After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - When Medieval Peasants Attacked London

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

In 1381, thousands of ordinary people rose up against the Crown, marched on London, and came close to bringing England’s political establishment to its knees... In this episode, Anthony and Maddy are joined by our very own Matt Lewis to discuss the Peasants’ Revolt: why it happened, who led it, and what this extraordinary uprising tells us about life in medieval England.This episode was edited by Anna Brant. Produced by Tomos Delargy and McKenna Fernandez. The senior producer was Freddy Chick.UK listeners: voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJaSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.After Dark is a History Hit podcast.History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Looking for more shady and sinister stories, sign up to History Hit. You can join us to explore the tragic life of the Bronties or discover the chilling story of Burke and Hair. Plus, with your History Hit 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 forward slash subscribe to start exploring the past. A teenage king sits behind the walls of the Tower of London. Outside, thousands of rebels have flooded into the capital. They've burned records, stormed prisons and have executed several members of the King's inner circle. Their demands are simple freedom, justice, and an end to the taxes and feudal obligations that have bound them for generations. At their head stands Watt Tyler,

A man who just weeks earlier was virtually unknown. Now he's leading a rebellion that threatens the kingdom itself. From the chaotic mess that is medieval England, welcome to After Dark. Hello and welcome to After Dark, I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony. We are taking you back to 1381 in today's episode, where thousands of ordinary people rose up against the crown, marched on London and came close to bringing England's political establishment to its knees.

Today we're exploring the Peasants' Revolt. Why it happened, who led it and what this extraordinary uprising tells us about life in medieval England. Today's guest is none other than History hits very own Matt Lewis, our resident expert on all things medieval history. Listeners have caught him, can catch him, will catch him on our sister show Gone Medieval, as well as echoes of history. You're a bit greedy, Matt, with your two podcasts. Yeah, you're the only one, right?

I'm literally all over the place and figuratively all over the place. We love that for you. Peasants Revolt, there's a film about to come out. How are you feeling about it? I'm excited to see it. I mean, I've only seen the trailer at this point. It looks traditionally medieval, grey, muddy and miserable. It was all grey scale in the medieval period.

I'm surprised you don't know that as a medieval historian. Yeah, yeah. That bothers me slightly. it looks like it's just going to be a big violent historical epic which I'm here for I wonder whether it's going to be another brave heart to bookend the century with but we'll find out Oh interesting

Can't be a brave heart I love brave heart It's atrocious history but it's a brilliant film Yeah it is apart from the whole I hate the dead wife So I go for vengeance trope Which is just like so frustrating But yes

Would you not look for vengeance if someone killed your wife I'm not challenging you I haven't seen it so I don't know No, I would But it's just She was an interesting character Could we not have kept her in? Oh, I see, I see, I see, I see, I see

Yeah I should probably watch it I haven't seen anything You need to watch Braveheart I need to watch more of films I think You've not seen Braveheart No And we discovered during lunch break

I haven't seen What is it? Indiana Jones Any Indiana Jones? Not a single one Even though he's dressed I had a high opinion Before today started

You were wrong Yeah well you're cancelled You're cancelled now Let's do some history map we are in the 14th century medieval England in this time it's not a great century is it there's a lot going on

there's death and destruction everywhere we look talk us through some of that said destruction it is a barely horrific century it's being positioned as the worst century in history to have been alive I think that might be fair

there is a lot that goes on it starts off around 1315 with the great famine does exactly what it says on the tin great start crops fail for about four years in a row. So everybody is starving to death. There is talk of cannibalism. Edward II can't get enough bread for his household. Even the king. Even the king. Even the king is struggling to get food during the Great Famine. That's quite hard to imagine the scale of that actually,

isn't it? It is, I think. Today when we've got tins of stuff in the cupboards and things like that, the idea that nobody can even get a loaf of bread. So what caused the Great Famine? Do we know? Just climate shifts. So we're moving out of the medieval warming. period into the Little Ice Age here. So there is a big shift in the climate change isn't good, kids. Rivers are flooding everywhere. It's not going very well. So we have that. Then we've got just, you know, if you sat at home hungry without your bread, we've then got some sickness and disease coming our way as well. A little touch of the black death. There is a school of thought. So we don't know why pestis that causes the black death has been around for thousands and thousands of years.

What we don't know is quite why it causes this humongous problem in the middle of the 14th century. And some people have suggested that it might link back to the Great Famine, that there was this base malnutrition in people who had gone for years in their youth without enough food that caused something that allowed this senior pestis to take hold and suddenly cause this massive mortality. So here we get the black death begins to spread its way across the world. We quite often think about how it affects Europe. We forget how it affects North Africa, the Near East and into China and places like that. And that's largely because of trade networks, right?

This is because we've got thriving trade. The silk routes are in full flow. We've got the Pax Mongolia, the peace of the Mongols, so that everything is settled. Trade is flowing really freely. Usually a great thing. Not so good when there's a pathogen trying to find hosts to take it further and further away. finds its way into Europe, hits England in 1348, and wipes out estimates vary,

up to half the population of Europe is wiped out. Some people suggest maybe half the population of the world, if you add it across. We don't know how far it goes into sub-Saharan Africa. It becomes really difficult to tell how far it reaches down there. But it's everywhere, and if you get it, you are probably going to die from it. And this must have been for people living in this moment, you talked about, you know, people living with malnutrition for most of their life with the famine and, you know, this lasting years and years and then you've got the black death.

What would that do to the mentality of people in the 14th century? You know, I mean, we think we, I know it's a comparison that is like slightly anachronistic and not particularly useful, but just to think back to COVID and like how our mentality as a society changed so much and the psychological effect it had on us as a group, but also individually and our households, all of that. What is this doing to how people view the world? You know, the medieval period is obsessed with the apocalypse at the best of times, let alone during this moment. Is it, you know, are they just trying to survive? Are they looking around them and thinking this is punishment from God? Are they seeing this moment as particularly extraordinary? Or are we looking back with a historian's eye and going,

Blime me, the 14th century was rough? They are seeing this as apocalyptic. You know, there were lots of schools of thought that the year 1000 was going to be the end of the universe. So there's a sense in which they feel like they're living on borrowed time already. So by the time you get to the mid-14th century and you've got the black death coming, it's actually doing, I mean, this is a really, really interesting question. It's doing two big things.

It's destroying trust in the church and it's destroying trust in the state. And if both of those are happening at the same time in a medieval world that revolves around the church and is held together by the state, you've got real problems. Because the two things that are going on is people think, well, why is this pandemic happening?

Why do bad things happen in the world? They happen because God is annoyed with us because we've sinned. We're not doing things properly. Therefore, we need to put this right. And the church is saying, you know, you need to pray more. You need to live better lives. There are sermons that are preached in, I think it's a Bishop of Rochester, who's telling everyone that their shirts are too tight and their skirts are too short.

And that's why they're all getting the black death. So you improve your life and this will go away. People try and improve their lives, and it doesn't go away. So all of these promises that the church has made them, their reliance on the church, is now beginning to feel misplaced. The other sort of spine of what they have is the state. The feudal system, and I'm going to say feudal, we can debate whether the feudal system exists or not.

