The Peasants’ Revolt, 1381

Between May and August 1381 England experienced a rebellion of dramatic severity and suddenness. The lower orders rebelled against the lawmaking and landowning classes and the incompetent minority government of the 14-year-old Richard II. They murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer of England, one of the two chief justices of the royal courts and numerous foreigners, merchants, lawyers and royal servants. Rebels from Essex and Kent invaded London, laid siege to the royal court in the Tower of London, burned down the Palace of Savoy and threatened to lay waste their own capital city. Urban rioting spread from Somerset to Yorkshire. The spirit of rebellion lasted all summer and was recorded with horror by contemporaries,  including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower and the chroniclers Thomas Walsingham and Jean Froissart. The revolt set a pattern for popular rebellion that lasted well into the 15th and 16th centuries – and perhaps lives on to the present day.

The Peasants’ Revolt terrified its victims and their kind. A rising of the common people was no political protest. It was a natural disaster. As John Gower wrote in 1378: 

There are three things of such a sort that they produce merciless destruction when they get the upper hand. One is a flood of water, another is a raging fire and the third is the lesser people, the common multitude; for they will not be stopped by either reason or discipline.

It was a time of great woe and shame. And it is for many reasons a defining and still resonant moment in English history. One does not have to be a Marxist to see that it was a rebellion – and the first English rebellion – of the workers against their masters. But there are more profound echoes with our current times: ordinary people protesting against an ill-managed, expensive war and the corruption of the super-rich who were seen to grow fat while the rest of the population were taxed through the nose; consciousness of and resentment towards the interfering presence of government in everyday life; the fear of homegrown subversive elements in society, organised in secret cells and mobilised through local communities.

Sound familiar? I hope it does. Yet if you were to ask the average, intelligent lay reader what they know of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, my guess is that they would tell you a few of the following things. First, they might say, Wat Tyler (a blacksmith? Or actually a tiler?) clobbered a taxman over the head with a lump hammer for lifting up his daughter’s skirts. Adam delved and Eve span from Blackheath to Smithfield until eventually the Lord Mayor of London committed some ghastly deed with a dagger and the whole thing came to a sordid end. As Sellar and Yeatman put it in 1066 and All That, ‘the Pheasants’ Revolts … were thus clearly Romantic episodes and a Good Thing.’

Let us revisit in more detail, then, the story of the Peasants’ Revolt. It is a complicated one, beginning in obscure circumstances and petering out without any immediately obvious gains. Yet it is also a rattling good story and it echoes, eerily at times, the great concerns and questions of today.

Like most social movements the origins of the Peasants’ Revolt were many and varied. To most chroniclers of the time the action didn’t start until Thursday May 30th, 1381, when men from numerous villages on the banks of the Thames estuary in Essex led an organised protest against royal justices holding peace sessions at Brentwood. Led by a man called Thomas Baker, they refused to answer to the judicial sessions, threatened the commissioners and made off into the woods. (Sad to report, Wat Tyler was at this point nowhere to be seen. And though the commissioners came armed they were probably not guilty of sexual molestation.)

These facts notwithstanding, during the fortnight that followed, disorder spread throughout Essex and over the River Thames into Kent. Great meetings were called in hub villages such as Bocking at which men (and women) swore oaths ‘to destroy divers lieges of the lord king and to have no law in England except only those they themselves move to be ordained.’ In other words, they committed themselves in organised cells to promote murder and anarchy. Between meetings, riders travelled around the countryside persuading or menacing others to join a movement of resistance to tax, law and government. Those villages that demurred were threatened with arson.

Eventually, when the revolt reached critical mass on June 6th, the rebels in Essex and Kent moved in parallel to kidnap the county sheriffs and thus cripple royal government. They then advanced on the major towns of Kent and finally organised a flash march from Canterbury to London, a sort of reverse pilgrimage in which the object was not worship but destruction. 

