Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. One of
Speaker 1: the kind of weird things to come out of the
Speaker 1: ongoing COVID nineteen pandemic has been a phenomenon that I
Speaker 1: am liking to call bad takes about the Black Death. UM.
Speaker 1: There are various articles and tweets and comments on our
Speaker 1: Facebook page that are all about how the Black Death
Speaker 1: was a good thing actually, because sure, while it did
Speaker 1: kill as much as half of Europe and also did
Speaker 1: everything from increasing wages to literally causing the Renaissance. UM,
Speaker 1: medieval and early modern historians have done so much debunking
Speaker 1: of these ideas through tweets and blog posts and various
Speaker 1: op eds, and today we have a topic that really
Speaker 1: illustrates that there is not some kind of a switch
Speaker 1: they got flipped that magically turned the Black Death into
Speaker 1: the Renaissance. Like. It's not like in a video game
Speaker 1: where you grind up a certain amount of experience and
Speaker 1: then you unlock the Renaissance. It did not work that way.
Speaker 1: This incident has been known as what Tyler's rebellion and
Speaker 1: as the peasants revolt of One. Today it is more
Speaker 1: often called the uprising of One or the Great Rising.
Speaker 1: And I just want to take a minute. I can
Speaker 1: imagine people listening to this episode and thinking that maybe
Speaker 1: we chose it because of parallels to the current situation
Speaker 1: where has there has been a lot of violence and
Speaker 1: destruction and property damage and some in some cases deaths
Speaker 1: um through this ongoing week of protests and violence that
Speaker 1: have been happening in the United States. Um, this episode
Speaker 1: was actually written the week of May eighteen, So if people,
Speaker 1: uh see parallels between this episode and what's currently happening,
Speaker 1: they are not something we tried to pick as some
Speaker 1: kind of political statement, right. Uh. I also feel like
Speaker 1: we could do an entire episode of this wasn't a
Speaker 1: magic switch, right, Like, there are a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of the way that history is taught is that way
Speaker 1: where it's like this happened and it catalyzed this, And
Speaker 1: that's true to some extent, but it's not as though
Speaker 1: everything shifts gears suddenly. It's a very slow progression. Well,
Speaker 1: in one of the op eds that's that's really been
Speaker 1: focused on debunking this whole idea since pretty clearly that
Speaker 1: a lot of ap world history classes have really framed
Speaker 1: the idea that the Black Death caused the Renaissance, but
Speaker 1: it's like it's a huge oversimplification. It will become more
Speaker 1: clear as we get through this episode today, So we're
Speaker 1: not going to dwell in the details of the Black
Speaker 1: Death as an illness, but it is a necessary part
Speaker 1: of the context of this uprising. The Black Death was
Speaker 1: really one piece of a larger pandemic, the Second Plague pandemic,
Speaker 1: which progressed through Asia, Europe, and Africa in waves from
Speaker 1: the fourteenth through the eighteen centuries. The term the Black
Speaker 1: Death was coined in the eighteenth century to describe the
Speaker 1: plague that moved from eastern or Central Asia through Europe,
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, and northern Africa between thirteen forty six and
Speaker 1: thirteen fifty three. The Black Death was truly catastrophic. At
Speaker 1: least a third of the population of Europe died, and
Speaker 1: it was possibly as much as half. In some specific
Speaker 1: regions that was as much as eighty percent. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is really focused on England, and England's population before the
Speaker 1: Black Death had been about sixty people. Afterward, it was
Speaker 1: half that, although some of that drop came from people
Speaker 1: who fled to other parts of Europe to try to
Speaker 1: escape the plague. Between twenty and thirty percent of the
Speaker 1: English nobility died, along with about forty five percent of
Speaker 1: the clergy and between forty and seventy percent of the
Speaker 1: peasant class. In some cases those numbers were even higher.
Speaker 1: And then the disease itself was just horrifying. On top
Speaker 1: of having a high high mortality rate, its progression once
Speaker 1: somebody contracted it was gruesome. Because the plague recurred in
Speaker 1: waves over the course of several years. People also didn't
Speaker 1: know when it was really over. It would seem as
Speaker 1: though the danger had passed, only for another wave of
Speaker 1: illness to strike. And since there were other outbreaks of
Speaker 1: the plague in the decades after the Black Death ended,
Speaker 1: it took generations for the population to really start to recover.
