The Rest Is History - 413. The Peasants' Revolt: England Erupts (Part 1)

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

By the late 14th century, England was in decline. Already weakened by the Hundred Years’ War, both Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, had died, leaving the country in a perilous state. Richard II, the new king, was only a child. With the poor facing increasingly harsh poll taxes, and distrust of the nobility growing among them, an uprising broke out in southern England in 1381. It was led for the first time by peasants, a class of person invisible on the historical stage up to this point. The Peasants’ Revolt would prove to be one of the most iconic events of English history, altering not only England’s society and the fate of her monarchy, but also generating a new kind of grassroots radicalism.  Join Tom and Dominic as they discuss the outbreak of this landmark moment in the history of English socialism, building up to the climactic moment when Richard II and his men find themselves besieged in London by the rebel army surrounding her walls, under the leadership of the elusive Wat Tyler… *The Rest Is History LIVE in 2024* Tom and Dominic are back onstage this summer, at Hampton Court Palace in London!  Buy your tickets here: therestishistory.com Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. To corrupt more people with his doctrine, at Blackheath, where 200,000 of the commons were gathered together, John Ball began a sermon in this fashion. When Adam delved and Eve span, who then was a gentleman? And continuing his sermon, he tried to prove by the words of the proverb that he had taken for his text, that from the beginning all men were created equal by nature,

and that servitude had been introduced by the unjust and evil oppression of men against the will of God, who, if it had pleased him to create serfs, surely in the beginning of the world would have appointed who should be a serf and who a lord. Let them consider, therefore, that he had now appointed the time wherein, laying aside the yoke of long servitude, they might, if they wished, enjoy their liberty so long desired. Wherefore they must be prudent, hastening to act after the matter of a good husband, tilling his field and uprooting the tares

that are accustomed to destroy the grain. First, killing the great lords of the realm, then slaying the lawyers, justices and jurors, and finally rooting out everyone whom they knew to be harmful to the community in future. So at last, they would obtain peace and security if, when the Great Ones had been removed, they maintained among themselves equality of liberty and nobility, as well as dignity and power. So that is a very disapproving account by Thomas Walsingham, a monk at St. Albans Abbey, of an open-air sermon given in 1381

by a certain John Ball Tom, a priest who played a key part in what came to be known as the Peasants' Revolt. So I did the Peasants' Revolt at school. And generally, I have to say, maybe this says a great deal about my school outside Wolverhampton in the 1980s, but the boys' sympathies were very much on the side of the king and not of the peasants. Now, that would amaze you, Tom. I'm astonished to hear that. I haven't massively deviated in that. I haven't massively deviated.

I'm astounded to hear that, Dominic. I mean, I guess one of the reasons might be that the young king is only 14. So perhaps if you're a boy studying the account, you would identify with him perhaps. But I think there's a certain irony there because although John Ball, those famous lines, when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman, these are kind of iconic in the history of English radicalism,

the history of English egalitarianism. At the same time, I think that there is a certain sense in which the idea that this is a peasants' revolt is incorrect. Actually, this is a revolt led by people, Dominic, who might perhaps better be described as Middle England. This is where Middle England is starting to discover its voice. So it's part of the paradox and fascination of this whole extraordinary event, which really is extraordinary.

In a sense, if this is the wellspring of English radicalism, then it's the start of something very, very kind of new. And what makes it different to previous revolts? There'd been revolts throughout medieval England. Edward II had been deposed. Barons had risen against John. There'd been a civil war in the reign of Stephen and Matilda. Barons siding with rival kings. But this is different because this is not led by magnates. This is not led by peers. This is led by a class of person who, until this moment, has not been heard really on the public stage of England. So this is the common people of England making their entrance in the history books. And that is why for anybody on the left, particularly the

kind of intellectual left in Britain, the Peasants' Revolt has come to be seen, hasn't it, as a sort of foundational moment. So it's the kind of event that if you are a Jeremy Corbyn or something, it's one of the landmarks in your kind of personal history of England and Englishness, isn't it? And there are always articles in The Guardian saying, everyone should do the Peasants' Revolt at school. It's such an important moment. Socialism began with the Peasants' Revolt, all this kind of stuff. Yeah, so Ken Loach, the very pro-Corbyn film director,

he opened a memorial to the Peasants' Revolt on Smithfield, where there was another famous confrontation, which we'll come to in due course. There's absolutely the sense in which this is the kind of thing that Billy Bragg would make a song about, or something like that. I think there's no question that it really does deserve this reputation. Judith Barker, who wrote a brilliant book about this, she doesn't call it the Peasants' Revolt very significantly.

