The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 Explained: England’s Turning Point

By the late 14th century, England was in decline. Already weakened by the Hundred Years’ War, both Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, had died, leaving the country in a perilous state. Richard II, the new king, was only a child. With the poor facing increasingly harsh poll taxes, and distrust of the nobility growing among them, an uprising broke out in southern England in 1381. It was led for the first time by peasants, a class of person invisible on the historical stage up to this point. The Peasants’ Revolt would prove to be one of the most iconic events of English history, altering not only England’s society and the fate of her monarchy, but also generating a new kind of grassroots radicalism.

Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the outbreak of this landmark moment in the history of English socialism, building up to the climactic moment when Richard II and his men find themselves besieged in London by the rebel army surrounding her walls, under the leadership of the elusive Wat Tyler…

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To corrupt more people with his Doctrine at black Heath where 200,000 of the commons were gathered together John Ball began a sermon in this fashion when Adam delved and Eve span who then was a gentleman and continuing his sermon he tried to prove by the words of the

Proverb that he had taken for his text that from the beginning all men were created equal by nature and that servitude had been introduced by the unjust and evil oppression of men against the will of God who if it had pleased him to create surfs surely in

The beginning of the world would have appointed who should be a surf and who a Lord let them consider therefore that he had now appointed the time wherein laying aside the Yoke of long servitude they might if they wished enjoy their Liberty so long desired wherefore they must be prudent

Hastening to act act after the matter of a good husband tilling his field and uprooting the tears that are accustomed to destroy the grain first killing the great Lords of the realm then slaying the lawyers justices and jurors and finally rooting out everyone whom they knew to be harmful to the community in

Future so at last they would obtain peace and security if when the great ones had been removed they maintained among themselves equality of Liberty and nobility as well as dignity and power so that is a very disapproving account by Thomas Walsingham a monk at St orban’s

Abbey of an open a sermon given in 1381 by a certain John Ball Tom a priest who played a key part in what came to be known as The Peasants revolt so I did The Peasants Revolt at school and generally I have to say maybe this says a great deal about my school

Outside wolver Hampton in the 1980s but the boy sympathies were very much on the side of the king really and not of the peasants now that would Amaze you Tom I’m astonished to hear that I haven’t massively deviated in that and I haven’t massively deviated I’m astounded

To hear that Dominic I mean I guess one of the reasons might be that the young king is only 14 so perhaps if you’re a boy studying the account you you would identify with him perhaps but I think there’s a a certain irony there because um although John Ball those famous lines

When Adam delved and Eve span who was then a gentleman these are kind of iconic in the history of English radicalism the history of of English egalitarianism at the same time I think that uh there is a certain sense in which the idea that this is a peasants

Revolt is incorrect actually this is a Revolt led by people Dominic who might perhaps better be described as middle England this is where middle England is starting to discover its voice so it’s part of the Paradox and fascination of this whole extraordinary event which which really is extraordinary in a sense

If this is the the Wellspring of English radicalism then it’s the start of something very very kind of new and what makes it different to previous revolts you know there have been revolts throughout medieval England Edward II had been deposed Barons had risen against John there had been a civil war

In the reign of Steven and Matilda Barons siding with kind of rival Kings but this is different because this is not led by magnates this is not led by peers this is led by a class of person who until this moment has not been heard really on the public stage of England so

This is the common people of England making their entrance in the history books and that is why for anybody on the left particularly the kind of intellectual left in Britain The Peasants Revolt has come to be seen hasn’t it as a sort of foundational moment so it’s the kind of event that if

You are you know a Jeremy Corbin or something it’s one of the landmarks in your kind of personal history of England and englishness isn’t it and there were always articles in the Guardians saying you know everyone should do the peasants Revolt at school it’s such an important moment socialism began with the peasants

Revolts all this kind of stuff yes Ken Loach the very kind of pro Corbin film director he open um a memorial to The Peasants revolt on Smithfield where there was another famous confrontation which will come to in due course and there’s absolutely the sense in which this is the kind of thing

That Billy Bragg would would make a song about or something like that and I think there’s no question that that that it really does deserve this reputation so Judith Barker who wrote a brilliant book about this she doesn’t call it the Pres Revolt very significantly she calls it

The great Revolt in her book Englander she says that the the the rebels did not seek personal advancement but a radical political agenda which if it had been implemented would have fundamentally transformed English society and I think that’s absolutely true and Nigel Saul in his biography of Richard II says of this

Revolt that what happened in 1381 was altogether unique but Dominic it probably won’t surprise you to know that I think that merely interpreting it as you know socialism AV allra isn’t entirely right it is slightly more complicated than that and that’s precisely what makes it so fascinating and

So to put it into a a bigger context Tom I mean this is an uprising in Southern England in the late 14th century and it’s become this sacral moment dare I say for the um the the bearers of the leftwing flame but it is also an episode

