25Real Plantagenets won blood-soaked victories over France and Scotland.
0:38:25 > 0:38:30Richard brought England the pocket handkerchief.
0:38:31 > 0:38:33Real Plantagenets built fortresses.
0:38:33 > 0:38:41Richard instead wanted a great ceremonial space in Westminster Hall with a spectacular hammer-beam roof.
0:38:44 > 0:38:49The rows of angels symbolised the king's divine right to rule.
0:38:56 > 0:39:01The angels in turn are supported by carved stone plinths,
0:39:01 > 0:39:05bearing Richard's own emblem, the white hart.
0:39:06 > 0:39:10But the alien strangeness attributed to Richard seems a lot less strange
0:39:10 > 0:39:14if you think of him as a Renaissance prince
0:39:14 > 0:39:20for whom the idea of the civilised life was not necessarily a mark of being un-English.
0:39:22 > 0:39:28The Wilton Diptych is the clearest illustration of his exalted vision of kingship.
0:39:29 > 0:39:34Richard instinctively felt he belonged in the company of saints,
0:39:34 > 0:39:37so here he is with three of them.
0:39:37 > 0:39:39John the Baptist,
0:39:39 > 0:39:42Edward the Confessor
0:39:42 > 0:39:44and the Saxon martyr king, Edmund.
0:39:49 > 0:39:53The other panel reveals him to be in the even more exalted company
0:39:53 > 0:39:57of angels, the Christ Child and the Virgin.
0:40:00 > 0:40:03He is her appointed lieutenant.
0:40:03 > 0:40:07She is receiving his kingdom as her dowry
0:40:07 > 0:40:12and in return will bestow on it her special protection and favour.
0:40:13 > 0:40:18Ceremonial style was not, the king decided, just an affectation,
0:40:18 > 0:40:20the window-dressing of power,
0:40:20 > 0:40:25it was at the heart of its mystery, its capacity to make men obey.
0:40:25 > 0:40:33This is what Richard had in mind when, for the first time in the history of the British monarchies,
0:40:33 > 0:40:40the king let it be known he should like to be addressed as "Majesty" and "Highness",
0:40:40 > 0:40:43a kind of mystical elevation.
0:40:46 > 0:40:49But what seemed like refinement to Richard,
0:40:49 > 0:40:56to the barons was evidence that the king had lost touch with their common interests.
0:40:58 > 0:41:06Richard's refusal to continue the war with France was an obvious source of irritation for the nobility.
0:41:06 > 0:41:08They prospered from foreign campaigns
0:41:08 > 0:41:15and built spectacular castles, like this one at Bodium, to guard against a French invasion.
0:41:15 > 0:41:21But it was the king's high-handedness that finally stung them into action.
0:41:22 > 0:41:26By issuing royal decrees, Richard could bypass parliament.
0:41:26 > 0:41:31He lavished favours on his closest friends and advisers,
0:41:31 > 0:41:38men like Sir Simon Burleigh and Robert de Vere who was absurdly promoted to be Duke of Ireland.
0:41:38 > 0:41:43The lords retaliated with their only available weapon, parliament.
0:41:44 > 0:41:48In February 1388, five of the king's favourites
0:41:48 > 0:41:53were charged with "abusing his youth and innocence to promote their own ambitions."
0:41:53 > 0:42:00All were found guilty of treason, by what became known as "the merciless parliament".
0:42:00 > 0:42:04Robert de Vere, the most hated of the king's confidants,
0:42:04 > 0:42:11escaped before sentence of execution could be carried out, but Simon Burleigh was not so lucky.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15Richard's queen pleaded on her knees for Burleigh's life,
0:42:15 > 0:42:17but to no avail.
0:42:19 > 0:42:26Richard may have crushed the Peasants' Revolt, but peers of the realm were another matter.
0:42:26 > 0:42:32Chastened by the humiliation, the king withdrew into autocratic solitude.
0:42:32 > 0:42:38And yet he had enough of the Plantagenet about him to harbour desires for retribution.
0:42:38 > 0:42:42He held his peace for nearly ten years,
0:42:42 > 0:42:49but when his beloved Queen Anne died of plague, Richard lost his only restraining influence
0:42:49 > 0:42:54and he reasserted himself in an extraordinary storm of revenge.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58Using the pretext of an aristocratic plot,
0:42:58 > 0:43:05he brutally disposed of the ringleaders of the "merciless parliament" a decade earlier.
