There is an apparent discrepancy concerning the economic impact that the plague years had leading up to 1381 and the year of the Peasants’ Revolt. It can be difficult to determine whether the plague caused the cost of living to increase or decrease if one depends upon an uncritical acceptance of contemporary sources for one’s interpretation. Complaints about increased prices and impending financial ruin are just as plentiful as statements about the lower cost of livestock and food. To resolve this apparent discrepancy one must evaluate these sources to determine in what ways the cost of living increased and decreased. This leads one to the conclusion that what became more expensive in the post-plague years leading up to the Peasants’ Revolt was the maintenance of the pre-Plague differences between the nobility and the laboring class. It was more expensive for the nobility to maintain their leisure lifestyle, and it was less expensive for the peasants to obtain leisure.
The consequences of the plague were crucial in the development of new power structures throughout this period. Robert of Avesbury asserted that this disease crossed the channel and landed in Dorset in August of 1348.[1] The infection spread with terrible swiftness such that by 1349 Geoffrey le Baker reported that the survival rate in London of either sex was one in ten.[2] In Durham manors saw death rates as high as seventy-eight percent.[3] The pus-filled black nodules, the awful stench, the rapid spread, and the indiscriminate effect of the plague was interpreted by men and women of the day as a biblical plague. Nothing so organized and systematic as a proper census was possible through such carnage, therefore the exact numerical impact of the disease is impossible to portray. The best estimates put the population of England in the first half of the Fourteenth Century at five million, and the population at the end of the same century at between two and three million.[4]
The labor force suffered serious losses. Crops and herds thrived, but with no workers to harvest, sheer, milk, or butcher, this produce rotted. The buying power of those who did work, however, increased dramatically. Reapers and mowers were now paid eight to ten pence compared to three pence before the plague. Also, while the cost of a horse before the plague years was forty shillings, it was now only half a mark.[5] Not only were the goods less expensive, wage earning peasants were now earning three times what they had previously earned. This meant they were able to purchase food and clothing that had previously been unavailable to them. This caused animosity between these ascending commoners and those like Matteo Villani, whose recent incarceration and bankruptcy in Florence brought him to England to survey the defaulted loans his patron Peruzzi family had granted King Edward III. Villani reviewed with disgust the fact that peasants were now eating duck and wearing fashions that were newer even than their landlords’.[6]
Here we encounter the strange discrepancies about how the plague impacted the cost of living. While laborers were earning more and were able to purchase goods for less, the landlords and nobility were seeing lower production and a much higher cost of labor. Landowners like John Gower complained that, while they used to be able to hire laborers for two shillings, they were now required to pay them five or six shillings.[7] What makes the discussion more difficult is the confusion about the cost of goods themselves. Henry Knighton, for example, stated in the same passage that the prices of produce and livestock reduced dramatically, but also said that items that were previously valued at one penny were now worth four or five pence.[8] The bitterness with which Knighton discloses this inflation, and the context, resolve the confusion. Knighton was discussing the increased buying power among the peasants, and the decreased buying power among the nobility.
The nobility did not take this well. The social structure in England was poorly prepared to understand this change in social strata. The clergy and nobility took for granted the balance of duties within the separate social estates. St Anselm of Canterbury summarized the common view by pointing out that the only hierarchy that matters is in the next life. In his view serfs would be the Lord’s freeman, and freemen would be the Lord’s serfs, and it is pride alone that causes one to worry about who is serf and who is free in this life.[9] Jean Froissart tersely summarized the situation by stating that “the nobility and clergy are served by right.”[10] Thus the nobility and clergy saw the demand among the peasants for higher wages as intransigence and impiety. John Gower epitomized the outrage with which landowners regarded the behavior of the peasants. He referred to them as the common multitude of small folk, and was repulsed by the fact that they were better fed, and were dressed better.[11]
Most knew somehow, Thomas Walsingham stated it explicitly, that after the carnage of the plague, 0the world would never again be the same.[12] Those of higher class, however, did not imagine that the change would be an improvement in the station of the peasants. Matteo Villani seems to have expected the opposite in fact. He said that his expectation of the impact of the plague would cause people to be more charitable and humble. He called for survivors to be better-conditioned. He lamented that the plague had the opposite effect. One wonders what he meant by this. How were the people to be better-conditioned? His explanation of the behaviors against which he was preaching make his meaning clear. He was upset that the peasants were abounding in earthly goods, and were, in his view, rotting with the easiness of their new life. He expected the peasants to become more active and satisfied in their condition, but instead he saw them purchasing food and clothing, and participating in leisure activities, that had until that point been restricted to the higher classes.[13] An exception to this pious outrage against the ascendency of commoners, was John Wycliffe who made the accusation of gluttony on the opposite side. The landowners were the gluttons for charging exorbitant rents, demanding excessive duties, and assessing crippling fines.[14]