She calls it the Great Revolt. In her book, England Arise, she says that the rebels did not seek personal advancement, but a radical political agenda, which if it had been implemented, would have fundamentally transformed English society. I think that's absolutely true. Nigel Saul, in his biography of Richard II, says of this revolt that what happened in 1381 was altogether unique. Dominic, it probably won't surprise you to know that merely interpreting it as socialism avant l'électre isn't entirely right. It is slightly more complicated than that, and that's precisely what makes it so fascinating and interesting. To put it into a bigger context, Tom, this is an uprising in southern England in the late 14th century, and it's become this sacral moment, dare I say, for the bearers of the left-wing flame. But it is also an episode in a long-running struggle that we've already devoted four podcasts to, because this is effectively part of our epic series on the Hundred Years' War, isn't it? The great struggle between England and France in the high Middle Ages. So maybe we should recap a bit to remind people who listened to

the Hundred Years' War and to explain to people who didn't what's been going on and why it is that England has been pushed to this position where the common people, as it were, are desperate to kind of have their say and make their entrance onto the stage. Right. So we did a four-episode series on the Hundred Years' War, and it was full of English heroism and victory, battles of Crecy and Poitiers. And then we did a 10-minute coda, didn't we, where basically it all went wrong and suddenly the English found themselves losing. And essentially at the high tide of English success, Edward III, the great conquering king, had made himself lord of pretty much half of France. But by the time that Edward III, the great conquering king, had made himself lord of

pretty much half of France. But by the time that Edward III dies in 1377, all those victories have slipped away and England is really left in France with two continental possessions. Calais, which has been reconstituted as part of England, and Gascony in the southwest of France. Edward III, this great conqueror, he slipped into his dotage. He's become the plaything of a highly avaricious woman called Alice Peres, who is much hated across England. The Black Prince, Edward III's son and heir, Victor at Poitiers, he has died. And when Edward dies, he is succeeded by the Black Prince's son, so Edward III's grandson, Richard II, who succeeds Edward on the 21st of June, 1377, and he is aged 10 years old.

And this is not good for England. In the Middle Ages, it's terrible to have a child as a king. And a truce has been in existence, but it ends three days after the death of Edward III. And the moment it ends, a French fleet descends on the south coast of England. It ravages it. In 1378, the English launch a campaign to try and capture a range of ports along the north French coast to complement Calais. This is an utter disaster. Then in December 1379, an entire fleet is shipwrecked off Cornwall. Essentially, everything is going completely tits up for the English in the Hundred Years' War. It's terrible. Now, England relative to France is very small. It doesn't have the huge

resources of land that France has. It's quite difficult for the English king to raise money. But if you're fighting a war against France, it has to be paid for somehow. And under Edward III, this radical development had been enshrined that essentially taxation can only be imposed on the people of England with the consent of the king's subjects as represented in parliament. And this is something really unusual in the context of medieval Europe. This idea that the commons should have a voice in how much money the king should be given to wage his wars becomes a fundamental principle with very, very enduring consequences for the future course of English history. And when you say the commons, these are, for the avoidance of doubt,

these are not politicians as we would recognise them. These are kind of local gentry, bigwig type people who are representing the interests of the property classes, effectively, such as they are. Yeah, they're kind of JPs, prosperous landowners, that class of person. So it's justices of the peace, JPs. Justices of the peace, yeah. And as landowners, they have a feeling that everybody in the country should shoulder the burden, that they should not be the only ones coughing up. And they feel that lots of wage earners in the country aren't really pulling their weight. And so their solution to

this problem in parliament is to introduce a poll tax whereby a flat levy is imposed and everyone has to pay it. And this is introduced in January 1377. And everyone has to pay for it. The only people who don't are children under the age of 14 and beggars, vagrants. But otherwise, everyone has to pay four pence. Now, this isn't a prohibitive sum. You could buy maybe a dozen eggs for four pence. Now, this isn't a prohibitive sum. You could buy maybe a dozen eggs for four pence. And it's very easy to collect because you just go around and grab it from everyone. And it's viewed as a success. It raises enough money to enable the war effort to be funded. And then it's so successful that two years later, another poll tax

is introduced. This one is more finely graduated. So you have 15 categories going from the very poorest who are still paying four pence, right the way up to almost seven pounds for the richest. This money is invested in the fleet that then sinks off Cornwall. Oh dear. So it's a kind of disaster. People have the feeling that all this money has been raised and they have nothing to show for it. It's kind of like HS2, this railway that's had billions and billions lavished on it to link London to Manchester, and it's not going to reach the middle of London and it's not going to reach Manchester. So there's a slight feeling

all this money has been wasted and the government is incompetent. And what adds to the sense of fury about this is the feeling that the guys who are leading the Hundred Years' War, who are Edward III's surviving sons, are basically glory hunters in it for the glory of their own names, but also they're fundamentally incompetent. The youngest of Edward III's sons, a guy called Thomas of Woodstock, he's desperate to emulate his brother, the Black Prince, who'd won the Battle of Poitiers. In 1380, he takes a large group of knights and men and they go on a chevauchée, which is a kind of raid where you march across France, burning and looting everywhere you go to try and bring the French out to have a battle.

