Riots and Rebels: Popular Protest in Britain from the Peasants' Revolt to Extinction Rebellion

Praise for Nick Rennison

‘Vivid… In this enjoyable slice of popular history, Rennison assembles a month-by-month almanac, including all the most notable moments from science, politics, art and culture’ – GUARDIAN

‘Fascinating and highly readable’ – DAILY MAIL

‘A delightful book… Intelligent and lively’ – SCOTSMAN

‘Entertaining and thoroughly readable canter through the events of a century ago… Fascinating’ – OBSERVER

‘In crisp and evocative snatches, Rennison gives monthly summaries of global events, domestic episodes, newspaper sensations, sporting triumphs and cultural acclaim during 1922’ – SPECTATOR

‘A revealing, kaleidoscopic snapshot of the most important events of a century ago… Rennison succinctly and vividly captures the major upheavals of 1922’ – SUNDAY BUSINESS POST

‘A fast moving and extremely readable book’ – ALL ABOUT HISTORY

‘An enjoyable biography of an important year that serves as another reminder of how much history just twelve months can contain’ – FOREWORD

To my mother Eileen Rennison

Introduction

The British have often liked to think of themselves as a peaceable and phlegmatic nation. Unlike our more excitable neighbours on the Continent, particularly the French, who are always erecting barricades and rioting in the streets, we settle our differences less violently. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, we have long been, and often still are, in the words of one recent history book’s title, ‘a fiery and furious people’. We beheaded one of our kings nearly 150 years earlier than the French sent one of theirs to the guillotine. Even a cursory glance through our history shows that we have not been slow to resort to protests and demonstrations, and that these have, not infrequently, resulted in violence.

Riots and Rebels is an attempt to provide a brief survey of such actions. As the subtitle states, it is about popular protests in England, Scotland and Wales. I have not included Ireland. The nationalist struggles of that country to free itself from English/British rule deserve a book of their own rather than to be subsumed into this one. They also form a territory into which an Englishman should probably tread with caution.

How have I defined ‘popular protest’? I have not included rebellions in which the principal aim of the rebels was to replace the king or queen with another monarch. These strike me as being more the result of conflict within the nation’s elite rather than any expression of popular protest. Thus the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685 was largely an attempt to replace the Catholic king James II with the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son. The Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 were risings against the newly installed Hanoverian dynasty by supporters of the supplanted Stuart dynasty. By contrast, the Pilgrimage of Grace in the 1530s, say, was an expression of ordinary people’s dismay at changes in religious practices and a slump in their economic fortunes. The crowds that gathered at St Peter’s Field in Manchester in 1819, only to be attacked by mounted yeomanry, were there to demand, among other things, reform of parliament and the franchise.

I have begun with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. There were, of course, examples of communal violence in England before that date. In 1196, a clearly charismatic individual named William FitzOsbert declared himself a champion of the poor and was the focus of what amounted to a minor uprising in London. It was quickly suppressed and FitzOsbert was executed, together with nine of his followers. In Oxford and Cambridge, rivalry between ‘town’ and ‘gown’ sometimes ended in bloodshed. The worst example took place in Oxford on 10 February 1355, St Scholastica’s Day, when two students named Walter Spryngheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, drinking in a town tavern, complained about the quality of the wine and beat up the pub’s landlord. In revenge, the landlord gathered together friends to attack the students. Other students rallied to the support of their peers and, in the escalating brawling that ensued, nearly 100 people, from both ‘town’ and ‘gown’ were killed. However, it seems logical to start in 1381 with an uprising that undoubtedly started among, and was led by, ordinary people, the kind of individuals who do not always feature in the history books.

There is a temptation to believe that protests in the past were mostly on behalf of causes of which today we would approve. This is very definitely not the case. Over the centuries, bigotry has proved as strong a motivating force for demonstrations as, say, reforming zeal. We can, with hindsight, applaud the commitment of those who fought for the right to vote or campaigned for peace but it’s as well to remember that, for example, the Gordon Riots grew out of anti-Catholic protests and that foreigners have very often been the target for violence in popular disturbances. And, before we congratulate ourselves on our greater tolerance for difference today, we should remind ourselves that the most recent riots in Britain at the time of writing – those which followed the terrible killing of three small girls in Southport – were fuelled by racism and xenophobia.

