HISTORICAL ACCOUNT

from
The Worms of the Earth
Against the Lions
from A Distant Mirror Barbara W. Tuchman

BACKGROUND
Under the English feudal system, farmers and craftspeople were peasants. They
lived on the manor of a lord, who was entitled to a portion of whatever they
produced. There was no social mobility. A peasant could not move to another
manor or rise in station. For many, the burden of taxes and the lack of freedom
were a source of discontent. Even so, the king, who was the head of this
repressive system, was regarded with reverence. During the Poll Tax Revolt of
1381, this contradiction became the rebels’ undoing.
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W hile France smoldered, true revolt erupted in June 1381 in

England, not of the urban class but of the peasants. In a
country whose economy was largely rural, they were the working
NOTES

class that mattered. The third poll tax1 in four years, to include
everyone over the age of fifteen, was the precipitant. Voted in
November 1380 by a subservient Parliament to finance Lancaster’s
ambitions in Spain,2 the collection brought in only two thirds of
the expected sum, not least because tax commissioners were easily
bribed to overlook families or falsify their numbers. A second round

1. poll tax tax per person, levied on individuals rather than on property.
2. Lancaster’s ambitions in Spain The Duke of Lancaster hoped to claim the crown of
Castile, a kingdom of Spain.

from The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions 179


NOTES
Mark familiar word parts or
indicate another strategy you
used that helped you determine
meaning.
demagogue (DEHM uh gog) n.
MEANING:
Mark familiar word parts or
indicate another strategy you
used that helped you determine
meaning.
animosity (an uh MOS uh tee) n.
MEANING:
180 UNIT 2 • REFLECTING ON SOCIETY
of collecting became necessary, which could have been foreseen as
an invitation to trouble if the lords and prelates and royal uncles of
Richard’s government had paid attention to the constant complaints
of rural insubordination. They did not, and brought upon themselves
the most fearful challenge of the century.
2 At the end of May, villages in Essex on the east coast just above
London refused payment; the resistance spread with some evidence
of planning, and burst into violence in Kent, the adjoining county
south of the Thames. Peasants mingled with yeomen3 from the
French wars armed themselves with rusty swords, scythes, axes,
and longbows blackened by age, and triumphantly stormed a castle
where a runaway villein4 had been imprisoned. Electing Wat Tyler, an
eloquent demagogue and veteran of the wars, as their commander-
in-chief, they seized Canterbury, forced the mayor to swear fealty
to “King Richard and the Commons,”5 and liberated from the
Archbishop’s prison the idealogue of the movement, John Ball. He
was a vagrant priest, scholar, and zealot who had been wandering
the country for twenty years, frequently hauled in by the authorities
for prophesying against Church and state and preaching radical
doctrines of equality.
3 Although the poll tax was the igniting spark, the fundamental
grievance was the bonds of villeinage and the lack of legal and
political rights. Villeins could not plead in court against their
lord, no one spoke for them in Parliament, they were bound by
duties of servitude which they had no way to break except by
forcibly obtaining a change of the rules. That was the object of
the insurrection, and of the march on the capital that began from
Canterbury.
4 As the Kentishmen swept forward to London, covering the seventy
miles in two days, the Essex rebels marched southward to meet
them. Abbeys and monasteries on the way were a special object
of animosity because they were the last to allow commutation6 of
servile labor. In the towns, artisans and small tradesmen, sharing
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the quarrel of the little against the great, gave aid and food to the
peasants. As the sound of the rising spread to other counties, riots
and outbreaks widened.
5 The “mad multitude” on its march from Kent and Essex opened
prisons, sacked manors, and burned records. Some personally hated
landlords and officials were murdered and their heads carried
around on poles. Others, in fear of death, fled to hide in the same
woods where villein outlaws frequently hid from them. Certain
lords were forced by the rebels to accompany them “whether they
would or not,” either to supply needed elements of command or the
appearance of participation by the gentry.
3. yeomen (YOH muhn) n. attendants in a royal household.
4. villein (VIHL uhn) n. farmer bound by law to serve the lord.
5. King Richard and the Commons Richard II Plantagenet, the King of England, and the
representative of the working class.
6. commutation (kom yuh TAY shuhn) n. substitution of one kind of payment for another.
 6 At the same time, peasant spokesmen swore to kill “all lawyers
and servants of the King they could find.” Short of the King, their NOTES