And you can kind of unleash your archers and your men at arms and win a decisive victory. But the French don't play that game. They learned their lesson. And they sign a deal with the Duke of Brittany, who had previously been an English ally. The English army gets the shit. It's all a disaster. In January 1381, Woodstock basically gives up, comes home, and that is the end of that campaign. Meanwhile, the son of Edward III, who is by miles the most powerful figure in England at this time, is John of Gaunt, born in Ghent, so hence his name.

Who makes this famous speech, doesn't he, in Shakespeare? He does. This septidile about England, which is always quoted as the epitome of Englishness, and everybody forgets that John of Gaunt was actually... It was widely detested. Yeah, everybody hated John of Gaunt. Yes. And part of the reason why he's widely detested is that he is by miles the richest person in England. His income is around, it's kind of probably more than double the next richest magnate in England. But he is also very keen on claiming a throne for himself in Spain. And so he's endlessly raising money to go off and try and do that. And he's also darkly suspected of

aspiring to become king himself. He's cast in the role of the wicked uncle. Because he is so rich and because he is so lavish in drawing attention to the fact that he's rich, he's a very obvious symbol of the imbalances and the iniquities in England. The ultimate symbol of this is his great palace, which he builds on the Strand, which is the road that runs from the city of London to Westminster, which is the center of royal power. And it's called the Strand because it runs along the banks of the Thames. And he builds this great palace, the Savoy Palace, which is where when King John of France had been captured by the Black Prince at the Battle of

Poitiers, that's where he'd been put up. So it's a house fit for a king, a palace fit for a king. Enorm enormous complex. It's got kind of beautiful gardens and orchards running down to the Thames and everyone in London and beyond hate John of Gaunt for it. So these figures are wildly unpopular and the sense starts to develop that people are being screwed out of taxes simply to fund their egos and their adventures. This is why in November 1380, when the King's government says, well, we need more money, we can't maintain the war without more money, very, very reluctantly, Parliament grants a third poll tax. This doesn't go down well at all, partly because, as we've said, people feel the money is

just being squandered, but also because this poll tax is much, much harder to pay. So whereas the previous ones for the poorest level had been four pence, now it's raised to 12 pence per person. So that's a significant increase. And it is justified by people assuming that the well-off will help the poor to pay it, but there's no mechanism in place for them to do that. So you're kind of dependent on hard, avaricious men doing the decent thing. Behaving like Victorian philanthropists. Exactly. But Tom, can I just ask a quick question? You said they need this money to pay for the war and the perception is the war is just to advance the interests of powerful men. Is that right?

Is it just to advance the interests of powerful men? Or is there still this thinking, which we talked about when you did your brilliant 100 Years War series, that the English felt they had to launch the war as a preemptive attempt because France was so much more powerful, so they had to carry the war to France? So is there a genuine sense of national security involved with the war, or is it really, are the critics right, and is it just about egotism? Yeah, I think initially, when French fleets are descending on Southampton or Rye or whatever, then people feel, yes, this is justified. But by 1381, this is no longer the case. In fact,

the tax continues to be levied even after Thomas Woodstock has come back from France. People definitely feel that this is an unjustified tax. Unsurprisingly, what happens is when the tax collectors go out, people just refuse to pay it. There's an incredible shortfall. This is an opportunity for Parliament to row back on it. They could have done that, but instead they doubled down and they send out commissioners who are told essentially, do not allow people to get out of paying this. And they're given very, very detailed instructions. They have to travel in person from village to village, from place to place, registering absolutely everybody. And there's one person who becomes particularly notorious for this, who's a guy called John Legg, who is a sergeant at arms, a royal sergeant at arms, so from the King's own household. And he supposedly looks up the skirts of young women to see if they are sufficiently mature to pay the poll tax. And this causes, as you can imagine,

incredible outrage. So people are not happy about this. They feel that they're being screwed out of money that is then being squandered on foreign quarrels that has absolutely nothing to do with them. So there is great resentment towards the royal princes, but also towards the entire structure of royal government and two figures in particular. There's a guy called Simon Sudbury, who's the Archbishop of Canterbury, but also since January 1380 has been the Lord Chancellor. There is a guy called Sir Robert Hales, who's prior of one of those orders of warrior monks

like the Knights Templar. The Templar had gone by this point, but the Knights Hospitaller, which Robert Hales is the prior of, they're still very much around. They have lots of properties in London and across England. And he, at the beginning of 1381, is appointed the Lord High Treasurer. So these two men are kind of blamed for everything that's going wrong. But there is also out in the shires, out in the counties, massive resentment of anyone who is held responsible for administering this tax. So this would include justices of the peace, MPs, and sheriffs. So it's not a coincidence that this is the time when all the legends of Robin Hood start to kick off.

