To restore the fortune of war, money was urgently needed, and Duke John kept asking for more and more, to the discontent both of the Parliament and the nation. He was granted in 1379 a poll-tax, wherein every man was assessed according to his estate, from dukes and archbishops who paid £6 13s. 4d. to agricultural labourers who paid 4d. In 1380 followed another tax graduated from £1 to 1s. on every grown man or woman.

It was the collection of this very unpopular tax that precipitated the violent outbreak of a discontent that had been smouldering among the lower classes for the last thirty years. Ever since the Black Death a silent but bitter contention had been in progress between the landholding classes and their tenants, more especially those who were still villeins, and bound to the soil. The main stress of the struggle had come from the fact that the dearth of labourers, and the rise in wages which resulted from the Black Death, had caused the lords of the manors to press more hardly on their tenants. They tried to get all the labour they could out of the villeins, and refused to take money payments for their farms instead of days of labour on the lord's fields. It seems, too, that they strove to claim as villeins many who were, or wished to be, free rent-paying copyhold or leasehold tenants. Moreover, when forced to hire free labour, they tried to under-pay it, relying on the scale of wages fixed by the Statute of Labourers in 1350, instead of abiding by the laws of supply and demand. The pressure on the part of the lords led to combinations in secret clubs and societies among the tenants, who agreed to refuse the statutory wages, and determined to agitate for the removal of all the old labour-rents. Their idea was to commute all such service due on their little holdings into money-rents, at the rate of 4d. for every acre.

But the rising of 1380 was due to many other causes beside the grievance of the villeins. Much discontent can be traced to the mismanagement of the French war, which was all laid on John of Gaunt's shoulders. Much more was due to the filtering down of the teaching of the Lollards to the lower strata of the nation. Wicliffe had always preached that unjust and sinful rulers, whether clerks or laymen, were cut off from the right to use their authority by their own manifest unworthiness, and had no just dominion over their fellow-men. He had especially protested against the wealth and pomp of the clergy, and urged that they ought to return to apostolic poverty. The wilder and more headstrong of his followers had pressed his teaching to the advocacy of pure communism, saying that riches were in themselves evil, and that all men should be equal in all things. John Ball, the best known of these fanatical preachers, was wont to perambulate the country delivering sermons on his favourite text—

Wherever men were oppressed and discontented, they listened eagerly to these discourses, and began to talk of putting an end to all difference between man and man, and dividing all things equally between them. But it was only the wilder spirits who were imbued with these doctrines; the majority—like most discontented Englishmen in all ages—were only set on the practical task of endeavouring to redress their own particular grievances and to better their condition.

It was in June, 1381, that the rising broke out simultaneously in almost the whole of Eastern England, from Yorkshire to Hants. It has gained its name of "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" from Walter the Tyler of Maidstone, who was chief of the insurgents of Kent. Curiously enough, four other men bearing or assuming the name of "the Tyler" were prominent in the troubles. The main incidents of the rising took place round London, towards which the insurgents flocked from all quarters. Simultaneously the men of Essex, under a chief who called himself Jack Straw, marched to Hampstead, those of Hertfordshire to Highbury, and those of Kent to Blackheath. On their way they had done much damage; the Essex rioters had caught and murdered the Chief Justice of England, and the Kentishmen had slain several knights and lawyers who fell into their hands. Everywhere they pillaged the houses of the gentry, and sought out and burnt the manor-rolls which preserved the records of the duties and obligations of the villeins to the lord of the manor.

The king's council at London was quite helpless, for the sudden rising had taken them by surprise, and they had no troops ready. Seeing the city surrounded by the rioters, they shut its gates and sent to ask what were the grievances and demands of the mob. The claims that were formulated by the leaders of the rising were more moderate than might have been expected, for the wilder spirits were still kept in order by the cooler ones. They asked that villeinage should be abolished, and all lands held on villein-tenure be made into leasehold farms rated at 4d. an acre, that the tolls and market dues which heightened the price of provisions should be abolished, and that all who had been engaged in the rising should receive a full pardon for the murders and pillage that had taken place.

These demands were not too violent to be taken into consideration. While the regency hesitated, the young king, who displayed a spirit and resource most unusual in a boy of fourteen, announced that he would himself go to meet the rioters and try to quiet them, for as yet they had not said or done anything implying disrespect for the royal name. But meanwhile the Kentish insurgents had crossed the Thames and burnt John of Gaunt's great palace, the Savoy, which lay in the Strand outside the walls of London. Presently the mob in the city rose and opened the gates, so that Wat Tyler and his host were able to enter. They slew some foreign merchants and some lawyers, the two classes whom they seem most to have hated, but wrought no general pillage or massacre.

