The Peasants' Revolt

In 1381, after plague, famine and war had pushed England to the brink, a final blow sparked an extraordinary uprising. This episode explores the Peasants’ Revolt, not as a chaotic riot, but as a coordinated challenge to royal and religious power in England. To cut through the myths, we're joined by medieval historian Dr Eleanor Janega, co-host of the 'Gone Medieval' podcast. She explains what really happened, why it mattered, and how this rebellion sent shockwaves through medieval England and beyond. Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore. Dan Snow's History Hit is now available on YouTube! Check it out at: https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:02Speaker 01

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• 1:45Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 1:56Dan Snow?

  Vous avez survécu à la mort noire, une série de famines et la guerre des cent ans. Le siècle est 1381, il est juste de dire que vous êtes contre ça. Et maintenant, avec peut-être 60% de la population partie et les terres ne fonctionnent plus, le gouvernement met en place de nouveaux taxes de réduction. Ce n'est vraiment pas surprenant que l'un dit : "Nous avons payé assez", et c'était la flamme qui a incendie un mouvement, enfin plus qu'un mouvement, une révolution. Maintenant, ce n'est pas une mob de rioteurs à flancs de pincée, c'est une strike coordonnée, organisée au cœur du pouvoir.

• 2:40Dan Snow?

  Des maisons religieuses et les palaces royales ont été brûlées, un arche-bishop et des officiers du gouvernement s'ont détruits, les portes de Londres ont été ouvertes, les rebelles ont été accueillis dans ce qui était une impregnable forêt royale, la tour de Londres. Aujourd'hui, je vais être accompagné par le brillant historien médiéval et host de Gone Medieval, le Dr Eleanor Yarnagger, pour dévoiler certains des mythes autour de la révolte des fermiers, pour vraiment aller au cœur de ce qui s'est passé et pourquoi, et voir comment ça a éclaté le monde médiéval, pas seulement en Angleterre, mais aussi partout en Europe. Bienvenue dans le film d'histoire de Dan Snow. C'est la histoire de la révolte des fermiers.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  ...

• 3:44Dan Snow?

  Eleanor, bienvenue à nouveau.

• 3:46Speaker 03

  Keep me away.

• 3:47Dan Snow?

  Was there a worse time to be alive than the mid 14th century?

• 3:52Speaker 03

  Probably not, but that's also why it's my favorite. So, yeah, yeah.

• 3:56Dan Snow?

  And it's also up against some pretty stiff competition.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 3:58Dan Snow?

  There've been some tough times for our little species.

• 4:01Speaker 03

  Honestly, you know, I would say, for example, mid 17th century, not great.

• 4:04Dan Snow?

  Not good.

• 4:05Speaker 03

  Wouldn't look, I'd rather mid 14th century, but you know, hey.

• 4:07Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 4:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:08Dan Snow?

  Okay. So why, let's just line that up for people because we've had the Black Death.

• 4:13Speaker 03

  We have.

• 4:13Dan Snow?

  Arguably, what, 50% of the population of England, let's deal with England for this story. 50% arguably die.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:19Dan Snow?

  In the space of.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  So basically you have with the Black Death, initial outbreaks over kind of like a three year period, but it's endemic at this point in time. And this is the thing to remember is that the Black Death is a specific period of time when the plague first kind of comes over, but it never goes away again.

• 4:35Dan Snow?

  It never goes away.

• 4:36Speaker 03

  It never goes away.

• 4:36Dan Snow?

  That's brutal. So monstrous mortality. Climate problems, climate breakdown. So you get these extraordinary famines in the 14th century, don't you?

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so they're like, before you even get to the Black Death, you have the Great Famine. And the Great Famine goes from a 1315 to 1317, where basically we just don't have a couple of summers. It just doesn't happen across Europe, but England is hit really hard by it in particular. Where there's torrential rain, the crops don't grow as a result, all of the animals die. There are rumors that people are resorting to cannibalism at the time. Whether or not that's true, we don't know, but bringing it up is just kind of showing us how bad things are. And then hot on the heels, you get the Black Death that comes. As a part of this, we're also now experiencing the beginning of the Little Ice Age. So the medieval period was actually quite warm. It is a time that we now refer to as the medieval warm period.

• 5:30Speaker 03

  But by the time you get to the 14th century, suddenly something happens. Winters are colder, they are longer, you have a lot more snow. And we can compare and contrast, for example, pictures of December in medieval manuscripts. And originally, if you have a 13th century picture where people are saying, oh, we're doing the labors of the month. So we are, for example, killing pigs in December, right? You will see them kind of like on some dry ground with the leaves off the trees. Fourteenth century, fifteenth century, you begin to see them killing pigs in the snow.

• 6:00Dan Snow?

  Interesting.

• 6:01Speaker 03

  So you have also this massive and rapid climate change, which was exacerbated by the Black Death, because there are fewer people around. So there are fewer fires being built.

• 6:10Dan Snow?

  And there's more rewilding, opposite problems as today, soaking up carbon dioxide, and the climate's getting cooler.

