Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. We are recording this on a
Speaker 1: lovely April Monday here in the fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Let's give it up for our super producer, the one
Speaker 1: and only Mr Max Williams. They call me Ben No No.
Speaker 1: Do you have a good weekend? Did I have a
Speaker 1: good weekend? Um? Yes, I think so. So we were
Speaker 1: just talking about the golf, right, uh, honestly so, Like
Speaker 1: I'm from a Gusta, Georgia, which is where the Augusta
Speaker 1: National Golf Course takes place, the most exclusive and whitest
Speaker 1: place on the planet, the Augusta National, And every year
Speaker 1: they hold the Master's Tournament and is a real um
Speaker 1: ship show there. And I happened to be visiting my
Speaker 1: mom um and she lives really close to the National
Speaker 1: Golf Course. And it's funny because a good friend of
Speaker 1: ours and friend of the show, Frank Well Herron, his
Speaker 1: family has these you know, Master's tickets at the enam
Speaker 1: of the tournament, and we were talking about how you
Speaker 1: just can't get them. They're so exclusive that they're passed
Speaker 1: down generationally, and it's sort of a closed system and
Speaker 1: you can like buy other people's tickets, but if you
Speaker 1: buy someone's ticket and then you act a fool at
Speaker 1: the master's, that will come back on the people who
Speaker 1: you bought tickets from. So it's very uh, high society,
Speaker 1: high falutin situation. And then I ended up back in
Speaker 1: Atlanta as the winner. Um, some white dude was announced
Speaker 1: and it became it. It was on the TV at
Speaker 1: this place called the brew House and little five points
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, and it went from the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the slowest sports Alive broadcasts, you know, to the white
Speaker 1: people hugging channel, and that's a lot of that three
Speaker 1: under par Interesting, I love the color commentary because even
Speaker 1: the color commentary is subdued, you know, where they say uh.
Speaker 1: And interesting fact about this athlete. He has two different dogs,
Speaker 1: they're both names. One of his legs is slightly shorter
Speaker 1: than the other, and he's he's made it work. He's
Speaker 1: made it work, and he prefers right, and he prefers
Speaker 1: to say one leg is in fact longer than the other.
Speaker 1: So a bit of a real glass has glass half full,
Speaker 1: half empty, kind of guy. You know, he's a glass
Speaker 1: glass half full guy. But I'm going e somewhere with
Speaker 1: the last thing I say, I joke the white people
Speaker 1: hugging channel I I kid you not. Once the win
Speaker 1: or is announced, it is just like I gotta fill
Speaker 1: out the broadcast day, I guess. So it just becomes
Speaker 1: like every imaginable type of frame shot of white people hugging.
Speaker 1: And then finally at the end when they before they
Speaker 1: go to commercial and like where they're done with the
Speaker 1: broadcast day. It's just a one shot kind of or
Speaker 1: two shot rather of the winner whose name eludes me
Speaker 1: and is irrelevant, uh and his wife slow motion hugging
Speaker 1: said against the beautiful backdrop of the augustache, which, to
Speaker 1: be fair, it is a feat of modern gardening engineering.
Speaker 1: They literally freeze the flowers with liquid nitrogen in advance
Speaker 1: of the event so that they bloom magically just right
Speaker 1: on time. And it was it was Scotty Schleft. So
Speaker 1: we are, yeah, we are going somewhere with this because
Speaker 1: one thing that the spritual cultural, the culture of the
Speaker 1: of the Masters has in common, I would say with
Speaker 1: today's episode is there's very much a sense of exclusivity.
Speaker 1: There's very much them versus us. An in crowd and
Speaker 1: an outcrowd. And what we're seeing in today's story is
Speaker 1: a story about how people can react on mass when
Speaker 1: they feel their insider status is threatened or when they
Speaker 1: feel the their hierarchy is being challenged somehow. And this
Speaker 1: story takes place in London in May, the first day
Speaker 1: of May, which is, you know, in averse creativity, home
Speaker 1: to a celebration called May Day, you know, dance around
Speaker 1: the may pole, marching around for various causes. But today's
Speaker 1: stories also about a time May Day went very wrong
Speaker 1: in London. In that's right, we're talking about London under
Speaker 1: Henry the eighth. Um. It was a back a milion time.
Speaker 1: Lots of carousing and drinking and cavorting. I don't know
Speaker 1: it was what it wasn't between carousing and cavorting, I
Speaker 1: don't we'll sort that outlier, um. But yeah, in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century folks in London, Um, it was kind of
Speaker 1: it was high times. The Feast of Saint Joseph the
Speaker 1: Laborer was another big events of the season. The start
Speaker 1: of summer. There would be lots of boozing and schmoozing
Speaker 1: and all that good stuff. The city would be decorated
Speaker 1: with these beautiful kind of green bows, and folks would be,
Speaker 1: you know, dressed in costume playing the hero of of
Speaker 1: the working man, rob from the rich and gave the
Speaker 1: poor and all that robin hood. But this particular may Day,
Speaker 1: the festivities took a bit of a turn. They sure did.
Speaker 1: Uh We're gonna learn how over one thousand people ran
Speaker 1: uh muck through the city, wreaking havoc. Within days, hundreds
Speaker 1: of folks got arrested, more than a baker's dozen were
Speaker 1: executed in very messed up ways. This is the story
Speaker 1: of evil may Day, and it's a story of xenophobia.
Speaker 1: It's a story of social dynamics. It's a story of
Speaker 1: panic and looking back, it is also a ridiculous story.
