England Before the Revolt
The population of England and Wales in 1307 is estimated at three million. The figure is not certain, and it is only a small and barely noticeable increase over the population of about two and a half million assumed for 1066. This suggests that progress in farming and industry was very slow in this period, and that famine, disease, and war strongly limited the growth of population on this fertile but small island, whose resources have never been enough to support a large number of people. Probably three quarters of the people were peasants, and of these about half were serfs. In this respect England was a century behind France.
A Society of Sharp Class Division
Class privilege was stronger than in the rest of Europe. Life turned on two groups: lords, who were either condescending or self-regarding, and servants, who were either hopeful or resentful. Apart from the limited services they owed the king, the barons owned and ruled their own domains and often more. The dukes of Lancaster, Norfolk, and Buckingham held estates equal to the king's, and the estates of the Neville and Percy families were not much smaller. A feudal lord forced his vassal knights and squires to serve him, defend him, and wear his livery.
Even so, it was possible to rise from one class to a higher one. The daughter of a rich merchant could marry a baron and gain rank and name. Chaucer would have been astonished to see his granddaughter bear the title of duchess. The middle classes adopted aristocratic manners as far as they could. In England they called each other master and in France monsieur, and soon every man was a master or monsieur and every woman a mistress or madame.
Industry, Wool, and Cloth
Industry advanced faster than agriculture. By 1300 almost all of England's mines were being worked. Silver, iron, lead, and tin were extracted, and the export of metals was one of the country's great items of foreign trade. According to the Commons, the kingdom underground was worth more than the kingdom above. In this century the wool industry took root in England and enriched the country.
Sheep Farming and the Wool Merchants
Every day lords took back more of the land they had earlier given to their serfs and tenants for ordinary farming and turned large areas over to raising sheep, since selling wool paid better than plowing and sowing. For a time the wool merchants were the richest traders in England. They could make huge loans and pay heavy taxes to Edward III, who then caused their ruin and misery.
From Raw Wool to Finished Cloth
Edward could not bear to see England's raw wool flow to the cloth factories of Flanders. From 1331 he encouraged Flemish weavers to move to Britain and, on their advice, set up a textile factory. He then forbade the export of wool and the import of foreign cloth. By the end of the fourteenth century the cloth industry had replaced the wool trade and become one of England's main sources of liquid wealth, reaching a semi-capitalist stage.
A New Way of Organizing Labor
The new industry required the cooperation of many crafts such as spinning, weaving, fulling, dyeing, carding, and finishing. The old craft guilds could not produce the orderly combination of effort that economic production requires. Bold owners and masters gathered the specialists into one organization and took on its cost and management. The system as it existed in Florence and Flanders had not yet appeared in England. Work was done in small shops under a master craftsman with his apprentices and a few hired workers, or in small rural mills that used water power, or in peasant homes where the patient fingers of the housewife went to the loom after the household tasks were done.
The craft guilds fought the new system and went on strike, but the greater production of the new system overcame all opposition. Workers, who competed with each other to sell their skill and labor, became more and more the tools of investors and workshop managers. The urban poor lived from hand to mouth. They were careless about clothing and housing, eating and drinking well on good days and going hungry on bad ones.
- All men were liable to forced labor on public works, but the wealthy paid money instead of working.
- Poverty was harder to bear, although its intensity probably never matched that of the early nineteenth century.
- Beggars multiplied and organized themselves to protect and manage their trade.
- The help given to the poor by churches, monasteries, and guilds was very small and uneven.
The Black Death as an Economic Revolution
Suddenly the Black Death walked onto this scene, not as a heavenly calamity fixed for humankind, but as an economic revolution. The people of England lived in a climate more favorable to the growth of plants than to human health. The fields were green all year, but people complained of gout, shortness of breath, rheumatism, sciatica, tuberculosis, dropsy, and diseases of the eye and skin. People of every class ate heavily and kept warm with alcohol. Around 1340 Richard Rolle wrote that scarcely anyone reached forty in those days, and fewer reached fifty.
