To what extent was The Peasant's Revolt a direct result of The Black Death?

To what extent was The Peasant’s Revolt a direct result of The Black Death?

The Peasant’s Revolt was the greatest mass rebellion in British history. Throughout June and July of 1381, up to 60,000 men and women all over the country from Yorkshire to Kent ran riot across the land causing chaos and destruction. As peasants from across England marched towards London, they destroyed tax records, killed poll tax collectors, and besieged castles. After being let down by the King’s officials, the peasants stormed the city, breaking open Fleet Prison and massacring lawyers and foreign merchants. The rebels eventually met with the young King Richard II at Mile End on June 14th, and made their demands. The King agreed to meet these, including the abolition of the poll tax and the lowering of land rent. While this meeting took place however, several other peasants had invaded the Tower of London and beheaded several men they deemed to be traitors. In a following meeting, Wat Tyler – the leader of the rebellion – was killed and the remaining peasants were sent home.

Although this rebellion proved to be largely unsuccessful and in the end was crushed brutally by King Richard II’s troops, it still remains a landmark in British history. This is perhaps because of the sheer strength of discontent brewing among the peasants of England for the uprising to start in the first place. So what caused this discontent? What was it that actually caused The Peasant’s Revolt? There is little debate that the rebellion was triggered by the ‘hated poll tax’ enforced by King Richard II, but what I intend to investigate here are what other causes contributed to the unrest.

There are always long term factors involved in causing any event in history. Perhaps the most prominent factor involved in creating the discontent that led to The Peasant’s Revolt is the long term one – The Black Death. The great plague of 1347 devastated much of Europe, wiping out as much as a third of Britain’s population. This had a huge effect on the survivors of the disease, so much so that society’s hierarchy was completely altered in during the following years. Before the epidemic swept across the continent, the feudal system, which had been in place since William the Conqueror took power in 1066, had worked effectively as a way of governing the country. Peasants worked on their lord’s land, owned as much by the lord as the land was. These villeins had very few rights, could not own their own land, and were answerable entirely to the lord who owned them. After the Black Death, the position of these poorest peasants changed dramatically. Because such a significant amount of the population had been completely wiped out, there was a huge shortage of labour. As a result of this, agricultural workers found themselves in an entirely new and considerably more favourable position – suddenly they were in control, they could charge for their services and move around more or less wherever they pleased. In 1351 the Statute of Labourers was passed to try to combat this growing independence. It involved a ceiling on wages, and meant that landowners could demand that a payment be made in labour as opposed to money. In spite of this, in the following years the newly founded middle class would emerge, with peasants finding themselves with increasing power. Small businesses emerged – a prime example being the growing native fabric industry. With this however, society was becoming further polarised; the gulf between the rich and the poor was growing. The wealthier peasants took advantage of the disturbances in the hierarchy caused by the destruction that was the Black Death, while the poorer peasants grew more dependant and more impoverished. This class polarisation, creating advantages for the newly formed middle class, the ability of this middle or yeomen class to mobilise themselves and make their services more widely available as they wished, and capital gain because of the economic situation were the legacy of the terrible disease, and all factors in contributing to the Peasant’s Revolt, which was to follow less than half a century after the outbreak of the plague.

This is a preview of the whole essay

So it seems to be clearly evident that the Black Death caused the Peasant’s revolt. Had the changes in society brought about by the plague not occurred, the yeomen would not have had the ability, or indeed the reason to rise up in such a way. However, this argument does not take into account the other factors that undoubtedly contributed to the discontent of the peasantry, leading them to rebel in such a way. One such factor is the bad conduct of the hundred years war by the English. The English involvement in the war had left the treasury empty, and the nobility grew tired of paying for the conflict. As a solution to this, John of Gaunt imposed a new tax as of 1377. This poll tax as designed to cover the increasing cost of the war, and to be paid by everybody – not only landowners, but for the first time, peasants as well. This supposed one off tax was so successful that it became anything but a short term solution; it was in fact repeated three more times. The first tax demanded 4d from every adult, and was raised eventually to 12d per adult. This obviously affected the peasants much more than it did the landowners, who could actually afford to pay the tax. It was even harder on the yeomen though, in the fact that it was paid in cash rather than goods. By 1380, many were hiding from the collectors in an attempt to avoid payment. As little by little less tax was taken, simply because so many peasants were dodging the collectors, those who imposed the tax began to notice, and so sent their collectors out again to return with the full amount from everybody. In a village in Essex called Fobbing, tax collectors arrived a second time only to be met with rioters after they had delivered the message that the tax would have to be paid again – and those who had not paid would have to be paid for by other villagers. This, along with the continuously rising prices after the Black Death proved too much, and the collectors were beaten and driven from the village. As word of this incident spread, peasants from all over the surrounding villages rallied against their landowners, burning houses, tax records and records of debt in a protest against this unfair treatment. Thus the unrest spread, and the march to London began.

This unfair enforcement of the poll tax can be seen as of just as much importance as long-term factors such as the Black Death. With the plague alone, there may have been no spark to trigger the peasants into revolution, and so the peasant’s revolt may not actually have happened. It is also true that the hundred years war, which led to the poll tax being enforced, had very little connection to the pestilence, and therefore it can be argued that this renders it fairly unimportant in contributing to the Peasant’s Revolt. There are also still more factors to be taken into consideration, one of which is the role played by the church.

Respect for the church was rapidly fading, as the effect of the Black Death took it’s toll on the clergy, of whom many of the remaining were badly educated and forced into potions they would not normally have taken. In addition to this, the church was a prosperous establishment as well as a landowner, and wanted to hold on to this wealth. Bishops and abbots tended to side with barons and lords against the peasants in order to keep them under control. Villeins were still forced to work church land, and so had less time for their own, and felt betrayed and exploited by an organisation that should have been supporting them. John Ball, a revolutionary priest at the time, is famous for preaching:

“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?”

He has been identified as one of the leaders of the Peasant’s Revolt, and rebel priests such as this man made the peasant’s desire to rebel even stronger. Ball was deemed so dangerous by John of Gaunt that he was arrested and imprisoned, but freed during the storming of London. Although not deemed the most important factor in contributing to the Peasant’s Revolt, the hatred of the church by the peasants, and indeed some of it’s own clergymen is undoubtedly significant in tipping the scales towards rebellion.

All these factors, along with the inexperience of King Richard II, who was only fourteen years of age at the time of the uprising and certainly taken advantage of by John of Gaunt and the barons who despised the peasantry, contribute to the events which later became known as the Peasant’s Revolt. It seems that one cannot claim that the Black Death was directly responsible for these events; even though it is of great importance, there are simply too many other factors to the contrary involved to justify this argument.

To what extent was The Peasant's Revolt a direct result of The Black Death?

This is a preview of the whole essay

Document Details

Related Essays

To what extent can the Revolt of 1381 be explained as a protest against tax...

To what extent was the 1832 reform act the result of popular pressure

To what extent can it be argued that threats to Henry VII were as a result...

To what extent was Whig/Liberal dominance 1846-68 a result of their free tr...