The Peasants’ Revolt

The so-called Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 was the first mass popular uprising in England. A true people’s revolution, it involved not just peasants but also tradesmen, merchants, artisans, priests, village leaders — an emerging middle-class from the countryside. Their demands were radical; an overhaul of a centuries-old system of power held by aristocrats and the church, and the end of the exploitation of the masses by the elites. By the time it was over, a small, disparate band of disillusioned common people had swollen into an army of tens of thousands, forcing the king himself to listen. How did a village ruckus explode into a national crisis? Who were the rebels willing to die for a cause? And who clung onto power after London fell into anarchy? This is a Short History Of The Peasants’ Revolt. A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. With thanks to Juliet Barker, a medieval historian and author of the book England, Arise. Written by Jo Furniss | Produced by Kate Simants | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Katrina Hughes | Sound supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Oliver Sanders | Assembly edit by Dorry Macaulay | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw | Fact check: Sean Coleman Unlock the next two episodes of Short History Of… right now by subscribing to Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening and early access to shows across the Noiser podcast network, including Real Survival Stories and Sherlock Holmes Short Stories. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed, or head to www.noiser.com/subscriptions to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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  It is May the 30th, 1381. Thomas Baker, a small holder of some local standing, approaches the marketplace in Brentwood, a town east of London and the county of Essex. He has walked for four hours to join hundreds of villagers who have been summoned to a meeting on this damp day.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Alongside neighbors from his village of Fobbing, Baker greets acquaintances from nearby Corringham and Stamford La Hope.

• 1:28Speaker 03

  There are strangers from further afield, too, their boots covered in the same Essex mud. And they are all equally angry about rumors that their tax bill is about to rise again.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Now, with a guard standing to attention, one of the officials, John Brampton, gets to his feet.

• 1:48Speaker 03

  A wealthy landowner, he is also a justice who often oversees disputes. But the news that he is here today in his role as a royal tax commissioner is received with jeers. The guards rattle their weapons, and the crowd mostly settles, but heckles and sardonic laughter continue to sound from the back. Ignoring it, Brampton makes his announcement. The payment of the poll tax, set at the amount of 12 pence per person, is due immediately.

• 2:21Speaker 03

  People react in dismay. There are groans, shouts of indignation. One woman throws a vegetable at the awning, but it lands wetly in the mud.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Amid the noise, Thomas Baker raises his hand. As calmly as he can, he says they cannot afford to pay another tax. There are cries of agreement from those around him, but then the guards march forwards to seize him.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  As he is led away, Brampton announces that anyone refusing to pay will be arrested.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  The crowd grows rested. One elderly woman at the back lifts her skirt as if to flash her backside. People laugh, but they know the reference is serious. There have been tales from the neighboring county of Kent that a tax inspector has been insisting on feeling under the skirts of young women, apparently to check if they are old enough to pay their taxes. At least, that was his excuse. His assaults have caused outrage and deepened the belief that these taxmen are not to be trusted.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  As Brampton tries to restore order, Thomas Baker breaks free from the guard. His fellow villagers surge forwards and storm the shelter. The guards are outnumbered. As fighting breaks out, Brampton barely manages to gather his vital tax scrolls before fleeing to his horse and riding away.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  But though the villagers win the skirmish and avoid paying the tax for now, a battle is coming. They must find a way to fight back on a larger scale, to stage a rebellion the like of which has never been seen in England.

• 4:12Speaker 03

  The so-called peasants revolt of 1381 was the first mass popular uprising in England. A true people's revolution, it involved not just peasants, but also tradesmen, merchants, artisans, priests, village leaders, and emerging middle class from the countryside.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  Their demands were radical, an overhaul of a centuries-old system of power held by aristocrats and the church, and the end of the exploitation of the masses by the elites. By the time it was over, a small, disparate band of disillusioned common people had swollen into an army of tens of thousands, forcing the king himself to listen.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  But how did a village ruckus explode into a national crisis?

• 5:04Speaker 03

  Who were the rebels willing to die for a cause? And who clung on to power after London fell into anarchy? I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is A Short History of the Peasants' Revolt.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  In the three centuries since the Norman conquest of 1066, the English have been living under a strict feudal system.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  The land is owned by a 1% elite: the king, the nobles and gentry, and the church. That land is worked by around 90% of the population, either tenants who pay rent for farms or unpaid serfs. Their status only differing from that of slaves by virtue of their being bought and sold with the land, and not individually. The remaining minority are those who do not work in agriculture: merchants, tradespeople, artisans, lower-level clergy. By the 14th century, with the growth of towns and cities, they form an increasingly influential middle class. For the vast majority, life is hard.

