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Conflagration: The Peasants' Revolt |
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In Part 1: The Fire is Laid, we saw how conditions were ripe for a peasant uprising in fourteenth-century England. This week we'll look at what triggered the revolt and its immediate effects.
By late 1380, dissatisfaction with increasingly difficult circumstances and resentment towards the upper classes had become fairly common throughout England's peasantry and laboring class. And thus the time was right for a violent reaction to the English government's foolish attempt to wring blood from a stone.
In November of 1380, John of Gaunt was able to convince Parliament to pass the third poll tax in four years, at the price of one shilling per person over the age of 15. This was a stiff amount for a hard-working family in a largely barter economy, especially coming as it did after so many other taxes. Tax collectors were easily bribed into falsifying records, and many people simply lied about the number of adults in their household because they could not or would not pay the required sum. The resulting amount of money collected was, not surprisingly, barely two thirds of what the government expected. Therefore, in the spring of 1381, the people of England were taxed again.
This proved to be too much for some villages in the county of Essex, who refused to pay. Word and agitation spread quickly to neighboring Kent, where peasants armed with scythes and old weapons stormed a castle and freed a villein who had been imprisoned for running away. They then elected Wat Tyler as their commander and went on to Canterbury. There they made the mayor swear fealty to "King Richard and the Commons" and freed John Ball from the Archbishop's prison. Although the coincidence of events gives the appearance of an orchestrated effort, whether or not the revolt had been planned remains unclear.
It is clear, however, that while taxes instigated the rebellion, the real goal behind the outbreak was a reform of the system. Villeins wanted the right to commute the goods and services owed their landlord into rent. They wanted the right to leave the land if they so chose without the permission of any man. They wanted the right to stand up in court and speak out against anyone who wronged them, even if that someone was their "lord and master." Furthermore, they wanted inequitable laws such as the Statute of Laborers, which had pushed many honest, hard-working people to the edge of starvation, abolished.
Quite simply, the peasants wanted freedom, equality, and justice.
Plan or no, the rebels of Kent now headed up to London as those in Essex approached the city from the north. Outbreaks of violence occurred throughout eastern England and in troubled northwestern cities. Supported by artisans and tradesmen who provided food and shelter, rebels attacked abbeys and monasteries, liberated prisons, burned records and murdered particularly hated officials. A few noblemen were forced to accompany them; in one notable instance Sir Robert Salle refused and was slaughtered. Lawyers, those orchestrators of unjust laws, were special targets, and every attorney's house on the rebels' path to London was destroyed.
Every figure of authority was their enemy, from lowly tax collectors and sheriffs to judges, bishops, and dukes. In particular they screamed for the heads of the two people most visibly responsible for the poll tax: Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor; and Sir Robert Hailes, the treasurer. John of Gaunt was often added to the list as the man most obviously responsible for the mishandling of the government.
Only the King, the young innocent they looked on as their champion, was exempt from the rebels' rage. That this should be the case may be an intriguing testament to the entrenched belief that royalty ruled by "divine right"; or perhaps Richard's youth and political powerlessness under the rule of the council gave the rebels a sense of affinity with him.
Whatever their reasons, the rebels' trust in the boy king was to prove seriously misplaced.
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Please join me next week for Part Three 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.
Chronicles by Jean Froissart; translated by Geoffrey Brereton.
A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman.
Peasants and Landlords in Later Medieval England by E. B. Fryde.
More at the Medieval History Site
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