Jack Straw in English Culture
Whether Straw was a real person, a pseudonym for Tyler, or simply a result of confusion on the part of chroniclers remote from the events they were describing, he went on to become a part of the popular narrative of the revolt. Straw is mentioned in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, in the Nun's Priest's Tale, as the leader of a mob targeting foreign workers:
- Certes, he Jakke Straw and his meinee
- Ne made nevere shoutes half so shrille,
- Whan that they wolden any Fleming kille.
Straw was central to an anonymous 1593 play dramatising the events of the Rising, The Life and Death of Jack Straw. In the modern era, the rather confused reporting of events was briefly satirised in Sellar and Yeatman's parody of Whig history, 1066 and All That, stating that the peasants revolted "in several reigns under such memorable leaders as Black Kat, Straw Hat, John Bull and What Tyler?", with objectives including "to find out which of them was the Leader of the Rebellion".
Straw was commemorated in the name of a pub on the edge of Hampstead Heath, London, which closed in the 1990s. The Jack Straw's Castle, reputed to be the highest pub in London, took its name from a story that Straw addressed groups of rebels on the Heath from a hay wagon which became known as "Jack Straw's Castle".
The British politician Jack Straw (born John Whitaker Straw,1946) adopted the name "Jack", allegedly after the rebel leader.
Read more about this topic: Jack Straw (rebel Leader)
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