Authorities: Walsingham; Knyghton—(Rolls Series); Wright’s Political Songs—(Rolls Series); Froissart; Professor Oman—Great Revolt of 1381, containing translation of a chronicle of the rising in the Stow MSS., first published in English Historical Review, 1895; André Réville—Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs (1898); Dr. G. Kriehn—American Review, 1902; Edgar Powell—Rising of 1381 in East Anglia; Dr. James Gairdner—Lollardy and the Reformation; G. M. Trevelyan—England in the Age of Wycliff; J. Clayton—Wat Tyler and the Great Uprising.

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WAT TYLER AND THE
PEASANT REVOLT 1381

The Peasant Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was not only the first great national movement towards democracy, it was the first uprising of the English people in opposition to all their hitherto recognised rulers in Church and State, and it was the first outburst in this land against social injustice.59

The Black Death in 1349 and the pestilence that ravaged the country in 1361 and 1369 upset the old feudal order. The land was in many places utterly bereft of labour, and neither king nor parliament could restore the former state of things. Landowners, driven by the scarcity of labour, went in for sheep farming in place of agriculture, and were compelled to offer an increase of wages in spite of the Statutes of Labourers (1351–1353) which expressly forbade the same:—

“Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three-score years, and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence.”

This act remained the law until the fifth year of Elizabeth.

“Free” labourers, landless men but not serfs, wandered away to the towns or turned outlaws in the forests. Serfs—only a small number of the population, for the Church had always recommended their liberation, even while abbots and priors retained them on Church estates, and Edward III. had encouraged granting freedom in return for payment in money—escaped to those incorporated towns that promised freedom after eighteen months’ residence. Villeins and lesser tenants commuted the service due from them to their landlords by money payments, and so began the leasehold system of land tenure.

For thirty years preceding the Peasant Revolt the social changes had bred discontent, and discontent rather than misery is always the parent of revolt.

An early statute of Richard II., framed for the perpetual bondage of the serfs, heightened the discontent.

“No bondman or bondwoman shall place their children at school, as has been done, so as to advance their children in the world by their going into the Church.”

This same act made equal prohibition against apprenticeship in the town.

The free labourer had his grievance against the Statute of Labourers. Villeins and cottar tenants had no sure protection against being compelled to give labour service to their lords; and they, with the freehold yeomen and the town workmen and shopkeepers, hated the heavy taxation, the oppressive market tolls and the general misgovernment.

To unite all these forces of social discontent into one great army, which should destroy the oppression and establish freedom and brotherhood, was the work John Ball—an itinerant priest who came at first from St. Mary’s at York, and then made Colchester the centre of his journeyings—devoted himself to for twenty years.

Ball preached a social revolution, and his gospel was that all men were brothers, and that serfdom and lordship were incompatible with brotherhood. In our times such teaching is common enough, but in the fourteenth century, with its sumptuary laws and its feudal ranks, only in religion was this principle accepted.60 John Ball became the moving spirit in the agitation set on foot by his teaching. He had his colleagues and lieutenants, John Wraw in Suffolk and Jack Straw in Essex—both priests like himself—William Grindcobbe in Hertford and Geoffrey Litster in Norfolk. The peasants were organised into clubs, and letters were sent by Ball far and wide to stir up revolt. In Kent and the eastern counties lay the main strength of the revolutionaries—it was in Kent that Ball was particularly active just before the rising—but Sussex, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Warwickshire, Yorkshire and Somerset were all affected, so grave and so general was the dissatisfaction, and so hopeful to the labouring people was the message delivered by John Ball.

Of course Ball did not escape censure and the penalty of law during his missionary years. He was excommunicated and cast into prison by three Archbishops of Canterbury, Islip, Simon Langham, and Simon Sudbury, for teaching “errors, schisms, and scandals against the popes, archbishops, bishops, and clergy,” and he was only released from prison, from Archbishop Sudbury’s gaol at Maidstone, by the rough hands of the men of Kent when the rising had begun. The “errors” of John Ball were civil and social rather than theological. The notion that Ball and his fellow socialists of the fourteenth century were mixed up with Wycliff and the Lollards has really no foundation in fact.61 Wycliff’s unorthodox views on the sacraments and his attacks on the habits of the clergy were of no interest to the social revolutionists, and John of Gaunt, the steady friend of Wycliff, was hated above all other men in the realm by the leaders of the revolt. Wycliff expressed as little sympathy with the Peasant Revolt of his day as Luther later in Germany did with the Peasant War, or Cranmer with the Norfolk rising under Ket in 1549.

