Revolt Flashcards
Causes
Black Death
- Typical interpretation - seignorial reaction to changes after BD – landlords attempting to reimpose villeinage + serfdom – but only sporadic attempts
- Increasingly interventionist state – legislation being passed to compel individuals to mobilise labour in specific ways, wages, clothing
- Emergence of yeomen, artisans
- Peasants – broad socio-economic span – lots of different kinds of people
- Royal intervention manifested through use of royal agents – people increasingly regulated but people doing regulation out in local communities causing tension
War
Taxation
- Burden of taxation felt more acutely across society
Weak government
- Revolt happens because of weak Kingship
- 2 significant periods of minority (Richard II, Henry VI - + weakness of his Kingship later on)
- Ideas they’re a weak ruler
- Instability caused by Hundred Years War and Wars of the Roses
Religious dissent
- Lollardy
- Reformation
- Implication of religious reform
- Pilgrimage of Grace
- But don’t fall into trap of treating it like a predetermined event and peasants were a homogenous group that had no agency
- Literature has tended to ignore political agency of peasants in the revolt
- Often focus on class struggle – treats peasants as homogeneous, political unit determined by socio-economic conditions
- Sources are from the elites that the masses were revolting against
- Chroniclers = Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Froissart –> portrayed rebels as barbaric, uncivilised vandals
- In reality, rebels were careful about when they deployed violence = rebels deliberately didn’t steal anything from John of Gaunt’s residence to prove they weren’t “thieves or brigands” (Justice, 1994)
- Murder of John Legge = poll tax commissioner
- Members of the commission to extract the poll tax in 1380 were often the targets of violence
Politics
- Popular revolts the main way unsatisafaction with government was expressed (Watts, 2009)
- PR helped by the Good Parliament (1376) (exposed corruption)
- PR = destruction of documents (tax registers, legal documents) - but carefully selected (e.g. didn’t burn down libraries) –> symbolic for their aims
- Loyal subjects of the King
- Saving King from bad council
- Want to return to primitive form of royal monarchy – have direct access to the King
- Sense King is good, reasonable and can be appealed to
- Rebels speak for an idealised political community – the ‘true’ commons
Communication + organisation
- Use of banners and signs – Five Holy Wounds on Pilgrimage of Grace
- Lots of evidence point to sophisticated communication networks – formal and informal
- Revolt was an active political choice, didn’t just rebel by following the crowd
- Not monolithic mass of people – required strategies of communication
Radical preaching – John Ball
– Froissart = believed John Ball to be the leader of the PR and it was his radical preaches that inspired Londoners to rebel, but no one else gives him this much credit
– Henry Knighton = rebels “intended to make him their archbishop” (Dunn, 2012) (but unlikely since Tyler’s demand was 1 bishop and 1 prelate)
– Thomas Walsingham = accuses John Ball of acting by purpose of heresy
– Chroniclers give too much credit to radical preaching, linking it to heresy. They’re aiming to show how religious dissent causes social upheaval – unreliable sources – but show elite / religious attitudes towards the PR
- PR had good degree of organisation
– Walsingham = rebels had 800 horses for transport purposes (Aston, 1994)
– Conflicts chroniclers ideas that they were carrying out random acts of violence
Law + justice
- Popular grievances often focused on access to justice
- Complaints focused on royal agents who abused power + infringed on local privilege
- Rebels claimed to be loyal subjects intervening to save the King from bad council
- About restoring order, not breaking it –> about rebellion not revolution
- 1450 = discontent with inefficiency of royal justice – major factor in revolt (Jack Cade’s rebellion) - bills articulate demand for justice – courts + tribunals being held in different parts of the county where people would have to travel long distances – problem with access to justice
- Rebels often set up alternative courts and try people themselves
- Cade + others took over a tribunal meant to try them and instead tried Henry VI’s advisors, ended up murdering Bishop of Salsbury (embedded in conception of justice)
- 1549 = Kett’s rebellion – led protestant army and formed a camp where he set himself up as a dispenser of justice. Takes on role of surrogate King – starts collecting taxes, about reclaiming forms of justice
- Tyler = “no law other than the law of Winchester” - Statute of Winchester = would give the peasants the right to bear arms and deal with the punishment of criminals
- Tyler = “execute all lawyers, escheators and others who had been trained in the law” (Omrod 1990)
Wales (see Wales)
- Owain Lawgoch claimed to be the Prince of Wales before being assassinated in 1378
- Context of Owain Glyndwr revolt = political instability
– Richard II confiscated lands of three of most important marcher lords and exhaled two for life
– His deposition - By 1903 the revolt was widespread in Wales
- Different to Welsh wars of 13th C = 13th C = Gwynydd’s princes wanted to establish themselves as princes of Wales to give homage to English King, Glyn Dwr wanted independence from England – wanted to make church independent to earl of canterbury
- Many ordinary Welsh people kept their heads down, were subject to intimidation and kidnapped to extract ransoms (Davies, 1989)
- Mix of Welsh squirearchy who supported revolt and who stayed loyal to the English Crown
- Suggests that taking sides during the revolt was influenced by self-interest for the advantaged in society, and self-preservation for the disadvantaged in society
– Many paid Glyndwr and his men protection money to prevent them from raiding them - Not unifying
– Some royal to Crown – generated civil war as well as struggle for independence
– Rhys Davis = most Welsh people sat on the fence as long as possible and would change sides depending on who was winning – most Welsh people trying to survive - The initial revolt in 1400 led to English Parliament demanding harsh repression of the Welsh
