Peasants' Revolt (1381): Wat Tyler and the March on London

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, also called the Great Rising, was the largest popular uprising in medieval England. It began on 30 May 1381 as resistance to a poll tax in Essex, spread rapidly through Kent and eastern England, and in mid-June brought thousands of rebels led by Wat Tyler into London. After the killing of Tyler at Smithfield on 15 June, the young King Richard II persuaded the rebels to disperse, and the rising was crushed within weeks.

Background: England after the Black Death

The Black Death of 1348–1349 killed perhaps a third to a half of England’s population. With far fewer workers, labourers and tenants could demand higher wages and better terms. Landlords and the government responded with the Ordinance of Labourers of 1349 and the Statute of Labourers of 1351, which tried to fix wages at pre-plague levels and limit the movement of workers.

Many villagers were still serfs, or villeins, legally bound to their lords’ manors and owing labour services, fines and dues. As economic conditions improved for ordinary people, these obligations seemed increasingly unjust, and attempts to enforce them caused bitter local disputes.

At the same time England was losing ground in the Hundred Years’ War with France. French raids struck the south coast, and the cost of the war fell heavily on taxpayers. When Edward III died in 1377, the crown passed to his ten-year-old grandson Richard II, and power lay with a council and with the unpopular royal uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

The poll taxes

To pay for the war, Parliament turned to a new kind of tax charged per head rather than on property. The third of these, granted in late 1380, was the heaviest.

The 1380 tax fell equally on rich and poor and amounted to several days’ wages for a labourer. Returns showed a suspicious drop in the number of taxpayers, as households concealed members. In spring 1381 the government sent commissioners to investigate and enforce payment, which provoked the rising.

The revolt begins

On 30 May 1381 the commissioner John Bampton arrived at Brentwood in Essex to examine villagers from Fobbing and neighbouring places. They refused to pay and drove him away. When officials returned with a judge, they too were attacked, and the rising spread across Essex.

Kent rose in early June. Rebels took Rochester Castle and on 7 June chose Wat Tyler as their captain at Maidstone. They freed the radical priest John Ball from the archbishop’s prison there, and on 10 June entered Canterbury. Across both counties rebels burned manorial and tax records, the documents that recorded their dues and status.

London, 12–15 June

On 12 June the Kentish rebels camped at Blackheath, south-east of London, while the Essex men gathered at Mile End to the east. John Ball preached to the crowd at Blackheath, reportedly taking as his text the rhyme “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”, attacking the idea that lordship was natural or God-given.

Richard II, then fourteen, tried to meet the rebels from a barge on the Thames at Rotherhithe on 13 June, but his advisers would not let him land. That day, the feast of Corpus Christi, the rebels entered London with help from sympathisers inside the city. They burned John of Gaunt’s Savoy Palace, attacked the Temple, home of lawyers, and opened prisons. Foreigners, especially Flemish merchants and craftsmen, were murdered in the streets.

On 14 June the king met the Essex rebels at Mile End and granted their demands, issuing charters that freed them from serfdom and offering pardons. While he was away, rebels entered the Tower of London. They dragged out and beheaded Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, and Sir Robert Hales, the Treasurer, whom they blamed for the poll tax.

Smithfield and the death of Wat Tyler

On 15 June Richard met Wat Tyler and the Kentish rebels at Smithfield, just outside the city walls. According to the chronicles, Tyler demanded far-reaching changes: the end of serfdom, the abolition of all lordship except the king’s, the redistribution of Church property and the end of outlawry.

What happened next is described differently in the sources, but all agree that an argument broke out. The Lord Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck Tyler with a weapon, and a royal squire wounded him further. Tyler was carried away and later beheaded.

As the rebels prepared to shoot, Richard rode forward and declared that he himself would be their leader. The crowd hesitated, and armed forces raised in the city surrounded them. The rebels were allowed to disperse, and the king knighted Walworth on the spot.