Speaker 1: England was largely a grarian and the land was considered
Speaker 1: to belong to the monarch. The monarch granted land to
Speaker 1: the nobility in exchange for service, including providing soldiers or
Speaker 1: funding at a time of war. This exchange of land
Speaker 1: for some kind of service was replicated on the Lower
Speaker 1: rungs of the social and economic ladder, and this went
Speaker 1: all the way down to freeholders who owned or rented
Speaker 1: small amounts of land, and then the unfree tenants who
Speaker 1: were known as villains, bondsman or surfs, and they were
Speaker 1: legally obligated to work for their landlord and subsist on
Speaker 1: a small plot that they kept for themselves. They were
Speaker 1: not free laborers, they were obligated to do this in
Speaker 1: this land for service system. When a households main tenant died,
Speaker 1: his son or another heir had to pay a fee
Speaker 1: to take his place. In England for a baron, that
Speaker 1: might be a hundred pounds for a peasant. It was
Speaker 1: typically the household's best livestock animal. During the Black Death,
Speaker 1: so many English tenants died that landlords received more livestock
Speaker 1: than they could possibly take care of or use, and
Speaker 1: this was in spite of a livestock plague that had
Speaker 1: previously killed many of these animals. Landlords sold off so
Speaker 1: many surplus animals that the market collapsed because the plague
Speaker 1: was the worst in the summer, and a lot of
Speaker 1: areas there wasn't enough labor alive by the fall to
Speaker 1: harvest the crops. That had been planted in the spring.
Speaker 1: This labor shortage led to food shortages as unharvested crops
Speaker 1: rotted in the fields in the Similarly, not like in
Speaker 1: a video game analogy, there's just not a one to
Speaker 1: one correspondence between how many people it takes to harvest
Speaker 1: the food and how many people that food will feed.
Speaker 1: In normal times, Medieval manners also tended to be relatively
Speaker 1: self contained, with their own blacksmith and their own bakeries
Speaker 1: and their own mills, which tenants were obligated to use.
Speaker 1: If an estate's only blacksmith or miller or brewer died,
Speaker 1: there might not be anybody to replace them, or anybody
Speaker 1: else who really knew how to do that work. Although
Speaker 1: the medieval world wasn't exclusively Christian, the Christian Church was
Speaker 1: colossally powerful. High placed church officials also held high ranking
Speaker 1: government positions, and high ranking nobles were often prominent in
Speaker 1: the church. Aside from that, religion was threaded through virtually
Speaker 1: every aspect of everyday life. But the Black Death started
Speaker 1: to undermine the Church's power. Because the disease spread so easily,
Speaker 1: the most compassionate and most involved clergy, the ones who
Speaker 1: really tried to comfort and care for the sick and
Speaker 1: their families. They were among the plague's first victims. In general,
Speaker 1: the clergy who survived were the ones who had not
Speaker 1: been doing that work. The plague also really devastated monastic
Speaker 1: communities where people lived in very close quarters. This caused
Speaker 1: such a huge labor shortage within the church that it
Speaker 1: had to relax its criteria for clergy, and that led
Speaker 1: to an influx of people who were more interested in
Speaker 1: the income or living that came with the position than
Speaker 1: in actually carrying out a clergyman's duties. People became more
Speaker 1: distrustful of clergyman and of the Church and its involvement
Speaker 1: in everyday life, especially in the face of devastations so
Speaker 1: immense that people wondered if God was punishing them. Aside
Speaker 1: from all of that and the Black Deaths immediate aftermaths,
Speaker 1: so many people had died and so much had been
Speaker 1: disrupted that things turned into a state of near lawlessness.
Speaker 1: And this brings us to some of the things that
Speaker 1: have led people to argue that the Black Death was
Speaker 1: maybe a good thing, although none of them are all
Speaker 1: that straightforward. Before the Black Death, England was in the
Speaker 1: middle of a land crunch in addition into an increasing population.
Speaker 1: Leading up to the thirteenth century, people had divided their
Speaker 1: estates among their heirs, which had resulted in people holding
Speaker 1: smaller and smaller amounts of land. This led to a
Speaker 1: shift to primogeniture, in which the eldest son was the
Speaker 1: only one to inherit, but that shift couldn't really undo
Speaker 1: what had happened in those earlier generations. After the Black Death, though,
Speaker 1: a lot of families were able to reconsolidate their holdings
Speaker 1: among the people who survived, and then in some cases,
Speaker 1: to increase those holdings further through inter marriage with other
Speaker 1: neighboring families. People went from having estates that were just
Speaker 1: too small to be profitable to having ones that were
Speaker 1: actually lucrative. Again, people who had not been able to
Speaker 1: acquire land at all because there just wasn't any were
Speaker 1: able to buy or rent these newly available parcels. That said,
Speaker 1: because of the labor shortage, it wasn't uncommon for people
Speaker 1: to have trouble finding enough workers for these newly consolidated estates. Also,
Speaker 1: a landlord whose tenants had died or left was no
Speaker 1: longer being paid rent. He was no longer collecting fees
Speaker 1: for the use of the manners, mills, or ovens. If
Speaker 1: he couldn't find hired labor to replace his previous workers,
Speaker 1: his crops went to waste and his livestock went untended.