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Most people cannot look for work without the permission of the lord of their manor. And if you're born poor, there is little chance of escape from the grind. But a brutal catalyst is about to spark change.

• 6:40Speaker 03

  Juliet Barker is a medieval historian and author of the book England A Rise.

• 6:46Speaker 04

  There were lots and lots of people who were living on manors where they were obliged to perform services in order to hold their land, what we would now call serfs but were known as villains, and the tenure was known as villainage. And these people weren't allowed to leave their manor. They couldn't do all sorts of things. So their lives were very restricted to what the lord of the manor wanted them to do. Life was defined by being subject to somebody else. And then when the great plague came along, the Black Death, it completely changed everything. At least half the population was wiped out.

• 7:28Speaker 04

  And it came in 1348, but it also recurred several times after that. 50% of people died on certain manors, or 78% on one of the Durham Prowry manors. So you left there with landlords who have lots of land, but nobody to look after it. And for the people who were still alive, it provided an opportunity to change things.

• 7:55Speaker 03

  It is a question of supply and demand. With a shortage of rural labor due to the epidemic, those who remain can command a better income for their services. Laborers such as ploughmen can double or triple their pay. Some people acquire property or land, too, creating a new class of independent farmer known as yeoman.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  The villains, who never previously received wages but instead labored for basic sustenance and a roof over their heads, now get paid in coin. Better off working people are able to send their children to school. Soon, many more people can read and write, something that not so long ago was limited to few beyond the clergy and aristocracy. Literacy expands as secular schools open up, organized by trade and merchant guilds. A cash economy means people can also purchase healthier food, such as meat and eggs from the market, rather than surviving on cheap rye cakes handed out by their masters.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Some villains, whose fate has always been tied to the land, now begin to leave and seek a better job. People have a freedom that has not existed in living memory.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  I don't think it's a question of feeling that it's a need to survive anymore because you've got a surplus. The people who are still left have got more than enough land or whatever to cultivate to feed their families. Even just taking on other land and using the produce and being able to sell it, take it to the local markets. And I think we forget how intertwined all these agrarian economy was with the local markets, and particularly get that in East Anglia, but more especially in Essex and also in Kent. You've got lots and lots of people who are starting to send their children out as apprentices

• 9:53Speaker 04

  in the towns to learn trades and become servants where they get a cash economy. And then themselves, they're building up land holdings, and they're building up a much greater independence from the old regime, as it were.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  The old regime, however, is far from happy about this new system and wants its power back. A law is passed in 1351 called the Statute of Laborers, which aims to restore the old way of life, the hierarchy of feudalism. The statute enforces a national wage freeze. A haymaker's earnings are capped at one penny a day, a carpenter at threepence, a stonemason can make a daily maximum of fourpence. In addition, the new law decrees that every able-bodied man and woman under sixty who does not own land must accept any job offered to them. It also outlaws freedom of movement, reinstating the old system of absolute submission to

• 10:58Speaker 03

  one's lord. Even acts of charity are banned for people who are considered able to work, forcing as many as possible to labor rather than receive arms. The new pay scale is a blunt instrument. It is applied as a flat rate across the country and doesn't account for any of the regional differences of potential income. For example, a fertile farm in Essex with access to the thriving markets of London can produce a better yield and turn a greater profit than, say, a manor in the northern county of Cumberland that has been ravaged by Scottish raiders damaging its productivity. In the north, the statute becomes unenforceable.

• 11:40Speaker 03

  Even lords break the law in order to secure working hands during harvest time. By the late fourteenth century, the statute has caused resentment among farmworkers, but also the emerging middle class of country folk who depend on the agrarian economy. In St. Albans, a town northwest of London, a protest emerges when people are forced to pay to use the local abbey's mill to grind their corn into flour rather than make use of their own freely available hand mills.

• 12:10Speaker 04

  One of the things that the abbey at St. Albans did was to literally seize all the handbills in the town, and they took them and made them into a pavement in the abbey so that they could walk on them all the time. It was very unpleasant, and really intelligent, educated, literate people didn't see why they should be treated like this. And what they wanted was the restoration of the liberties that they started to enjoy after the Black Death.