I'm going to say the feudal. We can't because we're not medievalist, but you can in the comments. People will. The feudal system relies on a contract. We often think about power just flowing up, but there is an element of it that comes back down because you work on your Lord's land, you pay him taxes and everything like that, and he's supposed to to provide you with protections. It's a big mafia protection racket, basically. What happens during the black death is that the government brings in, so people are dying left, right and centre.

Ordinary people are inheriting more land from wider members of their family than they could ever have imagined. They're actually becoming wealthier. If you survive the black death, you could become quite rich. And so they're then also, labour is short in the field. There's no one to bring the crops in. So they're thinking, well, you used to pay me a penny a day for doing this. How about you pay me two pence or three pence. There's no one to do it. How about you pay me five pence and I'll bring it all it? And the elites are like, hang on.

We can't be having it. I know half the population's dead. You can't be earning more money than you were before. And so the government brings in ordinances of labourers the year after the black death hits and then they enshrine this in statute a couple of years later that set wages at pre-pandemic levels. So they essentially say if you were earning a penny a day for this before the black death, it's illegal for you to be paid more than a penny. your day for it afterwards.

For doing maybe triple the work, yeah. You can't run away from the land that you're tied to as a surf. So even if you've managed to inherit from some distant cousins, you've got a big patch of land over there. You can't go to it

because you're required to stay on this piece of land and work it for your lord. Because if you go, how's your lord going to get this land worked? And so all of that, if you survive the black death, opportunity is presenting itself to you amidst the tragedy.

And the government is immediately. cutting all of that off. You can't have that. I mean, it reaches the point, they're still legislating for this in the 1360s. The plague comes back several times over the decades that follow. They're still re-legislating this

to the point where they now, in the 1360s, say that if you run away from the land that you're on and you're court, you'll have an F for falsehood branded into the middle of your forehead so that people know you've tried to run away. Wow. It's horrific.

And so for medieval, people who've survived the black death and all of the tragedies that have gone with that, the church hasn't helped you and the state has actually hindered you. So it's a bit of a tinderbox really waiting to go up. And then obviously we have the Hundred Years' War as well. So there's just that in the background as well, cracking on. So there's sort of an obviously money going to the war effort as well. So as well as having a lack of support from the state, the church promising you things that don't materialise. The state now need to levy new taxes, right?

Partly to pay for the war effort, partly because I suppose everything's gone to shit in England. How is this going to go down, Matt? Are these people who are stuck on the wages they were before the plague and are, you know, face starvation and exhaustion and all have Fs branded into the forehead? Yeah. I mean, imagine the government saying you can't possibly earn any more money, but we'd like you to pay more taxation from all of the money that we're imagining.

you know, it's not going to go down incredibly well. So taxation is kind of the straw that breaks the camels back with the peasants revolt. So we've got these problems, these societal problems bubbling away over the decades that precede it. Taxation in the Middle Ages usually takes the form of a fractional tax in England. So if you live in the town, you will pay a tenth of the value of your movable goods. So that's everything but your house. So all of the property that you own, apart from your house, add it all up, divide it by 10. So is someone literally coming into your house and saying, okay, Matt, you've got four mugs and a wooden chest and a coffee table and a dupe. Not generally. It wouldn't be a dupe in the media period. Before you come in the comments.

Not generally, and that's part of the problem. So there has been an assessment of tax that gives you kind of a rough idea of what people should be paying. Right. So in a town you pay a tenth and the countryside, you pay a 15th. So you pay a bit less if you live in the countryside. These tend to raise around about £38,000 for every round of taxation that takes place. in 1370 what? So the government becomes convinced there's more money out there than they're raising. There hasn't been a reassessment of those valuations for quite a while. They're convinced everyone is rich despite all of the legislation to stop them being rich. And so in 1371, they invent the parish tax and they levy an amount of money for every parish in England to raise more than that 38,000 pounds for them to get it.

When they get the money in, it's a fraction of what they're hoping it would be. And it turns out someone has done the maths wrong. They've accounted for 45,000 parishes in England and there's 8,000 parishes in England. Wait. They said there was 45,000, but in reality there was 8,000. Yeah. They just got it wrong.

Catastrophically wrong. Big wrong. That's the kind of maths. I would do wrong. Okay, I mean, that's wild. Who is paying tax? Who is eligible to pay tax in this society? Everybody, and they vary this around this period.

So through the 1370s, we get more rounds of taxation. And it's worth pointing out that while the 100 years war had been going well, they've gone for 14 years with no government taxation. Not one. So people aren't really used to paying tax because success in the war is funding the government. So all of a sudden they're getting hit with round after round of taxation. And by the time we get to 1377, they're inventing something called a poll tax. I've heard of it.

It's a flat fee for everybody. Everybody pays fourpence, no matter how much money you've got or haven't got. Everyone over the age of 14 pays four points. Over the age of 14. You should be working. Yeah, gosh, sorry. Get out in the field. You'll be dead by the time you're 28.

Yeah, that's true, yeah, yeah. You've got all that tax money to contribute. Get in the field and get working. It doesn't raise anywhere near as much as they want. So in the same year, they put out a double subsidy of a fractional tax as well. A double subsidy? Okay, right. So you're paying two tenths or two-fifteenths in a taxation.

This is making me feel super anxious about filling in my own. own tax self-assessment. And then they managed, so 1379, they tried the second poll tax. And this is actually a massively progressive taxation. So they create 33 levels of payment because the first poll tax had been fourpence for everybody. But some rich members of the clergy had said, oh, I'll pay a bit more, I can afford it. And someone in the government had gone, ooh, there's rich people who could pay more than that. And all of a sudden they create exemptions for the poorest married couples.

So it's fourpence again for the lowest rate. But if you're a poor married couple, you can just pay one lot of fourpence for the two of you. There are genuine exemptions for people like beggars and all of this kind of thing. And so they're trying to be progressive, 33 levels, up to dukes who are paying huge amounts of money in archbishops. Seems incredibly fair, doesn't it? There's a butt.

It doesn't raise as much money as they want it to. Okay. In spite of the fact that this feels like a really good way of doing. Is it because the majority of the population of poor, Matt? It might well be the fact that there aren't that many dukes and archbishops to be paying the massive whack of money. So in 1380, they fall back on what is the third poll tax, and this is the problematic one. This is one that causes trouble. Third poll tax, Warren France isn't going very well.

We really need money. We're not raising as much as we need to every time. How about a flat rate of 12 pence? What? It's gone from 4 to 12. In how many years? So the first poll tax is 1377. Yeah. So three years. Three years. It's trebled. So if you're that poor married couple who were paying four pence between you, you're just screwed up. There's no married couples exemption this time either. Yeah. So all those 33 thingies are gone. Yeah. If you were paying four pence for a poor married couple, you're now paying 24 pence.

That's, I mean, that's not, okay, so that's not doable. That's not a viable option for people. It's not. It's not feasible. No. Wow. And surprise, surprise, they get the returns into the exchequer, nowhere near. as much money as they thought. And now the government is thinking, someone is taking the Mickey here. Yeah, they are. Yeah. They can't see that. They think somebody else is.