John Ball’s sermons were all on one text—“In the beginning of the world there were no bondmen, all men were created equal. Servitude of man to man is contrary to God’s will.” He declared that “things will never go well in England so long as goods are not kept in common, and so long as there are villeins and gentlefolks.” He harped on the social inequalities of his age, quoting freely from Langland’s Piers the Plowman, and enlarging on the famous couplet:

As years went by and the time grew ripe for revolt, there is a definite call to rise in Ball’s letters and speeches. “Let us go to the king, and remonstrate with him,” he declares, “telling him we must have it otherwise, or we ourselves shall find the remedy.”

Richard II. was but eleven when he came to the throne in 1377. “He is young. If we wait on him in a body, all those who come under the name of serf or are held in bondage will follow us, in the hope of being free. When the king shall see us we shall obtain a favourable answer, or we must then ourselves seek to amend our condition.”

Some of the rhymed letters Ball sent out, bidding his hearers “stand together manfully in the truth,” urge preparation for the coming conflict:

In other letters he greets John Nameless, John the Miller, and John Carter, and bids them stand together in God’s name; and bids Piers Plowman “go to his work and chastise well Hob the Robber (Sir Robert Hales, the king’s treasurer); and take with you John Trueman and all his fellows, and look that you choose one head and no more.”

These letters and the preaching did their work; the peasants were organised; men of marked courage and ability were found in various counties; and “the one head and no more” was ready in Kent to lead the army of revolt to the king when the signal should be given. Litster, Grindcobbe, and Wraw were at their posts. In every county from Somerset to York the peasants flocked together, “some armed with clubs, rusty swords, axes, with old bows reddened by the smoke of the chimney corner, and odd arrows with only one feather.”

John Ball had rung his bell, and at Whitsuntide, at the end of May, 1381, came the great uprising, the “Hurling-Time of the Peasants.” The fire was all ready to be kindled, and a poll-tax, badly ordered, set the country ablaze.

The poll-tax was first levied, in 1377, on all over fourteen years of age. Two years later it was graduated, from 4d. on every man and woman of the working class to £6 13s. 4d. on a duke or archbishop. Even this with a further tax on wool was found insufficient.

So early in 1381 John of Gaunt called the parliament together at Northampton, and declared that £160,000 must be raised. Parliament refused to find more than £100,000, and the clergy, owning at that time one-third of the land, promised £60,000. Again a poll-tax was demanded. This time everybody over fifteen was required to pay 1s., but in districts where wealthy folks lived it was held sufficient that the amount collected in every parish averaged 1s. per head; only the rich were not to pay less than £1 per household, nor the poor less than 8d. In parishes where all were needy the full shilling was demanded without exception. It soon appeared that the money was not to be raised. In many parts the returns as to the population liable to the tax were not even filled in with any attempt at accuracy, and numbers avoided liability by leaving their homes—to escape a tribute, which to the struggling peasant meant ruin. Of the £100,000 required only £22,000 was forthcoming.

Then one John Legge undertook to supply the deficit, if he had the authority of the crown to act as special commissioner to collect the tax. The appointment was made, with the result that the methods of the tax-collectors provoked revolt, and Legge lost his life over the business.

The rising began in Essex, when the villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope were summoned to meet the tax-commissioner at Brentwood. Unable to pay, they fell upon the collectors and killed them. The government met this assault by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to punish the offenders. But as the judge merely had for escort a certain number of legal functionaries, and as the blood of the people was up, Belknap was received with open contempt, and, forced to swear on the Bible that he would hold no other session in the place, was glad to escape from the town without injury. And with this defiance and overpowering of the king’s officers the signal was given, the beacon of revolt well lighted.

It was June 2nd, Whit Sunday, when the Chief Justice was driven out of Brentwood; two days later Kent had risen at Gravesend and Dartford.

At Gravesend Sir Simon Burley, the friend of Richard II., seized a workman in the town, claiming him as a bondsman of his estate, and clapped him in Rochester Castle, refusing to hear of release unless £300 was paid.

At the same time word went about that the tax-collector at Dartford was insulting the women, and that, in especial, the wife and daughter of one John Tyler had been abused with gross indecency.

Whereupon this John Tyler, “being at work in the same town tyling of an house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff, so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.”62

Robert Cave, a master baker of Dartford, led the people straight off to Rochester; and the castle having been stormed, and all its prisoners released, Sir John Newton, the governor of the castle, was retained in safe custody.

