Peasants’ Revolt

Peasants’ Revolt, (1381), first great popular rebellion in English history. Its immediate cause was the imposition of the unpopular poll tax of 1380, which brought to a head the economic discontent that had been growing since the middle of the century.

Origins of the rebellion

The rebellion drew support from several sources and included well-to-do artisans and serfs as well as the destitute. Probably the main grievance of the agricultural laborers and urban working classes was the Statute of Labourers (1351), which attempted to fix maximum wages during the labor shortage following the Black Death.

The uprising was centered in the southeastern counties and East Anglia, but there were disturbances affecting many other places, including Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Somerset, and West Riding of Yorkshire. In some towns local conditions were decisive; at St. Albans and Bury Saint Edmunds the townsfolk rose to end the rule of the abbot and to secure municipal freedom.

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John Ball, Wat Tyler, and the march on London

The revolt began in Essex in May 1381, taking the government of the young king Richard II (then just 14 years old) by surprise. In June the rebellion spread from Essex to Kent, and the rebels freed John Ball, the so-called “mad priest of Kent,” from Maidstone prison. Ball had been excommunicated in 1366 for preaching about a classless society, and he was jailed frequently. Ball accompanied the rebels to London, and there he incited a crowd at Blackheath with the rhyme “When Adam dalf [dug] and Eve span [spun], Who was then a gentleman?” In other words, if the nobility did not exist at the Creation, from where did they derive their right to rule?

On the 13th the Kentish men, under Wat Tyler, entered London, where they massacred some Flemish merchants and razed the palace of the king’s uncle, the unpopular John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. With its armies far from the capital continuing to prosecute the war against France, the government was compelled to negotiate. On the 14th Richard met the men of Essex outside London at Mile End, where he promised cheap land, free trade, and the abolition of serfdom and forced labor. During the king’s absence, the Kentish rebels in the city forced the surrender of the Tower of London; the chancellor, Archbishop Simon of Sudbury, and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, both of whom were held responsible for the poll tax, were beheaded.

Wat Tyler’s execution and the suppression of the revolt

The king met Tyler and the Kentishmen at Smithfield on the following day. A disturbance broke out, and Tyler was treacherously cut down in Richard’s presence by the enraged lord mayor of London, William (later Sir William) Walworth. Tyler’s followers carried their grievously wounded leader to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, from which he was later dragged away and beheaded. Tyler’s head was mounted on a pole and paraded through London, before being mounted on London Bridge.

The king, with great presence of mind, appealed to the rebels as their sovereign and, after promising reforms, persuaded them to disperse. The crisis in London was over, but in the provinces the rebellion reached its climax in the following weeks. It was finally ended when the rebels in East Anglia under Geoffrey Litster, who had styled himself “king of the commons,” were crushed by the militant bishop of Norwich, Henry le Despenser, on about June 25. After the rebellion collapsed, Ball was captured and tried at St. Albans. On July 15, 1381, he was hanged, drawn and quartered, and his head was placed on a pike on London Bridge.

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Legacy of the Peasants’ Revolt

The rebellion lasted less than a month and failed completely as a social revolution. King Richard’s promises at Mile End and Smithfield were promptly forgotten, and manorial discontent continued to find expression in local riots. The rebellion succeeded, however, as a protest against the taxation of poorer classes insofar as it prevented further levying of the poll tax for more than 250 years The poll tax would not reappear in Britain until 1641 and the reign of Charles I.