The Robin Hood ballads, which are celebrating somebody who robs from the rich to give to the poor. I mean, that's the claim, isn't it, that's later made. Yeah. You can see where the Robin Hood story gains traction at this point in time. Absolutely. And those stories of Robin Hood are expressive of a kind of popular hostility towards people who are seen in the elites in a sense of identification with people who are sticking up for themselves. And the readiness of the commons, the common people, as they would be called by the elites, not to accept their status, not to accept their station, is compounded by, of course, the most catastrophic event in the 14th century. Indeed, perhaps you might say in the whole of European history, which is the Black Death. So Dominic, we love kindling, don't we, on the

Restless History? There are two metaphors that we like. One is the storm clouds of war, and the other is lighting the kindling, lighting the spark, sometimes a fuse if you're kind of post-early modern. Right. We're in kindling territory here, are we? We're very much in kindling territory because what has happened since the Black Death, the Black Death hits England in the late 1340s, the population has fallen from around maybe 6 to 7 million in the 1340s to 3 million by the 1380s. I mean, that is a stupefying collapse. And the consequence of that is obviously that there's a shortfall in labour. And the consequence in turn of that is that wages go up. And obviously for the landowning classes,

this is terrible. They don't want to have to pay more money. And so there are desperate attempts to try and rein this back. And in 1351, the Statute of Labourers is introduced, which is basically a kind of massive pay freeze. The idea is that everyone should work for wages that were set before the Black Death had hit. And it coincides with also an attempt by landowners to uphold the traditional rights that they exert over unfree labourers on their land. So these would be the vilains, the serfs, the peasants. And the laws that govern this, they are very variable. They're very fluid, but there is kind of certain constants that the landowners can insist on. So vilains are not allowed to sell their land. They're not allowed to leave it for more than a day without allowed to sell their land. They're not allowed

to leave it for more than a day without the permission of their lord. They have to work for several days a week on the land of their lord. That might just be one day, but in certain places, it could be up to five or six days. So, pretty oppressive. They have to attend his court every three weeks. And when the serf dies, the Lord can claim a tax called the heriot, the dead serf's most valuable possession, which is normally a cow or something like that. So all of this generates massive resentment. And because there are fewer peasants in the wake of the Black Death, they are in a position actually to fight back against this. So they can move to places that offer better wages. They can buy up land themselves. And essentially, the focus for these tensions between the peasants who are trying to cast off the legal restrictions of the past and the landlords who are trying to double down on them, the focus for this becomes written documents. you will have abbeys, landlords, whatever, drawing up legal documents and using them

in courts to impose wage restraint and to impose the rights that lords traditionally have been able to impose. And likewise, this means that for the peasants, for the villains, legal documents, lawyers, scholars, abbeys, monks, anywhere where there is a paper record, these become objects of absolutely intense hatred. Lawyers are the enemy, Tom. Lawyers are the enemy. Absolutely so. And so, Dominic, it's not surprising then that the people who lead this kind of mood of insurrection are those who are doing best, the rustics, the peasants, the people out in the country, who are actually kind of bettering themselves, who are getting on their bike, if you like,

and going off to find work, who are investing the wages that they're developing in land, who are interested in becoming homeowners and all this kind of thing. There's a Thatcherite revolt. That's what you're basically saying, Tom. Well, these are Sandbrook's people, aren't they? I mean, these are... I'm glad you think I have a people. Upwardly mobile, middle England. These are not the kind of the labourers at the absolute bottom of the pile. These are people who are trying to attain a new social status for themselves. And it's not a coincidence, I think, that they are most heavily concentrated in Kent, in East

Anglia, in the home counties around London, because these are the areas that are profiting most from the development of capitalism in Flanders, where English wool is being exported. And these are people who are able to share in the wealth that is starting to be generated in this period. Right. So that's the interesting thing about the so-called Peasants' Revolt, that the epicentres of it are the most affluent parts of England at that time. Absolutely. And so it's in that sense, I think, that the Peasants' Revolt is indeed a misnomer. So Nigel Saul says of this, the revolt of 1381 was not a movement of the poor and the downtrodden.

It was a movement of the more ambitious and assertive in society. And Tom, I am amazed you haven't made this point because it's a really good point that you've made in your notes. You point out that these are the places that will actually become the heartlands of the Protestant Reformation in England. Those parts of the country with most continental links, those parts where people are more likely to be aspirational, individualistic, free-thinking, because they're better off. Yes. And we know from the study of revolutions that it's invariably not the very poor. It's always those who have aspirations that they feel are being repressed by a pre-existing elite. I think that this is exactly the situation that we have in 1381. In the years that precede

this great revolt, you see, particularly in East Anglia and Kent, a growing mood of insurrection. So you start seeing rustiki, these upwardly mobile peasants, they start to organise strikes. They refuse to take part in the haymaking and the harvesting and so on. They do mass trespasses on land that is set aside for the Lord to go hunting or whatever, kind of mass trespassing, mass poaching. And you start to get sporadic examples of the burning down of places where legal documents are stored, the legal documents that specify the dues and services that they owe. So Juliet Barker in her book, England Arise, gives the example of Lakenheath, which is a manor in Suffolk, which is owned by the great Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds.