And now the time had come for good generalship and discipline in the ranks, if the fire of revolt was to burn aright. Accordingly at Maidstone, on June 7th, Wat Tyler is chosen captain of the host; and proof is quickly given that the rising is not for mob rule or general anarchy, but to redress positive and intolerable wrongs. (Five Tylers are mentioned in the records of the Peasant Revolt: Wat Tyler, of Maidstone; John Tyler, of Dartford, who slays the tax-collector, and is not heard of again; Walter Tyler, of Essex; and two Tylers of the City of London—William, of Stone Street, and Simon, of Cripplegate.)

In every respect was this Wat Tyler a man of remarkable gifts. Chosen as leader by the voice of his neighbours in Kent, his authority is at once obeyed without dispute, and his influence is seen to extend beyond the borders of his own county. Jack Straw acts as his lieutenant; John Wraw, of Suffolk, and William Grindcobbe, of St. Albans, come to him for advice; and it is not till Tyler moves on London with his army that the rising becomes national. He is plainly marked out as a great leader of masses of men. Skilful, courageous, humane, Wat Tyler is proved to be; firm, clear-headed, downright in manner, and yet large-hearted, jovial and brotherly—equally at home with king or beggar. There is nothing of the fanatical doctrinaire about this first great leader of the English people. He could order the execution of “traitors,” but he is not the man for bloodshed in England if the revolution he and John Ball aimed at can be accomplished by peaceful means. After more than 500 years the reputation of Wat Tyler stands out untarnished and unshaken.63

Yet for eight days—and eight days only—does history allow us to follow the career of this remarkable man. On June 7th Wat Tyler was chosen by the men of Kent to lead the revolt; on June 15th he was dead. Of his antecedents we know nothing. Parentage, birth-place, age, height, and personal appearance, are all unrecorded. His trade alone we can infer, and we know that his contemporaries trusted him to the full: for no suggestion has been made of any kind of rivalry or jealousy amongst the leaders, or of criticism or grumbling amongst the rank and file.

Wat Tyler emerges from the obscurity of history to become a strong democratic leader. For eight days he commands a vast army of men; he confronts the king as an equal; orders the execution of the chief ministers of the crown; and wrests from the king promises of fundamental social importance. Then, in the very hour of victory, an unexpected blow from an enemy strikes him down, and death follows. Surely to few men is it awarded to achieve an immortal reputation in so brief a public life.

No sooner is Tyler acclaimed as leader at Maidstone than the commons of Kent are flocking to the standard of revolt. The cry is for “King Richard and the Commons,” and it goes hard with any who refuse to take the oath. John of Gaunt is the enemy. John of Gaunt is held to be responsible for all the mischief wrought on the coast towns of Kent by the privateer fleets of the Scots and the French, for the raiding of Rye and Winchelsea. (Only in the previous year these fleets had invaded the Thames as far as Gravesend.) John of Gaunt is the head and front of the misrule that bled the land with poll-taxes. John of Gaunt is the incarnation of the landlord rule that would keep the labourer in bondage for ever. So bitter is the feeling against John of Gaunt, and so acute the fear that he is aiming at the crown, that a vow is taken by the men of Kent that no man named “John” shall be King of England.

John of Gaunt was the common enemy. But John of Gaunt was far away on the Scottish border, and there were enemies near at hand to be dealt with. The manor-houses of Kent were attacked; in a few cases, where their owners were notoriously bad landlords, were burnt. The main thing, however, was to obtain the rent-rolls, the lists of tenants and serfs, and all the documents of the lawyers. These papers were seized and destroyed by the peasants, for no assurance of freedom was possible while such evidence of service could be produced. These documents were the legal instruments of landlord rule; and as the people had risen to end this rule, a beginning had to be made by destroying the machinery. There was no general reign of terror in the country; there was nothing of the ferocity of the Jacquerie in France; no slaughter of landlords; and no common destruction of property.

The nobility seemed to expect judgment at the hands of the people, and those who were at Plymouth making preparation for their invasion of France put to sea as quickly as possible when news came of the rising.64 But the people had risen not for blind vengeance or for civil war, and the class who suffered badly at the rising were the lawyers rather than the landlords. It was the lawyer’s hand that the peasants saw and felt, and not the mailed fist, for the lawyer was not only the land agent of the lord of the manor, he was also the judge in matters of dispute between landlord and tenant, and it was he who kept the lists of villeins and serfs, and in the service of his lord did not scruple to manipulate those lists.