In a long running struggle that we’ve already devoted four podcasts to because this is effectively part of our epic series on the Hundred Years War isn’t it the great struggle between England and France in the high Middle Ages so maybe we should we should recap a bit to

Remind people who listened to the Hundred Years War and to explain to people who didn’t what’s been going on and why it is that England has been pushed to this position where the the common people as it were are desperate to kind of have their say and make their

Entrance onto the stage right so we did a four episode series on the Hundred Years War and uh it was full of uh English heroism and victory battles of cresy and potier and then we did a kind of 10-minute Coda didn’t we where basically it all went wrong and suddenly

The English found themselves losing and essentially at the high tide of English success Edward III the great conquering King had made himself Lord of pretty much half of France but by the time that Edward the third dies in 1377 all those victories slipped away and England is really left in France with two

Continental possessions so calal which has been reconstituted as part of England and gasan in the southwest of France Edward III this great conqueror he’s slipped into his dotage he’s become the play thing of a highly avaricious woman called Alice Perez who is much hated across England the black prince

Edward II’s son and Heir Victor at puer he has died and when Edward dies he is succeeded by the Black Prince’s son so Edward III’s grandson Richard II who succeeds Edward on the 21st of June 1377 and he is aged 10 years old and this is

Not good for England in the Middle Ages it’s terrible child as a king and a truce has been in existence but it ends 3 days after the death of Edward thei and the moment it ends a French Fleet descends on the south coast of England it kind of

Ravages it in 1378 the English launched a campaign to um try and capture a range of ports along the north French Coast so to complement Cal this is an utter disaster and then in December 1379 an entire fleet is wrecked off Cornwall so essentially everything is going completely tits up for the English

In the Hundred Years War and it’s it it’s terrible now England relative to France is very small it doesn’t have the huge resources of land that uh that France has and so it’s quite difficult for the English king to raise money but if you’re fighting a war against France

It has to be paid for somehow and under Edward III this radical development had been enshrined that essentially a ation can only be imposed on the people of England with the consent of the king’s subjects as represented in Parliament right and this is something really unusual in the context of medieval

Europe this idea that the commons should have a voice in how much money the king should be given to wage his Wars you know it becomes a fundamental principle with very very enduring consequences for the future course of English History and when you say the commons these are are

For the avoidance of Doubt these are not politicians as we would recognize them these are kind of local Gentry big wig type people who are representing the interests of property classes effectively such as they are yeah they’re kind of JP’s uh so that’s justices of the peace JPS yeah Justice

Of the Peace yeah um and they as landowners they have a feeling that everybody in the country should shoulder the burden that they should not be the only ones coughing up and they feel that lots of wage earners in the country aren’t really pulling their weight and

So their solution to this problem in Parliament is to introduce a pole tax whereby you know flat Levy is is imposed and everyone has to to pay it and this is introduced in uh in January 1377 and everyone has to pay for it the only people who don’t are children under the

Age of 14 and uh Beggars vagrants but otherwise everyone has to pay 4 P now this isn’t n um a a prohibitive sum um it’s a you could buy maybe a dozen eggs for four P um and it’s very easy to collect because you just go around and

Grab it from everyone and it’s viewed as a success it it raises enough money to enable the war effort to be funded it’s so successful that two years later another pole tax is introduced this one is more finely graduated so you have 15 categories going from you know the very

Poorest who are still paying 4 P um right the way up to £7 for the richest this money is invested in the fleet that then sinks off Cornwall so it’s it’s a it’s a kind of disaster people have the feeling that all this money has been raised and they

Have nothing to show for it so it’s a bit it’s kind of like hs2 the the kind of you know this terrible this Railway that’s had billions and billions lavished on it to link London to Manchester and it’s not going to reach the middle of London and it’s not going

To reach Manchester so there’s a slight feeling all this money has been wasted and the government is incompetent and what adds to the sense of Fury about this is the feeling that the guys who are leading the Hundred Years War who are Edward II’s surviving sons are

Basically Glory hunters in it for the glory of their own names but also they’re fundamentally incompetent so the youngest of Edward II Sons a guy called Thomas of Woodstock he’s desperate to emulate his brother the black prince who’d won the Battle of pitier so so in

1380 he takes a large um group of knights and men and they go on a chevet which is a kind of raid where you you you march across France burning and looting everywhere you go um to try and bring the French out to to H have a

Battle and you can kind of unleash your archers and your men at arms and win a decisive Victory but the French don’t play that game they they they learned their lesson and they sign a deal with the Duke of Britany who had previously been an English Ally the English army

Get the it’s all a disaster and in January 1381 Woodstock basically gives up comes home and um that is the end of that campaign meanwhile the son of Edward III who is by Miles the most powerful figure in England at this time is uh John of gaun