Suppression

The rising was not confined to London. Rebels attacked manors and monasteries in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Norfolk. At Bury St Edmunds the prior was killed, and the Chief Justice, Sir John Cavendish, was murdered in Suffolk. In Norfolk the dyer Geoffrey Litster led a large rebel force.

Royal and noble forces soon regained control. Henry Despenser, the warlike Bishop of Norwich, defeated the Norfolk rebels at North Walsham in late June, and Litster was executed. Essex rebels were routed near Billericay on 28 June. On 2 July Richard revoked the charters of freedom he had granted at Mile End.

Judicial commissions toured the affected counties, and leaders were tried and executed. John Ball was hanged, drawn and quartered at St Albans on 15 July 1381. The total number of rebels killed in the fighting and executions is uncertain; estimates range from a few hundred to around 1,500. In November 1381 Parliament confirmed the revocation of the charters and approved a general pardon with exceptions.

Key people

• Wat Tyler: Captain of the Kentish rebels, chosen at Maidstone on 7 June. He led the march on London and negotiated with the king, but his origins are unknown and the chroniclers who describe him were hostile.
• John Ball: A priest who had preached for some twenty years against the wealth of the Church and the division of society into lords and serfs. His sermons and letters, written in rhyming English, circulated among the rebels.
• Jack Straw: A rebel leader named in the chronicles, possibly from Essex or Kent. Little is known of him, and some historians think the name may have been a pseudonym.
• Richard II: The fourteen-year-old king, whose courage at Smithfield won praise from chroniclers, but who quickly withdrew the concessions made in his name.
• William Walworth: Lord Mayor of London and a wealthy fishmonger, who struck Tyler down and then helped raise the city militia against the rebels.
• Simon Sudbury: Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, who as head of the government was blamed for the poll tax and killed at the Tower on 14 June.

Consequences

In the short term the revolt failed. Serfdom was not abolished by law, and the rebels gained none of their political demands. Yet the governing class drew lessons from the crisis. No further poll tax on the 1377–1381 model was attempted for centuries, and Parliament became more cautious about new taxes on the poor.

Serfdom continued to decline through the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, mostly because of economic pressures: lords needed tenants and workers and had to offer better terms. By around 1500 personal serfdom had become rare in England, although historians debate how much the revolt contributed.

Myths and facts

The name “Peasants’ Revolt” is a later label. The rebels included artisans, townspeople, priests and better-off villagers who held local offices, and historians increasingly call it the Great Rising or English Rising of 1381.

Wat Tyler is sometimes imagined as a tiler or a veteran soldier, but nothing reliable is known of his background. Contemporary chroniclers, almost all hostile to the rebels, also linked John Ball to the teachings of John Wycliffe and the Lollards; there is little firm evidence for this, and Wycliffe himself did not support the rising.

Timeline

• 1348–1349: The Black Death kills a large share of England’s population.
• 1351: The Statute of Labourers tries to hold wages at pre-plague levels.
• 1377: Richard II becomes king; the first poll tax is levied.
• Late 1380: Parliament grants the third poll tax at one shilling per head.
• 30 May 1381: Villagers resist tax commissioners at Brentwood, Essex.
• 7 June 1381: Wat Tyler is chosen as leader of the Kentish rebels at Maidstone.
• 13 June 1381: Rebels enter London and burn the Savoy Palace.
• 14 June 1381: Richard II meets rebels at Mile End; Archbishop Sudbury is killed at the Tower.
• 15 June 1381: Wat Tyler is killed at Smithfield.
• 15 July 1381: John Ball is executed at St Albans.

Why it matters

The Great Rising of 1381 was the first large-scale popular revolt in English history to reach the capital and confront the king face to face. It revealed the deep tensions created by the Black Death and war, helped end experiments with crude poll taxes, and left in Wat Tyler and John Ball enduring symbols of protest against unjust taxation and inequality.