(see Chapter 2, note 6)
By the beginning of the fourteenth century, expansion of agricultural production in England had led to a general decline of agricultural prices. The landowning class then sought advantage by demanding payment of rent in cash, rather than in a share of the product of the free tenant. In turn, these rent-paying tenants, if they wanted to expand production, were obliged to pay their workers wages, since the latter were under no feudal obligation to the peasant proprietor or tenant. Thus capitalist relations of production began to be introduced in English agriculture.
The bubonic plague that swept Europe between 1348 and 1351 struck England in August 1348, and within sixteen months it had wiped out one-third to half of the population.1 Inconceivable horror though it was, the plague created such a shortage of labor that it became extremely difficult for landowners to continue to exact feudal labor dues from the villein, or to dictate the wages of labor: “The wages of labour were nearly doubled,” writes Thorold Rogers, “and the profits of capitalist agriculture sank from 20 per cent to nearly zero.”2
The ruling classes sought to reverse this trend by repressive measures, among the earliest of which was the Statute of Laborers of 1350, designed to impose compulsory labor at fixed wages under penalty of jail, hot branding irons, and outlawry. The wage-laborers and villeins struck back. The most common forms of resistance were those of combining for mutual strength and simple flight to other districts. Because this movement was so widespread, and escape so generally successful,3 repressive measures were insufficient remedy for the landowners; they were forced to pay the higher wages and to reduce rents if they were to prevent their crops from rotting in the fields for lack of hands.
In 1381, the ruling classes sought to filch back part of their higher labor costs by the imposition of a one-shilling poll tax on every person above fifteen years of age (except clerics and licensed beggars). It quickly became apparent that they had misjudged the temper and mettle of the people. The result was the Great Rebellion of 1381, more popularly known as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, in honor of its leader.4
The revolt was national in scope. It lasted only one month, June, but in that time “half of England had been in flame.”5 The ranks of the rebels were composed about half of peasants and half of proletarians – rural wage-laborers, and journeymen and apprentices of London and other towns. Most chroniclers estimate their number at from forty to sixty thousand; but the only eyewitness account states that at Blackheath one hundred and ten thousand rebels assembled to confront the king with their demands. They were a disciplined force, and armed; in their ranks were thousands of longbow veterans of the Hundred Years’ War, then in its forty-fifth year.
The lines of revolt converged on London, a metropolis with a population of some 23,000 (males of fifteen years of age and over). On 13 June a rebel army of ten thousand entered London through gates opened by the welcoming proletariat within; by that afternoon, “the rebels were in possession of London, without having had to strike a single blow.”6 Combining xenophobia with anti-feudalism, they killed a large number of the Flemish community of weavers whom the former king had imported and installed in London. Young King Richard II took refuge in the Tower of London with his armed guard and his advisers. His position was so desperate that “he was prepared to grant anything” the rebels were demanding.7
Through the voices of John Ball, the radical priest, and Wat Tyler, their commander-in-chief, the “commons of England” made their demands known: for an end to bondage of villeins and laborers, the revocation of the poll tax, and no more “outlawry” for resistance to forced labor. Tyler addressed the king as “Brother,” and in the royal presence he declared, “there should be equality among all people,” adding only courteously, “save the king.”8
Even as the king parleyed with the rebels and agreed to their demands, he arranged for the assassination of Wat Tyler.9 But he did not dare to revoke the promises he had made; not, that is, until the rebels had decamped from London and dispersed to their homes. Then the king did revoke his promises and sent forth his armed bands to wreak vengeance on the deceived and demobilized rebels, and to inaugurate a period of “pacification” and punishment.
Some commentators seem disposed to disparage the revolt as a factor in bringing feudalism to an end in England. It is true that there were a number of factors contributing to that end, but surely Wat Tyler’s Rebellion was one of them. It barred the way to a raising of the rate of profit by means of feudal dues on the peasantry. Even a prime disparager conceded that in the following century “tenants did not find it impossible to resist pressure from their landlords.”10 Shorter-range goals achieved included the revocation of the attempt to force down wages to the old levels under the provisions of the Statute of Laborers of 1350. These ancient rebels would seem to merit the enthusiasm expressed by Thorold Rogers five centuries after their audacious rising: “The peasant of the fourteenth century struck a blow for freedom … and he won.”11