• 6:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's a real existential worry for medieval people at this point in time. We're losing whole villages, right? So it's not even necessarily that every single person in a village may die, but there aren't enough people to sustain a village. So those collapse, they become rewilded. And medieval people really live a lot more cheek by jowl with nature. And nature is seen as almost a threat, oftentimes the way that they will talk about woodlands, for example, as though they are magical. They really see humanity as necessary in order to tame nature, in order to make things fruitful, in order to

• 6:50Dan Snow?

  Yeah, tidy things up around here.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 6:51Dan Snow?

  Get those brambles chopped back.

• 6:53Speaker 03

  And it just kind of feels like humans are losing at the moment, you know? There are a lot of people who fundamentally talk about this period of time as though it is the end of the world. This is the apocalypse. We've seen famine, we have seen pestilence, and indeed, here in England, you also see rather a lot of war, because we are kicking into the Hundred Years' War in the fourteenth century as well. And that is something that largely happens in France, but occasionally the French get in boats and they

• 7:18Dan Snow?

  There's some raids.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  They attack the Song port and places like that. So it is a really dodgy time for people. It's quite frightening. It's existential. You know, people now wouldn't understand that at all. Nothing weird's happening now.

• 7:31Dan Snow?

  No, no, no, very unfamiliar.

• 7:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:33Dan Snow?

  And these times are plenty. And is that concern, is that nervousness reflected in this of popular uprisings? Is that a normal thing in the fourteenth century?

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yes. So especially towards the end of the fourteenth century, we see popular uprisings across Europe. So we have like the Jacqueville revolt down in France, you have varying peasants uprisings all over the German lands. People really are not particularly happy. I mean, hell, you know, my good friends, the Czechs, they invent a whole new religion about it and do rebellions, right? So these things

• 8:07Speaker 03

  Really come to a head and they come to a head here in England in a very interesting way because the market kind of tries to adjust for the fact that there are a lot fewer people around here, right? So when we have the great famine in the earlier 14th century, there's just like a lot of people around, right? We've got a lot of mouths to feed. People have smaller farms that they have to keep turning over and to make sure that their kids are getting enough to eat. They've got enough to sell on the market and that all collapses. With the Black Death, one of the things that we see is that there aren't enough people around anymore to farm. So suddenly, people are farming a lot more land than they were before, which means there is enough to eat. That's a great bit of news.

• 8:51Speaker 03

  But one of the other things that's happening is that there are fewer people to do skilled jobs, right? So you have lost a lot of blacksmiths. You have lost a lot of Coopers. You have lost a lot of weavers, things of this nature. So people start to kind of negotiate for higher wages. And they say, well, yeah, you want to saddle? Well, this is what a saddle costs now. This is just what the cost of labor is. The rulers of England, not too keen on this. Not hugely keen on the fact that ordinary people-

• 9:25Dan Snow?

  Yeah, these are artisanal, poor people. Suddenly they're-

• 9:28Speaker 03

  Oh, wow. These people think they're people. Wow. They think that they can negotiate for higher wages. And there are several attempts here in England to stop this from happening. So in 1349, for example, we have the ordinance of laborers, which says, you are not allowed, you are not allowed to ask for higher wages. This is what wages are. And of course, they set them at pre-plague levels. They say, this is what a wage is. This is what you can ask for building a road. This is what you can ask for doing masonry on a church. You cannot ask for more than this. That doesn't take the first time. So they do it again in 1351. They say, okay, this is the statute of laborers at this point in time. And it's not just like there are laws on the books about this. They have some really disgusting

• 10:12Speaker 03

  punishments. Like, they will brand you-

• 10:15Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  -if you are caught. Trying to negotiate for higher wages. It's really disturbing stuff. And it's interesting because I think this is something that people tend to forget. There's this really easy idea of the Black Death where people go, actually, well, if you think about it, it's pretty good because it allowed people to negotiate for higher wages. Yeah, they negotiated for higher wages and then they got branded about it. Very few laws are enforced very strictly in the medieval period because it's difficult to do it. There are no police, for example. This is something that the kings went out of their way to make sure was enforced. So it's really horrible stuff that is specifically aimed at keeping people in what the nobility saw as their place.

• 10:57Dan Snow?

  Because if you're the only blacksmith now in the neighborhood, you might have several people saying, I need some horseshoes. Can you make them for me? Like, well, you know, I'm not putting up my prices and that's market forces for you.

• 11:06Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so we really see them at play here. And there is this particular violent attempt to make sure that doesn't happen on the part of the state. And it's actually really grim. It's really, really sad that this is happening to ordinary people.

• 11:21Dan Snow?

  So ordinary people are like, hang on, the only silver lining here. I've lost half my family. My communities have been absolutely destroyed. Everything's terrible. But the silver lining is my labor is worth more now.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 11:33Dan Snow?

  I have more value. Oh, and now the central government is literally putting red hot pokers into me if I'm actually trying to exploit that.

• 11:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's really horrifying. Like, you would think, oh, it's great. I've got a little bit more cash to flash. You also see them try to make laws on the other side of things where you also see these sumptuary laws brought in. And they're like, you can't wear nice things. You can't be wearing colorful clothing. Oh, can you afford irons suddenly? No, you cannot. Put that down. And that is harder to enforce. And we see less of that actually happening because they really kind of aim the brunt of the law at people who are asking for more money because they're like, well, if we can crack down on one, that is going to solve the other problem as well.

• 12:13Dan Snow?