• 12:43Speaker 03

  At the same time, England is at war against the French. In fact, it has been at war against the French for almost half a century. The conflict was started by a king who staked a claim to the French throne. But though he's now dead and gone, his war continues, and it's bloody, labor-intensive, and costly. Warfare is usually funded by aristocrats from the profits of their manners, but due to the crisis, that income has waned. The treasury now turns instead to direct taxation, a so-called pole tax. The word pole is an archaic English word for head, so it means the same amount must

• 13:25Speaker 03

  be paid per capita, from the poorest serf to the richest baron. For the wealthy, it's a drop in the ocean; for the impoverished, it amounts to a week's worth of food. But despite their hard-earned contributions to the war effort, the people can see that England is on the back foot. What's more, the war is no longer happening far away on the continent but knocking at their back door. The French naval forces have been on the counterattack, with invasion forces landing on the south coast of Kent and sailing as far as East Anglia, from where they attack merchant ships off the coast of Essex and Suffolk. And, just like the French, the taxes keep coming.

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• 16:58Speaker 03

  In 1380, Parliament imposes a third pole tax, the highest yet, at a one-off payment of 12 pence per person. Perhaps two weeks' salary for a menial worker, it must be paid by every individual over the age of 15, a devastating amount for a rural family. Villages like Thomas Baker from Fobbing in Essex refuse to pay, and the pushback only intensifies when stories circulate about the taxman John Legg, who it's said abuses his power by lifting young women's skirts to check if they're mature enough to pay the tax. Whether true or exaggerated, the allegations reflect a level of contempt shown by tax collectors

• 17:43Speaker 03

  and for them.

• 17:44Speaker 04

  These all added up to make a feeling that the officialdom was crushing them and that it was corrupt from root and birth. It causes huge anger, and it's all in such a short amount of time. We're talking 1377 to 1381 when the revolt breaks out. And that sort of crushing sense of being taxed and being forced to pay money for failed campaigns is the thing that really sparks it off.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  To make matters worse, there is no strong head of state to whom people can appeal. The current king, Richard II, has been on the throne for four years, but he is still only 14 years old. Slight, pale, and fair, he enjoys activities like hunting and hawking, but refuses to joust or fight for fear of losing his dignity. Although portraits from this period are rare, there are more surviving paintings of Richard II than any monarch until Henry VIII. Such was Richard's concern with his self-image. But in 1381, he is nonetheless still a child, with his powerful advisers pulling the strings.

• 18:56Speaker 04

  It's the classic instance of having a child on the throne who is not competent to rule in his own right and yet is an absolute monarch. So his advisers, those around him, are always the ones who, whenever there's any sort of problem, they're the ones that get blamed. And in the case of the Great Revolt, that is exactly what happened. And Richard's uncles, particularly John of Gaunt, who was the most powerful man in the kingdom, were universally loathed throughout the whole of the country for their vast wealth that was assumed to be taken from people who had their noses rubbed in it, as it were,

• 19:39Speaker 04

  huge landowner and with enormous power, and also with great ambitions of his own.

• 19:48Speaker 03

  People in Essex and Kent decide it is time to take action and focus their ire upon aristocrats like John of Gaunt. There is no single rebel leader and no one group that incites revolt. Instead, communities in various towns and villages coordinate their efforts.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  It is relatively easy to communicate the plan. Travel is common for medieval people, especially in this part of the country. Merchants and pilgrims move quickly on horseback or foot along old Roman roads like Watling Street. Though Essex and Kent are separated by the river Thames, ferries crisscross its estuary between the ports of Gravesend and Tilbury. The planned revolt is supported by boatmen, who carry secret messages urging people to rise up and unite.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Many priests are also on side, their sympathy for the cause overlapping with their opposition to the corruption of powerful church institutions. Wealthy abbies, such as the one in St. Albans, have been increasingly seen to exploit the local community as much as any land baron. Unable to remain neutral, priests read out the rallying cries during sermons, and travelling preachers spread the word of both God and the rebels.

• 21:11Speaker 03

  The uprising springs from Essex and Kent, areas close to London where the rural middle class is literate, prosperous, and has a lot to lose from punitive taxes. But despite the name given by historians much later, they are not all peasants. In fact, what becomes a widespread rebellion is headed by people who are educated and professional with knowledge of the legal and administrative systems that grind them down.

• 21:37Speaker 04

  They wanted first and foremost to destroy all paperwork, all the manorial records and the royal records of the poll tax, so that those couldn't be used against them in future. Then they wanted to replace particularly the manorial records with ones that set out in detail their rights to hold land by paying rent without having to pay bodily services.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Among the agitators is Walter Tyler, better known to history as Wat Tyler. A charismatic man with enough influence to raise an amateur army, he bursts into the Chronicles on June 7, 1381, when he is elected leader of the Kentish rebels at a large gathering in Maidstone.

