“O vile and odious by land and sea, you who are not worthy to live when compared with the lords whom ye have attacked; you should be forthwith punished with the vilest deaths were it not for the office ye bear. Go back to your comrades and bear the king’s answer. You were and are rustics, and shall remain in bondage, not that of old, but in one infinitely worse. For as long as we live, and by God’s help rule over this realm, we will attempt by all our faculties, powers, and means to make you such an example of offence to the heirs of your servitude as that they may have you before their eyes, and you may supply them with a perpetual ground for cursing and fearing you.”
In despair at this rough ending to all their cherished hopes of freedom, the Essex peasants made a last attempt to fight for liberty, and on June 28th, at Great Baddow and Billericay, more than 500 fell before the king’s soldiery.
On July 2nd all the charters of manumission and royal pardons were declared formally annulled, and sheriffs were strictly forbidden to release any prisoners. It was not till August 30th an amnesty was granted to those suspected of taking part in the rising. In the autumn parliament refused to ratify the charters, and the lawyers declared that without the consent of parliament the charters were illegal.
So there was an end to all Wat Tyler and the peasants had risen to obtain, and well might it seem that the rising had been in vain.[69]
Yet it was not altogether in vain that John Ball had rung his bell and died for his faith, that Wat Tyler had led the peasant folk of Kent to do battle for freedom. The poll-tax was stopped for one thing. And villeinage was doomed. “The landlords gave up the practice of demanding base services; they let their lands to leasehold tenants, and accepted money payments in lieu of labour; they ceased to recall the emancipated labourer into serfdom or to oppose his assertion of right in the courts of the manor and the county.” (W. Stubbs.)
The great uprising brought out the desire for personal liberty in the labouring people of England that has never since been utterly quenched. It was the first insistence that peasants and serfs were men of England. “It taught the king’s officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years’ time there were very few bondsmen left in England.” (F. York Powell.)
If Wat Tyler died as a man should for the cause he loves, few of those who trampled on the cause of the peasants were to know the paths of peace in later years.
Richard died in prison at the hands of Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son, whom Tyler had let depart in safety when the Savoy was in flames. The Earls of Suffolk and Warwick died exiled fugitives. The Earl of Salisbury, fleeing from Henry V., was hanged in the streets of Cirencester. Chief Justice Tressilian was hanged for a traitor in 1387, and Sir Simon Burley was beheaded.
This worldly wealth is nought perseverant
Nor ever abides it in stabilitie.