Here’s a quirky group of individuals: Johanna Ferrour, John Ball, Katherine Gamen, Tom Baker, John Wrawe. Their names ring no bells? Then how about Jack Straw or… Wat Tyler? These folk were the ring-leaders of an almighty uprising against authority in 1381. It was commonly called the Peasants Revolt, although many of the rebels, while not gentry by any means, were far from peasants. It was the first uprising of commoners in British history, but not the last. Its trigger? The imposition of an oppressive tax: the Poll Tax.
It’s a fascinating period of history – not only because it demonstrates the underlying “bolshiness” beneath the skin of many English folk, if you push them too far. But also because so much of the action took place where I dwell: the estuarial lands of Essex and Kent.
“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie…”
Of course, the modern reminder of that ancient revolt is the Poll Tax riots of 1990. Older readers may remember the attempted introduction of the fixed Community Charge, nicknamed “the poll tax”, by Mrs. Thatcher’s government. Suffice to say, people did not take well to it. It’s easy to forget just how widespread and angry those protests were, against what was seen as blatant unfairness. Here’s a reminder…
The similarities between the ancient and modern taxes are striking. Both attempted to impose a fixed-value tax, regardless of the underlying circumstances of the taxpayer. In both protests, people took unkindly to the idea that a duke paid the same amount as a dustman – or a peasant. Both governments fixed on the idea that you could raise more money by imposing a flat-rate tax on a bigger pool of people than by taxing a smaller pool of people large amounts. And both taxes, in their own way, had high rates of non-compliance and bloody outcomes.
The 1990 Community Charge was a fixed rate of tax on individuals, rather than on the value of their property, although with some concessions for the poor. Similarly, the 1381 Poll Tax was imposed on individuals, regardless of their income or financial standing. The term “Poll” actually comes from the old Germanic word for “head” – hence our terms, “counting heads” or “taking a poll”.
Groat expectations
Richard II’s government in 1381 was desperate to raise revenues – England was 40 years into the Hundred Years War with France, and wars cost money. Taxes to raise funds for the war had started three years earlier, but had been graduated according to status. The start-point was four old pence (4d) – otherwise known as a “groat”, for a commoner. Quite steep, when you consider that a lowly worker earned around half a groat for a day’s labour. But at least a knight or a noble paid more, according to their station. So, grumbles, but no mass uprisings.
Now fast forward to 1381, and Richard’s “Maggie moment”. He imposed a new tax with a flat rate tax of a shilling for every adult – three groats! A mere inconvenience to a knight or noble, but pretty much a week’s wages for a peasant living on the edge of poverty.
Imagine, early in 1381, Richard rubbing his hands as he sent the tax collectors on their way. Logically, he expected far greater revenues than earlier collections, because the tax was spread far between far more people. To his horror, the collectors came back from all corners of the country, with nowhere near the expected revenue. And worryingly, he started to hear of a widespread refusal to pay, in the county of Essex.
Richard duly set up another commission to go and sort out this little local difficulty. Needless to say, things did not go well.
TOWIE
Commissioner Thomas Bampton arrived in Brentwood, Essex on 30th May 1381, and summoned the potential tax payers from the surrounding towns and villages, When they gathered, he demanded they immediately cough up the monies owing. The good folk of Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford-le-Hope, led by Thomas Baker…..a baker!, would have none of it. So, Bampton ordered his “serjeants”, or hench-men, to arrest the ringleaders and trouble makers. He drastically underestimated the perils of messing with angry Essex boys. The end result: riots and mayhem in Brentwood. Worse than Sugar Hut on a Saturday night. Bampton and his serjeants, under threat, fled back to London in fear of their lives.
Richard immediately sent in the heavies. Sir Robert Bealnap arrived in Essex a few days later, to capture the rioters and try and punish them in court. The locals were unimpressed. Events escalated rapidly, resulting in Sir Robert being held to ransom. He was only released after swearing on the bible not to oppress common folk ever again. He also hot-footed it back to London.
By now, local anger had reached boiling point, and escalated into real violence. At Brentwood, Bampton’s remaining clerks were captured and beheaded, with their heads paraded on poles. A similar fate was bestowed on the jurors that Bealnap had appointed for his abortive court.
Wat of Essex…or Kent?
And somehow, in the mysterious way that these things happen, a rabble became an army. In early June, the Essex men sailed to Kent, assisted, historians believe, by Thames mariners, sympathetic to their cause (no Dartford tunnel in those days). They joined the Kent rebels in the capture of Canterbury and Rochester.
And now we see the emergence of a leader, that enigmatic figure, Wat Tyler. Nobody’s sure where he actually came from. In Essex, he was considered by most to be a man of Kent. In Kent, word was he was from Essex. With little doubt though, he originated from a marshy village on the mudflats on one side of the Thames or the other.
What had started as a local spat about an unfair tax had turned into a general uprising – initially in Essex and Kent, soon followed by other areas of the country – against the injustices of the feudal system. Pressure had been building for a while. Why? As any student of economics – or Bill Clinton – will tell you, “It’s the economy, stupid”.
“It’s the economy, stupid”
It all began with the Black Death in the late 1340s. Probably the greatest pestilence ever known in Europe. In the UK the mortality rate is now estimated as between 40 and 60 percent of the population. Entire villages were abandoned. Animals were left in the fields to die, for lack of anyone to tend them. Peasants were suddenly in short supply, and the land lay untilled.
As our economics student would tell you, scarcity of resources drives up prices. Peasants were in demand, and started to flex their muscles, no longer content to work at subsistence level on their lord’s land. They demanded higher wages, and suddenly realised they might pick and choose where to place their labour.
