“Bradford Appeasing the Riot at St. Paul's Cross,” in John Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, illustrated by Kronheim
A 12th-century execution and the mixed messages in the chronicles around how things had gotten to that point. Did William with the Long Beard offer a better life to those unhappy in Richard I's London, or did he just take advantage of their misery to serve his own vices?
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Sources:
The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, translated by Henry T. Riley. Henry G. Bohn, 1853.
The Church Historians of England, volume IV, part II, translated by Joseph Stevenson. Seeley's, 1861.
Roger of Wendover's Flowers of History, translated by J. A. Giles. Henry G. Bohn, 1849.
Alexander, Dominic. "'The People are the Waters': Social Revolt in London, 1196-1381," Counterfire. May 30, 2021.
Dennis, David E P. "The Rise and Fall of William Fitz Osbert."
McEwan, John. "William FitzOsbert and the Crisis of 1196 in London," Florilegium. Volume 21, 2004.
Script:
In 1196, King Richard I entered his 7th year as the King of England and of more than that besides. Richard, the Lionheart, had already been away on crusade by this point, had clashed with Salah ad-Din and come away from that only to be imprisoned for more than a year in Austria and then in Germany on his way home. He had clashed rather more regularly with Philip II of France, and would continue to do so.
Today’s source tells us that in that year of 1196, Philip and Richard reached an accord that saw lands returned which had been taken. “Any future misunderstanding between the two ... was likewise cautiously provided against by a penal statute affecting the infringer of these agreements,” says our source. “But,” he continues, “every precaution proved futile in strengthening the proposed peace, as was soon plainly manifested.”
“So once more did the rage for war break out between the [kings], to whose impulse neither the sacred seasons of Lent and Easter, nor the inclemency of the weather, which was more severe and lasting than usual, nor the famine which was raging beyond measure throughout the provinces, could oppose any obstacle sufficient to induce them to suspend for a while their anger, which had been for a time mollified by the persuasions of their friends.”
That year, there was revolt against Richard from the Bretons, among their number a boy named Arthur and the, quote, “mighty omen of his name.” That year too, Richard sent forth an abbot “armed with authority to inquire narrowly and searchingly into those matters which concerned the revenue.” The abbot was little skilled in some ways but as for, quote, “temporal concerns [was] eminently wise and eloquent,” perhaps too much so our source would say, for he busied himself overly with worldly affairs “inconsistent with the profession of a monk and the duty of an abbot.”
Then, quote:
“...boastful and ostentatious of his power, he tarried during Lent in London, fated never to behold the festivities of Easter, nor to reckon accounts with those whom he had summoned after Easter, but destined to render up before Easter an account of his own stewardship to the Judge on high; and the more prepared he was to reckon accounts with others, the less so was he to furnish his own: for but a few days after his arrival in England he departed out of the world; and those persons who had dreaded his coming sorrowed not at his departure.”
It was but days after the death of that abbot, apparently little mourned, that there came another death, the, quote, “violent end of a certain person who had lately risen into notice, designing great events,” and it is that certain person and his violent end that we are going to be talking about today.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the history podcast that generally covers the stories of that world through those of its travellers but today will be doing something a little different, and it is a podcast that is supported by a Patreon, one where the listening is early, more often, and in the absence of advertising, all for as little as one dollar a month or more, should you wish it.
And now, all that being said, let’s get back to the story. Today, this is going to be a stand-alone episode, all wrapped up in one, and while there is the odd bit of travel in the story, it’s hardly the first thing you would say about it.
That source which I mentioned earlier, our primary one today in both senses, is a writer that we’ve encountered more than once before on the podcast, going all the way back to the first Halloween episode and also to an early patreon extra on the escapades of a certain bishop who found time to also double as warlord and marauder. Quite possibly the first patreon extra, I think. That writer would, of course, be our favourite Yorkshire-born chronicler, William of Newburgh, though he would not be the only writer of the period to feature our protagonist, who would also pop up in the work of those such as Roger of Howden, Roger of Wendover, Matthew Paris, Ralph de Decito, and Gervase of Canterbury.
In their writing, and in William’s chronicles of 11th and 12th-century England, tucked in there alongside strange children emerging from the earth, the recently deceased emerging from the earth, and varied other figures who sometimes began and remained above ground, we find today’s story. Based on what I said a few minutes ago, you already know how that story ends. We’ll reach that point around the middle of the episode and then carry on for a little of the aftermath as well as some thoughts on how we might take the story.
