The Peasants' Revolt, also known as the Great Revolt, was a largely unsuccessful popular uprising in England in June 1381. The rebellion's leaders included Wat Tyler and they wanted massive social changes which included a removal of the poll tax, an end to the cap on labour wages, redistribution of the Church's wealth and the total abolition of serfdom.
The revolt began in the south-east of England and then spread to London and elsewhere. Although desiring social change, the rebels did not want to remove King Richard II of England (r. 1377-1399). It lasted only four weeks and was put down by Richard, first by negotiation and then through ruthless persecution of the ringleaders. The consequences of the revolt were, therefore, limited, but the poll tax was abandoned, restrictions on labour wages were not strictly enforced, and peasants continued the trend of buying their freedom from serfdom and becoming independent farmers.
Causes of the Revolt
The Peasant's Revolt of June 1381 was the most infamous popular uprising of the Middle Ages and it was caused by a simmering discontent in England that went as far back as the middle of Edward III of England's reign as king (1327-1377) and the arrival of the Black Death plague in 1348. It was, though, Edward's successor, Richard II of England, who had to deal with the chaos when the widespread discontent boiled over into all-out rebellion.
The principal causes of the Peasants' Revolt were:
- a new poll tax imposed on all peasants irrespective of wealth (the third such tax since 1377).
- the limit by law on wages after labour costs had risen dramatically following the Black Death plague.
- unscrupulous landlords trying to turn free labourers back into serfs (aka villeins) to save money on wages.
- a general feeling of exploitation by local authorities during a time of economic decline.
Violence Erupts
The uprising began, then, in May-June 1381 in England's south-east where royal tax inspectors were investigating why tax returns had been surprisingly low. These inspectors suddenly met with opposition for their demands for payment of the poll tax which Parliament had passed in November 1380. Officials and sheriffs were kidnapped and murdered. Bands of rebels toured the countryside on horseback, torching manors and destroying their records - a clear indicator of the peasants' desire to overturn manorialism. The public records at Maidstone, Rochester, and Canterbury all went up in flames. The ringleaders seemed to be better-off small farmers and included in their number parish priests and village constables. This was not a revolt of the absolute poor but those commoners who had something to lose. The Crown sent men-at-arms to deal with the problem areas, but these were too few in number and many were killed.
Two leaders, in particular, came to the fore. Wat Tyler of Maidstone, perhaps a former soldier but any certain details are lacking, and the demagogue priest John Ball, who radically sought for more equality in society. Ball had already seen the inside of a prison a few times for his extreme preaching.
Consequently, with leadership, genuine grievances and an ideological framework to justify their actions, the disturbances developed into a full-scale rebellion with a mission: confront the King and get things changed. It is important to note, however, that the rebels did not want to topple the king and their members even swore an oath of loyalty to 'King Richard and the true Commons'. The rebels marched to London on 11 June - causing much havoc on their way - where they were joined by equally discontented townsfolk illustrating that the revolt was not simply one of feudal labourers. In London, there had long been rivalries between the rich and poor, factions of the Church, medieval guilds, native and foreign merchants, and apprentices and their masters, and all these divisions would be widened by the revolt. Some chroniclers noted the rebels now numbered over 60,000 people, and all this while the king's army was in Scotland.
The Peasants' Demands
When the mob got to London on 13 June they continued to loot, pillage, and murder. Lawyers, foreigners, and petty officials of the Crown were just some of the groups targeted as old grudges resulted in wanton acts of vengeance. Prisoners were freed while those thought to be guilty of crimes were hanged by peoples' courts.
Although only 14, King Richard emerged from the safety of the Tower of London and bravely promised to meet the protest leaders at Mile End, a field on the outskirts of London. There Richard listened to their demands and blithely promised to meet all of them, issue charters accordingly and even permitted Tyler to extract justice on any person he thought deserved punishment. Tyler then promptly ordered the storming of the Tower of London and had the hated Chancellor, Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, decapitated on Tower Hill.
The participants of the Peasants' Revolt demanded the following changes:
- the total abolition of serfdom
- a repeal of labour laws limiting wage increases brought in after the Black Death
- free fishing and hunting rights for all
- more peasant participation in local government
- the Crown should be the only authority in the counties, not local lords
- the redistribution of the Church's riches, especially of the great abbeys
Richard then employed the much-used tactic of making a load of extravagant promises he had no intention of keeping such as giving everyone involved royal pardons. These promises were enough to stave off more rioting, and the mob disbanded, escorted out of London by the city's militia.
Consequences of the Revolt
Utterly ruthless, Richard next ensured that around 150 of the rebels were hanged, so many that new gibbets had to be built for the purpose. Wat Tyler's head was displayed on London Bridge. There were other minor outbreaks of rebellion thereafter, but these were mercilessly quashed and their ringleaders executed as traitors. As the king boldly stated: 'villeins ye are, and villeins ye shall remain'. The whole affair was perhaps the high point of Richard's reign as things went downhill from then on, the once-admired young king turning out to be a major disappointment and ending his days with a short imprisonment and a mysterious death.
Ultimately, though, there were social changes in England, as had already be seen prior to the revolt. The poll tax was abandoned, the limits on labourers' wages were not rigorously enforced, and serfs continued to buy their freedom. Significantly, the law and legal records were now used not by landowners to enforce an obligation of labour but to demonstrate a labourer had legitimately bought their freedom and could pass on their land to their descendants.