Speaker 1: With an excess of land and a shortage of workers,
Speaker 1: many turned their attention from cultivated crops to livestock, which
Speaker 1: was less labor intensive. The massive labor shortage made it
Speaker 1: easier for surviving workers to negotiate better terms for themselves.
Speaker 1: People who were dissatisfied with their pay or their working
Speaker 1: or living conditions could find a different job on another manner,
Speaker 1: or they could move to a city or a town
Speaker 1: more easily. Tenant farmers are able to negotiate lower rents
Speaker 1: or to rent larger amounts of land that could, at
Speaker 1: least in theory, yield a bigger income, and general wages increased,
Speaker 1: often by as much as fifty percent and sometimes more
Speaker 1: than that. However, in many cases it probably wasn't that
Speaker 1: people were being paid more for the same work. People
Speaker 1: were working more to make up for the shortage of labor.
Speaker 1: The increase in incomes was also at least partially offset
Speaker 1: by rising inflation and higher prices on goods that were
Speaker 1: now in short supply. There's also the part where for
Speaker 1: the lowest paid people, they sort of went from making
Speaker 1: not enough to live on too barely enough to live
Speaker 1: on two times zero is zero. Right. People who moved
Speaker 1: from the country to the city after the Black Death
Speaker 1: generally had more opportunities available to them, especially because urban
Speaker 1: employers were dealing with their own labor shortages. Trade guild
Speaker 1: started shortening the links of their apprenticeships to try to
Speaker 1: replenish their numbers, but this really meant that there was
Speaker 1: also a big loss of knowledge, skill and quality among
Speaker 1: the various trades, and in some cases, the number of
Speaker 1: newcomers to the cities just outstripped the number of available jobs,
Speaker 1: causing these recent arrivals to just become a drain on resources.
Speaker 1: As a trend, merchants fared better than rural landlords because
Speaker 1: their work didn't require the large labor force that agriculture did.
Speaker 1: This was especially true is increasing wages and ongoing shifts
Speaker 1: in supply and demand allowed more people to buy better
Speaker 1: quality and luxury goods. Of course, England's wealthiest classes saw
Speaker 1: all of this. The increased freedom for workers, the rising wages,
Speaker 1: and the luxury goods becoming more available to the masses
Speaker 1: as a threat. They tried to return things to the
Speaker 1: way they had been before the plague. Parliament passed the
Speaker 1: Ordinance of Laborers in thirteen forty nine and the Statute
Speaker 1: of Laborers in thirteen fifty one to return wages to
Speaker 1: their pre pandemic levels, also to require able bodied men
Speaker 1: and women under the age of sixty to work, and
Speaker 1: to prevent people from moving to find different or better work.
Speaker 1: These statutes were not always enforced very well, but when
Speaker 1: they were, the focus was most often on the working
Speaker 1: people who were being paid more money, not on the
Speaker 1: employers and the landlords who were paying the um. In
Speaker 1: thirteen sixty three, Parliament also passed a sumptuary Law to
Speaker 1: try to keep the trappings of wealth only with the wealthy.
Speaker 1: This was like the latest in a series of these laws,
Speaker 1: some of which had been back before the Black Death.
Speaker 1: So by the time of the One Uprising things were
Speaker 1: at least somewhat better for some of England's population, but
Speaker 1: in general the people who had gained the most in
Speaker 1: the wake of the Black Death were the people who
Speaker 1: already had some wealth to start with. Too many working people,
Speaker 1: it had seemed like they were going to have meaningfully
Speaker 1: more money and opportunities, but thanks to things like shortages,
Speaker 1: other illness outbreaks, and the statute of laborers, those theoretical
Speaker 1: gains had largely disappeared or plateaued, and England's poorest people,
Speaker 1: the serfs, were still not free. We have not even
Speaker 1: talked about taxes yet, and taxes were really the spark
Speaker 1: that started this rebellion. We will get into that after
Speaker 1: a sponsor break. The Black Death took place during the
Speaker 1: warfare between England and France that came to be known
Speaker 1: as the Hundred Years War, even though it was really
Speaker 1: a series of intermittent conflicts that played out over a
Speaker 1: span of a hundred and sixteen years. In England, the
Speaker 1: primary way to raise money for war was through taxes,
Speaker 1: and at the time, the only acceptable reason to directly
Speaker 1: tax the population was to deal with an immediate threat
Speaker 1: to the realm. This meant that warfare and taxation were
Speaker 1: tightly linked in people's minds, so if the war was
Speaker 1: going badly for England, public opinion was more likely to
Speaker 1: blame corruption and ineptitude from parliament and royal advisers who
Speaker 1: had demanded their tax money, rather than blaming the military.
