During the 1381 Peasants' Revolt, a Cambridge woman named Margery
Starre heaped looted college records onto a bonfire in Market Square,
crying "Away with the learning of the clerks." (Or so says my secondary
reference, E. Powell's _Rising in East Anglia in 1381_ [1896]; I can't
find the original source.) And Thomas Walsingham reported that rebels
"strove to burn all old records; and they butchered anyone who might know
or be able to commit to memory the contents of old or new documents. It
was dangerous enough to be known as a clerk, but especially dangerous if
an ink-pot should be found at one's elbow: such men scarcely or ever
escaped from the hands of the rebels." (From his _Historia Anglicana_
excerpted in R. B. Dobson's _Peasants' Revolt of 1381_, p. 364.)
Though this was done on the estates of both secular and spiritual
lords and cannot be construed as anti-clericalism per se, during the
revolt there were several recorded cases of villeins burning manorial
rolls, which must have seemed potent written symbols of their servile
duties. These sorts of incidents suggest that some ordinary, unlettered
folk did see writing as one of the tools of their (clerical?) oppressors.
Best,
John Shinners
--
John R. Shinners e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Associate Professor Phone (office): (219) 284-4494
Humanistic Studies Program Phone (dept.): (219) 284-4485
Saint Mary's College Fax: (219) 284-4716
Notre Dame, IN 46556
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