The Peasants’ Revolt 1381

Undoubtedly a major event in English history, this rebellion has been co-opted by various groups to make political capital. In particular many on the left have claimed it as an embryonic working class revolution, if from the Marxist line of history, a rather early one.

The truth, as ever, is rather less romantic, and as usual, several myths are involved. Far from revolutionaries, the insurgents converging on London in June 1381 supported the king. But they replaced the usual target of ‘evil counsellors’ by simply killing them, and murdered hundreds of innocent people along the way. Also the participants were not truly peasants (was England ever a peasant country?), but middle class and later, urban folk.

The background to what has more accurately been termed the Great Revolt is well enough known. With no adult king ruling, England had, since the death of Edward III been run by aristocrats and bureaucrats whose main aim had been to enrich themselves. This corruption was on both a local and national scale. It was compounded by price manipulation, three poll taxes to finance the long running war with France, and a series of land enclosures. On top of all this various parliamentary Acts, most notably the Statute of Labourers, 1351, sought, if not always successfully, to control the wages of ordinary working people.

Poll Tax

Under these burdens and with this provocation, especially the hated poll tax, the revolt began in May 1381 at Brentwood, Essex when tax commissioners were set on by villagers. This was the spark. Uprisings soon spread across the county and over to Kent. It was controlled and coherent ie. organised and well communicated, not the outpouring of ‘rustic underclass rage’ later chronicles suggested. Moves were co-ordinated between groups. It was angry, certainly, but focused. Tax and local commissioners were beheaded and their tax records publicly burnt. Jails were emptied and serfs freed. Thousands now marched on London taking their grievances to the capital. They demanded reduced taxation and to replace the king’s ‘evil counsellors’.

Tower of London 14th century

The rebels had no wish to kill or dethrone the teenage Richard II, nor to undermine the monarchy. They wanted to save it from itself. It was not the inevitable result of the class struggle beloved of Marxist historians, a political and social earthquake to transfer power and wealth - what we may term a ‘true revolution’. It was about fairer shares. The rebels’ early demands were to rid the country of corrupt officials, and the institutions and laws preventing people from living their lives free from undue state interference or illegitimate burdens.

Improving conditions

But despite the growing weight on peoples’ shoulders, the situation for many in this period was getting better. Statutes designed to cap wages after the Black Death of 1348-9 wiped out nearly half the English population, were increasingly ineffective as laws of labour demand and supply took over. Social mobility was developing as education improved general literacy rates. Personal wealth was growing, too, and against popular myth, water supplies improved so people were relatively clean. It all helped create a new ‘middle class’ - confident, ambitious, but with no say in how things were run.

It was these people, often with skills and even some land, who led the rebellion. A few were clerics and other professionals. Many of those protesting locally did not join the march on London. Thinking they had gained justice they went back home. But when in June thousands of others converged on the capital after failing to meet the king at Blackheath, the behaviour of some amounted to an orgy of violence and cruelty. Joined by many Londoners they murdered high ranking officials like Treasurer Robert Hales, and Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury. They also sacked several buildings, including the Savoy Palace, home of the king’s hated uncle, John of Gaunt, though he was away in Scotland. Most notoriously and horrifically, they killed some foreign residents, including about 80 Flemish weavers. Whatever the ends their means were particularly savage.

Killing of Wat Tyler at Smithfield 

At Mile End, the 14 year old king eventually met the rebels. But the crowd knelt down and their leaders welcomed him saying “Our Lord King Richard, we will have no other king but you”. Richard agreed to most of their demands which had grown into a fairly radical list - feudal serfdom abolished, no man to serve any other in England ‘except at his own will’, the right to buy and sell goods anywhere in the country, breaking the grip of the monopolies and guilds running the medieval economy; and the re-allocation of Church lands to the landless. Other demands were the execution of tax officials and other royal servants. Scribes were set to document letters on the agreement.

Smithfield confrontation

A day later, on June 15, with the rebels not departing and indeed entering the Tower, the king met them again at Smithfield. Richard was taking a risk, though perhaps not as much as the later narrative maintains - some sources speak of a reserve militia on standby. After an argument Wat Tyler was killed. He was stabbed by London’s Lord Mayor, William Walworth, with a dagger, and slashed by the king’s esquire, Ralph Standissh, with his sword. This might have been disastrous, but no. The king rode towards the rebels declaring himself their captain. Leave peacefully, and pardons would be honoured. Strangely, over the next few hours the throng gradually dispersed.

Richard II

The rebel leaders were supposedly Tyler and John Ball, the proto socialist priest. But Tyler was only a leader of the Kentish group and one of several who met the king. And there is little evidence Ball was even there - Lollards were not popular in London - and his line “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman” seems not to have been current but attributed much later.  

Aftermath

There were smaller outbreaks of dissent and related riots in different areas of the country over the next year, from Bridgwater to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, though by October 1381 the most serious of them had been put down. Revenge was brutal. Over 2000 and maybe as many as 5000 rebels were killed in related fighting or executed before or after trial. The agreement to their demands was abrogated as having been secured under duress. Serfdom was restored, with more control of free tenants, and while it had been gradually dying out for economic reasons, it was another 100 years before it completely faded away. A general pardon was eventually made available to most rebels, but had to be bought by each person after admitting involvement.

Juliet Barker’s impressive work is a prime source on this episode. The Revolt had some obvious and even beneficial consequences. No new taxes were levied for years, and the costly war with France temporarily scaled back. There was in practice insufficient political or administrative infrastructure to maintain rebel demands even had they been granted. Even so, it was the first time a revolt against the state had been led not by the nobility, but by ordinary folk. And the first time in history English people demanded personal liberty from the king. Finally, it would be 600 years before the government levied another poll tax. Was this enough of a result?