The difficulty of the situation among the nobles should not, however, be understated. They saw economic factors that were at work in the marketplace, but did not accept that these changes should benefit any class but the nobility. There were two factors limiting the profits of the nobles. The first was that landowners could not collect as much rent. Rent was assessed in two ways. First there were labor duties. This meant that tenants practiced demesne farming. To live on a landlord’s property a tenant made an agreement to farm the landowner’s crops in addition to his own. Second there was the actual payment of rent. Since whole villages were evacuated because of the plague, however, landowners were forced to do away with demesne farming and simply charge rent. This was called commutation, which was first practiced at Woodeaton in 1349.[15]
Since landowners no longer could use rent to procure labor, they now had to hire laborers. One can see how terribly this hurt the profitability for landowners. They often could not find anyone to pay rent at all, and when they did it was for far less than they previously could, and without any demesne duties. This situation was unprecedented. In 1351 a parliament that had been prorogued since the onset of the plague met and passed the Statute of Labourers which forced reapers and other laborers to work for wages they had accepted before the plague years. Despite the King’s attempt to control the market, resistance to the statute was widespread. In 1357 the village of Bodenham alone had over forty cases against textile workers due to infractions against the 1351 statute.[16] The King soon learned that parliament’s act was not being enforced and began to fine offenders more heavily. Anyone demanding wages higher than pre-plague rates could be fined as much as one-hundred shillings, a harsh enough blow for the peasantry. That King Richard II, already intensely disliked, was keeping a fifteenth of every fine incensed the working class.
Most frustrating for the peasants were the series of escalating poll taxes enforced by The King throughout the ensuing decades. The King’s exchequer was also dependent upon rents, as well as the production of the ever more precious field laborers. Not only were fewer funds flowing in, demands on these funds increased with action escalating in the English wars against France. As taxes were raised and enforcement became more brutal and exorbitant, it is easy to see why peasant resentment increased. It is important also to understand the desperation at the government level, which was the cause of the increased harshness. Edward III’s concession to the House of Commons of control over taxation meant that a King with little income and tremendous expenses had to give up power to Parliament in order to ensure the passage of new taxes. Parliament in turn could only remain powerful insofar as funds could be gathered to meet the needs of The King.[17] Thus rampant tax evasion increased tension at every level of government. The peasants saw their income being exploited to ever increasing degrees. Local collectors of the taxes were forced into an unsustainable balancing act between reconciliation with their neighbors and the need to satisfy over-bearing superiors in government. Parliament was losing their ability to bargain with The King. The King needed much more money than he could pass through Parliament, and what did pass was not being collected.
The atmosphere was ripe for conflict. What lacked was an ideological means by which peasant interests could be united. This came from fringe elements within The Church, and to understand it a presentation of some background is necessary. Like most institutions at this time, The Church was in a post-plague spiral. The clergy suffered disproportionately severe losses. From the year 1348 to the year 1350 three Archbishops of Canterbury died. Clergymen were dying so fast that stipends doubled in order to attract anyone willing to fill positions. Those who accepted were often illiterate men of the third estate, who immediately demanded more money upon entering their post. This lead the Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine to warn the clergy that if those seeking clerical appointment did not practice restraint, the whole church would eventually become bereft of clergy and ceremonies.[18] Despite this objection from The Church’s highest authority in England, many thought that The Church was guilty of simony because of these exorbitant appointments.
Escalating the controversy were ideological schisms within England that had begun in 1368 with the Lollard movement and the teachings of John Wycliffe. Wycliffe emphasized Christ’s life of poverty and His rejection of worldly wealth and prestige. This was a very popular teaching at a time when the clergy were seen as less qualified and more paid than ever before. Particularly influential upon the ideological influences on the Peasants’ Revolt, were Wycliffe’s teachings against papal authority. He taught that authority came from The Bible and the capacity of the individual to discover what it means for herself. Since the divine right of kings was also based on the authority of The Church,[19] This individual access to church teachings also created great animosity between the nobility and the peasants, as evidenced by the name given to lay scholars of scripture who followed Wycliffe: Lollards. Lollard or Lollardi had long been a derogatory term for a common, unlearned, person.[20] While Wycliffe’s teachings emphasized spiritual authority, the Lollard movement quickly became political. The most radical example of Lollard politics was John Ball, of whom there will be much more to say later.