Regarding that abbot of a moment ago, the one who so few had missed when he was gone, our chronicler says that “in his search after the king's profit and the tranquility of the provinces, [the abbott had] deemed it requisite to chastise the dishonesty and unbridled avarice of the royal officials.” In that sense, he was not so very different from today’s protagonist, who quote, “being a citizen of London … took upon himself to plead the cause of the poor citizens against the insolence of the rich, alleging in powerful terms … that at every royal edict the rich spared their own fortunes, and imposed by their power the entire burden on the poor, and so defrauded the king's treasury of a large amount.”
So far, he was a pretty relatable character, a figure for any era, one might say, leveling criticisms that were pretty universally applicable. But who was he? We know that he was born in London, and that he, like our source, had the first name of William. We know that his nickname was derived from his long beard and that according to Matthew Paris he wore that beard “because his ancestors in anger against the Normans never shaved.” William of Newburgh, who I’ll just call Newburgh from now on so as to avoid confusion, says that he, quote, “cherished [that beard] in order that he might by this token, as by a distinguishing symbol, appear conspicuous in meetings and public assemblies.” Kind of like how you always notice a David Luiz or a Cucarella on the field due to their hair, I want to say, though I would not want to leave you with the impression, by my choice of those particular examples, that I was a Chelsea fan. Or a Cucarella one for that matter, but moving on.
Our William of the Long Beard was William Fitz Osbert, the son of Osbert the Clerk. According to Roger of Howden, he had, like King Richard, been away on crusade, having inherited property from his father and then leased part of it to his brother to cover the costs. His ship had been one of those caught in a storm on the way there, a “a mighty and dreadful tempest [that] overtook them” and swiftly scattered the fleet. All seemed bleak for those aboard William’s ship until Saint Thomas of Canterbury, or Thomas Becket, had appeared to them and announced that he, Edmund the Martyr, and Nicholas the Confessor had all been appointed by God as guardians of the king’s fleet. Three times he repeated his statement and then, just as he disappeared, the tempest ended and the seas became calm once more.
There are differences in how the chroniclers depict William of the Long Beard, but a picture emerges in regards to his cleverness, his way with words, and his possession of a certain kind of charisma. “He was a man versed in the law,” says Roger of Howden. “He was most eloquent,” says Gervase of Canterbury. “He was of ready wit, moderately skilled in literature, and eloquent beyond measure,” says Newburgh. “He possessed a mouth speaking great things and … spoke like a dragon.” These, they would explain, were the kinds of attributes and abilities that when paired with that unignorable beard allowed him to raise a crowd to his side and cause, and to whip up the kind of unrest that writers would greet with varying degrees of sympathy or lack thereof over the centuries.
When that unrest came, it was during a time when Roger of Howden reported personally “notic[ing] that there was bad feeling and conflict in the city of London between the rich and the poor,” when, he would continue, “strife originated amongst the citizens of London, for not inconsiderable [demands] were imposed more often that usual because of the king's imprisonment and other incidents, and in order to spare their own purses the rich wanted the poor to pay everything.” Decito noted a similar swelling of tension as with, quote, “every royal edict, the rich spared their own fortunes and because of their power placed the whole weight on the poor and defrauded the royal treasury of a large sum.” From each according to their means, it was not.
When that unrest came, Newburgh writes that it was directed against the “insolence of the rich men and nobles by whom [the common people] were unworthily treated.” It was on the topic of this mistreatment that William Fitz Osbert “inflamed the needy and moderately wealthy with a desire for unbounded liberty and happiness, and allured the many, and held them fascinated,” not something that Newburgh himself particularly approved of.
Our William Fitz Osbert, he of the facial hair, was said to have gathered 50,000 people to his cause, and even if by 50,000 we really just mean something like “lots,” it indicates a certain level of time and effort being invested. This was not a case of a single speech in the city square or an impromptu coming together. Some measure of large-scale support was building and evolving over time.
Newburgh has Fitz Osbert lifted up by “certain persons” to “a place in the city among the magistrates,” though I’ve elsewhere seen that there is no evidence for this. He has Fitz Osbert collecting iron tools in large numbers for the purpose of breaking into houses, has him troubling the nobility—“bearding” them, as this edition puts it—at every public gathering and opportunity, has him winning over the common people through “his secret labors and poisoned whispers.” They were bound to the cause and to him, apparently willing to obey him unhesitantly in whatever he said, though later events may call that into question.