Poor Sanitation and Repeated Plague
Public hygiene was very primitive. The stink of tanneries, pigsties, and privies fouled the air. Only the houses of the wealthy had running water, while most people drew water from ditches and wells and could not afford to use it for a weekly bath. The lower classes were ready prey for cholera and plague, which every few years killed large numbers. In 1349 bubonic plague passed from Normandy to England and Wales, and a year later it reached Scotland and Ireland. It returned to England in 1361, 1368, 1375, 1382, 1390, 1438, and 1464, and over all these attacks it destroyed about one in three Englishmen.
Effects on the Church, Art, and Morals
Nearly half the clergy died. One cause of the abuses and misconduct in the English Church that drew so many complaints was probably that, out of need, it put into service people who lacked the necessary qualifications and character. Art and craft suffered greatly, since for nearly a generation the building of churches stopped. Public morals weakened, family ties broke, and sexual license broke through the barriers that marriage law had built around it for the sake of social welfare and order. Laws were often forgotten because no one enforced them.
The End of the Manorial Order
Plague and war worked together to speed the decay of the manorial system. Many peasants who lost children or helpers abandoned their rented holdings and went to the towns. Landlords had to hire free laborers at twice the former wage, find new tenants on easier terms, and convert feudal services into money payments. Since the landlords themselves had to pay more for everything they bought, they asked the government to fix wages.
The Ordinance of 1349 and the Statute of Labourers
The royal council answered with an ordinance on 18 June 1349. It stated that a large number of people, especially laborers and servants, had died in the recent plague, that many would work only for very high pay, and that some even preferred idleness and begging to work. After consulting bishops, nobles, and learned men, it decreed these main points:
- Any able-bodied person under sixty with no means of living must serve whoever asked for his work, or be jailed until someone guaranteed him and put him to work.
- A worker or servant who left his job before the agreed term was to be imprisoned.
- Servants were to be paid only at the earlier rates, and no more.
- A craftsman or laborer who asked for or received more than the proper wage was to be jailed.
- Food was to be sold at a reasonable price.
- No one was permitted to give alms to a beggar who was able to work.
Neither workers nor employers paid attention to the decree. On 9 February 1351 Parliament was forced to issue the Statute of Labourers, which stated that wages must not exceed the rate of 1346 and set prices for a large number of jobs and goods. A further measure of 1360 provided that peasants who left their land before their lease ended were to be brought back by force and, at the discretion of the justices of the peace, branded on the forehead. Similar measures, more severe, were taken between 1377 and 1381. In spite of these efforts and commands, wages rose. The quarrel this created between workers and the government set fire to class war and put a new weapon in the hands of the orators of revolution.
The Causes of the Revolt
The revolution had many causes and motives.
- Peasants who were still serfs wanted freedom.
- Free peasants wanted an end to the manorial dues still demanded of them.
- Tenants insisted on reducing the yearly rent to four pence per acre ($1.67 in the book's conversion).
- Some towns were still subject to feudal rules and under the control of feudal lords, and wanted self-government.
- In the free communities, workers hated the oligarchy of merchants, and wage earners complained of poverty and insecurity.
Laborers, farmers, and even parish priests blamed the misgovernment of the last years of Edward III and the first years of Richard II. They asked why, since 1369, English armies kept losing and why heavier taxes were laid on them every day because of those defeats. They especially hated Archbishop Sudbury, Robert Hales, a chief minister of the young king, and John of Gaunt, and they considered them the cause of the corruption and incompetence of the government.
Wycliffe's Teaching, John Ball, and Wat Tyler
The preaching Lollards were not connected with the revolt, but their teaching helped to prepare minds for revolution. John Ball, the thinker behind the revolt, looked with approval on Wycliffe's ideas, and Wat Tyler, who demanded the stripping of the Church's material property, followed Wycliffe's teaching.