imagined champion, all officialdom was their foe—sheriffs, foresters,

tax-collectors, judges, abbots, lords, bishops, and dukes—but most
especially men of the law because the law was the villeins’ prison.
Not accidentally, the Chief Justice of England, Sir John Cavendish,
was among their first victims, along with many clerks and jurors.
Every attorney’s house on the line of march reportedly was
destroyed.
7 If the Jacquerie 7 23 years earlier had been an explosion without
a program, the Peasants’ Revolt arose out of a developing idea of
freedom. Though theoretically free, villeins wanted abolition of the
old bonds, the right to commute services to rent, a riddance of all
the restrictions heaped up by the Statute of Laborers8 over the past
thirty years in the effort to clamp labor in place. They had listened
to Lollard9 priests, and to secular preachers moved by the evils of
the time, and to John Ball’s theories of leveling. “Matters cannot go
well in England,” was his theme, “until all things shall be held in
common; when there shall be neither vassals nor lords, when the
lords shall be no more masters than ourselves. . . . Are we not all
descended from the same parents, Adam and Eve?”
8 Wyclif’s10 spirit, which had dared deny the most pervasive
authority of the time, was abroad. What had happened in the last
thirty years, as a result of plague, war, oppression, and incompetence,
was a weakened acceptance of the system, a mistrust of government
and governors, lay and ecclesiastical, an awakening sense that
authority could be challenged—that change was in fact possible.
Moral authority can be no stronger than its acknowledgment. When
officials were venal—as even the poor could see they were in the
bribing of tax commissioners—and warriors a curse and the Church
oppressive, the push for change gained strength.
9 It was encouraged by the preachers’ castigation of the powerful.
“The tournaments of the rich,” they said, “are the torments of the
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poor.” They regularly denounced “evil princes,” “false executors

who increase the sorrows of widows,” “wicked ecclesiastics who
show the worst example to the people,” and, above all, nobles who
empty the purses of the poor by their extravagance, and disdain them
for “lowness of blod or foulenesse of body,” for deformed shape of
body or limb, for dullness of wit and uncunning of craft, and deign
not to speak to them, and who are themselves stuffed with pride—of
ancestry, fortune, gentility, possessions, power, comeliness, strength,

7. Jacquerie (zhak REE) disorganized peasant uprising in France that was suppressed
violently by the nobility.
8. Statute of Laborers law restricting the rights of workers, passed in the wake of the
Black Death, in order to keep the reduced workforce tied to the land and farm work.
9. Lollard (LOL uhrd) belonging to a dissenting religious movement that protested the
extravagance of the Catholic Church and called for reform.
10. Wyclif John Wyclif (1331–1384), an English philosopher and lay preacher, who founded
the Lollards and translated the Bible from Latin to English in secret.

from The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions 181

NOTES

An artist’s view of the Black Plague in London, 1349

children, treasure—“prowde in lokynge, prowde in spekyng, . . .

prowde in goinge, standynge and sytting.” All would be drawn by
fiends to Hell on the Day of Judgment.

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10 On that day of wrath, said the Dominican John Bromyard in
terms that spoke directly to the peasant, the rich would have hung
around their necks the oxen and sheep and beasts of the field that
they had seized without paying for. The “righteous poor,” promised
a Franciscan friar, “will stand up against the cruel rich at the Day of
Judgment and will accuse them of their works and severity on earth.
’Ha, ha!’ will say the others, horribly frightened, ‘These are the folk
formerly in contempt. See how they are honored—they are among
the sons of God! What are riches and pomp to us now who are
abased?’”
11 If the meek were indeed the sons of God (even if they too were
scolded by the preachers for greed, cheating, and irreverence), why
should they wait for their rights until the Day of Judgment? If all men
had a common origin in Adam and Eve, how should some be held in

182 UNIT 2 • REFLECTING ON SOCIETY

 hereditary servitude? If all were equalized by death, as the medieval
idea constantly emphasized, was it not possible that inequalities on NOTES

earth were contrary to the will of God?

* * *

12 At its climax on the outskirts of London, the Peasants’ Revolt came

to the edge of overpowering the government. No measures had been
taken against the oncoming horde, partly from contempt for all Wills
and Cobbs and Jacks and black-nailed louts, partly from mediocre
leadership and lack of ready resources. Lancaster was away on the
Scottish border, Buckingham was in Wales, and the only organized
armed forces were already embarking at Plymouth for Spain under
the command of the third brother, Edmund of Cambridge. Except for
500 or 600 men-at-arms in the King’s retinue, the crown controlled
no police or militia; London’s citizens were unreliable because many
were in sympathy and some in active connivance with the rebels.
13 Twenty thousand peasants were camped outside the walls
demanding parley with the King. While they promised him safety,
they shouted for the heads of Archbishop Sudbury and Sir Robert
Hailes, the Chancellor and Treasurer, whom they held responsible for
the poll tax, and for the head, too, of the arch “traitor,” John of Gaunt,
symbol of misgovernment and a failing war. John Ball harangued
them with a fierce call to cast off the yoke they had borne for so long,
to exterminate all great lords, judges, and lawyers and gain for all
men equal freedom, rank, and power.
14 In agitated council, the government could find no course but
to negotiate. Richard II, a slight fair boy of fourteen, accompanied
by his knights, rode out to meet the insurgents and hear their
demands: abolition of the poll tax and of all bonds of servile status,
commutation at a rate of four pence an acre, free use of forests,
abolition of the game laws—all these to be confirmed in charters
sealed by the King. Everything the rebels asked was conceded in the
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hope of getting them to disperse and go home.

