> 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
Along those lines, I would recommend heartily Steven Justice's *Writing
Rebellion: England in 1381* (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1994), a
fascinating study of the uses and meanings of writing in English peasant
political culture.
laura smoller
Laura Smoller
Department of History
University of Arkansas at Little Rock
2801 South University Ave.
Little Rock, AR 72204-1099
tel 501-569-8389
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