Abbeys are at least as oppressive in this situation as the more secular landlords. In 1371, the vicar in Lakenheath leads the villagers in an attack on the abbot's officials who are trying to come in and take goods from people who haven't paid the poll tax. And the villagers basically won't have it. They attack the officials, they break the staff of office of the guy who's in charge of them, and they are so threatening that the Abbey's commission has just run away. Then in 1379, the entire village is fined for breaking the statute of labourers. So that's the law that's been brought in in 1351 to try and regulate how much people can be paid. And throughout the 1370s, you can see that in this one village, resentment and hatred of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds, and by extension, the government that is lying behind these demands for poll taxes is just becoming greater and greater and greater.

And so Dominic, as we have said, it is a tinderbox awaiting the spark. Oh, that's great, Tom. Because I see in your notes, you've written these words, the poll tax is the straw that breaks the camel's back. That's right. So, I mean, we would never mix our metaphors on the rest is history. No, it's the spark that breaks the camel's back. Well, the storm clouds of revolt are gathering.

And after the break, the storm will break. The tinderbox will light up. The camel's back will break. Yeah, with a great splintering. Return after the break to see these exciting metaphorical developments in the Peasants' Revolt. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. exciting metaphorical developments in the Peasants' Revolt. Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.

Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom, when and how does the storm break? When does the Peasants' Revolt kick off? Well, we've been talking about how this kindling box is lurking in East Anglia and Kent. But actually, Dominic, the first recorded act of violence in 1381 against the poll tax is in your neck of the woods. It's very near Bicester. Bicester. So home now to a very well-known, one of Europe's leading retail outlet, Parks, Bicester Village. It starts there.

It does. So what happens is that the Dean of Bista sends a tax collector out. He gets set upon by a group of people who've disguised themselves. He gets roughed up. They beat him up. They cut off the ears and tails of his horse, and then they nail them to the local pillory, where they are the objects of much mockery. And the name of this tax collector, Dominic, is absolutely brilliant. That's what I'm laughing at. He's called William Payable. So Bill Payable.

I don't believe that. I don't believe that. I just don't believe it. It's like if you said to me, his name is Thomas Tax or something. His name is Bill Payable. Bill Payable. I think you've been the victim

of some historical practical joke, surely. No, it's absolutely true. And the Bishop excommunicates these unknown ruffians and nothing further happens. But then in Essex, it's in Essex really that it all kicks off. So on the 30th of May, you get these assessment teams that are being sent out to try and uncover all these people who should have paid the poll tax who've just vanished off the record. This assessment team turns up in Brentwood in Essex, and they have some very notorious figures in this commission. So there is a guy called John Bampton who is notoriously corrupt.

I mean, he's the kind of embodiment of the corrupt elite. So he's an MP. He's a JP, a Justice of the Peace. He is a bailiff who is notorious for coming down hard on Rustique, Bill Aynes, who break the labour laws. Very hated. There is a guy called Sir John Guildsborough, who is an MP, but not just an MP. He's the Speaker of the House of Commons. This is a very radical innovation. It had been introduced in 1376 in the so-called Good Parliament.

All the parliaments in this period have brilliant names. In the Good Parliament, he serves as spokesman for the MPs who are trying to rein in Alice Peres, the avaricious mistress of Edward III. And they appoint a speaker so that he can be their spokesman. And John Gillsborough now is the speaker. He's the guy basically who's introduced the poll tax. And he's a close friend of Thomas of Woodstock. So he's a very, very provocative figure. So this commission goes in, John Bampton and Sir John Gillsborough, and they summon representatives from all the neighbouring villages to demand the money. And what happens is that you get a guy from a place called Fobbing, which is a small village.

Again, an implausible name, I would say. But absolutely true, kind of on the marshy edges of the county. And this guy, Thomas Baker, stands up and declares forthrightly that nobody is going to pay a single penny more because they've already paid the tax. And indeed, they have receipts to prove it. Bampton, he's not going to put up with this, so he orders his men to arrest Baker. Violence ensues, Dominic. This is the straw. This is the spark. This is when it all kicks off. And Bampton and his men are forced to run away. They realize that they're massively outnumbered.

And because of this, the villagers realize that they've crossed the line because you can't just try and kill royal commissioners. And so they're nervous about this. But at the same time, because it's 16 villages and because these villages are represented by leading figures, there's a feeling that, well, these are well-respected figures. We could perhaps make a stand here. Particularly if we can try and get other kind of leading figures from villages across the rest of Essex to join us, perhaps we can make a point. This is what happens.