  So the government are trying to pretend that everything's going on as normal, despite the fact that more than 50% of the population have died. And that has produced, as you'd expect, different economic outcomes and some social mobility perhaps. So the government are furious about that.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. So that is one thing. That is happening. Another thing that starts happening here in England that is not great is we get a new young king on the throne. Richard II, one of our worst kings.

• 12:37Dan Snow?

  And the Plantagenet family, just when you think you've got a good thing going, you get an absolute dud.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. And actually, you don't need to be fair to Richard II. Never be fair to Richard II. I was about to say, to be fair to Richard II, he was quite young when he comes to the throne.

• 12:52Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  And so his uncle, John of Gaunt, sort of takes over running the country because like, nobody wants a 14 year old doing all of this stuff, right? And people don't like John of Gaunt. The generalized impression is that he is kind of bleeding the country dry. And indeed, we see rather a lot of taxation happen at this point in time because, again, the Hundred Years' War is happening.

• 13:15Dan Snow?

  And the tax base presumably has halved.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we've had, we've seen the tax base really shrink down. But they're trying to tax people at the rate that they were before the Black Death. People are like, we just can't come up with this money. They then invent new taxes. So in particular, one that is introduced is called the poll tax. And this is just going to be a tax on everybody over the age of 14. There are some tax breaks for married couples where they're like, eh, well, okay, so we're just going to tax the household. But they will say, okay, you are this age, you need to give us money now. They do this three times. And at first, they are saying everyone over the age of 14, tax breaks to married couples. Later on, they say everyone over the age of 15, no exceptions asked.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  And they are going over and over and over to these communities that simply can't pay this money. And for what? To press the claim of the king in France? What does an English person care about that? No one in Essex cares that the king wants to take over France. That has nothing to do with them. They're just trying to survive in a world that they really feel like might fall apart at any moment.

• 14:20Dan Snow?

  Essex is.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  A really wealthy part of the country.

• 14:24Dan Snow?

  It's just east of London on the Thames estuary. So a lot of trade, a lot of stuff going on with the continent.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Yep. So to be in Essex is actually quite a nice thing ordinarily, because you can trade with London, absolutely fantastic. You can get your goods out to market by floating up the Thames, and it's good, rich farmland. It's a really nice part of the world for that. Another place where things start getting quite sticky is Kent.

• 14:50Dan Snow?

  Interesting. There's always a bit uppity Kent, isn't it?

• 14:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So they have kind of a similar thing going on as Essex. Really nice reach into the capital, really good trade, really good farmland. So both of these places become centers where people are attempting to ask for more taxes. Because they're sort of like, I know you're good for this.

• 15:13Dan Snow?

  And is it easy if you're a royal government to sort of tax Essex? I mean, it's up in Lancashire, up here, it's a long way from...

• 15:21Speaker 03

  A long way away.

• 15:22Dan Snow?

  Right.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  Worse farming conditions up there as well, so they just don't have as much money.

• 15:25Dan Snow?

  These are kind of heartlands.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  It's way easier to just shake down your next door neighbors than it is, you know, a bunch of people who they're a month of travel away, right? So over and over again, they will attempt to enforce things in these particular areas because they're wealthy and they're right next door.

• 15:40Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  So this creates a situation where people are not particularly happy. They don't really understand what the taxes are supposed to be doing. This also creates tensions within London particularly. Because Londoners are not happy with this entire situation. Londoners don't like John of Gaunt. John of Gaunt is a big fan of John Wycliffe, who is busy in Oxford, again, kind of like trying to invent Protestantism. And so they don't like a lot of that. There have been some new arrivals in London. In particular, we are seeing a lot of Flemish weavers show up. That is starting a lot of tension with the local weaving guilds and merchants guilds here in London. They feel like this is kind of like bringing in cheaper foreign labor

• 16:24Speaker 03

  that is competing with what they see to be their rightful trade. And so they are also feeling like the royals are encroaching on their rights in the city of London, because the city of London, quite famously, they have a Lord Mayor.

• 16:38Dan Snow?

  Famous. Not a friendly place to the royal family often, London.

• 16:41Speaker 03

  No. They understand what they've got going on here. You know, London is one of the most important cities in Europe. I always say that it's difficult for us to get our heads around this now, but England as a country isn't particularly important in the medieval period. But London as a city is. You have to understand that England is... Is essentially a petrostate but for wool. And now, so and what London does is it translates all of the wool that has grown all over England into cloth and it ships it out. So this is a place that everybody understands is incredibly wealthy and God don't Londoners know it. Again, you know, it has absolutely no parallels with today. And Londoners thinking like, you know, they own the place, right?

• 17:23Dan Snow?

  And they've got walls, they've got their own systems of government. The king, they don't, if the king says jump, they don't say how high.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  No, absolutely not. They say, yeah, you and what army? And unfortunately for them, the king has increasingly been like this one, the one right here. And also, I want to control the courts. I want to have a little bit more say of what's going on here. And, you know, when I say the king, I mean John of Gaunt, who quite famously is living the high life at the Savoy Palace.

• 17:47Dan Snow?