Note: When I have quoted from older documents, spellings have been modernised to make the meaning clearer.

Medieval Rebellion

‘There is a complete absence of large-scale popular rebellions before the 1300s. Around the mid-fourteenth century, something happened across Europe that transformed lower-level struggles between landowners and those who worked the land into mass revolt.’

Edward Vallance

Peasants’ Revolt 1381

In the wake of the Black Death, in which somewhere between a third and a half of the population had lost their lives, those peasants who had survived the pestilence had a new bargaining power. Labour shortages put them in a stronger position. This was not to the liking of large landowners and, in 1351, Edward III’s parliament had passed the Statute of Labourers, an attempt not only to get peasants to work for pre-1348 wages but also to prevent workers from moving from one place to another in search of better terms and pay. Unsurprisingly, this was deeply resented by those it affected and was a simmering cause of anger amongst the peasant classes for decades. The first seeds of the Peasants’ Revolt had been sown. (I have continued to use the familiar term for the events of 1381, although some contemporary historians consider it a misnomer since craftsmen, tradesmen and artisans in the towns as well as the rural peasantry played a significant part in them.)

The final and most powerful motivation for rebellion was provided by the series of poll taxes levied to finance the ongoing war in France. Three such taxes were imposed in the space of a mere four years. The third of these, passed by parliament in 1380, was for a shilling for every adult, and the tax began to be collected across the country in April of the following year. It was hugely unpopular and there was large-scale avoidance of it. The crown stepped up its efforts to prevent this but, in the south-east at least, they backfired. On 30 May 1381, the Peasants’ Revolt began in Brentwood, Essex after the arrival of royal commissioners under a man named John Bampton to look into evasion of this third poll tax. Many of the nearby towns and villages refused point blank to cooperate with them and Bampton, fearing for his life, eventually fled. Success in driving Bampton out encouraged a larger rising and thousands prepared to march on London. Other counties also began to experience disorder. In Kent, trouble was sparked by the arrest of one Robert Belling who was imprisoned in Rochester Castle. Rebels stormed the castle and freed him. The first mention of Wat Tyler occurs at this moment and, by early June, he is clearly the leading figure among the Kentish rebels. Tyler’s origins are unclear but he seems to have been around 40 years of age and to have come from either Maidstone or perhaps Dartford. He probably worked at the trade which provided his surname but he may also have had military experience and fought in France as a longbowman. His first move, once he had assumed leadership of the rebels, was to march his men to Canterbury before they turned towards London, gathering more recruits to the uprising as they travelled.

Apart from Tyler, the most prominent figure in the uprising was John Ball, a priest who had been a thorn in the side of the church and state authorities since the 1360s because of his egalitarian views and supposedly heretical beliefs. He was released from Maidstone jail by the Kentish rebels. It was Ball who wrote the famous words, which have echoed down the centuries for radical thinkers: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men by nature were created alike, and our bondage or servitude came in by the unjust oppression of naughty men.’

On 12 June, the Kentish rebels reached Blackheath where they gathered in force. Although the rebellion was, in the words of one historian, ‘not regicidal in its intent’, the young king, Richard II, was persuaded to take refuge in the Tower. On the following day, Tyler’s men entered the city from the south. At the same time rebels from Essex were approaching the city from the north. Both forces caused mayhem. In Smithfield, they attacked buildings owned by the Knights of the Order of St John, knowing that their prior, Sir Robert Hales, as Lord High Treasurer, was the man most responsible for the collection of the hated poll taxes. The Savoy Palace, the property of the king’s uncle, John of Gaunt, another man seen as heavily implicated in the imposition of the tax, was burned and its contents ransacked. According to a possibly apocryphal story recounted by the much later chronicler, John Strype, some of the rebels entered the building’s wine cellars, where ‘they drank so much of sweet wines, that they were not able to come out in time, but were mured in with wood and stones, that walled up the doors, where they were heard crying and calling seven days after, but none came to help them out until they were dead.’ On 14 June, other houses were burned, and prisoners were released from jail. Many lawyers were physically attacked and foreigners, especially Flemish merchants, became targets for the mob’s wrath. Thomas Walsingham, a contemporary chronicler, wrote that he had heard ‘from a trustworthy witness’ that ‘thirty Flemings were violently dragged out of the church of the Austin friars… and executed in the open street.’