0:43:06 > 0:43:10The Earl of Arundel was executed, the Earl of Warwick was exiled
0:43:10 > 0:43:18and the Duke of Gloucester, Richard's own uncle, was murdered, smothered in his bed on the king's orders.
0:43:21 > 0:43:25The old scores had been settled at last.
0:43:25 > 0:43:30You would think that Richard would contain his sense of triumph,
0:43:30 > 0:43:34if only in the interest of self-preservation.
0:43:34 > 0:43:40But now that Richard II discovered that people were, for the first time, frightened of him,
0:43:40 > 0:43:44he also discovered he rather liked it.
0:43:44 > 0:43:49He drank it in and lashed out at anybody he thought was disloyal,
0:43:49 > 0:43:52replacing them with yes-men and toadies,
0:43:52 > 0:43:59eating, sleeping and travelling surrounded by a private army, as if he were some sort of Roman emperor.
0:44:00 > 0:44:07Beneath these delusions of omnipotence, though, Richard remained neurotically insecure.
0:44:07 > 0:44:10On the merest suspicion of treason,
0:44:10 > 0:44:16he rashly condemned John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, to ten years in exile,
0:44:16 > 0:44:20without even the pretence of a show trial.
0:44:20 > 0:44:26If such summary justice made the English nobility uneasy, what happened next left them stunned.
0:44:26 > 0:44:32When John of Gaunt finally died, Richard decided to increase Bolingbroke's sentence
0:44:32 > 0:44:37to banishment for life and seized the young Duke's inheritance,
0:44:37 > 0:44:42the valuable Lancastrian estates, in the name of the crown.
0:44:44 > 0:44:52The magnates of England must have looked at this and said, "He's got to be stopped, or it's my turn next."
0:44:54 > 0:44:58Richard was one blunder away from disaster.
0:44:58 > 0:45:01The final, fatal distraction was Ireland.
0:45:02 > 0:45:07He had decided to bring the Irish princes to heel,
0:45:07 > 0:45:12but he took with him enough soldiers to leave himself defenceless at home
0:45:12 > 0:45:15and not enough to cow the Irish nobles.
0:45:15 > 0:45:19And before he could finish his business there,
0:45:19 > 0:45:25he heard news that Henry Bolingbroke had landed with an army on the Yorkshire coast
0:45:25 > 0:45:30and the alienated English lords had flocked to his banner.
0:45:30 > 0:45:33By the time Richard returned,
0:45:33 > 0:45:39Bolingbroke was in command of the southern and eastern heartland of England.
0:45:39 > 0:45:46The odd thing is that Richard seemed to be one step ahead of his enemies in fatalistic pessimism,
0:45:46 > 0:45:48so that when he got the bad news
0:45:48 > 0:45:54that many of his most trusted supporters and allies had switched to the other side,
0:45:54 > 0:45:59his reaction was not to dig in his heels, make a fight of it,
0:45:59 > 0:46:04but rather to flee at night across the country, disguised as a priest,
0:46:04 > 0:46:09bewailing his misfortunes and as usual blaming them on everybody else.
0:46:09 > 0:46:16At some point in his uncontested march towards Richard, Bolingbroke's aims changed,
0:46:16 > 0:46:20from simply getting his lands back to overthrowing the king.
0:46:20 > 0:46:25"Now I can see my end," Shakespeare has Richard say,
0:46:25 > 0:46:28a neat little piece of Lancastrian propaganda
0:46:28 > 0:46:33which solved the embarrassing problem of a deposition
0:46:33 > 0:46:37by making Richard seem as though he had resigned the crown,
0:46:37 > 0:46:42rather than having it snatched from his desperate grip.
0:46:44 > 0:46:48It took a month of painful negotiations
0:46:48 > 0:46:53to get Richard, now a prisoner in the Tower, to give up the throne.
0:46:53 > 0:46:58Three times they asked him to surrender, three times he refused,
0:46:58 > 0:47:02before finally bowing to the inevitable.
0:47:02 > 0:47:08On 30th September, a report of the king's renunciation was read to parliament,
0:47:08 > 0:47:12gathered under the angels of Richard's magnificent roof.
0:47:12 > 0:47:19The lords were asked to acclaim Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Hereford, Duke of Lancaster, as King Henry IV
0:47:19 > 0:47:24which they did to cries of, "Yes, yes, yes."
0:47:35 > 0:47:42Richard, the divine prince no longer, was spirited away and imprisoned in Pontefract Castle.
0:47:42 > 0:47:46Most likely he was starved to death, a horrible way to end.
0:47:46 > 0:47:53It ensured there'd be no compromising marks of assault on his body when it was given a public burial.
