Popular rebellions

Socio-economic context

Labourers are able to command higher wages Landowners are struggling to adapt to new

conditions Landowners try to revive feudal services Squeezing of tenants in manorial courts

Poll tax of 1381

Regressive tax, falling on every adult male Higher in 1380 than before Falls hardest in most populous parts of

country, esp. East Anglia After mass tax evasion in first assessment,

the crown insists on harsher enforcement of collection

Chronology of events30 May 1381 – Refusal to pay poll tax in Brentwood, Essex4 – 5 June – Rebellion breaks out in Kent (Dartford)10 June – Rebels arrive in Canterbury12 June – Rebels arrive in Blackheath in London14 June – King meets rebels at Mile End. Execution of Simon Sudbury

(Chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury) and Robert Hales (Treasurer of England).

15 June – fFrther meeting of king and rebels at Smithfield. Killing of Wat Tyler. Outbreak of violence between city militia and rebels

Collapse of rebellion soon thereafter

Uprisings elsewhere

Other uprisings in 1381 in East Anglia, Hertfordshire

These provoke disobedience across southern and midland England

Abbeys of St Albans and Bury of St Edmund prominent targets of urban anger (the monasteries are harsh urban landlords)

Authorities strike back

From 22 June 1381 royal household goes on progress through the counties involved in the uprising – more or less a military campaign

Many who take part are given punishments in court

Still, remarkably few people put to death. Probably the crown is too afraid to take severe reprisals.

Who were the rebels?

Most participants are peasant farmers, with a plot of land.

They are well below gentry status, but are generally not landless labourers.

Slight bias towards the better off. Many of the rebels have played a role in local

government (as reeves, chief pledges, bailiffs, jurors, etc.)

What do the rebels do?

Destruction of court records Attacks on property and manorial estates Personal violence and abuse towards shire

officials, such as JPs (but relatively little bloodshed in regions)

Murder of high-ranking political figures such as Sudbury

Targeting

Very few of the first collectors of the poll tax are persecuted.

Those who enforce the collection of the tax are punished

Mark Ormrod: Peasant uprising is ‘a protest against twenty years of mismanagement’.

Rebels want a return to the law of Winchester, i.e. return to a system of community policing

Ideology

Violence not confined to personal retribution Rebellion cannot be explained solely in terms

of immiseration or widespread serfdom There are general aims – to protect newfound

rights from the encroachment of lords Religious ideas of Christian equality (John

Ball’s sermon)

Jacquerie of 1358

Uprising north of Paris, around the towns of Compiègne and Senlis

Sparked by imposition of tallage by cathedral chapter of Laon.

Participants are mainly rural artisans Appears to be part of wider patterns of anti-noble

aggression, sponsored in part by Etienne Marcel, a bourgeois in charge of Paris government at this time

Ciompi rebellion of 1378

Primarily an urban phenomenon Seems to be an outgrowth of organized forms of

political association among craft workers Leads to the overthrow of patrician government

in Florence in 1378. Replaced with a council of 32 elected by the popolo minuto (labouring classes)

Measures are taken to regulate the wool industry, providing greater protection for workers