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Introduction

The last chapter offered Bakhtinian and Foucauldian readings of King Edward and the Shepherd and placed it in context with the populist revolts of the late-medieval period. This chapter will turn to John the Reeve, a further early King and Commoner bourde that blends carnivalesque ceremony and ideology with the political complaints of its commoner

protagonist. John the Reeve is particularly amenable to this form of Bakhtinian interpretation, as it emphasises banqueting imagery throughout and repeatedly stages the carnivalesque beating of the political body.

The sole copy of John the Reeve is preserved in Thomas Percy’s folio manuscript (British Library Add MS 27879), a manuscript famously rescued from obliteration by Percy during a visit to his friend Sir Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal. Having noticed a bundle of old papers by the fireside, Percy learned that Sir Humphrey had instructed his maids to use the manuscript as kindling. Luckily for posterity, Percy was allowed to take the remaining sheaves of the manuscript with him and subsequently published some of these in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765). Here, Percy describes John the Reeve as ‘infinitely superior’ to all other King and Commoner texts but did not print it in this collection because of the tale’s length.¹ It remained unpublished until the nineteenth century, when it was printed in Frederick Furnivall and John Hales’ 1867 edition of the Percy folio (an edition which

1 Thomas Percy, ‘Introduction to The King and the Miller of Mansfield’, in Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, Vol. III, ed. Thomas Percy (London: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1996), pp. 179-80 (p. 179).

published the full Percy manuscript, while removing Percy’s own creative additions and

‘amendments’ to the tales). Furnivall picked John the Reeve out for special mention in his foreword to the Percy folio as a ‘curious poem’ that was among several ‘real gains to our literature’.² Hales’ poetic introduction to John the Reeve added:

All the powers of the poet are devoted to the description and portraiture of the villain.

He understands best the life of the villain; his sympathies go with it; his great delight is to depict it [...] It was evidently written in the decadence of feudalism, when the darkest ages of villenage were fast passing away [...] The great rising of Richard II’s reign, however abortive, however completely foiled it might have seemed at the time, had produced a lasting effect [...] This is a poem of mirth and of hope, not a wild angry satire, not a deep bitter moan. That mighty exodus which the fifteenth century witnessed is being accomplished. The house of bondage is being left. The land of freedom is coming into sight.³

However, it has remained largely unstudied since. Elizabeth Walsh, Rachel Snell, and Rochelle Smith all briefly refer to John the Reeve’s radicalism but without elaboration or detail.⁴ It has also received some attention from critics studying the Scottish King and Commoner tale Rauf Coilȝear but only to be dismissed as an inferior, conservative story.

Stephen Shepherd mentions John the Reeve in passing as a ‘sentimentally patronizing portrayal of a churl blundering his way amongst royalty’ that demonstrates Rauf Coilȝear’s comparative sophistication.⁵ Glenn Wright devotes slightly more space to John the Reeve but

2 Frederick J. Furnivall, ‘Forewords’, in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, Vol. I, ed.

Frederick J. Furnivall and John W. Hales (London: N. Trübner, 1867), pp. ix-xxvi (p. xi).

3 John W. Hales, ‘John the Reeve: Introduction’, in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, Vol. II, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall and John W. Hales (London: N. Trübner, 1867), pp. 550-56 (pp. 550-1).

4 Walsh claims that John’s ‘obstreperous nature’ represents a ‘challenge to the rigid class society of the Middle Ages’, Smith argues that John’s feast ‘blurs class lines as it mocks the idea of simple taste for simple folks’, and Snell compares John’s storming of the court and holding the King ‘checkmate’ to the 1381 revolt. Elizabeth Walsh, ‘Upward Bound: The Sociopolitical Significance of the King-in-Disguise Motif’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 26.1 (1991), 156-63 (p. 160). Rochelle Smith, ‘King-Commoner Encounters in the Popular Ballad, Elizabethan Drama, and Shakespeare’, SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 50.2 (2010), 301-335 (p.

309). Rachel Snell, ‘The Undercover King’, in Medieval Insular Romance: Translation and Innovation, ed.

Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows and Morgan Dickson (Cambridge and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2000), pp.

133-154 (pp. 152-4).