Speaker 1: A lot of our research here, by the way, is
Speaker 1: coming from an excellent Smithsonian article by Lorraine Bosigo, who
Speaker 1: quotes an awesome professor named Paul Griffith's. The title is
Speaker 1: on Evil made a Londoner's rioted. Not gonna read the
Speaker 1: whole headline yet, because we're we're gonna ask some questions
Speaker 1: for you at the end of this. So if you,
Speaker 1: if you look back in the fifteen hundreds in London.
Speaker 1: We we talked about this time period of a few
Speaker 1: episodes ago. If you look back, London is a booming
Speaker 1: city at this time in the early sixteenth century, and
Speaker 1: because it was a hub of commerce and industry, it
Speaker 1: also became a hub for immigration. A lot of people
Speaker 1: from the European continent. We're coming to London for opportunities.
Speaker 1: You know, when we talk about um, we're talking about journeyman, right,
Speaker 1: the journeyman system. A while back, we learned journeyman would,
Speaker 1: on their way to becoming a master their craft, they
Speaker 1: would go where the work was. So if you were
Speaker 1: in Italy, you probably wanted to go to Rome, that's
Speaker 1: where all the jobs were, or you know, you wanted
Speaker 1: to go to Prague. You wanted to find the big cities,
Speaker 1: basically because the big cities held the jobs. So Dutch folks,
Speaker 1: Italian folks, Russian merchants, lots of bankers as well. They
Speaker 1: all came to London, which was fine. It was okay
Speaker 1: with most people so long as the economy was doing
Speaker 1: well and so long as they weren't in the grips
Speaker 1: of a terrible epidemic or plague. Unfortunately, around this time period,
Speaker 1: fifteen seventeen early fifteen hundreds, London did have an economic downturn.
Speaker 1: They did have an epidemic something called sweating sickness. Have
Speaker 1: you guys heard a sweating sickness? Yeah, it sounds pretty, uh,
Speaker 1: pretty unpleasant. Is it a matter of like getting like
Speaker 1: a like a bad fever. What's that? What's it caused by?
Speaker 1: It's weird because from what I understand, I was looking
Speaker 1: into this a little bit earlier. What I understand is
Speaker 1: that it was a mysterious disease. We know it was contagious,
Speaker 1: but since about the late four hundreds fourteen eighty five
Speaker 1: or so, it was regularly infecting large parts of various countries.
Speaker 1: We know that there are some things, some diseases we
Speaker 1: recognize in modern medical parlance today that can cause sweating,
Speaker 1: like tuberculosis or indocarditis, which is just affection of heart valve.
Speaker 1: It's weird because we we could almost do an episode
Speaker 1: of it. Honestly, the last epidemic was in fifteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: and it hasn't it hasn't occurred in a long time since.
Speaker 1: No one's exactly sure. They think maybe it's a sitting
Speaker 1: numbre hand of virus. Just kind of group of virus
Speaker 1: that usually caused kidney failure syndrome. But yeah, there was
Speaker 1: a mystery disease. Let's for our purposes today. That's the
Speaker 1: scary part. Not only was the economy in the crapper,
Speaker 1: but also people were getting sick and no one knew why.
Speaker 1: This was not a problem that John Snow could solve
Speaker 1: like Colt like he did with cholera. I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: Maybe we talked a little bit about the economics because
Speaker 1: this kind of yeah, almost always goes hand in hand
Speaker 1: with economic problems. Yeah, so there was a certain boom
Speaker 1: time element at play, with wheat prices being pretty low
Speaker 1: um in the early part of the sixteenth century. The
Speaker 1: harvest from fifteen sixteen saw a tiny little increase but
Speaker 1: nothing super significant, but that paired with a decrease in
Speaker 1: wages and something that was referred to as a droughty
Speaker 1: and frosty winter, along with the introduction of the disease
Speaker 1: in question, caused some of the lower to mid class
Speaker 1: Londoners uh to become very very anxious about the future.
Speaker 1: There was a simmering kind of tension and resentment from
Speaker 1: the lower class against the upper class that had the
Speaker 1: potential to be sort of a powder keg situation. Um
Speaker 1: they're always was kind of a bit of xenophobia m
Speaker 1: as remains the case and in many parts of Europe
Speaker 1: with a lot of immigrants and foreigners being seen as
Speaker 1: kind of others that referred to as strangers in their
Speaker 1: midst in the history of Vault dot co dot uk article,
Speaker 1: but we looked at for this episode and there was
Speaker 1: a lag with legislation that kind of would help, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of mediate these these tensions a bit because nothing
Speaker 1: was put in place to limit the economic activities of immigrants,
Speaker 1: So I do not necessarily was a good thing, but
Speaker 1: it was something that I think the the you know,
Speaker 1: indigenous Lendoners would have preferred to have some sort of
Speaker 1: protection against um, you know, people coming from other countries
Speaker 1: to take their jobs. So it wasn't until the fifteen
Speaker 1: twenties that this kind of like listen was put in place,
Speaker 1: but that was largely because of the riotous events of
Speaker 1: Evil may Day, Yeah yeah, or Ill may Day as
Speaker 1: it was also known. There was this palpable sense of
Speaker 1: tension in Old London town at this time. The kind
Speaker 1: of stuff you could cut with a butter knife through
Speaker 1: the air. This was also on the rump end of
Speaker 1: the War of the League of Cambra, a war against France.
