Peasants' Revolt on Film: The Uprising Reviewed

How accurate is Hollywood's take on the Peasants' Revolt? It is 1381, and England is at breaking point. A civilian army of thousands stormed the capital, making demands of King Richard II. Now, Paul Greengrass’s new film, The Uprising, brings the revolt to the big screen, starring Andrew Garfield and Cosmo Jarvis. Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega give their review of the film and separate cinematic fiction from equally exciting historical fact. MORE Richard II vs. Henry IV Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/richard-ii-vs-henry-iv/id1564113746?i=1000671468160 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6FwoVILnFD15Q5S7Qm3WhP The Black Death: A Global Apocalypse? Listen on Apple https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-black-death-a-global-apocalypse/id1564113746?i=1000770789239 Listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6YlDMrYf4mwiAHl1NsdpBu Gone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. Edited by Amy Haddow, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Want even more Gone Medieval? Watch Matt and Eleanor's new film Medieval Summer on History Hit. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

  From long-lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on History Hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 1:12Matt Lewis?

  Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots, and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval.

• 1:53Matt Lewis?

  It's 1381, and England is at breaking point. The Black Death has laid waste to half the population, and crippling taxes have ignited the peasants revolt. A civilian army of thousands stormed through the capital, breaching the walls of the Tower of London for the only time in its history, and they made their demands to their king. And the crazy part? It actually worked, for a day at least. England almost changed forever and for the better. But they were betrayed. Their victory was snatched from them. So how accurate is Hollywood's take on this bloody rebellion? Paul Greengrass's new film, The Uprising,

• 2:37Matt Lewis?

  stars Andrew Garfield as a fictional ploughman, alongside Cosmo Jarvis as Wat Tyler and Jamie Bell as the radical preacher John Ball. Bizarrely and briefly, it was rebranded in the US as The Rise of Robin Hood, which we have thoughts about, and the grainy, grimy, muddy art direction, which we definitely have more thoughts about. The peasants revolt really happened. It's packed with drama and intrigue, but how does that translate to the movie screen? Well, we're here to be your cinematic companions, so let's get into it.

• 3:15Eleanor Janega?

  All right, Matt, I suppose we need to begin at the beginning. Let's do the state of play in 1381. How's England doing? Is she doing good? Is she doing all right?

• 3:25Matt Lewis?

  It's a mess. Things have gone badly for a while now. Most notably, the Black Death has been around.

• 3:33Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it's endemic at this point. So we've had the first big breakout, which kills a lot of people, but it just keeps coming back in successive summers. So we do have a pretty huge loss of life overall. So everyone alive is terribly traumatized.

• 3:49Matt Lewis?

  So everybody's grieving. Everybody is struggling to work. You know, there's not enough people to work the fields and bring in the harvests and the crops and things like that. And they've seen the unexpected opportunity that the Black Death created has kind of been taken away from them by the government as well. So there was an unexpected positive side to the Black Death for those who survived it, but that's been ripped away from them too. So there's, for them, there's kind of nothing good is coming out of this period.

• 4:18Eleanor Janega?

  And I think this is an incredibly important point because there's this tendency that people say, oh, well, one of the good things that happened with the Black Death is that people were able to argue for higher wages. And I'm like, yeah, for about five minutes, and then the king shut that down.

• 4:32Matt Lewis?

  That's it. You get the year after the Black Death hits, you get the Ordinance of Laborers, which is later backed up in statute with a statute of laborers that says you can't earn any more than pre-pandemic levels. If you were getting paid a penny a day before, you get paid a penny a day now, and you can't demand any more than that, and you can't leave your land. And, you know, by the 1360s, they're bringing in extensions to those laws that you can be branded with an F on your forehead for falsehood if you try and run away from the lands that you're tied to. So they're doing everything they can to strip away the unexpected opportunities that come out of the tragedies of the Black Death.

• 5:03Eleanor Janega?

  And this is 100% the bedrock on which all of this rests, is there isn't this romantic, like wonderful, bright upside that happens as a result of the Black Death. And indeed, the other issue on top of the fact that you aren't able to argue for better wages, you're not able to move down the road in order to go find them, is also that there's an incredibly heavy taxation burden at this time, because the king is also like, where did all my money go? And if you say, well, all your money is not coming anymore because everyone's dead, so they can't pay taxes, they're like, doesn't sound like my problem.

• 5:37Matt Lewis?

  No. And alongside that, you've got the fact that the Hundred Years' War, which we're, you know, not all that far into at this point, but far enough, had been going well. And when war's going well, it makes tons and tons of money for all of the rich people, so they don't feel the need to go after ordinary people for taxation. I think there's 14 years in the middle of the 14th century where there's no direct government taxation, where you get used to that pretty quickly, wouldn't you? And then, once Edward III becomes older and iller, and the Black Prince is kind of off the scene, and we move into the beginning of Richard II's reign, the war is not going well, but it is still costing an awful lot of money. So the government are constantly saying, we need more, we need more, and we need more. And they experiment with all of these versions of taxation. So

• 6:21Matt Lewis?

  this is where you get the dreaded poll tax coming in, you get the parish tax as a one-off thing, where they try and work out how many parishes there are in England, divide the total amount of money they want by the number of parishes, and that's what each parish has to pay. And, you know, slightly progressive in that they don't care what you pay in tax or what I pay in tax, they care what the community puts in. So the idea would be that wealthier people could contribute a little bit more. It does happen.

• 6:48Eleanor Janega?

  It does happen. There are, there are, some, some wealthier people are good.

• 6:52Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. But they get the maths horribly wrong because they calculate that there's 45,000 parishes in England when there's like about a fifth of that. So they wonder why they don't raise enough money. And you get poll taxes where everyone is charged a flat rate. And then you get another round of poll taxes, which is the most progressive medieval tax I've ever seen, in which you get kind of 33 different layers of taxation, from dukes and archbishops being charged an absolute fortune, all the way down through earls and bishops and knights, to the people at the very bottom. There's even a poor married couples allowance, so that the poorest people pay four pence, but if you're the poorest married couples, you pay four pence for the pair of you. And it does feel progressive, but doesn't raise as much as they want it to. So then they go back to a poll tax, which

• 7:37Matt Lewis?

  instead of being four pence each, is 12 pence each with none of the relief. So if you're a poor married couple who just paid four pence in taxation, you've now got to find 24 pence.

• 7:46Eleanor Janega?

  Which is an absolute ton of money at the time. And I think it's also important to note here, you know, now when we pay our taxes, you know, for example, here in the United Kingdom, we get stuff like the NHS, you get your roads paid for, it's going to go towards all of the daily minutiae that keep our society running. Medieval taxes don't do that. You're not getting anything. Like, there's no schools that this is paying for, there are no roads, there are no hospitals this is paying for. This is just, this is for the king. This is for your lord. And they use it in order to do whatever it is they wish to do. They use it to fop about and start wars.

• 8:23Matt Lewis?

  It tends to be big project money, doesn't it? So you're paying a tenth of your income to the church in your tithe, but you might feel like you're getting something to some extent for that. You're getting your spiritual care, and the church provides hospitals and bits of education and all of that kind of thing. So you're 10% to the church? Okay. But when the king turns up asking for money, it's because he wants to go and try and make himself richer and more powerful in another country. And it's like, what do I get out of that?

