← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling. And if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
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Narrator
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Anthony Delaney
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- [02:38]
Narrator
It's 1381 and a red breasted robin is bobbing across the fields and hedgerows of England. What does he see? He sees an empty kingdom, a Population ravaged by the Black Death a generation earlier, he sees a kingdom locked in an endless war with France. So far, so medieval. But the England in which this bird flits and swoops is changing beneath his wings. This is a kingdom about to erupt with new opportunities. All this disaster promises those surviving in its wake a new way of doing things. Presiding over all of this, though, is a bureaucracy of paperwork, records of transfers and fines, punitive laws, and worst of all, new fangled taxes that threaten to crush the ordinary working man. Unaware of this, our gallant Robin Redbreast is singing merrily on a summer's day late in May of 1381, when he draws towards a hubbub in the village of Brentwood in Essex, a crowd has gathered, summoned from the surrounding villages to await the arrival of royal commissioners. They don't know what for, but they have their suspicions. The commissioners arrive, their horses trotting into the middle of the crowd, their brows furrowed. Their leader, John Brampton, produces documents and announces that they are here to investigate poll tax evasion. The crowd are outraged. All they ever seem to do is pay what's owed. One Thomas Barker of Fopping steps forward, speaking for them all. You will not get another penny out of us. The commissioner's ire rises in turn. How dare these churls challenge them on the King's business. Brampton orders his sergeant to arrest Baker. A mistake. He's misjudged the mood. With one accord, the crowd transforms, reaching for weapons and pointing blade and arrowheads now at the tax collectors who turn and flee. Some accounts say they're killed, though it's more likely they're not. In terms of what happens next, though, it really makes no difference. These Essex villagers have crossed a line. There's no going back now. For better or worse, they must stand firm. Did they guess how many others in Essex and beyond would stand with them? How many others were ready to rebel and mark England with a vision of a fairer land? Our plucky Robin takes off, six swinging into the summer sky.
- [05:56]
Anthony Delaney
Hello there. My name is Anthony.
- [05:58]
Maddy Pelling
And I'm Maddie.
- [06:00]
Anthony Delaney
And welcome to the Only Way Is Medieval Essex. No, it's after dark, as you probably very well know. And today we are exploring the peasants revolt of 1381, a year I am personally very familiar with, and by that I mean have no idea about, apparently. I am told it is a moment when England's lower classes rise up against their rulers and going to be doing two episodes on this, and we'll be following the revolt as it unfolds. Meeting its leaders and its foot soldiers and then diving into the complex reasons why at the end of the 14th century, the world seemed to turn on its head. We love a bit of world turning on its head. Mind you, it feels like it's happening at the minute. It's not exactly the most fun thing in the entire world, but anyway, Maddy, tell me a little bit about your knowledge of this history.
- [06:46]
Maddy Pelling
Well, like you, Anthony, as we are both comfortable more in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, I don't know a huge amount from this period and I've been aware of the Peasants Revolt. I will say I told my husband we were doing this episode and he knew literally everything there is to know about it. Not sure why, not sure how. We've been together for over a decade, we've never spoken about it before and he rattled off any number of facts about it. So maybe he should be presenting this episode.
- [07:16]
Anthony Delaney
Oh my God, we should so do that one day.
- [07:19]
Maddy Pelling
I will say there is a brilliant documentary series, multiple episodes, I think four episodes by Matt Lewis, fantastic presenter on history hit. It's a genuinely fantastic documentary. Elena Jarniger appears multiple times on it as well. It's absolutely brilliant and it takes you step by step through this entire event. And yeah, Matt really gets to the fact, the material culture, the archaeological evidence, the archival evidence of do go and check that out. But in the meantime, we are going to attempt to tell this story. So a little bit of context. The 14th century, Anthony, do you know anything about it? Can you think of anything that happened in the 14th century? Pop quiz.
- [07:56]
Anthony Delaney
Yes. Hundred Years War. I think that's then, right, Is it?
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Maddy Pelling
She knows things, ladies and gentlemen.
