Tag Archives: Peasants Revolt

revolting peasants and chartists

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The G.C.S. E question worth 8 marks asks students to explain two ways in which the Peasants’ Revolt and the campaign for the People’s Charter were similar. This is not a complete answer. It could be developed and tweaked but it covers the key points. It raises the interesting question of what other key events in British history might be compared – for instance could Chartism be compared to the English Civil War? And what else could the Peasants’ Revolt be compared with – certainly to the French and American revolutions.

The Peasants Revolt of 1381 and Chartism which was most active for the decade between 1838 and 1848 were both about ordinary people trying to improve their lives with more freedom or a greater say in how their lives were governed. In both cases, economics had a part to play. The peasants of 1381 were tied by serfdom, the wage limits of the 1351 Statute of Labourers that kept pay to pre-Black Death rates and by the poor harvests that followed the Black Death and the impact of the medieval mini Ice Age. Trade was also badly impacted by piracy resulting from the Hundred Years War and the French raids on the Isle of Wight and southern ports including Rye. The 1830s saw bad harvests and the impact of the corn laws keeping bread prices artificially high.

In 1831, peasants wanted their freedom from a feudal hierarchy that saw 40% of them described as serfs, unable to leave the manor where they lived without their lord’s permission, to work without pay and to pay feudal dues including the right to inherit their father’s property. They also wished to abolish the poll taxes that saw everyone over 15-years-old paying the same taxes, whatever their rank in society. Wat Tyler demanded that corrupt officials should be punished. During the Nineteenth century the ordinary working classes were disappointed by the failure of the 1832 Reform Act to give people more rights and in 1833 the Factory Act failed to limit the working day to 10 hours. For those who fell into poverty there was also the impact of the 1834 Poor Law Act which forced paupers into workhouses and made poverty a crime to be punished. Ordinary people in Medieval England and the Nineteenth Century felt that there should be better wages and living conditions for everyone not just the elite. The Chartists demanded regular elections and full male suffrage, ending the 40 shilling property bar that prevented most adults from voting.

The peasants were united in their demands and turned to violence to ensure that evidence of their servitude was destroyed and that local JPs and churchmen were punished. Simon Sudbury, one of Richard II’s advisors and the Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered by the peasants when they were let into London. The Chartists were more divided in the way that their goals could be achieved. Some of them preferred argument and moral force but in the end violence was less easy to ignore. In 1837, Feargus O’Connor, an Irish lawyer living in Leeds, published the Northern Star, a newspaper that campaigned for better wages and living standards. O’Connor supported Physical Force Chartism, which championed using violent means. He felt that even if the violence was negative, that in the long term there would be positive outcomes.

The Chartists were emulating the men and women who were part of the reform movement that led to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. The event, named after Waterloo, was something of a turning point for the working classes in the nineteenth century. The meeting in Manchester asking for universal male suffrage ended in chaos and 11 deaths when the authorities seized Henry Hunt, a political reformer. Some people blamed the violence on the authorities while others blamed the 60,000 strong crowd. The poet, Shelley, urged the working classes to ‘rise like lions from slumber’ but his words weren’t published until 1832. The authorities wanted to keep the country calm but they feared a revolution of the kind that happened in France. On 4 November 1839, 10,000 Welsh Chartists at Newport, many of them miners, were waylaid by soldiers. Between 22 and 24 of the protesters were killed. The chartists who were not armed really stood no chance – something of a difference to the peasants of 1381 who were armed with whatever they could find and who had killed justices and churchmen during May and June 1381. The Newport chartists’ leader, John Frost, was sentenced to be executed along with several other men who were at the forefront of the campaign – it was the same fate of hanging drawing and quartering that befell the leaders of the Peasant’s Revolt. For John Frost and other chartists the sentence was changed to transportation.

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Something for any G.C.S.E. students or anyone interested in the concept of power and the people.

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Power and the People – the Peasants’ Revolt according to Froissart.

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Jean Froissart was a fourteenth century monastic chronicler. He was not sympathetic to the peasants when he recounted the English Peasants Revolt of 1381. He wrote, ‘Never was any land or realm in such great danger as England at that time. It was because of the abundance and prosperity in which the common people then lived that this rebellion broke out.’ Despite the ‘never had it so good’ viewpoint – which would have gone down well with his European patrons who did not want to see the peasants getting a different deal, he did explain that the peasants believed that they were treated like animals and were determined to be free ‘and if they laboured or did any other works for their lords, they would be paid for it.’

