#John Tresilian

[newyorkthegoldenage]

At the Police Department commencement exercises on September 4, 1941, Mayor LaGuardia appointed Samuel J. Battle a member of the Parole Commission. Thirty years earlier, Battle had been the first African-American to serve as a police officer in the NYPD.

Photo: John Tresilian for the NY Daily News via Getty Images

[sharontates]

Gene Tierney poses in the News color studio, 1947. Photo by John Tresilian

[shredsandpatches]

sunday snippet (sing, John Ball, and tell it to them all edition)

I feel like I’ve been kind of in the zone writing about the Rising of 1381, and also the novelthing, since it has a lot of sex, needs more violence, and so this week I wrote up John Ball’s execution scene. It definitely balances the ratio out a little bit. But I think it actually came out pretty well and I’m a little bit “huh, so I can write a horrible medieval execution, I guess.”

I’m not giving you the whole scene below—it stops before the gross parts—but I really like the scaffold speech I wrote, even though I only technically wrote about three lines of it and pulled together the rest from the Wycliffe Bible and Ball’s sermon on Blackheath (admittedly, the version given by the hostile Walsingham, but it does evoke some of the language of Ball’s surviving letters. Incidentally: Walsingham was probably AT John Ball’s trial, which was held in St. Albans, and does not describe it in any way. This is a common sentiment here but: fuck you, Walsingham).

--

They have set up a throne opposite the scaffold. It glitters in the sunlight. Tresilian is at his right hand, looming over him like his ill angel, as he has ever since they left for Essex—ever since they returned to the Tower from Clerkenwell.

At the scaffold they have already lit the flame. Richard stares into it, although in the sunlight it seems feeble, scarcely like something that would burn a man’s heart and entrails. He remembers the fire he had felt inside himself, on the day of Smithfield; now he, too, feels like a thin flame that a slight breeze might easily snuff out. Richard wonders if John Ball had felt like that, when he preached on Blackheath—if he too had known himself filled with light. He wonders if that light still burns within him now.

His flame will be extinguished today.

Richard had expected jeering, from the crowd, although as Ball finally comes into view, dragged on a wooden frame behind a horse, there is only a murmur that rustles through the crowd like dead leaves blowing across stony ground. Tresilian rests a hand on Richard’s shoulder, just for a moment, in a gesture that might be a paternal reassurance, but the slight pressure he applies might also be a stern warning: now is not the time for mercy.

If you let this continue, he had said, the blood will be on your hands.

John Ball, though bruised from his ignominious journey, mounts the scaffold as if he were ascending the altar to say mass. He is not a big man, like Wat Tyler had been, although he looks as though he had once been well-fed, before extended imprisonment. His face is bruised in a way it had not been, during his trial. As the executioners strip him to the waist, his eyes meet Richard’s and Richard feels, for an instant, as if it is he who were being stripped bare.

This is in your name, Richard tells himself. You cannot look away.

Ball is given the chance to speak, one last time: to make a confession, or to plead for mercy and thus entertain the crowd. But when he steps forward, he is brief, and his voice is steady, firm. His flame has not been extinguished yet.

“Brothers and sisters,” he says, in his thick Yorkshire burr. “You have heard my message by now. I would say the one thing I have said again and again. God has made no distinction of men, between bondmen and free men. But the Evangelist tells us that our Lord—our only Lord, Christ who is in heaven, has said: ‘whoever receiveth not you, neither heareth your words, go ye from that house and city, and scatter the dust of your feet. Truly I say to you, it shall be more sufferable to the land of men of Sodom and of Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than to that city.’ And so I say the same unto you. Now is the time, appointed to me by God, in which I will cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.”

He steps back, offers his wrists to be bound, and inclines his head to receive the noose.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Herald Square, looking north, January 18, 1925.

Photo: John Tresilian for the NY Daily News via Getty Images/Fine Art America

[newyorkthegoldenage]

A crowd gathers in Canarsie to celebrate the opening of the 14th St. Eastern subway extension, 1928.