On the 13th of June, Richard, persisting in his resolve of bringing the insurgents to reason, rode out of Aldgate, and met the Essex men at Mile End. After hearing their petitions, he declared that they contained nothing impossible, and that he would undertake that they should be granted. But while the king was parleying with the eastern insurgents, the Kentishmen burst into the Tower, where the regency had been sitting, and committed a hideous outrage. They caught Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury—he was also Chancellor—Sir Robert Hales, the High Treasurer, and Legge, who had farmed the obnoxious poll-tax, dragged them forth to Tower Hill, and there slew them.

Notwithstanding these murders, the young king persisted in his design of treating with the insurgents. He bade Tyler and his host meet him next day in Smithfield, outside the city gates. They came, but Tyler, who had throughout shown himself the most violent of the insurgents, began wrangling with the king's suite instead of keeping to the business in hand. This so enraged William Walworth, the Mayor of London, that he drew a short sword and hewed the rebel down from his horse. Then one of the king's squires leapt down and stabbed him as he lay. Walworth's act was likely to have cost the king and his whole party their lives, for the insurgents bent their bows and shouted that they would avenge their captain there and then. But Richard, with extraordinary presence of mind in one so young, pushed his horse forward and bade them stand still, for they should have their demands granted, and he himself would be their captain since Tyler was dead. So there in Smithfield he had a charter drawn up, conceding all that the insurgents asked, and pardoning them for their treason. Satisfied with this, the Kentishmen dispersed to their homes.

Richard returned to London in triumph, as he well deserved, vowing that he had that day won back the realm of England, which had been as good as lost. Soon the nobles and their armed retainers began to gather to London, and when they found themselves in force, they began to discuss the legality of the king's concessions to the peasants. He had not, it was urged, the right to give away other men's property—namely, their feudal rights over their vassals—without the consent of Parliament. It was shocking, too, that the murderers of the archbishop, the lord chief justice, and the treasurer, should go unpunished. So Richard's charter was annulled and his general pardon cancelled; all the leaders of the revolt were caught one after another and hanged; even John Ball's priest's robe did not save him from the gallows, though clergymen were so seldom executed in the Middle Ages.

When Parliament met, the king proposed to them that his promise to the insurgents should stand firm so far as the abolition of villeinage was concerned, since this had been the main cause of the rising. But the barons and knights of the shire were loth to give up their feudal rights, and refused to confirm the king's grant; they replied that the trouble had really had its origin in the evil governance of the ministers, and turned them all out of office. Nevertheless, the rising had not failed in its object, for in future the lords of the manors were afraid to enforce the full letter of their claims over the peasants, and villeinage gradually sank into desuetude.

King Richard had shown his high spirit in the days of the rising, and four years later, when he had attained the age of eighteen, he endeavoured to take the reins of power into his own hands. His uncle of Lancaster did not gainsay him, for he felt himself to be unpopular with the nation, so he departed over-sea on a vain errand. In right of his wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, he had a claim to the crown of Castile, and trusted to get aid from the Portuguese, to set him on the throne which Henry of Trastamara had usurped. So he gathered his retainers and many hired soldiers, and sailed away to Spain; nor was his face seen in England for more than four years.

Meanwhile the young king had placed his friends in office, and strove to rule for himself. His chief minister was Michael de la Pole, son of a rich merchant at Hull, whom he made Earl of Suffolk, to the disgust of many of the barons. He also favoured greatly Robert de Vere, whom he made Lord-Deputy of Ireland, and created Marquis of Dublin. In them and in his two half-brothers, Thomas and John Holland, he placed his confidence.

Richard was now twenty; he had been married some years back to Anne of Bohemia, the daughter of the Emperor Charles IV., and might have expected that all the world would have counted him old enough to administer the kingdom.

But he had reckoned without one man's ambition and jealousy. His youngest uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was an unscrupulous and domineering prince, who had hoped to succeed to John of Gaunt's position, and to have the chief part in ruling his nephew's realm. Richard knew him well, and had no intention of employing him. Seeing this, Duke Thomas began to gather a party among the greater nobles, persuading them that the king was putting the rule of England into the hands of mere upstarts and favourites, and that de la Pole and de Vere were no better than Gaveston or the Despensers. Gloucester drew into his designs many of the most important barons; the Earls of Warwick, Arundel, and Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the son and heir of John of Gaunt, were the chief plotters. They stirred up the people and Parliament by complaints of the maladministration of the ministers, and used a threatened invasion of the French as a lever against those entrusted with the conduct of the long unhappy war with France. When they had excited public opinion, they had Suffolk impeached in Parliament for maladministration of the revenue. Though almost certainly guiltless, he was condemned and imprisoned. But when Parliament had dispersed, the king took him out of confinement, and restored him to favour, declaring that he had a full right to choose his own ministers.