  What we mean by London is what's now called the City of London, the Square Mile, the old Roman footprint London. But if you look out to the west, along the Strand, the Savoy, so this is his big old royal palace, just lurking there on the outskirts of London.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so people are really unhappy with the situation. Incredibly high taxes, they feel as though the king is being swayed by his uncle. They don't love the idea that this money that should be in their own pockets is being swept off to other places. So we just have tensions at an incredible high at the moment. It's a real tinderbox because ordinary people feel as though their voices are not being heard. And even now, we have problems convincing people that they should pay their taxes, right? Think about how much worse it is in a world where you don't get anything for them. You know, now when we pay taxes, we get schools and we get roads and we get the NHS. We get all kinds of great things as a result of our taxes.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  This is, oh, you have the opportunity to pay for the king to press his claim in France. What does that do for you? That doesn't do anything for you if you were a Londoner or if you were a farmer out in Kent.

• 18:55Dan Snow?

  And so you say farmers and Londoners, when we think about the peasants revolt, the word peasant today in English implies someone who is pretty low down the socioeconomic spectrum, they're tilling the land, they are the workers, they're the labouring class. What are we talking about? Who are these people that are getting annoyed here? It sounds like they're taxpayers, they're the middling sort of people, they're literate, they're educated, networked.

• 19:17Speaker 03

  It's really interesting, because now, a lot of times, if you are like a professional medieval nerd, you know, us academics, we are moving further away from using the term peasants revolt, and we are a little bit more into saying the Great Uprising, or the uprising of 1381 now.

• 19:32Dan Snow?

  Good rebrand.

• 19:33Speaker 03

  Because there are so many people who are not peasants involved, and like, yeah, now when we say the term peasant, we kind of mean uncultured person. Peasant has a technical meaning, if you are a historian, it means farmer.

• 19:44Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 19:44Speaker 03

  And you could be a really dirt poor farmer, a lot of people are, you could also be a really rich farmer. And this is the thing, is that there's so many people involved in this uprising now, that we're a little uncomfortable saying that they are peasants. This is kind of like a more romantic ideal, that was kind of laid on it in the 19th century, you know? And I think also, it is interesting, because we don't have the term peasant in the 14th century, the term peasant doesn't kind of come on the books for English people until the 15th century.

• 20:11Dan Snow?

  So this is just a big uprising?

• 20:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh god.

• 20:13Dan Snow?

  And we shouldn't be surprised by that, because there's loads of big uprisings throughout English and European history, that's what happens.

• 20:18Speaker 03

  Absolutely, and you would be surprised, there are individuals, so for example, up in Norfolk, we have dukes involved in this, where they're like, yeah, I don't like John O'Gonner either, and actually, these people are making some good points. So there are all sorts of people who just think that enough is enough.

• 20:31Dan Snow?

  So this is less a sort of Marxist workers of the world unite, this is just a good old fashioned provincial, and indeed London uprising against an unpopular king, and in this case, his uncle as well?

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Quite, I mean, it would be going too far to say that it doesn't have to do with unfair terms for workers, that's absolutely true.

• 20:49Dan Snow?

  Oh, that feeds into it.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, but it's just, this is a real situation where we see people kind of understanding what their worth is, kind of having problems with this old social order that says, understand your betters.

• 20:59Dan Snow?

  And you can say you get a cross section of people rebelling against this teenage king and his very Very unpopular uncle.

• 21:06Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And this ends up kicking off in Kent and Essex primarily first. And that's because they are trying to ask for taxes there. So we see it kicking off in Essex as a result of trying to bring in the poll taxes and in Kent for the same reasons. Now Kent is one of the places that we really tend to focus on as well. Because that's where a lot of our great characters come from. So in particular, we have our good friend John Watt. And he is a really interesting character. We think that he has some military experience, probably as a bowman. We know that he understands how to talk to troops.

• 21:47Speaker 03

  He understands military tactics and he becomes a real flashpoint for the rebellion. We don't exactly know how he comes to power. There are some sources from the time that say that there was an election that puts him in charge down in Kent. But we also have another really charismatic person who comes on the scene who is called John Ball. And John Ball is a preacher. And now we don't really understand the power of preachers because we're like, yeah, who wants to get a lecture constantly? But at the time, you know, a good old sermon, that's like a hot date. That's like a nice night out. And John Ball is giving these really incredible speeches about what it is that we should expect from society.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  And there is a possibly apocryphal quote attributed to him, which is when Adam delved an Eve span, who was then a gentleman. So you know, this idea that when God created the world, he didn't create the social hierarchy that we have in place in the medieval period. He created people and they are all equal.

• 22:43Dan Snow?

  There's no, there's no gentleman in the book of Genesis.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  Exactly. And you know, who's doing all the work around this place, right? You know, the people who are actually putting boots on the ground in the fields, who are actually doing the spinning, who are doing the real productive things that keeps the country ticking over. These are ordinary people and they should be able to have a dignified life. So there's a religious aspect to this as well. This idea that God is not happy with the hierarchy as it sits.

• 23:09Dan Snow?

  Which is a revolutionary idea because traditionally it was said that the reason there's a hierarchy is because God wants a king in charge. Then he wants nobles in charge. This is what it is, and to try and interrupt that hierarchy, disrupt it, is actually last for us. It's heretical.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  Exactly. And this then also comes in with the idea that people like John have gone, ooh, they're getting a little too highfalutin'. They are interested in all of this lawlerdery. They're interested in these heretical ideas. So what God wants, like the good Catholic God, is to uplift the people and get them in control as opposed to this heretical tyrannical royal milieu.