Speaker 1: England had fought this on and off for years and years,
Speaker 1: and it had an enormous cost, both in terms of
Speaker 1: blood and in terms of treasure. And religious authorities were
Speaker 1: super anxious about all kinds of heretics and lasphemer's who
Speaker 1: were waging a war for the hearts and minds of
Speaker 1: the faithful. Fund side note, Just a few months later
Speaker 1: this same year, in October, Martin Luther would dale his
Speaker 1: famous n theses to the door. So these issues all
Speaker 1: inner mix in this gumbo of this gumbo of bad vibes,
Speaker 1: and uh, they have gumbo at the time. I'm just
Speaker 1: editorializing a lot of the cosmics. Right right, It moves
Speaker 1: to the beat of jazz. We used to joke about
Speaker 1: that and how it moves to jazz. Londoners started to
Speaker 1: question the legitimacy and the wisdom of their government, and
Speaker 1: Shannon McSheffrey, who is a professor of history at Concordia
Speaker 1: University in Montreal, said, quote, artisans and English merchants were
Speaker 1: united in a sense against these foreigners who are coming
Speaker 1: in and had unfair advantages, allowing them to prosper while
Speaker 1: the English board had economic problems. By the way, we're
Speaker 1: talking about these foreigners, which Londoners of the time called
Speaker 1: them strangers, not foreigners. They just said these strangers and
Speaker 1: our shows. But there weren't a whole bunch of them.
Speaker 1: Most estimates say they were about fifty thou people in
Speaker 1: London at this time. Two percent of those were born
Speaker 1: somewhere else. At the most extreme estimate, maybe six percent
Speaker 1: were born somewhere else, but it was by no means
Speaker 1: a huge minority the population. Still, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of widespread poverty. People's lives were terrible. Folks were getting sweating, sickness,
Speaker 1: you name it. And that's something that Paul Griffith's, who
Speaker 1: is a professor at Iowa State University, mentions he's a
Speaker 1: history professor. He noted that there was this sense among
Speaker 1: the working class, especially that these strangers were taking work
Speaker 1: away from honest london Ers and that they would they
Speaker 1: would control various industries, particularly the wool trade. So the
Speaker 1: idea was that there was an insidious conspiracy on the
Speaker 1: part of some of these foreigners, which obviously is not true.
Speaker 1: But when people are in desperate times, they often want
Speaker 1: to have an enemy well, and they're vying for limited
Speaker 1: resources and real estates and um supremacy in these particular industries.
Speaker 1: And frankly, I mean a lot of times, you know,
Speaker 1: folks that are litill come in from other countries or
Speaker 1: they have it way worse, are gonna have a better
Speaker 1: work ethic and they're gonna come in and like set
Speaker 1: up shop and absolutely kick ass. Let's take a big claim.
Speaker 1: And if there aren't either laws in place or oversight
Speaker 1: or some way of keeping things, you know, quote unquote fair,
Speaker 1: then you're all is going to have people who want
Speaker 1: to see themselves as better than another group that's quote
Speaker 1: unquote coming in to take what's theirs. Uh. And without
Speaker 1: some form of of mediation or at least oversight, this
Speaker 1: can blow up because you know, especially when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with folks who are living on the edge of poverty,
Speaker 1: you're going to have these tensions potentially erupt. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and they did. And this is a big part of it,
Speaker 1: like I said, was because of finite kind of infrastructure,
Speaker 1: things like the geography of the city. Griffiths goes on
Speaker 1: to say that some of the foreign merchants UM lived
Speaker 1: in what we're referred to as liberties, which were essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, racially divided enclaves like St Martin Legrand, which
Speaker 1: were outside of the city UM and had their own
Speaker 1: sort of self sufficient government, which was perceived as an
Speaker 1: advantage for the foreigners, who, you know, we're able to
Speaker 1: kind of band together and get this special treatment. And
Speaker 1: they looked at it as as as an excuse for
Speaker 1: them to not have to learn the language that I
Speaker 1: have to proper league, you know, integrate into London life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to further set up something. Uh,
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians. This is not me defending the xenophobic crowd,
Speaker 1: but there is. There are a couple of things in
Speaker 1: addition to the Liberties that really ticked off native london Ers,
Speaker 1: and it's this Henry the eighth and the crown. They
Speaker 1: had an iron grip on what guilds and city governments
Speaker 1: could and could not do. They could set up rules
Speaker 1: regarding trade and production, but the king could veto those rules.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't apply to foreign artist. So Professor McSheffrey points
Speaker 1: out something that seems silly now, but we have to understand,
Speaker 1: this made a lot of cobblers livid. If you were
Speaker 1: a four and shoemaker, the King would let you make
Speaker 1: shoes and styles that native London shoemakers were permitted to make.
Speaker 1: And this meant that the aristocracy was gonna buy the
Speaker 1: hot new sneakers, you know what I mean, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word. But because of this, they were
Speaker 1: given advantages, they were given distinct advantages. So this wasn't
Speaker 1: these objections weren't coming out of nowhere. But John Lincoln
Speaker 1: and the priest Dr Bell absolutely capitalized on this. In
Speaker 1: the weeks before May Day, John Lincoln started going around
Speaker 1: to priest and saying, look, the big Easter sermon is
Speaker 1: coming up. You need to talk about the problem with
Speaker 1: these strangers taking over London. To be clear, Lincoln himself
Speaker 1: was not a priest. He was a merchant, He was
Speaker 1: a broker, and he had a lot of ties in
Speaker 1: government and in trade, and he managed to convince one guy,
Speaker 1: one priest, Dr Bell, to talk about this. In his
Speaker 1: address at the St Mary's Spittal, he told his idiots
Speaker 1: foreigners eat the bread from poor fatherless children, and told
Speaker 1: the English to cherish and defend themselves and two hood
Speaker 1: and grieve aliens. Not very christ like I would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: just gross uh christ like at all. Um. But this
Speaker 1: nationalistic you know, taking advantage of these tensions and you know,
Speaker 1: of poor people who are concerned for their livelihood and
Speaker 1: for being able to you know, provide for their children.
