Poverty in London in the 1190s: Some Possibilities

Summary

My starting point, as it has been for much of my work of the last decade, is the short and sad life of William fitz Osbert. He was a Londoner who went on the Third Crusade. He came home, fell out with his family, grew a shaggy beard that earned him the nickname ‘Longbeard’ and began haranguing the rich about the way they were treating the poor. He briefly travelled to Normandy to complain to his fellow crusader, the king, about what was going on. Finally, in April 1196, the city authorities in London were so alarmed that they moved against him, at which point he killed one of the men sent to arrest him, fled for sanctuary to the church of St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside, was smoked out, taken to the Tower, condemned, dragged through the city, and hanged. His revolt – if it is right to call it that, and I do not think it is – was abortive and apparently futile, his life a sad waste. He has generally been dismissed by historians as uninteresting or even slightly amusing. I would prefer, however, to see the moment in 1196 as one of those moments – much like the much better documented Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – that allows us to see beneath the surface of medieval society. If we are to take William fitz Osbert seriously, as I believe we should, then it is essential that we answer the question: who were the poor that he claimed to speak for? Or to put it another way, what was the experience of poverty in the 1190s? These are the questions I will attempt to answer in this short essay.

I would first note that there are obvious obstacles to answering these questions: we stand in the 1190s right on the cusp of the documentary revolution that transforms the way we write the history of medieval England. The court rolls, chancery records, municipal records, etc. that have allowed scholars such as Barbara Hanawalt and Carole Rawcliffe to do wonderful reconstructions of everyday life in the cities in a later period are, at best, in their most rudimentary stage in the 1190s.