THE PEASANT’S REVOLT

We can consider this as an uprising rebellion, but we cannot consider this as a revolution
because it was not against the authority or the monarchy. This rebellion was against the
people advising the King, they were questioning them. In fact the leaders trusted the king.
Although most of the people involved were peasants they were not the only ones. There
were several other groups supporting them as landowners, merchants, priests that helped
them to be able to go to London to finally meet the king.

Because there were many fewer workers the peasants started asking for better salaries. The
landowners started offering better salaries to attract peasants to work for them and also
people started moving from one place to another looking for better salaries. The way that the
government established a limit to this was through the statute of labourers in 1351. This law
was against the peasants and in favour of the landowners.
At this moment Edward III established two aspects that limited the possibilities for peasants
to get a better life: a maximum wage for the peasants, the maximum salary they could
perceive was the same they earned before the plague; and also limited the possibility for
them to move from one place to another. In fact, if they were caught in the roads they could
be put in prison.

In 1377 Richard II assumed as a king but he was only 10 years old so the man in charge at
the time was John of Gaunt. He was one of the most hated men in England. One of the
ideas of John was to increase the frequency of the Poll tax that was regularly paid once
every 4 to 5 years (tax related to war), but he made it to be paid every year since 1381.
The problem with this tax was that everyone above 15 years old had to pay, even though
they had no job or were not workers and also, it was a fixed tax so everyone paid the same
amount, rich and poor people paid the same.
The people stopped to pay and then John sent the sheriffs in order to press people to pay. In
May 1381 the commissioner Thomas Bampton went to Essex and wanted to put in jail
everyone who hadn't paid the tax, at that moment the rebellion started and they killed the
commissioner. Following this, many other villages started rebelling against the sheriffs.
In June 1381 Kent started to revolt also, and Wat Tyler became one of the most important
leaders and was one of the ones that finally met the king.
The rebels thought that they needed to go to London to meet the king and express their
discomfort because they trusted him and thought that he was gonna listen to them.
They were not alone, they had the support of some landowners and some priests called the
Lollards, the radical priests whose main leader was John Ball. The important thing about the
lollards was that they believed in equality. This group had many enemies inside the church
because the main purpose of the church was to maintain the status quo (the rich still being
rich and the poor still being poor) that is why the lollards were persecuted.
Then, in June there were two meetings, the first the 14th June the King met Richard
Wallingford and his wife (one of the peasants leaders), and the following day he met Wat
Tyler. This was a strategy to meet them separately to not allow them to get connected so
they cannot join forces against the king's advisers.
What were they asking for? They were asking for cheap lands where they could work, the
abolition of serfdom (so receiving a salary and being able to use it not only in the land of
their landowners) and last, they asked for free trade (here we can see the influence of the
merchants in the requirements).
If you think about these demands, all of them were economic, they were not questioning the
monarchy and were not asking for participation in the political aspect.
The second meeting, the one with Wat Tyler, was in fact a trap where Tyler was stabbed in
front of the king and died and many of the leaders of the revolt were captured. It ended at
the end of June when most of the leaders were hanged and also, the lollards were
persecuted throughout England.

This revolt has two points of view.

From the left-wing side, this is a very important event, this rebellion was the first popular
rebellion against authority.
From a right-wing pov, this wasn't a very important event, because after that there was no
change to the status quo.
Nevertheless, this was the first time the peasants joined with other groups to reclaim certain
rights and demands and this idea led us to understand what happened after in the other big
revolutions.