First we must revisit the crisis within orthodox Catholicism regarding clerical appointments. The paucity of qualified clergy altered education in two important ways. Since education in England was carried out by the clergymen, there were fewer teachers who had far fewer resources. One implication of this is that grammar lessons were no longer taught in French or Latin, but in English because this could be done faster and with less effort.[21] This had a profound impact upon the literary tradition of the age, but also had legal implications. The law was written and carried out in French. Thus a more powerful population of peasants began to demand greater privilege, without any means of understanding the judicial background against which such demands were made. The rule quickly became to take the law into one’s own hands. Peasants refused to pay rent, and regularly raided the homes of landowners. In short this is to show that the peasantry sought redress from the unfairness within English law, but had no way to do this legally, since they did not speak the language of the law. There was a culture of lawlessness throughout the last quarter of the fourteenth century, which is important to bear in mind.
Into this tinderbox sparked John Ball. Ball was a lay worker at St. Mary’s Abbey in York. After his assignment there, he became a preacher in Colchester. Precisely to what degree Ball was involved in the revolt is controversial. Froissart cites Ball as the principal instigator of the movement.[22] He is alone, however, in making that claim. Henry Knighton confirms that Ball was imprisoned in connection to the uprising, and states that he had a strong connection to the Kentish arm of the conspiracy. Knighton even claims that the peasants of Kent wanted to appoint Ball as their Archbishop.[23] There is no document in his autograph presently available, but we do have a short series of coded couplets copied by Knighton, and there is little reason to doubt Knighton’s transmission. The most famous of these is: “When Adam delved, and Eve span/Who then was a gentleman?”[24] That Ball was publicly censured, and his preaching outlawed as early as 1366 within the Register of the Archbishop of Canterbury. is further evidence of his radicalism. According to Froissart these couplets, together with a series of escalating radical speeches, constituted a conspiracy throughout the summer of 1381 of which John Ball was the head. The couplets were coded messages. To Kent and Essex he wrote, “John Ball/Greeteth you all,/And doth you to understand/He hath rung your bell./Now with right and might,/Will and skill,/God speed every dell!”[25] If Froissart is to be believed, this was a call to action, and one that would be accepted.
The immediate cause of that rebellion was an increase in the poll tax. Each year from 1377, a new Poll Tax was assessed. The national treasury was in desperate need of money to fund conflicts in France, and to replenish the King’s income, which had diminished along with that of every other landowner. John of Gaunt had also mustered an army to attend him in his negotiation with Scotland in case an agreement proved impossible. Each new tax was graduated based on income, except the 1380 tax. Despite protest from Sir John Gildesburgh, The Commons accepted the burden of 160,000 pounds. To collect this fee Parliament passed the third poll tax in 1380. It demanded of every person of the realm more than fifteen years old a tax of three groats. Parliament specifically named both men and women, clarifying that they meant every single person, not just every household.[26]
The peasants reacted in the same way as they did to the Statute of Labourers. They ignored it. Tax evasion was the norm, and was a successful policy until 1381. Collection was left to local commissions, who knew the locality. This meant, however, that the collectors were knocking on the doors of their neighbors, to whom they would remain accountable afterward. No town had any incentive to accurately perform the census. Dependents and poorer people, despite the express phrase from Parliament that only legitimate beggars were exempt, were simply not reported. Despite the disbandment of the Scottish and continental campaigns, which meant that the Poll Tax was no longer immediately necessary, the government decided to harshly enforce the tax and punish the evaders. Government agents were deployed to head second commissions to each town whose number of eligible taxpayers had disproportionately decreased.
The peasants, who we recall could not read the intricacies of the tax, could not help but feel the weight of a more intrusive policy than they had ever seen. Previous poll taxes had not required as much from their personal income, and evasions, about which they were most likely ignorant, reduced the obligation even further. Now the King’s men were at their door and the tax was due in full and due right now. Thus armed with economic advantage, albeit one denied them by the Labour Acts, justified by a new spiritual ideology and a charismatic leader, the government tax commissions became the match-point for revolution.