• 22:26Speaker 03

  As a lowly tradesman, there are no official records revealing Tyler's origins. Perhaps, as his name suggests, he works with tiles, laying clay or stone roofs. Quite likely, he has military training, thanks to the previous king's obsession with the war in France.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  Edward III had introduced a statute forced all men between the ages of 16 and 60 to have the proper requisite armour required for being an archer. So they had to have their longbow, they had to have their arrows, and they had to be prepared to fight. So you've got a lot of men here who are in that situation, who have trained at least once a week to be fighters. And they are the ones that called on every time that there's going to be a campaign against France or whatever. And this is why it's possible that Wat Tyler himself was one of those men, because he might have been a soldier.

• 23:20Speaker 03

  After receiving the mandate from those gathered in Maidstone, Wat Tyler marches around 35 miles east to Canterbury. His militia grows in size as more villagers join the band. They follow the well-trodden pilgrims way along the North Downs to reach the famous cathedral. This is the Mother Church, the birthplace of English Christianity since its founding in 597.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  The Archbishop of Canterbury then, as now, is the most senior church leader in England. In 1381, the role is held by Simon Sudbury. He is also the king's chief minister and head of government, meaning he has a tight hold on both reins of power, the state and the church. As such, Sudbury is high on the rebels' most-wanted list. But when they get to the cathedral, they find that he is in London. Even so, they find other business to keep themselves occupied in Canterbury.

• 24:24Speaker 04

  So the reason that Kent rebels target Canterbury is because that's where the sheriff was, and he had all the poll tax records and all the records of royal tax collection there. So they go straight there to destroy those first and foremost. And I think what's really interesting about the Great Revolt is that in almost all cases, particularly in Essex and Kent, but elsewhere too, once they had destroyed the royal records, destroyed the manorial records, sometimes very occasionally beaten up or even murdered the officials in charge, most rebels went home.

• 25:07Speaker 03

  Wat Tyler rallies his remaining supporters, numbering in the tens of thousands, and sets off to London. At the same time, north of the Thames in Essex, another local leader is amassing an army. John Ball is an itinerant preacher, an ordained priest without a parish, and has a reputation as a firebrand.

• 25:29Speaker 03

  Disgusted by the wealth held by church officials and abbies, he delivers heated sermons promoting egalitarianism and argues that the feudal system goes against the will of God and the teachings of the Bible.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  He famously asks, "When Adam Delved and Eve Span, who was then the gentleman?" Meaning that if everyone descends from Adam and Eve, as the Bible states, then the nobility have no special right to rule. But his indignant speeches get him excommunicated and eventually incarcerated.

• 26:05Speaker 03

  The Chronicles written after the event suggest that John Ball is imprisoned at Maidstone Jail, where he is busted out by Wat Tyler and his men. More recent research suggests he was held in a town called Bishopstortford before being released by sympathizers.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  The rebels, on their way to London from Essex, went to Bishopstortford and extracted him from the prison, and he went with them. So he's a figurehead. There's no way he could have done the military side, the leadership's role in that sense. But he is your inflammatory person to inspire your troops.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  Fifty thousand people from Essex march on London from the east, while Wat Tyler's army now advance from the south. The pincer movement throws the authorities onto the back foot.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  When news of the impending attack reaches the capital, many of the young king's advisers are absent, including his powerful uncle, John of Gaunt, who is currently in the north.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  The remaining council summon Richard from Windsor Castle and secure him at the highly fortified Tower of London. The ruling elites join him inside the battlements. The Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, is there, as is Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the hated poll tax official John Legge, and William Walworth, a prosperous fishmonger turned Lord Mayor of London.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  On Wednesday, June 12, Wat Tyler reaches the city boundary. He sets up camp at Blackheath, an uncultivated area of elevated land close to modern-day Greenwich that gives a good view over London. The story goes that a nobleman called Sir John Newington is sent to deliver a message to the king. He has little choice, as the rebels are holding his children hostage after seizing them from Rochester Castle in Kent. Newington prostrates himself before the king, begging him to parley with Tyler for the sake of his family. Richard agrees.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  As the sun sets, England's rulers in the tower make out pinpricks of orange light on the horizon, campfires of the rebels on Blackheath. In return, the rebels conceive the distinctive white stones of the most heavily fortified keep in England and wonder how they will ever break its defenses. The next morning, five barges set off down the Thames, carrying the king and his delegation. But when they see the scale of the army, they refuse to disembark. In panic, they head back upstream to the sanctuary of the tower, while the rebel army follow along the riverbank. It is a race now. The royal barges make it back to safety, while Tyler's army is held outside the city limits in what is now Southwark.