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Anthony Delaney
So I know those kind of loosey goosey undergrad y bits, but like anything specific, not so much. And in my head I just see like dancing little flutey minstrel men going around that's less historically accurate. Right, Maddie, tell me what I need to know about the 14th century that I haven't mentioned there.
- [08:21]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, so it's not a great century. My understanding is that it's a pretty dramatic and terrible one, especially if you are a human being living through it. So the first decades of the century are shaped by famine. So the crops fail in the first decades of the century and then inevitably the livestock starts to die because there aren't the crops to feed the livestock. Everyone's going hungry. There is huge discontent contained within individual parishes. Essentially there's fear about why these famines have happened. There's frustration. People are trying to move around to find work to Find food. Everyone is feeling displaced and anxious. Enter the Black Death. We did an episode with Helen on the Black Death, and in that episode we learned that an estimated 25% of the population died from the Black Death. 25%. A quarter of the population disappeared from those communities. Have a. Think what that looks like in reality. If you live in a community that relies on labourers working in the fields to create food, to create clothing in the homes, to cook the food, to sell things, to make things, to repair things, the quality of life is going to drop rapidly. Your ability to support yourself, to protect yourselves as well, is hugely diminished. So this is a really anxious time. And then, as you mentioned as well, Anthony, based on your very impressive knowledge, this is also a century in which the Hundred Years War is happening. So there's fighting between England and France that's ongoing. People are coming back from that conflict across multiple years, injured with limbs missing, with terrible wounds, with mental scarification, I suppose, as well, and sort of psychological distress from that. This is a really, really, really difficult time to be alive. On top of the state of being a peasant in the 14th century, you know, just having to get up early and go and harvest your food, tend to your animals and just survive. You've now got all of these other tensions on top.
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Anthony Delaney
Jesus. Way to bring the mood down, Maddie.
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Maddy Pelling
And I'm sorry, it's. It's not very cheery, is it?
- [10:36]
Anthony Delaney
No, it's not very cheery. But nonetheless, this is also one of the important things to kind of point out when we're doing medieval histories, right, that it's not the Dark Ages that people so often refer to the medieval period of. This is actually a very colorful period at the same time where some of the books that are being produced are, like, beautifully illustrated with incredible colors. The golds, the blues, the reds. This is a time of innovation. This is also a time of, you know, music, entertainment. So these two things are living cheek by jowl in the 14th century. And we're seeing a little bit of the kind of darker side of it in this episode, obviously enough. And we've talked about plague and we've talked about everything else, but keep that other side to medieval life in the back of your mind as you're listening to this now, Maddy. The other thing that comes to mind for me when I think about the medieval period is the feudal system. I think people have a little bit of an instinct as to what that might be. And some people may not be familiar with that word at all. So give us a bit of a background A bit of an overview of what the feudal system in England specifically is at this time.
- [11:37]
Maddy Pelling
Well, I think it's interesting that you say that the medieval world is actually this nuanced and colourful place. And I think we maybe imagine, in a very sort of Monty Python cliched way, this idea of at the bottom of this sort of triangular structure, we've got peasants, we've got people in grubby clothes with grubby faces, scratching a living from the land. And then we might have the nobles above them who, you know, might be sort of envisaged on horseback in armour, having a nice time, maybe eating a feast at a very long table in front of a very big fire in a castle. And then at the tip, at the peak of this triangle, we have the monarch, usually the king. That is not necessarily the case. That's a very simplified version of that. And actually, when you look at the peasant classes at the bottom of this so called triangle, there are loads of different types of people with all different varying levels of wealth and freedom. So you've got free men, for example, who can actually own lands, goods, servants. They are able to make their own wealth, make their own luck to a certain extent. They have the power and finances and resources to travel around, to make connections, to build themselves up in their own life and to be sort of aspirational. And then within this group of people that are kind of lumped together in our imagination, we've got the serfs. And they are maybe more what you would sort of picture as a medieval peasant. These are people who are tied specifically to the land where they live and work. They're answerable to the landowners and they have to ask permission to do things like move away or work elsewhere, which is going to be really, really relevant to the history that we're attempting to tell today. And of course, bear in mind that.