• 8:47Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. And it's, so it's not one of these things where you look at this taxation and you say, yeah, well, we all do have to pay taxes here. You do have to pay taxes, but there's literally nothing in it for you. It is just extractive, first and foremost. And I think that's important for us to get our heads around as part of it. So.

• 9:04Matt Lewis?

  And when we get to 1381, it's kind of a reassessment of the third poll tax that is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

• 9:10Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. It's like, I mean, imagine, again, again, on top of everything else, you know, you're grieving your family, you are trying to figure out how to live. Many people's villages have collapsed entirely. You know, you don't even have your old community around you. You don't have enough money to survive, really. And here they come once more and say, more taxation, please.

• 9:30Matt Lewis?

  And this reassessment seems to...

• 9:33Matt Lewis?

  To spark things off because it's much more invasive than previous ones. You know, we have this idea that medieval peasants maybe had no privacy and everything else. But when the the king's tax collectors are coming into your house and starting to count the things that you own and value them, that's a real invasion of your privacy that medieval people aren't used to from the government. They don't like it and they don't expect it and they don't want it. And that's, that's really what they're pushing back against in that instant.

• 9:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think that is an incredibly important point because we are used to high levels of taxation. That is certainly something that has happened as, as you've demonstrated already. And even though you are on free and you're tied to the land and you can't move about, you do own your home, right? You do, sure, you have to pay a tax on the land and these things, but that house, that's your house. You probably built it, you know, or your father did, something like that. These, these have to be kind of rebuilt over and over again. That is your little private world. And having the king's people come into it and start going through your pots to see if you've paid enough tax, that is a huge invasion of privacy and they do not take it well.

• 10:35Matt Lewis?

  No.

• 10:36Eleanor Janega?

  No.

• 10:36Matt Lewis?

  And we ought to point out, we've got a 14 year old king as well at this point in Richard the Second. He's been king since 1377, when his granddad, Edward the Third, died. The kingdom is still largely ruled by a council on behalf of this young king, who everyone seems to have forgot needs to be taught how to be a good king.

• 10:53Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that at this point in time, the people who are kind of controlling the council don't really hope that he will ever try to get around to kinging so hard. And it is so bad, the situation is so bad, that we often refer to these groups of people around Richard as the evil Senate, the evil, and literally just that's, that's the moniker that we use for them. So it's, that is a indication of how bad this group of people was and how they were seen by their contemporary peers.

• 11:26Matt Lewis?

  And for the purposes of the peasants revolt, we've got kind of two of the main players. So we've got the chancellor, who is kind of the medieval equivalent of a prime minister, Simon Sudbury, who is also the Archbishop of Canterbury, who interestingly also resigns his position as chancellor the day before the peasants revolt gets into London. Smart move, doesn't really work out for him though. And the other one is Sir Robert Hales, who is the treasurer. So they're really going after the, the politics man and the money man. They're the two people that the peasants in the peasants revolt are blaming for everything that's gone wrong.

• 11:55Eleanor Janega?

  Ah, and the peasants are so real for that. I absolutely love it. But okay, listen, this is, this is the setup. Here we go. This is the, the cauldron of bubbling frustrations that we see before the peasants uprising breaks out. And this is a movie, the uprising, about said uprising. However, there was some confusion, was there not, a week or two ago about what this movie was? Would, would you care to speak on that?

• 12:26Matt Lewis?

  I mean, I probably shouldn't go into the depths of the conversation that we had on WhatsApp.

• 12:30Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, it's true, it's like, well, literally Matt and I are like, you know, just texting each other really quick. Because, so, I mean, what happened? I think from, I suppose I will say what the Americans did. All right, so the, it seemed as though there was advertising specifically within America, which added a tagline to the uprising, which said, witness the rise of Robin Hood. And nerds around the world were heard to give out a collective groan. Garments were rent, mine included.

• 13:12Eleanor Janega?

  You and I were texting furiously about how frustrating this was because we were like, I don't understand what's going on. I thought this was a film about the Great Uprising. I did not think this was a Robin Hood film. And this was then swiftly retracted, at least from the UK perspective. Here in the UK, they said, no, actually, haha, like, I don't know what they're doing over there. I don't know, I don't know who told you that. That's crazy. They said that, you know, kind of a thing. And people sort of went, mm, all right. And I suppose the, the important points to make here about why we are frustrated with that as historians is, first of all, there's an established Robin Hood tradition well before the uprising ever takes place.

• 13:57Eleanor Janega?

  And at first, it isn't necessarily written down, because obviously the sorts of people who would tell stories about somebody who robs the rich and gives to the poor, no one's like, hey, give those guys some parchment. We should write this down, like, write down the story.

• 14:11Matt Lewis?

  And it's like, we got one copy of Beowulf, because these things don't get written down for a very long time.

• 14:17Eleanor Janega?

  And we do know that people are telling these stories though, because certainly we find that there are references, for example, in the extended utopian poem, Piers Plowman, where they will say, men tell tales of Robin Hood. We see them come up in frustrated sermons at times where people will say that ordinary people wish to hear songs of Robin Hood as opposed to going to mass, which, yeah, guilty, sorry.

• 14:41Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 14:41Eleanor Janega?

  Sorry.

• 14:42Matt Lewis?

  And the issue with Piers Plowman is that appears five years before the peasants revolt. So that's our first written surviving reference to Robin Hood, which points to a long, long oral tradition that exists before that. So it's hard to position this as a rise of Robin Hood film. And I, I wondered whether this was, we've talked about this, was this a deliberate mistake by the US marketing team to kind of say, if you like Robin Hood films, this is, this is for you?

• 15:05Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Matt Lewis?

  And then, oh, no, it's not a Robin Hood film.

• 15:07Eleanor Janega?

  It's not. Oh, what am I like?

• 15:10Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, we didn't really need, we didn't say it was a Robin Hood film.

• 15:13Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, and I do think that that is, that is kind of like a frustration because that there is this tension here surrounding it about what, what it is and what it means.

• 15:21Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And I think the part of the frustration that we both had with it as well was, it, it, the peasants revolt doesn't need something adding to it. It's a fabulous story on its own that deserves to be told. It doesn't need Robin Hood bolting onto it.

• 15:35Eleanor Janega?

  Mm hmm. And this is in and of itself, one of the most exciting historical things that has ever happened. It is a true story of ordinary people rising up against the wealthy who are oppressing them. It's done. Job's a good in, right? We do, we do not need a fictional version kind of ratcheted on the top here, I don't think. To the credit in the movie, the words Robin Hood are never spoken.

• 15:56Matt Lewis?

  True. And I mean, we ought to give a little spoiler alert here.

• 15:59Eleanor Janega?

  Spoiler alert.

• 15:59Matt Lewis?

  If you haven't seen the film, stop listening, but do come back. There is a kind of thing at the end of the film that kind of, kind of does the Robin Hood thing without saying it's Robin Hood, which was, which it didn't feel like the film needed it.

• 16:13Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think that was sort of frustrating for me because I think in terms of plot, it doesn't work either, because I think that if one does have the opportunity to confront the person who killed all of your friends, you probably don't let them live. And I feel like it was just so tongue in cheek. It was either commit to the bit or don't. And I mean, I do also think that if what we were going to do is we were going to commit to telling Robin Hood, there would have been a nice historical way of doing this, which is anytime we have a scene of them sitting around the campfire, throw some Robin Hood stories in there. And then they could be like, will we?

• 16:52Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Eleanor Janega?

  Should we? Am I Robin Hood?

• 16:55Matt Lewis?