So 1381, they send tax inspectors back out into the country to reassess everything. And this is the point where people are going into people's homes to see what they've got and value it. And this is a real invasion that medieval people don't expect from the government. And this is a system that's open to all kinds of power-hungry abuses, essentially, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely. But the first thing, interestingly, the first thing that they do find is that thousands, tens of thousands of people in England have vanished. What? Oh, they were never there. No, they were there. Since the last tax returns, in Essex 17,000 people have disappeared. In Centeenth, 13,000 have disappeared. In Cepton, 13,000 have disappeared. Norfolk goes full in at 30,000 people less. Fair play. Communities are just hiding their poorest members. star from the tax inspectors. Couldn't do this stage for I see now, could you? So they're not being registered for taxation.

So when they go and levy this 12 points on everybody, there are tens of thousands of people who simply don't exist on the tax register anymore because their communities are hiding them because they know they can't afford it. That's kind of nice of the communities. Well, and it shows you just how impossible it was to pay if people literally had to go and hide. I mean, that's extraordinary. Just talking about the tax collectors or the tax assessors,

I have here in my notes, is this true about that there were certain tax collectors who became very notorious for, you know, assessing who was responsible for paying tax? And you mentioned earlier that people as young as children, as young as 14 upwards, would have to pay tax. And then in some cases, you know, you'd have people who were, yeah, essentially abuses and would be sort of checking for how old people were, sometimes sexually assaulting them. you know, it's a real frightening abuse of power from people who have been imbued with the authority from the state to go into these communities and not only take money off people, but also, you know, that kind of violation as well as there. This is a really interesting aspect of it. It's difficult to be sure about what's going on.

The story emerges that some tax collectors are sexually assaulting young girls in order to assess whether they think they're. 14 and should be paying taxation. But there is absolutely zero contemporary evidence that this was happening. Okay. There are stories that emerge in later centuries, most notably the 16th century, when Chronicle has started to talk about tax collectors doing this. You get a story that what Tyler's daughter is one of those who is affected by this. I see.

And that that's a driver for him to join the rebellion. Well, we were talking about Braveheart and a sort of female violation, abuse, vengeance, narrative and, you know, there's the hero's motivation. And not to say that this didn't, I mean, this has been happening since time immoral to women and girls. But it's interesting that that and you say the 16th century appears as like, it's more of a narrative, right? And so whether the new film will lean into that as part of what Tyler's motivations,

I don't know. But in the 16th century, you also get broader stories that this was a practice from tax collectors. They come up with a couple of names of tax collectors from, you know, 150. years earlier that they're saying we're doing these things. It's really hard to know whether that is a cultural memory that's not written down until the 16th century or whether it's simply lascivious information that the 16th century chroniclers are thinking, oh, it might well have been this. It's a detail that I can add to make it salacious. It's hard to know. We have no contemporary

evidence. No one is ever charged with doing this. There is a huge amount of litigation after the peasants revolt, none of which revolves around. sexual assault by tax inspectors. Can I ask though, sexual assault in the 14th century, is this something that you could accuse someone of and what would the outcome be? Is that even something that is legislated against in this? It is something that is legislated against,

difficult to prove, again, what's new. It's one of those things that has always been hard to prove. But particularly 14-year-old girls, unmarried girls, there's no such thing as rate within marriage during the medieval period, well until fairly recently. So medieval society does not accept sexual assault. It is not part of everyday life. It is legislated against.

But it's difficult to prove. If you're a 14-year-old girl, how do you bring a case against a local government official? Yeah, you're not going to. Yeah. Okay. So there's all that going on. People are unable to pay their tax.

They're going to hide when the tax collectors are coming round. You know, the potential. Eventually, these tax collectors are enjoying other privileges and abuses along the way, although we talked about the evidence for that in this particular moment. When does this, when does the tension break then? And who are the people at the center of what becomes the peasants for what? Who are the, are we calling the rebels at this point in the story? I don't know. Who are the people who turn against this system and decide enough is enough?

Yeah, I think they would struggle to characterize themselves as rebels as throughout this process, they will position themselves as utterly loyal to the king, who at this point is 14-year-old Richard the second. Right. This is never about challenging the king and his royal authority. It's about challenging the authority of the people between them and the king, who they're blaming for all of this abuse. It kicks off in May 1381 in Brentwood in Essex. And the tax inspectors roll into town.

there's a couple of tax inspectors who've been beaten up around Oxfordshire by this point already but they roll into Brentwood and announce that they're there to reassess the taxation year we're going to come into your house count all of your stuff and work out how much money you owe and a man named Thomas Baker who we otherwise don't really hear about in the Peasant Shrine Shrine he's not one of the famous names but he is the first one to step forward and say to these tax collectors we've paid our share and we're not paying anymore oh wow I mean that must been a huge moment to witness that and you'd be like, Thomas, what are you doing? I think so. It's got to be an indication of how far they've been pushed and just how done with all of this

they are. The royal representatives around the tax collector kind of draw their swords. All of the men of Brentwood string their bows as a bit of a standoff. Turns into a bit of a scuffle. The tax collectors are chased out of Brentwood. But the people of Brentwood must have known there's no way that's the end of it. Yeah. So they hold this meeting on the 2nd of June in a nearby village called Bocking. And they call for anyone who's willing to make a stand at this point to come forward. And they appear to be utterly shocked by the amount of people who turn up to this meeting. There is clearly a very strong sense that everybody has had enough now.

And part of the effects of the Hundred Years War going on and compulsory training with the bow on a Sunday and everything else like that is you've got a hugely militarised society. So many men in England have fought in France at some point. They know how to organise stuff like this. They know how to coordinate. They know how to send messages. They know how to set musters and stuff like that. They create a series of passwords that they use on roads and things like that.

The main one that we know of is that they would stop people and say with whom do you hold. And the correct answer was with the king in his comments. And if you didn't know that, you weren't part of the rebellion and quite possibly in trouble. So it's a really sophisticated movement that they begin out of this meeting. A few days later on the 4th of June we get a guy called Abel Kerr who again not particularly well known but perhaps better known than Thomas Baker

he attacks an abbey in Dartford and this is a really good early indication of what the rebels are really after the government will later try to position this as a violent outburst by a bunch of uneducated peasants who don't know any better what Abel Kerr does he breaks into this abbey he gets into their strong box

that contains all of their records and he burns it and this is what they're really, really after because they are held people in medieval England at this point are held to the land by documents of court records that say you belong to this lord

and this piece of land if you destroy that legal record there's nowhere for it to be enforced and of course it's a very lopsided system in that the peasants who are governed by these these manuscripts by these pieces of paper or vellum, I suppose, cannot generally read or write. So the only thing they can do is to burn them because they can't refute them or overwrite them

or present their own version of them. It's simply destruction as a way forward. Yeah. And so the key motivation for the peasants revolt, it's sparked by this push against the taxation, but their motivation is to do away with serfdom in England. The idea that you're tied to a piece of land that you're forced to work for a lord they want that done away with and that's a key plank of what they're trying to get you i really want people to remember when we get through everything else that's happening this all the evidence we have is that this is what they're really after this is what they're aiming for that's not to say this isn't violent they do beat people up they do cause a lot of destruction as well but it's in pursuit of this aim so getting rid of serfdom i mean

This is a society built on the labour of these people who are tied to the land. And you've already spoken about the penalties for trying to leave, trying to, as a state would see, it shirk the responsibilities of working that land, etc. What percentage of the population were serfs, though? How significant is this to try and put an end to this system? Is this catastrophic for the whole formation of society? It pretty much is, you know, up to, again, it's really hard to be sure, on numbers. But up to half the population of England are tied to a piece of land during this period.

