This week in the Secret History: Anarchy in the UK - 1381

The murder of Wat Tyler,
peasant leader












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

On this day in 1525 the German Peasants' Revolt was brutally crushed by the combined forces of the nobility and the church. This was the typical fate of a peasants' revolt. But these epical risings by supposedly ignorant and subservient men and women were the first symptoms of a change in consciousness that would eventually sweep their oppressors from power and begin a new age in Europe...

We tend to imagine medieval society as a fixed and immovable hierarchy, where even imagining a different ordering of society wold have been impossible. Not so. The sense of dignity and the desire for freedom are inherent in human nature. Peasant revolts, uprisings of exploited subsistence farmers, whose labor was at the disposal of their feuudal overlords, were in fact fairly common in the late Middle Ages. In Germany alone between 1336 and 1525 there were no less than sixty phases of militant peasant unrest. In the end they were almost always defeated. .

The main demand of the revolutionaries was for the abolishment of serfdom, whereby the poorest of the small farmers were in effect owned and, by law and tradition, exploited by their feudal lord.

Inn the late Middle Ages, the social gap between rich and poor had become extreme, as it is now in the United States. Dress, behaviour, manners, courtesy, speech, diet, education — all became signs of the noble class, making them distinct from others. By the 14th century the nobles had indeed become very different in their behaviour, appearance and values from those "beneath".

"The Peasants' Revolt," "Wat Tyler’s Rebellion," or the "Great Rising of 1381" is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the best documented popular rebellion ever to have occurred during medieval times. The names of some of its leaders, John Ball, Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, are still familiar.

In June 1381, Kentish rebels formed behind Wat Tyler and joined with rebels from Essex and marched on London. When the rebels arrived in Blackheath on June 12, the renegade priest, John Ball, preached a sermon including the famous question that has echoed down the centuries: "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?". (I.e. "While Adam dug, and Eve spun, who then was the Gentleman ?") The following day, the rebels, encouraged by the sermon, crossed London Bridge into the heart of the city. They were betrayed by false promises from King Richard II, their leaders murdered, and the rising crushed.

Even though the revolt itself failed, the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 demonstrated such enormous support that it marked the beginning of the end of serfdom in medieval England. It led to calls for the reform of feudalism in England and an increase in rights for the serf class.

Bond Men Made Free is a highly readable account of peasant revolts in general, and the English Revolt of 1381 in particular, written by one of the foremost current authorities on the subject, Rodney Hilton.