There followed, shortly after, the armed rising of Thomas of Gloucester and his accomplices. Proclaiming that they wished only to free the king from evil councillors, Gloucester, Warwick, Arundel, Nottingham, and the young Henry of Bolingbroke marched on London with a great body of retainers. They called themselves the "Lords Appellant," because they appealed or accused of treason the king's ministers. Richard was taken by surprise at this very unjustifiable raising of civil war. He bade his friends arm, but de Vere, who had raised some levies in Oxfordshire, was beaten by the rebels at Radcot Bridge, and no one else tried to resist. De Vere and de la Pole succeeded in flying to France, where they both died shortly after in exile. But the king and the rest of his friends and ministers fell into the hands of the Lords Appellant.

Under the eyes of Gloucester and his accomplices the Merciless Parliament was summoned to London. Awed by the armed men around them, the members declared Suffolk and de Vere outlaws, and condemned to death seven of the king's minor ministers. So Tresilian the Chief Justice, Sir Simon Burley who had been the king's tutor, and five more were hanged (February, 1388). This disgraceful Parliament ended by voting £20,000 as a gift to the Lords Appellant for their services, and then dispersed.

Gloucester and his friends were in office for something more than a year, a period long enough to show the world that they were grasping self-seekers, and not patriots. The only service they did the country was to negociate truces with Scotland and France, which stopped for a time the lingering "Hundred Years' War."

By 1389 Richard had passed his majority. In a session of the royal council, he suddenly asked his uncle Gloucester how old he was. The duke replied that he was now in his twenty-second year. "Then," said the king, "I am certainly old enough to manage my own affairs." So, formally thanking Gloucester and the rest for their past services, he dismissed them from office. If he had replaced them by his own favourites the civil war would have broken out again, but Richard wisely called in the good bishop William of Wykeham, and other ancient councillors of his grandfather's, against whom no one had a word to say. He made no attempt to punish the Lords Appellant, and acted with such self-restraint and moderation that all the realm was soon full of his praises. Yet all the time he was dissembling, and biding his time for revenge on the men who had murdered his friends in 1388.

Richard's wise and moderate rule lasted for eight years, 1389-97. They were a prosperous time: the French war was suspended, and the king seemed to have put a permanent end to it, by marrying a French princess, Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., after his first wife Anne of Bohemia had died. Perhaps the most important feature of the time was the growth of the Wicliffite movement. John Wicliffe himself had died, at a good old age, in 1384, but his disciples the Lollards continued to increase and multiply. We find them so powerful that in the Parliament of 1394 their representatives in the Commons had begun to agitate for a national declaration against some of the most prominent doctrines of the Roman Church—such as image-worship, the efficacy of pilgrimages, the celibacy of the clergy, and even the Real Presence in the Lord's Supper. They were only stopped by Richard himself, who hurried home from Ireland to rebuke them. He told them that he would hear nothing of such changes, but he did not molest or persecute them, and let the movement take its course. The "Great Schism" was at this time at its height, and the Church presented the disgraceful spectacle of two rival popes, at Rome and Avignon, anathematizing each other, and preaching a crusade against each other's adherents. When such was the state of affairs, and no one knew who was orthodox and who heretical, it was natural enough that the new doctrines should flourish.

In 1397 Richard thought himself so firmly seated on his throne that he could venture to execute his long-cherished vengeance on the Lords Appellant. He had won over two of them to himself, Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the heir of the old Duke of Lancaster. On the others his vengeance suddenly fell; he accused Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, of plotting a new rebellion. They were seized and thrown into prison: Arundel was tried and executed; Gloucester was secretly murdered at Calais; Warwick was banished for life to the Isle of Man. Nor was this all: for a time Richard professed the greatest affection for Nottingham and Bolingbroke, the two survivors of the plotters of 1388. He even made them Dukes of Norfolk and Hereford. But in 1398 his vengeance fell on them also. He induced Hereford to accuse Norfolk of treasonable conversation, and when Mowbray denied it, proposed that they should meet in judicial combat in the lists at Coventry. They consented, but when the champions came ready armed before him, Richard suddenly stopped the duel, and announced to the astonished dukes that he had determined to banish them both from the realm—Norfolk for life, Hereford for ten years.