  That could have acted as the inspiration.

• 16:56Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Matt Lewis?

  For what happens at the end, but it kind of comes out of nowhere.

• 17:00Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. And so, I don't know, it, it felt, you know, a bit sweaty, right? Like, we're, we're really working, we're really working here, attempting to kind of shoehorn this in. And I don't think that we needed it because I think it was interesting in and of itself. But I think also perhaps the reason why it has ended in, this is, listen, it's a Hollywood movie, and I think they don't want you to walk away sad. And the peasants uprising is a sad story.

• 17:28Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Eleanor Janega?

  It's a sad story. There isn't a happy ending. And so I do understand why they might have said, oh, look, though, there, there is a kind of glimmer of hope. These people have been able to do something else with this frustration and this rage. And because, I'll tell you what, bad vibes central down at peasants' Akeeshu after, after this particular uprising. So, yeah, yeah.

• 17:53Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. But, so let's get into the, the film a little bit. The film is an experience as a spectacle. What do you make of the way that it looks?

• 18:02Eleanor Janega?

  Well, um, yeah, I think as a spectacle, it works really well. It's very watchable. It is a pleasingly grandiose. Um, I think it, one of the things that I found quite interesting is the costuming was odd. And, and people have made this point before, and we're gonna do it again. I will, you know, my kingdom for a version of medieval history that shows peasants wearing colour.

• 18:27Matt Lewis?

  Where's the yellow?

• 18:28Eleanor Janega?

  Where's the yellow? They're growing yellow outside. That's my matter garden, you know, like, I'm growing red, I'm growing yellow, their, their greens are really green, their blues are really blue. Everyone in this is dressed like mud and wearing mud, and there are, all the peasants are filthy, which just, I assure you, they bathed.

• 18:48Matt Lewis?

  It falls into that trap of medieval films, doesn't it? Where it is all grey and brown and dark. It's always either raining or it looks very much like it's just rain. It's, it's so desaturated, which does a real disservice to the medieval world. There's bare stone walls that shouldn't be bare stone walls all the way through it.

• 19:06Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. And it's, you know, I have yet to see a medieval movie that does this correctly. And I guess I was frustrated because the costuming for the wealthy people was so good. The, the, oh, the costuming for the royalty and all of the council, excellent, spot on, absolutely loved it. The bare stone walls in the castles drives me up a wall because they do a really good job with the art, really great job with the religious art and with the cloths and things. And they're, those stone walls are not stone walls, they're plastered and they're probably red, you know, they're probably yellow, they painted them. There's probably a mural of something there. And it's a little bit frustrating because at this point, we even have castles who have redone that, you know, you can go check out Norwich Castle, you can go check out Dover Castle.

• 19:49Eleanor Janega?

  We have multiple castles that will show you what it looked like. And production companies still don't want to do that. Um, and I guess I get a little frustrated here because if what we're doing is we're telling a story about inequality.

• 20:05Eleanor Janega?

  I don't like that you're paying more attention to the way the wealthy people look than the way the poor people look, right? Like, let the poor people look like they actually do. I mean, there was not a covered woman's head amongst them.

• 20:17Matt Lewis?

  No, apart from, you know, the noble women, particularly Joan of Kent and the nuns who were in there had their heads covered. But no other woman in the film seemed to have her head covered, even though every single married woman.

• 20:30Eleanor Janega?

  Would have her head covered. And none of them had ever taken a bath or knew what soap was.

• 20:35Matt Lewis?

  The amount of mud that was everywhere and the amount of times that you cut to the next day and they're still covered in streaks of dried blood down their faces. Like, they would know that was gross.

• 20:44Eleanor Janega?

  They, that's uncomfortable, at the very least. You know, these people would stop and they'd have a bit of a wash, I promise you. You know, so that, that is a little bit frustrating. I think also one thing that frustrated me along these same lines was as a part of this, you know, the constant mud and the constant dreariness of the whole thing. We actually know that when the peasants uprising kicks off, it's pretty nice and sunny.

• 21:10Matt Lewis?

  It's June.

• 21:11Eleanor Janega?

  It's June, it's June, and they talk about it. They talk about in records when the big army of peasants is camping out on Blackheath. It's like a picnic and everyone's up there having a great time and they've all got bonfires and it's beautiful sunny weather. And we know this from the records. So I think it's like, that's literally something we know. We, we've got a handle on that. It was streaming sunshine. And I think it's a shame to try to turn everything into this sort of muddy puddle of a world.

• 21:37Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. It's, I guess you're trying to create a miserable world instead of creating a beautiful world that has misery in it.

• 21:43Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, and the entire point of what the peasants are doing is saying, you know, there is, to quote the great philosopher George Michael, fun and sunshine, there's enough for everyone, right? And so they're saying that there's enough for everyone to kind of get along. There are beautiful things, why can't we have them? Not, everything is awful, burn it all down.

• 21:59Matt Lewis?

  Thank you for bringing our Lord George Michael into God Medieval. I know you'd do it eventually.

• 22:03Eleanor Janega?

  We're here for your time.

• 22:05Eleanor Janega?

  I think if we are here talking about the world and medieval clothing and castles, et cetera, though, it is also kind of, we're talking about the art direction here generally, because there is a kind of desaturation and graininess to the quality of the film. And what I would say is, word of warning, if you're gonna go see this, we sat kind of close to the front, and there is a lot of that kind of Paul Greengrass characteristic shaky camera work, and it took me about 15 minutes to be able to handle it. It, it was a lot for my brain, so you may wanna sit a little bit further back, because it is kinda shaky.

• 22:43Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I, I felt that there was too much of that. I think it was, it felt overused. It's almost constant camera shake, so it doesn't kind of reflect the mood in the moment. It's not used kind of sparingly to reinforce tension or anything like that. It felt like it was just going on all of the time, to the point where it's like, I'm trying to follow the action a bit like this, just, it was just too much camera shake, and I wish there was less of it. I think, wish it was less violent camera shake and less prevalent throughout the film. And I think, I think the graininess, I think you're absolutely right, and it felt a bit like, so London, I think, looks really good in the film, and I wonder whether that, trying

• 23:23Matt Lewis?

  to soften the, the sharpness of the CGI of, of the London that they created, was something they felt the need to perpetuate throughout the whole film. So to make that look a little bit softer and more realistic, and less kind of digital, meant that the whole film had to look a little bit more grainy and desaturated and, and dark, which is, you know, a pet peeve about medieval films.

• 23:48Eleanor Janega?

  Listen, I agree with you. I think that this is what we're doing, is we're, we're putting a little bit of Vaseline on the lens in order to get it all through, and I would say, make a brighter London. Make a brighter London, do it that way.

• 23:57Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 23:58Eleanor Janega?

  Now, having said all of this, I think it's effective in terms of the storytelling. I did enjoy seeing medieval London. Oh, I love to see her.

• 24:11Matt Lewis?

  And I think it looked really good in this film. I would have loved to have seen a bit more of London Bridge, because I just love medieval London Bridge and I want to spend time on it and see it. And we, I, I think we were rushed through it a little bit, minor complaint, because otherwise I thought they did a fantastic job of recreating the city, you know, the, the low skyline, the tower really standing out and dominating the whole city.

• 24:36Eleanor Janega?