• 23:48Dan Snow?

  You're listening to Dan Snow's History. Don't give up on us, there's more coming.

• 23:59Dan Snow?

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• 24:40Dan Snow?

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• 27:05Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 27:21Dan Snow?

  It's a great uprising and yes, there's some barons and some dukes involved, but there is definitely a flavour of social revolution here.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  Oh, completely, yeah. So it is a really interesting mix and it's not something that we tend to see in other rebellions over time. This is a lot of people who come together and sort of agree that stuff is just not going as it should.

• 27:41Dan Snow?

  Right, so it's beginning in Essex and Kent. How does it manifest itself?

• 27:45Speaker 03

  So we start to see people go after tax collectors in particular and then they decide, you know what, we're going for the whole shebang. We're going to march on the capital. And so of course this makes sense for it to come out of Essex and Kent because they're the closest to the capital, right? And they do. So in particular, we see these troops come up out of Kent and they all get together at the Blackheath, which is now in London, so you know, just near Greenwich.

• 28:10Dan Snow?

  South East London.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  And they get together, they hear a big old sermon from John Ball and everyone, it gets really riled and they decide they are going to march on London. They are going to take it. And this is rather successful. Now, they get up to the London Bridge and the Londoners let them in.

• 28:28Dan Snow?

  Okay, so they're at the south end of London Bridge. They've come up from Kent. They're sermoned up, they're ready to go.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  And you would sort of think, okay, well, London's got a wall, London's got a bridge, it's difficult to get in. The Londoners are like, oh hey, you're here.

• 28:41Dan Snow?

  Interesting.

• 28:41Speaker 03

  And they let them in. Now, we don't know if that's because the Londoners are certainly on their side or if they just see which way the wind is blowing and they're like, oh, that's a lot of people from Kent. So, but they do manage to get in. Meanwhile, the people from Essex managed to get in one of the gates and so we have these two armies converge and they kind of go through the city, opening up all the other gates and letting people swarm in. And this is interesting because we tend to see that there are certain flashpoints of violence when that happens. So, for example, they go after the temple, the temple which is not technically in London, it's just outside near the Savoy. And that is where a lot of legal things happen.

• 29:22Speaker 03

  So the temple is owned by the Crown and that is where we keep a lot of documentation about who owns what and a lot of legal things. So they storm the temple, they burn everything there.

• 29:32Dan Snow?

  Things like destroying tax records.

• 29:33Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, so that's sort of a thing. They also go after things that are owned by the Knights Hospital there. They go after the Priory of St Bartholomew, which is right by St Bart's now. And they tear this down. They also go after the Savoy Palace.

• 29:49Dan Snow?

  Oh, this is John of Gaunt's big luxury palace.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they get in there and they find that there are movable goods worth about 10,000 pounds inside, which is just unimaginable money. And one of the big things that they do with the Savoy is they don't steal this stuff. They destroy it. You know, they burn everything that they can. They burn the palace to the ground. They throw a bunch of silver plate in the river because they say that they aren't thieves. That's not what this is about. This is about reimagining the social order. And it's about making sure that people who have ill-gotten gains lose it. So they are in the city. They've taken over all these things. Londoners too get involved in some things that I would find dodgy. So up until this point, I'm like, hell, yeah. Love everything about this. Come on peasants, burn it all down.

• 30:36Speaker 03

  But in the city, one of the things that they do is they go after the foreign weavers. And they kill a lot of the Flemish weavers who are in town and like piled their bodies up in the streets. We think this is probably instigated as a result of like varying weaving guilds, the mercers, things like this. And that's where I start being like, oh, don't know about all of that. I think it's incredibly funny to like burn taxation records. That's great. Like, let's keep that going. I think it's a lot less cool to be killing foreign workers. For some reason, I don't know why I would think that.

• 31:12Dan Snow?

  As are very hardworking. So like with all great revolutions, uprisings, there are a lot of different motivations, different groups, people getting involved for different reasons. And this is an example of some of that sort of score settling, slightly more partial, narrow interest.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Exactly. And so it is one of these things where on the whole, on paper, it is quite righteous. But the way that it kind of shakes down is a little more dodgy. Now, this is a roaring success. And one of the things that the workers managed to do is get Richard II to agree to some things. So

• 31:42Dan Snow?

  And Richard's secretary is in London this

• 31:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's in London. He has had to fall back to the Tower of London because

• 31:50Speaker 03

  things are looking kind of dicey. So you're going to want to get behind the walls of somewhere serious that can actually be defended. And that, in this case, is the Tower.

• 32:00Dan Snow?

  And the Tower of London is in the southeast corner of London. And this is why William the Conqueror and his successors built the Tower.

• 32:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:07Dan Snow?

  Right? Because London is an uppity place.

• 32:09Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 32:09Dan Snow?

  And they said, we need somewhere physically safe that we can live here when all our neighbors basically hate us.

• 32:14Speaker 03

  Exactly. You need to be able to fall back when the neighbors are unruly. And you also need to have a reminder of the fact that big men on horses could show up at any given moment. So the Tower is both a place of safety and a direct threat.

• 32:29Dan Snow?