Well, this is also presumably they're thinking, if we have a revolt and we prevail we will escape punishment that's exactly what they're thinking i think yeah but if we just say oh dear that was a mistake and we go home we will be punished exactly so in other words it's it's kind of you know in for a penny in for a pound oh god that's another terrible cliche but no well let's go for it let's yeah a clichetastic episode. So what this is not is a load of peasants reaching for their pitchforks and charging around willy-nilly. This is much, much more coordinated, and it's coordinated by people who have horses,

because basically the leaders of this uprising in Brentwood, they now get on their horses and go galloping across the county, trying to establish links with matching figures in other villages, in other regions of the county. Some start to go out to open meetings across Essex. For instance, on the 2nd of June, you have a mass assembly at a place called Bocking, which is north of the town of Chelmsford. Everyone swears a formal oath. Oaths are taken very, very seriously in the Middle Ages. I mean, this is not a light step at all. And the oath these various representatives of Bocking

swear is to destroy divers legions of the king and to have no law in England except only those which they themselves moved to be ordained. So this is a very radical agenda, really, really radical agenda. And it Really, really radical agenda. And it suggests that probably, you know, these are ideas that have been circulating in the region beforehand. They're not just kind of spontaneously coming up with them. Possibly in the aftermath of the Black Death, Tom, as people are moving up and down the social scale and there's so much fragmentation and dislocation that these new ideas are coming in. Right. But also possibly due to the teachings of a particular figure who we will come to a little bit later on, but who you mentioned at the very start of the program. So John Ball, who we'll come to later on. Oh, John Ball. Yeah. This is the area where John Ball has been operating and probably we are seeing the impact

of his teachings here. But I think it's not just the ideological seasoning. There's also been very, very clear planning because the rebels are very targeted in what they attack. They're not just pillaging and looting here and there. They're targeting specific properties, the properties of people whom the mass of people in Essex have particular reason to dislike. So they target a monastery in Essex that is owned by the Knights Hospitallers. And of course, the Knights Hospitallers, their prior is Sir Robert Hales, who is the treasurer. They torch the house of Sir John Gillsborough, the Speaker, who had been at Brentwood. So that's very targeted, but that's not to deny that there isn't also violence.

So they capture the official who's responsible for all the poll tax assessments in Essex. They chop off his head and they stick his head on a lance and they kind of braid it around going hurrah, hurrah. Okay, well, that's a slightly different dimension then to the, oh, these are aspirational people who just want a better field. Well, I think you can be both. I think you can be an aspirational person and prone to violence. So to sound like Simon Sharma, violence is inherent in the revolution from the very beginning. I think that there is targeted violence against people who are particularly identified with oppression from the beginning. Yeah. And if they can't get these individuals in person, then they will target their property. So that's why, say, three of Gillsborough's houses across Essex are destroyed. It's very, very deliberate.

But I think the really unsurprising but momentous development is that what gets particularly targeted are these repositories of documents. And this happens across Essex. Essentially, what people are trying to do is to destroy the apparatus of royal government within the county and the ability of local landlords, including the abbeys, to impose the taxes and the dues and obligations that these papers specify. Because if the records of the dues and obligations are destroyed, there will be no longer any basis for the landowners to demand that. Well, that'd be oral tradition. There would be, but you can kind of ignore that.

You can. Well, you can contest it. And that would give the aspirational people a chance then to break away from the network of obligations and to forge new careers and lives themselves. Yeah. Well, so that will require the king to agree to it. And so this is a kind of looming further dimension is, do we stay in the county or do we perhaps march on London and try and get the king to change things? Now, the people of Essex can't do that themselves, but they can do it if they have allies in other counties. It so happens that at the same time, things are also kicking off in Kent. In Kent, likewise, there have been provocations. John Legge, the guy who was the upskirter, he's been very active in Kent. Then there's a

particular outrage because there's a villain from Essex called Robert Belling, who is seized and imprisoned in Rochester Castle. A gang of rebels come together, they march on the castle. The castle is in a very ruinous state because there's been a flood and the gateway has been demolished in the flow of water. The rebels are able to get in. They capture the children of the constable, a guy called Sir John Newington. So Newington surrenders. From this point on, Newington is basically kept to serve as the spokesman of the rebels to the king because he is a man of high standing. They want him to be the go-between between them and the king. So they're already thinking, well, we should take this further. We should march on London. And before the men of Kent march on London, they do what's been going on in Essex as well. So they're sending horsemen out across the country to raise villages everywhere.

They are staging bonfires of legal documents. They're hunting down MPs and JPs. And they even managed to capture Canterbury. And of course, Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a particular object of hate as the Lord Chancellor, but he's not there, but the rebels proclaim that he is deposed as Archbishop of Canterbury. They do, however, manage to capture the Sheriff of Kent, and they frog march him to his house on the outskirts of Canterbury, where all the records for the county are kept, and they frog march him to his house on the outskirts of Canterbury, where all the records for the county are kept.

