Peasant discontent: long and short-term causes
Why 1381? Building Towards Revolt
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 did not erupt from nowhere. It was the product of decades of accumulated grievances stretching back to the Black Death and even earlier — combined with a specific set of short-term triggers in the late 1370s and early 1380s. Understanding both the long-term causes (the structural injustices of medieval English society) and the short-term catalysts (the Poll Tax, the French Wars) is essential for analysing why this particular moment produced revolt.
Long-Term Causes: The Issue of Serfdom
At the core of the revolt was the continued existence of serfdom. As explored in the previous lesson, the Black Death had created a labour shortage that gave surviving peasants real economic leverage. Many expected that the practical decline of serfdom would be formalised — that they would be freed from their legal obligations to their lords. Instead, the Statute of Labourers (1351) tried to restore the pre-plague order and keep wages down.
Over the following three decades, the tension between peasants who felt they had earned their freedom through their indispensable labour and lords who used the courts to enforce serfdom built steadily. Manorial court records from the 1360s and 1370s show increasing numbers of cases where lords prosecuted peasants for leaving their manors or refusing to perform labour obligations. This legal pressure was a constant source of resentment.
The long-term causes of the Peasants’ Revolt included the continued enforcement of serfdom after the Black Death, the Statute of Labourers (1351) attempting to reverse wage gains, and decades of resentment at the gap between peasants’ economic reality and their legal status as unfree servants of their lords.
The Religious Ideas of John Ball
One of the most influential voices of peasant discontent was John Ball. Ball was a wandering priest who had been repeatedly imprisoned for preaching without licence. His message was simple and explosive: God made all people equal; serfdom was therefore not divinely ordained but a human invention imposed by the rich to exploit the poor.
Ball’s most famous expression of this idea was his rhyme: “When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” — arguing that at the beginning of the world there were no lords and no serfs, only working people. This egalitarian message resonated deeply with peasants who had seen their practical importance to the economy grow while their legal status remained that of property. Ball was in prison at the time of the revolt but was broken out by the rebels, becoming one of its leading voices.
Ball’s ideas intersected with a broader religious ferment in late fourteenth-century England. The theologian John Wyclif (c. 1328–1384) was developing critiques of the Church’s wealth and authority that would later inspire the Lollards. While Wyclif himself was a university theologian and not directly connected to the revolt, the wider climate of questioning Church authority — especially the wealth and worldliness of senior clergy — fed into the atmosphere of discontent that produced 1381.
The Cost of the French Wars
By the late 1370s, the Hundred Years’ War had turned dramatically against England. The gains of the Treaty of Brétigny (1360) had been steadily eroded by French counter-attacks under Charles V. English armies were being driven out of territory won in the previous generation, and the cost of military campaigns was enormous. The Crown needed money, and it needed it fast.
The ordinary taxation of the period fell heavily on the poorest. Parliamentary subsidies, which funded the wars, were assessed on moveable goods — meaning peasants who owned some property paid, while the very poorest contributed nothing and the very richest paid proportionally less than their wealth warranted. The wars drained resources from communities already struggling, and the lack of decisive military victory made the taxation feel like exploitation without return.
The failing French Wars of the late 1370s created a fiscal crisis. Parliament imposed three Poll Taxes between 1377 and 1381 to fund military campaigns. The third Poll Tax of 1380 — collected in 1381 — was set at one shilling per head for every person over fifteen, regardless of wealth, and its deeply unfair flat rate was the immediate trigger for revolt.
The Poll Taxes of 1377-1381
Three Poll Taxes were levied between 1377 and 1381 to fund the French Wars. The first two were less resented because they were graduated — the wealthy paid more. The third Poll Tax, passed in 1380 and collected in early 1381, was deeply different: it imposed a flat rate of one shilling on every person over fifteen. For a lord, one shilling was trivial; for a peasant family, it could represent a week’s wages. Many communities simply refused to pay or hid people from tax collectors.
When the government sent out commissioners to investigate evasion and collect the unpaid tax in 1381, the result was explosive. In Essex and Kent — areas where the Statute of Labourers had been especially aggressively enforced — the arrival of tax commissioners became the final spark.
The Role of Wat Tyler
Wat Tyler emerged as the leading figure of the Kentish rebels in 1381. His exact background is uncertain, but he proved an effective military organiser, leading the march on London and negotiating with Richard II at Mile End. Tyler represented the convergence of specific short-term grievances — the Poll Tax, the French Wars’ failures — with the deeper, longer-term anger about serfdom and inequality that John Ball had given intellectual expression.
The Peasants’ Revolt began in Essex and Kent for specific reasons. Both counties had experienced aggressive enforcement of the Statute of Labourers. Both had relatively prosperous peasant communities with enough resources to organise resistance. Essex was close to the legal records and institutions the rebels targeted in London; Kent was the route through which French raids had recently threatened the coast, making taxation for failed wars especially bitter. The arrival of Poll Tax commissioners in these specific counties acted as the detonator for grievances that had been accumulating for decades.