Thomas Lodge - Broadview Press Publisher's Blog

1390
1395
find hope in his son’s untowardness, and the untoward
son take example to please his despairing
father. Here is ebon, 1 though black in colour yet
abiding trial. Let those that make no idol of their
wits be masters of this work; for the rest, they
shall, if they read, find a thorn where they seek a
thistle, and a reason to condemn themselves,
though they commend not this sequel. And so,
courteous gentlemen, relying on your favours, I
bid you farewell.
—1591
Finis.
The Life and Death of William Longbeard
Thomas Lodge’s account of the tragic career of
William Longbeard is based on the brief life contained
in Holinshed’s Chronicles. From this source, Lodge constructed
the plot of his narrative, following its outline
very closely, and even copying wholesale the speech
that William makes to the people (see below, lines 502-
41). However, his representation of William’s character
and motivations is somewhat ambivalent in contrast to
Holinshed’s resolutely damning portrait. Like Holinshed,
Lodge vilifies William as an amoral demagogue, a
hypocritical supporter of the poor and oppressed, a
danger to national stability, and a disrupter of “right
order” in civic and professional life; unlike Holinshed,
Lodge also celebrates William as a brave and resolute
citizen of London, as well as an eloquent orator and
accomplished poet.
According to his DNB biographer, Derek Keene,
William Longbeard was born William fitz Osbert (d.
1196), and although his London family was neither particularly
wealthy nor prominent—his father was a
clerk—he rose to become a significant force in municipal
and national politics. Returning from an abortive
trip to Jerusalem as part of the Third Crusade, fitz
Osbert became a catalyst for the dissatisfaction of the
London citizenry with the inequitable apportioning of
1 ebon ebony.
T HOMAS L ODGE
29
taxation: the mayor, aldermen, and other powerful individuals
were constantly forcing the middle ranks and
the poor to bear the brunt of such taxation in order to
ease the burden on themselves. In 1194, after William
charged his brother and other individuals with treasonable
words, he became perceived as the champion of
London’s over-taxed citizenry, quickly gathering the
support of large numbers of householders; moreover,
as Holinshed notes, William’s assertions that the King
was losing out on vast tax revenues on account of the
wealthy’s constant “tax evasion” gained him, initially at
least, royal favour. However, as also reported in Holinshed,
William’s growing power led to retaliation by the
government, headed in Richard I’s absence on the Continent,
by Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury;
after a failed attempt to arrest him publicly—William
arrived as ordered to speak with Walter, but he brought
with him a huge mob—Walter resorted to less obvious
methods; he set his men to watch William and arrest
him when he was relatively unaccompanied by followers.
Approaching William in the street, two were killed,
and William fled to the Church of St Mary-le-Bow
where he was later arrested, after having been ‘smoked
out,’ just as Holinshed and Lodge report. Lodge’s
account adopts many other details from Holinshed:
that William was condemned for treason along with
nine of his confederates, that he was venerated as a
martyr after his execution, that a priest declared the
chain used to hang William up had wrought miraculous
cures, that people gathered his blood as relics and to
use for such cures, and that Hubert Walter had the
people driven away by troops from the site of William’s
execution to prevent further “idolatry.”
However, Lodge does not include two incidents that
Holinshed offers in order to blacken William’s character:
Holinshed says that William acknowledged that he
had violated the sacred space of St Mary-le-Bow
Church by having sex there with his concubine during
the siege; and that he had murdered a man. Holinshed
says that both these actions only came to light after
William’s death. In Holinshed, William’s murder of
Arthur Brown serves as one of the revelations that
leads the people gradually to mitigate their high opinion
of William: “In fine, the opinion which the people had
thus fondly conceived of his virtue and innocency, was
by little and little removed out of their heads when