Photo: John Tresilian for the NY Daily News

[shredsandpatches]

sunday snippet (i do approve of his appellant-killing policy edition)

Wrote this a while back when I was thinking about how I was writing Lord Chief Justice Robert Tresilian in the aftermath of the Revolt vs. during the appellant crisis and decided I should just, you know, put it in the text. Last night while being frustrated about not being sure what I wanted to write I decided to tweak the scene a bit, so here’s some of that. I spent way too much time contemplating where exactly I should have Richard shift (unconsciously) out of the royal “we” here, but I think I have it right.

Tresilian was the probable author of Richard’s infamous “questions to the judges” in 1387, which were meant to establish the actions of the “Wonderful Parliament” of the previous year (described in the passage below) as treasonable, so this scene is leading up to that. The reference to the rebels of 1381 being guilty, or not guilty, of treason was a genuine controversy at the time, as the Treason Act of 1351 laid out very specific definitions for what counted as treason (it is still in force today, though the punishments are somewhat different). This is, of course, also why Richard needed to pose the questions to the judges.

--

“My lord,” Richard says, “I think you know that I didn’t approve of your handling of the Rising, back in ’81.”

Tresilian gives him a tight little half-smile, runs a hand through his hair, the red beginning to fade to a less remarkable yellow around his temples. “Your Highness made your disapproval quite clear,” he says, bending forward as if he can’t decide whether to bow properly or not. “You were very young then, my lord, and still quite new to your throne. I know your Highness meant well.”

“Indeed,” Richard says. “We may not have approved of your methods back then, but we do recognize the zeal with which you served us.”

Tresilian straightens, a hint of relief visible in his features. “I am glad of it, your Highness,” he says. “Especially in these times, when your Highness has enemies everywhere.”

“Yes,” Richard says. “Enemies mightier and more dangerous than Wat Tyler or John Ball could ever have been. We’re surrounded by traitors, Tresilian. Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick—they’ve turned the Parliament against us and mean to rule in our name. They harp constantly on how we should be fighting the French, and then they deny us the funds to actually fight the French. They convince the knights of the shire that we’re going to poison them all when we summon them to a meeting, so they can come to my palace themselves to threaten me. They dismiss my allies from office and appoint a council to choose my associates for me.” By now he is angry enough that his head is beginning to throb and his cheeks are flushing. He sighs heavily, presses his hands to his face. “Christ,” he says. “Sometimes I wish the French had invaded. Let them deal with that.”

Tresilian snorts a little in a way that at least sounds amused. “I wouldn’t make such a rash wish, your Highness,” he says. “I think we have the means to deal with your enemies without French assistance.”

Richard nods. “You’re extremely learned in the law,” he says. “This is treason—isn’t it? Gloucester said that there is precedent, for deposing a king. There’s also precedent to convict overmighty subjects of treason, right? My grandfather did it to Mortimer, you know. After the Rising, you helped my councilors overrule me. But I’m not a boy anymore. I won’t let them trample on my rights like this.”

“Your Highness,” Tresilian says, “I’ve already spoken to my lord of Suffolk. I see no impediment to building a case against them. It’ll take some careful argument, of course. But I think you’re absolutely right, my lord: if the rebels back in ’81 were guilty of treason—and I maintain they were—”

Richard clears his throat. He isn’t here to relitigate the revolt.

“—then certainly Gloucester and Arundel and their confederates are at least equally guilty, your Highness,” Tresilian concludes.

[shredsandpatches]

sunday snippet (i don’t approve of his peasant-killing policy edition)

For today’s Sunday snippet, a bit I wrote a while back, set after Richard witnesses the execution of John Ball. I think it’s pretty self-explanatory. Tresilian does end up being someone Richard comes to trust, despite his general disapproval here; he’s a shitty person but also, as it turns out, a King’s man, so Richard will be more than willing to use him as an attack dog against the Lords Appellant.