Having thus wreaked his vengeance on the last of the Lords Appellant, Richard proceeded to rule in a far more arbitrary manner than before, and decidedly outstepped his constitutional rights. He thought that there was no one left in the realm who would dare to oppose him, and that he could do all that he chose. His most flagrantly illegal step was to increase his revenue by raising forced loans from men of wealth, an ingenious means of getting money without having to apply to Parliament for it. But he kept up a considerable standing army of archers, to overawe discontent, and thought himself quite secure. When John of Gaunt died in 1399, he seized upon all the great estates of the duchy of Lancaster, and refused to allow the exiled Henry of Bolingbroke to claim his father's title and heritage. This roused much sympathy for Henry, since he had been promised that his banishment should make no difference to his rights of inheritance.

Richard's nearest kinsman and heir at this time was his cousin Roger, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel of Clarence, the Black Prince's next brother. The king had sent him over to Ireland and entrusted him with the government of that country, for he paid more attention to Irish affairs than any of his ancestors, and had already made one expedition across St. George's Channel in 1394. Ireland had been in a state of complete anarchy ever since Edward Bruce broke up the foundations of English rule eighty years before, and both the Anglo-Norman lords of the Pale and the Irish chiefs of the west showed an utter disregard for the royal authority. Roger of March was killed by rebels in a skirmish at Kenlys-in-Ossory in 1398, and this so provoked Richard that he resolved to go over himself, with all his personal retainers and hired guards, and put an end to the anarchy.

Accordingly, early in 1399 the king sailed for Dublin, leaving England in charge of his one surviving uncle, Edmund, Duke of York, a weak old man who had always shown himself very loyal, but very incapable. When Richard was lost to sight in the Irish bogs, all his enemies began to take counsel against him. The barons began to murmur at his arbitrary rule, the citizens of London at his forced loans, the clergy at his tolerance for the Lollards. At the critical moment Henry of Bolingbroke landed unexpectedly at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, proclaiming that he had only come to claim his father's duchy, which had been so wrongfully withheld from him. He was immediately joined by Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and many other northern lords. The regent Edmund of York gathered an army to withstand him, but when Bolingbroke explained to him that he came with no treasonable purpose, but only to plead for his forfeited estates, the simple old man dismissed his troops and went home. Thus unexpectedly freed from opposition, Bolingbroke soon showed his real mind by catching and hanging Richard's ministers, Scrope, Earl of Wiltshire, Bushey, and Greene.

The news of Duke Henry's landing had soon got to Ireland, and the king at once prepared to return and resist him. But for four weeks persistent easterly winds kept him storm-bound at Dublin. At last the wind turned, and Richard could cross, but he came too late. York's army had dispersed, and some Welsh levies, whom the Earl of Salisbury had raised, had also gone home, after waiting in vain for the king's landing. When Richard reached Flint Castle with the small following that he had brought with him, he was surrounded by troops under the Earl of Northumberland, who had been awaiting his arrival. Nothing but surrender was possible, so Richard yielded himself up, trusting that his cousin aimed merely at seizing the governance of the realm, and not at his master's life or crown.

Henry, however, had other views: he put Richard in strict custody, and took him to London. There the Parliament assembled, overawed by the armed retainers of the duke and his partisans. Richard was forced by threats to abdicate, and thought that he had thus secured his life. Then Henry caused the Parliament to accept his cousin's resignation, and claimed the crown for himself. This was in manifest disregard of the rights of Edmund of March, the young son of that Roger who had fallen in Ireland a year before. The Parliament, however, formally elected the duke to fill his cousin's throne, and saluted him as king by the name of Henry IV. Constitutionally, no doubt, they were acting within their rights; but it is only fair to say that Richard—headstrong and arbitrary though he had been—had scarcely deserved his fate. Nor was there any adequate reason for setting aside the clear hereditary claim of Edmund of March (1399).

Henry had grasped the crown, but he knew that his position was insecure. He had only a Parliamentary title, and what one Parliament had done another could undo. The late king had many faithful partisans, and was not misliked by the nation at large. Therefore the unscrupulous usurper determined to make away with him. Richard was sent to Pontefract Castle, and never seen again; undoubtedly he was murdered, but no one save Henry and his confidants knew how the deed was done. The details of the dark act have never come to light.