  Old St Paul's, like beautiful Gothic St Paul's, which I think was really exciting. My only minor quibble about their London is, it doesn't have any suburbs, and we know that it does have suburbs, so London sprawls a bit outside its walls, it's got houses on the outside of the wall, it's got, you know, a few struggling things that are leading up to it, and we know this because we have old maps that show us that that is there. This is a minor quibble. I was just happy to see London Bridge, you know? I'm just, I'm always, I'm always pleased about it, I would always like to, to spend more time among it. I think that the villages looked really good, I liked the way the houses looked. I think some of the thatching could have been a little newer.

• 25:18Matt Lewis?

  You could do that, we've seen it in medieval summer.

• 25:20Eleanor Janega?

  I was saying, call your girl, like, I know, I know how to thatch now, so it'll be fun. But I did like, I did like the way that the villages looked as well.

• 25:28Matt Lewis?

  And I thought the cast was really, really strong as well. I thought there were some fantastic performances in there. Catherine Waterston as Joan of Kent really stood out to me.

• 25:36Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, she was amazing.

• 25:38Matt Lewis?

  She did so much with, with looks. You know, without saying a word, the, the slightest smile or frown or look of concern or worry, I thought she delivered all of that absolutely perfectly.

• 25:52Eleanor Janega?

  She was absolutely killing it. Catherine Waterston, thank you for your service, straight down the lens to you, ma'am. Love this. So yeah, she was absolutely incredible. I thought Andrew Garfield was really enjoyable.

• 26:04Matt Lewis?

  Yes.

• 26:05Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, you know, like, he's out here tugging heartstrings, babe. It's, oh, I'm, I'm on the verge of tears every time he puts his little face on the screen.

• 26:12Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I thought he was really, really good, a really strong performance.

• 26:17Matt Lewis?

  I struggle to think of anyone that wasn't a strong performance, Cosmo Jarvis as Wat Tyler.

• 26:21Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah, I really enjoyed that. I, I think it was, it was quite interesting, it was quite interesting characterization, and I really liked the way that he seemed to be really trying to keep everyone in stride. I thought they were excellent. Jamie Bell as John Ball.

• 26:39Matt Lewis?

  I thought he had so much kind of, of the religious zeal and the passion and the drive, I thought he delivered all of that really well, this kind of a fierceness in his eyes that you could see all the way through it. And I think his character in particular did a great job of talking about the difficulties of balancing the power that comes with religion in the medieval world, because it is so much at the center of the religious way of thinking, of the religious life, of the medieval life. But with that power, you know, Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. There is also danger in that power. If you harness it and it's directed in the wrong way, it can be really dangerous too. And I think his character delivered that really, really well.

• 27:21Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I thought that that was a really excellent performance and a really nice characterization. And I also really enjoyed, Woody Norman as Richard II. I thought that was a really excellent performance, actually. Ooh, so slimy.

• 27:34Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, I think beyond his years, you know, he, he acted it like a, a real grown up. There was some intensity behind all of that. And again, he did a lot with, with looks, and he did a lot with, with shouting, but I think he delivered it all so, so well, very mature performance.

• 27:51Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, really, really excellent. And I think this is a difficult, this is a difficult person to characterize, because he's almost cartoonishly evil. And Woody Norman's done a really great job of balancing that and kind of showing some way where the humanity can kind of get into those things. I think we can both agree that Richard II is the worst Richard.

• 28:17Matt Lewis?

  Yes.

• 28:18Eleanor Janega?

  He's the worst, he's the worst King Richard. Now, it's a close run thing, because Richard the Lionheart is the second worst Richard.

• 28:25Eleanor Janega?

  We're right. Anyway.

• 28:27Matt Lewis?

  Which only means Richard III is the best.

• 28:29Eleanor Janega?

  Best Richard.

• 28:30Matt Lewis?

  The best Richard.

• 28:31Eleanor Janega?

  That, that is actually true. That's science. So anyway, see Matt for more information. But I think that it is good that he did manage to, to bring a sort of nuance to what could have just been a caricature of evil, which I, I think is very good.

• 28:47Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, and I think they did, they did a really good job early on in the film of painting a really nice picture of some of the political complexities. So you've got the council arguing about who are you gonna tax? And it's like, you know, we can't, we're not gonna tax us. We're rich.

• 29:01Eleanor Janega?

  Well, yeah.

• 29:01Matt Lewis?

  If we tax the merchants, they're gonna want a seat at the table, a say in the decisions that we make, and we don't wanna include them, so we don't, we're not gonna tax them. Who are the people who can't push back? Easy.

• 29:13Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that that is genuinely how it works. It's not more complex than that, and it is a thing that we consistently see throughout the medieval period, and indeed into the early modern period, is this sort of horror at the idea that the merchant class might get a seat at the table, and attempts to create boundaries between the aristocracy and the merchant classes, especially at a time of increasing merchant wealth, because it's true, the peasants are a lot worse off after the Black Death. Merchants are doing just fine, babe.

• 29:44Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Eleanor Janega?

  Merchants doing great, so.

• 29:47Matt Lewis?

  They have all of the money, but they're not taxed because they might want some influence, and the nobility don't wanna give away the influence.

• 29:54Eleanor Janega?

  Exactly.

• 29:54Matt Lewis?

  And I think it also, early on, does a really powerful job of painting a picture of the ways in which ordinary people are kind of trapped into this system as well, that they're locked in. When the ploughman is presented with the, the choice between, he's saying he's, he's the only member of his family left after the Black Death, you either have to pay death taxes for the ones that have died, or pay the king's taxes as if they were alive. And it's, it's kind of, you're in that catch 22, there, there is no win here for him.

• 30:23Eleanor Janega?

  And it, and I think that it is a really good opportunity that they took here to point out the absurdity of the taxation system, where there are all these ridiculous, you know, you pay a tax when you get married. You pay the taxes for all sorts of ridiculous things.

• 30:50Matt Lewis?

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• 31:32Matt Lewis?

  your specific goals and background. Plus, there are no wait lists. You can often get an appointment as soon as tomorrow. Thousands of people are already using Ruler to get affordable, high-quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit ruler.com/medieval to get started. That's R U L A dot com forward slash medieval. You deserve mental healthcare that works with you, not against your budget.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  If you love a good story, why aren't you listening to Dan Snow's History Hit Podcast? It's a show where we tell you every amazing, crazy, and important thing that's ever happened in human history. From the perilous voyages of the first Polynesians, the discoveries of Captain Cook, the deadly Viking raids on Britain and Ireland, the rise and fall of the great English kings and queens. We'll tell you how Waterloo was won, the Alamo was lost, and all the history in between. So make sure you check it out. Dan Snow's History Hit, for the best true stories ever told, wherever you get your podcasts.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  I'm Connor Tomlinson from Love on the Spectrum. History is my thing, and I've been waiting my whole life for a show like this one.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  And I'm Carter Roy, and this is What the Fact. Three facts a week, each with the whole story behind it. The history class you actually wished you had in school. New episodes every Wednesday. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 33:25Eleanor Janega?

  I will flag up something here that I did not like. There's this inciting scene where we have a very bad taxman, Boo, and Andrew Garfield, the plowman, decides he can take it no longer. Now, I loved the beating up knights part. That was excellent. I was just sitting there saying, hell yeah, in my head repeatedly at a higher and higher volume. However, what I did not like in this scene is one of the things that is, I mean, inciting thing is that in order to decide who was taxable as an adult, they have a scene where, content warning, real quick, sexual assault, and they are taking young girls, throwing them up against a wall, and groping them. And I cannot stress how

• 34:07Eleanor Janega?

  much that would not happen. This is an incredibly Christian world. This is a world where you do not allow men into birthing chambers with women. When Joan of Arc is saying that she is a maiden and is very proud of this, you know, they have a bunch of women go check that. Some guy from the king is not going to be allowed to grope your teenage daughter in front of the entire village up the skirt.

