: Nick Rennison
: Riots and Rebels Popular Protest in Britain from the Peasants' Revolt to Extinction Rebellion
: Oldcastle Books
: 9780857306081
: 1
: CHF 10.80
:
: Regional- und Ländergeschichte
: English
: 210
: Wasserzeichen
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: ePUB
The only power otherwise powerless people possess lies in their numbers. Riots and Rebels is an examination of how people have exercised that power in England, Scotland and Wales over the centuries and how governments have reacted to it. From the Middle Ages to the present day, Riots and Rebels discusses and highlights how protests have shaped British history and contributed to the struggle for the vote, labour rights, women's rights, trade unions and climate awareness. Without many of these examples of direct action, modern society would look very different. In 1381, a large army of people marched through the south-east of England to London, demanding an end to unfair taxation and threatening the rule of the boy-king, Richard II. During the eighteenth century, food riots, riots in protest at land enclosure, and riots targeting religious groups and foreigners regularly occurred. In the following century, mass gatherings demanded reform of the electoral system which allowed only a tiny proportion of the population to vote. In the early twentieth century, suffragettes chained themselves to railings, took part in huge demonstrations and endured prison sentences in pursuit of the vote for women. Recent decades have seen tens of thousands of people take to the streets of London and other cities to protest against the Iraq War and, in the last year, the war in Gaza. From the so-called Peasants' Revolt to Just Stop Oil, via the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, Luddites breaking machinery which threatened their livelihood, the infamous Peterloo Massacre of 1819, the Chartist demonstrations of the 1830s and 1840s, 1887's Bloody Sunday and many other, often violent events, Nick Rennison provides a concise, compelling account of popular protest in Britain. For readers of Unruly by David Mitchell, The Restless Republic by Anna Keay and Revolution by Peter Ackroyd. PRAISE FOR NICK RENNISON 'Entertaining and thoroughly readable canter through the events of a century ago... Fascinating' OBSERVER on 1922 'Rennison proves a chatty and amiable guide and offers an enjoyable and evocative ramble down memory lane' TELEGRAPH on 1974 'Hugely entertaining... often wryly amusing... plenty of light entertainment and colourful anecdote' MAIL ON SUNDAY on 1974

NICK RENNISON is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and in crime fiction. He is the author of 1974: Scenes from a Year of Crisis, 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year, A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History& Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books, and the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press. He is also the author of The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction, 100 Must-Read Crime Novels and Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography. His crime novels, Carver's Quest and Carver's Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both The Sunday Times and Daily Mail.

Tudor Turmoil

Rebellion in the Reign of Henry VII

As a king who could plausibly be seen by some as a usurper, Henry Tudor, first of his dynasty, could expect to face rebellion and did so. Less than a year after he had overthrown and killed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, he easily quashed an abortive uprising by supporters of the defeated House of York. The following year, a young boy named Lambert Simnel, whom some pretended to believe wasthe Earl of Warwick, a Yorkist claimant to the throne, became the figurehead in a rebellion that was brought to an end in a battle fought near East Stoke in Nottinghamshire. Most of those Yorkist nobles who had used Simnel were killed in the battle as were thousands of their followers; Simnel was spared and was reportedly given a job as a spit-turner in the royal kitchens.

By contrast, the Yorkshire Rebellion, four years into Henry’s reign, was an almost bloodless uprising. Like others to come, it was occasioned by the king’s persistent attempts to raise money through additional taxation. Parliament had granted Henry a subsidy of £100,000 to help him organise a military expedition to aid his allies in Brittany who were at war with the French. Many in the north, particularly Yorkshire and Northumberland, were reluctant to contribute to the subsidy and rumours filtered south that a rebellion was brewing. The king sent Henry Percy, 4thEarl of Northumberland tocollect the monies to which he felt entitled. Northumberland, together with his small entourage, was confronted by a group of protesters near Thirsk in north Yorkshire and a brawl broke out in which the earl, abandoned by his retinue, was killed on 28 April 1489. (His proved to be the only death during the course of the largely ineffectual revolt, although several of its ringleaders were later executed.) The army of rebels, led initially by a man named Robert Chamber and later by a knight called Sir John Egremont, had become several thousand strong by early May and the king decided that a display of force was needed to quell them. He marched north with a large body of troops and the rebels, unnerved by Henry’s swift response, dispersed when an advance guard under the command of the Earl of Surrey arrived in York. The Yorkshire Rebellion was over before it had properly begun.

Eight years later, in the spring of 1497, Henry was concerned about the threat posed by Perkin Warbeck. Warbeck wasanother pretender to the throne but one who proved far more of a danger than Lambert Simnel. He claimed to be Richard, Duke of York, one of the ‘Princes in the Tower’, presumed murdered in the previous decade. He was being sheltered at the Scottish court of James IV and Henry was eager to raise money for an army to confront any invading force that might cross the border into England. Many of his subjects were much less eager to provide that cash via their taxes. In Cornwall in particular,resentment was high. Under the leadership of Michael An Gof, a blacksmith from the village of St Keverne, and a Bodmin lawyer and one-time MP named Thomas Flamank, thousands rose in revolt. A rebel army headed into Devon, attracting further recruits as they marched. In Somerset, they gained noble support when James Touchet, Lord Audley threw in his lot with them and, because of his rank and military experience, took over as their commander. Perhaps as many as 15,000 strong, they continued towards the capital.

A skirmish with a detachment of the king’s soldiers near Guildford was just about the only time they faced any opposition as they came closer to London. After this, they skirted the city, hoping other rebels would join them, and set up camp at Blackheath. They were finally confronted by a royal army at Deptford on 17 June. The outcome was predictable. The rebel forces had been depleted by desertions on the long march from Cornwall and were heavily outnumbered by Henry VII’s troops. Their hopes of a rising of Kentish men to support them, of which Flamank had been confident, had beendashed. They were soundly defeated. About a thousand Cornishmen lost their lives. Flamank and Audley were captured on the battlefield; Michael An Gof, attempting to seek sanctuary in a nearby church, was also taken. On 27 June, An Gof and Flamank were sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered but were spared this peculiarly grisly fate by order of Henry. However, after they were executed by hanging only, they were beheaded. Audley, through his privilege as a peer, was never in danger of the worst kind of death as a traitor but was also beheaded at Tower Hill the following day. The heads of all three men were displayed on London Bridge.

This first Cornish uprising had one almost immediate effect. It became the stimulus for a second rebellion.Perkin Warbeck had noted the discontent in Cornwall and chose Whitesand Bay near Land’s End as the place to come ashore with just over 100 supporters on 7 September 1497. Many Cornishmen rallied to his support and he was hailed as ‘Richard IV’ on Bodmin Moor. With a growing army of perhaps 6,000 men, the pretender besieged Exeter but the king had already responded swiftly to news of Warbeck’s advance. Forces under Lord Daubeney arrived in the West Country, ahead of Henry himself, and Warbeck realised that the game was