  So what's the plan?

• 32:31Speaker 03

  Well, what happens is that Richard actually goes out of the Tower, which is quite brave of him. We'll give it up. And he meets up with the varying armies over at Bo, so in the east of what is now London. And he says, you got me banged to rights, guys. Turns out, we have been acting like absolute maniacs. I am going to agree to certain things. So one of the things he agrees to is abolishing serfdom. So serfdom is the practice by which, in particular, peasants are unfree. So that isn't to say that they are enslaved, but, for example, you can't move down the road if you want to. You have to pay weird taxes for things like if you want to get married, for example, you've got to ask your boss if you're allowed to get married.

• 33:15Dan Snow?

  So they're not enslaved, but they're also not free, as you and I can understand.

• 33:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. It's not a great thing, to be honest.

• 33:20Dan Snow?

  And Richard said, fine, that's going to go.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  Fine, that's gone. He says that we are going to allow you to negotiate wages. That is something that we will let you do. We'll get rid of the laborers' ordinances. That's fine. He also says that he is going to pardon everyone who's involved. He'll say, like, everybody just like, put your stuff down and go home. And we're just gonna try to make do.

• 33:44Dan Snow?

  And is this teenage Richard himself having these conversations?

• 33:46Speaker 03

  It is. It's really interesting. So

• 33:47Dan Snow?

  Face to face.

• 33:48Speaker 03

  Face to face. And perhaps that's why they got him to agree to it. Right? You know, if it was John of Gahn. Probably a little bit less, you know, it'd be like, no, I don't think so. And so he does initially agree to this. So he's gone out to Bo. He's had the first meeting.

• 34:01Dan Snow?

  And that's gone well. He's made concessions. This is exciting. This could be a great turning point in English history.

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And a lot of people are convinced that it is. A big part of the Essex contingent, for example, are like, we did it. We did it. Well, I'm off home then. Fantastic. Great news for me, a person from Essex. I love that. I will not have to be in serf anymore and I am really glad that the king has seen eye to eye with us.

• 34:26Dan Snow?

  But.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  But.

• 34:27Dan Snow?

  There's more to this story.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Absolutely. So a lot of other people don't agree with that. Right? A lot of other people, in particular, Wat Tyler, think that this is a time when you cannot take the pressure off. We have to take possession of London, as it were, and we have to keep our foot on the throat of the king, as it were. So one of the big things that happens is they managed to storm the Tower of London. Inconceivable, inconceivable.

• 34:56Dan Snow?

  It's crazy. Never been captured in battle before.

• 34:58Speaker 03

  No, and it's ordinary folks from across England who managed to do it. And they get in there and they kill some rather important people. So for example, they killed the Archbishop.

• 35:11Dan Snow?

  Wow.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  If you can believe that, because they're like Canterbury, I do not think so. Like, oh, you think you're the prince of the church in England, do you?

• 35:17Dan Snow?

  The most senior churchman in England.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. So they, they absolutely get him and some other important religious figures as well. So one of the representatives of the Knights Hospitaler is killed as well. So again, they are not just pointing their ire at the king. They think that if you are one of the important princes of the church, then you can get God as well.

• 35:40Dan Snow?

  Wow. And these, we should say they're prince of the church, but they're also handling a lot of this taxation system. They're they're royal officials as well as religious figures.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You do not rise through the ranks of the church because you are an ordinary person who quite loves the Lord. Right? Like you become the Archbishop of Canterbury because you're incredibly well-connected. So these are individuals who have connections to John of Gaunt, who Connections to Richard II and who have been involved in taxing people. So it isn't really that surprising that people would go after them.

• 36:11Dan Snow?

  So briefly, the Tower of London, one of the chief bastions of royal power in England, is stormed and overrun by these rebels.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And at this point in time, Richard has to retreat from the city entirely. He goes over to one of his other, you know, very stately homes, the Royal Wardrobe, which is kind of near Blackfriars. So he is forced to be outside of the city. And granted, London is independent, but it is also supposed to be the seat of royal power. You are supposed to always be able to get into the tower and do what it is that you want to with the city. But Richard is fundamentally driven out.

• 36:51Dan Snow?

  This presumably the fact that Tower of London has been stormed is making Richard think, I'm not sure I can do a deal with these guys.

• 36:56Speaker 03

  Yes, absolutely. And what happens as a result is there needs to be another meeting.

• 37:01Dan Snow?

  Another meeting. Okay.

• 37:02Speaker 03

  Okay, we had the first meeting, but what if we had another meeting? So we have the big meeting at Beaux where Richard agrees to the terms of what, but he says, okay, listen, let's have another meeting. We'll talk this out. Let's all get together at the Smoothfield.

• 37:19Dan Snow?

  This is Dan Snow's History. There's more on this topic coming up.

• 38:00Speaker 01

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• 38:43Speaker 01

  Apple Card, issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 38:58Dan Snow?

  So this is the key moment, right?

• 39:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so there's a big open space that is used for varying things. At tournaments, this is a big place where if you have a tournament, you have it out on the smooth field. It's also where you butcher animals and sell it to Londoners because you don't want to be doing all that gross stuff inside the city.

• 39:13Dan Snow?

