popular rebellions
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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
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