It changes over time, but it won't be until the 16th century, towards the end of the 16th century, that serfdom actually vanishes from England altogether. During the Tudor reign, people are still being treated like this, which may be a bit of a spoiler that this doesn't work. This is a huge deal. And what they're essentially saying is all of these layers of bureaucracy, of nobility between us and the king, what if we just did away with all of that? What if we were all just loyal to the king? And there was none of these, this middle management. We're too heavy on the middle management. We need to get rid of them. They're all corrupt. They're what's destroying everything. And part of the thing as well is that when we get to the bit of this that happens in London, we've got to remember we've got a 14 year old

king. So you imagine a old enough to pay his own tax. Exactly. But you imagine a 14 year old. I mean, you set a 14 year old down and say, everyone in this country worked. worships you. They all absolutely love you. And they'd love to worship you more if you'll let them. You know, will you give them permission to think you're even better than they already think? I mean, imagine the ego trip that this 14 year old is going on. Yeah. Through all of this as well. Because I think that's another key element that's at play here. Because he thinks this is a great idea. That sounds fantastic. But the people who don't think it's a great idea is everyone in between him and these ordinary people. And is there a,

a form of regency in place because of his age, the king's age? So he's been king since he was nine, and there has been a variety of councils that have governed on his behalf. His uncles, who include people like John of Gaunt, have also been involved in government. John of Gaunt is particularly unpopular at this point, which might be quite unfair, the amount of hatred that he gets, but he's blamed for a lot of the things that are going wrong as the senior uncle of the king, senior representative of the royal family. apart from the king.

Yeah, I mean, it certainly seems like the young king isn't getting the best advice, shall I say. Let's move to, I think, arguably, the most famous rebel of all in this rising, which is, of course, What Tyler. You mentioned a couple of names before and the fact that they appear very briefly in the written record and then sort of disappear.

How much information do we actually have about what Tyler and why is he the name that has, survive the longest? Absolutely nothing. Next question. We know nothing about him. Interesting. Is his surname Tyler because that's his job?

Is what short for Walter, probably, we don't know. We have nothing to pin on this guy whatsoever. What we know is that by the 10th of June, so a few days before this, the rebels have been in Rochester, they've captured Rochester Castle, they've taken the constable of Rochester Castle prisoner. they've burned all of the records. So things are escalating quite a lot. Yes.

They're having bonfires of these records in Rochester and in Canterbury and places like that. By the 10th of June, a few days after this, what Tyler has emerged as the leader of the rebels of Kent. We have no idea why. But he is now being positioned in all of the records that we have as the man who is leading those rebels. Is it maybe fair to potentially surmise that he has seen action in France? It's likely, I think, that he is some kind of,

Maybe he's been a captain in France that he is used to leading men, that he is used to coordinating these kinds of efforts. He at least seems to be somebody that the rest of them are willing to look to as a leader and accept as a leader. There is a belief that someone else who is closely associated with this is Jack Straw, who becomes an equivalent leader of the rebels in Essex. But there's no record of Jack Straw. It's all very confusing because it does. does lead you to go, well, how much of this persona is invented. And when we come back after this break, we're going to try and pin down some of the historical details of this person.

Matt, we were talking about what and what we know about what. You had mentioned already June 10th. There's a contingent of Kentish rebels. We're marching on Canterbury. Whatever about him, we know that happened. Yes. So take us through what that looks like and what, that means for what and those rebels?

We know as they're moving through places like Rochester and Canterbury, they're focusing on, you know, they're breaking into Canterbury Cathedral, into the Treasury Room, they are targeting these documents. They are trying to be very careful not to position themselves as thieves. They're not stealing money and goods. They're collecting as many of these documents as they can,

often in town squares and having a bonfire of all of these documents. And they seem to just be gaining, support all the way through. There are local landowners in particular who are targeted for violence whose homes are ransacked in the search for these documents, but they're destroying property in the process. Several of them are at least beaten up, a couple are killed during these times as well. So the rebels aren't shy of using violence to try and achieve their aims. But within that, they do seem fairly well disciplined, which again might hint back at this militarisation. of the sense that someone like what Tyler is needed

as a focal point as a leader who is making the decisions for all of these people and that he is in some way capable and competent of doing that perhaps because he served in the wars in France. But these groups seem to be moving in from various parts and it's important as well. This doesn't only happen in Kent and Essex. This is happening all across the country.

We know it's happening in the Midlands. We know it's happening in the South West. There are cases that are bought, after the Peasant Revolved as far, and north as Yorkshire, against people for involvement. And do they, is it the case that these pockets of rebellion

are hearing about rebellion that's first happening in places like Essex and Kent? And then they're like, oh, we should do that too. Or is this something that organically just sort of erupts at the same time? They must be hearing about what's happening. And one of the key things is,

when we get a little bit further into the story, one of the things that happens in London has a real national impact. people act on the basis of that impact without realising that the government have already changed their minds and not told anybody so the things that they're doing on the basis of the legal document that they have in their hand are now illegal

so all of those people are then being prosecuted in court which means we get lots of court records of what was happening to those people. Great for us as historians, not great for them okay so you mentioned we have famously the rebels in Essex the rebels in Kent they're joining forces now and they are going to

let's go to London they're going to march to London on the 12th of June so what's that just two days days after they've gone to Canterbury, they're at Blackheath. What scale is the rebellion here at this point? How many people are marching on the capital city now? The sources, numbers in medieval sources, really, really tricky. Give or take. Thousands.

Tens of thousands of people, perhaps 50,000 people are gathering on Blackheath. This is absolutely immense. I mean, that's, if you're a medieval peasant, you, what's the big? biggest gathering of human bodies you've seen in one place, maybe a battle if you fought in France, but otherwise, I mean, other than the congregation, a church on Sunday, like, what, 100 people maximum if you live in a relatively big town? I mean, what on earth are people going to make of 50, 60,000 people marching on London? And what are the people in London going to make of watching them come over the hill? All of these people gathering together on Blackheath, you know,

to the south of London, they've probably, the crowd have never seen. anything as big as what they're gathering into. Yeah. And London is aware of this group of people gathered there, maybe not quite knowing exactly what their motives are at this point. It's got to be slightly frightening for everybody. And just to be in that kind of mass of people, you know, we all know what it's like to be in like a stadium, a concert or a football match or something

and to feel like the power of just that many people gathered in one place, focused on the same thing and feeling the same emotions in the same moment. that it's so volatile. And, you know, that's from our modern perspective when thankfully everything's safe and there's all security and, you know, all of that. But it must have been so electric and just to feel so kind of powerful

but unpredictable about the direction that this was going to take. And the intoxication of knowing that you're there to change the world you live in. You know, that's literally the reason you're here. Having lived your life with no power. Yeah. You want the world to change. And all of these people who are gathered around you

want the same thing. It must have increased the belief that they might actually be able to do this. And we get, I mean, all of those legal records give us some interesting insights. There's a guy called John Statepole who is beheaded. He's executed shortly after the Peasants Revolt because he's identified as one of the principal insurgents amongst it. But as a result of this, all of his goods are inventoried. So we know that he owned a red gown, a cloak made of red and green cloth, three hoods, a pair of worn out stockings, a pair of worn out thigh boots, a worn out earth and wear pots, but he also owned a harp and a Gitton. Like a Gitton is like a medieval version of a guitar kind of thing.