• 34:39Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Eleanor Janega?

  And I think that was a bit traumatic to show the audience, and I think that the rate of taxation was bad enough in and of itself to be an inciting thing. I don't think we had to be doing all that.

• 34:52Matt Lewis?

  No, I think it's tricky, because it's a really salacious story. It does become attached to the Peasants' Revolt. People, I think, are quite often convinced that this happened as part of the Peasants' Revolt. They can name a tax collector who used to do it. But none of these stories emerge until the middle of the 16th century. It's almost 300 years after that people start looking back and thinking, this must have been a thing as well. And it almost detracts from the very real reasons that it was happening. And like you say, it's unnecessary. It's not part of what we know about the Peasants' Revolt. And it does a disservice to medieval society to think that this goes on in the open air, in front of everybody, and it's just a normal piece of everyday politics.

• 35:37Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, so I didn't love that. Again, did love the knight killing, though. So that was good. So that was a nice little, little bit. So I just think we could have got there in a different way. I think that we could have got there by the traditional route, which is that, yeah, this is a bunch of bad people, and the taxes were bad, and it was bad. You know, I think that was, that was sort of enough. So I think that that is also a kind of important place to talk about how the peasants are feeling about this. Because there is, of course, the whole material circumstances, and the fact that they are worse off, they're incredibly impoverished, they are totally unfree. But there is also, very importantly,

• 36:20Eleanor Janega?

  a religious element to this. And of course, we have John Ball, the preacher, as a part of this. And he is an interesting guy. You should have, both Matt and I were nodding along the minute John Ball shows up, and he did the, when Adam 12, and Eve span, who was that a gentleman? And we're like, yes, yes, it's very good.

• 36:42Matt Lewis?

  We all be born of one mother and one father.

• 36:44Eleanor Janega?

  So, good, good, good, good, good. And I think that this is an important point, because there's always a tension in the medieval period. And it's something that we see with periodic church reform, things like the rise of the Franciscans in 13th century, where there's an ongoing critique of wealth as a moral failing, both on the part of the church and on the part of kings more generally. And a thing that I often point out is especially from the 14th century onward, we begin to see more and more hellmouths on display in churches, more and more depictions of hell. And when you see depictions of hell, everyone in there is wearing a crown. Everyone in there is wearing a bishop's tiara, right? And so there's this real, obvious tension where ordinary people are like, what's, what's

• 37:28Eleanor Janega?

  all this? Like, it is clearly morally impossible to have this much money. And we see expressions of that throughout preaching as well.

• 37:37Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think they did a really good job of presenting John Ball as the kind of moral, spiritual compass of the revolt. So we know John Ball existed. We know he's a real person. He's excommunicated years and years before the Peasants' Revolt by Simon Sudbury when he's bishop of London, before he becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. So there's a bit of personal beef between Simon Sudbury and John Ball. And one of the times that he is repeatedly excommunicated. One of the times they describe him preaching sermons that reeked of heretical depravity, which sounds pretty cool.

• 38:15Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, that's, those are my favorite kind.

• 38:17Matt Lewis?

  That's the sermon you want to go to, isn't it? Crossing your fingers on a Sunday for heretical depravity.

• 38:21Eleanor Janega?

  Come on, yeah.

• 38:22Matt Lewis?

  What we don't think is that he is actually involved in the Peasants' Revolt. There's no record of him being at the places where the Peasants' Revolt took place. He's executed, he's arrested and executed about a month after the Peasants' Revolt, in the presence of Richard II. Richard II is there to watch him be executed. But I think he has a really good place in the film, because almost undoubtedly, his kind of preaching and that kind of attitude to the wealth of the church figures in the thinking of the people of the Peasants' Revolt. Because the flip side of, we've talked about how the government has let people down in the Black Death, the church has let them down big time, too, because they've been telling them, if you, if you reform your ways, if you pray hard enough, all of this will go away. And that's what they pay the church for, to provide that kind of guidance. And

• 39:04Matt Lewis?

  that, so the, the social contract with the crown has been broken, but the spiritual contract with the church has also been very severely damaged by something like the Black Death, which opens the door to people like John Ball to cause people to question the wealth of the church, and whether, whether the church doing things wrong is actually the problem.

• 39:21Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. And I think that the, many people within the church, their response to the Black Death was specifically this, you did it. You know, you were, you were sinful. And people say, okay, well, that's fine, but you're supposed to be acting as a buffer. You're supposed to be this pastoral care. You're supposed to have a kind of link with God that is supposed to spare us from this. And that is why you live so well whilst we are out in the fields. And so I think that that has worn incredibly thin. And I did, I did like the inclusion of John Ball there. Does he have a role within this film that he did not have in real life? Yeah. I was not particularly mad about it, though. I was like, I was like, great to see you. Love a heretical preacher. Always happy to see them here.

• 40:04Matt Lewis?

  Yeah, yeah. I think he fits in there really well, despite this being a slight bending of the history.

• 40:10Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Matt Lewis?

  And I wonder whether, you know, the plowman, Andrew Garfield's character, the plowman, is, is an everyman. He's, he's no, we don't even know a name beyond plowman.

• 40:19Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Matt Lewis?

  You know, he's just an ordinary person. There's an interesting potential reference in there to Piers Plowman poem.

• 40:25Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Matt Lewis?

  Which links us back to Robin Hood a little bit.

• 40:27Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 40:28Matt Lewis?

  Could have been something like that. There's also, you know, it's missing completely Jack Straw, who was the, the famous putative leader of the rebels out of Essex. But there's no Jack Straw in the records of the Peasants' Revolt. So he's an apocryphal kind of figure. Is, is there something in that? We know that, so in the film, the plowman is the one who first snaps and begins the violence and pushes back against the tax collectors. We know the name of the person that did that. His name is Thomas Baker, and he lived in a place called Fobbe.

• 40:59Eleanor Janega?

  Shout out, Thomas Baker. You're a legend. You're a real one. Thank you for your service.

• 41:03Matt Lewis?

  He kicked it off. So there, there is potential that that plowman figure is an amalgamation of several aspects of people who were involved in the Peasants' Revolt, kind of all poured into one character to perform this function. But even without, I mean, I think it works better that we don't know his name.

• 41:20Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I really like that. I like the introduction of the plowman as a character, because I think that if you focus too much on Wat Tyler, if you focus too much on John Ball, if you focus too much on these names, then what you are in danger of is just turning them into legends in and of themselves, making this about great man history, when the Peasants' Rising is something that thousands upon thousands of people participated in, and that's the beauty of it, right? Like, that's the really cool thing. So I think it was nice to have this sort of amalgamation character in the person of the plowman.

• 41:49Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Something that I wanted to talk about. So aside from, from Woody Norman's performance as Richard II, which I think was outstanding. The character of Richard II in the film, the way that he is portrayed, the way that he is written. This is something I think I struggled with a little bit in the film, in that he's, I don't know what to make of him to begin with. I'm not sure what's going on with him. I think there was a real opportunity to have presented a Richard II who was really excluded by his council, instead of we get his council kind of looking to him and him shutting himself away all of the time and being distant from them. I think there was an opportunity to give us a Richard II who had been sidelined by his own council, despite being told, you know, we do get him told in the film that you're the Messiah. You've been put here by

• 42:33Matt Lewis?