The passage below doesn’t have anything too graphic but does have some discussion of medieval executions (and display of bodies), a reference to animal death (in a hunting context, sort of), and some vomit. All of the events of the revolt in St. Albans, and their punishment, are historically accurate to the best of my ability.

--

Afterward, on the ride back to St. Albans Abbey, Tresilian talks at him about the trials, the people arrested in the days before the charters of manumission were revoked, the news from other parts of England. Richard nods whenever there is a suitable pause. He is only half listening. Tresilian doesn’t want his opinion anyway, just his seal on the commission. There will be more executions in the days ahead. Richard is quite certain he has seen enough, but he knows what Tresilian will say: you are the king, people expect to see you, your presence will emphasize that the rebellion has been well and truly crushed, they will doubt your resolve if you don’t attend. Before Smithfield, Richard had not really recognized how often people mentioned to him that he was the king precisely because they wanted him to do something he didn’t want to do. Since then, he has lost track of the number of times people have said it to him even today.  

The abbey itself is on high alert, even now. It was besieged (so to speak) by the rebels back in June, although surprisingly little harm had been done: the millstones that the abbey had seized from the townsmen and used for its parlor floor had been taken away, and a number of records were seized and burnt, but the millstones had been returned, as had the charters the townsmen had demanded that would confirm their ancient privileges, and there was almost no loss of life in St. Albans at all, except for one prisoner and a rabbit that was killed by poachers and displayed on the town pillory as a statement in favor of free hunting. Richard remembers a townsman from St. Albans called William Grindecobbe, who had sued for letters patent at Mile End. One of the monks had become convinced that this man had been in league with Wat Tyler, that Tyler had promised him twenty thousand men who would come to the abbey and behead all the monks, and his brothers had been perfectly eager to believe him, even after Richard had issued letters patent ordering that the monks—and their property—should not be harmed.

Tresilian had had him hanged, with two of his compatriots. He’d had to threaten three different juries with treason charges to do it. Since then, the townsmen have stolen the bodies from the gibbets to bury them in secret; Tresilian has been urging that they be found and hung in iron chains until they rot. As a warning against rebellion, he says. The abbot is fully on board with his plan.

It is only a short ride from the center of town to the abbey, and yet by the time they pass through the gates to the guesthouse, Richard feels as though Tresilian has been talking for hours. But despite his hard-learned lesson, in the past month, in how far the royal prerogative will stretch, he still has the ability to call for at least a small amount of privacy. When he reaches the elegant chambers, near the abbot’s private quarters, set aside for noble guests, he orders his attendants away and locks the door behind him.

As soon as he is out of sight of others, Richard can feel his hard-fought composure slip away, feel that hot, tight, prickly feeling in his temples. For a moment the world is red and he lashes out, shoving half-blind at the table at the foot of the bed, knocking it to the ground with a loud crash of clattering plate. There is an unfinished cup of wine on the table, abandoned this morning, and it leaves a bloody trail on the stones. Richard stumbles toward the privy then and vomits until his throat burns and his head throbs.

[shredsandpatches]

Every time I write about Sir Robert Tresilian I think about his appearance as my new historicist anecdote in the article I published on Thomas of Woodstock a few years back. My article was about textiles as an expression of historiography, so the point of leading off with this was the use of a frieze coat as part of the disguise, which is an addition of the Elizabethan writer John Stow--the original source, Henry Knighton, is less specific. In the play, a frieze coat is the title character's signature garment and is used as shorthand for his having the common touch and being a good counselor who cares for the welfare of the realm, frieze being considered a humble but characteristically British fabric. (This is not much like the historical Thomas of Woodstock at all.) Tresilian is a major character in the play and depicted very much as an enabler of Richard's extravagances, although the playwright (who had definitely read Stow) doesn't make use of this incident.

Anyway, this is a more obscure reference than Horrible Histories tended to go with, but wouldn't it have made a great Stupid Deaths entry?