  That makes sense.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  So this is a big, open place that you can have a meeting. This is a big and pivotal moment because what happens is that here comes Richard II and here comes Wat Tyler. And Richard is like, wow, Wat, see, you're still here, even though the other day we agreed to all of your terms. And Wat's like, yeah, but that's crazy because the thing is I don't really trust Royals. Don't know where that came from.

• 39:38Dan Snow?

  And like all these risings and rebellions through history, the minute that rebel army go home and lose that integrity, they're incredibly vulnerable.

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Exactly. And one of the reasons that what ends up happening, happens is Wat is already incredibly vulnerable. A lot of the people from Essex were like, well, job's a good'un. Off we go.

• 39:59Dan Snow?

  People are already drifting home.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, people are already drifting home. They're like, we got the concessions that we wanted out of Richard and we will go away. But Wat understands that you need to keep the pressure on if you want to keep this going. He apparently, in this meeting, does a couple of things that ruffle the feathers of the royal contingent. He refers to Richard II as his brother, you know, very comradely. He's like, "Well, my brother, like, we all agree that we are equals now." And the royals are like, "Oh, oh, oh, this ordinary person thinks he's a human," you know, and that ruffles people the wrong way. He asks for food and drink, and they're like, "Oh, oh, the peasant thinks that he should have a drink." It's, you do absolutely ridiculous stuff, but at the time, they really, really believed

• 40:42Speaker 03

  that this is like an insult to life itself, that an ordinary person could ask the king for things. And then something happens. Someone stabs Wat Tyler, and then someone else stabs Wat Tyler a whole bunch more times. We don't exactly know who. There are varying accounts of who this is. It's some of the king's men, and as a result, Wat ends up dead. And this has really terrible effects for the uprising in general, because they've kind of lost the flashpoint around which they're coalescing at this point in time. So you have the Kentish people basically in disarray. They are all attacked.

• 41:25Speaker 03

  Richard, surprise, goes back on his word about like not prosecuting anyone who is involved in this, and we begin to see that leaders of the rebellion are hunted down. So as a result of this, very, very, very many people will be killed. Now, I'm not saying that the people involved in the uprising weren't killing people. They do kill a handful of people. I'm so sorry, I don't particularly care if the nobles who are branding people for asking for higher wages are killed. I kind of think turnabout is fair play. But at this point in time, we see like a real crackdown. Richard gives this really, really terrible speech after this, where he says, "Rustics you are, and rustics you shall remain."

• 42:06Speaker 03

  And he's like, not only does he say that I am not giving you any of the concessions that I already agreed to, but he goes on a crackdown. He's like, "We are going to hunt you down and kill you." But the cat is already kind of out of the bag in various places. The rebellion has now spread around England, so there's a major uprising in York, where the Bishop of York is threatened, and they want better conditions, much like the people down south. We have some rebellions in East Anglia. The Duke of Norfolk will get involved. He actually thinks that these people are making some good points, so just showing you that not all nobles are bad people. And now, could he be making some plays to get himself some more lad?

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Sure, but listen, if he's also going to be nice to ordinary people while he does it, I don't really care. We also see some attacks on Cambridge. So coming out of the fence, people attack Cambridge, and they end up burning a lot of documents. So again, here's a point where I disagree with the rebellions. I'm like, please don't burn those documents, I was using this. But they say, away, away with the learning of clerics, away with it. So again, this is kind of like a call out to what they see as these highfalutin, heretical ideas that are coming out of the universities at the time.

• 43:21Dan Snow?

  So there are a lot of different sources of disillusionment.

• 43:24Speaker 03

  Mm hmm, absolutely. So there are flashpoints for all different problems with authority.

• 43:30Dan Snow?

  You cannot tell me that down in the West Country, they were relaxed about this.

• 43:34Speaker 03

  Oh, god, no. So the West Country is kicking off, too. Basically, anywhere it's a little bit harder for the royal forces to get, they are going to kick off. Now, we see the hardest crackdowns come in the places it's easiest to get down. So it's easier to get to Essex, it's easier to get to Kent, so the royals are able to do that. This kind of just continues to simmer, to bubble for quite some time. So it's easy for us to say, oh, this is just kind of a flash in the pan, Wat Tyler gets killed, and everyone is then put back in their place. But we will see tensions continue, especially in the further flung corners of the kingdom, where it's harder for someone like Richard to crack down.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  And indeed, we will see tensions between varying places, and Richard exists for the rest of his reign. London and Richard never come right again, and there will be varying crackdowns on London. Throughout the reign of Richard II. So, yes, you can kill Wat Tyler. You can go after the people who are seen as the leaders of the rebellion. Ideas are a lot harder to crack down on. And we will see this just be one of many uprisings that happens across the continent at the time for very similar reasons. Granted, here in England, we have the particulars of the Hundred Years' War. We have the particulars of the fact that nobody likes Richard. Nobody likes John of Gaunt.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  But these same socioeconomic forces will inspire uprisings across the continent.

• 45:03Dan Snow?

  So the leaders are hunted down and killed.

• 45:05Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yeah.

• 45:06Dan Snow?

  Is it Ball, John Ball?