  God to look after us. But Richard II finds himself with no power to go alongside that idea of his status. And I think he gets a little bit, his character is a little bit lost in the film in that he turns from this kind of reclusive, frightened child into a mass murdering tyrant. And I don't know why that happened. I don't know what the trigger was for that. And there could have been an opportunity. So my reading of the Peasants' Revolt is that the trigger for this is that when he gives the rebels permission to go and arrest members of his council so that they can face trial for treason, they go away and kill them, murder them, which isn't what he gave them permission to do. And there's an opportunity for that to have been something that flipped. So what I think

• 43:16Matt Lewis?

  this is a really long-winded way of saying is I think this was an opportunity to have explored what made Richard II so bad. And it sort of got missed or lost in the film.

• 43:27Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it is an interesting one because I think up until we see this characterization flip into, oh, there's Richard II. And I think I was madder than I'd ever been in my life. So angry because I thought that to a certain extent, the way they were portraying it is, oh, he's just a lost little boy. Oh, he's having these nightmares and he just doesn't know what to do and his council's kind of going along without him. And he's receiving bad information. Richard II doesn't know what's going on. And I was like, Richard II is actually evil, you know? And I was like, I don't. And then suddenly it just happens. And I was like, oh, there he is. There's Richard. But you're right in that

• 44:09Eleanor Janega?

  I don't think they make it clear exactly what happens there. And I think, I don't know, maybe there is some kind of scene where there is a kind of bridging characterization that can make this work. You know, for example, another way I could see them going with this is him kind of being talked off, you know, like just blah, blah, blah in his ear from everyone around him. And then his mother kind of pushing him in the other direction. And then him just saying, okay, well, here's the model that I have. And the model has been cracked down on peasants. And so that's what it is to be powerful. So I'm going to crack down on peasants because I want to be powerful. Right? And then kind of taking it even further in order to prove a point. And I think that would have worked really

• 44:54Eleanor Janega?

  well. But as it is, we just kind of have this, this almost rupture. And then the Richard II we know and hate appears. But at least he did. At least he did. Because I was like, I swear to God, if this is going to be a film where they're like, oh, the poor king. Oh, he's only a poor little king. I was like, I will, I will actually start the peasants uprising right now.

• 45:13Matt Lewis?

  I might be slightly more sympathetic to Richard II at this point in his life than you are.

• 45:18Eleanor Janega?

  No. No, you're definitely, I mean, you are, you are, you are more, you are more sympathetic to him than I am. I guess my thing is that I suppose every royal teenager, you know, we go, oh, they're just a teenager. Oh, yeah, they're a teenager whose entire life is made possible by the blood and pain of thousands upon thousands of people who died in the mud. So like, forgive me if I don't really care if they're having like a crisis.

• 45:44Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. But he did very nearly agree to the complete restructuring of English society.

• 45:49Eleanor Janega?

  He did.

• 45:49Matt Lewis?

  For what may well have been his very, his own reasons, not altruistic reasons.

• 45:54Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Yeah. It's just that, I mean, it's the crackdown that will make me hate him forever. So.

• 46:00Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And I think that crackdown was a little bit where they played with the history a bit too much in the film for me in that the idea of these charters and he was going to give, grant them at Smithfield. But in reality, they'd already got them at Mile End at the previous meeting. So there wasn't that kind of, he's withholding them and tricking them and luring them into a trap and all of this sort of stuff. That, for me, that felt a little bit like you've messed with the history a little bit too much to create the circumstance that you want at the end of the film.

• 46:28Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think they wanted this big dramatic trap that is sprung. And I think a thing that is interesting here is they have this very interesting scene with Joanna of Kent speaking to the ploughman and saying that, you know, you need to have things written down because everything else is just words and it can change. But the trouble is, the actual history is, no, we had them charters. Like, they were there. It was done. It was a done deal. And actually, power is power.

• 46:53Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. People walked away from the Peasants' Revolt with those charters in their hands and went home and acted on the basis of them.

• 46:58Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 46:59Matt Lewis?

  Before they realized that they'd been revoked by the government.

• 47:02Eleanor Janega?

  And that's the thing is that two things are true. It's not just the writing it down. It's not a way of establishing law necessarily going forward because provided you have the person of a king, the person of a king can just decide to revoke that at any point in time, especially if what he's done is give ordinary people rights that they didn't have otherwise.

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• 49:03Eleanor Janega?

  I think another, another thing, what with the charters and the writing things down?

• 49:11Matt Lewis?

  I think from the look on your face, I think I know what you're gonna say.

• 49:12Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, it was the whole doomsday. The whole doomsday thing.

• 49:17Matt Lewis?

  Don't, don't watch this scene sitting next to Eleanor in a cinema.

• 49:20Eleanor Janega?

  I did snort. I did snort laugh. When they came out with the doomsday book and they opened it up and it says, William the Conqueror. Like, come on, babe.

• 49:30Matt Lewis?

  Bill's Lady Bird book of the doomsday.

• 49:32Eleanor Janega?

  It's just like, I mean, we actually, like, we have the doomsday book. You go, we know what it looks like. It's actually kind of a famous book. You could have just looked at it. And I mean, it was funny. Every time you see a document, and obviously they're trying to like bring the audience in. It's like, they're always in English and they're super clear and legible. And I'm like, babe, I wish. Like, I wish 14th century documents looked like that. They're all in secretary hand here. They're all in Latin. Nothing is in English, like, let alone modern English. You know, it's all, it's all in like, middle English, if it's anything. So that was all a bit silly. And I guess within here too, we saw this thing that is really common with a lot of perceived medieval things. So we saw this in the Robin Hood that has Russell Crowe in it where they're like, oh, and Richard

• 50:17Eleanor Janega?

  I really wanted to do, like, he wanted to do a big Magna Carta. No, he didn't, babe. And there's this thing where people are like, we've got to get that doomsday book back. Because everything was fine until the French came along. I'm like, the Normans are not French. Like, do not call them French.

• 50:34Matt Lewis?

  When the French king conquered England.

• 50:35Eleanor Janega?

  And it's like, no. And so he was not, and I don't like the idea. I think it's really dangerous to say that everyone was having a great time. Like, ordinary peasants just loved the Anglo-Saxon kings. Oh, they were, oh, we were having such a nice time. Babe, those were slaveholders. Surfing people is bad. It's bad to have serfdom. It's even worse when those are slaves, which was a huge part.

• 51:02Matt Lewis?

  The Normans who abolish slavery in England.

• 51:04Eleanor Janega?

  Like, it's not, no one was longing or pining for like the Anglo-Saxon kings in 14th century England.

• 51:11Matt Lewis?

  300 years later.

• 51:12Eleanor Janega?

  I think that is just, because it's, I think it's really dangerous actually to posit that there's like some conception of the good old English days and that if everyone was just a bit more English, then none of this would be happening. When people with power have been abusing peasants throughout the entire medieval period. And that's what the truth is. And I mean, part and parcel of this is when we see Wat Tyler show up. Wat Tyler is like, well, who am I? I'm a patriot. I'm like, no, you aren't. There's no such thing as a patriot. Like, and he's like, I was fighting in France for my country. You were not. That is not what was going on with the Hundred Years' War. You were fighting in France for your king, who wants to be the king of France. He wants more money. It has nothing to do with England. It has nothing to do with like you, yourself, like saying that you, oh, I'm going to seek the glory of England. That's ridiculous. There's no

• 51:57Eleanor Janega?

  such concept at the time. And I think.