Fitz Osbert seems to have brought a two-pronged attack against the nobility: through their monstrous avarice they were abusing the poor, yes, but they were also sapping the king’s revenue, his financial strength. And of course the nobility pushed back against this attack, causing him to leave London briefly in search of the king’s support. Newburgh doesn’t exactly say that he got it, only that he returned to his work with a confidence as if fuelled by royal favour. Newburgh says that, quote, “surrounded by his rabble,” he “convok[ed] public meetings by his own authority, in which he arrogantly proclaimed himself the king or savior of the poor, and in lofty phrase thundered out his intention of speedily curbing the perfidy of the traitors.”
Citing as his source an unnamed “trustworthy man” who was there at one of those meetings, Newburgh gives Fitz Osbert the following rather messianic speech, indicative, he writes, of “the pride of [Fitz Osbert’s] discourses”:
“I am the savior of the poor,” the bearded man began. “Do ye, oh, poor! who have experienced the heaviness of rich men's hands, drink from my wells the waters of the doctrine of salvation, and ye may do this joyfully; for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the waters. I will divide the humble from the haughty and treacherous. I will separate the elect from the reprobate, as light from darkness.”
If Newburgh’s representation is at all accurate, then the “pride of [Fitz Osbert’s] discourses” does indeed seem to have been quite, quite high.
As you might imagine, not everyone approved of Fitz Osbert’s activities or his words. Those who found themselves on the darkness/reprobate side of his watery divide were always going to have problems with what he said. In Newburgh’s narrative, it was the Archbishop of Canterbury, having chief custody of the realm while the king was away, who specifically took against his doings and took charge of acting against him.
First, the archbishop went to speak to certain unnamed people, to calm them, it sounds like, but also to arrange for hostages to be given, it’s not exactly clear who. There is talk of arrests for any who strayed outside of London and of certain merchants at the Stamford fair. Perhaps those were the hostages in question, but whoever it was, our bearded protagonist was evidently not dissuaded. Fitz Osbert was summoned next, to “answer the charges preferred against him.” Exactly what those charges were, Newburgh doesn’t say, and it doesn’t sound like the summoner got a chance to say them either. When Fitz Osbert presented himself, he showed up “surrounded by the populace,” putting on such a show of force that the archbishop was too intimidated to do anything but cautiously defer judgement on the matter.
Time passed, and Fitz Osbert was rarely to be found alone, going everywhere with the kind of numbers that really put off any attempt to contain him. He was never to be found alone, at least until he was. It was two or more “noble citizens,” one of them perhaps named Geoffrey, who caught him at the opportune moment, away from the protective crowds but still not wholly unable to defend himself. They had caught him unawares and, it seems, under-armed, but he would not remain that way.
William Fitz Osbert wrenched an axe from one of his attackers and killed them himself, while another “noble citizen” was struck down by the group that came rushing to his aid—I guess he wasn’t entirely alone. He and his supporters withdrew to a church, but in Newburgh’s presentation, he entered it not as a sanctuary but as a fortress, which does feel a little like an attempt to recast the fire that was going to come after.
Word was sent out to gather Fitz Osbert’s followers to him, but here at rather the critical moment, it seems that his “great conspiracy” let him down a little. Just as he could have really used some of those 50,000 bodies placed between himself and the ones who were coming for him, they were nowhere to be found, some of them, Newburgh tells us, put off by the hostage situation, some by their fear of the men at arms, more of whom were on the way at the orders of the archbishop.
At the end, as those men at arms closed in on him, Fitz Osbert was called forth from the church to answer for what he’d done and to face justice, of a kind, but he would not. He was still waiting, still hoping, for help to arrive, and he probably felt fairly secure there, though that feeling would not last long. When he refused to come out voluntarily, his attackers took steps to force the matter, actually going so far as to set fire to the church and let the smoke and the flames do their work for them. With no other choice remaining, William Fitz Osbert and those who were with him rushed out.
Details are understandably scant at this point—you really have to take what you can get in these things. Clearly Fitz Osbert did not have the numbers with him that he would have liked. Whoever came out those church doors with him must have been fully committed, to the cause or the person, but that would not in itself be sufficient. The moment sounds like it has all the makings of a last desperate charge against insurmountable odds, the stuff of many a climactic movie scene, but like I said, the details are not there to fill the picture out for us. Newburgh will only say that Fitz Osbert was, quote, “compelled to sally out with his followers: but a son of the citizen whom he had slain in the first onset, in revenge for his father's death, cut open his belly with [a] knife.” Or, as Roger of Howden puts it, “drawing a knife, [the man] plunged it into [Fitz Osbert’s] entrails.”
