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Conflagration: The Peasants' Revolt |
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In Part 2: A Spark Ignites the Blaze, we looked at what triggered the revolt and its immediate effects. This week we'll examine the actions taken by the rebels in the capital.
By the time they reached London, the rebel mob numbered approximately twenty-thousand. They camped outside the city gates, and spokesmen announced their intentions: they would execute all "traitors," seize the king and set up a new government.
The royal council had hitherto dismissed the danger of the peasant insurgents. Now, reports of rioting from all corners of England and a horde parked on their doorstep convinced them they were in serious trouble. With the council's guiding force, John of Gaunt, up at the Scottish border and the greater majority of trained troops embarking for Spain, there was little by way of aggressive defense. The king's retinue included only a few hundred soldiers; the citizenry of London were not to be relied upon as militia since many of them sympathized with the rebels, and some were actually conspiring with them.
Faced with such limited options, the council decided to negotiate. They sent King Richard, a mere lad of 14 years, out with a delegation to parley.
The negotiations seemed to go very well for the rebels. They asked that villeinage be abolished. Instead of providing goods and services to their landlords, a flat rate of fourpence per acre should be the lawful charge for rent. They wanted free use of the forests and the abolition of laws that restricted their right to hunt game. And miraculously enough they received concessions to all these demands, signed and sealed in official royal charters by Richard himself.
In reality, it is extremely unlikely that the king would have kept any of his promises once the danger was over; the insurgents' demands had been met in hopes that they would disperse. And indeed, with the charters drawn up and signed, many peasants did pack up and go home. But while Richard was blithely handing out empty guarantees, discontented citizens of London had opened the city gates to Wat Tyler and a riotous band of associates. These rebels invaded the capital and proceeded to wreak absolute havoc.
Their first stop was the Tower of London, where they found and killed, among others, two of their most despised targets: Archbishop Sudbury and Robert Hailes. Denied a chance to kill John of Gaunt they settled for vandalizing his palace, the Savoy. On Wat Tyler's instructions, rebels were not to loot the building of its contents but to destroy utterly everything in their path. This they did with some thoroughness before running through London burning houses and murdering lawyers, foreigners, and unpopular authority figures.
This riot of destruction and death turned the tide of public opinion against Tyler and his followers. It was one thing to stand up against injustice; it was quite another to burn London and risk the lives of thousands of innocent people. In the meantime, Master of War Sir Robert Knollys had managed to assemble a small army of trained, experienced soldiers to deal with the crisis. Suddenly, the fortunes of the rebels had taken a drastic turn for the worse.
Tyler, who no doubt suspected Richard's promises were false, knew that for him there was no turning back. He would be granted no pardon, no charter of rights, no freedom whatsoever after the conflagration he had set off in the capital. His only hope was to sieze power for himself.
Such was his goal when he arranged a meeting with King Richard the following day.
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Please join me next week for the fourth and final part 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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