- [13:24]
Narrator
There is this famine, there's plague.
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Maddy Pelling
The need to move away, the need to find opportunity and to fill the gaps in the workforce that have been left has never been more pressing. And so people who are fixed in their place by the rules, by the ruling class, by the bureaucracy that governs their lives, they start to feel the need more and more to push back against that and to try and grasp onto some freedom for themselves. And now we're gonna have a really interesting conversation about tax, because long term listeners of the podcast will know that you and I, we love maths, we love numbers, crunching them.
- [14:05]
Anthony Delaney
I'm quite good with dates. I am actually quite good with dates. And hence the history Thing like, sometimes I'll think to myself, is something wrong with me? That I can remember dates as well as I can.
- [14:14]
Maddy Pelling
Well, do you know, I will say you can remember dates, but also if we have to work out how old someone is from a range of dates, the blind panic that comes over both of us.
- [14:23]
Anthony Delaney
I am in awe of you if you can do maths. But anyway, let's talk about tax, baby. So one of the things that stood out to me in that narrative was this mention of new taxation. And I was like, oh, I don't know about taxation. I mean, I know there's taxation in the 14th century, but I don't understand the newness necessarily. So what, what are we talking about? Like, is this the first time there's been tax? Is there just new taxes have just recently come in? Like, what's, what's happening in terms of the dynamics there?
- [14:48]
Maddy Pelling
So there are multiple different types of taxes in the medieval world in England, that really help to bolster and strengthen that hierarchy. I suppose the ultimate aim in terms of these taxes is to strengthen the infrastructure of the country and the end game being to strengthen the monarchy and the king's position. So peasants at the bottom of this hierarchy are kind of absolutely controlled and kept in their place by these taxes that go variously to the chur, to the royal coffers, etc, etc. There are existing taxes already in the 14th century, but there are a series of new taxes that are introduced that really ignite this problem and really, I think, clarify for people living under this system, at the bottom of it, at least the absolute oppression that they're facing, that they can never escape the circumstances that they're born into, they can never better themselves. They can expect to be born, live and die in the fields, in the tiny village, in that small parish, and to never sort of escape that. So to give you a sense of the kinds of taxes and the kinds of laws and systems that are in place to keep these people in these positions, in 1351 we have the Statute of Labourers, which freezes wages for people working in these roles and restricts worker mobility. So you cannot for examp, go over the hill into another dale and say, hey, I'm going to work on this person's land instead. Because all of their workers died of the Black Death and here's an opportunity and they're offering better wages because they need their fields. Tilling, plowing, question mark of other things you do in the field. Yeah, and then we have tithe tax. So in the autumn every year, when harvest is happening, the tithe tax is collected, and this was originally collected for and by the church. It's usually a portion around about 10% of the income of every person. And this can be paid in cash or also in produce. So many people living in England will know of the existence of tithe barns. There's some great examples in Essex, actually. I lived in Essex briefly once. A lot of survivals in places like Essex are these huge tithe barns and they're huge wooden structures where this tax would be collected. You would go to this big barn and you would give over whatever produce or whatever money you had, paying this appropriate 10%. But then the government decides it needs to introduce new taxes on top of this, largely to fund, by the way, this ongoing war in France that just never seems to end. So the poll taxes emerge largely in the second half of the century and there are different waves of them that come through, and we're not going to rehearse them all here, because maths. But initially, everyone, and this is peasants, nobles, every single person in this society over the age of 16 has to pay 4 pence in tax. So whether you're incredibly rich or you are literally the poorest of the port, you have to pay this 4p. So for the port, this is the equivalent at this time of maybe a day or two working in the field. This is really significant and inevitably people are pissed off about this. People resist it. And when I was researching for this, there's a detail that I absolutely love, which is when these poll tax collectors would come back, die, often people would hide members of their family, because, don't forget, every single person over the age of 16 has to pay this. And so, you know, you'd like, pop granny in the loft or, you know, hide your 15th son in the barn or whatever it was. And I just love that there's these kind of little moments of resistance and sort of obscuring of the facts going on here. But this 4P is going to increase and this really, really, really pushes people over the top. So in 1381, this is the year of the revolt. This is the year we started. Our story in the poll tax has risen from 4p to 12p per person.