According to Froissart, Ball was a mad priest of Kent who taught his followers communist ideas and was excommunicated in 1366. He then became a traveling preacher who condemned the corrupting wealth of bishops and lords and demanded that the clergy return to evangelical poverty. He mocked the popes of the schism, who were trying to divide the robe of Christ. A famous rhyme is attributed to him, asking who was the lord when Adam dug and Eve spun.
The Message Attributed to Ball
Although Froissart greatly admired the English aristocracy, he reports the views attributed to Ball at such length that it suggests sympathy. In substance, Ball said that England would never be at ease until everything was held in common, until the foundation of lord and serf was swept away, and until no one but ourselves was our master. Why, he asked, did the lords keep the people in bondage, since all were children of one father and mother, Adam and Eve? What did they have more than others to make them lords? They called the people slaves and had them whipped if they did not do their work. His advice was to go to the king, who was young and might listen and respond favorably, and if he did not, the people themselves must rise to better their lives. Ball was arrested three times, and when the revolution broke out he was in prison.
The Poll Tax and the First Sparks
The poll tax of 1380 added to the discontent. The government was near bankruptcy, the king's pledged jewels were about to be lost, and the war with France demanded new expenses. A tax equal to 100,000 pounds ($10,000,000 in the book's conversion) was imposed, to be paid by every inhabitant over fifteen years of age. This new tax united the scattered elements of revolution.
- Thousands avoided it and fled from the tax collectors, so the sums collected were much less than expected.
- When the government sent out new collectors, the people gathered and resisted by force.
- At Brentwood in 1381 the king's agents were driven out of the town with stones, and the scene was repeated at Fobbing, Corringham, and St. Albans.
- In London, large meetings were held in protest and encouraged the rural rebels to march on the capital and join the rebels gathered there, in order to press the king and convince him that there should no longer be serfs in England.
The Rising in Kent
When groups of tax collectors arrived in Kent, they met revolutionary resistance. On 6 June 1381 a crowd of rebels broke the doors of Rochester's dungeons, freed the prisoners, and plundered the castle. The next day the rebels chose Wat Tyler as their leader. Nothing is known of his life or background. He was apparently a veteran soldier, since he gave order and unity to the disorganized revolutionary host and made it obey him.
On 8 June the crowd, which grew by the hour and was armed with bows, clubs, axes, and swords, and which was joined from every side by a flood of rebels from around Kent, attacked the houses of landowners, judges, and notorious officials. On 10 June they reached Canterbury and were welcomed by the people. They plundered Archbishop Sudbury's palace, opened the prisons, and looted the houses of the rich. By now all of east Kent had joined the revolutionary army. Town after town rose, and local officials fled from the storm. The wealthy fled to other parts of England, hid themselves in remote places, or gave help to the revolutionary movement to avoid further ruin.
Ball Freed and the Vision of Christian Democracy
On 11 June Tyler marched his army toward London and at Maidstone freed John Ball from prison. Ball joined the rebels and resumed his fiery speeches. He said that the Christian democracy he had longed for and wanted was now beginning. There would be neither rich nor poor, neither lord nor slave, all social inequality would disappear, and everyone would be his own king.
The Revolt Spreads
At the same time, similar risings broke out in Norfolk, Suffolk, Beverley, Bridgwater, Cambridge, Essex, Middlesex, Hertford, and Somerset. At Bury St. Edmunds the people beheaded a church official who had pressed hard to enforce the abbey's feudal rights over the townspeople. At Colchester the rebels killed some Florentine merchants because they interfered in British trade. Wherever they could, they destroyed the rolls, leases, contracts, and decrees that proved the lords' ownership or their own servitude. For this reason the people of Cambridge burned the university's charters, and they burned every document they found in the archive of the abbey at Waltham.