William Fitz Osbert does not seem to have died there and then. He was judged by the king’s court, “drawn asunder by horses, and then,” Newburgh writes, “hanged on a gibbet with nine of his accomplices who refused to desert him.” Sometimes Fitz Osbert is taken to the Tower of London to be condemned, sometimes is dragged to his hanging behind a horse. Sometimes it is only eight of his comrades who hang with him rather than nine. In one account he is armed only with a knife and his great personal strength when he fights his way to the church, not making use of anyone’s axe.
In any case, William with the long beard’s story had reached its end, at least as far as his direct part in it was concerned, but there is a bit more to it still to tell, and after this quick break, we will tell it. Or at least, I will, and as I’ll need to do that part in a couple of days, when I get back, it will be a near-future version of me who does so. Perhaps he will be smarter, faster, stronger, better, more productive, more employed, or just having got rid of this post-viral cough that I can’t seem to get rid of, the one that has overstayed lingering and now just lives here. We shall see.
…
William with the Long Beard was dead, but his story was not really over. In the aftermath of his death, the monks of the Holy Trinity at Canterbury expressed outrage that their church in London should have been subjected to violence and indeed fire, and at the orders of their own archbishop of all people. No matter his responsibilities to the state, they felt, he should have still protected the rights of the church. After that, Roger of Howden writes, they were “unable to hold communication with him on any matter in a peaceable manner,” and this was not the only source of strong feelings as to what had happened.
Newburgh writes that Fitz Osbert’s impact was not erased by his death. The, quote, “extent to which this man had by his daring and mighty projects attached the minds of the wicked to himself, and how straitly he had bound the people to his interests as the pious and watchful champion of their cause, appeared even after his demise.” The people did not so easily forget what he had been doing for them, how he’d put his oratorical skills to use in advancing their cause and, based on those iron tools he’d apparently been stockpiling, had been willing to do more than that, perhaps already had. They still looked to him for leadership, as a figurehead, as a martyr.
By Newburgh’s telling this didn’t exactly come about without a little outside assistance. He has one of Fitz Osbert’s relatives, a priest, taking the chain that had bound him and laying it on a man who was sick with fever before, quote, “feign[ing] with impudent vanity that a cure was the immediate result.”
Word spread of what had happened, the miracle of William Fitz Osbert, a new saint of the downtrodden common folk, and they in turn sought out anything associated with him. The gibbet on which he’d hung was removed to be honoured in secret, and the ground where he had died, “as if consecrated by the blood of the executed man,” was dug and scraped away for its healing qualities, leaving a “tolerably large ditch” in its place. Large numbers of people flocked to that place, “large bands of fools” Newburgh would say, many even coming from the provinces outside the city. It was not a situation that the authorities could allow to go on for long.
That priest who’d performed the miracle with the chain was imprisoned. The people, the quote unquote “rustic multitude” who occupied the place where Fitz Osbert was killed, were captured or driven off. That place itself was guarded, and the believers and simply curious were kept away until the interest and popular feeling had subsided. The whole “great conspiracy,” the movement, an implausible 50,000 strong, which had sprung up around William of the Long Beard, was over.
As you may have gathered, and as I may have mentioned, Newburgh did not have a great deal of sympathy for his fellow William. The common folk who followed him were variously characterized as an “idiot rabble,” a “witless multitude,” or mere “infatuated creatures.” His apparently noble aims amounted instead to a “nefarious scheme,” a “malignant conspiracy,” an effort to “conceive sorrow and to bring forth iniquity,” all fueled by his “two great vices, pride and envy … the former … a desire for selfish advancement, and the latter a hatred of [others’] happiness.” Newburgh was not going to let his opinion of the man or what he’d done be the subject of any doubt.
In Newburgh’s depiction, this massive disruption of the peace had not truly been instigated by a desire to aid the poor at all but rather by Fitz Osbert’s desire to destroy his own older brother, an urge that soon spilled over into a wider envy and broader actions. Fitz Osbert had supposedly been dissatisfied with the financial assistance his brother was giving him, so much so that he’d accused him and a few others of treasonous plotting against the king. As John McEwan notes in his article on the topic, this detail sounds like a fabrication made to simplify all of this to family squabbling, and an attempt reduce our protagonist to the role of spoiled and discontented younger sibling, but there are indeed records of these charges brought against a Richard Fitz Osbert and two others for treasonous, if rather mild-sounding, remarks about the king, his rule, and his taxes. This had been a couple of years before the events of our story, back in 1194.