And so people have said, you know, is this guy some kind of protest singer? Is he entertaining all of these crowds that are gathered there? You know, is he writing songs to remind them why they've all come here to keep their spirits up and keep everything on track. So there is very quickly this kind of community that seems to be emerging out of all of this. We know there are also women there. There are several women who will become prominent in the course of the Peasantry Vault.

We also know that this isn't just serfs that are gathering there. It's people who are free as well, who aren't serfs, but believe serfdom should be done away with. So there is a real sense of social responsibility amongst those who aren't necessarily affected by this, but they're willing to risk everything they have for their belief in it. We call it the peasant shivolt, but peasant isn't the word that anybody used for people during this period. They called them rustics. And rustics means anyone who doesn't live in a city. It doesn't reflect your social rank.

So we know that there is landed gentry who are involved in the Peasants' Revolt on the side of the rebels, again, because they live in the countryside, they see the problems and the oppression, and they're willing to march on London with their neighbours in support of what they're trying to achieve.

So although we call it the Peasants Revolt, it doesn't mean that this is only the lowest members of society who are getting involved. Yeah, it's a really inaccurate title, actually, for what it's a far more important in. At the time, they call it either the Great Insurrection or the Great Hurling or something like that no one called it the Peasants Revolt then.

The Great Hurling. The Great Hurling is the peasants. Well, not who, but when did that come in? I'm not sure entirely when it emerged, but the government could well be. Well, let's blame the Victorians as usual. Yeah. Just blame them. Can I just ask now, because we're going to go to a break, but before we do,

if you can tell us where at this point, they're at Blackheath, there is potentially up to 50,000 of them, where do they think they're going? Or do they know? Well, we know what they want, because on the 12th of June. June, when they arrive at Blackheath, the first thing that they do is send the constable of Rochester Castle, who they captured, to the Tower of London to see the king. Okay. And to reassure the king of their good intentions, but tell the king that they'd like a word.

Knock, knock. Right. So we have a messenger sent to the king. We're about to take a break. And when we come back, we will discover what the king said to this messenger. Matt, what did the king say to this messenger? Actually, where has he been? What has the king been doing? And then what's his response? He's in the Tower of London playing on his Xbox.

Yeah, yeah. 14 year old, grunting at everybody around him. He is very much under the rule of his advisors, his counsel. He's not really considered old enough to make decisions for himself. He's a chess piece really, isn't he? Just been moved around. Richard the second is growing up in one of these weird positions where he's told he's the most important, most significant and most powerful person in the kingdom,

but he can't actually do anything for himself, which is a really hard thing for a 14-year-old to process, I would imagine. So the constable of Rochester Castle arrives, a guy called Sir John Newington, who is known to Richard the second, and he says, you know, the rebels want me to tell you they don't mean to cause any harm, they're all in favour of you. And we have a record of this from a guy called Jean Fassar, who is a continental diarist chronicler, who is in the Tower of London at the time. He's visiting England when this happens and he's in the tower. Terrible timing for a holiday.

But great for an on-the-spot reporter. Yeah. And he says that Sir John says he's come to show him how all they had done or would do was for him, the king, and his honour. And how the realm of England had not been governed a great space for the honour of the realm nor for the common prophet by his uncles and by the clergy and especially by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Right. Hmm. Okay. So they're traitors basically. Yeah.

That cabal of men around him have the traitor. In terms of medieval politics, it's bad form to blame the king. Yeah, yeah. for anything. Yeah. Because he's been put there by God. So you criticize him. Yeah.

Dangerously close to heresy. So the key thing is to blame everybody around him, which is what the rebels are very keen to do. So the rebels, I mean, they're very strategic, really. They understand that they can't just march on the Tower of London and tell the king that he's crap and that everything needs to change. They understand the way that the system works. The king decides that he's going to allow them space to speak right.

He meets with them. which turns out not to be a great decision. But I think what does that tell us about this 14-year-old monarch? Is this the advice that's given to him by those around him, including his uncle, the John Gawwant? Is this, you know, a case where he's like, I'm going to do what I want and I'm going to march out and meet them? What's going on and what can we sort of surmise about him from this?

I think this demonstrates his massively over-inflated opinion of himself. Okay. I say overinflated him. He is the king of England. But he's also a 14-year-old boy who has never governed a day in his life. People have been doing that for him all of his life. I don't think he really understands what's going on, but he hears these people want to do away with all of this middle management

report directly into you and tell you how great you are every day. And he thinks that that sounds brilliant. So he says to his advisors, we should go and talk to the rebels. This sounds great. All of his advisors who are in that middle management tier are saying, and this seems like a really, really bad idea. I don't think we should be doing this. minus. Eventually, he says he will go meet the rebels and they set this meeting on the 13th of June at Rotheraithe, which is kind of halfway between the Tower of London and Blackheath. Richard the second comes out to the tower, gets on a barge, his road along the Thames. They turn a corner in the Thames and we're told that they are greeted by a sight that absolutely terrifies them. It seems like his advisors were thinking they were going to get a delegation of, you know, 10 of the smartest dressed peasants to come up and say, say, well,

what they'd quite like if the king doesn't mind, please. They turn the corner and they're greeted by tens of thousands of people gathered on the bank of Thames. Probably quite keen to have a sight of the king who's come to talk to. This is extraordinary from both sides, right? Like the king to be met with this vast crowd, but also this vast crowd, seeing God's appointed individual, the king, in front of them, I mean, these are people who could not ever have possibly imagined they would ever lay eyes on anyone close. to the king, let alone the king himself.

And not just laying eyes on him, he's coming to talk to you. Yeah, yes, he's legitimising what you want to say. So all of his advisors on the barge think, not having any of this. And they turn the barge around. They go back to the tower. Understandable. I can, yeah, yeah, I can see why they would think strategically that's the best.

Because how many of them was there? Not that many, no. Yeah, they were way outnumbered, yeah. Yeah, okay. And so they go back to the tower. Kings with them, but the rebels are. still at the banks of the terms. Well, they're infuriated now.

They've been promised a meeting with the king. And as far as they're concerned, all of those men that they're blaming for the problems of the country have sort of bought the king so far and they've watched him turn the bar, they've watched those men turn the barge around. They've dangled him in front of them. And take him away and refuse them the opportunity to talk to the king,

which they see as their route to getting everything that they want. So immediately after this, they head to London Bridge. Okay. And they cross over London Bridge. And the significant thing about this is that London Bridge at this point has a drawbridge in the middle of it that can be raised against hostile forces. Okay. The drawbridge is not raised.