The disgruntlement that crystallised in Brentwood was connected to a wide number of complex long-term processes. Some of these stretched back to the first half of the 14th century. Most immediate was the poll tax that had been levied earlier that year, a decision passed at a parliament held in the midst of violent thunderstorms at Northampton in 1380. Parliament had recommended that the king levy a flat tax of three groats ( 1 2d) per head on every adult in the kingdom. It was an effort to shore up England's dismal position in her seem- ingly endless war with France, which had begun in the 1330s and had been in decline ever since the collapse of the Treaty of Bretigny in 1369, in which the French King John II had obtained his release having been imprisoned since his capture at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. Not only was the tax a gross and manifestly unfair one, it was also an exercise in buck-passing. The parlia- mentary commons felt that they had already pumped far too much money into a war that was poorly led and rapidly failing and it was about time, as they saw it, to pass on some of the burden of defending the realm to those beneath them.

From the point of view of the men who imposed the tax, collecting more from the lower orders made perfect sense. They saw the wealth of the labouring classes as a fruit ripe for the plucking. Since its arrival in England in 1348 the Black Death had wiped out between 40 to 50 per cent of the population. Labour had become scarce and expensive and labourers relatively well-off. Those who survived the plagues suddenly found that they could pick and choose their masters, name their price for services, build up their landholdings and begin to employ their neighbours.

All this had happened despite the best efforts of crown and legislature to enforce the social order by means of legislation and the legal system. The Statute of Labourers in 1351 had set out a schedule of upper wage limits for every conceivable kind of worker: mowers and reapers; swineherds and skinners; butchers and brewers; carpenters, masons, tilers, shipwrights, carters and more. Even centuries before Adam Smith, it was clear to see that this was an appalling injustice.

But in an aggressive attempt to enforce the labour laws, Edward Ill's govern- ment had sent frequent commissions out into the English shires to prosecute both the givers and receivers of 'excessive' wages. The common folk of England grew ever more used to seeing royal commissions in their localities, who came mainly to swindle people out of their wages. Small wonder that when Richard II's parliament began to levy poll taxes in the late 1370s, people felt they were caught in a scissor movement. On the one hand their wages were restricted and they were punished for earning what they were worth. On the other they were taxed harshly and regressively on what they did earn. The whole weight of royal law was being lined up against them and it was used not to provide justice but to oppress and impoverish.

On top of all of this were other influences: the destabilising effects of the war which had placed the south coast in perpetual danger of invasion by the French; the general feeling that the court had been corrupt and packed with toadies and wastrels since the last days of Edward Ill's government; and a specific hatred of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, who was the nominal figurehead of government during the minority of his nephew Richard II. Gaunt, who was thought to covet the crown for himself, was compared unfavourably with Edward the Black Prince, the son of Edward III and father of Richard II, who had died in 1376. Gaunt patronised the controversial Oxford don and founder of the radical religious movement, the Lollards, John Wyclif. He quarrelled viciously and frequently with the citizens of London. Scurrilous rumours circulated the City of London that Gaunt was a changeling: the son of a Ghent butcher. All of these factors combined in the summer of 1381 and were catalysed by the poll tax.

When the rebellion passed into Kent it gained a more radical character. A sort of rebel highway was soon established along the pilgrim road from London to Canterbury. Small local bands under the charismatic leadership of men like Thomas Baker and the early Kent rebel leader Abel Ker joined forces and formed a dangerous, fast-moving mob. When the rebels entered Maidstone and Canterbury townsmen joined them in rioting and smashing the houses of local lawgivers. Their main targets were almost invariably men who had been involved in law, tax and government.