Speaker 1: The idea of the evil foreigners stealing bread of the
Speaker 1: mouth of the elderly and the in the week, and
Speaker 1: and you know, the the youth and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: We see this all the time. We see this like
Speaker 1: with you know, like World War two and then Hitler
Speaker 1: and him taking over after the crushing defeat that Germany
Speaker 1: saw during World War One and all of the um,
Speaker 1: you know, the hardships of that brought. And we've seen
Speaker 1: it in the United States of America. The idea of
Speaker 1: you know, highlighting the otherness of groups that quote unquote
Speaker 1: don't belong here, you know, using these dog whistle kind
Speaker 1: of terms. This goes well beyond dog whistle terms. And
Speaker 1: it's very straight to the point basically saying, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna demonize the hell out of these people and cause uh,
Speaker 1: you know Native Londoners to rise up, right, Isn't that
Speaker 1: essentially what he's asking people to do. Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: he's it. Also if you want to more recent historical example,
Speaker 1: unfortunately dot to look far at all. But you see
Speaker 1: this in the US today, whatever the economy is not
Speaker 1: doing well. You also see it in films like Gangs
Speaker 1: of New York, which is almost a beat by beast
Speaker 1: example of rilling up the lower socio economic strata against immigrants,
Speaker 1: even though they're both working class and have much more
Speaker 1: in common with each other than they do with the
Speaker 1: ruling powers with the brass. That's true. I actually recently
Speaker 1: just watched the Steven Spielberg remake of West Side Story,
Speaker 1: and if you're in the musical theater at all or
Speaker 1: just good film, I highly recommend it. I thought it
Speaker 1: was fantastic. I loved every second of it. But it
Speaker 1: is about, you know, these native kind of New Yorkers
Speaker 1: um and then this their gang in the jets versus
Speaker 1: these immigrants from Puerto Rico, which was newly declared I
Speaker 1: believe been correctly if I'm wrong, in that era a
Speaker 1: territory of the United States, so they were able to
Speaker 1: immigrate much more easily. And then they you know, built
Speaker 1: all these shops and did what I was describing earlier
Speaker 1: and kind of like bootstrapping and all that stuff. And
Speaker 1: there was a lot of instant resentment which was fed
Speaker 1: and almost encouraged by the higher ups in the police force.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got your officer crub Key, who's on
Speaker 1: the street just trying to keep law in order. But
Speaker 1: then you've got the detective character who is secretly when
Speaker 1: the Puerto Rican gang leaves, is basically encouraging the jets
Speaker 1: to keep doing what they're doing. And this, and in
Speaker 1: all many of these cases, what you see is a
Speaker 1: call to arms or a call to action on behalf
Speaker 1: of a local authority. So it might be a business person,
Speaker 1: it might be a religious figure. That's what was happening
Speaker 1: here in London. This got a lot of attention. We
Speaker 1: have a quote from a Venetian ambassador who was writing
Speaker 1: about this on the fifth of May in fifteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit long, but it's important. It's explicit.
Speaker 1: So I suggest that we divide and conquer here and
Speaker 1: old all right, So he says, after Easter, a certain preacher,
Speaker 1: at the instigation of a citizen of London, preached as
Speaker 1: usual in the fields where the whole city was in
Speaker 1: the habit of assembling with the magistrates. He abused the
Speaker 1: strangers in town and their manner and customs. And pause
Speaker 1: here because the next part is important. The next part
Speaker 1: is just not him having a problem, it's him telling
Speaker 1: them to do stuff. M Yeah, so it goes on
Speaker 1: to say, in addition to uh abusing the strangers in
Speaker 1: town and their manner and customs, he also allowed that
Speaker 1: they not only deprived the English of their industry and
Speaker 1: of the profits arising therefrom but this on their dwellings
Speaker 1: by taking their wives and daughters. Oh. Really gross fearmongering
Speaker 1: and that othering um with this exasperating language and much more. Besides,
Speaker 1: he's so irritated the populace, that's putting it lightly that
Speaker 1: they threatened to cut the strangers to pieces and sack
Speaker 1: their houses on the first of May. And that's quoted
Speaker 1: as Venetian ambassador who is literally just kind of standing
Speaker 1: aghast watching this on fifth of May seventeen. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: this is this is far beyond just free speech about
Speaker 1: having a problem. This is and they didn't have the
Speaker 1: same free speech laws obviously, but it is directly telling
Speaker 1: people in the crowd to attack these folks and Mick
Speaker 1: Scheffrey says, you got a bunch of young men together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: alcohol and grievances and righteous calls for patriotism, then their
Speaker 1: combustible situations. So in the final days of April, We've
Speaker 1: got a great recount of this from an author named C.