15 Meanwhile, partisans had opened the city’s gates and bridges to
a group led by Wat Tyler, who gained possession of the Tower of
London and murdered Archbishop Sudbury and Sir Robert Hailes.
Balked of Gaunt, they flung themselves upon his palace of the Savoy
and tore it apart in an orgy of burning and smashing. At Wat Tyler’s
order, it was to be not looted but destroyed. Barrels of gunpowder
found in storage were thrown on the flames, tapestries ripped,
precious jewels pounded to bits with ax heads. The Temple, center of
the law with all its deeds and records, was similarly destroyed. Killing
followed; Lombards and Flemings (hated simply as foreigners),
magnates, officials, and designated “traitors” (such as the rich
merchant Sir Richard Lyons, who had been impeached by the Good
Parliament and restored by Lancaster) were hunted down and slain.

from The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions 183

 16 In the hectic sequence of events, only Richard moved in a magic
NOTES circle of reverence for the King’s person. Perched on a tall war-horse
before the peasants, a charming boy robed in purple embroidered
with the royal leopards, wearing a crown and carrying a gold rod,
gracious and smiling and gaining confidence from his sway over
the mob, he granted charters written out and distributed by thirty
clerks on the spot. On this basis, many groups of peasants departed,
believing in the King as their protector.
17 While in London, Sir Robert Knollys, the Master of War, was
urgently assembling an armed force. Wat Tyler, inflamed by blood
and conquest, was exhorting his followers toward a massacre of
the ruling class and a takeover of London. He was no longer to
be satisfied by the promised charters, which he suspected were
hollow, and he knew he would never be included in any pardon.
He could only go forward toward a seizure of power. According
to Walsingham, he boasted that “in four days’ time all the laws of
England would be issuing from his mouth.”
18 He returned to the camp at Smithfield for another meeting with
the King, where he put forth a new set of demands so extreme as
Mark familiar word parts or
to suggest that their purpose was to provoke rejection and provide
indicate another strategy you
used that helped you determine a pretext for seizing Richard in person: all inequalities of rank and
meaning. status were to be abolished, all men to be equal below the King,
provoke (pruh VOHK) v. the Church to be disendowed11 and its estates divided among the
MEANING: commons, England to have but one bishop and the rest of the
hierarchy to be eliminated. The King promised everything consistent
with the “regality of his crown.” Accounts of the next moments are so
variously colored by the passions of the time that the scene remains
forever obscure. Apparently Tyler picked a quarrel with a squire of
the King’s retinue, drew a dagger, and in a flash was himself struck
down by the short sword of William Walworth, Mayor of London.
19 All was confusion and frenzy. The peasants drew their bows; some
arrows flew. Richard, with extraordinary nerve, ordering no one
to follow, rode forward alone, saying to the rebels, “Sirs, what is it

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you require? I am your captain. I am your King. Quiet yourselves.”
While he parleyed, Knollys’ force, hastily summoned, rode up
and surrounded the camp in mailed might with visors down and
weapons gleaming. Dismayed and leaderless, the peasants were
cowed; Wat Tyler’s head displayed on a lance completed their
collapse, like that of the Jacques at the death of Guillaume Cale.
20 Ordered to lay down their arms and assured of pardons to
encourage dispersal, they trailed homeward. Leaders, including
John Ball, were hanged and the rising elsewhere in England was
suppressed—with sufficient brutality, if not the wild massacre that
had taken place in France after the Jacquerie. Except for scattered
retribution, the English revolt, too, was over within a month, defeated

11. disendowed v. deprived of financial endowment, in this case of the lands and tithes
given to the Church by the English.

184 UNIT 2 • REFLECTING ON SOCIETY

 more by fraud than by force. The pardons issued in the King’s name
were revoked without compunction, and the charters canceled by a NOTES

landowners’ Parliament on the grounds that they had been issued

under duress. To a deputation from Essex who came to remind the
King of his promise to end villeinage, Richard replied, “Villeins you
are, and villeins ye shall remain.” ❧

Comprehension Check
Complete the following items after you finish your first read. Review and clarify
details with your group.