• 29:00Speaker 03

  London itself is a densely packed city of fifty thousand residents, crammed inside the original Roman walls. It is a warren of unpaved streets with open sewers, with buildings growing ever larger to house the urban population and immigrant traders. At this time, London Bridge is the only fixed crossing over the Thames, and acts as the main gateway to the city. A massive stone structure, it is lined with shops teetering over the filthy water of the river, with a forbidding portcullis built at the south end. It is here that the army is delayed.

• 29:40Speaker 03

  After the mob set fire to a brothel owned by William Walworth, the Lord Mayor, the guards on London Bridge open the gates. Perhaps it is a practical decision. If the mob were to attack the bridge, it would mean disaster for the economy of the port city. Additionally, Londoners themselves are deeply divided, and many support the rebellion.

• 30:02Speaker 04

  London had always had revolts within its precincts. Riots were regular, and like many towns in throughout the country where the same thing was repeated, there was a class of people who were the high oligarchs who ruled the town and were in charge of all the administration. And then there was also a huge wave of people coming up through society's ranks who had no voice in the local government, who were keen to take more authority onto themselves. So they are your ripe rebels.

• 30:40Speaker 03

  What Tyler's supporters stream across London Bridge. The Second Army approaching from Essex enters London at Aldgate in the east. By now, rebels almost outnumber the regular population of the city. Most country folk don't know the labyrinthine streets, but sympathetic locals help them find their first target, the home of the deeply unpopular John of Gaunt.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  The richest man in England, his residence is the Savoy Palace, the site of the modern-day Savoy Hotel on the Strand. The magnificent home is arranged around a central courtyard and houses not just the family, but also Gaunt's private guard of knights and hundreds of clerks and servants. On a scale more like a country estate, it comprises thirteen acres of gardens with fishing ponds, orchards, and a vegetable farm, running down to the banks of the Thames where a stone water gate allows barges to dock. The centerpiece of the palace is a great hall where diplomatic councils and feasts are held on a floor decorated with vibrant earthenware tiles.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  It's the most opulent and richly furnished private mansion in the land, and possibly even the continent.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  As the rebels arrive, they discover Gaunt is away on business and are able to swarm his remaining guard with sheer numbers.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  They literally sacked it, but they didn't steal. And even the chroniclers comment on that, they didn't steal, they actually destroyed it. Destroyed the pieces of gold, destroyed everything they could, because they wanted to bring him down and destroy him.

• 32:22Speaker 03

  One rebel who tries to slip a piece of silver inside his jacket is spotted by his fellow raiders and executed on the spot. Elsewhere in the complex, Tyler's supporters smash precious metalwork, silver plate, jewels, and furnishings, dumping what they cannot pulverize into the river. Silks, furs, and tapestries are ripped to ribbons. Bonfires are fed with Gaunt's land records, disabling his ability to collect future taxes. Finally, the rebels use his own stockpile of gunpowder to blow the place apart.

• 33:03Speaker 03

  For over a century afterwards, the site of the Savoy Palace will mostly sit derelict, with a small portion being repurposed as a prison. It is not until the Tudor era that the area is restored, ironically turned into a shelter for the city's homeless.

• 33:20Speaker 03

  Back in thirteen eighty-one, one eyewitness to the violence is the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, who will later become famous for writing the stories of pilgrims known as the Canterbury Tales. Watching the arrival of the Essex Army from his Aldgate apartment, he writes that "there was a great massacre of Flemings", meaning merchants from Flanders who dominate the cloth industry, and reports seeing forty headless bodies.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  But historians take his claims with a pinch of salt. Like many later chroniclers, Chaucer has an agenda, coming as he does from an elite social class and enjoying royal patronage. Indeed, the poet later becomes brother-in-law to John of Gaunt himself.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Though the violence is likely overstated and the destruction of property characterized with unusual discipline, there are other rebels with a lust for blood. What Tyler is part of a group who somehow get into the Tower of London. Maybe they sweet-talk their way in, or perhaps there is another sympathetic guard on the gate. Among this group of rebels is Thomas Baker, the man whose refusal to pay the poll tax in Essex caused a ruckus at the marketplace some weeks ago. Once inside, they go looking for their most wanted.