0:47:53 > 0:47:58Now, oddly enough, it was Henry who orchestrated this big funeral,
0:47:58 > 0:48:02a pre-emptive strike against any conspirators
0:48:02 > 0:48:08who might imagine that Richard could be rescued and restored to the throne.
0:48:09 > 0:48:16It was Bolingbroke's son, Henry V, who had the body of King Richard buried in Westminster Abbey.
0:48:16 > 0:48:23Perhaps Henry wanted to put the charge of murder, as well as its victim, to rest.
0:48:23 > 0:48:29He must have hoped that, in his reign, the wounds of the contending parties might be healed.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32But it was not to be.
0:48:34 > 0:48:41Despite his victory at Agincourt, Henry V remains a might-have-been, dead at 35 from dysentery.
0:48:41 > 0:48:49So neither he nor his son, Henry VI, could prevent what the stealing of Richard's crown had made inevitable,
0:48:49 > 0:48:55a long and bloody war between the competing wings of the Plantagenet family.
0:48:57 > 0:49:04For 30 years, the houses of York and Lancaster slogged it out in a roll call of battles
0:49:04 > 0:49:07we know as the Wars of the Roses.
0:49:08 > 0:49:13There are only two ways to feel about the Wars of the Roses.
0:49:13 > 0:49:18Either the endless chronicle of violent seizures of the crown
0:49:18 > 0:49:25makes you thrill to one of the great English epics, or it leaves you feeling slightly numbed.
0:49:25 > 0:49:28If you're one of the dazed and confused,
0:49:28 > 0:49:35the temptation is to write off the whole sorry mess as the bloody bickering of overgrown schoolboys
0:49:35 > 0:49:41whacking each other senseless at Towton, Barnet and Bosworth.
0:49:42 > 0:49:46But there was something at stake in all the mayhem -
0:49:46 > 0:49:51the sense of needing to make the English monarchy credible again.
0:49:51 > 0:49:53To re-solder the chains of allegiance
0:49:53 > 0:50:01which had once stretched all the way from Westminster, out to the constables and justices in the shires
0:50:01 > 0:50:05and which had been so badly broken by the fate of Richard II.
0:50:08 > 0:50:13To understand the way in which lawlessness, violence and chaos
0:50:13 > 0:50:17did make an impact on 15th-century England,
0:50:17 > 0:50:24we have something incomparably richer than the list of battlefields and barons, kings and king makers.
0:50:24 > 0:50:32We have the letters of the Paston family of Norfolk, the very first private correspondence in English,
0:50:32 > 0:50:35the authentic voice of middling folk.
0:50:35 > 0:50:39Farmers, lawyers, would-be gentry, social climbers.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45Like many an anxious wife and mother, the Wars of the Roses worried Margaret Paston
0:50:45 > 0:50:51because they were making England a bad place to make and keep a little fortune.
0:50:51 > 0:50:54"God, for his mercy give grace,
0:50:54 > 0:51:00"for I never heard say of so much robbery and manslaughter in this country as is now.
0:51:00 > 0:51:05"And as for gathering of money, I never saw a worse season."
0:51:06 > 0:51:13To Margaret, the Kingdom of England might be up for grabs, but the real disaster was shopping.
0:51:13 > 0:51:20"As for cloth for my gown, I pray that you will vouchsafe to do buy for me three yards and a quarter
0:51:20 > 0:51:24"of such as it pleaseth you that I should have.
0:51:24 > 0:51:30"For I have done all the draper's shops in this town and here is right feeble choice."
0:51:30 > 0:51:37The founder of the Paston dynasty, Clement, is described as a plain husbandman,
0:51:37 > 0:51:39which is to say a peasant,
0:51:39 > 0:51:46but a peasant who took advantage of the Black Death to scramble right up the social ladder of the village.
0:51:46 > 0:51:51Clement Paston was shrewd enough to send his son William to law school.
0:51:51 > 0:51:58Clever enough, that is, to understand that it was going to be through learning, as much as through land,
0:51:58 > 0:52:04that the fortunes of the Pastons would be utterly transformed.
0:52:05 > 0:52:10Clement's son did indeed become a lawyer, and married into money.
0:52:10 > 0:52:17So did his grandson John, who acquired Caister castle, completing the meteoric rise of the Pastons
0:52:17 > 0:52:21from peasantry to landed gentry in just two generations.
0:52:23 > 0:52:30"John Jenney informed me, and I've verily learned since, you're to be made a knight at this coronation.