• 45:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, John Ball, you know, R.I.P. to a real one. He is a god. You know, they kind of say that he is heretical. This idea that you would be agitating against your social betters is brought up. We do also see some interesting people caught. So we see a lot of women get caught. And this kind of shows us two interesting things. We do see women leading contingents of soldiers, sometimes stealing some things. And I'm like, yes, Queen, go off. Like, take money from the Savoy Palace. I absolutely love this. But also, one of the things that's happening here is you don't kill women when you find out that they were involved in the rebellion, whereas you do kill men. So if people are like, oh, who was the leader of the rebellion in this village?

• 45:51Speaker 03

  They're like, Jane? And Jane's like, I did it and I would do it again, you know? And so we do tend to see a lot of women who are prosecuted. They are fined very heavily. You know, if they manage to steal anything, they have to give it back, that sort of a thing. But women are allowed to live if they are seen to be the flashpoints for rebellion.

• 46:11Dan Snow?

  Does anything change? Is it one of those stories where, yes, there's a savage royal crackdown, but then quietly they do try and take the heat out of some of those issues? Or do they learn nothing?

• 46:21Speaker 03

  Oh, we learn nothing at all whatsoever. And one of the things that we will see is intense fortification at the Tower of London. They're like, we need to put a lot more money into keeping this going. Because we did actually see the rebels get into the Tower of London. And so Richard is like, we can't be having this. There is going to have to be some money put into making sure that a royal presence can continue to exist here. You see crackdowns on the city of London, higher taxation will be put in place there. So you can't put this cat back into the bag, right? You can't get the ideas out of the heads of people that maybe things should be a little bit fairer. But similarly, you can't make Richard II not scared from this point on. And he will

• 47:03Speaker 03

  adopt for the rest of his reign, a really terrible attitude to the people that he rules. He absolutely sees them as his social inferiors. He will over and over again, attempt to put in place really terrible and regressive taxes. He will try to force London in particular to give him lots of money. And when they refuse him alone at one point in time, he tries to take away the Charter of London and make Norwich the capital of England.

• 47:34Dan Snow?

  Monstrous.

• 47:35Speaker 03

  He's a, I mean, like, shout out to Norwich. We don't hate it. But also, come on, be serious right now. He will absolutely be a real thorn in the side of the ordinary English person for the rest of his reign.

• 47:48Dan Snow?

  And get very unpopular doing so.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yeah. No, he's one of our most hated kings. A really bad guy. I'm glad he's dead.

• 47:55Dan Snow?

  And he meets a sticky end. But on the whole, as a result of this great uprising, you just don't see any changes to the way normal people are living and interacting in the state, really. It's just, the legacy is just, Richard behaves even worse.

• 48:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And it's one of these really interesting things because it became a real romantic flashpoint for historians, particularly in the 19th century. It's one of these things that gets brought up a lot when people are trying to like, wax lyrical about, you know, the great British or English spirit.

• 48:22Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  You know, the idea of-

• 48:24Dan Snow?

  And the journey towards some sort of constitutional monarchy.

• 48:26Speaker 03

  Exactly. And I'm afraid that it doesn't really pan out that way. Do I wish that this was a story where ordinary people pressed for greater rights and then got them? Yes, I do wish that to be true. But it just simply isn't the case. What we tend to see is a huge regressive crackdown. We do see wages stagnate after this. And so we see- A lot of everything that people are fighting for really go by the Wade side. I do think that there is something to this wherein people do kind of understand that they might have something called a right that doesn't really go away. And we will see more and more of that come up, obviously, in the early modern period. But we don't actually see any greater equality come about as a result of this, which is

• 49:11Speaker 03

  a real shame.

• 49:12Dan Snow?

  So those rebels, they died for nothing. And on that thought, Eleanor Yanega, thank you for coming on the podcast.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Oh, no, I don't want to be linked to ordinary people being crushed, but it's true.

• 49:22Dan Snow?

  It's a really optimistic place to end it. It was, it led to no improvements at all for anyone. Thank you.

• 49:29Speaker 03

  It's true.

• 49:31Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History. You know, you could have watched this episode and others on YouTube. That's right. You can peek behind the curtain of how we record this podcast on our YouTube channel. Very exciting new development here. Just click the link in the show notes and head over to subscribe. New YouTube releases every Friday, friends. Don't miss out.

• 50:03Speaker 04

  At Lowe's, this Veterans Day and every day, military members, veterans and their spouses get automatic Milo's Rewards Silver Status benefits. Plus 10% off eligible purchases with no annual limit. It's one way we honor and give back to those who have served and still do. Learn more and verify now at Lowe's.com/military. 10% discount can't be combined with another offer. Exclusions, terms and conditions apply. Loyalty program subject to terms and conditions. Details at Lowe's.com/terms. Subject to change.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  This is a paid partnership with Apple Card. The coolest flex at brunch these days is not the Bloody Mary with the bottomless gold flake caviar topping. It's not whipping out your wallet to pay. It's not having a wallet at all. Jack's been an Apple Card user since 2019. That's the same year he tossed his wallet in the trash. Because Apple Card holders earn 2% daily cash back on purchases made using Apple Pay. It's the only credit card designed for the iPhone. I tap to pay with Apple Card at the grocery store, at the gas station, at restaurants. And yes, I use it at my second home, the farmer's market. Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound? Means I just got 2% daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval.

• 51:14Speaker 01

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• 51:22Dan Snow?

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