Speaker 1: The Hundred Years War is generally noted as starting in
Speaker 1: thirteen thirty seven, and England saw a series of victories
Speaker 1: in the thirteen forties and fifties, but then the tide
Speaker 1: started to turn. France allied with Scotland and attacked parts
Speaker 1: of the English coast and started reclaiming territory that it
Speaker 1: had previously ceded to England. France's Castilian allies also destroyed
Speaker 1: the English fleet in thirteen seventy two, and English forces
Speaker 1: on the ground in France suffered various setbacks. After using
Speaker 1: a variety of taxation strategies to raise the money to
Speaker 1: pay for all of this, Parliament passed a poll tax
Speaker 1: in thirteen seventy seven. That same year, Richard the Second,
Speaker 1: who was aged ten at the time, ascended to the
Speaker 1: throne after the death of his grandfather, Edward the Third.
Speaker 1: Richard's father, who had been next in line for the throne,
Speaker 1: had died the year before. Earlier taxes had been fractional taxes,
Speaker 1: like their names suggests, they were based on a fraction
Speaker 1: of how much someone's movable goods were worth. These were
Speaker 1: assessed at the community level based on how large and
Speaker 1: affluent the community was, and they left it up to
Speaker 1: each community to figure out who should pay what, so,
Speaker 1: at least in theory, it was based on your ability
Speaker 1: to pay the tax. But the thirteen seventy seven poll
Speaker 1: tax was different. It was a flat rate of four
Speaker 1: pence per person required of everyone over the age of fourteen,
Speaker 1: with the exception of beggars. Even though everyone was paying
Speaker 1: the same amount regardless of how much money they had,
Speaker 1: this poll tax didn't seem all that egregious to people.
Speaker 1: Fourpence was about the price of a dozen eggs. It
Speaker 1: was still more than a day's pay for the lowest
Speaker 1: paid laborers. Though England still needed more money though in
Speaker 1: early thirteen seventy eight, Parliament passed another fractional tax that
Speaker 1: was due that February. Many towns were also required to
Speaker 1: build ships to bolster the English fleet, and since they
Speaker 1: had to pay for this themselves, this was perceived as
Speaker 1: yet another tax. Then, in thirteen seventy nine, Charles the
Speaker 1: fifth of France annexed the Duchy of Brittany and there
Speaker 1: was another poll tax to try to fund efforts to
Speaker 1: restore its independence. The second poll tax was on a
Speaker 1: sliding scale based on a person's profession, with thirty three
Speaker 1: to professions listed a different tax rates. Anybody who wasn't
Speaker 1: a member of one of those professions was again taxed
Speaker 1: at four pence. The government had pawned the King's jewels
Speaker 1: and had secured loans from several towns, but combined with
Speaker 1: the poll tax, this still wasn't enough, in part because
Speaker 1: of increasing tax evasion, and then the newly raised English
Speaker 1: fleet was scattered in a storm and nearly twenty ships
Speaker 1: were wrecked. Another fractional tax followed, this one framed as
Speaker 1: a loan that would be repaid rather than an actual tax.
Speaker 1: Taxes had to be approved by Parliament, and Parliament was
Speaker 1: not expected to be in session again for the next
Speaker 1: eighteen months, so people believe this tax but really alone,
Speaker 1: would be the last one for a while. Instead, Parliament
Speaker 1: was summoned again in November of thirteen eighty two, once
Speaker 1: again approve another poll tax to fund the ongoing war.
Speaker 1: Like the thirteen seventy seven tax, this poll tax was
Speaker 1: a flat rate and free person over the age of
Speaker 1: fifteen was required to pay twelvepence or one shilling to
Speaker 1: add insult to injury. This tax was due in two
Speaker 1: installments the first at the end of February and the
Speaker 1: second at the beginning of June. There was not a
Speaker 1: lot of time to plan for that first payment, and
Speaker 1: since it was due towards the end of winter, it
Speaker 1: was also at the hardest time of year for rural people.
Speaker 1: It's possible that no tax would have possibly gone well
Speaker 1: at this point, but this tax was despised. It was
Speaker 1: three times as large as the previous flat rate tax,
Speaker 1: and for large households it just added up to enormous
Speaker 1: amounts of money. People also doubted that the tax was
Speaker 1: really necessary. The king's uncle John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
Speaker 1: who was highly placed in the administration, had asked for
Speaker 1: more tax revenue than the military budget really seemed to require.
Speaker 1: People thought he was either lining his own pockets with
Speaker 1: this money or using it to pay for his own
Speaker 1: ventures that weren't directly related to the military needs of
Speaker 1: the kingdom. So England's fed up population, sick of paying taxes,
Speaker 1: just didn't. Tax of asion was widespread, with as many
Speaker 1: as thirty to people simply vanishing from the local tax roles.
Speaker 1: That people were like my widowed mother, not part of
Speaker 1: my household, not not going to lay name er on there.