Born in Gent so hence his name who makes this famous speech doesn’t he in Shakespeare does this this sepad about England which is always quoted as the sort of epitome of englishness and everybody forgets that John of GA was actually was widely detested everybody hated John of course yes yeah and part

Of the reason why he’s widely detested is that he is by Miles the richest person in England his income is around more than double the next richest magnate in England but he is also very keen on claiming um a throne for himself in Spain and so he’s endlessly raising

Money to go off and and try and do that and he’s also Darkly suspected of of aspiring to become king himself so he’s kind of cast in the role of the wicked uncle and because he is so rich and because he is so lavish in drawing attention to the fact that he’s Rich

He’s a very kind of obvious symbol of the imbalances and the iniquities in England and the ultimate symbol of this is his great palace which he builds on the Strand which is um the road that runs from the city of London to Westminster which is the the center of

Royal power and it’s called The Strand because it runs along the banks of the temps and he builds his great palace the seavoy palace which is where when King John of France had been captured by the black prince at the Battle of pitier that’s where he’d been put up so it’s a

House Fit For A King a palace Fit For A King enormous complex it’s got kind of beautiful gardens and Orchards running down to the temps and everyone in London and and Beyond hate John of gun for it so these figures are wildly unpopular and the sense starts to develop that

People are being screwed out of taxes simply to fund their egos and their Advent ures and this is why in November 1380 when the king’s government says well we need more money you know we we can’t maintain the war without more money very very reluctantly Parliament

Grants a third pole tax and this doesn’t go down well at all partly because as we’ve said it people feel the money is just being squandered but also because this pole tax is much much harder to pay so whereas the previous ones you know for the poorest level had been um 4 P

Now it’s raised 12 P per person so that’s a significant increase and it is justified by people assuming that the well off will help the poor to pay it but there’s no mechanism in place for them to do that so you’re kind of dependent on hard avaricious men doing the decent thing

Behaving like Victorian philanthropists exact exctly but Tom can I just ask a quick question you said um they need this money to pay for the war and the perception is the war is just to advance the interests of powerful men is that right is it just to advance the

Interests of powerful men or is there still this thinking which we talked about when you did your brilliant Hundred Years War series that the English felt they had to launch the war as a preemptive attempt because France was so much more powerful as they had to

Carry the war to France so is there a genuine sense of National Security involved with the war or is it really is it is are the are the critics right and is it just about egotism yeah I think initially people you know when when um French fleets are descending on

Southampton or Ry or whatever then people feel yes this is Justified but by 1381 this is no longer the case um and in fact the the tax continues to be levied even after Thomas Woodstock has come back from France so people definitely feel that this is an unjustified tax and so unsurprisingly

What happens is when the tax collectors go out people just refuse toay and there’s inall and this is anun for Parliament to to back on it they could have done that but instead they double down and they send out um Commissioners who are told essentially you know do not

Allow people to get out of paying this um and they given very very detailed instructions they have to travel in person from kind of Village to Village from place to place registering absolutely everybody and there’s one person who becomes a kind of particularly notorious for

Who who’s a guy called John leg who is um a sergeant-at-arms a royal Sergeant at Arms so so from the king’s own household And he supposedly um in he looks up the skirts of young women to see if they’ve you know they are sufficiently mature to pay the C tax and

This causes as you can imagine incredible outrage so so people people are not happy about this they feel that their money you know that they’re being screwed out of money to that that is then being squandered on foreign quarrels that has absolutely nothing to do with them so there is great

Resentment towards the Royal princes but also towards the entire structure of Royal government and two figures in particular so there’s a guy called Simon Sudbury who’s the Archbishop of Canterbury but also since January 1380 has been the Lord Chancellor and there is a guy called Sir Robert hailes who’s

Prior of one of those kind of orders of warrior monks like the Knights Templar the Templar had gone by this point but the knights hospitala um which the uh Robert hailes is the prior of they they’re still very much around they have lots of properties um in London and

Across England and he at the beginning of 1381 is appointed the Lord High Treasurer so these two men are kind of blamed for everything that’s going wrong but there is also out in the shes out in the counties massive resentment of of anyone who is held responsible for

Administering this tax so this would include justices of the Peace um MPS and sheriffs so it’s not a coincidence that this is the time when all the kind of the Legends the Robin Hood ballads which are celebrating somebody who robs from the rich to give to the poor I mean

That’s the that’s the the claim isn’t it that’s later made yeah um you can see why the Robin Hood story gains traction at this point in time absolutely and um those stories of Robin Hood are expressive of a kind of popular hostility towards people who are seen in

The Elites in a sense of identification with with you know people who are sticking up for themselves and the Readiness of the commons the common people uh as they would be called by the elites um to not to accept their status not to accept their station is compounded by of

