|
Conflagration: The Peasants' Revolt |
|
|
|
|
In the spring of 1381, a rebellion occurred in England that threatened the very foundation of feudal government. No longer willing to accept the bonds of villeinage, thousands of peasants rose up and demanded legal recourse for the injustices of inherited servitude. The resulting explosion of violence and betrayal has gone down in history as the Peasants' Revolt.
Villeins, while theoretically "free" and owned by no man, were nevertheless bound by law to work the land on which they lived and provide services and goods to the owner of that land. They were prohibited from translating these services into cash and from paying rent instead of working. If they were ill-treated in any way by their landlord they could not speak against him in court; if they left the land without his permission they could be hunted down and imprisoned. There was no way out of this cycle of bondage except to change the law, but no one represented the peasantry in Parliament.
Why, after centuries of compliance with this system, did people accustomed to service suddenly rebel? The answer is that there was nothing "sudden" about it. Over the course of generations, conditions steadily worsened for the peasantry while the nobility not only thrived but displayed their riches with ostentation. The recurring conflicts of what would come to be called the Hundred Years' War drained England of manpower and funds alike, and be it in blood or money, it was the lower classes who paid the most dearly.
In the aftermath of the Black Death, unstable economic conditions led the English government to restrict wages in an attempt to control the rising costs demanded by skilled laborers. The result was the widely ineffective yet dangerously unpopular Statute of Laborers. At the same time, a shortage of food made it absolutely mandatory that as many farms as possible be worked, and the rights (such as they were) of the villeins who worked them were often overlooked in favor of turning a profit. Whether he stayed with his farm or found a way to move to the city, the average peasant would find it impossible to dig himself out of the hole into which the world seemed intent on shoving him.
To make matters worse, upon the death of King Edward III the crown passed to his young grandson Richard, and the reins of the country were put into the hands of a council led primarily by Richard's uncle, John of Gaunt. It soon became apparent that Gaunt cared less for the welfare of England than he did for conquering parts of the continent. Not only were issues of domestic importance ignored or mishandled, but the money to finance his expeditions was raised by round after round of injurious taxation.
Conditions were bad, but they'd been bad before. Now, however, an awareness of injustice had been awakened in the general populace. In the 1370's John Wycliffe had begun writing his revolutionary theories in which he tore at the roots of the papacy's power. Because of the spread of these theories, the Church, already unpopular thanks to a general failure of the clergy to live up to its standards during the plague, fell even further in the eyes of many people. For centuries the Church had been reminding peasants to keep their place. Now, slowly, serfs and laborers alike began to question just where their place was.
Wycliffe's theories were spread throughout England by his followers, who would later become known as the Lollards. Among these was John Ball, a particularly radical and outspoken priest whose speeches on equality and freedom landed him in prison on more than one occasion. Four hundred years later, these principles would form the founding philosophy of two successful revolutions and a brand-new nation; but in the fourteenth century they were considered by those of property, means and education to be "crazy," as Froissart recorded in his chronicles.
Crazy such ideas may have been to the rich, but to the "downtrodden masses," much of what John Ball was saying began to make sense:
"Are we not all descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve? and what can they show, or what reasons give, why they should be more the masters than ourselves? except, perhaps, in making us labour and work, for them to spend."The Chronicles of Froissart
If such grumblings and murmurs of discontent were heard by the upper classes, they were largely ignored. The prevailing attitude was: "They're only peasants. What can they do?"
Just what the peasants could do was about to be seen when Parliament decreed one poll tax too many.
Please join me next week for Part Two of Conflagration: The Peasants' Revolt. |
Sources and Suggested Reading
The links below will take you to mySimon, where you can compare prices at booksellers across the web. More in-depth info about each book may be found by clicking the "buy" button to go on to one of the online merchants.
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.
Peasants and Landlords in Later Medieval England by E. B. Fryde.
More at the Medieval History Site
Site
Map
FAQs
Quizzes
Reviews
Daily
Features
More about the Knightly Newsletter