He is obliged to hand over all the rolls, and they light a great fire in the middle of Canterbury and publicly burn them. So again, it's this systematic attempt to destroy the paper records that enable royal government to be upheld. Undoubtedly, once this has been completed, there are many rebels in both Essex and Kent who feel that they've done what they set out to do. But there are others, as I said, who think we can't end here. The only way that we can absolutely secure the abolition of all these obligations and

dues that are imposed on us as rustiki is to get the king to agree to it yeah and these ambitions coalesce around two figures who are really you know these are the men who are most associated in the popular mind i guess with what we call the peasants revolt and the first of these is what tyler soatt Tyler, for people not familiar with this story, Watt Tyler is without doubt seen in the popular imagination as the figurehead of the Peasants' Revolt, but also as a foundational figure in what people imagine to be the radical left-wing English tradition. He's exactly the kind of person, if you're at some sort of big May Day trade union meeting in 2023 or 2024, somebody might well say, ever since the days of what, Tyler? And everyone would cheer and know who he was. And I think that he deserves this reputation. He is clearly a man of incredible ability. The frustration is we don't know much about him. Well, in fact, we know almost nothing about him before 1381. So maybe he's a Tyler. Who knows?

He seems to have been so competent as a leader that some people have suggested that maybe he'd fought in the Hundred Years' War, that he had military experience. We don't even really know where he comes from. So one chronicler describes him as coming from Maidstone in Kent, but we have a legal record which describes him as being from Essex. I mean, maybe he's both, maybe he's a man of Essex who's moved to Kent. And legally you're not allowed to do that. So if that is the case, then that might kind of explain why he's so ready to join the rebellion. But the truth is that he emerges very, very rapidly, as in the word of one document, the captain and leader of the men in Kent. And it is under Tyler's leadership that the men of Kent decide that they are going to march on London. And even as they are doing that,

people in Essex and Suffolk are doing the same. And the likelihood is that it is Tyler who is coordinating this. I mean, if he has come from Essex, then perhaps he has links there. So the Kentishmen under Tyler, they've taken Canterbury, they've had their great bonfire, they've deposed the Archbishop. And on the 10th of June, they leave Canterbury and they take the Pilgrim Road that heads towards London. Now, what are their goals? People might suspect that their goal is to abolish the poll tax because, Dominic, this was the spark that lit the kindling. But as far as we know, they don't mention the poll tax. This seems to have gone as a concern. They now have much higher goals because their agenda is unbelievably radical. They want the complete abolition of serfdom. They want legal recognition

of a worker's right to work for whom he wants, where he wants, on such wages as he can command. And they want all the wealth of the church, all the abbeys, all the monasteries to be seized. Because they see the churches and the abbeys and the monasteries as highly oppressive. So this is an incredible bundle of aims. Obviously, in the 21st century, lots of keen political activists have seen this as proto-socialist. But could you also see this as proto-Protestant, Tom, with the attack on the established church? Yes, I absolutely think you could. And as we said before, these are the regions that will be the heartlands of the Protestant Reformation in due course. And this is where I think you see the influence of this very, very mysterious, enigmatic, but clearly highly

influential figure, John Ball, with his Adam Delving and Eve Spinning, who then was a gentleman, rhyming. So John Ball seems, I mean, again, the records of his life are scanty, but to the degree that we can piece them together, he seems to be an Essex boy, an Essex lad, probably from Colchester. He seems to have been trained, interestingly, as a priest in York, and then he's moved back by Norwich back to Colchester. And he is constantly having run-ins with Simon Sudbury, who's become the Archbishop of Canterbury by this point, but who previously had been the Bishop of London, and as Bishop of London, had responsibility for quite a lot of Essex. Sudbury had secured a condemnation of John Ball as a vagabond and a man

who preaches doctrines contrary to the faith of the church, to the peril of his own soul and those of others. And in 1375, this excommunication of John Ball had been confirmed by Sudbury. And then just as the revolt is starting to kick off, just before it kind of really bursts into flames, Sudbury issues an order that Ball should be arrested, almost as though he is alert to the kind of ideological underpinnings of what's going on. Sudbury accuses Ball of being a false prophet, of being a man whose sermons reek of heretical depravity, a man who is not preaching in church, he's preaching in public spaces, public places, and that John Ball is attacking not only the wealthy, the landowners, but he's attacking the entire hierarchy of the church right the way up to the Pope himself.

And in particular, Sudbury complains John Ball is attacking Sudbury himself. So it's personal. Yeah. John Ball, Sudbury says, is spreading scandals about our person. So all of this suggests that Ball is pretty notorious by this time among the clerical hierarchy, and probably that he has been active in all the areas where the revolt bursts into flames. That he really is the person who is encouraging people to think in this almost apocalyptic tone.