Oh. Someone's getting fired. The people within London have really strong sympathies with these rebels. If you were a serf who ran away from the land that you were tied to, the best place that you could go was London. They had a thriving underground that would protect you. So that when your local sheriff's men or whatever came looking for Joe Bloggs, who's run away from his lord's land, and everyone in London would be like, nope, no idea, not a clue. Never heard of him.

So London has a lot of sympathy with the complaints of the rebels too. They allow them into the city. London Bridge is also populated by the fleet prison and lots of lawyers offices too. So as they go across, they're breaking people out of prison. And this isn't breaking out like violent criminals. They're breaking out people who've been accused of running away from serfdom or of owing money to people.

they are collecting documents from lawyers offices on tower on london bridge and burning all of those as they go but they are now increasingly pissed off because the king hasn't come to meet them and they go straight at this point same day 13th of june straight to the savoy palace and the savoy palace is the london home of john of gaunt duke of lancaster that oldest uncle of richard the second john of gaunt at this point is on the border of scotland negotiating peace with the Scots and that fact probably saves his life. He's not in London when all of this happens. So the rebels go into his house, into his palace, can't find him anywhere, pile up all of his documents in the middle of the room, pile up all of his good furniture, everything else, anything burnable, and then they set fire to the Savoy Palace.

Oh, yikes. They bring out all of his gold and silver plate and they make a big show of the fact that they are not stealing this. They throw it all in the River Thames. Right. one of their number tries to steal something, probably shoves it up his tunic or whatever else he does, he's caught by the rest of them and killed.

Oh, wow. Because to them, I think this devalues what they're doing. But that's so incredible, because again, thinking about like mob mentality and this huge, vast crowd that's become this like moving beast going through the city, there is so much potential for people to splinter off when we see it again and again throughout history, right,

especially in a city like London, where there's riots that turn into like, you know, someone over there's robbing a house, someone's doing a sexual assault over here, someone's burning something down that. You know, it all goes to chaos. And even if there's a sort of legitimate political aim to begin with, it can go tits up really quickly.

And yet here, they're so committed to the cause. And it's so unified in terms of what they want and what they're prepared to, what they're not prepared to do, that when one person behaves in a way they don't like, they kill him. Which might, again, point to that militarisation. Because if you go with a medieval army, most medieval arminists have ordinances for a campaign that will tell you what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do.

So famously, Henry V on the Agincourt campaign creates all of these ordinances. You're not allowed to steal anything from a church. He finds one of his men has stolen a picks out of a local church and hangs in as an example to everybody. You don't break the rules of the army. And so if someone like what Tyler is even informally setting out the ordinances, we are not stealing. That's not what we're here to do. So, yeah, so John of Gaunt's palace is burned with all of his furniture and tapestries inside.

incredible amount of wealth. Golden silver that won't burn is thrown into the river. That's the reason there's no Savoy Palace anymore. It's smoulders for weeks and weeks. It's never rebuilt. It's on the site of the Savoy Hotel, but no palace has ever rebuilt there. As a historian part of me, it's like, think of all that stuff that's lost. You know what I mean, it's obviously in the context of this, all power to the rebels, I guess.

I mean, it's such a powerful thing that they do. And you can see how it's part of their cause and everything. But yeah, just the loss. and you talked about all the way through this campaign, all the burning of documentation, all of those written records that are lost to us now. And we do get another hint of a slight lack of discipline in that as the palace is burning,

they suddenly begin to hear some noises. And it turns out that about 30 of the rebels have strayed into John of Gaunt's wine cellar. Oh. And have been helping themselves down there and the palace is set on fire and they can't get out anymore. Oh, no. And the records tell us that their shouts and cries are heard for about three days.

after the fire and the revolt but none of them ever got out of that cellar so a nice bottle of wine has just cost them their lives now we are going to have to address this and somebody is going to have to knit these two factions together do they go to the king or does the king come to them after so?

I'm imagining, tell me if I'm wrong but I'm imagining that Savoy as a physical and visual prompt now goes, we're in chaos, the capital's falling apart so someone's going to have to patch this together. And someone in, you know, from the tower, you're going to be seeing smoke and flames

and you're going to be aware that not only is this to them an unruly violent mob now swarming through the streets of London, but the people of London are kind of on board with it as well. And you'd be in the tower thinking, how long are these ramparts going to protect us? You know, how tightly is the gate bard? Yeah. So we get a situation where

Richard the second seems to take matters into his own hands again. and he arranges to go and meet the rebels the following day, the 14th of June, at Mile End. And it seems like this time he is taking a little bit more of a leading role and saying, we are going to talk to them, end of. Nobody is changing my mind this time. And so on the morning of the 14th, with London still enveloped in smoke and flames, he rides out to Myel End to meet all of these rebels.

And this is where we know what Tyler, as the leader of those rebels, kind of come forward and addresses Richard. And he says to them, you know, Jean Fassar tells us, he said, are you good people? I am your king. What lack you? What will you say?

What do you want? Yeah. And what Tyler says, well, we'd like serfdom to be abolished. So we can all be even. We can all, you know, reporting to you, we can all live our lives without this kind of level of servitude. And Richard says, okay.

Just got to obend the whole system. Yeah. And I think the rebels probably went. It was that easy? But he calls for a load of clerks to bring tables, sets up a line of tables across the space at Mile End, and has them start writing writs to say that people are free. And he's like, you know, you're going queue at a table,

get yourself a writ and you can go home. How did his advisors view this? Were they thinking, oh my God, this child is so naive, what is he doing? Or at this point are they thinking, give the rebels what they want, we don't want our houses to be burned to the ground. It's hard to know what they think. Lots of them stay in the tower.

They have no intention to go into this meeting. So they don't follow their king. Okay. The other thing that the rebels managed to ask for, through the shock that Richard has agreed so easily to this, is for the Archbishop of Canterbury, who up until the day before had been Chancellor of England, which is kind of medieval equivalent of the Prime Minister.

So he'd been the head of the government. He quit that post the day before. And the treasurer, who is a man named Sir John. John Hales, they want them tried for treason as the people that they blame. Head of the government, head of the money. Sure. And Richard says, absolutely fine, but they must undergo the due process of law. They must be arrested, tried in court.

But that will be done as well. I mean, you'd be tempted to ask for anything at this point. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. He's going to give it to you. He's going along with it. And a group of the rebels then peel off and they head to the Tower of London, which is where the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Treasurer are. And this has often been framed as the only time.

time in its history that the Tower of London is breached, is broken into. But all of the sources that we have suggest that the gates were opened to these men. They talk about the guards of the tower shaking hands with these people as they came in and welcoming them in. It seems likely that perhaps they had a writ from Richard II for the arrest of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the treasurer. So they got to the tower with permission from the king being allowed in. They then seem to tear their way through the Tower of London into the White Tower eventually. We get reports of what must have been a fairly horrific scene in which Richard's mother, Joan of Kent,

who is often positioned as one of the most beautiful women in English history, known as the Fair Maid of Kent, is trapped in her bedroom by a bunch of the rebels who refused to leave her bedroom until she gives them a kiss. Oh, God. Oh, okay. Yuck. And terrifying for her.

