A shibboleth is a linguistic identity marker. It is a phrase (or custom) that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. Its functions as a password and excludes those that do not ‘belong’. A person whose way of speaking violates a shibboleth is identified as an outsider. 

The book of Judges (chapter 12: 1-15) describes the battle between two Semitic tribes in which the Ephraimites are defeated by the Gileadites. The victorious soldiers set up a blockade across the Jordan River to prevent fleeing enemies to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to cross the river to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s. They were thereby unmasked and killed. In ethnic conflicts language is all too often is a tool for persecution and brutality. 

The word ‘mob’ is derived from the Latin phrase ‘mobile vulgus’ (the fickle crowd). It had its origin at the period of the Exclusion Crisis when the nation became divided into party and faction, Whig versus Tory. Elections for parliament and other public meetings inevitably resulted in fights and disturbances. Initially the word the ‘mobile’ circulated to describe rioters. It was soon shortened to ‘mob’. Over the following decades, Londoners started to use the ‘slang’ neologism to describe urban disorder. 

The connotation of ‘political’ unrest may be a relatively recent one, but rioting had long been a facet of urban life. Londoners were used to social havoc in the metropolis. The first manifestation of mob violence was caused by the imposition of the poll tax in 1381. The revolt took place in the dark aftermath of the Black Death epidemic of the late 1340s which had devastating socio-economic consequences both in rural and urban parts of the country. 

Rioters rebelled against the landowning classes and Richard II’s government. Laying siege to the Tower of London, they murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer of England and numerous lawyers and Royal servants. The Peasant’s Revolt began in Essex in May 1381. Unrest spread quickly through the county and then into Kent. In June Wat Tyler joined the uprising in Maidstone and assumed leadership of the Kentish rebels. He marched his men into London and left a trail of destruction behind him. His men burned Savoy Palace, home of the hated John of Gaunt (Ghent), fourth son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, who took his name from the Duke of Brabant, his godfather and one of Edward’s allies in the Low Countries. 

Bringing the riot to an end proved difficult and the rebellion appeared to be out of control. A horde of drunken men went in search of immigrants and a massacre took place in the neighbourhood of St Martin’s Vintry. The riot turned into a lynch party long before the word ‘lynching’ was entered into the dictionary. The spirit of rebellion lasted all summer. 

The violence in London was related by the anonymous author of the Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381 in the following record: ‘whoever could catch any Fleming or other aliens of any nation, might cut off their heads … they went to the church of St Martin’s in the Vintry, and found therein thirty-five Flemings, whom they dragged outside and beheaded in the streets. On that day there were beheaded 140 or 160 persons. Then they took their way to the places of Lombards and other aliens, and broke into their houses, and robbed them of all their goods that they could discover’.

Jack Straw was a leading figure in the London riots who was later executed for his involvement. In The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Geoffrey Chaucer (whose father lived locally) refers to the massacre of Flemings by Straw’s gang:

Jack Straw and all his followers in their brawl | Were never half so shrill, for all their noise, | When they were murdering those Flemish boys.

One of the victims was the wine merchant and land-owning financier Richard Lyons. He owed a large house in Thames Street, a narrow riverside street in Vintry, which contained grand residences of courtiers and merchants. The street represented authority and foreign influence. Of Flemish descent, Lyons was killed in Cheapside on June 13, 1381, and his head was carried around the city on a pole. 

One of the victims was the wine merchant and land-owning financier Richard Lyons. He owed a large house in Thames Street, a narrow riverside street in Vintry, which contained grand residences of courtiers and merchants. The street represented authority and foreign influence. Of Flemish descent, Lyons was killed in Cheapside on June 13, 1381, and his head was carried around the city on a pole. 

Dozens of Flemings were dragged from their dwellings and the sanctuary of city churches, beheaded and their bodies left to rot. Nobody was spared during that violent outburst, except those who could plainly pronounce the shibboleth ‘bread and cheese’. If their speech sounded anything like ‘brot and cawse’, off went their heads, as a sure mark they were Flemish. 

Jean Froissart was born in 1337 at Valenciennes, Hainault, which was then part of the Low Countries. Around 1360 he was employed by Philippa of Hainault, Queen Consort of Edward III, as court poet and historian. In his Chronicles he described Wat Tyler’s rebellion and the violence against immigrants. 

A lavishly illustrated edition of his account was commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuuse, a nobleman within the Burgundian court and bibliophile from Bruges, who was awarded the title of Earl of Winchester by Edward IV in 1472. The four volumes contain 112 splendid miniatures, including images of Richard II meeting the rebels and the murder of Wat Tyler, in the style of Flemish illuminator Loiset Liédet. The London cityscape figures splendidly in the background of both scenes. It is a bitter irony that one of the bloodiest moments in London’s history of xenophobia helped to bring about what is arguably the capital’s most superbly illustrated book.

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