The Capture of London
On 11 June the rebel army of Essex and Hertford approached north London. On the twelfth the Kent rebels reached Southwark, across the Thames, and the royalists put up no organized resistance. Richard II, Sudbury, and Hales hid in the Tower of London. Tyler sent the king a message asking for a meeting, but the king refused. The mayor of London, William Walworth, closed the city gates, but the revolutionaries inside opened them.
On 13 June the Kent rebel force entered the capital and was warmly welcomed by the people, and thousands of workers joined it. Tyler kept good order among his troops, but he appeased their anger by letting them plunder and destroy John of Gaunt's palace. Nothing was stolen there. The crowd killed one rebel who tried to steal a silver cup while the palace was being torn down, but they destroyed everything. They threw precious furniture out of the windows, tore up hangings and costly tapestries, crushed the jewels, and then burned the building to the ground. Some merry rebels who had drunk themselves senseless in the palace cellar were consumed by the fire.
The Temple and the Prisons
The rebels then poured into the Temple, the citadel of English lawyers. The peasants and farmers remembered that the judges had written the documents of their bondage and wage labor or had assessed the taxes on their property, so they burned every document there and set the buildings ablaze. The prisons of Newgate and the Fleet were destroyed, and their lucky prisoners joined the crowd. At night the revolutionary army, which had taken a century's revenge in a day, lay down tired and battered in the streets of the city and fell asleep.
Mile End and the Killing of Sudbury
That night the royal council judged that a meeting between the king and Tyler was better than refusing one. They sent word that Richard would meet him and his followers the next morning at Mile End, a suburb north of London.
At dawn on 14 June the fourteen-year-old king risked his life and came out of the Tower with all the members of the royal council except Sudbury and Hales, who did not dare to leave. This small party made its way through the enemy army to the appointed place, where the rebels of Essex had gathered. Tyler also set out for Mile End at the head of a part of the Kent rebels.
The King's Concessions
Tyler was surprised that the king was ready to grant almost all the rebels' demands:
- Serfdom was to be abolished throughout England.
- Manorial dues and forced labor were to end.
- Rents on leased land were to be lowered to the amount the rebels named.
- A general pardon was to cover everyone who took part in the revolt.
The king refused one demand, which was to hand over the ministers and other so-called traitors. Richard said that everyone accused of treason and abuse would be tried according to law and punished if found guilty.
The Execution of the Archbishop
This answer did not satisfy the rebels. Tyler and a group of his closest men rode quickly to the Tower of London. They found Sudbury in the Tower chapel reciting the prayers of the Mass. They dragged him into the courtyard, forced him to the ground, laid his head on a log, and an unskilled executioner severed it with eight blows of an axe. The rebels then beheaded Hales and two others. The archbishop's cap was fastened with a nail to his skull, and the heads of the dead were set on spears, carried through the city, and placed on the gate of London Bridge.
Massacre of Foreigners
The remaining hours of the day were spent in killing. London merchants, resentful of Flemish commercial competition, told the crowd to kill every Fleming in the capital. To identify a suspect, they showed him bread and cheese and asked him to name them. If he answered in his own language, he lost his head. On that day in June more than 150 foreign merchants and bankers were killed in London. Many judges, tax collectors, and followers of John of Gaunt died under the axes of the avengers. Apprentices killed their masters and debtors killed their creditors. At midnight the victorious rebels lay down again to rest.
Smithfield and the Death of Tyler
When the king heard what had happened, he returned from Mile End, but instead of going to the Tower he went to his mother's palace near St. Paul's Cathedral. Meanwhile many of the Essex and Hertford rebels, delighted with their pardon, went home. On 15 June the king sent word to the remaining rebels and asked them to meet him in the fields of Smithfield, outside Aldersgate.
Tyler agreed. Fearing for his life before the meeting, Richard confessed and took the sacrament, and then went to the place with two hundred attendants who had swords tied on beneath their ordinary clothes. At Smithfield Tyler came forward with one guard. He made new demands, whose exact nature is unknown because the reports are uncertain, but they apparently included the seizure of church property and the distribution of its wealth among the people.
