Lives of English Popular Leaders in the Middle Ages; Tyler, Ball, and Oldcastle (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ( 133 ) CHAPTER III. INSURRECTION OF BALL AND TYLER, 1381. The south-eastern counties of England had had from a very early time a peculiar position in the country. Even Caesar at the time of his invasion had noticed the superiority of Kentish men to the inhabitants of the other parts of the island. Whatever of improvement or development the first settlers from the northern nations had brought to England, must at any rate have first been established in Kent. Early History of Kent.?An advantage of even more importance was gained by Kent at the time of the coming over of Augustine. Professor Stubbs has shown us how much constitutional freedom in England before the Conquest owed to the institution of the Church Councils, which were brought in by Augustine and his followers. And we have additional proof of thetendency which Augustine's influence had in this direction, in the fact, that the first written laws which have been handed down to us, as established in any part of England, were those which were established in Kent about the time of Augustine. The earliest, and in some ways one of the most important, of the monasteries in England, was the one to which Augustine gave his name at Canterbury. All these advantages were secured to Kent mainly by its geographical position. But there were other advantages which were due to other causes. Over a large part of Kent stretched the Weald, which in early times contained a great deal of waste land; and from the inaccessible character of much of the woods which grew up there, the inhabitants were less under the control of their lords than many of the surrounding tenantry.1 This Weald extended through Sussex and Surrey,2 and the extent to which the privileges gained by its position were recognized in the thirteenth century, ...