Text From Worldhistory article Peasants' Revolt
Another England: The Story of the Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt
- ๐ปLink to all Hexbear comms https://hexbear.net/post/1403966
- ๐ Come listen to music and Watch movies with your fellow Hexbears nerd, in Cy.tube](https://live.hexbear.net/c/movies
- ๐ฅ Read and talk about a current topics in the News Megathread https://hexbear.net/post/5042186
- โ Come talk in the New Weekly PoC thread https://hexbear.net/post/4738774
- โจ Talk with fellow Trans comrades in the New Weekly Trans thread https://hexbear.net/post/5039365
- ๐ New Weekly Improvement thread https://hexbear.net/post/5031369
- ๐งก Disabled comm megathread https://hexbear.net/post/4891939
- Parenting Chat https://hexbear.net/post/5020579
reminders:
- ๐ You nerds can join specific comms to see posts about all sorts of topics
- ๐ Hexbearโs algorithm prioritizes comments over upbears
- ๐ Sorting by new you nerd
- ๐ If you ever want to make your own megathread, you can reserve a spot here nerd
- ๐ถ Join the unofficial Hexbear-adjacent Mastodon instance toots.matapacos.dog
Links To Resources (Aid and Theory):
Aid:
Theory:
- โค๏ธFoundations of Leninism
- โค๏ธAnarchism and Other Essays
"On previous occasions they had been persuaded to such thoughts by a mad priest from the county of Kent called John Ball, and for his mad words he had been thrown into the Archbishop of Canterbury's prison a good many times; for on Sundays after mass, when the people were leaving the church, this John Ball had been in the habit of going to the lectern and preaching there, causing the people to gather around him, and saying to them,
'Good people, things in England cannot work, nor will they until wealth is shared equally; until there are neither peasants nor noblemen and we are all united. Why are these men, whom we call lords, masters over us? What have they done to deserve this? Why do they keep us in servitude? Do we not all come from one father and one mother, Adam and Eve? How can they claim or prove that they are any more lords than we are, except by forcing us to earn and toil for what they spend? They dress in velvet, silks and satins lined with miniver and grey fur, while we wear poor cloth. They have wine, spices and good bread while we have rye, bran and straw and drink water.
They have their ease in fine manor houses, while we have toil and labour, and the rain and wind in the fields, and from our exertions comes the means for them to maintain their estates. We are called serfs and beaten if we are not at their beck and call, yet we have no figurehead to whom we may complain, nor who might be inclined to listen to us or administer justice. Let us petition the king for he is young, and we will make him aware of our servitude and tell him that we would wish things to be otherwise or else we will find our own remedy. If we go to him directly and as a group, all manner of people who are called serfs and are kept in bondage will follow us in order to be liberated. When the king sees or hears us, he will provide a solution, peaceful or otherwise.'"
-From Froissart's Chronicles Book II, translation taken from the Online Froissart webpage
if only he knew
The parlaying force shouldn't have listened to Richard II (accounts said that Wat Tyler ordered archers to fire) big mistake. Guillaume Cale of the Fr*nch Jacquerie believed the same, he was promised surity of safety when he was approached to come to terms, the French magnates broke their promise because they said that he wasn't under the social conventions of "chivalry", grabbed him and tortured him for days before executing him and dispersing the Jacquerie and raining hell on peasants in reprisal.
Woah, what a crazy guy. A full on joker.
"He therefore urged them to be men of courage, and out of love for their virtuous fathers who had tilled their land, and pulled up and cut down the noxious weeds which usually choke the crops, to make haste themselves at that present time to do the same. They must do this first, by killing the most powerful lords of the realm, then by slaying the lawyers, justiciars, and jurors of the land, and finally, by weeding out from their land any that they knew would in the future be harmful to the commonwealth. Thus they would in the end gain peace for themselves and security for the future, if after removing the magnates, there was equal freedom between them, and they each enjoyed the same nobility, equal dignity, and similar power." - Thomas Walsingham, Chronica maiora
He was a fascinating historical figure, being a priest he had a modicum of education and while we don't know much about John Ball, I'm sure he could have just lived a cozy life but he didn't. He was the only one of the tried leaders that was permitted to speak to defend himself which indicates that he had certain privileges of class unlike Jack Straw, another one of the leaders captured and executed. Ball got imprisoned multiple times, yet preached still (in the vernacular English rather than in Latin) after his release and was eventually forbidden to preach by the Archbishop of Canterbury. With his last imprisonment, he was broken out by rebelling peasants as they marched toward London.
What we do have of John Ball is secondhand accounts from chroniclers that are, of course, condemnatory of him, so the specifics of what he preached is tenuous. Apparently there were letters 'found' on a hanged rebel which are attested to him by Walsingham but again, they could be fabrications or true letters with exaggerated and stretched truths as often occurs with accounts by medieval chroniclers. Alongside his call for the abolition of class and the holding of property in common, he probably held some not very progressive viewpoints (one writing attested to him but again not confirmed for sure as his own, was not very kind to those born out of wedlock) but I consider him an incredibly important proto-socialist figure from history that preceded Thomas Mรผntzer by about a century. Interesting figure which we know little about and one of my faves from the Middle Ages.
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men. For if God would have had any bondsmen from the beginning, he would have appointed who would have had any bond and who free. And therefore I exhort you to consider that now the time is come, appointed to us by God, in which ye may, if ye will, cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty." - John Ball
John Ball more like John Ballz.
E:
John
&
Tyler