• 52:02Eleanor Janega?

  That is again dangerous because what we're doing is like, oh, there's the, oh, the ruddy Englishman who simply loves his country. No.

• 52:10Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. I wonder whether they've used Doomsday as a kind of shorthand for the elite seizing land and power, which isn't really what it was because the elite already had land and power. This was just quantifying it. It's suggesting that Doomsday took something away that that was never there in the first place. But I guess it's maybe a shorthand for that idea, but it just doesn't feel like it works.

• 52:31Eleanor Janega?

  Because the trouble is it's a census. It's not, it isn't actually a set of charters. It's nothing like that. Doomsday is a census and it wouldn't have anything to do with the lives of people in the 14th century anyway, because it was the census of how many pigs there are in Anglesey, you know, like it's, it just doesn't affect your life. And also those things are not the sort of thing that ordinary people would know or care about. So, yeah.

• 52:56Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. I do think the film does a really good job of presenting us with what were the genuine and real complaints of the rebels and the way that they go about it, this targeting of written documentation, the, the court decisions and the charters that keep them in serfdom, that tie them to the land. They target those and they destroy them. And they're very clear in the film, as they are in real life, that they are not looters, they are not thieves, they are not just violent thugs. They are destroying the records that maintain what they view as a corrupt and broken society.

• 53:30Eleanor Janega?

  And that was my favorite part of the movie. My favorite thing in the movie was this maintaining what the actual goals were. And, and the goal here is the abolition of serfdom. And I think that it was so great to see that and see people talking about that. It's the one time when I am pro damaging medieval sources. It's like, yeah, baby, if that's, if that's the document that says you're a serf, you go ahead and burn that. I don't need it. I don't need it. It'll be fine. It's fine. You know? Yeah.

• 53:59Matt Lewis?

  I think it does a good job. This film does a good job as well in the scenes towards the end in London of showing particularly like what Tyler and John Ball realizing slightly the horror of what they've unleashed, that the mob has become uncontrollable, that however noble their aims were and however much they all shared those same aims, it's so easy to lose control of that.

• 54:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh yeah. And I think especially in a society where you have been violently downtrodden, it's very easy to flip very quickly. And I think the thing that I was disappointed with here, there's a throwaway line that I think we could have got rid of, which is that the mob are attacking the Flemish merchants. And this is an interesting one because it's a little bit of a deep cut. It's like, here's one for the historians where you, and I'm like, yes, that's true. Flemish merchants were attacked. However, again, what I think is a little bit of a problem here is the people who were attacking the Flemish merchants were English merchants. And they say the mob are attacking Flemish merchants. They think they're taking their jobs. And I don't think that's fair because it was other rich

• 55:00Eleanor Janega?

  people that attacked the Flemish merchants because they basically saw an opportunity in all the chaos. And they're like, oh, this is great. I am going to attack my competition. And I don't like saying that it is kind of the unruly mob of poor people who have done this where ordinary poor folks do not think a Flemish merchant has taken their job because they're not a merchant, right?

• 55:23Matt Lewis?

  And you're right, because it would have been a good opportunity to have shown those merchant classes that we talked about, that the focus in the film around the mayor of London, it would have been a good chance to have shown them, another wealthy elite, ruining things for the ordinary man again. So, you know, it's not that the ordinary folk have destroyed their own revolt. It's that other forces are coming in and hijacking it and using it for their own ends. They're using the, the cover of the, the violence of the peasants revolt and the burning of records to target their enemies, which is derailing the peasants revolt and driving it to places it was never meant to go.

• 55:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. I think we could have either not talked about that. I think that you could just go ahead and not do it, you know, and just sort of have the nebulous violence that was happening. That's absolutely fine. Or you could have like had the mayor of London call over a messenger and say, hey, really quickly, go to, go to, you know, Jan van Luderoyden's house and go, you know, and then that might've been like a nice way of kind of showing it in the person of the mayor who's a cage character.

• 56:20Matt Lewis?

  Were you after Jan?

• 56:21Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like, oh, go, go, go. And then, and then they'll be like, oh, it's crazy. A lot of the merchants from Flanders were attacked. And he could be like, oh, that's

• 56:29Matt Lewis?

  Oh dear.

• 56:29Eleanor Janega?

  Wow. Who did that? You know, and that, that would have been a nice way of doing it. But otherwise, I think it's just not nice to kind of put that at the door of poor people.

• 56:37Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. And also we can talk a bit about Dark Ages references and burning of records.

• 56:43Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:45Matt Lewis?

  Dark Ages is about a lack of written source material rather than it being a backward age.

• 56:49Eleanor Janega?

  That's right. That's right.

• 56:50Matt Lewis?

  And sometimes records get burnt as they do today.

• 56:53Eleanor Janega?

  And, you know, it is nice. I think it is, it's really important to kind of show that, that there are reasons why people might not want records around, right? So, yeah, I thought that that was interesting. I did like seeing, again, one thing I really liked from the bit when they come into London though, is I was really into the Corpus Christi plays.

• 57:11Matt Lewis?

  Yes.

• 57:12Eleanor Janega?

  I was so excited to see the mystery plays going around. And when they have like a guy dressed up as a nun, kind of like running out of the way, you know, like when the mob comes in. Ah, I loved that. It was so exciting to see the wagon. So I thought that was a really lovely little detail.

• 57:26Matt Lewis?

  It was, it was really, really well done. And I like the idea of them using a saints' day, a feast day to, to coordinate things because that's, that's very medieval, isn't it? You know, you don't use a calendar day, you use a saints' feast day because everybody knows when it is.

• 57:41Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. And so I think that we are good to remember here, the way that peasants are thinking about the year, the way they really, they know all of these feast days and these mean things to them. So bringing that to the forefront, I think was a really nice slice of the medieval world. Very, very well done.

• 57:58Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. So I guess we ought to think about what, what might people take away from this film. So Andrew Garfield has made some comments recently that he hopes that the message of social resistance will cause some concerns for the billionaires of the world, that the peasants revolt might just be around the corner again. You know, we're living in a post pandemic world with highway, high taxation burdens.

• 58:21Eleanor Janega?

  Same. I hope that they do become better. You know, like Andrew Andrews got me there. I think that that is nice. I think though, one of the things that I worry about, you know, because obviously I'm team peasant, you're a team peasant, we're peasant people. And, and I am really interested in the peasant uprisings that happen around Europe as a result of that, because I think that it is this expression of ordinary people and it shows us how inequality works. My worry however, is that this is a sad story. Yeah. And so I don't want to pin all of our hopes on a fairer and more equal society on the peasants uprising because it was brutally

• 58:59Matt Lewis?

  Crushed.

• 59:00Eleanor Janega?

  Crushed and curtailed. But I do think it is important to show that wealthy people and powerful people do not willingly cede that power. And I think it is nice to talk about the importance of organization.

• 59:14Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the same. I think, you know, for anyone that was paying attention in 1381, this, this was a really faint death knell for the, the kind of, let's call it feudal system that people have been living under for hundreds of years, that it couldn't carry on. If the social contract is broken and the, the spiritual contract is broken, those living on the rough end of that contract have no reason to stick by it anymore. That you can push people so far and they'll accept that, but there is always a limit to how far that can go. Does anyone ever realize they're going past the limit? Probably not.