Earlier that morning the king met a delegation of the rebels at Mile End and agreed to the majority of their demands. He asked that they return to their homes in peace and significant numbers did indeed depart the city. However, on the same day, other rebels burst into the Tower of London and into its Chapel of St John the Evangelist, where they seized Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was closely associated with the most recent poll tax. Sudbury was dragged to Tower Hill, together with Sir Robert Hales, the country’s Treasurer, and there both were beheaded by a series of sword blows to the neck.

Richard’s government renewed efforts to persuade the rebels to leave the city. The king and his entourage met with Tyler and his Kentish men at Smithfield on 15 June. There are conflicting accounts of what happened but it appears that, after an initially amicable encounter between the two sides, something went badly wrong. Tyler behaved in what was seen as an insufficiently respectful manner towards the king; one of the king’s men insulted the rebel leader, calling him ‘the greatest thief and robber in all of Kent’. At some point, William Walworth, the Lord Mayor of London, fearing that Tyler might harm the king attempted to arrest him. Tyler struck out with his dagger but Walworth was wearing armour. Unharmed, he stabbed the peasant leader in the neck and somebody else in the king’s entourage ran him through with a sword. Mortally wounded, Tyler was carried away by some of his followers but was found and brought back to Smithfield where he was beheaded. Deprived of their leader, the rebels lost their fight and most began to disperse.

However, Tyler’s death did not mean the end of the revolt. There was further violence to come. The king’s forces defeated the Essex rebels on 28 June in a battle near Billericay where as many as 500 of the peasant soldiers were killed. At about the same time, rebels in East Anglia were crushed in a confrontation with heavily armed troops loyal to the king and led by Henry le Despenser, the so-called ‘Fighting Bishop’ of Norwich. According to one contemporary chronicler, ‘The warlike priest, like a wild boar gnashing its teeth, spared neither himself nor his enemies.’ On 13 July, John Ball was captured in Coventry and, after a brief trial, he was hanged, drawn and quartered at St Albans two days later. His head was put on display at London Bridge. In the aftermath of the revolt, with the rebels no longer a threat, Richard, or his advisers, lost little time in reneging on all the promises he had originally made to them. ‘Rustics you were and rustics you are still,’ he is reputed to have said, ‘you will remain in bondage, not as before but incomparably harsher.’ Yet England was not as it was before. The Peasants’ Revolt shook the upper classes of medieval society to their core. As the historian Gerald Harriss wrote, ‘political society had always lived in fear of social revolution, and in 1381 it peered into the abyss and took heed.’

Jack Cade’s Rebellion 1450

Much of the popular unrest in the first half of the fifteenth century was underpinned by religious beliefs. The Lollards were religious radicals and followers of the preacher John Wyclif who initially enjoyed some support amongst society’s upper echelons. However, attempts to condemn their ‘heresy’ and the banning of their English translation of the Bible drove some of them into revolt. In 1414, Sir John Oldcastle, a former friend of Henry V and reputedly one of the models for Shakespeare’s Falstaff, led an attempted Lollard coup which was defeated with some ease. Oldcastle himself escaped and went on the run. He was captured in Wales more than three years later, transported to London and executed.

There was a further Lollard rising in 1431 which was swiftly repressed and its ringleaders executed but a more considerable crisis for Henry VI’s government came in 1449–50. This had little to do with heresy or religious unorthodoxy. Its causes were more material than spiritual. Military failures abroad and tax rises at home provided the catalysts for rebellion. In January 1450, a labourer named Thomas Cheyne who had taken to calling himself ‘Bluebeard the Hermit’ led a brief rebellion in Kent. Abbey buildings in Canterbury were attacked but the response of the authorities was immediate and decisive. Cheyne, who had only a few hundred followers at most, was swiftly captured and executed. His abortive revolt was, however, the precursor of a far more serious insurrection that arose in the same county a few months later. At its head was a man named Jack Cade. As with other leaders of medieval and Tudor rebellions, such as Wat Tyler, there are various, often conflicting stories about his background. He may have been born in Ireland. He possibly spent time in France, fleeing an accusation that he had murdered a woman in Sussex. He was even rumoured to be a sorcerer of the black arts who could summon the Devil. What is certainly true is that he emerged as the leader of a Kentish rebellion in May and June 1450. There had been earlier