5 S. H. A. Shepherd, ‘“Of thy glitterand gyde have I na gle”: The Taill of Rauf Coilȝear’, Archiv für das Studium der neuern Sprachen und Literaturen, 228 (1991), 284-98 (p. 297).

ultimately repeats Shepherd’s view, adding that ‘the poem is at bottom a jovial romp that casts no shadows [...] of its own potential seriousness’.⁶

If John the Reeve is largely ignored by literary critics today, it was certainly well known in the sixteenth century (in Scotland, at least), as is attested by many literary

references to it. Several of these references also seem to either hint at John’s aggression, or identify him within a distinctly political framework. The earliest reference to the bourde can be found in Gavin Douglas’ dream poem The Palis of Honoure (c. 1500-1501). Towards the end of the poem, the narrator is shown a mirror in which he views figures from history and mythology, among whom are a collection of literary figures popular in Douglas’ time:

I saw Raf Coilyear with his thrawin brow, Craibit Johne the reif and auld Cowekewyis sow And how the wran come out of Ailssay,

And Peirs Plewman that maid his workmen fow, Gret Gowmakmorne and Fyn Makcoull, and how Thay shuld be goddis in Ireland, as thay say.

Thair saw I Maitland upon auld beird gray, Robene Hude and Gilbert with the quhite hand, How Hay of Nauchtoun flew in Madin land.⁷

That the first two literary figures recorded in this esteemed company are from the fifteenth-century King and Commoner tradition speaks volumes regarding the popularity of these texts.

It is also worth noting that amongst this company John is identified as being especially

‘craibit’, which is to say ‘ill-natured’ or ‘bad humoured’.⁸

Both texts are also mentioned by William Dunbar in his complaint To the King (‘Exces of thocht dois me mischeif’), probably written shortly after Douglas’ Palis of Honoure:

6 Glenn Wright, ‘Churl’s Courtesy: Rauf Coilȝear and its English Analogues’, Neophilologus, 85.4 (2001), 647-62 (pp. 654-6).

7 Gavin Douglas, Palis of Honoure, ed. David Parkinson (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), ll.

1711-19.

8 A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (up to 1700). Available at http://www.dsl.ac.uk/entry/dost/crabit [accessed March 2015].

Quhone servit is all uther man, Gentil and sempill of everie clan –

Kyne of Rauf Colȝard and Johnne the reif – Nothing I gett nor conqueis can.⁹

Rauf Coilȝear and John the Reeve are here being associated by Dunbar with both the supposed disempowerment of the nobility and increasing political influence of those of low birth. While an undoubted exaggeration on Dunbar’s part, this nonetheless reveals an explicitly political perception of these King and Commoner texts, directly associating them with the usurping of hierarchical norms.

A further sense of this sixteenth-century political perception of John the Reeve is found in David Lyndsay’s The Testament and Complaynt of Oure Soverane Lordis Papyngo (1530). This is a bleakly comic Scottish poem detailing the political complaints of King James V’s dying parrot, in a pessimistic portrayal of James’ court.¹⁰ It includes a description of ‘Archebischop of Sanctandros, James Betoun’, who is forced to flee into the wilderness

‘dissagysit, lyke Jhone the Reif’ as ‘the courte bair hym sich mortall feid’.¹¹ This dichotomy again hints at a political association, placing John in a position of hidden, ‘disguised’

opposition to the corrupt court.

A final reference to John the Reeve can be found in Harley MS. 207 (c. 1532). This lengthy pro-Catholic religious debate begins with ‘Johan the Reve’ putting on a feast for his friends ‘Hobbe of the Hille’ (who also appears in John the Reeve), ‘Laurence Laboror’,

‘Thomlyn Tailyor’, and Langland’s ‘Peirs Ploughman’.¹² However, their festivities are interrupted (in a seeming parody of Arthurian romance) by the arrival of the Lutheran ‘Jacke

9 William Dunbar, To the King (‘Exces of thocht dois me mischeif’), in William Dunbar: The Complete Works, ed. John Conlee (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), No. 48, ll. 31-4.

10 For more on which, see Joanna Martin, Kingship and Love in Scottish Poetry, 1424-1540 (Hampshire:

Ashgate, 2008), pp. 169-70.

11 David Lyndsay, The Testament and Complaynt of Oure Soverane Lordis Papyngo, Kyng James the Fyft, in The Poetical Works of Sir David Lyndsay, Vol. I, ed. David Laing (Edinburgh: W. Patterson, 1879), pp. 61-104 (ll. 549-60).

