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Sep 16, 2009 · The Great Revolt of 1381 began in South-West Essex sometime between late May and 2 June: contemporary narratives and record sources differ irreconcilably about the dates. It all started with the arrival of a royal tax commissioner, John Bampton, at Brentwood inBarnstable Hundred.
May 2, 2021 · The Great Uprising of 1381 saw a group of dissatisfied peasants and their supporters march on London with demands that the king abolish serfdom and a new poll tax. The revolt remains one of the most widespread insurrections in English history, and it was inspired, in part, by the famous medieval poem Piers Plowman.
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Feb 16, 2024 · On 4 June 1381 the Essex rebels launched an attack on Lesnes Abbey in Kent, targeting tax records crucial for control and taxation by the Church and Crown. This destruction sparked a coordinated revolt, necessitating military expertise.
- Amy Irvine
The Peasants' Revolt, also known as the Great Revolt, was a largely unsuccessful popular uprising in England in June 1381. The rebellion's leaders included Wat Tyler and they wanted massive social changes...
- Mark Cartwright
- Publishing Director
- Famine and Plague
- The Poll Tax
- The Revolt Escalates
- Storming The Tower
- The Rebellion Crumbles
The 14th century was a terrible era to be alive: the Great Famine of 1315 to 1317 killed perhaps 10% of Northern Europe, and the Black Death, an even greater natural disaster, claimed between 1/3 and 1/2 of the continent’s population at the end of the 1340s and in later outbreaks in the 1360s. The government of King Edward III of England (r. 1327-7...
In 1380, the government of Edward III’s 13-year-old grandson and successor Richard II(r. 1377-99) unwittingly lit a fuse to a powder keg by instigating an unfair poll tax that fell most heavily on the poor. Poll tax collectors in the early months of 1381 had extraordinary difficulties gathering the due payments and refused to collect taxes in Londo...
The widespread though as yet unfocused rage found two leaders in Walter ‘Wat’ Tyler, who coordinated bands of protesters from Kent and Essex, and John Ball, a firebrand preacher who, according to the St Albans chronicler Thomas Walsingham, gave a sermon at Blackheath to 200,000 people (a gross exaggeration on Walsingham’s part) which included the f...
On 13 June, the young king met the rebels’ leaders at Blackheath but was soon forced to retreat, and tried again at Mile End the following day, where they presented their demands to him. In Richard II’s absence, a mob broke into the Tower of London, where the widely loathed Simon Sudbury and Robert Hales, and John of Gaunt’s fourteen-year-old son a...
Richard II met the rebels for the third time at Smithfield on 15 June 1381. William Walworth, Mayor of London, stabbed the rebels’ leader Wat Tyler in Richard’s presence, apparently because it appeared as though he was assaulting the king or had spoken rudely to him. The 14-year-old king bravely saved the situation by riding towards the rebels, cry...
- Kathryn Warner
I. THE month of June, 1381, a mighty convulsion shook the order of feudal society in England. The laboring masses from one end of the country to another rose and assembled at a preconcerted signal and, converging upon London, proclaimed aloud their inten- tion of destroying traitors to the realm and gaining redress of griev- ances from the king.
Senior government officials were beheaded and unpopular foreigners killed. Government paralysis encouraged uprisings elsewhere. Opportunities were taken to settle old grievances. The revolt spread as far north as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, as far west as Bridgwater, and to St Albans.