Course the most catastrophic event in the 14th century indeed perhaps you might say in the whole of European history which is the Black Death so Dominic we love kindling don’t we on the rest of’s history that then gets lit by The Spar I think you can either use what

There are two metaphors that we like one is the storm clouds at War and the other is lighting the you know lighting the kindling lighting the spark sometimes a fuse if you’re kind of post early modern but you this is we’re in kindling territory here are we we’re very much in

Kindling territory because um what has happened since the Black Death hits England in the late 1340s the population has fallen from around maybe 6 to 7 million in the 1340s to 3 million by the 1380s yeah I I I mean that is a a Stupify collapse and the consequence of

That is obviously that there’s a shortfall in labor and the consequence in turn of that is that wages go up and obviously for the landowning classes this is terrible they don’t want to have to pay more money um and so there are desperate attempts to to try and Reign this back and in

1351 uh the statute of laborers is introduced basically kind of massive pay freeze the idea is that everyone should work for wages that were set before the Black Death had hit and it coincides with um also an attempt by landowners to uphold the traditional rights that they

Exert over unfree laborers on their land so these would be the villains the Surfs The Peasants the laws that govern this they are very variable they’re very fluid but there are kind of certain constants that the land owners can can insist on faines are not allowed to sell

Their land they’re not allowed to leave it for more than a day without the permission of their lord they have to work for several days a week on the land of their Lord that might just be one day but in certain places you know it could

Be up to kind of five or six days so pretty oppressive um they have to attend his court every three weeks um and when the surf dies the Lord can claim um the dead surf’s most valuable possession which is normally you know a cow or something something a tax called the

Harriet so all of this generates massive resentment and because there are fewer peasants in the wake of the Black Death they are in a position actually to to kind of fight back against this so um you know they can move to places that offer better wages they can buy up land

Themselves and essentially the focus for these tensions between um the the The Peasants who are trying to cast off the legal restrictions of the past and the land Lords who are trying to double down on them the focus for this becomes written documents because you will have abies uh landlords whatever drawing up

Legal documents and kind of using them in courts to impose wage restraint and to impose the the kind of the rights that Lords traditionally have been able to impose and likewise this means that for the peasants for the villains legal documents lawyers Scholars Abby monks anywhere where there is a paper record

These becomes objects of absolutely intense hatred and so Dominic it’s not surprising then that the people who lead this uh kind of mood of insurrection are those who are doing best the the rusy the people the rustics The Peasants the people out in the country who are actually kind of bettering themselves

Who are getting on their bike if you like and going off to to to find work who are investing the the the w that they’re developing in land who are interested in becoming a a homeowners and all this kind of so it’s a that right Revolt that’s what you’re

Basically saying Tom well it’s these are sandbrook’s people aren’t they I mean these [Laughter] are I’m glad right middle England uh so they’re absolute you know so the PE you know these are not the kind of the laborers at the absolute bottom of the pile these

Are people who are trying to attain a new social status for themselves yeah yeah and it’s not a coincidence I think that they are most heavily concentrated in Kent in East Anglia in the home counties around London because these are the areas that are profiting most from um the development of capitalism in

Flanders where English wool is being exported and these are people who are able to share in the kind of the wealth that is starting to be generated in that’s the interesting thing about the so-called peasants revolt that the epicenters of it are the most affluent

Parts of England at that time yes and so it’s in that sense I think that the peasants Revolt is indeed a misnomer so Nigel Saul says of this um that the Revolt of 1381 was not a movement of the poor and the down trodden it was a movement of the more ambitious and

Assertive in society and Tom you made a point in your notes which I think is a brilliant Point these are the very same areas that will be the the the heartlands of the Protestant Reformation in England those parts of the country with most Continental links those parts

Where people are more likely to be aspirational individualistic freeth thinking because they’re better off absolutely yes and and you know we know from the study of revolutions that it’s invariably it’s not the very poor it’s always those who are you know who have aspirations that they feel are being

Repressed by um a pre-existing Elite and I think that this is exactly the situation that we have in in 1381 and so in the the years that precede this great revolt you see particularly in East Anglia and Kent a kind of a growing mood of insurrection so you start seeing um

Rusky you know these these upwardly mobile peasants they start to organize strikes um they refuse to take part in the haying and the harvesting and so on they do Mass trespasses on um land that is set aside for the Lord to go hunting or whatever kind of mass trespassing Mass

Poaching and you start to get sporadic examples of um The Burning Down of places where legal documents are stored the legal documents that specify the dues and services that they owe so Juliet Barker in her in her her book England arise gives the example of Laken

Heath which is a Manor in suffk um which is owned by the great Abbey of berry St Edmunds and abies are at least as oppressive in the situation as the more secular landlords so in 1371 um the vicer in Laken Heath leads the villagers in an attack on the Abbott’s officials