In those first days of the rising, when yeomen and more than one landholder joined the army of revolt,65 and all who were willing to cry “King Richard and the Commons” were counted as supporters, the worst that the landlord suffered (except in extreme cases) was the loss of his papers, but the lawyer who clung to his office was often hanged without mercy, as a scourge to the commonwealth.

Tyler was at Canterbury on Monday, June 10th, and here Archbishop Sudbury’s palace was ransacked for papers, and his tenant-rolls burnt. Beyond this, and a rough exhortation to the monks to prepare to elect a new archbishop, no injury was done. The following day Tyler was back at Maidstone, and his men burst open the archbishop’s prison and released John Ball, with all others who had incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. This accomplished, with John Ball, the people’s poor priest, in the midst of them, 30,000 men of Kent—yeomen, craftsmen, villeins and peasants—set out for London under Wat Tyler’s command.

Blackheath was reached at nightfall on Wednesday, June 12th, and a camp fixed; but a few indefatigable rebels hastened on to Southwark that same night to burst open the Marshalsea and King’s Bench prisons. John Wraw was at Blackheath, and after a short conference with Wat Tyler, hastened back to Suffolk to announce that the hour of rising had struck.

Near Eltham Tyler had overtaken the young king’s mother, the widow of the Black Prince, returning from a pilgrimage, and had promised that no harm should befall her or her women from his host. Reassured, the princess and her company went on their way in safety to the Tower of London, where Richard and his council were assembled, and told of the great uprising.

Judges had already been despatched into Kent at the first news of the disorders, but had turned back before reaching Canterbury, not liking the look of things.

Early on Thursday morning, June 13th, the camp at Blackheath was astir. It was Corpus Christi day and a solemn festival. After mass had been said before all the people, John Ball preached on his old theme of equality and brotherhood. “For if God had intended some to be serfs and others lords He would have made a distinction between them at the beginning.” He went on to speak of the work to be taken in hand at once.

“Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom they have always desired. Wherefore let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. Now the tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with them all—the evil lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers, every man indeed who is dangerous to the common good. Then should we all have peace for the present and security for the future. For when the great ones have been rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom, all will have common nobility, rank and power.”

The sermon was received with bursts of cheers, and the people shouted that John Ball should be archbishop, “for that the present archbishop and chancellor, Simon Sudbury, was but a traitor.”

Later that morning Sir John Newton arrived at the Tower with a message from Tyler, asking for an audience with the king. All along it was the belief of the commons that the king had but to hear the tale of their wrongs and redress would be speedily obtained.

“Hold no speech with the shoeless ruffians,” was the advice of Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer. But Richard agreed to an interview, and presently rowed down the Thames in the royal barge as far as Rotherhithe with the Earl of Suffolk (President of the Council), and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick.

The river bank was crowded with the commons of Kent, and Wat Tyler and John Ball urged the king to land and listen to the message his subjects brought. They were promptly rebuked by the Earl of Salisbury66 for their boldness:

“Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor are you in a fit condition for the king to talk to you.”

Instead of landing, Richard listened to the counsels of fear and pride, and the royal barge was turned and rowed back swiftly to the Tower.

Wat Tyler and the men of Kent, with thousands more from Surrey, at once marched on to London Bridge, where they destroyed the houses of ill-fame that clustered round the south side of the bridge. The prisons had been pulled down the night before, and now the brothels were burnt to the ground and their inmates dismissed—that the new City of God of John Ball’s vision might be cleansed of its old foulness. These places of infamy, rented by Flemish women, were the property of William Walworth, the Mayor of London; and their destruction filled him with rage against the invaders.

Walworth made some attempt to fortify London Bridge by placing iron chains across the bridge; and he gave orders for the drawbridge to be pulled up, in order that a passage might be prevented. But on Tyler’s threat that he would burn the bridge if a way was not quickly made for him, Alderman Sibley (who, with Aldermen Horne and Tonge, supported the claims of the revolutionaries on the City Corporation) had the chains removed and the draw-bridge lowered, and Alderman Horne met Tyler at the city gate and bade him welcome.

Fifty thousand men followed Tyler in London, and the city was now at the mercy of the peasant army. Walworth, who had no want of spirit, declared to the king and his council in the Tower that 6,000 soldiers could be raised in the city, but “fear had so fallen upon the soldiery that they seemed half dead with fright.” Sir Robert Knolles with 600 men-at-arms guarded the Tower.