But they eventually tear their way up to the top of the White Tower where you can still go today, St. John's Chapel. Absolutely beautiful space at the top. top and there they find the Archbishop of Canterbury and the treasurer and they dragged them both outside and they cut their heads off. Oh, so no due process. Which is not what Richard the second said they could do. Okay. I mean, this, this is now tipped over into chaos. You know, we spoke earlier about the sort of the discipline of the rebels. You know, if you try and steal something, you're going to be killed by the mob. Now we've got people, I mean, the interaction with Richard's mother,

you know, obviously we don't, do we have written documentation? for exactly what happened there. I mean, it seems, you know, it's not great. It's not a great scenario, whatever actually went on. And then you've got people who are meant to stand trial or whatever and be subjected to the law now being killed. I mean, this is now just, this is a mob just taking what they want. Yeah.

And I think it's something that you see so often is that discipline will hold for so long. Yeah. But then it's almost like in the face of success. Yes. The wheels completely come off. discipline goes completely to pot and now people are doing the exact things that they've been swearing all along they were never going to do. And when this happens, is this at the tower, is this joined up to Richard at any point? Like, does that faction here that this has happened?

Because I would imagine that will change his perspective on things that are happening or at least the perspective of those who did go with him to my land. What we get is, I mean, presumably they they go their separate ways. Richard heads back to the tower and finds out what's gone on. Because the next day we get another meeting, Richard agrees to meet with the rebels again. And essentially, I think he's annoyed with them now.

Yeah. Well, because they've come and shot sunshine up his backside. Yeah. And then gone away and done exactly the thing he told them they couldn't do. And so he agrees to meet with them again. What Tyler comes forward to talk to him and has another list of, complaints because like I said, you know, they've probably gone home and thought,

if the king's in a giving mood, what does everyone want? You know, scribbling away all night with this big long list. And at some point during this confrontation, we get conflicting versions of what happens from the sources. Either what Tyler makes a grab for the reins of Richard's horse, or he talks to the king disrespectfully. And one source suggests that he puts his hand on the handle of his dagger, which is seen as an aggressive move. Whatever it is that happens, we know that the squire of the Lord Mayor of London draws his dagger and stabs what Tyler.

And then the Lord Mayor draws his sword and runs what Tyler through and kills him. Oh, wow. So that's on the spot done there like this. And now he is accompanied by a big group again or not? The tens of thousands are still there. They're still there. Watching this. Okay.

Chaos or despair? This is the moment when Richard the second is often credited with a huge amount of personal bravery as a 14-year-old boy. He spurs his horse on, rides over to the rebels and says, you don't need what Tyler, I'm your leader. Oh, how true is this? As far as we know, this is what happens. We've got people like Jean Foisar who are there when these things are going on. He seems to have done this. it's often positioned as this moment of bravery.

I suspect he just simply doesn't have any concept of how much danger he's in. He thinks these people absolutely adore me. He's so removed from the situation, he's like, this will be fine. Yeah, I think he is. I think all of the soldiers that are with him are probably thinking, holy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is he doing? And I don't think Richard thought for a second he was in any kind of physical danger. In a way, he's the best possible candidate to be dealing with this because of the naivity. Yeah. Yeah. And he kind of says to the rebels, you know, you need no leader other than me.

I'll make sure that you looked after. But probably time you went home. Calm your shit down now. This is getting a bit much. And I think most of the rebels probably realize it's gone as far as it's going to go. They're lucky to be walking away. They've got those writs that say they're free. Yeah. Which is what they really came for. Yeah. Yeah. It is a success in that way. I mean, stuff has gone wrong. And so they disperse and they go home. and almost immediately that they leave

those rits are reversed. By Richard? Well, the interesting question is who does it? So we have Richard, obviously annoyed at the rebels, that they've not done what he told them to do, having said that they were there to serve him and only him. And we get a quote from Richard, which is one of those things we don't.

putting words into his mouth. But he's given this speech that says, you wretches, detestable on land and sea, you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues. Rustics you were and rustics you are still. You will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. Oh, God.

For as long as we live, we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. Oh, sugar. And we don't think he said that. I suspect he didn't say that. He might have been a fuming 14-year-old. Yeah. Yeah.

That sounds like the speech of a Shakespearean village. It does. But the interesting counter to this is all of this goes through Parliament and all of this sort of stuff later on. And Richard causes his Chancellor in Parliament, so his new kind of prime minister, to stand up at the moment at which they're going to legalise reversing all of these writs. So they're reversed immediately,

but it needs to go through Parliament to be made legal. because the king has given out all of these sealed rits. And the Chancellor is told to stand up before Parliament and say to them, Now the King wishes to know the will of you, my Lord's prelates, Lords and Commons here present. And whether it seems to you that he acted well in that repeal and pleased you or not. For he says that if you wish to enfranchise and make free the said villains by your common agreement, as he has been informed some of you wish to do, he will assent to your request.

So Richard is sitting in Parliament saying, I'll still do it. I'll still abolish serfdom and completely change the structures of this society. The issue we have with this is, is this what Richard really thinks? Does he want to do this still?

But his counsellors are bullying him out of it. Or is this Richard saying, we're all going down together on this one? You're now going to sign that you're all 100% back, you're going to have to say you don't want me to do this. Yeah. It's really hard, isn't it, to access, again the mind of this this 14 year old boy and and to find the truth of what how he viewed this

and you know he I think it's sort of remarkable that he has this whole experience with the rebels he's very much in this rebellion even though he's on the other side of it and the figurehead of what everything they're standing against but also they're trying to collaborate with him and all of that and then for it to be over and for him to then have to completely reposition himself potentially depending on you know what advice he's taking Tell me this, Matt, if when what Tyler is killed, if the rebels hadn't have dispersed in that moment, how different do you think history would have been?

Like, what would have happened in that moment if, for example, they then turned on Richard and killed him, which they could have very easily done from the way you've described it. What would England have looked like? It's really hard to know. I mean, if a mob had killed the king, you can imagine that his uncles would have been raising armies to wade their way into Kenton, Essex,

and be knee-deep in blood before the year was out. There would have been a mass slaughter. But we're living in a society that has faced a century of problems. Up until this point, we began with the great famine and the black death and all of those things that have destroyed people's trust in the government and trust in the church, would the rebels have been willing to keep pushing to get what they wanted? I suspect they might have been.

I think if discipline had held a bit longer, they could well have completely revolutionised the state of English society, you know, 200 years before it would eventually happen. Had Richard ignored those executions, I think he takes that as a personal slight against his own authority. You know, you've overstepped what I said you could do

and still gone along with the rebels. Country still might have changed. I think actually his death would have been the thing that would have kept things the way it was because then all of that nobility would have come in and had the excuse they wanted to deal harshly with what they'd can position as just a violent unruly mob.

And one of the things we get out of the aftermath of the Peasants' Revolt is all of these legal cases brought against people that tell us lots of interesting things about the Peasant's Revolt. So there's a few people kind of worth talking about. We get a woman called Godyther de Staitham. Oh, say that again, sorry. Godiva de Staitha.