12 King Edward adopts the name ‘Peeres’ in John the Reeve, although this may simply be coincidental.

Jolie’, who declares that ‘it is plane ydolatrie to beleue that the bodie and bloude of criste ar in firme of breade and wyne ministrede in the alter’. This in turn causes a strongly Catholic

‘Peirs Ploughman’ to wax ‘woundrous Angrie’ and call ‘Jacke Jolie fals heritike’. John then steps in and ‘defied them bothe to be content in his house’, ordering them to sit down so that they can continue with their feasting: ‘And thei warre bothe contente So to doo.’ As in King Edward and the Shepherd, John’s commoner banquet table seems able to assert a space in which usual divisions are temporarily suspended, allowing for these ideological opposites to meet and ‘reason’ their differences ‘gentlie’.¹³

John the Reeve is 910 lines in length and divided into three parts. The manuscript was produced in the mid-seventeenth century, probably somewhere in Lancashire, but is clearly copied from a collection of pre-existing materials.¹⁴ A date for the composition of this bourde can be deduced from the tale’s statement that there had been ‘kings three’ named Edward, thereby placing the tale’s composition between the death of Edward III in 1377 and the accession of Edward IV in 1461.¹⁵ Furrow has narrowed this further by pointing to the bourde’s use of the term ‘handful,’ a term which was identified in 1439 (in Rotuli

Parliamentorum 5. 30b) as a relatively new concept: ‘They were wonte to mete clothe by yerde and ynche, now they woll mete by yerde and handfull’.¹⁶ She also points to the bourde’s distinction between ale and beer, highlighting that continental beer was only made from 1391 in London, spreading to a few English towns by 1400, with beer-brewers only

13 The Banckett of John the Reve, unto Piers Ploughman, Laurens Laborer, Thomlyn Tailyor, and Hobb of the Hille (c. 1532), British Library Harley MS. 207, f2v.A summary can also be found in Frederick J. Furnivall,

‘On Bondman, the Name and the Class, with Reference to the Ballad John the Reeve’, in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, Vol. II, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall and John W. Hales (London: N. Trübner, 1867), pp. lxi-lxii.

14 Furnivall, ‘Forewords’, in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, Vol. I, p. xiii.

15 John the Reeve, in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads and Romances, Vol. II, ed. Frederick J.

Furnivall and John W. Hales (London: N. Trübner, 1868), pp. 550-94 (l. 16). All further references are to this edition and are given parenthetically in the text.

16 Quoted in Melissa M. Furrow, ‘John the Reeve: Introduction’, in Ten Bourdes, ed. Melissa M. Furrow (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2013), pp. 187-189 (p. 188).

established enough to warrant regulation by 1441.¹⁷ As a result, John the Reeve was probably composed towards the middle of the fifteenth century.

The basic plot of John the Reeve is as follows:

Part One: King Edward I is hunting in the South West of England when three of his falcons fly off. Edward pursues them with an Earl and a Bishop but they soon find themselves lost, with night falling and the weather turning wet, cold and rough. They spy John and ask him to lead them to some shelter. John answers them rudely at first and takes them for thieves. The aristocrats protest that they are acquainted with lords and gentlemen but this merely provokes John to speak angrily of both lords and the law. However, John eventually agrees to take them to his own home for the night.

Upon reaching John’s home, the Earl tells John that Edward is the King’s falconer, the Bishop is a poor chaplain and he himself is a pack-horse driver. They are then joined for dinner by John’s neighbours, Hob and Hodgkin.

Part Two: John serves up bean bread, pottage, sour ale, year-old salted bacon and salted beef. The King protests and insists on being given better food. Having first sworn the courtiers to secrecy, John produces a vast feast of aristocratic food and drink. During this feast John, Hob and Hodgkin perform a chaotic dance for the aristocrats.

Part Three: The next day the aristocrats ride home and summon John to them. John declares that his guests have betrayed him, arms himself and rides to the court. There he knocks the court’s porter unconscious, kills four of the King’s dogs and rides into the royal banquet hall, where he is only stopped by the King’s promise to make John a gentleman. Edward then presents John with a feast and pardons him. John’s daughters are subsequently married to squires, his two sons are made a parson and a knight and Hob and Hodgkin are made freemen.

John the Reeve makes for an intriguing comparison with King Edward and the Shepherd. It contains many of the same political ideas and themes, including strong anti-noble sentiment, a clear awareness of the materialistic definition of hierarchy and its subsequent upheaval in the commoner’s carnivalesque feast, while also providing a subtle, repeated focus on the body and the body politic (especially from the feast onwards). In many ways it also appears to be a more radical text, with John’s statements and rebellion against the King and the lords far less ambiguous or subtle than Adam’s in King Edward and the Shepherd, while John’s

17 Furrow, ‘John the Reeve: Introduction’, p. 188. Also see: Richard W. Unger, Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), p. 99.

bloody insurrection at the end of the tale enacts the violence that remained locked in Adam’s thoughts and words.

I will first examine the opening passages of John the Reeve, arguing that it foregrounds many of the carnivalesque elements found in the later feast, including the collapse of boundaries and depictions of the body politic. The chapter will then look at the politics of the carnivalesque feast itself in detail, before ending with an examination of John’s violent storming of the court and the strange pessimism that seems to haunt its closing

passages.