It was now that Wat Tyler’s great qualities of leadership and the good discipline of his army were seen. With London in his hands, he warned his followers that death would be the instant punishment for theft; and proclaimed to the citizens, “We are indeed zealots for truth and justice, but we are not thieves and robbers.” Every respect was to be shown to the persons and property of the people of London, and wrath was only to fall on John of Gaunt and the ministers of the crown, and the lawyers—the enemies, as it seemed to Tyler, of the good estate of England. In return, the citizens offered bread and ale freely to the invaders, and London artisans joined their ranks in large numbers.

The archbishop’s palace at Lambeth was soon stormed, and all the records it contained were destroyed; the building itself was left uninjured.

At four o’clock in the afternoon the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, by the Strand, was in flames; and all its wealth of treasure, rich tapestries and costly furniture, rare vessels of gold and silver, precious stones, and art work of priceless value, heaped up on a bonfire or ground to powder. The Duke of Lancaster’s jewelled coat, covered with gems, was set up as a target and riddled with arrows, before it was cut into a thousand pieces and pounded to dust. One wretched man was caught attempting to sneak off with a silver cup; and being taken in the act, was put to death as Tyler had decreed. The Savoy was burnt to the ground, but no one interfered with its inhabitants; and Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt’s son (who was to reign in Richard’s stead as Henry IV.), passed out with all his servants unmolested. The wine-cellar proved fatal to certain of the host, who, drinking freely, perished, buried under the fallen building.

From the Savoy the army of destruction passed to the Temple, the head-quarters of the Knights Hospitallers, of whom Sir Robert Hales was president, and a hive of lawyers. The Temple was burnt, but no lives were lost; for the lawyers, “even the most aged and infirm of them, scrambled off with the agility of rats or evil spirits.”

At nightfall the priory of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, the prisons at the Fleet and at Newgate, and the Manor House at Highbury, had all been demolished; and the men of Essex, led by Thomas Faringdon, a London baker, were at Mile End; while William Grindcobbe, with a body of men from St. Albans, lay at Highbury.

In vain Walworth urged the king and his royal council to act. Richard had sent to Tyler asking for a written statement of the grievances of the commons, and had been told in reply that the king must meet his commons face to face, and hear with his own ears their demands. In the evening Walworth proposed that the garrison at the Tower should be despatched against Tyler, “to fall upon these wretches who were in the streets, and amounted to 60,000, while they were asleep and drunk. They might be killed like flies,” Walworth added, “for not one in twenty had arms.”

But the handful of soldiers at the Tower were in mortal terror of the peasant host, and “all had so lost heart that you would have thought them more like dead men than living.”

The Earl of Salisbury checked Walworth’s rash proposals. “If we begin what we cannot carry through,” he observed, “we shall never be able to repair matters. It will be all over with us and our heirs, and England will be a desert.”

An open conflict with Tyler and his 60,000 was a very hazardous proceeding. Who could be sure of escape if it came to battle? So far Tyler had only struck at the chief ministers and the lawyers, and why should others risk their lives in such a quarrel? Besides, it was said that Wat Tyler and a mad priest of Kent were for doing away with all nobles, and for making all men equal, and caution was necessary in dealing with men who held such strange opinions. England without its nobility would be a desert, and at all costs such an irreparable calamity as the loss of England’s nobility must be prevented.

So Walworth got no help in his plans for resistance; and when that night a messenger from Tyler warned the king that if he refused to meet the commons of England in open conference, the people would seize the Tower, Richard sent word in reply promising to meet his subjects on the morrow at noon at Mile End, and there hear their complaints.

Tyler accepted the king’s word, and after sleeping with his men hard by the Tower, at St. Catherine’s Wharf, was at Mile End betimes. Here he met Grindcobbe, and hearing that the people of Hertfordshire had trouble with the abbot at St. Albans, bade Grindcobbe return and accomplish freedom for the abbot’s tenants and serfs.

Richard went to Mile End with no large retinue, and two of his companions, the Earl of Kent and Sir John Holland, left him at Whitechapel and galloped off in craven fear of the multitude that thronged the road. Richard, though he was only fifteen, displayed both courage and cunning when confronted with Tyler. He knew that the discontent in the country was directed against the government, and not against the king, and that the misrule could not fairly be laid to his charge. Besides, he was the son of the Black Prince, and the people showed no signs of hostility. His policy was to yield and to wait an opportunity for regaining power.

