Mutinous hordes of vegetables, reclamation of lands and bodies illegally commandeered by a bastard king:
..... William of Normandy (the Conqueror) was crowned King.
King William wasted no time establishing himself. He seized control of lands and embarked on a programme of castle building. Winchester remained the royal capital and William, who was fond of hunting deer, decided to create a specific area nearby for his sport.
In 1079 the area of some 150 square miles was declared a royal hunting ground by King William. Villages were depopulated and destroyed to clear the way. It is said that 36 churches were demolished during the creation of King William's New Forest.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Did the rebellion begin with the mysterious death of the floridly complected William II?:
In 1100 William's son King Rufus was killed by an arrow while hunting in the forest.
Rufus had introduced harsh penalties for breaking forest law and was very unpopular. It is thought that he was murdered.
A stone marks the spot where his body was found.
In King Rufus's days the punishment for poaching or taking wood from the forest was sometimes mutilation or death. Eventually, after much discontent, it was recognised that the forest folk had to be allowed some use of the forest in order to survive.
Was this payback for what his papa, William the Bastard, had done to England? Not only the confiscation of lands but the introduction of serfdom, ownership of other humans, body and soul:
.... In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy in northern France, crossed the Channel and defeated King Harold and his Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Hastings. He confiscated their lands and turned them over to his followers, creating a French-speaking aristocracy, and reducing the Anglo-Saxons to serfdom.....
The Anglo-Saxon serfs did the hard work; the French nobles enjoyed an easy life of leisure. For example, the serfs raised the livestock, which the nobles then confiscated for their own consumption, leaving the peasants to survive on oatmeal. Thus we call sheep, cows, and swine by their Anglo-Saxon names while in the field, and by their French names, mutton, beef, and pork, when on the table. Also, "hard" and "work" are Anglo-Saxon words, but "easy" and "leisure" are French.
http://www.hotforwords.com/...
The journey back, uncompleted even until this day, was slow and tedious and costly, but notable victories were attained along the way, such as the signing of Magna Carta by King John, great great grandson of the bastard William, which granted partial freedom to the bodies of some "Norman" Englishmen, the feudal lords:
38 In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.
39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.
Gradually, every Englishman, Norman or not, got to claim his very own self:
More freedoms were added in the 1620s when five knights were thrown into jail by King Charles I for not paying their taxes. The knights sued, on the basis of habeas corpus, on their right to remain free unless convicted of a crime. King Charlie took it upon his kingly self to say that, "By golly, I’m the King and I get to toss into jail anyone I want to (unless you’re a pretty wealthy sort of fellow)."...
But the Parliament, comparable to our Congress, had more gumption in those days and they got mad at the King’s presumption of power. In 1628, Parliament passed the "Petition of Right" law, which restated Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta and added that "writs of habeas corpus, [are] there to undergo and receive [only] as the court should order." It was later strengthened with the "Habeas Corpus Act of 1640" and a second "Habeas Corpus Act of 1679." The basic meaning of the 1679 law was that individuals cannot be imprisoned just because the King finds it inconvenient to have them running around, mouthing off and flipping their thumbs at his Royal Majesty. My thanks to John Hemming’s weblog for so nicely compacting several centuries of jurisprudence.
http://karenhedwigbackman.blogspot.com/
The John Hemmings site I cribbed from is at:
http://johnhemming.blogspot.com/...
Historically interspliced with the battle to regain habeas corpus was a similar battle to end the state of serfdom:
Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the best documented popular rebellion ever to have occurred during medieval times. The names of some of its leaders, John Ball, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, are still familiar even though very little is actually known about these individuals.
The rising is significant because it marked the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England though the revolt itself was a marked failure. It led to calls for the reform of feudalism in England and an increase in rights for the serf class....
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
And a battle to reclaim the lands confiscated by William the Bastard and his Norman nobility:
The Diggers [or ‘True Levellers’] were led by William Everard who had served in the New Model Army. As the name implies, the diggers aimed to use the earth to reclaim the freedom that they felt had been lost partly through the Norman Conquest; by seizing the land and owning it ‘in common’ they would challenge what they considered to be the slavery of property. They were opposed to the use of force and believed that they could create a classless society simply through seizing land and holding it in the ‘common good’.
To this end, a small group [initially 12, though rising to 50] settled on common land first at St George’s Hill and later in Cobham, Surrey and grew corn and other crops. This small group defied the landlords, the Army and the law for over a year. In addition to this, groups travelled through England attempting to rally supporters. In this they had some successes in Kent and Northamptonshire. Their main propagandist was Gerard Winstanley who produced the clearest statement of Digger ideas in ‘The Law of Freedom in a Platform’ published in 1652. This was a defence and exposition of the notion of a classless society based in secularism and radical democracy.
http://libcom.org/...
These momentous, historical days reverberated throughout the centuries, including the New Land with its new documents, its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution declaring new freedoms:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That "all men [and women among them] are created equal." What leveling words!
The pursuit of happiness! A new concept! The restoration of the Norman words "easy" and "leisure" to all.
Or, perhaps a return to the values held in old England before the bastard usurper, or in the New Land by the First Peoples there before the European invasion, or to what Americans held before its own King George III.
And finally, in regard to the American Democratic Republic, homage must be paid to the First People here who influenced the creators of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, the legacy of the Six Nations:
The people of the Six Nations, also known by the French term, Iroquois Confederacy, call themselves the Hau de no sau nee (ho dee noe sho nee) meaning People Building a Long House. Located in the northeastern region of North America, originally the Six Nations was five and included the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas. The sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, migrated into Iroquois country in the early eighteenth century. Together these peoples comprise the oldest living participatory democracy on earth. Their story, and governance truly based on the consent of the governed, contains a great deal of life-promoting intelligence for those of us not familiar with this area of American history. The original United States representative democracy, fashioned by such central authors as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, drew much inspiration from this confederacy of nations. In our present day, we can benefit immensely, in our quest to establish anew a government truly dedicated to all life's liberty and happiness much as has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years.
http://www.ratical.org/...
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
My word! Happiness! What an alien concept to the Christian Europeans.
That even a lowly serf might deign to be happy.