History of England 1-6

Yet the king’s first real test came four years later, when he was confronted by the greatest rebellion in English history. At a meeting of parliament in Northampton, in November and December of 1380, ‘a great and notorious rumour’ spread among the Commons about a ‘dreadful thing’ that had taken place in York; a group of rebels, armed with swords and axes, had broken their way into the guildhall of that city and driven out the mayor. They were protesting about the level of taxes imposed upon them by the royal court.

Nevertheless, the Northampton parliament decreed a poll tax three times more exacting than the last. It was the third such tax in four years. A poll tax, literally a tax on every ‘poll’ or head, was a wholly inequitable mode of taxation; rich and poor paid the same alike, with the proviso that the richer people had the means and opportunity of evasion. So the greater burden fell upon the poor. Widespread unrest followed, naturally enough, and judicial officials were sent to the more disobliging areas in order to ensure collection. The commissioners in London declined to carry on their unwelcome work, for the good reason that it had become too dangerous.

The men of Essex were the first who refused to pay; on 30 May 1381, at Brentwood, a royal official was attacked and driven off. The revolt quickly spread to Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk and Hertfordshire, encompassing some 340 villages. It is pertinent that these were the counties most affected by the pestilence; they were the areas most likely to feel the effects of economic instability and insecurity in the wake of the vast mortality. Change, in medieval society, was always unsettling. In Essex and Kent, also, the labour laws were most strictly imposed. Here, if anywhere, are the causes of rebellion.

The Kentish rioters occupied Canterbury and released all the prisoners held in the archbishop’s prison, among them a cleric known as John Ball. The rebels went on to burn the rolls of the county on which the estimates for taxation were written. On the following day the crowd broke open Maidstone Prison and freed its inmates. They already had a clarion call. ‘John Ball greets you all and gives you to understand, that he has rung your bell.’

The movement grew much more dangerous when, on 11 June, the rebels of the various regions agreed to march or ride upon London. That was the centre of their woes, the home of the lawyers and the royal officials. It has been estimated that some 30,000 men were now on the road. The men of Kent, always the most fierce, went northwards, while the men of Essex came from the east and the rebels of Hertfordshire from the north. The Hertfordshire men made a camp at Highbury, while the men of Essex rested and waited at Mile End. It was at this point that they were informed of risings all over England. Riots erupted in Norwich and in St Albans, in Winchester and in York, in Ipswich and in Scarborough.

The Kentish men, under the leadership of Wat Tyler or Wat the tiler, gathered on Blackheath on 12 June. The king had retreated to the Tower of London for safety, but on 13 June he and his most trusted councillors agreed to meet the main body of protesters on the heath. The royal party sailed in four barges down the Thames in order to land at Rotherhithe, but too many rebels were clustered on the south bank to allow a safe landing. The young king could now quite clearly hear the terrible shrieks and cries that would soon echo through the streets of London. A chronicler reported that the rebels ‘made such a great clamour that it really seemed as if the devil himself had joined their company’. The barge returned to the Tower.

The royal retreat inflamed the rebels. Tyler now led his people to the city itself. They stormed the Marshalsea, in Southwark, and freed its prisoners. Another party burned the tax records held at Lambeth Palace. Then they made their way across London Bridge. The people of London refused to allow the city gates to be closed against them; they sympathized with the cause. They, too, were oppressed by royal exactions on behalf of an unpopular war. The crowd surged along Fleet Street, opening the Fleet Prison and pillaging the lawyers’ quarter of New Temple. The Londoners, now invigorated by their example, burned down the residence of John of Gaunt, the Savoy Palace, and killed many of his officials. As the leading nobleman of England, during the minority of the king, Gaunt was the most hated.

The young king surveyed the scene of looting and burning from a window of the Tower, and asked what should be done. No one knew. But at fourteen he was old enough to think for himself; he would ride out to Mile End and address all of the rebels. He hoped that this would draw them from the city into the eastern suburb, and thus allow his court and household to escape from the Tower. In this, he was only partially successful.