Tempestuous beginnings: ‘Of Lords,’ sayes hee, ‘speake no more!’

John the Reeve opens with an unusual feature that initially seems to separate it from the other surviving King and Commoner texts. While out hunting King Edward I chases ‘wonderous ffast’ three ‘ffawcons’ who ‘fflew away’ until:

ffrom morning untill eueninge late, many menn abroad they gate

wandring all alone;

the night came att the last;

there was no man that wist

what way the King was gone, saue a Bishopp & an Erle ffree. (ll. 20-31)

This provision of two companions to accompany the King is unique in the King and

Commoner tradition.¹⁸ The appearance of the Earl and Bishop is at the start of a new stanza and as part of a new rhyme, suggestively indicating that this detail was intended to be unexpected and surprising. The effect is to draw attention to these royal companions and the

18 Although, as is noted in the introduction, this feature does make it somewhat resemble the Gawain romance Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle (c. 1400), in which Gawain is accompanied by Sir Kay and Bishop Baldwin when encountering and lodging with the seeming Carle. Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, in Sir Gawain: Eleven Romance and Tales, ed. Thomas Hahn (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995), pp.

85-112.

way in which they influence the tale. What emerges as a result of their insertion is a focus on the wider body politic and its carnivalesque dissection.

The first hint of this can be seen in John the Reeve’s presentation of what happens to the court once the king becomes separated from it: ‘many menn abroad they gate / wandring all alone’ (ll. 21-2). Without a figurehead the court fragments. The aristocrats are no longer united as a cohesive social body but each are separated, severed from that body. The body politic is decapitated, its head removed, its social body ‘wandring’ without order. As the Bishop and Earl say, in their opening words to the King:

itt is a ffolly, by St. Iohn, ffor us thus to ryde alone

soe many a wilsome way;

a King and an Erle to ryde in hast, a bishopp from his coste to be cast,

ffor hunting sikerlye.

the whether happned wonderous ill, all night wee may ryde vnskill,

nott wotting where wee bee. (ll. 34-42)

At this point, these characters present themselves not as individuals but symbolically, as members of the wider society (‘a King’, ‘an Erle’ ‘a bishopp’). They become embodiments of kingship, the nobility and the Church and their subsequent disorder – each has been symbolically ‘cast’ from the ‘coste’ under his care. These courtiers are both literally and symbolically isolated from society, lost and made ‘thus to ryde alone’ / soe many a wilsome way [...] nott wotting where wee bee’ (emphasis mine). What is emphasised is the disordering of the medieval orders that rule society, before meeting a ‘churl’ who will further disturb the dividing lines between the social orders.

The presence of three members of the court also ties into an important focus on an interweaving of triumvirates throughout John the Reeve, which is used to portray a similarly

destabilising effect on the boundaries that govern the social body. The three courtiers chase the three ‘ffawcons’, in a ‘wonderous ffast’ flight into the natural world where they ‘may ryde vnskill’ (l. 41), and so meet with the three anarchic commoners. Its effect is to blur boundaries, staging a descent from high to low, from civilised and courtly to natural and wild.

At the same time these commoners resemble the aristocrats, with the bourde directly connecting each of the three commoners to their corresponding courtier. Hob and Hodgkin are described by John as being ‘of the same ffreeledge that I am’ but he adds that one is the vassal of ‘the Bishopp of Durham’ and the other the vassal of ‘the Erle of Gloster’ (ll. 176-180). While the Bishop and Earl accompanying the King are never named, it seems highly probable that they are intended to be the aristocrats who are here named as Hob and Hodgkin’s lords. John, meanwhile, describes himself as nothing less than ‘the Kings

bondman’ (ll. 125). Therefore, each courtier is bound to a corresponding commoner. Each is presented as the shadow of the other, while John’s carnival feast (like Adam’s in King

Edward and the Shepherd) specifically works to rupture social boundaries amid a mingling of bodies and collapse of difference. This binding of commoners and aristocrats also reappears at the end of the bourde, where John’s ‘royal’ (l. 471) feasts are legalised and his two sons are made a ‘Knight’ and ‘parson’ (ll. 888-90), thus ending with John and his sons bearing a disconcerting resemblance to his original three courtly guests. Each group resembles the other, regardless of their superficial social position and hierarchical separation. There is an intermingling present, a carnivalesque threat that human may easily become the animal, that the nobles may easily become the commoners and that the commoners may easily become the nobles.

This carnivalesque ‘world turned upside-down’ seems to be directly referred to when

This carnivalesque ‘world turned upside-down’ seems to be directly referred to when