One of the men appointed to lead a tax commission was Thomas Bampton. As he travelled on 30 May, 1381 from Fobbing to Corringham, and Stanford, the commissioner was violently opposed. The residents of Fobbing insisted that Bampton had already provided them with a receipt of payment, thus they would not pay a penny more. Hostile opponents from each town gathered to the next town until they outnumbered Bampton’s sergeants at arms. What was aggressive toward Bampton’s commission became violent against the force headed by Sir Robert Belknap. Belknap was immediately apprehended by the force, now five thousand strong, and forced to disclose the names of the jurors who had reported them as in default. These they hunted and decapitated. All of Essex united against the commissions and Thomas Bampton himself was assassinated with his three clerks. Just as their cause may have been, the violence and lawlessness of this mob became immediately apparent. The staggering number of recruits was due in part to the threat that if each household did not unite in rebellion, their houses would be burned down and they too would be decapitated.[27]
Whether lead by John Ball or not, the immediate and widespread response of Kent to the Essex revolt was strong evidence that some conspiracy or other united them. It is factually the case that the first act of the Kentish rebels was to free John Ball and other Lollards from Canterbury prisons. Ball had been excommunicated and imprisoned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in Maidstone. Though the revolt started in Essex, it is clear that the locus of the rebellion was in Kent, for with them was not only found John Ball, but the two most prominent men throughout the later episodes in London Wat Tyler and Jack Straw.
The Kentan and Fobbingham rebels combined to march on London. Having plundered the see of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the rebels marched to London, continuing to plunder along the way. Attorneys were especially sought out because certain of them had supported the government in the enforcement of the poll taxes. Within the walls of London, they immediately ransacked the Temple. This made sense since the record of feudal duties were stored there and could be destroyed. Many of the lawyers who had enforced the taxes were also in the Temple. It is in the seizure of the books, rolls, remembrances, and reliquaries of The Temple Church that Tyler and Ball lost English sentimentality. Hospitals, residences, Treasuries, and churches of all kinds were levelled. King Richard was within the Tower of London seeking refuge from the rebels. It became apparent that this would not be sufficient protection, and as he left the tower the Kentish rebels rushed in to kill the nobility sequestered there including Simon Sudbury the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is the massacre of the Flemish Weavers, however, that most affected English commentators in following centuries. King Edward II had enlisted the Flemings to improve cloth manufacture in the city. They were seen as outsiders who were taking gold out of England. Anti-immigrant sentiment is a common vice in popular movements. Even sympathetic commentators like Geoffrey Chaucer could not forgive Jack Straw and company for murdering the Flemish boys.[28]
That the Peasants’ Revolt was unnecessarily violent and anti-immigrant must therefore be granted. So too must the legacies of each of these faults. This does not prevent the modern reader from the welcome acknowledgment, however, that the values and causes of this revolution were ahead of their time. This can be seen in the demands of rebels when they confronted King Richard II. Richard was willing to promise the abolition of serfdom and the free pardon to all who would cease rioting and gather to London. He wrote patents verifying the promise and sent messengers from among the rebels with his royal banner to Kent, Essex, Sussex, Bedford, Cambridge, Stafford, and Lincoln.[29]
Here the chronicles become mysterious. The King had promised and placed his seal upon the total abolition of serfdom, and complete amnesty for the rebels. One wonders what demands Tyler, Ball, and Straw could have had other than this. What we know is that more than half of the rebels dispersed from London, under the regal banners, back to their homes. Wat Tyler, and thirty thousand followers remained in London, however, and they did not stop their siege. Jean Froissart states that when Tyler and his company met face to face with the King, he obstinately demanded the same terms to which the King had already agreed.[30] He follows the episode of Tyler’s rambling demands and the King’s cool patience, by telling us that Tyler acted like a fool before the King. He spoke boldly and crassly, he rinsed out his mouth with water and spit brutally in front of King Richard II. He even took a large draught of ale in defiance of the King. Perhaps this is precisely what did happen, and Froissart related it with verisimilitude. The biased unreliability, however, of Froissart regarding post-plague economic conditions together with the motivations of the serf class, causes one to doubt the account. The episode is carefully constructed to make of Wat Tyler, and the whole revolt, an unsophisticated bumpkin leading a group of common, unreasonable, men. Were this a bar fight over the stakes of tab, perhaps Froissart’s dismissal would be sufficient. Here were thirty-thousand discontented members of the working class remaining in London in arms when the offer of safe escort, amnesty, and perpetual freedom had been given. There seems to be more to Tyler’s persistence than Froissart would let on. We know certainly that Tyler had bowed to Richard at Mile’s End, and promised the King to gather any known traitors against the crown.[31] That within a day a man equal to the task of leading tens of thousands of people would obstinately oppose the King for no reason other than his own brutishness seems unlikely. Here again we have an undeniable fact that helps us to speculate more solidly. In the very next parliament, the nobles, even those of the Commons, were eager to express that the King had no authority to grant any part of the patents he signed that day. Parliament vowed to die before agreeing to the manumission of serfs. One suspects that Tyler knew this, and knew the disposition of parliament, and that this is why he stayed in London with his thirty thousand and remained unsatisfied with Richard’s letters.