1. According to Tuchman, what was the immediate cause of the revolt?

2. Where did the peasants get some of their ideas about equality and freedom?
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3. Where did the Peasants’ Rebellion reach its climax, according to this account?

RESEARCH
Research to Clarify Choose at least one unfamiliar detail from the text. Briefly research
that detail. In what way does the information you learned shed light on an aspect of the
historical account?

from The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions 185

 MAKING MEANING
from The Worms of the Earth
Against the Lions
for GROUP DISCUSSION
If you disagree with an
opinion, allow the speaker
to finish. Then, raise your
objection tactfully—for
example, you might say,
“I see it a little differently.”
Make sure that you have
textual evidence to support
your idea before you
continue.
 WORD NETWORK
Add interesting words
related to society from the
text to your Word Network.
 STANDARDS
Language
Consult general and specialized
reference materials, both print and
digital, to find the pronunciation of
a word or determine or clarify its
precise meaning, its part of speech,
its etymology, or its standard usage.
186 UNIT 2 • REFLECTING ON SOCIETY
Close Read the Text
With your group, revisit sections of the text you marked
during your first read. Annotate details that you notice.
What questions do you have? What can you conclude?
CITE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE
Analyze the Text to support your answers.
Notebook Complete the activities.
1. Review and Clarify With your group, reread “The Worms of the Earth
Against the Lions.” Discuss Tuchman’s explanation of the peasants’ revolt.
Does Tuchman reveal any biases? Explain.
2. Present and Discuss Now, work with your group to share the
passages from the selection that you found especially important. Take
turns presenting your passages. Discuss what details you noticed, what
questions you asked, and what conclusions you reached.
3. Essential Question: How do people come to have different views
of society? What has this text taught you about what influences people’s
views of society? Discuss with your group.
language development
Concept Vocabulary
demagogue    animosity    provoke
Why These Words? The three concept vocabulary words from the text are
related. With your group, determine what the words have in common. How
do these words enhance the impact of the text?
Practice Copyright © SAVVAS Learning Company LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Notebook Confirm your understanding of the concept vocabulary
words by using them in sentences. Be sure to include context clues that hint
at each word’s meaning.
Word Study
Notebook Greek Root Word: agogos The word demagogue
derives from the Greek root word agogos, meaning “leader.” English words
formed from this root word often end with -agogue or -agogy.
1. Look up the words synagogue and pedagogy in a college-level dictionary.
Explain how the root word agogos contributes to their meanings.
2. Consult an etymological dictionary to find another word that derives from
the root word agogos. Write the word and its meaning.
 ESSENTIAL QUESTION: How do people come
essential to have
question: What
different
does itviews
take of
to society?
survive?

Analyze Craft and Structure

Historical Writing When you read informative writing about a historical
event, it is important to notice whether the writing is a primary or a
secondary source.
• A primary source offers an eyewitness or contemporary view of an
event. Primary sources include a wide variety of text types, such as
diaries, speeches, official records, and chronicles.

• A secondary source interprets and analyzes primary sources. Secondary

sources are one or more steps removed from the event. Such sources
include textbooks, commentaries, encyclopedias, and histories.

Secondary sources, such as Tuchman’s account of the Peasant Rebellion, rely

on both primary and earlier secondary sources as evidence of facts. They
often go further by providing interpretation of these facts. Interpretation
of facts sometimes reveals bias, in which an author’s values, subjective
feelings, and allegiances influence how he or she perceives the evidence. Bias
is often indicated by “value words,” such as honorable, wicked, or mean-  Standards
spirited. Objectivity, on the other hand, is neutrality or even-handedness. Reading Informational Text
In a completely objective account, a writer reports facts but does not take a • Cite strong and thorough textual
evidence to support analysis of
position or express an opinion. what the text says explicitly as well
as inferences drawn from the text,
Tuchman’s account includes several examples of interpretation, in which including determining where the text
she offers her own evaluation of the facts. For example, she writes: leaves matters uncertain.
“Richard, with extraordinary nerve, ordering no one to follow, rode forward • Analyze a complex set of ideas or
alone. . . .” By characterizing the king’s actions, Tuchman expresses sequence of events and explain how
specific individuals, ideas, or events
admiration for him. This is an interpretation of events that reveals the writer’s interact and develop over the course
subjective feelings about the event. of the text.

CITE TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

Practice to support your answers.
With your group, use a chart like this one to analyze Tuchman’s historical
account. Record instances in which she gives evidence from another source,
interprets or explains events, and reveals her own judgments or biases.
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HISTORICAL ACCOUNT REFERENCES FROM ACCOUNT

gives evidence

interprets events

reveals biases

from The Worms of the Earth Against the Lions 187