Yeah, like a kind of evangelical preacher roaming the land, stirring the people up, basically. Yeah, and I think that one of the things that kind of points to this is that the 2nd of June, which is the day of the Bocking meeting, the kind of the mass assembly in Essex, is also Whitsun, Pentecost, which is the day on which the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles and animates the functioning of the entire church. And the Acts of the Apostles records what that meant in practice. So the whole group of those who believed, I'm quoting from Acts of the Apostles records what that meant in practice. So the whole group of those who believed, I'm quoting from Acts of the Apostles, were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in

common. So that is a kind of scriptural sanction for what you might almost call communism, a kind of radical idea that everything should be held in possession. Maybe Ball is preaching on this topic on that very day. I'd be very surprised if he wasn't. However, the record of Ball preaching that you began this episode with, that's on the 12th of June. As Walsingham noted, it's preached at Blackheath, which is a great assembly point to the southeast of London. London is visible from it, and this is where all the men of Kent gather. And Walsingham's account of Ball's sermon that he gives there, as you said, Walsingham is not in favour of it. He thinks it's terrible. Kill all

the lords, king all the lawyers, all this kind of stuff, which is what makes it so ironic that it's become so iconic. Walsingham, in a way, by trying to damn John Ball, has given him a kind of immortality. Except Dominic, there is a problem. Ball never gave that sermon. He was not at Blackheath on the 12th of June. Because he'd been in prison in Essex. Is that right? He'd been in prison and he's only released on the 11th of June. Couldn't have got there in time. There's no way he could have got there in time. No, it's such a shame. And there's no contemporary record that places him in London at all

in this period. But you say that's a shame, but isn't that incredibly revealing that the people who are telling the story of the Peasants' Revolt are hyping up John Ball's role, presumably because they know that their readers or their listeners or whatever, the people who consume this, will be horrified by Ball's egalitarianism and will regard him as a madman. Yeah. And the Peasants' Revolt will therefore be tainted by association. Yes.

It's kind of Daily Mail editorial wanting to make Middle England's blood run cold by suggesting all the horrors that Jeremy Corbyn might want to unleash as Prime Minister. It's that kind of thing. I'm very familiar with such pieces, Tom. Are you? I had no idea. So in this sense, I think the emphasis on John Ball in Walsingham's account, this is Sandbrook as Daily Mail columnist. But as I say, the paradox is that it serves to immortalise John Ball. He's enshrined as this great spokesman, which I think he probably was. It's just that the sermon wasn't on Blackheath. They were probably being given it

in Essex. And I think indisputably, the rebels are motivated by radical views in which politics and religion are kind of indistinguishable in the way that they so often are in the Middle Ages. And he didn't have to be at Blackheath for his teachings to have had a profound impact. So in strictly kind of historical detail, Ball wasn't at Blackheath, but his spirit was there. He was very much there in spirit. Am I right in thinking that like so many later revolutions, the story of this is really that what has happened is the intersection of material grievances, which are based actually not on poverty and inequality, but on frustrated completely understand in the aftermath of the Black Death. And those two things have now become completely fused. So some of those people who have been marching on London might have started their grievances

actually about the Baltics and about some incredibly mundane dispute about a field. And now they are full of the zeal, the Holy Spirit, as you might say, because of John Ball's teachings. Yeah. And what Ball is doing and why this kind of looks forward to the Reformation is that there is a kind of strain of radical egalitarianism within Christianity. You know, the apostles do hold all their possessions in common. And obviously, the spectacle of John of Gaunt in the Savoy Palace or the Archbishop of Canterbury or all

the hierarchies or the abbeys and monasteries that are screwing money out of peasants. I mean, this obviously can be cast as opposed to God's wishes. So that also provides a sanction for what is happening. And when you combine that with the obvious ability of what Tyler to organize and coordinate the attack, because even as the men of Kent are massing on Blackheath, people from Essex and Suffolk are starting to gather on Mile End, which is directly outside the eastern walls of the City of London. You have this extraordinary situation where London effectively is going to come under siege. All the elites of England are inside the city. You have the King, the 14-year-old Richard II. You have the Archbishop of Canterbury.

You have the treasurer. What are they to do? Because they are now staring down the barrel of something that no royal government has ever had to face before in England, which is a genuine popular revolt. What a cliffhanger, Tom. They are staring down the barrel. Staring down the barrel, don't they? It could not be more exciting. Now, if you are a member of the Rest is History Club,

and that works on very egalitarian principles, with the exception of me and Tom, who are right at the top, untouchable. And it has a kind of poll tax, but we won't get into all that. If you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, you can find out what happens after this thrilling cliffhanger. You can find that out right now. You can just listen right away. If you have not paid that particular poll tax, then your prospects are grim in the next couple of days because you'll have nothing to listen to.

And you'll have to wait till Thursday when things will look up for you and you'll find out what happened. So it's very exciting. You know, the storm clouds are gathering once more. The fires are lit. You know, all cliches are operational. And we'll see you next time for the conclusion of the Peasants' Revolt. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.