Speaker 1: When the government realized that the amount of money that
Speaker 1: had been collected was way less than they expected, they
Speaker 1: dispatched commissioners to investigate this rampant tax of Asian. Investigations
Speaker 1: started in late May one when John Bampton and Sir
Speaker 1: John Guildsburg arrived in Brentwood in Essex, which is northeast
Speaker 1: of London and as part of the Greater London Metropolitan
Speaker 1: Area today. Bampton was a Justice of the Peace and
Speaker 1: when delegates from Brentwood and the surrounding communities arrived to
Speaker 1: meet with him, they may have thought that he was
Speaker 1: there for the upcoming June Court session. When they learned
Speaker 1: that it was really a tax investigation, the delegates were
Speaker 1: angry and astonished. Thomas Baker of Fobbing insisted that everyone
Speaker 1: had paid already and that they had a receipt from Bampton,
Speaker 1: saying so, and that they would not be paying anymore.
Speaker 1: When the commissioners ordered their guards to start making arrests,
Speaker 1: the delegates ran them out of town, armed with things
Speaker 1: like bows and arrows. Then the delegates returned to the
Speaker 1: fifteen or so towns and villages where they lived, and
Speaker 1: they started organizing a resistance, including spreading the word into
Speaker 1: other nearby towns in Essex. Meanwhile, the unrest also spread
Speaker 1: into Kent. June two was the day that the final
Speaker 1: tax payment was due. It was also the holiday of
Speaker 1: Whitsun Day or Pentecost. On that day, people from at
Speaker 1: least forty Essex communities meant in Boking, which is northeast
Speaker 1: of Brentwood, and swore an oath to their cause. They
Speaker 1: also started making plans to break radical priests John Ball
Speaker 1: out of prison. Ball preached on things like a quality
Speaker 1: in the abolition of England's class structure. His ideas were
Speaker 1: considered heretical and he had been excommunicated by the Archbishop
Speaker 1: of Canterbury. Ball had been incarcerated at an ecclesiastical prison.
Speaker 1: On June seven, rebels in Kent named former soldier Walter Tyler,
Speaker 1: known as What as their leader. People from Essex and
Speaker 1: Kent then marched on London, with the people of Kent
Speaker 1: first converging on Canterbury and making their way to London
Speaker 1: via the Pilgrimage Road. At some point during all of this,
Speaker 1: John Ball was broken out of prison, and his speeches
Speaker 1: to the rebels continued to advocate for a classless society,
Speaker 1: including the widely quoted quote when Adam delved and Eve
Speaker 1: span who then was a gentleman, as we said at
Speaker 1: the top of the show. For a long time this
Speaker 1: was known as the peasants Revolt, and the word peasants
Speaker 1: generally conjures up an image of poor agricultural workers or
Speaker 1: landless people, and some of the people involved with the
Speaker 1: revolt definitely do fit that description, but there were also
Speaker 1: free tenants and small landholders, as well as clergy apprentices
Speaker 1: and tradespeople. Thomas Baker and what Tyler were as their
Speaker 1: names suggest a Baker and a Tyler, that doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean the uprisings trades people were all free, though there
Speaker 1: were definitely Baker's and Tyler's and other workers who were
Speaker 1: classified as surfs. At the same time, some of the
Speaker 1: people involved were also relatively powerful people in their communities,
Speaker 1: including having previously served as assessors or constables or bailiffs.
Speaker 1: Women were also a huge part of the uprising, both
Speaker 1: as participants and as targets of the taxes and policies
Speaker 1: that were being protested, and as had been the case
Speaker 1: with most of the other protests, uprising and strikes that
Speaker 1: we have talked about on the show. Women were generally
Speaker 1: the ones who were making men's participation possible by making
Speaker 1: sure that the demonstrators stayed clothed and fed. As the
Speaker 1: uprising moved toward London, some of the nobility became involved,
Speaker 1: and some of the city's merchants as well. And we
Speaker 1: will get into the uprising in London after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: That late May incident in Brentwood had ended with John
Speaker 1: Bampton and the other commissioners being run out of town,
Speaker 1: and although the commissioners said that the delegates had been
Speaker 1: pursuing them with the intent to kill them, it seems
Speaker 1: as though everyone escaped without injury. But as this uprising
Speaker 1: progressed in the early June one, things became increasingly violent
Speaker 1: all over Southeast England. People attacked manners, abbeys and the
Speaker 1: homes of sheriffs as cheaters and other officials. The cheeter
Speaker 1: handled various matters related to what we described today as
Speaker 1: the feudal system that includes collecting of the fee after
Speaker 1: the death of a tenant, and yes, that is the
Speaker 1: etymology as a term. Cheater. Rebels burned records, including tax
Speaker 1: records and documentation of people's serfdom. In Cambridge, a woman
Speaker 1: named Marjorie Starr was described as throwing the ashes of
Speaker 1: these burned documents into the wind, saying away with the
Speaker 1: learning of clerks, away with it. Some of the chroniclers
Speaker 1: who wrote about this uprising in the fourteenth century framed
Speaker 1: all of this as the product of the rebels wilful
Speaker 1: ignorance and illiteracy, but it was really a coordinated effort
Speaker 1: carried out by the residents of communities all over England,
Speaker 1: especially in the southeast, to destroy all the written records
Speaker 1: of a system that they felt was oppressive and corrupt.