Who were trying to to come in and take um goods from people who haven’t paid the pole tax um and the villagers basically won’t have it they they attack the officials they um they break the staff of Office of the guy who’s in charge of them um and they are so

Threatening that the uh the aby’s commission has just run away um then in 1379 the entire Village is fined for breaking the statute of laborers so that’s the the law that’s been brought in in 1351 to try and regulate how much people can be paid um and all of

This throughout the 1370s you can see that in this one Village resentment and hatred of the Abbey of Barry St Edmonds and by extension the government that is lying Behind These demands for pole taxes is just becoming greater and greater and greater and so Dominic as we

Have said it is a Tinder Box awaiting the SP that’s great cuz I see in your notes you you’ve written these words the pole tax is the straw that breaks the camel’s back yes so that’s right I mean we would never mix our metaphors on the

Rest of his history um no it’s the spark that breaks the storm clouds of Revolt are gathering and after the break the storm will break the Tinder Box will light up the camel’s back the camel’s back will break return after the break to see these exciting metaphorical developments in The Peasants

Revolt welcome back to the rest is history Tom when and how does the storm break when does The Peasants Revolt kick off well we we’ve been talking about how this kindling box is uh lurking in East Anglia in Kent but actually Dominic um it the first recorded act of violence in

1381 against the ptax is in your neck of the wood so it’s very near bista so home now to a very wellknown one of Europe’s leading retail retail outlet Parks B Village it starts there it does so uh what happens is that um the dean of B

Sends a tax collector out um he gets um set upon by a group of uh people who’ve disguised themselves um he gets roughed up up um they beat him up uh they cut off the ears and tals of his horse uh and then they nail them to the local

Piller where they are the objects of much mockery and the name of this tax collector Dominic is absolutely brilliant that’s what I’m laughing at he’s he’s called William payable so Bill payable determinism I don’t believe that I just don’t believe it’s like you if you said to me his name is Tomas

Tax or something his name is Bill payable Bill payable so um and the bishop I mean I think you’ve been the victim of some some historical practical joke surely no it’s absolutely true uh and the bishop excommunicates the uh these unknown Ruffians and you know nothing nothing further happens um but

Then in Essex it’s in Essex really that it all kicks off um so on the 30th of May you get you know these assessment teams that are being sent out to try and uncover uh all these people who should have paid the pole tax you’ve just vanished off the record um this

Assessment team turns up in Brentwood in Essex and they have some very notorious figures in this commission so there is a guy called John bampton who is notoriously corrupt he’s um I mean he’s the kind of the embodiment of the corrupt Elite so he’s an MP he’s a a JP

A Justice of the Peace he is a baith who is notorious for um coming down hard on rusy villain who um break the labor laws so very hated and there is a guy called Sir John gilzor who is an MP but not just an MP he’s um he’s the Speaker of

The House of Commons and this is a very kind of radical Innovation um it had been introduced in 1376 uh in the so-called good Parliament uh and all the parliaments in this period have brilliant names yeah um in the good Parliament it was um he he be serves as spokesman

For um the MPS who were trying to reign in Alice perz the avaricious Mistress of Edward III and they appoint a speaker so that um you know he can be their spokesman and John gillor now is uh the speaker um and he is you know he’s the guy basically who’s introduced the pole

Tax and he’s a close friend of Thomas of Woodstock so he’s a very very provocative figure so this commission goes in John bampton and John gillor and they summon representatives from all the the the neighboring villages to demand the money and what happens is that you get a guy

Um from a place called fobbing which is a small village brilliant name yeah again again an implausible name I would say but it but but absolutely true uh kind of on the marshy edges of the county and this guy Thomas Baker stands up and declares forthrightly that they

Will not nobody is going to pay a single penny more because they’ve already already paid the tax um and indeed they have receipts to prove it um bampton he’s not going to put up with this so he orders his men to arrest Baker violence ensues Dominic this is

The straw this is the spark right it’s this is when it all kicks off and bampton and his men are forced to run away they realize that they’re massively outnumbered right and because of this the villagers realize that they’ve crossed a line because you can’t just

You know Mark and a try try and kill Royal Commissioners and so they’re they’re nervous about this but at the same time because it’s 16 Villages and because these Villages are represented by you know leading figures there’s a feeling that well you know these are these are well-respected figures we

Could perhaps make a stand here and particularly if we can try and get other kind of leading figures from Villages across the rest of Essex to join us perhaps we can make a point and so this is what happens well this is also they’re thinking if we have a revolt and

We Prevail we will escape punishment that’s exactly what they’re thinking and if but if we just say oh dear that was a mistake and we go home we will be punished so in other words it’s it’s kind of you know infra pen in for a pound oh God that’s another terrible

Cliche but no well let’s go for it let’s cliche cliche tastic episode but the thing I mean so so what this is not is a load of peasants reaching for their pitchforks and kind of charge around willy-nilly this is much much more coordinated and it’s coordinated by people who have horses because basically