• 59:49Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 59:49Matt Lewis?

  Unfortunately. I don't think Elon Musk is going to watch this film and think, hmm, I'm a terrible person.

• 59:55Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. I think, I think that you're right. It is one of these things where the, the difficulty is, we have a hard enough time. We have a hard enough time convincing people that they are peasants in, in the Middle Ages. You know, everyone thinks that they're the king. Everyone thinks that they are a Roman senator. Everyone thinks that they are Cleopatra. When you were a peasant, your family were peasants, everyone was a peasant, you were peasants, right? And so it's going to be very difficult to convince people who are wealthy and powerful that they are, should maybe behave a little bit better and think of the pores as actual people with lives, you know?

• 1:00:30Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. And, you know, if we haven't given away enough spoilers for the film, big spoiler for the end of the film coming up.

• 1:00:35Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:36Matt Lewis?

  I thought it was odd when we get to the, is it Robin Hood bit at the end, that they chose to involve Richard the second in that to the point where he is on the floor in front of the people who have murdered all of his friends and betrayed everything. And somehow, for some reason, they stop short of killing him and let him go on the basis that if we kill him, we just get another king. It's like, yeah, but there's good kings and bad kings.

• 1:01:04Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. But this one literally is in the middle and it's a year later, right? A year later, we are in the midst of the incredibly violent crackdown because the uprising doesn't go away that quickly. It's something that it periodically springs up throughout varying counties and people are being killed in their thousands still. And so if you got hold of Richard the second, you would kill him on account of the fact that he's a mass murdering jerk, right? Like you would a hundred percent do it. He 100% is the reason why your own friends have been killed. You're not just gonna, I mean, I applaud you for killing the mayor of London. Fantastic job in this scene, but you would kill Richard the second. And I think it's a little

• 1:01:46Eleanor Janega?

  Silly, because, I mean, obviously, they kind of can't kill Richard II because that didn't happen, right?

• 1:01:53Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Eleanor Janega?

  So.

• 1:01:54Matt Lewis?

  So why put him there?

• 1:01:55Eleanor Janega?

  So why put him there at all? It could just be representatives of the crown and you could have done the same thing.

• 1:01:58Matt Lewis?

  It could have just been the mayor that you went after. But I think it might have been interesting if they played with that idea of it's almost a psychological blockage that someone like the Ploughman can't bring himself to kill a king because that's God's anointed.

• 1:02:10Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:11Matt Lewis?

  You can't bring yourself to do it. But instead, it's kind of Joan of Kent in the background going, oh, mercy.

• 1:02:16Eleanor Janega?

  I know. We love Joan of Kent, though.

• 1:02:18Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Eleanor Janega?

  Unfortunately, I was just happy to see her there. So I was like, oh, she's so good. Look, oh, another fine performance.

• 1:02:23Matt Lewis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Eleanor Janega?

  But, yeah.

• 1:02:25Matt Lewis?

  So, conclusions. What do we think of the film? Are we going to give it a score out of 10?

• 1:02:30Eleanor Janega?

  Um, yeah. Let's, let's go for it. What's your score out of 10 first?

• 1:02:35Matt Lewis?

  I'm going to go solid seven, maybe seven and a half in that I, I really enjoyed it. I think, I think it's a, I said to you before, didn't I? I think it's, there's some Braveheart in it, in that I think it's truer to the history than Braveheart, but maybe not quite as good a story as Braveheart. I applaud sticking closer to the history. So I think, I think I'd be happy to go like seven and a half out of 10, and I think people should watch this film.

• 1:03:00Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I think people should absolutely watch this film. I think, I'm, I'm similar. I'm going to say I'm about a seven, I'm about a seven out of 10, maybe six and a half if I, if I'm going to get like real pro peasant about things. But I would tell people to go watch this. I would tell people to go watch it in theaters. I think it's an excellent first crack, a peasants uprising film. And what I really hope is that people are going to see this, they're going to get super interested in the peasants uprising and they're going to go read some books about it and, and find out the actual history. And I mean, much like our friend William Wallace, who is made famous by Braveheart, hey, you can go see the memorial to William Wallace, which is about 20 feet away from the memorial to the peasants uprising out on the Smithfield. So, you know, it's related, babe.

• 1:03:44Matt Lewis?

  Yeah. So watch the film, grab yourself a really good book about the peasants revolt.

• 1:03:48Eleanor Janega?

  That's right.

• 1:03:49Matt Lewis?

  And enjoy.

• 1:03:50Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, actually, not even any good book about the peasants uprising. Like, go, go read a book. This guy over here has made a really good peasants uprising film for History Hit. I'm just saying, some of us were in it. Other people made it. It's really excellent. If you are wanting to see a little bit more about the history and the actual facts of the matter, Matt has you covered. Go watch Matt's peasants uprising film. Come on, come on. I'll do his work, he's not going to do it, I'm going to do it.

• 1:04:20Matt Lewis?

  No, it was really good fun to do. We did it, it ended up being three parts and we talked all about the, the long aftermath of the peasants revolt and the people who were taken to court for acting on the basis of the charters that they left Mile End with. And there were some incredible stories. I mean, one of the things in the film that I was actually, I forgot to mention earlier, there was lots of singing, lots of songs being sung while they're traveling and while they're camping and things like that. And there's a guy called John Stackpole, who's amongst those who were prosecuted as a result of this. And this guy's executed as one of the main leaders of the peasants revolt. And so his goods are inventoried. And this guy has instruments, you know, he's got worn out boots and holy hose and all that kind of stuff, but he's carrying a gitern and a couple of other instruments around with him.

• 1:05:04Matt Lewis?

  Is he a protest singer who was, who was around that campfire encouraging them to think about why they were there? There are real people and real stories at the heart of this that are absolutely fascinating.

• 1:05:12Eleanor Janega?

  A lot of women, too.

• 1:05:14Matt Lewis?

  Absolutely. Joanna Ferrell.

• 1:05:16Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Matt Lewis?

  Fascinating woman.

• 1:05:18Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, wonderful. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm, I'm really happy that the uprising is out in the world. I think that people should go see it and I think it's a great jumping off point for learning more about the actual history.

• 1:05:27Matt Lewis?

  Perfect. I hope you'll go and see the uprising and let us know what you think of it. Do you agree with us? What's your score out of 10 for this movie? In exciting news, I also wanted to let you know that from the start of October, you'll notice a couple of changes here at Gone Medieval Towers. All of your Friday episodes, or Thursday for subscribers, will be episodes with Eleanor and I together. Now, we petition the rulers of History Hitland to allow us to do this because, well, it's just such good fun. We've already started recording episodes from exploring how to survive the Black Death to winning a medieval tournament, and from the Hussites to Richard III. So, yeah, our personal faves get a good airing.

• 1:06:11Matt Lewis?

  The Tuesday episodes, which subscribers can get on Mondays, will alternate between an Eleanor episode with a guest and a me episode with a guest. So that format is also still staying. From the start of October, we're also going to be launching a Gone Medieval YouTube channel with filmed versions of the episodes that Eleanor and I are doing together. So you'll be able to watch as well as listen if you want to. I hope you'll subscribe to the channel when it goes live and give it a go. But you can also still enjoy your audio versions wherever you get your podcasts from, as usual. I hope you'll be as excited about these developments as I am. We look forward to hearing what you think of it all in October. And there are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come

• 1:06:55Matt Lewis?

  back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com/subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hits.

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