- [18:48]
Anthony Delaney
Oh, so that's nearly a week's wage, then. For a labourer, it's huge.
- [18:54]
Maddy Pelling
It's absolutely huge. And don't forget, they still have to pay the tithe tax and everything else, and they're not allowed to go and work on the neighbouring farm that is paying more money because everyone's dead. They're pushed to their limits.
- [19:05]
Anthony Delaney
That's rather shocking. I didn't realize that it was. Wow. I mean, can you imagine if that's what happened now? That if we had to give up a whole week's wages from out of our like, people wouldn't be able to survive. And such is what's happening here. I'm guessing that this is how we are finding ourselves in this rising tension, that there's this peasants revolt. That's the name of these episodes. So we know that this is coming, but you can really see the path that has been laid for this.
- [19:46]
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- [21:59]
Maddy Pelling
So, at the beginning of the episode.
- [22:00]
Narrator
We hear how when these tax collectors.
- [22:03]
Maddy Pelling
Come to Essex, all hell breaks loose and people just simply have had enough at this point. So they decide, in for a penny, in for a pound. We are rising up. And it's not just about the Poll Tax, it's all of it. It's the problem of serfdom, of corruption in terms of the people in charge. It's the laws that are forcing these peasants to take low wages and to hand over so much of those same wages. And rebellion quickly starts to spread, first of all, through Essex. But it is not just Essex where this is happening. Similar uprisings, remarkably, are happening at the same time in Kent, which is on the opposite side of the Thames from Essex, of course, so it's a bordering.
- [22:47]
Narrator
County, and it is to Kent that we will be heading next.
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Maddy Pelling
Our Merry Robin is in Kent now.
- [22:58]
Narrator
Flying along above one of the main arteries of England, Watling Street. The path is an ancient one, set first as a Roman road, straight and true, joining London with Canterbury, that jewel.
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Maddy Pelling
Of the county of Kent and home.
- [23:14]
Narrator
To the shrine of Thomas Becket. It is along Watling street that Geoffrey.
- [23:19]
Maddy Pelling
Chaucer's pilgrims will amble, swapping stories as they go.
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Narrator
Only a few years for now, but today is the 10th of June, 1381.
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Maddy Pelling
And as our Robin flies, he sees.
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Narrator
Below a band of riders galloping at breakneck speed, urging the beasts beneath them onwards, whips set, snarling at their flanks. Following in their wake is a long column of men and women, each with a glint of anger in their eyes.
- [23:48]
Maddy Pelling
It's been less than two weeks since.
- [23:50]
Narrator
The rebellion first sparked, but much has happened since.
- [23:54]
Maddy Pelling
As Essex rebels swore oaths to destroy.
- [23:57]
Narrator
The power of the lords, the rebellion's.
- [24:00]
Maddy Pelling
Spark transferred to Kent, jumping the border.
- [24:03]
Narrator
To grow to a terrible blaze. The rebels took first the Abbey of Lesness, then Dartford, then the impregnable castle at Rochester, where the constable of the castle, Sir John Newington, became their hostage. Our Robin watches all from above as more and more join the column. Soon it reaches Canterbury, the city's authorities taken by surprise as chaos rips through their streets. The Sheriff is dragged from his home and forced to hand over all documents in his possession.
- [24:36]
Maddy Pelling
Rolls, writs, pleas of the county and the crown.
- [24:40]
Narrator
All are burned. Royal Officials suffer the same fate. Any deemed corrupt watch as their property is set aflame. At least one is killed. The destruction of documents, above all documents, is ordered. Coroners and landlords are tracked down and their deeds taken. As street rolls recording fines owed are gathered together. All this machinery of royal and civic.