Speaker 1: Bloom in their book Violent London, two thousand Years of Riots,
Speaker 1: Rebels and revolts. Foreigners start getting man handled in the street,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, let's say you're a
Speaker 1: Dutch shoemaker. You're walking by, and then somebody like spits
Speaker 1: on you. Someone just shoulder checks you, and he gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse, and the word is out. There's something
Speaker 1: fell in the wind. By April, the rumor is that
Speaker 1: Londoners are going to attack foreigners. And a guide named
Speaker 1: Cardinal Thomas Woolsey. Here's about this. Now, he is King
Speaker 1: Henry's right hand boy. They hang out, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, They trust each other. And then then this
Speaker 1: means that Wolsey can do a lot of things for
Speaker 1: King Henry that maybe the Crown wouldn't necessarily do officially,
Speaker 1: so we can exercise soft power. And he says, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get the mayor and the Alderman of
Speaker 1: London to my house and they meet up at his
Speaker 1: house and Woolsy and the crew said, we're gonna nip
Speaker 1: this in the bud. We're gonna have a curfew. And
Speaker 1: so the institute a curfew or they want to, but
Speaker 1: they were already too late. In retrospect, it looks like
Speaker 1: maybe the city government wasn't super keen to help stop this, uh,
Speaker 1: this violence that was coming up on May Day because
Speaker 1: a lot of those guys agreed that the crown was
Speaker 1: overly favoring foreign merchants and craftsmen. And uh, one guy
Speaker 1: did try to I don't know, this kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: One guy did try to to enforce the curfew by himself,
Speaker 1: like just him as the alderman. Uh. He found these
Speaker 1: two guys that were out drinking and celebrating April, and
Speaker 1: then he uh and then he was he said, okay,
Speaker 1: you two, you young ruffians, there's a curfew, get indoors.
Speaker 1: Get indoors for the curfew. And then the and then
Speaker 1: a crowd swarmed him man and they whipped him six
Speaker 1: ways to sundown. Yeah, it really escalated with rallying cries
Speaker 1: of apprentices and clubs echoing through the streets within just
Speaker 1: a few hours of that inciting event, and then you
Speaker 1: had a thousand or more roughly young men all gathering
Speaker 1: around in an area called Cheapside. And this is from
Speaker 1: Steve Rappaport in Worlds within World, Structures of Life in
Speaker 1: the sixteenth century London, UM. And of course we know
Speaker 1: Thomas Moore from his treatise Utopia. UM. He was actually
Speaker 1: something called an under sheriff at the time, that deputy.
Speaker 1: This is definitely not the sheriff. Yeah, it's you sheriff.
Speaker 1: I think of this dude like the alderman, the under sheriff.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of those titles that doesn't sound for stigious,
Speaker 1: does it, No, not particularly, But he's that he's that
Speaker 1: saying uh. And you know, we know, you know, he
Speaker 1: becomes a very important political figure in terms of just
Speaker 1: like modern political theory, you know, with Utopia. By the
Speaker 1: time he was he was installed in this kind of
Speaker 1: like bureaucratic role and um, he was an observer of
Speaker 1: all of this and and and under his leadership, the
Speaker 1: authorities were almost nearly able to get a handle on things.
Speaker 1: But the mob proved to be a little too expansive
Speaker 1: and hardheaded and potentially super drunk. That's the thing too.
Speaker 1: You mentioned alcohol and uh, you know, righteous grievances. That
Speaker 1: is a hell of a drug combo right there. And
Speaker 1: so people started uh looting shops along St. Martin Legrand, which,
Speaker 1: as we said, was that um enclave, this one um
Speaker 1: the shoemakers in this region would have largely been Dutch.
Speaker 1: So then we have the Lieutenant of the Tower of London,
Speaker 1: Sir Richard Charmley, it was a very British name, and
Speaker 1: he ordered his men to go down there and start
Speaker 1: opening fire like yeah. In this article in Smithsonian, the
Speaker 1: quote is firing ordinance, But I mean that's basically just bullets, right, ordinances,
Speaker 1: just like big bullets. They were firing into the crowd. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this this is not you know, this is something
Speaker 1: that's frowned upon by world governments today. But even firing
Speaker 1: at civilians didn't stop their pillaging. They went beyond St
Speaker 1: Martin Legrand. They were sacking and pillaging any neighborhood that
Speaker 1: have foreign apprentices living in it and traders. And you
Speaker 1: know also there were actual native born Londoners living there.
Speaker 1: But if they were in the wrong neighborhood, their shop
Speaker 1: will be up for grabs. Two. Finally, the Lord's Marchant
Speaker 1: with some minute arms. In the early hours of May one,
Speaker 1: they put down multiple riots across London. Eventually there were
Speaker 1: an estimated twenty five thousand troops inside and around central London.
Speaker 1: This this went on for about four or five hours,
Speaker 1: I guess. Also, it's interesting the way it's described. If
Speaker 1: we go back to the Venetian ambassador we mentioned the
Speaker 1: gang of roaming ne'er do wells and rioters, they're described
Speaker 1: as wearing themselves out, which in my mind means maybe
Speaker 1: they got exhausted because they were drinking a lot and also,
Speaker 1: you know, rioting is an energy intensive activity. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're covering a lot of ground. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of steps in, not to mention that
Speaker 1: they're you know, potentially doing beat downs along the way
Speaker 1: and smashing shop windows and yelling a lot presumably, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see how they get a little bit tuckered
Speaker 1: out after a while, especially if there's booze involved, which,
Speaker 1: as we know in this time likely would have been beer,
Speaker 1: which is very filling and can make you a little
Speaker 1: bit sleepy. Yeah, and they might have run out of
Speaker 1: beer by the point, and there was into it early on,
Speaker 1: but then like at this point there's like as an
Speaker 1: old suthers like full entire and wanted to take a
Speaker 1: nap now yeah, and then okay, So this Venetian ambassador
Speaker 1: says that he feels Cardinal Woolsey and his crew had
Speaker 1: done the right thing and that activating these troops, even
Speaker 1: if you're firing into a crowd, did prevent further violence.