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• 36:41Speaker 03

  It is the fourteenth of June, thirteen eighty-one, in St. John's Chapel, the king's own place of worship at the top of the White Tower, built in ten eighty for William the Conqueror.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  The atmosphere is hushed, the setting austere but spectacular.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  A horseshoe of pale arches in creamy con stone gives the impression of a larger church. Candles reflect in the gold of religious icons. A large cross stands on the altar in the apse window. On floor level are eight wooden pews. Here, a small group of elites are sheltering down on their knees, heads bent in prayer.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  At the altar stands the most senior church leader in the country, Archbishop Simon Sudbury. Dressed in his finery, a linen cassock covered by silk chasuble and a pointed mitre hat, he projects an image of authority. As Lord Chancellor, he also has a luxurious state robe, weighing heavily on his shoulders.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  In a low voice, he recites a prayer. Omnes sancti orate pro nobis. All saints pray for us. He has already taken the confessions of his frightened congregation. These men expect to die today and want to be prepared.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Now, through the window comes the sound of shouting down in the courtyard, a clash of swords. The men clasp their hands and pray harder, trying to drown out the noise. But soon screams are echoing through the internal stone corridors, accompanied by a drumroll of heavy feet pounding up stone steps.

• 38:32Speaker 03

  Some of those in the chapel cry out. Archbishop Sudbury reassures them, "A chapel is sacred ground. They are safe." But he has underestimated the wrath of those outside.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  The doors burst open, and rough-looking men block the doorway. They are filthy, stinking of blood and sweat. But the splendor of the king's chapel can intimidate even the most arrogant of men, kings among them, and for a long moment, the rebels hesitate. Sudbury turns his back to kneel before the cross once more and continues his prayer.

• 39:11Speaker 03

  Heavy boots approach. He prays louder, hoping beyond hope that even if these men do not respect him or even their king, they will be cowed by the word of God spoken in his house. He speaks the words again. Omnes sancti orate pro nobis. But no sooner has he finished than a heavy hand lands on his shoulder.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  The rebels drag Sudbury outside. They also take the Lord Treasurer and John Legge, the infamous taxman who carried out his crude checks on young women in Kent.

• 39:54Speaker 03

  The captives are marched up Tower Hill. Then, without trial, Sudbury is forced back to his knees, this time before an amateur executioner. The axeman takes a swing that slices open the Archbishop's neck, but he lives. Sudbury cries out that his survival must be the will of God, but the executioner is not deterred. A second blow severs Sudbury's fingers as they clutch at his injury. It takes a total of eight blows to kill him.

• 40:28Speaker 03

  His severed head is mounted on a pole and raised over London Bridge. Later it will be recovered and preserved. His skull is still on display today in a church in the village of Sudbury in Suffolk. The rebels kill five people from the tower. It isn't a massacre, the victims are carefully chosen. But one person who is conspicuously missing from this group of elites is King Richard.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Having agreed to meet another group of rebels in Mile End, he rode out earlier that morning. The rendezvous point is now a busy neighbourhood in London's East End, but in 1381 it is a large, open common exactly one mile from the city's boundary. Here, Richard meets the disgruntled delegates face to face.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  I do think there is a strong element that maybe he was indeed sympathetic to their aims and felt the injustices. And so, when he agreed to go to Mile End and he met the rebels in person there, and he literally agreed their demands, agreed to free all the serfs who appealed to him, not a blanket freeing, but a freeing of all those of trying to rectify all the injustices. He agreed to deal with all that and he started to actually issue charters, freeing people, giving people new freedoms. He may not have thought through the consequences of that.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  All the while, Richard remains oblivious to the violence back in the city, including the executions of his most senior advisers at the tower. After his meeting, most of the rebels are allowed to depart to journey back to Essex and Kent. Having secured pardons and concessions direct from the king, their uprising has been a triumph. Or so they think.

• 42:24Speaker 04

  They were then able to go back to their towns and to where they'd come from. We, the King's written word, supporting what they had appealed for, so they were right. You know, I have a charter. And that, in a way, was perhaps one of the worst things that happened, really, because it meant that people then went back to their homes, started to gain, and said, "We've got the charters", and they attacked St Albans, they attacked Berri St Edmunds, and all these places that hadn't been involved in the actual revolt up to that stage, because they went to put things right. And they thought they were doing what the king wanted.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  Richard returns to London to find a situation even worse than he left it a few hours earlier. His remaining council is divided between doves and hawks, those who would negotiate and those who would fight. The young king summons the rebels to a second meeting. At the very least, he hopes it will successfully draw the insurgents out of the city. Both sides gather at Smithfield, a flat meadow outside the city walls. It is used as a livestock and horse market, a venue for jousts and tournaments, and a place of public executions, any event likely to draw a large crowd.

• 43:49Speaker 03

  It is June the 15th, 1381. Thousands of rebels gather on the grassland of Smithfield, looking back towards the city. A small entourage approaches on horseback at a sedate canter. At the front, riding on a handsome charger is a slight figure, the royal standard flying high above him, showing the white heart. Word goes round, the king is here.