There are different editions of the chronicles. In one version the illustrator makes Richard II look like a young boy but in another, fifteenth century version, he is an adult with dark hair.

Wat Tyler and John Ball meet outside London – they’re carrying English banners so that readers know who they are. Wat and John are labelled for clarity by the artist but the background and the buildings are stylised. It is unlikely that the rebels would have been as well equipped as the illustrations show them – the illustrators were used to armies of the Hundred Years War and even then it was only the wealthy who could afford armour. Most ordinary soldiers were fortunate to have a padded jerkin known as a ‘jack’ or a coat reinforced with chain links. Armour was expensive – and peasants could not afford it.

The king meets the rebels at St Catherine’s wharf. The back ground is stylised but the image also shows rebels being admitted to London in the background. The next scene shows the killing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury and other officials by the peasants.

The death of Wat Tyler- killed by the mayor of London William Walworth – apparently for not taking his hat off to the king. The scene also shows Richard II winning over the peasants by promising to be their leader. Wat was drawn into the revolt because, amongst the other grievances, a poll tax collector had assaulted his daughter. The image below is the same scene by a different illustrator – the king is shown as an adult. Smithfield has taken on a stylised urban aspect.

Power and the People – The Peasants’ Revolt

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Image showing Richard II meeting peasants at St Catherine’s Wharf near the Tower of London on his barge – Froissart’s Chronicles.

England was not the only place to see its’ peasants revolt during the fourteenth century. The city-state of Florence had similar problems at about the same time.

In 1380, in England, the third poll tax in four years was levied. The poor were required to pay as much as the rich but somehow or other in 1380 there was large-scale tax avoidance.

In March 1381 commissions were sent to exact payment one way or an other – anyone who looked like they were over fifteen was expected to pay.

It wasn’t long before people began to make their feelings on the subject quite plain. By April, a poll tax collector in Oxfordshire was attacked and at the end of April tax collectors in Essex came under fire (of the bow and arrow kind).

30 May men from Fobbing in Essex joined with other protesters from Corringham and Stanford to attack a court in session at Brentwood. Sir Thomas Brampton, the poll tax collector for Essex, was chased out of town. Similar uprisings were reported across the river in Kent.

On 2 June – Bocking in Essex- Rebels swore ‘to destroy divers lieges of the king and his common laws and all lordship’. Sir Robert Belknap the chief justice for Essex and his men are attacked and two of the men are killed as they flee. It was as though someone had lit a touch paper. The rebellion spread through Essex, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. In North Kent the band of rebels swelled with each passing day.

7 June Wat Tyler is elected head of the rebels in Kent and John Ball is rescued from Maidstone prison.

9 June- The peasants march on Canterbury and the following day they ransack the town before beginning their journey to London. Groups of rebels stop at manors to destroy records. It means that the evidence of serfdom is destroyed.

12 June – Men from Kent arrive at Blackheath while rebels from Essex arrive at Mile End. There are approximately 30,000 very cross people on London’s doorstep.

13 June- King Richard II is taken to the Tower of London for safety. Simon of Sudbury and Richard Hales, both important ministers, have gone with him. The king talks to the rebels at St Catherine’s Wharf and War Tyler sends him a letter. The king agrees to meet the rebels at Rotherhithe. When he arrives be barge, he very sensibly refuses to get off, especially when the rebels demand that he have his principal advisors including John of Gaunt, who is on campaign in Scotland, executed.

14 June Wat Tyler and the king meet at Mile End outside London’s city walls. Tyler asks for an end to all feudal services and for pardon for any offences committed during the rebellion. Richard II immediately agrees and Tyler pushes for the execution of corrupt officials. Richard II announces that anyone found guilty by a court of corruption will be punished. He also hands out charters – signed by himself- to be given to serfs- confirming their freedom. The serfs who have got what they wanted clear off home. Inside London, the rebels have a number of supporters – one of them opens the town’s gates and let those that remain inside the city the same afternoon.