Godiather. De Statham. And she lives in Morley and Derbyshire. And her family are involved in acting as rebels. So they are attacking local priories and a castle, gathering these documents and burning it and acting on the basis of these rits that are being handed out everywhere that they're free.

And she has five sons who are also accused of all of this. And we know for a fact that all five of those sons appear on muster roles for the army of France at various points. So again, that militarisation of it. And sadly no one is, no one of them is called Jason. I would have loved it if there was a Jason to Statham. Oh my God. It's like, what are you saying, Jesus?

What does that got to do with anything? I was like thinking of the Argonauts. No, okay, Jason's Daytham, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I make myself laugh. We have a woman called Marjorie Tornie who gives testimony after the revolt that counteracts the government's official position on all of this. Because they say it's just a mob that invades London with no right to be there and everything else. Marjorie Tornie gives us testimony.

in London. And she tells us that a proclamation was made that anyone with a legal complaint should go to the tower and present it directly to the king and he will provide justice for them. Because she says she tried to get to the tower on the 13th of June, that day that London is burning.

And she couldn't get there because of the mobs and the fires and it was all a little bit scary. So she goes back on the Saturday, the following day, and she manages to get her case heard, which is essentially that the Dean of Windsor owes her deceased husband a load of money. She wins her case in front of the king. The dean of Windsor is ordered to pay her the money.

What he actually does is beat one of her sons to death. That's not the same thing. No, not the same thing. And he doesn't pay the money. But her story is interesting because the government were adamant after the revolt that this never happened, that they weren't encouraged to go to the tower, that they were told to all go home. And Marjorie is saying, no, we got the proclamation to say,

bring your legal complaints to the tower and the king will straighten them out for you. Wow. We get a man in Norfolk called Geoffrey Lister who calls himself the King of the Commons, which seems like a really stupid idea. Oh, mate. Ends up in a battle against Henry Dispenter, the only battle of the Peasants' Revolt.

Battle of North Walsham. He fights against Henry Dispenter, who is the Bishop of Norwich. So you get a bishop running around the battlefield, beating people up and chasing them down. But what you are painting, though, is a picture of individuals, familial, domestic, then state, legal, and warfare chaos, but warfare is a bit of a strong

war, but certainly battlefield chaos, certainly violent chaos. And I think actually that's not something that I had as an overall picture of this revolt, where I had this idea of a group of tens of thousands of people, especially coming over Blackheath, that being the moment where they really present themselves. But this is, A, an interesting way in which we're we're getting voices that we would otherwise not know, and that's always so valuable because we're left with this aftermath of what's going on post the intense middle of June time.

But we're also getting a much more fractured geographical picture around the country that this isn't just concentrated on Blackheath, or it's not just one swathe of people coming from Kent up to Blackheath. This really is a national movement. It is. I mean, there's a website. There's a project called The People of 1381.

So if you Google people of 1381, they have a searchable database of all of these legal cases that you can find on there. So you can search for a name, surname, or a place name. And I do talks on the Peasants Revolt, and Touchwood, I've yet to give a talk in a place where I can't find a rebel from that town or village or whatever else.

It's so widespread. So hundreds. You're talking about hundreds of cases. Hundreds and hundreds of cases all across the country. One of the most interesting, I'm going to squeeze this in as well. Squeeze it. One of the most interesting is a woman named Joanna Ferrer,

who is the wife of John Ferrer and it's very much that way around in the records. So she is recorded at being at Rochester Castle when they captured that and burnt the record. She's recorded being at Blackheath. She's one of only three women named amongst the 520 rebels who are brought to task afterwards. And she's accused of stealing £1,000 from the Savoy.

And one of the things that we said was they weren't, they were very clear that they weren't stealing stuff. They killed someone who tried to steal something. But the government accuses her of stealing a thousand pounds worth of stuff throwing it across the Thames and divvying it up with all of her mates. Okay. And we get the, so the indictment against her in court, says, Joanna, wife of John Ferrer of Rochester in the county of Kent,

went as the chief perpetrator and leader of a great society of rebels, wrongdoers from Kent on Thursday, the 13th of June 1381 to the Savoy. And as an enemy of the king, burn the said manor, seized the chest of £1,000 and took it away. So she is positioned as one of the... leaders, one of the senior figures of the Peasants' Revolt. And we know that this ends up going to court. We're told that the sheriff orders Joanne's arrest, that she pleads not guilty in court,

and that the jury find her not guilty and release her. Wow. So the government's, to me, the government's plan to frame her and make her look like a thief who was out for her own ends, kind of fails at that point. And their story is interesting, too, because 20 years after the Peasants Revolt, 1401.

The king is now Henry the 4th. Richard the 2nd has failed dismally being kicked off the throne. Henry the 4th is trying a guy for treason. And he's squint in his eyes. He's like, do I know you? Have we met before?

And this guy is like, we have, Your Majesty, in 1381 in the Tower of London. So this is John Ferrer. In 1381 in the Tower of London, John of Gaunt wasn't in London. But his son, Henry Bolingbrook, who becomes Henry IV, was in the Tower of London. Same age as Richard the second, a 14-year-old boy.

But would the mob have liked to get their hands on him? Most likely. And the king records in court his recollection of the fact that it was John and Joanna Ferrer who bundled him into a cupboard and protected him from the rest of the rebels. Oh my God. So John Ferrer is standing in front of him accused of treason and Henry essentially lets him off because he said, I remember 20 years ago, saved my life. No.

Is that going to be? be in the movie because that needs to be in the movie. Oh my God. Now have you flexed and warmed up? I was asking you this before we started in preparation because if the Odyssey has anything to go by, there's going to be an awful lot of hot medieval takes that need to happen once this movie comes out. Do you get excited when these new things present themselves? Or you're just like, oh, here we go again. Trot me out. No, I think it's great whenever any bit of history like this is served to a more general public. who may not know the Peasants Revolt very well, who may not have encountered it,

may not know the detail. I think I would always say, treat these things as an intro, as a bit of a gateway, do a bit of reading, because making a film requires you to bend the history and not tell the full story because it never can do that.

So just take it with a pinch of salt. Enjoy it, but then go and find out how much of it is really true. Because the stories of the Peasants Revolt are incredible and they are all there, for us to see. Tell us again what that database is called with all the legal. The people of 1381.

Okay, I'm going to be going to that. I'm going to be going to that. I'm going to be going and looking all of that. I love a legal record. We're always talking about the... And I don't see medieval legal records, actually. So that will be a totally different gig for me. Totally.

I'm going to go and do that. I really am. I should go now there. Look for your surname and look for where you live and see if you can find. Oh, there won't be any for me though, because Ireland. It might not be directly related, but it's always interesting to them. Yeah, okay. I'll look for my surname.

Yeah. You know, you. Sorry, on an earlier episode, you were like, I'm related to the Normans when they invaded in 1066. Yeah, but I mean, they're not going to be in the peasants revolt, are they? They were in Ireland. We're all peasants there. We didn't revolt.

Were you already in Ireland at this point? Yeah. Well, okay, more research needed on until his family history. No, we've done it. Oh my God, I've done so much for this podcast on my family history. We've gone back as far as I can go. Yeah, that's very sure. Okay, we're going to end this episode.

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