• 44:17Speaker 03

  Among the rebels, a drummer starts up and a bagpipe joins in. A rhythmic tune, the sort that keeps time when people are carrying out manual labour, digging in the fields or hoisting sails on ships. The music of the common man.

• 44:33Speaker 03

  But not all the dissidents share the celebratory mood. Some rest their fingertips on their weapons or check their stock of arrows and ensure bows are securely strung across their backs. Although Richard is accompanied by a modest guard, they're not about to forget that his soldiers are professionals with swords and even firearms that use gunpowder. The Smithfield is boxed in. Roman walls line its southern boundary, the river fleet to the west and the priory to the east. If violence ensues, the rebels are trapped and can only retreat north away from the city.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  The music comes to a stop as the king reaches the mass of his people. Wat Tyler steps forward. His tunic and breeches are dirty after days on the road and along the way he has lost the simple hood he usually wears. Nonetheless, he is dignified as he greets the king.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Pleasantly out of the way, he makes two new demands of the monarch, who has been sympathetic to their cause so far. The rebels want him to confiscate land and property held by the church and also to abolish the tradition of lordship.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Richard is visibly stunned. Granting such requests would mean dismantling the whole feudal system in favour of equality. A culture shift that would entirely revolutionise economics. It is too much to ask.

• 46:09Speaker 03

  When the king turns his horse away, Wat Tyler reaches out to grab its bridle. One of the king's men rushes forward and shoves the rebel leader. There are shouts and barked insults. Tyler shows a fist to the lackey, an insulting gesture which proves incendiary. Another man, William Walworth, the mayor of London, springs forward and jabs at him. But instead of retaliating, Tyler grasps his stomach. When he staggers back, his hands are covered in blood.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  A soldier finishes him off with a swish of a saw to the throat. Tyler drops onto the grass.

• 46:53Speaker 03

  Almost as one, the great gathering emits a roar of shock and anger. Their leader lies dead, murdered in front of the king who promised to help them. But as the rebels draw their weapons, the king, instead of fleeing, spurs his horse into the fray and raises a sword. He is a child, but his voice is powerful when he shouts to the stunned rebels, "I am your captain. Follow me."

• 47:31Speaker 03

  The rebels have long said they have no argument with the king, only his hated advisers. And most of them are now dead. When Richard steps into the role vacated by Wat Tyler, offering himself as their leader, he draws them away from London to disperse back into the countryside. It is a masterstroke from the young king.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  That's an amazing thing for him to do and again it implies some sort of sympathy with the rebels. And he saved the situation as a 14-year-old. So it is quite an extraordinary event and it could easily have gone the other way. Some people have argued that it was all an ambush and that the Londoners, the mayor and his alderman had set a ring of soldiers round the Smithfield itself and they were going to come in. But how could they have done that with the king in the middle? It doesn't work, does it?

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Whether the king is genuinely moved by the plight of the “true commons”, as they are known, or merely cunningly gets rid of them with empty promises, his attitude soon changes. Under pressure from his advisers, a few days later, on June 23, he revokes the concessions he made to the rebels. They are not free. They are not pardoned. Throughout July, the royal army mobilizes around the countryside. Their retribution is brutal.

• 48:53Speaker 03

  The firebrand preacher John Ball is captured and taken to St. Albans. With King Richard in attendance, he is hanged, dragged through the streets behind a horse, and then quartered, his body divided into four parts that are put on display around the country to warn other rebels. His head is mounted on a spike on London Bridge, reportedly swapped out with that of the recently killed Archbishop of Canterbury.

• 49:21Speaker 03

  And so the Great Uprising is put down.

• 49:26Speaker 03

  But the events of a few days in June 1381 fire a warning shot across the bows of the great juggernaut of government. The richest man in England, John of Gaunt, has had his lavish home, the Savoy Palace, blown to pieces. The loss costs the equivalent of millions of pounds, but his pockets are deep enough to fund a new project, a doomed campaign to seize the throne of Castile in modern-day Spain, to which he has acclaimed through marriage. And though his nephew, King Richard, gains confidence from his handling of the rebels, many of his advisers are now dead: the head of the church, the chief of the treasury, the most senior justice, all gone.

• 50:07Speaker 03

  Parliament is shocked by the power of the masses and how easy it was for simple country people to hold the city to ransom. Perhaps fearful of a rematch, they abandon the hated poll tax. A flat rate per capita levy is not seen again in England for another 600 years.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  The rebellion is also a catalyst for the decline of serfdom and the feudal system. Although Richard revokes his great promise of freedom, landowners are stunned by the way the literate rebels destroyed manorial records on which their claim to property depended. Many voluntarily emancipate their villains to prevent local uprisings.