The leaders of this kind of Uprising in Brentwood they now get on their horses and they go Galloping across the county trying to establish links with matching figures in other villages in other regions of the county and someon start to go out to open meetings across essics

So for instance on the second of June you have a mass assembly at a place called boking which is north of of the the town of Chelmsford yeah and there everyone swears a formal oath and Oaths are taken very very seriously in the Middle Ages I mean this is not a light

Step at all and the oath these um various representatives of boking swear is to destroy divers Lees of the king and to have no law in England except only those which they themselves moveed to be ordained so this is a very radical agenda yeah really really radical agenda and it suggests that

Probably you know these are ideas that have been circulating in the region beforehand they’re not just kind of spontaneously coming up with them possibly in the in the aftermath of the Black Death Tom as people are moving up and down the social scale and there’s so much fragmentation and dislocation that

These new ideas are coming in right but but also possibly due to the teachings of a particular figure who we will come to a little bit later on but who you mentioned at the very start of the program so John Ball who will come yeah

John this is this is the area where John B has been operating and probably we are seeing the impact of his teachings here but I think it’s not just the kind of the the the ideological seasoning there’s also been very very um clear planning because the rebels are very

Targeted in what they attack they’re not just kind of you know pillaging and looting um here and there they’re targeting specific properties the properties of people whom the mass of people in Essex have particular reason to dislike so they target um a monastery in Essex that is owned by the knights

Hospitalis and of course the knights hospital is there prior is Sir Robert hailes the treasurer yeah exactly um they uh they torched the house of s John gillor the speaker who had been uh had been at Brentwood so that’s very targeted but that’s not to deny that there isn’t also violence so

Um they capture the uh the official who’s responsible for all the pole tax Assessments in Essex they chop off his head and they stick his head on a lance and they kind of parade it around going harah harah okay well that’s a slightly different dimension then to the oh these

Are aspirational people who just you know want a better field I think you can be both I think you can be an aspirational person and and prone to violence so to so to to sound like Simon Sharma violence is inherent in the revolution from the very beginning I

Think that there is targeted violence against people who are particularly identified with with oppression from the beginning yeah right um and if they can’t get these individuals in person then they will Target their property so that’s why say you know three of Gill’s houses across essic are are destroyed it’s very very deliberate

Um but I think the the the kind of the really unsurprising but momentous development is that what gets particularly targeted are these repositories of documents and this happens across Essex great you know essentially what what people are trying to do is to destroy the apparatus of Royal government within

The county and the ability of local landlords including the abies to uh impose um the taxes and the dues and obligations that these papers specify because if the records of the Jews and obligations are destroyed there will be no longer any basis for the landowners to demand them well that’ be oral

Tradition there would be but you can kind of ignore that you can you can contest it and that would give the uh the aspirational people a chance then to break away from the network of obligations and to forge new kind of uh you know careers and lives to themselves

Yeah well so that will require the king to agree to it and so this is a kind of looming further Dimension is you know do we stay in the county or do we perhaps march on London and uh and try and get the king to change things now the people

Of Essex can’t do that themselves but they can do it if they have allies in other counties and it so happens that at the same time things are also kicking off in Kent uh and in Kent likewise there have been provocations so John leg the guy who was you know the upskir um

He’s been very active in Kent um then there’s a a particular particular outrage um because there’s a a vain from Essex called Robert Belling who is seized and imprisoned in Rochester Castle uh and a gang of rebels they they come together they um they march on the

Castle and the castle is in a very ruinous State because there’s there’s been a flood and the Gateway has been demolished in the flow of water and the rebels are able to get in they capture the children of the conable a guy called s John Newington and so newon surrenders

And from this point on neon is basically he’s kept to serve as the spokesman of the rebels to the king because he is a man of high standing they want him to be the kind of the goet between them and the king so they’re already kind of

Thinking well we should back we should take this further we should march on London and before the the men of Kent march on London they do what’s been going on in in Essex as well so they they’re sending Horsemen out across the country to raise Villages everywhere they are staging bonfires of legal

Documents they’re hunting down P’s and JPS um and they even managed to capture Canterbury uh and of course Sudbury the Archbishop Canterbury particular object of hate as the the Lord Chancellor but he’s not there but the rebels Proclaim that he is deposed as Archbishop of Canterbury they do however manage to

Capture the sheriff of Kent uh and they frog March him to his house on the outskirts of Canterbury where all his you know all the records for the county are kept and he is obliged to hand over all the roles and they light a great fire in the middle of Canterbury and

Publicly burn them so again it’s this systematic attempt to destroy the kind of the the the the the the paper records that enable Royal government to be upheld and undoubtedly when once this has been completed there are many rebels in um in both Essex and Kent who feel