0:52:30 > 0:52:37"Considering the comfortable tidings aforesaid, 'twere time the necessary gear be purveyed for."
0:52:38 > 0:52:41But nothing's ever this easy, is it?
0:52:41 > 0:52:48As the Pastons became influential and rich, so they also were bound to attract enemies.
0:52:48 > 0:52:55While they were nobodies, the great bloody tides of the Wars of the Roses were going to happen somewhere else.
0:52:55 > 0:53:00But now that they became owners of lands and manors and castles,
0:53:00 > 0:53:07they also became prime targets for the heavies and no-one was heavier than the Duke of Norfolk.
0:53:07 > 0:53:13He'd always coveted Caister Castle. In September 1469, he came to get it.
0:53:13 > 0:53:19Margaret wrote in some anguish to her son, "I greet you well,
0:53:19 > 0:53:26"letting you know that your brother and his fellowship stand in great jeopardy at Caister."
0:53:26 > 0:53:31Well, she was clearly desperate, but she was also extremely angry.
0:53:31 > 0:53:34A few lines later, she lets her son, John,
0:53:34 > 0:53:39feel the rough edge of her tongue which is extremely rough indeed.
0:53:39 > 0:53:46"Every man in this country marvels that you suffer them to be for so long in great jeopardy.
0:53:46 > 0:53:50"They be like to lose both their lives and the place.
0:53:50 > 0:53:55"The greatest rebuke to you that ever came to any gentleman."
0:53:55 > 0:53:58John immediately writes back...
0:53:59 > 0:54:06"Mother, if I had need to be woken up by a letter at this time, I would indeed be a sluggish fellow.
0:54:06 > 0:54:13"I have heard ten times worse tidings since the siege began than any letter that you wrote me.
0:54:13 > 0:54:20"But I assure you that those within have no worse rest than I have, nor fear more danger."
0:54:24 > 0:54:31Faced with the might of the Duke of Norfolk's army, the Pastons had no choice but to surrender their castle.
0:54:31 > 0:54:37But once again the law would bring about the transformation of their fortunes.
0:54:37 > 0:54:42It took a seven-year legal battle and an appeal to the king,
0:54:42 > 0:54:46but they were eventually reinstated at Caister,
0:54:46 > 0:54:51although for the eldest of Margaret's brood, the triumph was short lived.
0:54:52 > 0:54:56Three years later, John Paston died of the plague.
0:54:58 > 0:55:06The Pastons had got over all these bumps in the road to become a settled presence in their county.
0:55:06 > 0:55:11The same would be true for countless other English men and women.
0:55:11 > 0:55:13Essentially they were survivors.
0:55:13 > 0:55:19They'd survived the plague, they'd survived dethronement, they'd survived civil war.
0:55:19 > 0:55:26Kings came and went, but the men of the village, the same sort of men who'd marched on London in 1381,
0:55:26 > 0:55:31who'd been revolutionaries and desperados, were becoming squires.
0:55:31 > 0:55:38They knew what the worst could be. They knew that the plague could come and carry off babies and children.
0:55:38 > 0:55:43They knew that the knights from over the hill might go on a rampage,
0:55:43 > 0:55:50but they also knew that with an equal measure of prudence and prayer, they would get through it.
0:55:55 > 0:56:01So come to an English village like this, far from the mayhem, say around 1480,
0:56:01 > 0:56:04and you'd see what you'd expect.
0:56:04 > 0:56:09A church built in the economic elegance of the perpendicular style.
0:56:10 > 0:56:14A village ale house with a name like The Swan or The Frog.
0:56:14 > 0:56:21And at the heart, a grand and handsome dwelling for the biggest tenant farmer in the area.
0:56:21 > 0:56:25Not a wattle and daub single-roomed glorified hut,
0:56:25 > 0:56:31but a miniature manor with its own hall and servants to wait on the master and mistress.
0:56:31 > 0:56:36A buttery, a cellar and private retiring chambers.
0:56:40 > 0:56:48One shouldn't be too complacent about the condition of Britain at the end of its first century of plague.
0:56:48 > 0:56:53The end of the road through trauma was not all buttercups and beer,
0:56:53 > 0:56:57there was still grinding poverty alongside plenty.
0:56:57 > 0:57:01But all the same, the improbable HAD happened.
0:57:01 > 0:57:08Out of the fires of pestilence and bloodshed had emerged that most unlikely example of survivor,
0:57:08 > 0:57:11the English country gent.
0:57:37 > 0:57:44There's much more to discover and debate about the history of Britain on the BBC History website.