- [25:08]
Maddy Pelling
Power goes up in smoke.
- [25:11]
Narrator
But the rebels are not done yet. Leaving the poor of Canterbury to their smouldering city. The leaders of this astonishing movement turn back to Watling street and begin the march to the centre of power itself. London.
- [25:32]
Anthony Delaney
London. You know that thing that's going around on, like, social media every time someone in Coronation street says, oh, such a one has gone to London and then the other one.
- [25:40]
Maddy Pelling
London, yeah.
- [25:41]
Anthony Delaney
It's like, what London? But I have a question about this, right? We've talked before about how printed material can disseminate information and can spread the word. And especially when there's times of change and revolt and thinking about the 16th century and thinking about religious unrest and how printed material is informing some of that change and making communities and identities within that change. We don't have that same dissemination of printed material in the 14th century. So my question is, how is this word spreading? I mean, obviously there's going to be groups of people feeling dissatisfied with these rising taxes. Fair enough. But how are they coming together? How are they organising? How are they mobilizing?
- [26:24]
Maddy Pelling
It's a really interesting one, and I think, initially, at least, in Essex and Kent, this is word of mouth. You've had decades, generations of trauma, famine, disease, death, loss on a scale that we can barely imagine. You are taxed to the hilt, you're exhausted, you're working for nothing. There is no opportunity to go anywhere. You're going to join in. Now, the group of rebels, who these people are is actually really fascinating because it's not just a rowdy kind of rabble of unskilled people. These aren't all illiterate workers. These aren't necessarily. Certainly by the time we get to Canterbury, these aren't just people up for a bit of mischief, a bit of raiding people's houses and burning documents and sort of resisting and rebelling on a local scale. And the way that we know this is through the most incredible discovery and the most incredible project. And for anyone listening who wants to know more about this history, do spend some time on this website. It's incredible. It's called the 1381 Project and it's set up by a bunch of academics at Reading University, Glasgow, Oxford and Southampton. It's this huge collaboration and at the centre of this project is the digitization of an amazing document that was, get this, this is like Indiana Jones level excitement. This document was discovered under the floorboards in Westminster and it's a rolled up massive parchment, like huge. And it's impossible to unravel it. It's now in the National Archives. It's too delicate to be rolled out. So what they've done is, and don't ask me how science works, they have.
- [28:04]
Narrator
Digitized it and they can read the.
- [28:07]
Maddy Pelling
Records without unrolling it.
- [28:09]
Anthony Delaney
Yeah, mad.
- [28:09]
Maddy Pelling
It's mind blowing. It is magic. Yeah, yeah. Witchcraft. It's incredible. And what they've been able to extrapolate then from this document and others is a data set about these so called peasants of the Peasants Revolt. And what we find is a large number of them actually have military experience. They are ex soldiers. Don't forget the Hundred Years War is going on. And of course, you know, that is a way to get out and see the world. If you are from a class that primarily works the land and is stuck in the parish in which you were born and you can expect to die there, that's a way to go and travel and make something of yourself. A lot of these people are then completing their military service. They're injured, they've had enough, they manage to get their freedom and they come back to their communities. So when this movement starts to pick up momentum, there are people able to advise, to lead from the front, to strategise to say, this is how we take Rochester Castle, this is how we're going to enter Canterbury. We need to take these people by surprise. There is organisation going on in there. The other thing is heading back to our conversation about who were the peasantry. And yes, we have the serfs and the poorest people, but there are also merchants in there. There are also people who own land, who have servants, who trade goods, who make money and have social standing. These people have access to proper weaponry and men at their command. So this is no longer a rabble of people joining from a field at this stage. Once we get to Canterbury, this is for all intents and purposes, an army, an equipped, well managed army.
- [29:54]
Anthony Delaney
So you'd really need to question the anachronistic title of the Peasants Revolt in many ways then, because what I can imagine is that it's almost been invented very much with class in mind, which is, you know, absolutely true. Obviously, class is a huge driving force behind this. But at the same time, this seems far more universal than a peasant's revolt. This seems to be A revolt involving the peasantry.