14 June pm. Radical rebels attack the Tower of London. The king’s ministers including Simon Sudbury and Robert Hales are murdered by the rebels in a display of summary justice or brutality depending upon your viewpoint. John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace is burned to the ground – somewhat unfortunately a number of rebels who broke into the Savoy’s cellars, had become drunk and did not make their escape before the fire. The rebels target royal officials, churchmen and also wish to destroy evidence of their serfdom. Also targeted are records of land ownership and any debts.

15 June The mayor of London, William Walworth, raises an army of 5,000 men and Richard II arranges to meet Wat Tyler that evening at Smithfield. Tyler makes more demands including an end to tithes (the taxes that people have to pay to the church), the abolition of bishops (the Church’s equivalent of the barons), redistribution of wealth, equality before the law, and the freedom to kill the animals in the forest – because remember the Forest Laws are still in force.

William Walworth argues with Wat Tyler then stabs and kills him. it could have been nasty but Richard II, who is only 14, calls on the rebels to accept him as their rightful leader and sends them home.

22 June Richard II goes back on his word and cancels the charters that gave the serfs their freedom. On the 28 June the king’s army defeats the rebels at Billericay in Essex. many rebels are captured, tried and executed during the following weeks.

13 July John Ball is captured at Coventry. In addition to preaching that all men should be equal he also argued that the Church exploited the peasants. He and John Wycliff, the writer of the Bible in English, argue that men shouldn’t have to pay for indulgences for the pardon of sins. They also believe that its wrong that the church is as wealthy as it is.

15 July Ball is tried and executed at St Albans.

Government went on much as usual afterwards. The rebels did not target the king. They blamed his bad advisors. The rebel leaders were executed but longer term Parliament did stop trying to control wage increases. Some historians argue that there was no need for the rebellion and that it didn’t achieve much – feudalism was already declining. Others take the view that this was the first rebellion by ordinary people. It saw the first expression by ordinary men and women of the need for representation before taxation. It was also a warning to the rulers who came after Richard II about what a sufficiently disgruntled bunch of ordinary people might be capable of.

A G.C.S. E question worth 8 marks asks students to explain two ways in which the Peasants’ Revolt and the campaign for the People’s Charter were similar. So the next post but one will see us leaping forward 500 years. The next post will be about Froissart’s Chronicle and the illustrations it contains relating to the Peasants’ Revolt. For a start the king looks much older than a teenager and that before we get on to the peasants sneaking across the bridge or the fact that the outskirts of London are remarkably picturesque!

For those of you looking for more about the Peasants Revolt – A Summer of Blood by Dan Jones originally published in 2010 and Juliet Barker’s 1381 are good reads.

Richard II – birthday boy

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tumblr_m94jocf45j1qeu6ilo1_500Richard, son of the Black Prince and Joan of Kent was born on January 6th 1367. Ten years later the Black Prince died pre-deceasing his aged and increasingly infirm father Edward III. It says something about the changes in society that a child was successfully able to inherit his grandfather’s throne. It probably also says rather a lot about Richard’s uncles, particularly John of Gaunt that there was no take over bid.

 

Richard’s reign tends to be remembered, in popular imagination at least, for two things. The first event was the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Richard demonstrated personal bravery in order to ride out to Smithfield to meet Wat Tyler – and remember that Richard’s chancellor, even though he did resign shortly before, Simon of Sudbury had been brutally murdered by the mob and that John of Gaunt’s palace, The Savoy, had been utterly destroyed.

 

Richard, married to Anne of Bohemia introduced the word Majesty to court circles, no doubt helping his uncles and relatives to remember who was in charge. It was this period that saw curly toed footwear, Geoffrey Chaucer and the building of Westminster Hall. Despite these things which seem on their own to indicate a period of culture and learning (shoes aside) but Richard failed to live up to his early promise.  In addition to not being particularly keen on fighting the french he liked bathing, reading and clothes as well as getting his own way. The death of Anne of Bohemia in 1394 didn’t help matters very much nor did his second marriage two years later to Isabella of Valois who was a child so unable to curb his despotic tendencies or desire to have his entire court on their knees:

 

‘After this on solemn festivals when by custom [Richard II] performed kingly rituals, he would order a throne to be prepared for him in his chamber on which he liked to sit ostentatiously from after dinner until vespers, talking to no one but watching everyone; and when his eye fell on anyone, regardless of rank, that person had to bend his knee towards the king …’

Continuatio Eulogii, pp. 371-9

 

 

To cut a long story short Richard didn’t look to his relatives for support once he reached adulthood – a fact which irritated them immensely. One of Richard’s uncles (Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester) waited until John of Gaunt (yet another of Richard’s uncles) was out of the country and then used the law to curb Richard’s increasingly authoritarian practices. Many of Richard’s favourites were executed. The event is recalled by the title that the 1388 Parliament is known by – the Merciless Parliament.