The Quarrel and the Killing
A dispute broke out, and one of the king's attendants called Tyler a thief. Tyler ordered his assistant to destroy the man. Walworth, the mayor of London, stepped in between them. Tyler struck at Walworth with a dagger, but the wound had no effect because the mayor wore armor under his robe. Walworth wounded Tyler with a short sword, and one of Richard's squires drove a sword into his body again. Tyler leaped on his horse and rode back toward the rebel army, crying "treason, treason," and then fell from the saddle and died.
The rebels, enraged by what was clearly treachery, put arrows to their bowstrings and prepared to shoot. Their numbers were reduced, but still large, and Froissart reckons them at 20,000. They would very probably have overwhelmed the king's party. But Richard boldly rode forward and cried out, asking whether they wanted to kill their king. He told them to come, that he would be their leader and would give them whatever they asked, and to follow him out into the fields. He rode on slowly, not knowing whether they would follow. The rebels at first hesitated and then followed him, and many of the king's guards mingled with them.
Walworth's Army
Walworth, however, rode quickly back to the city and sent word to the aldermen of London's twenty-four wards to join him at once with whatever armed forces they could raise. Many citizens who had at first favored the rebels were now alarmed by all the killing and plunder. Anyone with even modest property saw life and goods in danger. As a result Walworth found an army of seven thousand men, who seemed to spring from the earth, ready to obey him. With this army he returned to Smithfield, joined the king, surrounded the rebels, and proposed to destroy them.
Richard did not agree. The rebels had spared him when his life was in their hands, so he must show them generosity. He announced that they might disperse and no one would harm them.
The Rebels' Retreat
The rest of the rebels of Essex and Hertford vanished at once. The London rebels fled to their hideouts, and only the rebels of Kent remained. Walworth's armed men prevented them from passing through the city, but Richard ordered that no one should touch them. They left the city in safety and, disordered and straggling, took the old road back to Kent.
The king returned to his mother, who was now weeping with joy. She said that if he knew how anxious she had been for him, he would understand. He answered that he understood well, told her to rejoice and give thanks to God, and said that on that day he had saved both his lost inheritance and the kingdom of England.
Reprisals and Revocation
On 15 June, probably at the urging of Walworth, who had saved his life, Richard issued a decree that everyone who had not lived in London the previous year must leave the city on pain of death. Walworth and his soldiers searched all the streets, alleys, and tenements of London for such people, arrested many, and killed some. Among those killed was a man called Jack Straw, who apparently under torture confessed that the Kent rebels planned to make Tyler king.
Meanwhile a delegation from the Essex rebels came to Waltham and demanded the king's formal confirmation of the promises he had given them on 14 June. Richard replied that he had made those promises out of fear for his life and would not carry them out. He told them that they had been serfs and would remain serfs, and threatened severe vengeance on anyone who rose in arms. The angry delegates went back and called their comrades to a new revolt. Some rose, but Walworth's soldiers put down this rising with a dreadful massacre on 28 June.
Trials and the Death of John Ball
On 2 July, at the urging of those around him, the king revoked all the charters and decrees of pardon that he had issued during the revolt and opened the way for judicial inquiries into the identity and conduct of those who took part. Hundreds were arrested and tried, and 110 or more were condemned to death.
John Ball was captured at Coventry. He boldly admitted his effective role in supporting the principles of the revolution and refused to ask the king's pardon. He was hanged, disemboweled, and quartered, and his head, together with the heads of Tyler and Jack Straw, replaced those of Sudbury and Hales as an ornament of the bridge.
Parliament Preserves Serfdom
On 13 November Richard presented an account of his actions to Parliament and said that if the clergy, the lords, and the commons wanted the freedom of the serfs, he wanted it too. But the members of Parliament were almost all landowners and could not approve the king's right to free their serfs. They therefore confirmed and approved the existing feudal relations between landlord and tenant. The dejected peasants returned to their fields, and the sullen workers to their workshops.