At some point the maverick priest John Ball was sprung from the Archbishop of Canterbury's prison at Maidstone. Ball is manna for historians of the revolt for his is a rare clear face among the angry herd. His extrovert personality left a greater mark on the chroniclers of the time than almost any other character in the story, save perhaps John of Gaunt. Ball had a running feud with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England, Simon Sudbury. Sudbury had found repeated cause to imprison Ball for heretical and seditious preaching during the years preceding 1381. Ball was an inveterate preacher, hectoring impressionable parishioners in churchyards and calling for an end to lordship. He spoke in mystic riddles and there was undoubtedly a millenarian strain to his preaching. He was a fierce opponent of his own government and highly adept at inciting others to violence.

By Monday June 10th, the court, which was at this point at Windsor, began to grow seriously alarmed. Richard II's ministers sent envoys to Canterbury to attempt to negotiate a settlement. Not for the last time during the revolt diplomacy failed. Rather than dampening a provincial riot, the envoys were forced to concede to a meeting between the king and the rebels to be held on the outskirts of London.

The rebels marched to London in less than two days and arrived at Blackheath in the late afternoon of Wednesday June 12th. At around the same time, rebels from Essex were marching towards the north-east gates of London. It is almost certain that both camps were in contact with seditious elements in the capital and with one another.

Chroniclers estimated that there were 60,000 people camped at Blackheath. Even given the medieval tendency to wildly overestimate the size of crowds it was still obvious that this was a popular gathering of unprecedented size. There would have been a carnival atmosphere, for Thursday June 13th was the festival oí Corpus Christi which was marked by plays, processions, the ringing of bells and general mass gatherings. Just as modern protests in London have been organised on the semi-pagan occasions of April Fool's Day or May Day, so the 1381 riots owed a great deal to their timing.

By now the court had moved to the Tower of London, clearly fearing the worst. The king travelled downriver on Wednesday evening to meet the rebels, with Archbishop Sudbury and the Treasurer Sir Robert Hales on board alongside him. At this point and throughout the entire course of the rebellion both sides failed completely to understand one another's motives. When the rebels saw the royal barge approach they went berserk. This was almost certainly an expression of their excitement at catching a glimpse of their 14-year-old king whom they idolised. Unfortunately, the royal ministers (fearing, correctly, for their necks) interpreted the reaction as one of bloodthirsty rage and persuaded the king to retreat to the Tower.

We must imagine the impotence and disappointment felt by the rebels waiting on the riverbank for a chance to parley with a king. Nor is it hard to think of the terror that must have been felt in the Tower where every man save Richard II knew he was marked for death. The court was severely weakened by the absence of any of the king's uncles: Gaunt, Edmund Langley or Thomas of Woodstock. From this point onwards, the actions of rebels and government were characterised by rage and yellow funk respectively.

On Thursday morning, when the Corpus Christi bells were ringing around London, the Kent rebels stormed the capital. How and why they were allowed to cross London Bridge was the subject of a lengthy inquest after the revolt was over. Almost certainly there were more sympathisers to their cause in the City than there were opponents and the gate in the middle of London Bridge was lowered under duress.

Space here prohibits a full discussion of the violent crimes committed by the rebels during their time in London. Their principle actions on Thursday June 13th were to burn down Gaunt's Palace of the Savoy, attack the Temple,

hunt out and destroy legal records and drink themselves silly in the taverns. As the City burned, king and council sat in the Tower, their teeth chattering. An attempt on Friday June 14th to negotiate with the rebels at Mile End was a humiliating failure. The king was sent to the meeting as a distraction so that the archbishop and treasurer could escape from the Tower of London by boat. The king's total inexperience as a negotiator was immediately exposed and although he persuaded some of the rebels to go home, it was at the expense of a charter of rights, a blanket pardon and a promise that 'traitors' would be brought to justice. He had effectively signed death warrants for his two chief ministers.

Within hours of the Mile End meeting, the Tower, built by William the Conqueror as a supposedly impregnable fortress to dominate the City, had fallen to a mob of rural villagers and London townsmen. Sudbury and Treasurer Hales were captured and murdered along with several others on a block outside the Tower. The future King Henry IV was only saved when a loyal soldier hid him in a cupboard. He must have heard the chilling sounds of rebels screaming like peacocks as the noble heads were hacked off. These heads were stuck on poles and paraded down to Westminster past the still-burning ruins of the Palace of the Savoy.