Speaker 1: And here's here's the weirdest part. This is not necessarily
Speaker 1: the crux of the story in terms of the human
Speaker 1: toll taken. There were multiple neighborhoods with a lot of
Speaker 1: damage done, but no one had been killed, which is
Speaker 1: amazing because what happens after the riots is the really
Speaker 1: interesting part. It is I just want to double back
Speaker 1: really clearly that they must be using the term ordinance
Speaker 1: here to refer to some sort of suppressive, non lethal
Speaker 1: alternative to bullets, like nowadays we think of firing into
Speaker 1: a crowd for crowd control. It would be something like
Speaker 1: rubber bullets, you know, which is painful and if you
Speaker 1: catch one in the eye and get blinded, but it's
Speaker 1: not going to kill you. But if there were no
Speaker 1: deaths and they're firing into a crowd, it must have
Speaker 1: been something like bird shot or like you know, rock
Speaker 1: salt or something like that that would have like mellowed
Speaker 1: people down and caused them to disperse, but not like
Speaker 1: executed them. Yeah. Yeah, the ordinance didn't kill anybody either
Speaker 1: that we know of for sure. The weird thing is
Speaker 1: that the Crown used this acting out, use this riot
Speaker 1: as a way to or they used as an opportunity
Speaker 1: to give themselves more power. First, to understand this, we
Speaker 1: need to go to Joan Paul, writing for the History
Speaker 1: Vault with the article Immigrants and Propaganda, which is about
Speaker 1: the fifteen seventeen Evil May Day riots, and Paul explains
Speaker 1: it this way, saying that you have to understand the
Speaker 1: essence of tudor international affairs and the importance of political performance.
Speaker 1: The rioters who got apprehended weren't just charged with rioting
Speaker 1: and disturbing the peace. They were charged with treason because
Speaker 1: their attack on foreigners could be interpreted as an act
Speaker 1: of war against those foreigners home countries, meaning it could
Speaker 1: be a breach of the piece that Henry the eighth
Speaker 1: had worked hard to establish with all other Christian princes,
Speaker 1: so they in their mind, in Henry's mind at this time,
Speaker 1: that violence is not violence against foreign dignitaries and shoemakers.
Speaker 1: It is an act of via lens against the crown
Speaker 1: and against the state itself. So it's seditious, it's treasonous.
Speaker 1: Three hundred people get arrested, one of whom is our
Speaker 1: boy Lincoln from earlier, and uh, he gets, along with
Speaker 1: I think thirteen other people, he gets the absolute worst punishment,
Speaker 1: which we were talking about a little bit off air. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: William William Wallace type treatments. Max, you wanta you want
Speaker 1: to fact us up with that one? Do I have
Speaker 1: to what Hung, John and Quarter is. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a oh god, it's about as bad as it comes. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of this should I leave out? Guys? Well, no,
Speaker 1: I think we want the people to to understand the
Speaker 1: full weight of this punishment. I mean, I brought up
Speaker 1: and we were talking about it off air. It's like,
Speaker 1: you really gotta do all three? Is one of them
Speaker 1: just to start with a humiliation, because I mean you
Speaker 1: could any of these acts would kill you. But Hung
Speaker 1: is where they start you off, and you're hung by
Speaker 1: your neck, right, but you don't die yet, and then
Speaker 1: they tie you to a horse right after. So how
Speaker 1: they would do I mean, this is one of these
Speaker 1: punishments where they got kind of like I guess, lazier
Speaker 1: over time, and they brought it over to the colonies
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly. But they would hang you till
Speaker 1: your basically dead and then chop you off of their
Speaker 1: emasculate you, disembowel you. Then the head you pick your head,
Speaker 1: put it on a spike, yeah, and then quarter you
Speaker 1: chop your body into four parts. Wasn't there a version
Speaker 1: of this that involved being tied to two horses that
Speaker 1: were slapped and pulled in different directions. That's when they, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't have all the stuff where they
Speaker 1: would hang you to your death and then die you
Speaker 1: tie you up by a horse and then have the
Speaker 1: horses just running. Yes, yeah, typically you would be Typically
Speaker 1: the horse part would take place like in their early days.
Speaker 1: The horse part would be when they fasten you to
Speaker 1: a wooden panel and then tie that to a horse
Speaker 1: and then the horse just runs and drays you in
Speaker 1: a very ignoble way to the site of your non
Speaker 1: lethal hanging. But I heard there was a version of
Speaker 1: that where it eveloped two horses that would like be
Speaker 1: one horse would be tied to one leg one or
Speaker 1: the other and then they get slapped on the button,
Speaker 1: go in opposite directions and rip you in half. Well,
Speaker 1: this is interesting. So being pulled apart by wild horses,
Speaker 1: you'd usually have four horses, and that was typically execution,
Speaker 1: a kind of execution that was reserved for regicide, the
Speaker 1: murder of a monarch. I see some of these are
Speaker 1: I'm sort of I'm sort of mixing my my brutal
Speaker 1: um death sentences here. But this is the thing this
Speaker 1: Uh I was talking about this off air. You know,
Speaker 1: I understand wanting to set an example by an execution,
Speaker 1: but after a certain threshold, it feels like someone's doing
Speaker 1: it for fun. You know, that's so extra like after
Speaker 1: a certain point, they're just desecrating a body, right, and
Speaker 1: there's no mind there too counter the punishment for its actions.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there were brutal You know what we could
Speaker 1: we could do, Uh, we could do an episode on
Speaker 1: the weirdest, strangest execution methods. But I think we need
Speaker 1: to pop a disclaimer on that because they for everybody um,
Speaker 1: I just realized the guys just just while while you
Speaker 1: were describing this, Ben, I was just doing a little googling.