While immediate changes did not occur concerning the condition of servitude in England, the Peasants’ Revolt demonstrated the fragility of the feudal power structure. Concerns were more diverse, and the concerned were more powerful than in previous centuries. From the Peasants’ Revolt through the coronation of Henry VII, kings did not have the luxury of ignoring dissidents. 1381 taught everyone that status must be maintained, and cannot merely be assumed. Another major progression in the evolution of parliament was the ascendency of the House of Commons. This demonstrated the rising power of the Third Estate in post plague, post Peasants’ Revolt, years, and also the crippling demand on the powers of the monarchy as presently constituted. Centuries of bias have distorted our view of the events of the Peasants’ Revolt. It was an episode of extreme and exorbitant violence, but of just causes also.
Bibliography
Allmand, Christopher. The Hundred Years War England and France at War c. 1300- c. 1450. Revised Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Barker, Juliet. 1381: The Year of the Peasants' Revolt. Boston: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Bradwardine, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas. In The Age of Chivalry, by Arthur Bryant, 390. New York: Penguin Publishing Company, 1963.
Burke, Edmund. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Sixth. Edited by Thomas H D Mahoney. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc Library of Liberal Arts, 1955.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Nun's Priest's Prologue and Tale (ca. 1400)." In The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by V A Kolve, & Glending Olson, 269-285. New York: W W Norton & Company, Inc, 2005.
Cowie, Leonard. The Black Death and the Peasants' Revolt. London: Wayland Publishers, 1972.
Dunn, Alastair. The Peasants' Revolt: England's Failed Revolution of 1381. London: Tempus Publishing, 2004.
Froissart, Jean. Chronicles of Froissart (1400). Edited by John Joliffe. Translated by John Joliffe. New York: Pearson Longman, 1969.
Geoffrey le Baker. In The Black Death, by Phillip Ziegler, 15. New York: Penguin, 1970.
Gower, John. In The Medievel Village, by G G Coulton, 87. New York: Simon Knopf, 1925.
Knighton, Henry. Description of the Peasants' Revolt (1381). Vol. I: to 1688, in The Past Speaks Sources and Problems in English History, edited by Lacey Baldwin Smith, & Jean Reeder Smith, 202-205. Lexington, Massachusetts: Heath and Company, 1993.
Knighton, Henry. "The Cheapness of Everything." In Peasants' Revolt, by R B Dobson, 59. New York: W W Norton & Company, Inc, 1983.
Paine, Thomas. "Rights of Man (February 1791)." In Common Sense and Other Writings, by Thomas Paine, edited by J M Opal, 49-85. New York: W W Norton & Company, Inc, 2012.
Robert of Avesbury. "An Account of the Plague Years." In The Black Death, by Philip Ziegler, 14. New York: Penguin, 1970.
Roberts, Clayton, David Roberts, and Douglas R Bisson. A History of England. Fifth. Vol. II: Prehistory to 1714. II vols. London: Pearson Longman Educators, 2009.
St Anselm of Canterbury. "Proslogium." In The Making of the Middle Ages, by R W Southern, 109. London: Signet Books, 1959.
Villani, Matteo. "Those Few Discreet Folk." In The Black Death, by Phillip Ziegler, 263. New York: Penguin, 1970.
Walsingham, Thomas. Vol. I: Prehistory to 1714, in A History of England, by Clayton Roberts, David Roberts, & Douglas R Bisson, 174. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2009.
Wycliffe, John. Concerning the Pope's Power (1376). Vol. I: From Ancient Times to the Enlightenment, in Sources of the Western Tradition, edited by Marvin Perry, Joseph R Peden, & Theodore H Von Laue, translated by Alfred J Andrea, 270-271. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
Comments