The conference at Mile End began with a request from Richard to know what was required of him. Tyler answered that first all traitors should be executed, and to this demand the king agreed. Then four definite proposals were put forward by Wat Tyler:

1. A free and general pardon to all concerned in the rising.

2. The total abolition of all villeinage and serfdom.

3. An end to all tolls and market dues,—“freedom to buy and sell in all cities, burghs, mercantile towns, and other places within our kingdom of England.”

4. All customary tenants to be turned into lease-holders whose rent should be fixed at 4d. an acre for ever.

Richard at once assented to these requests, and to prevent any uncertainty and remove all doubt or suspicion of good faith, thirty clerks were set to work on the spot to draw up charters of manumission, and to present banners to each county represented.

Then Richard bade the people return home in peace, bearing the king’s banner in token that the king had granted the request of his subjects. One or two from each village remained to carry the charters of freedom signed and sealed by royal warrant.

Richard was taken at his word. Thousands of the peasants dispersed that day believing their cause had triumphed. Nothing could be plainer than the charters of manumission:—“Know that of our special grace we have manumitted all our liege and singular subjects and others of the county of Hertford, freed each and all of their old bondage, and made them quit by these presents; pardon them all felonies, treasons, transgressions, and extortions committed by any and all of them, and assure them of our summa pax.”

So ran the document which the peasants of Hertford bore, and similar charters were given to the counties of Bedford, Essex, Kent, and Surrey.

Richard was also taken at his word concerning the execution of traitors, and by the authority of Wat Tyler, Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer, and John Legge, the poll-tax commissioner, were dragged out of the Tower and beheaded on Tower Hill. When Richard returned from Mile End the heads of these three men were on the gate of London Bridge.

Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, deserved a better fate, for he was an amiable and gentle priest, and “lenient to heretics.” As chancellor he shared the punishment of a government deservedly hated, but there were many who deplored his death.

The soldiers at the Tower offered no resistance, but joked and fraternised with the people.

(John of Gaunt’s chaplain, William Appleton, some of Legge’s subordinates, and Richard Lyons also perished that day on Tower Hill. Of these, Richard Lyons was a thoroughly corrupt person, who five years earlier had been convicted of gross usury and of fraudulently “forestalling” in the wool trade, and had escaped the penalty of the law on being sentenced to pay a heavy fine and suffer imprisonment. At one time he had been a member of Edward III.’s council, and in that capacity had enriched himself and his friends at the expense of the nation.)

A cry was raised in London that night against the Flemings, and many of these industrious aliens, whose only offence was the employment of cheap labour, were put to death, denied even the right of sanctuary when they fled to the altar of the church of the Austin Friars. The houses of certain unpopular citizens were also fired, and it went hard with all who refused to shout for “King Richard and the Commons.”

But Tyler gave no sanction to the attack on the Flemings, and though the London mob took the law into its own hands and dealt roughly with those whom it disliked, there is no evidence of general rioting and disorder. To the end the peasant folk in London remembered the brotherhood John Ball had proclaimed, and respected their fellows, and their good order is a lasting tribute to their leaders.

Tyler, with the bulk of the men of Kent and Surrey, remained in the city, and the king hearing of what had happened at the Tower, decided to pass the night at the Wardrobe, by St. Paul’s, whither his mother had gone when the Tower was invaded.

Tyler, in spite of all that had been obtained at Mile End, was not satisfied. The peasants and serfs had been freed by royal warrant, but the landlords remained in possession of power, and there was no promise of better government, no word as to the restoration of the old common rights in the land, or the repeal of the savage forest laws. Reforms had been won, but the changes were not strong enough to ensure a social revolution.

Once more, on the Saturday, June 15th, Richard was invited to meet his subjects, and again he declared his willingness, summoning his commons by proclamation to meet him that afternoon at Smithfield, in the square outside St. Bartholomew’s Priory.

It seemed on the morning of June 15th as though the rising had succeeded triumphantly. The peasants had their charters of manumission, the nobles were thoroughly alarmed and cowed, the soldiery powerless, and Wat Tyler and his men still held the City of London.

Holding such an advantage, Tyler determined to make the king decree further reforms, and when the two met at Smithfield, the confidence of victory could be seen in the peasant leader’s bearing.