• 50:50Speaker 03

  While serfdom does not end with a victory parade of peasants in 1381, it withers over subsequent generations. Within a century, bonded labour is virtually non-existent.

• 51:03Speaker 03

  But with the status quo defeated by the spread of literacy as well as direct action, it is perhaps misleading that the Great Uprising goes down in history as the peasants revolt. The explanation is simply that the events are chronicled by monks who live in wealthy abbeys. It is in their interests and the interests of their moneyed patrons to present the rebels as a baying mob of peasants with pitchforks.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  The people who led the Great Revolt were, on the whole, educated, reasonably well-off people, and they were able to lead because they had an education, because they had the means to be involved in that. They were not a rampaging horde of peasants from the fields, and this is why it was such a dangerous revolt and why the chroniclers were anxious to portray it as just being ignorance, rural people, because they were terrified it would happen again. The chroniclers concentrate on the murders, of which there were remarkably few. More people were executed after the revolt than were killed in the revolt.

• 52:18Speaker 00

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• 52:41Speaker 07

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• 53:12Speaker 03

  As the pages of history books turn, the whole project of the Great Revolt becomes synonymous with one name: that of Wat Tyler. Although in reality the rebellion had many local leaders, it is he who becomes a figurehead for resistance.

• 53:28Speaker 03

  The archetype of the Honourable Rebel becomes a core element of English mythology. Though the character of Robin Hood, who famously steals from the rich to give to the poor, exists in legend before the uprising, in its aftermath, the story changes to incorporate the same grievances and social ideals as those epitomized by Tyler. Before 1381, Robin Hood was akin to a mercenary. Afterwards, he becomes a symbol of the common man, valiantly opposing the cruelty of the Sheriff of Nottingham and the corruption of the clergy while remaining loyal to the king. He even, like Wat Tyler, gains a trademark hood.

• 54:14Speaker 03

  For those more interested in fact than fiction, the name of Wat Tyler echoes through history as an inspiration for socialist movements. In his 1791 treatise, The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine praises Tyler as “a bold, honest man who stood up against feudal tyranny”. A century later, during the socialist movement of the 19th century, William Morris uses Ball and Tyler's stories in his left-wing writings.

• 54:41Speaker 03

  And more recently, in the 1990s, when Margaret Thatcher's government introduced a “community charge”, popularly called a “poll tax”, the name and image of Wat Tyler is used by demonstrators. The invocation helps mobilize millions into protests that force the tax to be abandoned once again. Over 600 years since he was born, Wat Tyler remains an inspiration for leftist thinkers.

• 55:09Speaker 04

  With Robin Hood, he becomes the champion of the poor and the champion of equality, which is a compelling idea, isn't it? And you can understand why they would look to somebody like Wat Tyler and John Ball indeed for inspiration, because they do encapsulate those same ideas. I love the idea that in the anti-poll tax leaflets, they actually put “avenged Wat Tyler” in 1990, when the next poll tax is led, they dare to do another poll tax.

• 55:40Speaker 03

  His Great Revolt is, in its own time, a failure. But the ghosts of Wat Tyler, John Ball, and the thousands who marched behind them haunt the halls of Westminster. The cruel engine of serfdom grinds to a halt not because of the mercy of King Richard, but because the ruling class lives in terror of another uprising.

• 56:00Speaker 03

  And those who govern from on high are kept in check, at least to some extent, by the power of the people.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  Next time on Short History of, we'll bring you part one of a special two-part Short History of the English Civil Wars.

• 56:25Speaker 07

  The king eventually flees from London at this point because he's raised such a sort of outrage in the capital, and in no time at all, Pymon and his allies are back in Parliament and announcing that, you know, the king's attempt to arrest them with his troops at his back was proof that what they'd been saying all along was true, that there is a Catholic plot against Parliament, and that the king is determined to take power by force. And they claim that the whole of Parliament was on the point of being massacred when Charles arrived, and had it not been for divine aid, you know, he would have killed all of the MPs there and then. I mean, there's no evidence at all that that was the case, but it is gold dust from their point of view. It's like a massive propaganda victory.

• 57:07Speaker 03

  That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right now, without waiting and without adverts, by subscribing to Noiser Plus. Just hit the link in the episode description or head to www-noiser.com/subscriptions to unlock more episodes today.

• 57:24Speaker 00

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI: your job, your kids, where it's going? Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Everyone's got a hard question about AI: your job, your kids, where it's going? Anthropic was built to surface those questions and share what it finds along the way, because there's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/spotify and keep thinking. That's claude.ai/spotify.