The fall of the Tower marked the descent into total anarchy. Rioting and looting became indiscriminate. Westminster Abbey was invaded and desecrated with murder. Private scores were settled amid the chaos. In one of the rebels' most despicable acts, 1 40 Flemings were massacred, their headless bodies piled in the gory streets. A chopping block was set up at Cheapside for the butchering of 'traitors'. Word began to circulate that the power-drunk Tyler intended to burn the City to the ground.

The only men who kept their heads were the Mayor of London William Walworth and the veteran soldier Sir Robert Knolles. Eventually they persuaded the king that there was nothing more to be gained by appeasement. Another meeting was set up at Smithfield, the playing field and marketplace outside the City walls at which Tyler was given the chance to negotiate in person with the king. This part of the story is familiar: a cocksure Tyler approached the young king demanding the abolition of serfdom (an institution that was all but dead in many parts of the country) and various other granthose concessions. A scuffle broke out during which a royal attendant stabbed Tyler. He escaped, though mortally wounded, and Richard II, in a rare act of heroism, rode out to the assembled rebel army, declared himself their new leader and led them out of Smithfield. Walworth and Knolles, meanwhile, had a small band of soldiers waiting in the City which they sent to subdue the rebels and send them packing. Finally, Walworth found Tyler languishing in the Hospital of St Bartholomew and executed him in person. The revolt was over.

Or was it? In fact, this is only a part of the story. Following the events in London there were months of further rebellion. It gripped the country from the south-west to the north-east. There was also a judicial counterterror in which the vindictive side of Richard II was horribly evident. Gibbeted bodies and butchered hunks of rebel flesh hung in villages and towns the length of the land. By November 1381, Richard's own parliament was asking him to show leniency for fear that his cruel persecutions would spark another rising.

Finally, some remarks about writing medieval history: it is my firm belief that the history of England in the later Middle Ages has been wastefully neglected. It is no longer taught as a matter of course in schools or universities. And it has not been nearly so attractive to popular historians (by which I mean those who write for an intelligent lay audience, rather than for their academic peers) or those commissioning editors who make history programmes as, say, the Tudor period.

It is neglected partly because the sources are difficult, limited largely to formulaic legal records and the fanciful accounts of monastic chroniclers. The art is often one-dimensional and crude and the social archetypes not those we can immediately relate to. (Where are todays friars and tillers?) Pre-Reformation religion can seem superstitious and the medieval worldview obtuse and gullible.

The later Middle Ages are now dingy and distant to most modern readers and the characters are considered flat and cartoonish in comparison to the psychologically complex cast of the Tudor period. The great medieval events between Magna Carta and the Wars of the Roses are familiar in name but not in detail. The fragments that do pass down are usually borrowed and romanticised portrayals from different ages. In the case of the Peasants' Revolt that means the heroic 19th-century paintings of Tyler tussling with the mayor in the revolt's supposed denouement and perhaps the mad priest John Ball's sermon at Blackheath ('When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?') which had the convenience of being a neat rhyming couplet with an egalitarian bent to which we can still easily relate. Beyond that, all is sackcloth and darkness.

Yet medieval England provides the richest seam of stories about the formation of the country, with the greatest cast of characters. To tell these stories in a way that will appeal to the modern reader requires historical imagination and a sense for how an age that is superficially extremely different from our own is, below the surface, really very similar. There will be those who dislike my comparison between the rioting peasants of Corpus Christi 1381 and the G20 protestors who danced through the self-same streets beneath apocalyptic hobby horses this past April Fool's Day. But they are not so different. And we can learn much about one from the other. That, surely, is what history is for.

Dan Jones is the author of Summer of Blood The Peasants' Revolt of 1381.