Richard, with two hundred retainers, and with Henry, Earl of Derby, the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury, Sir Simon Burley, and Walworth, the mayor, were on the east side of the square, the great priory at their back.

Tyler and his army drew up on the west side, and when Walworth opened the proceedings by calling on Wat Tyler to speak with the king, Tyler, seated on a little horse, rode out into the middle of the square with a single attendant. There he dismounted, dropped on one knee before the king, and shook him heartily by the hand. He bade Richard be of good cheer, and declared that within a fortnight he should have even more thanks from the commons than he had won already. “You and I shall be good comrades yet,” Tyler added.

Richard, in some embarrassment, enquired why the commons did not return home, and Tyler answered with a great and solemn oath that no one should leave the city until they had got a further redressing of all their grievances. “And much the worse will it be for the lords of this realm if this charter be refused,” he concluded.

Then Richard bade Tyler say what charter it was the commons demanded.

“First, then,” said Tyler, “let no law but the law of Winchester prevail throughout the land, and let no man be made an outlaw by the decree of judges and lawyers.67 Grant also that no lord shall henceforth exercise lordship over the commons; and since we are oppressed by so vast a horde of bishops and clerks, let there be but one bishop in England; and let the property and goods of the holy Church be divided fairly according to the needs of the people in each parish, after in justice making suitable provision for the present clergy and monks. Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all to be free and of one condition.”

“All that you have asked for I promise readily,” Richard answered, “if only it be consistent with the regality of my crown. And now let the commons return home since their requests have been granted.”

In the presence of his nobles and the hearing of his people the king had promised that the demands of his subjects should be granted.

For Wat Tyler the victory seemed complete, and now that the battle was won he called out that he was thirsty, and complained of a parched throat. The days had been strenuous, and Tyler longed for a draught of the good home-brewed beer of his native county. His attendant brought him water, and Tyler rinsed out his mouth with it, to the disgust of the king’s courtiers. Then beer was brought in a mighty tankard, and Tyler drank a deep draught to the health of “King Richard and the Commons.” He remounted his little horse, while the nobles stood by in silent and sullen anger, “for no lord or counsellor dared to open his mouth and give an answer to the commons in such a situation.” Had they not heard it proclaimed that henceforth all were to be free and equal in the land?

A “valet of Kent,” some knight in the royal service, broke silence, muttering loudly his opinion that Wat Tyler was the greatest thief and robber in all Kent.

Tyler caught the abusive words, and immediately ordered his attendant to cut down the man who had spoken in this insulting fashion.

The “valet” edged back within the ranks of the king’s party, and Tyler drew his dagger. Walworth, sharing to the full the rage of the nobles at the capitulation of the king, and yet anxious to avoid a conflict, shouted that he would arrest all those who drew weapons in the royal presence. Tyler struck impatiently at Walworth, but the blow was harmless, for the mayor had armour on beneath his jerkin.

Before Tyler could defend himself the mayor retaliated. Drawing a short cutlass he slashed at Tyler, wounding him in the neck so that he fell from his horse. And with the fall of their leader fell all the promised liberties of the peasants, and the rising collapsed.

Two knights, Ralph Standish and another, plunged their swords into him while he was on the ground. Still, mortally wounded though he was, Tyler managed to scramble on to his little horse. He rode a yard or two, gave a last call on the commons to avenge his death, and then dropped to the ground to rise no more.

Had the commons at once attacked the king’s party, they would have conquered. But confusion fell upon the people, and there was no one ready to take command. “Let us stand together,” “We will die with our captain or avenge him,” “Shoot, lads, shoot,”—the various cries went up, and the bowmen looked to their weapons.

But Richard, with the presence of mind that marked his dealings with the people at Mile End, turned the doubt and uncertainty to his own advantage. He rode out boldly into the middle of the square, reminded the people that he, and not Tyler, was their king, and bade them follow him into the fields and receive their charters.

There was no reason to refuse obedience, no reason to mistrust the king. Tyler had always spoken well of Richard, and the people themselves had seen him only yesterday sign their charters, and had heard him in Tyler’s presence, only a few minutes ago, promise to do the will of the commons. It was not by the king’s hand that their leader had been slain.

A small band carried Tyler’s body into the Priory of St. Bartholomew, while the rest of the peasants followed Richard into the fields that stretched from Clerkenwell to Islington. Here he held them until Sir Robert Knolles arrived with 700 soldiers, for Walworth had lost no time in spreading the news that Tyler was dead, and in raising a troop for the king. By Richard’s orders the commons were dispersed when the soldiery arrived, the men of Kent, now broken and dispirited, being marched through the city, and left to take their way home.