In our chronicler’s depiction, Fitz Osbert was decried as a “mischief maker and assassin” possessed of “a certain innate insolence of disposition and manner to make himself a great name,” a vainglorious and unpleasant fellow of iniquitous aims and ignoble intent. If nothing else would convince us, Newburgh argued, then there was the confession. It had occurred after Fitz Osbert was likely stabbed and had certainly occurred under duress. The doomed man had supposedly admitted not only to that killing with the axe but also to, quote, “pollut[ing] with carnal intercourse with his concubine that church in which [he] had sought refuge,” and then, when the reinforcements he wished for did not arrive, “abjur[ing] the Son of Mary, because he would render him no assistance, and invok[ing] the devil that he at least would save him.”
Newburgh had heard all of this shocking material from quote/unquote “trustworthy lips” and was sure that the admissions were enough to redden the face of any who had thought to make this man a martyr, “if any blood exist[ed] in their bodies” that is. For this 12th-century chronicler and for Roger of Wendover also, William Fitz Osbert was decidedly not a man to be admired, but then we really don’t have to go along with them on this one.
Newburgh might not have approved of all that public disruption. De Decito might have frowned upon the riot at St Paul’s which Fitz Osbert had apparently instigated. But a great many people evidently had approved of all of it. No matter how foolish Newburgh thought they were, he did not deny that people had been angry at what was done to him and had then massed at the place of his death, some of them all night there in prayer.
You don’t need to squint very hard to imagine this William inspiring the activities of other “King Fitz Osberts,” like the “General Ludds” who would storm buildings and smash machines in centuries to come, with William’s Beard maybe even standing in for Enoch’s Hammer. I can recommend Brian Merchant’s book, Blood in the Machine, if you’d like more of that sort of thing, but back to our immediate topic, you can easily see how a pretty heroic figure can be read into these events.
Sure he’d brought a rather serious case against his own brother, but was that enough to discredit his other deeds? As for the rest, even Newburgh with all of his unconcealed distaste, essentially acknowledges the unworthy treatment of the common people at the hands of the rich and insolent. He acknowledges that there was reason for people’s grievance against them. He just didn’t care for how that grievance was expressed, and might have been a difficult guy to please on that count no matter what was done, an “okay, just not this mode of protest” guy for the Middle Ages, forever disapproving of what was being done.
Another Yorkshire-born 12th-century chronicler, Roger of Howden, paints a more sympathetic picture of our subject. The overall depiction is of a person very much driven by the pursuit of justice and a true “champion of the poor.” Then, as we move on into the 13th century with Matthew Paris, we find a William Fitz Osbert who had fought bravely against the oppressors of the poorer classes until, Matthew Paris, concludes, “William of the Beard was shamefully put to death by his fellow citizens for asserting the truth and defending the cause of the poor: and if the justice of one's cause constitutes a martyr, we may surely set him down as one.”
That archbishop and Newburgh both, in their way, would have had William of the Beard forgotten or at least dismissed, but here, about 50 years after his death, we have him not only not forgotten but also offered something of an endorsement, and there would be more of those to come, all the way up to present-day readings of transformational politics in this 12th-century story.
One expression of approval comes to us from a very familiar name, though possibly not one you were expecting. He was admittedly not so close to matters that he could make any claims about being told this or that by first-hand witnesses, but he is still of interest here, and like William of the Beard, he quite famously was someone who took an interest in the poorer folk of London.
Initially appearing in serial form and completed in 1853, Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England had this to say on the events of 1196.
Quote:
“There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out of the discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion in William Fitz Osbert, called Longbeard. He became the leader of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men; he was seized by surprise; he stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him; and retreated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, until he was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he came out. He was not killed, though; for he was dragged, half dead, at the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was long a favorite remedy for silencing the people's advocates; but as we go on with this history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to make an end of, for all that.”
I think we’ll end there on that note of 19th-century optimism. This has been the story of William Fitz Osbert, he of the remarkably conspicuous beard. I hope that you enjoyed it.
I’ll be back next time with another medieval story, probably some Patreon bonus listening and then a full length one. Thank you for listening. I’ll talk to you then.