OCR A Level History A Y104-01 England 1377–1455 QUESTION PAPER Friday 10 June 2022 – Morning

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A crowd of turbulent and wicked men overran every district, oppressing the innocent and either killing or ill-treating the king’s judges and the nobles of the realm. After massacres at Canterbury ... and the neighbouring towns and villages, they gathered all together at Blackheath and sent for the lord king to go there to talk with them to approve them and their worthless doings. He travelled by water and when, from a distance, he saw that violent and disorderly company, he was afraid that if he approached them, he might imperil his royal majesty. Acting upon wise advice, he retreated and went to his Tower of London. William Thorne, Chronicle of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, written before 1397 Source B: An anonymous chronicler, with connections to the royal court, gives his version of events in 1381. The king was in the Tower, pensive and sad. He went up into a little turret, from where he could see a great number of the commons and he had it proclaimed that they should all go home peacefully and he would pardon every kind of trespass [lesser crimes]. They all cried with one voice that they would not go until they got the traitors in the Tower and had charters of freedom. The king gladly granted these and a clerk wrote out the bills in their presence, promising that he and his council would find remedies for their grievances. He sealed this with his own signet seal. Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333–1381 Source C: A monk at Evesham Abbey gives his account of what happened. The king ordered the lords and magnates of the realm to hurry to him in London to consider how so great a popular rising could be quelled, contained and pacified. It was decided that certain lords, with an armed force, should go into Kent, to calm down and pacify the people who had risen in this way. They would chastise and vanquish completely with the edge of the sword those who resisted them. The king, with great courage, went into Essex and pacified those parts. History of the Life and Reign of Richard II, written at the end of the fourteenth century Source D: A chronicler explains how the bishop of Norwich dealt with the rebels in Norfolk. The warrior bishop, ready to fight in open battle and indignant at the audacity of the ruffians, threw himself on the rebels with such force and courage that he reached their defences more quickly than the arrows of his men. The bishop’s forces fought more fiercely than the commons. He did not cease his violent struggles until the commons were ready to flee. Surveying everything like a general, he frustrated those who tried to get away and struck them down so that he achieved total victory. By then the chief instigators of the mob had been captured. Thomas of Walsingham, Chronicle, written before 1422 [Show More]

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