That they’ve done what they set out to do but there are others as I said who think we can’t end here you know the only way that we can absolutely secure the abolition of all these obligations and dues that are imposed on us as rusi

Is to get the king to agree to it yeah and these Ambitions coales around two figures who are really you know these are the men who are most associated in the public mind I guess with the with the what we call The Peasants revolt and

The first of these is what Tyler so what Tyler for people not familiar with this story what Tyler is without doubt seen in the popular imagination as the figurehead of the peasants Revolt but also as a kind of as a foundational figure in the what people imagine to be

The radical left-wing English tradition you know so he’s exactly the kind of person if you were at some sort of big Mayday Trade union meeting in 2023 or 2024 you know somebody might well say ever since the days of what Tyler and everyone would cheer know who he was I

And I think that he deserves this reputation he is clearly a man of incredible ability the frustration is we don’t know much about well in fact we know almost nothing about him before 1381 so maybe he’s a Tyler right who knows um he he seems to have been so

Competent as a leader that some people have have suggested that maybe he’d fought in the Hundred Years War that he had military experience um we don’t even really know where he comes from so um one chronicler describes him as as coming from Maidstone in Kent but we

Have a legal record which describes him as being from Essex I mean maybe he’s both maybe he’s a man of Essex who’s moved to Kent um which would you know and and that’s legally you’re not allowed to do that so if that is the case then that might kind of explain why

He’s so ready to join the Rebellion but the the truth is that he emerges very very rapidly as in the word of one document the captain and leader of the men in Ken and it is under Tyler’s leadership that the men of Kent decide that you know

They are going to march on London um and even as they are doing that people in Essex and suffk are doing the same and the likelihood is that it is Tyler who is coordinating this I mean you know if he has come from Essex and perhaps he

Has kind of he has links there so the kishman under Tyler they’ve they’ve taken Canterbury they’ve had their great bonfire they’ve um depos the Archbishop um and on the 10th of June they leave Canterbury and they take the Pilgrim Road that heads towards London now what are their goals um

People might suspect that their goal is to abolish the pole tax because Dominic this was the spark that Lit the kindling yes but as far as we know they didn’t mention the P tanks this this this seems to have have have have gone as a concern they now have Much Higher Goals

Because their their agenda is unbelievably radical they want the complete abolition of serfdom they want legal recognition of a worker’s right to work for whom he wants where he wants on such wages as he can command and they want all the the wealth of the church all the abies all the

Monasteries to to be seized because they see the churches and the the abies and the monasteries as highly oppressive so this is an incredible bundle of obviously in the 21st century lots of kind of keen political activists have seen this as protoo socialist but could you also see this as Proto Protestant

Tom with the attack on the established church yes I I I absolutely think you could and and as we said before I mean these are the regions that will be the heartlands of the Protestant Reformation in due course and this is where I think you see the influence of this very very

Mysterious but any atic but clearly highly influential figure John ball with his you know Adam delving and Eve spinning who then was a gentleman yeah rhyming um so John B seems I mean again the records of his life are are scanty but to the degree that we can piece them

Together he seems to be an Essex boy an Essex lad probably from Colchester he seems to have been trained interestingly as a priest in York and then he’s moved back via Norwich back to Colchester and he is constantly having run-ins with Simon Sudbury who’s become the

Archbishop of Cry by this point but who previously had been the bishop of London and as Bishop of London had responsibility for quite a lot of essics and srey had secured condemnation of John Ball as a vagabond um and a man who preaches doctrines contrary to the faith

Of the church to the Peril of his own soul and those of others and in 1375 this excommunication of John Ball had been confirmed by Sudbury and then just as the Revolt is starting to kick off just before it kind of really bursts into flames Sudbury issues an order that

Ball should be arrested almost as though he is alert to the kind of ideological underpinnings of what’s going on and srey accuses ball of being a false prophet um of being a man whose sermons wkak of heretical depravity um a man who you know he’s not preaching in church he’s preaching in

Public spaces public places um and that that John Ball is attacking not only the wealthy the land owners but he’s attacking the entire hierarchy of the church right the way up to the pope himself and in particular Sudbury complains John Ball is attacking Sudbury himself so personal he is yeah yeah John

B suby says is spreading scandals about our person so I think that that all of this suggests that ball is pretty notorious by this time among the the the kind of the clerical hierarchy and probably that he has been active in in all the areas where the Revolt kind of

Bursts into flames that he really is the person who is kind of um en encouraging people to think in this almost kind of apocalyptic tone that like a kind of Evangelical preacher roaming the land stirring the people up basically yeah and I think that one of the things that

Kind of points to this is that the 2nd of June which is the day of the boking meeting the kind of the mass assembly in Essex is also witson Pentecost which is the day on which the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles and animates the functioning of the entire church and