Speaker 1: If there was no record of their taxation and their bondage,
Speaker 1: and their rents, or all the other expenses and commitments
Speaker 1: that were associated with their lives, then they could be
Speaker 1: free of it. Documents were seized or destroyed, and more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and fifty places around England this also
Speaker 1: went beyond property destruction. On June tenth, a mob and
Speaker 1: Essex killed a s jeeter John Yule before burning his records.
Speaker 1: That same day, the king's ministers started attempting to negotiate
Speaker 1: with the rebels, who were demanding an audience with the king.
Speaker 1: By June twelfth, as many as thirty thousand people had
Speaker 1: encamped at Blackheath, which is part of London today, and
Speaker 1: the King's court had moved from the Palace of Westminster
Speaker 1: into the Tower of London out of fear for their
Speaker 1: own safety. Outside of London, crowds from Essex and Suffolk
Speaker 1: had ransacked the home of Henry English, which was in Birdbrook,
Speaker 1: and Richard Lions, which was enlisted. English was the sheriff
Speaker 1: of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, and Lions was a widely hated
Speaker 1: merchant and financier. The assembled forces from Kent, Essex and
Speaker 1: Suffolk vastly outnumbered the King's available army, so the king
Speaker 1: agreed to negotiate with the rebels. He traveled down the
Speaker 1: Thames by boat to meet them, but once he arrived
Speaker 1: at the meeting point, it was decided that it was
Speaker 1: just too dangerous for him to go ashore. This, of
Speaker 1: course stoked the rebels and and resentment, and at some
Speaker 1: point on June somebody it is not clear who, opened
Speaker 1: the gates of London to the assembled crowd. Once inside,
Speaker 1: they burned Savoy Palace, which was the home of John
Speaker 1: of Gaunt. They also looted and burned the homes of
Speaker 1: other prominent officials, as well as the buildings that were
Speaker 1: situated along London Bridge. On June fourteenth, the King met
Speaker 1: with Watt Tyler and men from Essex at Mile End.
Speaker 1: Tyler presented the King with a series of demands, including
Speaker 1: the abolition of serfdom, community self governance, execution of several
Speaker 1: widely hated public officials who he described as traitors, and
Speaker 1: a general amnesty of the rebels. There are various interpretations
Speaker 1: of the king's response. Either his youthful inexperience meant that
Speaker 1: he wasn't a very good negotiator, or he really did
Speaker 1: feel some sympathy for the rebels. He also might have
Speaker 1: felt like there was no other option because these rebels
Speaker 1: vastly outnumbered his army and had done i'll kinds of
Speaker 1: destruction and killed people. He made some really really sweeping promises,
Speaker 1: including that he would abolish serfdom and forced labor, that
Speaker 1: he would bring the so called traders to justice, which
Speaker 1: included some people that were high up within his own court,
Speaker 1: and that he would issue a blanket pardon for anybody
Speaker 1: who had participated in the uprising. The King gave Tyler
Speaker 1: signed charters that granted the serfs their freedom. However, as
Speaker 1: that was happening, other rebels broke into the Tower of London.
Speaker 1: The future King Henry the Fourth was protected by hiding
Speaker 1: him in the cupboard. The rebels captured and beheaded several
Speaker 1: prominent people, one with Simon Sudbury, who was both the
Speaker 1: Archbishop of Canterbury that was the one who had excommunicated
Speaker 1: John Ball who he mentioned earlier, and the Chancellor of England.
Speaker 1: Another was Lord High Treasurer of England Robert Hales, who
Speaker 1: was also the Admiral of the West and Grand Prior
Speaker 1: of the Knights of Malta. Their heads were reportedly put
Speaker 1: on display and paraded around London. Among others. John Legg,
Speaker 1: a royal sergeant at arms, was also executed. In some
Speaker 1: of the chronicles of this event, he was described as
Speaker 1: putting his hands up teenage girls skirts under the pretense
Speaker 1: of determining if they were old enough to work. Richard
Speaker 1: Lyons was killed as well. The targets of this violence
Speaker 1: also went beyond the officials who were associated with taxes
Speaker 1: and serfdom and other issues that were being protested. The
Speaker 1: mob focused on Flemings who were a widely hated ethnic
Speaker 1: group in London. Flemish homes and businesses were targeted, looted
Speaker 1: and burned, and roughly a hundred and forty Flemings in
Speaker 1: London where massacred. What Tyler and the King met for
Speaker 1: a second time on June fifteenth, the goal was to
Speaker 1: persuade Tyler to get the rebels to disperse from London. Instead,
Speaker 1: Tyler presented additional demands, including an end to tithing and
Speaker 1: a redistribution of wealth. During a heated argument between Tyler
Speaker 1: and London Mayor William Walworth, Tyler was stabbed, probably by Walworth,
Speaker 1: but that is not entirely clear. The King at this
Speaker 1: point did something which is fascinating to me, which is
Speaker 1: that he rode out to the assembled bob told them
Speaker 1: that he was their leader now, and led them out
Speaker 1: of town. Tyler was taken to the hospital of St. Bartholomew,
Speaker 1: where Walworth later went and killed him. Walworth had also
Speaker 1: raised his own fighting force of about five thousand men,
Speaker 1: and he despatched them to start putting down this rebellion.
