Wat Tyler and the Peasant Revolt
1381
Authorities: Walsingham; Knyghton—(Rolls Series); Wright’s Political Songs—(Rolls Series); Froissart; Professor Oman—Great Revolt of 1381, containing translation of a chronicle of the rising in the Stow MSS., first published in English Historical Review, 1895; André Réville—Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs (1898); Dr. G. Kriehn—American Review, 1902; Edgar Powell—Rising of 1381 in East Anglia; Dr. James Gairdner—Lollardy and the Reformation; G. M. Trevelyan—England in the Age of Wycliff; J. Clayton—Wat Tyler and the Great Uprising.
KING RICHARD II.
(From the Panel Painting in the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.)
WAT TYLER AND THE
PEASANT REVOLT 1381
The Peasant Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was not only the first great national movement towards democracy, it was the first uprising of the English people in opposition to all their hitherto recognised rulers in Church and State, and it was the first outburst in this land against social injustice.[59]
The Black Death in 1349 and the pestilence that ravaged the country in 1361 and 1369 upset the old feudal order. The land was in many places utterly bereft of labour, and neither king nor parliament could restore the former state of things. Landowners, driven by the scarcity of labour, went in for sheep farming in place of agriculture, and were compelled to offer an increase of wages in spite of the Statutes of Labourers (1351–1353) which expressly forbade the same:—
“Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three-score years, and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence.”