Speaker 1: The drawn part literally refers to being drawn behind a horse,
Speaker 1: like in the street, and oftentimes they wouldn't disembowel you
Speaker 1: while you were alive. You would hang until you were dead,
Speaker 1: and then they would just like you said, Ben, just
Speaker 1: desecrate the hell out of your corpse, you know, to
Speaker 1: further humiliate you and uh and tarnish your chances of
Speaker 1: going to the afterlife, I guess. And look, you know,
Speaker 1: it's really like make other people like like, oh, so
Speaker 1: you should not consider doing anything like that, because look
Speaker 1: at what we're doing to this first spot. And they
Speaker 1: distribute the bits to to the various parts of the
Speaker 1: realm exactly. Don't forge about the spike and this this
Speaker 1: is the you know, one thing note about inequality that
Speaker 1: haunts me with this is that for a lot of
Speaker 1: people executed in this fashion, being drawn, like I was
Speaker 1: saying earlier, being tied to that panel and drugged behind
Speaker 1: a horse, it's kind of the closest they would ever
Speaker 1: get to riding a horse. It's a real munch's pause
Speaker 1: situation for anyone who's like, one day I want to
Speaker 1: ride a horse monkeys finger curls. Uh, yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: leaving only the middle, finger, only the middle. And so
Speaker 1: fourteen people, including Lincoln, meet their death in this tremendously
Speaker 1: gruesome way. And then on May four the government of
Speaker 1: London and the you know, the legal apparatus charge almost
Speaker 1: three other people, not just dudes, men, women, and children
Speaker 1: with high treason. How are you going to charge a
Speaker 1: child with high treason? What eight year old is? Like?
Speaker 1: The revolution begins today. Here's the thing, though, if that
Speaker 1: sounds weird to anybody else, there's a pretty good indication.
Speaker 1: I think that this charging of all these people, men, women,
Speaker 1: and children was a set up for a little bit
Speaker 1: of political theater, that's right. I mean, it really was
Speaker 1: kind of a way to maybe prevent further revolution or
Speaker 1: to kind of quell any kind of discontent, or to
Speaker 1: make people feel like justice, justice had been served, but
Speaker 1: it maybe hadn't exactly. Um, there were another four hundred
Speaker 1: riders that were condemned to that same you know, horrible
Speaker 1: end of of of being hanged, drawn and quartered. But
Speaker 1: the Queen Catherine of Aragon, the Queen of England, supposedly,
Speaker 1: you know, in a in a moving show of of emotion,
Speaker 1: a real display is described as on her bended kneed
Speaker 1: obtained their pardon, all four hundred of these, uh, to
Speaker 1: show mercy, to show this, this this magnanimity, you know,
Speaker 1: coming from the highest possible office in the land. Um like,
Speaker 1: look at me in my mercy. Yeah, that was absolutely
Speaker 1: And then it was like a what do you call it?
Speaker 1: We have to remember foreign courtiers would have been there too,
Speaker 1: so it would be like, look, how merciful and good
Speaker 1: the queen and therefore the government is. And so that
Speaker 1: got that appealed to the aristocrats. But then they wanted
Speaker 1: to look even better to the common people. Right, what's
Speaker 1: that song? Is a pulp common people? So they wanted
Speaker 1: to pull pull one of those be like common people do?
Speaker 1: What common people do? And what do common people do?
Speaker 1: They thought they forgive. So there's this other huge thing
Speaker 1: at Westminster Hall on May twenty two, and the cardinal
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier, Wolsey and Henry our boy the
Speaker 1: King make these long speeches about you know, justice and
Speaker 1: the nature of punishment for rebellion. They bring these almost
Speaker 1: three prisoners in and they've got ropes tied around their
Speaker 1: neck like they're just about to be killed, and then
Speaker 1: they all fall down on their knees at once. This
Speaker 1: is clearly choreographed, and they're going mercy, mercy, please. And
Speaker 1: then the cardinal and the other like nobles joined in,
Speaker 1: and I think this is super fake by the way.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you can tell by the way
Speaker 1: I'm talking about it, but they joined and they're like, oh, King, please,
Speaker 1: and you're infinite majesty and mercy forgive these these prisoners.
Speaker 1: And they act like they're literally begging him. But backstage
Speaker 1: they all knew how this show was supposed to go.
Speaker 1: It's like a wrestling match. This is the wild man.
Speaker 1: I mean that, you're right, then, this was totally political
Speaker 1: theater because they essentially um the way history of all
Speaker 1: dot co dot uk points it out, and I completely agree.
Speaker 1: They refrained what was clearly a xenophobic riot between Londoners
Speaker 1: and you know who they saw as these foreign you know,
Speaker 1: invaders taking their job, their livelihood, their whole way of life,
Speaker 1: and they reframed it into a rebellion against the state
Speaker 1: because again, and there was some truth to that, because
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of these things where if you're
Speaker 1: in the game of of politics, the game of thrones here, um,
Speaker 1: you do a lot of things to make sure that
Speaker 1: you are seen in a certain light by your allies
Speaker 1: and even your enemies. And when the common people took
Speaker 1: this into their own hands by you know absolutely um,
Speaker 1: beating in the streets and defacing the property of these
Speaker 1: immigrants wasn't a good look for the Crown to those
Speaker 1: allies and could potentially exacerbated things with some of those enemies.