The Acts of the Apostles records what that meant in practice so the whole group of those who believed I’m quoting from Acts of the Apostles were of one heart and soul and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions but everything they owned was held in common

So that is a kind of scriptural sanction for what you might almost call communism kind of radical idea that everything should be held in possession and I think that it’s I mean maybe ball is preaching on this topic on that very day I’d be very surprised if

He wasn’t however the record of ball preaching that you began this episode with that’s on the 12th of June um and as wiam noted it’s preached at black Heath which is a a kind of great a assmbly point to the southeast of London you know London is visible from it and

This is where all the men of Kent gather and wol singham’s account of Ball’s the sermon that he gives there you know as you said this is not wolsingham is not in favor of it he thinks it’s terrible you know kill all the kill all the Lords King all the

Lawyers all this kind of stuff which is what makes it so ironic that it’s become so iconic um you know waling him in a way has by trying to Dam John Ball has given him a kind of IM ality except Dominic there is a problem ball never gave that sermon yeah he was

Not a black Heath on the 12th of June because he’d been in prison in Essex is that right he he’d been in prison and he’s only released on the 11th of June couldn’t have got there in time there’s no there’s no way he could have got

There in time no it’s it’s it’s such a shame and there’s no contemporary record that places him in London at all um in in this period but you say that’s a shame but but that is not incredibly revealing that the people who are telling the story of The Peasants Revolt

Are hyping up John Bull’s role presumably because they know that their readers or their listeners or whatever the people who consume this will be horrified by Bull’s egalitarianism and will regard him as a madman and The Peasants Revol will therefore be tainted by association yes I mean it’s um it’s

Kind of daily maale editorial wanting to make middle England’s blood run cold by suggesting all the horrors that Jeremy Corbin might want to unleash as prime minister very familiar with pieces Tom I are you I I had no idea yes so so in in

This sense I I think the kind of the the emphasis on John Ball in wal’s account this is sandbrook as daily maale columnist right but you know as I say the the Paradox is that it serves to immortalize John B he becomes this you know he’s he’s enshrined as this this

Great spokesman which I think he probably was it’s just that he wasn’t he you know the sermon wasn’t on black Heath it it was prob they were probably being given in essic and I think indisputably the rebels are motivated by radical views that you know in which politics and religion are kind of

Indistinguishable yeah in the way that they so often are in the Middle Ages um and he didn’t have to to be at at black Heath for his teachings to have had a a profound impact so strictly kind of you know historical detail ball wasn’t at black Heath but his Spirit was there he

Was there very much there in spirit so am I right and thinking that like so many later revolutions the story of this is really that what has happened is the intersection of material grievances which are based actually not on poverty and inequality but on frustrated expectations and frustrated aspirations

Among upwardly mobile people and then that has become interwoven with this sort of sense of apocalyptic excitement which you can completely understand in the you know that we we’re in the aftermath of the black death and that those two things have now become completely fused so some of those people

Who have who have been marching on London might have started their grievances actually about the ptax and about some incredibly mundane dispute about a field and now they are full of the Zeal the Holy Spirit as you might say because of John Ball’s teachings yeah and and and what what ball is doing

And why this kind of looks forward to the Reformation is that there is a kind of strain of radical egalitarianism within Christianity you know the apostles do hold all their possessions in common and obviously the spectacle of John of gaun in the SEO Palace or the Archbishop of

Canterbury or all the hierarchies or the abies and monasteries that are screwing money out of peasants I mean this is obviously can be cast as opposed to God’s wishes so that also provides a sanction for what is happening and when you combine that with the obvious

Ability of what Tyler to to organize and Co coordinate the attack because even as the men of Kent are massing on black Heath people from um from Essex and suffk are starting to gather on my end which is um directly outside the Eastern walls of the city of London and so you

Have this extraordinary situation where London effectively is going to come under siege and all the elites of England are inside the city so you have the king the 14-year-old Richard II you have the Archbishop of Canterbury you have the treasurer what are they to do because they are now you know they’re staring

Down the barrel of something that no Royal government has ever had to face before in England which is a genuine popular Revolt what a cliffhanger Tom they are staring down the bar barel it could not down the barrel it could not be more exciting now if you are a member of the

Rest’s history club and that works on very egalitarian principles with the the exception of me and Tom who are right at the top Untouchable and it has a kind of pole tax but we won’t get into all that if you a member of the rest’s history Club

You can find out what happens after this thrilling Cliffhanger you can find that out right now you can just listen right away if you have pay that particular B tax then your prospects are Grim in the next couple of days because you’ll have nothing to listen to and you’ll have to

Wait till Thursday when things will look up for you and you’ll find out what happened so it’s very exciting the storm clouds are gathering once more the fires are lit you know all cliches are operational and we’ll see you next time for the conclusion of the peasants Revolt bye-bye Bye-bye St