Speaker 1: With Tyler gone, the government moved to put down the rebellion,
Speaker 1: and aggressive and bloody effort that went on for weeks.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of people were killed in fighting all around southeastern England.
Speaker 1: John Ball was captured on July and he was hanged,
Speaker 1: drawn and quartered two days later. Although the king had
Speaker 1: made a series of very broad promises to what Tyler,
Speaker 1: most of them were never carried out. He withdrew the
Speaker 1: charters that had given the serfs their freedom on June,
Speaker 1: reportedly saying villains ye are, and villains ye shall remain
Speaker 1: in case you're curious, just like a s cheeter is
Speaker 1: the etymology for cheat. This is where the word villains
Speaker 1: come from. So people thought the cheaters were cheaters, and
Speaker 1: they thought that the surfs were villains. He never carried
Speaker 1: out the other reforms he had promised in that meeting either.
Speaker 1: The people who were believed to be ringleaders of this
Speaker 1: whole rebellion were rounded up, some were hanged, some were
Speaker 1: drawn and quartered. But after the executions were done, the
Speaker 1: king did order a general amnesty, and amnesty records are
Speaker 1: one of the sources of information for who these rebels
Speaker 1: actually were and where they lived. At the same time,
Speaker 1: a lot of people took this as an opportunity to
Speaker 1: get a pardon for crimes that they had not committed,
Speaker 1: either fearing that they might be accused of something later,
Speaker 1: or just thinking that a documented pardon might be a
Speaker 1: useful thing to have in a time that was clearly
Speaker 1: so socially and politically chaotic. The only thing that this
Speaker 1: uprising really concretely achieved was that the government stopped pursuing
Speaker 1: this whole poll tax issue. At the same time, though,
Speaker 1: this was England's first large popular uprising, so on a
Speaker 1: more intangible level, it demonstrated to everyone that such a
Speaker 1: thing was even possible. This kind of peasant uprising really
Speaker 1: was not unique to England in the fourteenth century. The
Speaker 1: same conditions that led people in England to rise up
Speaker 1: existed in most of the rest of Europe as well.
Speaker 1: Popular revolts, civil wars, and other social unrest were widespread
Speaker 1: all across Europe from the thirteen hundreds through the fifteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: A lot of the gains that the lower classes did
Speaker 1: see during these centuries were not simply because the Black
Speaker 1: Death had killed so many people. It came out of
Speaker 1: this widespread unrest and violence. Class is always the case
Speaker 1: with everything in history. This uprising has been interpreted and
Speaker 1: reinterpreted in the centuries since then. Even though the rebels
Speaker 1: destroyed a lot of the records of their own lives
Speaker 1: and personal histories, the uprising is still pretty heavily documented
Speaker 1: through court records, medieval chronicles, and works of literature. But
Speaker 1: all these sources have their own biases. The court records,
Speaker 1: for example, are frontal legal system that was innately biased
Speaker 1: against the defendants, and then the chroniclers who detailed the
Speaker 1: day to day occurrences of the uprising often disagree with
Speaker 1: one another on the specific details. The chroniclers in general
Speaker 1: also didn't necessarily understand the people involved or what their
Speaker 1: grievances were. There are eight different accounts of the whole uprising,
Speaker 1: including the Anonomal Chronicle, which was probably written at by
Speaker 1: Land Abbey, the Chronicles of Henry Knighton, who was an
Speaker 1: Augustinian canon the Chronicles of Thomas Walsingham, who was a
Speaker 1: benedicting monk, and the chronicles of Jean Foassoire, who was
Speaker 1: a medieval poet and court historian. In general, their lives
Speaker 1: were fairly removed from the people that they were writing about,
Speaker 1: and they lumped the rebels together as uneducated peasants motivated
Speaker 1: by willful ignorance. Frozaar characterized John Ball as mad. So
Speaker 1: we kicked off this episode by talking about bad takes
Speaker 1: about the Black Death, which sort of compressed the whole
Speaker 1: timeline between the Black Death and the Renaissance, just skipping
Speaker 1: over centuries of unrest, and also something we didn't really
Speaker 1: get into in this episode, imagining the Renaissance as a
Speaker 1: time that was a lot better for working people than
Speaker 1: the medieval period had been, which was not necessarily true
Speaker 1: at all. But there have also has been some bad
Speaker 1: takes about one rebellion, including that it literally inspired the
Speaker 1: French Revolution. While there is some similarity between the uprisings
Speaker 1: focus on freedom and equality and the French Revolution ideals