That very night Walworth and Standish were knighted for what they had done, and in the morning Wat Tyler’s head stared horribly from London Bridge.

“My son, what sorrow I have suffered for thee this day,” cried the king’s mother, when Richard came to the Wardrobe.

“I know it well, madam,” answered the king; “but rejoice with me now, and thank God that I have this day won back my heritage of England, so nearly lost.”

The great uprising was over. Wat Tyler had fallen, as it seemed, in the very hour of victory.

By Walworth’s orders, Jack Straw and two prominent men of Kent were hanged on the night of June 15th, without the formality of trial. Jack Straw, an itinerant priest sharing John Ball’s views, it is said, explained before he died what had been in the minds of the leaders of the revolt. They had meant to get rid of the supremacy of the landlords altogether, and to substitute for the established clergy a voluntary ministry of mendicant friars; the boy-king was to be enlisted in the cause of the revolution before the monarchy was finally abolished; and in place of parliament and royal council each county was to enjoy self-government.68

No longer in the presence of danger, the king and his ministers struck fiercely at the rebels.

On June 18th a general proclamation was issued ordering the arrest of all malefactors and the dispersal of all unruly gatherings. On June 22nd, Chief Justice Sir Robert Tressilian went on assize, and “showed mercy to none and made great havock.” John Ball was taken at Coventry and, with Grindcobbe, hanged at St. Albans on July 15th.

The Earl of Suffolk went down to Suffolk with 500 lances on June 23rd, and John Wraw, with twenty others, including four beneficed clergy, was quickly taken and hanged. Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, grandson of Edward III.’s minister, suppressed the rising in Norfolk, and walked beside Litster to the gallows.

At least a thousand peasant lives were sacrificed to the law under Tressilian’s sentence.

At Waltham a deputation came to Richard to ask if it were true that the royal promises and charters were annulled, and the king’s answer left no room for doubt, for it breathed all the hatred and contempt of the commons that Tyler had striven to end:

“O vile and odious by land and sea, you who are not worthy to live when compared with the lords whom ye have attacked; you should be forthwith punished with the vilest deaths were it not for the office ye bear. Go back to your comrades and bear the king’s answer. You were and are rustics, and shall remain in bondage, not that of old, but in one infinitely worse. For as long as we live, and by God’s help rule over this realm, we will attempt by all our faculties, powers, and means to make you such an example of offence to the heirs of your servitude as that they may have you before their eyes, and you may supply them with a perpetual ground for cursing and fearing you.”

In despair at this rough ending to all their cherished hopes of freedom, the Essex peasants made a last attempt to fight for liberty, and on June 28th, at Great Baddow and Billericay, more than 500 fell before the king’s soldiery.

On July 2nd all the charters of manumission and royal pardons were declared formally annulled, and sheriffs were strictly forbidden to release any prisoners. It was not till August 30th an amnesty was granted to those suspected of taking part in the rising. In the autumn parliament refused to ratify the charters, and the lawyers declared that without the consent of parliament the charters were illegal.

So there was an end to all Wat Tyler and the peasants had risen to obtain, and well might it seem that the rising had been in vain.69

Yet it was not altogether in vain that John Ball had rung his bell and died for his faith, that Wat Tyler had led the peasant folk of Kent to do battle for freedom. The poll-tax was stopped for one thing. And villeinage was doomed. “The landlords gave up the practice of demanding base services; they let their lands to leasehold tenants, and accepted money payments in lieu of labour; they ceased to recall the emancipated labourer into serfdom or to oppose his assertion of right in the courts of the manor and the county.” (W. Stubbs.)

The great uprising brought out the desire for personal liberty in the labouring people of England that has never since been utterly quenched. It was the first insistence that peasants and serfs were men of England. “It taught the king’s officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years’ time there were very few bondsmen left in England.” (F. York Powell.)

If Wat Tyler died as a man should for the cause he loves, few of those who trampled on the cause of the peasants were to know the paths of peace in later years.

Richard died in prison at the hands of Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son, whom Tyler had let depart in safety when the Savoy was in flames. The Earls of Suffolk and Warwick died exiled fugitives. The Earl of Salisbury, fleeing from Henry V., was hanged in the streets of Cirencester. Chief Justice Tressilian was hanged for a traitor in 1387, and Sir Simon Burley was beheaded.