The Nobles higher up the feudal food chain who depended on such cheap labour huffed and puffed. Over the next few decades the government tried to stem the increase of worker’s power through restrictive labour laws, such as one preventing movement of peasants into towns to take up apprenticeships. They wanted workers to stay put on the land.
So the economic tensions between peasants and masters set the powder keg that exploded with the introduction of the hated poll tax.
When Adam delved
Back to Wat, wreaking havoc in Kent. One of prisoners he freed from prison in Canterbury was a Colchester-born travelling priest named John Ball. He’d been banged up for incitement to riot. He had preached a sermon vehemently criticising the government for its repressive laws – including the one banning town apprenticeships. He preached for justice and equality for the common man. Balls’ most famous words still resonate today:
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
By mid June, the rebels had travelled to London, the Kent men gathering at Blackheath, and the Essex contingent at Mile End. Old scores were settled, with buildings burned and enemies dispatched. Jack Straw, a fellow leader with Wat, marched to Highbury manor and burned it down. (Obviously not an Arsenal fan). The rebels fired and destroyed Lambeth Palace. They stormed London and freed prisoners from the Newgate and Fleet prisons.
Wat finally met with King Richard on the 15th June at Smithfield, in the City of London. Such was the fear of a mass insurrection, Richard listened, and agreed to Wat’s demands: no more unfair taxes, and the end of serfdom. All seemed to be going well – then it started to go horribly wrong. Some belligerent supporters of Richard took offence at Wat’s over-familiarity with the king, one thing led to another, and Wat, after giving as good as he got, was killed, decapitated, and his head stuck on a pole on London Bridge.
Wat’s army dispersed in panic, but many were hunted down and killed. John Ball was found and executed in St. Albans. The Essex peasants fled back home, and a contingent made a desperate last stand against the king’s army at Norsey Wood in Billericay, where several hundred were killed.
Law and Order
And then the legal clear-up began. Later that year, Richard sent commissions into Kent and Essex, to try the guilty and to reestablish law and order. You can still examine the court records – I found transcripts of local cases at the public library – and they make fascinating reading. A common problem the lawyers had to sort out was establishing who owned or rented pockets of land. The rioters had deliberately burned records, to destroy evidence of who owed feudal servitude to local landowners.
So, for example, in June, local rioters attacked the manor house at Southchurch, near Southend (the building is still there, now a local museum). In September 1381, in the aftermath of the clear-up, William and Joan Paperel petitioned for the lands to be legally re-registered as theirs – the paperwork had been destroyed.
Girl power
What of the women, Johanna Ferrour and Katherine Gamen, mentioned at the very start of this post? They were but two of many females involved in the revolt. The poll tax hit single women and widows especially hard. It was desperate, having to find tax money when you probably had no income coming in from a husband’s labours. So women joined the cause, and didn’t hold back in fighting.
On the 14th June, Johanna led an attack on the Tower of London, captured the Lord Chancellor, Simon of Sudbury, and had him beheaded. (You can view his mummified skull at St. Gregory’s church in his home town of….Sudbury of course ). She also led the attack which burnt down the Savoy Palace in London, where the Strand is now. Recalling the old adage of sheep and lambs, she was also accused of stealing a duke’s chest of gold from the palace. What a woman!
As for Katherine, she was a key member of the Suffolk faction of peasants, led by John Wrawe. They marched to the house in Bury St. Edmunds of John Cavendish, a hated enforcer of local feudal labour. John tried to escape by boat from nearby Lakenheath. Quick-thinking Katherine unhitched the boat and pushed it away from the bank, preventing his escape. John was captured, and also lost his head.
Why don’t we remember the Johannas and Katherines, and the other women fighters, when we look back at the revolt? Because, as previous posts have said, history is written by the powerful, by the winners. You can only write, if you’re literate. In mediaeval times, that meant generally the chaps, and the rich ones at that. It’s good to celebrate the memory of those women, named and unnamed, who fought to make their world a little better.
Hiding in plain sight
It all happened so long ago, but clues to the uprising are still found in these Estuary parts. The place names mentioned in the chronicles are all still there, and quite recognisable with a squinted eye, or a good translation. Sleepy little villages like Fobbing and Corringham, Bocking and Cressing now, were hotbeds of sedition and rebellion back then.
You can find tributes to the leaders who lost their lives across Essex and Kent. Like in Wat Tyler Country Park, just a stone’s throw from Fobbing in Essex, where Tom Baker said “enough!” to the hated tax. 
A poignant memorial to the rebels stands in the park, looking over Vange creek to Tom’s hamlet of Fobbing.
The Wat Tyler pub in Dartford. That’s where the Kent rebellion began, when the king’s tax collector shockingly tried to lift the skirts of a young girl to determine if she was old enough to be taxed. Her father took great offence, and then the fighting started.
And of course, another more famous pub, Jack Straw’s Castle on Hampstead Heath. Legend has it that Jack addressed a crowd on the heath from the top of a hay wain, which was immediately nominated as his castle!
“The Peasants Revolt” micropub , in Brentwood, Essex commemorates the uprising with a rather good beer brewed by the Billericay Brewery Company..
I’ve walked often in Norsey Woods, and tried to conjure the presence of those poor souls who fought for their lives over 600 years ago. No luck, but perhaps it’s too long ago. And in general, history judged that the rebellion failed and did little to change the course of world events. It was the force of economics of course that eventually did that.
Richard was merciless in his condemnation of the rebels:
“Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were, and rustics you are still; you will remain in bondage, not as before, but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity”.
Legacy
And yet – perhaps a rebellion doesn’t have to succeed to influence the future. Perhaps it’s enough that it happened. If Wat were here today he would gasp in amazement to see how political power had shifted from the monarchy and nobility to the descendants of his fellow commoners. We take our democracy for granted, but it was hard fought for.