Speaker 1: of liberty, equality, fraternity, I guess you could also make
Speaker 1: comparisons between the reign of Terror and the beheading of
Speaker 1: officials and parading their heads around London. Uh, that idea
Speaker 1: just leap frogs over four hundred years of history. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: the cause and effect stuff that sometimes happens when discussing history, Uh,
Speaker 1: loses a little bit of track of timeline and nuance.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I mean you can make lots of arguments
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things, where like we see patterns
Speaker 1: in history when we look back on them, or how
Speaker 1: one thing set conditions in place that made another thing
Speaker 1: more likely. But the Black Death caused the Renaissance. Really oversimplified. UM,
Speaker 1: do you have a little bit of uh? Non oversimplified
Speaker 1: listener mail? I do? I This is from Aaron, and
Speaker 1: Aaron sent this wonderful email after our homemech. Uh. It
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a two parter, but we spent a week
Speaker 1: talking about home mac and practice babies. Um and Erin
Speaker 1: writes High Tracy and Holly. My high school had an
Speaker 1: Infant Lab class. This was an elective for those high
Speaker 1: school or seniors who were not parents, but for students
Speaker 1: like myself who had a baby at sixteen, it was mandatory.
Speaker 1: This class was a godsend for me. Obviously, without it,
Speaker 1: I probably would have had to drop out of high school.
Speaker 1: The class taught the young parents and students how to
Speaker 1: care for an infant and toddler. It was seen as
Speaker 1: a support to the parents and the cautionary tale to
Speaker 1: the other students. It covered topics like child development, nutrition,
Speaker 1: educational play, child safety, stress management, and other life lessons.
Speaker 1: It was fortunate because the teachers who taught the class
Speaker 1: were supportive suite and caring, and the students who also
Speaker 1: took care of my son were amazing too. To my knowledge,
Speaker 1: they ended the program after we graduated in two thousands
Speaker 1: two because the program was seen as a crutch for
Speaker 1: teen parents and not enough of a deterrent from teen pregnancy.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to the teen parents who
Speaker 1: came after me. I hope they were able to find
Speaker 1: the support that they needed to finish high school. As
Speaker 1: you mentioned, this topic touches on so many other issues
Speaker 1: that I won't drawn on about here, socioeconomic reform, education
Speaker 1: and tuition reform, a woman's right to choose the foster
Speaker 1: care systems, etcetera, etcetera. All of these things play a
Speaker 1: part in the endless politic well shell game that will
Speaker 1: continue costing the most vulnerable of us more than just money.
Speaker 1: But I digress. Thank you for your clear, concise presentation
Speaker 1: of this topic. I never knew about practice babies, even
Speaker 1: though my son basically was one for two years. Stay safe.
Speaker 1: Aaron PS attached to a picture of my son with
Speaker 1: one of his and my favorite student caregivers. He's twenty
Speaker 1: now and likes to joke that he liked high school
Speaker 1: so much the first time that he went back for more.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Aaron. UM. We have gotten so
Speaker 1: many lovely and personal emails about the whole neck episodes
Speaker 1: and the practice baby episodes, and I'm sure we will
Speaker 1: read more of them in the future. UM. When I
Speaker 1: was in high school, anybody who had a baby in
Speaker 1: high school was sent to a different school. UM. Which
Speaker 1: when I started high school in our particular school system,
Speaker 1: it was called optional education, which is a terrible name.
Speaker 1: The school system rebranded it as Independence High School, and
Speaker 1: it was like it was the high school where teenage
Speaker 1: parents went um as well as where like the kids
Speaker 1: that had been expelled from schools were able to go
Speaker 1: there to continue their educations. UM. And I uh tried
Speaker 1: to go figure out, like, what's what's the school system
Speaker 1: I grew up in doing now? I did not get
Speaker 1: a great answer to that question. UM. So anyway, thank
Speaker 1: you again Aaron for that wonderful email and for the
Speaker 1: great picture. UH. If you'd like to write to us
Speaker 1: about this or either podcast or history podcast at iHeart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. We're also all over social media at
Speaker 1: miss in History. That's where you will find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
Speaker 1: and Instagram, and you can subscribe to our show on
Speaker 1: Apple podcast the I heart Radio app, and anywhere else
Speaker 1: you get podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite show.