 

Richard had to wait nearly a decade to get his own back and during that time he ensured that there was a cohort of men loyal to him as well as a crack troop at his command. In 1397 Richard arrested and banished his opponents including his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke who was also John of Gaunt’s son. The Duke of Gloucester having been arrested and sent to Calais had a fatal ‘accident’, allegedly involving a mattress, on his nephew’s orders.

 

When John of Gaunt died, Henry of Bolingbroke thought that his banishment would be over. Instead Richard made the banishment permanent and stripped Henry of his lands. Henry landed at Ravenspur with the intent of reclaiming the Duchy of Lancaster. Which leads to the second event of Richard’s reign which most folk know – his usurpation and death from starvation at Pontefract. No wonder Shakespeare found plenty of material to write about.

Froissart’s Chronicles, somewhat sympathetic to Richard, gives an account of the period but ultimately seems to indicate that Richard brought his own downfall upon himself through his authoritarianism and failure to make war on the French.

 

Two generations on, problems resulting from Richard’s removal would arise when the Lancaster line failed to produce a strong king. Henry IV as Henry Bolingbroke became held on to his crown though in constant fear that someone would do to him what he had done to Richard.  Henry V was probably the most martial king of the period and then there was Henry VI.  That would be the time when a swift investigation of the family tree would remind the nobility that the Lancaster line was descended from Edward III’s third surviving son.  Unfortunately for England, Lionel of Antwerp, Edward’s second surviving son, had a child Philippa who had married into the Mortimer family.  Richard II had named Philippa’s son (Roger Mortimer) his heir. At a time when the Lancaster line weakened this inconvenient fact would become very important indeed. And it would be another Richard – Richard of York – descended on both his mother and father’s side from Edward III who would demand that attention be paid to the previously ignored rights of the Mortimers.

The Mad Priest of Kent

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John-ball-rebel-1John Ball was an English priest and one of the leaders of the Peasants Revolt of 1381. The revolt started in Essex at Brentwood.  It was only when the revolt spread to Kent that John Ball became involved but he quickly, according to folk-lore and the chroniclers of the period, became one of the revolt’s leaders.  He was certainly one of the most eloquent representatives of the Peasants Revolt.

Ball probably began his career in St Mary’s Abbey, York where he was ordained as a priest.  He next appears in Colchester in 1366 when he was arrested for heretical preaching and forbidden from preaching.  John Ball was not deterred. He attacked the wealth of the church and preached for equality between social classes. In 1376, he was arrested by the new archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury because he preached that people need not pay their tithes to unworthy priests.  Even more inflammatory he said that all property should be shared in common among all people.

He was in prison at the outbreak of the Peasants’ Revolt in June of 1381. He wrote many letters from prison to his supporters continuing to urge them to break free from social injustice. When the revolt reached Maidstone one of the first things that Wat Tyler did was to free Ball.

Ball gave a sermon at Blackheath saying “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”  The peasants were so inflamed by his words that they demanded the heads of King Richard II’s bad advisors— Richard returned to the Tower with the men who the commons wanted to kill and the next day the commons rampaged through London.

Ball survived the death of Wat Tyler, there is no further reference to him after the famous sermon speech at Blackheath “When Adam delved and Eve span – who then was then the gentleman?” He escaped London and went into hiding.  He got as far as Coventry where he was discovered, captured and dragged back to face the king.

He was hanged, drawn and quartered on July 15 1381 at St Albans after judgment by Richard II.  His head ended up on a spike on London Bridge.  In the city itself people began to rebuild their homes and their lives where they could.  Many Flemings and Lombards had been killed during the unrest and now the King and his council ordered Englishmen to leave London if there had not lived there for a year and a day.

It was said by chroniclers of the period that Ball was a supporter of Wycliff and the Lollards but it is thought that this was an attempt by the authorities to implicate them in the events of the revolt.