Speaker 1: So they flipped it and made that really the focus
Speaker 1: by saying, no, these are traitors to the crown. And
Speaker 1: then they were able to flip the script once again
Speaker 1: by showing this just absolutely you know, christ like mercy, uh,
Speaker 1: and essentially through all of this having a win by
Speaker 1: in the end having everyone even more loyal to the
Speaker 1: crown because they saw, oh, they spared the lives of
Speaker 1: these men you know who I identify with, whomever you were. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was incredibly clever, you know. And then
Speaker 1: the next thing we have to ask about really is
Speaker 1: the legacy here. What changed? Everybody got a shot of
Speaker 1: propaganda and state loyalty. Fourteen people were killed in gruesome way.
Speaker 1: Everybody else got off due to the apparent the apparently
Speaker 1: spontaneous mercy of the king, but not much really changed
Speaker 1: for the strangers. For the foreign born residents of London.
Speaker 1: The issues with immigration persisted after Evil may Day, and
Speaker 1: there were more and more regular tussles regarding immigration and
Speaker 1: migration in the late sixteenth century early seventeenth century, especially
Speaker 1: when Protestants began a having after the Reformation, you know,
Speaker 1: after England broke with the Roman Catholic Church, and these
Speaker 1: folks were religious refugees, that's what they were seen as.
Speaker 1: So they were at first welcomed, but then they also
Speaker 1: set themselves up in economic niches. They started to really
Speaker 1: represent in different specific industries, and so again the problem occurred,
Speaker 1: and you had English born folks saying, well, I don't
Speaker 1: care if they're Protestant, they're taking over the wool game,
Speaker 1: and we're the woman here, uh and yeah. And people
Speaker 1: talked about constantly. It's in plays, it's in ballads. Even
Speaker 1: Shakespeare gets involved talking about it. It It left a
Speaker 1: lasting impression. There's a really cool wood cut um image
Speaker 1: on the Smithsonian MAGA article on Evil may Day. Londoner's
Speaker 1: rioted over foreigners stealing their jobs. By Lorraine I believe
Speaker 1: it's bossa no might be bosan no bo I S
Speaker 1: s O N E A U L T. Lovely article
Speaker 1: call from seventeen. At the very top, you can see
Speaker 1: a depiction of kind of like the early seeds of
Speaker 1: this riot, you know, with people kind of looking like
Speaker 1: we're a little bit grumpy and malcontented, and you can
Speaker 1: kind of see the sides um, you know, starting to
Speaker 1: form um in this image. It really isn't that persistent
Speaker 1: kind of in the zeitgeist and in in the and
Speaker 1: it led to it's sort of that set a precedent
Speaker 1: in some ways where it's like, okay, we can't let
Speaker 1: these things at the out of hand. But it just
Speaker 1: meant that a lot of these resentments and um biases
Speaker 1: and bigoted behavior just we're a little bit more underhanded.
Speaker 1: Maybe not quite as like large scale riots in the streets,
Speaker 1: but I mean, we know this kind of behavior exists
Speaker 1: to this day. It has a couple of different meanings
Speaker 1: depending upon one's perspective. On one side, you know, as
Speaker 1: Professor Paul Griffith said, it can remind those in authority
Speaker 1: about the danger of working class rebellion. But then from
Speaker 1: another perspective. It kind of gives you this this romanticized
Speaker 1: sense of the valiant apprentice, the hero of the working
Speaker 1: class who was standing up to the corruption in the
Speaker 1: halls of power. And this again, both of those perspectives,
Speaker 1: in their own way are valid, and they both come
Speaker 1: in handy time and time again. You're never too far
Speaker 1: away from a riot or revolution, no matter where you live.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of that excellent quote that no society
Speaker 1: is more than three meals away from revolution. It's often
Speaker 1: attributed to Lenen, but a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: people have said it, and they've said it because it's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it sure is. And these are the types of disputes
Speaker 1: that really can only take place between folks who are
Speaker 1: living on the edge of survival. Um, you know, the
Speaker 1: the disagreements and and wars and struggles of the upper
Speaker 1: class take on a completely different tone and oftentimes these
Speaker 1: uh as we've seen here, these types of struggles are
Speaker 1: capitalized on by the upper class in order to further
Speaker 1: their own agenda as opposed to like, the question remains
Speaker 1: like do they actually do the crown actually care about
Speaker 1: either of these parties. I think the answer is probably no.
Speaker 1: I think it was more used as a political bargaining
Speaker 1: chip or a way to kind of stage that excellent
Speaker 1: bit of political theater. Agreed, Agreed, and that's that's a
Speaker 1: lesson that I think we can all take away from this.
Speaker 1: Even in two fellow ridiculous historians. This was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a long win, but we really wanted to
Speaker 1: explore it together, and we hope you enjoyed this exploration
Speaker 1: as much as our own super producer, Mr Max Williams
Speaker 1: will surely enjoy editing it. Thanks Max, You're an unsung
Speaker 1: hero indeed. Uh. In addition to Max, we also thank
Speaker 1: his brother, the composer of our theme song here, Mr
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, wherever he may wrong, God bless you, Sir
Speaker 1: Christopher hacionas Eve Jeff Coates here in spirit. Yes, and
Speaker 1: of course thanks to our own one man riot, Mr
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister h. He has
Speaker 1: not been drawn and quartered at this time. Just just
Speaker 1: a shot him a note for confirmation and he said,
Speaker 1: why would you ask me that? So I think he's fine,
Speaker 1: and uh, happy may day, I guess yeah. In advanced
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts for
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.