- [30:18]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. And I think as well, what we're going to see over this episode, and certainly in the next one, is their demands are going to shift and change because all of these people have slightly different concerns and slightly different complaints and ideas of how they're being oppressed and controlled. And the aims of this movement are going to shapeshift a little bit as it barrels on, certainly towards London. Yeah, it's really interesting. The Peasants Revolt should always, I think, have an asterisk after it and then, you know, down at the bottom of the page, a very complex description of.
- [30:54]
Anthony Delaney
Who these peasants are and also other people.
- [30:56]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [30:58]
Anthony Delaney
Because you're talking about these people beginning to organize now as a group and coming from different parts of medieval society, 14th century society. I'm imagining that this organization requires leadership. And do we know who those leaders were? Do we have names? Do we know what kind of people they were? Who was at the forefront of this?
- [31:18]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, so there are some really famous names that are attached. People will probably know the name of Wat Tyler, who emerges as one of the leaders in Kent. And he is a really vocal leader calling for justice and reform in terms of taxation, in terms of government control and administration. There's also John Ball, who is, we think, an Essex based preacher, He's a priest. And he has this kind of long history throughout his life of getting into trouble for preaching to the poor. He's jailed at various points and his presence throughout the revolt is kind of a little bit unclear. There's some debate about whether he was in prison at certain points and therefore couldn't have been present and couldn't have taken part, or whether he is actually there. And all these people, we really know very, very little about them. There's not much in the historical record, largely due to the fact that they come from these lower classes. And so even in the chronicles the years after this event, they start to take on a mythological quality because they are sort of empty vessels. We have no real information, nothing substantial anyway, to fill them with. And so people sort of fill their own versions of them. Another leader is Jack Straw. Again, we know very little. The other thing to say is that it's not just men. There are women. And this is something that the 1381 project has shown actually, is that women were involved at all levels of the rebellion in terms of organization, in terms of getting people to join, but also in terms of some of the destruction that was meted out. You know, burning of records, attacking people's houses, attacking officials as well, women's names do crop up in this, and also as the victims of the peasants as they're moving through these towns and villages and eventually onto the cities as well. So this is a very nuanced, very complex, moving beast that is now sweeping through the landscape of southeast England.
- [33:18]
Anthony Delaney
That's one of the things that's really becoming quite clear is this movement. It does feel like a serpent almost making its way through these roads.
- [33:28]
Maddy Pelling
And it's rapid. It's absolutely rapid.
- [33:30]
Anthony Delaney
It feels like we're heading towards a crescendo slightly. Now that this group is on the move and is organized, and we have a bit of an insight as to who these people are, what can we, we expect to unfold?
- [33:42]
Maddy Pelling
Well, the next step, inevitably, is London.
- [33:50]
Narrator
Picture our Robin now, his breast glowing in the last light of the day as he darts through the rough scrubland of Blackheath, a wide open expanse in Greenwich with the River Thames and London not far away.
- [34:04]
Maddy Pelling
It's the evening of the 12th of.
- [34:06]
Narrator
June now, and the heath is alive with activity as the rebels of Kent amass here one final stop before the capital.
- [34:15]
Maddy Pelling
The chroniclers tell us that between 1.
- [34:18]
Narrator
And 200,000 rebels are present, a somewhat.
- [34:22]
Maddy Pelling
Unlikely figure, though the more recent and realistic estimation of up to 10,000 is hardly unimpressive.
- [34:30]
Narrator
The chroniclers also report that John, John Ball, the preacher, joined the rebels at Blackheath and delivered a sermon to them there.
- [34:38]
Maddy Pelling
Its words have gone down as a.
- [34:41]
Narrator
Clarion call of liberty, a foundational moment for English egalitarians. As the sun sets with London beneath them, Ball cries out when Adam delved and Eve span, who then was a gentleman. He speaks of equality, says that serfdom is a creation of wickedness, a betrayal.
- [35:07]
Maddy Pelling
Of God's will, and tells the rebels this is their moment to cast off the yoke of their oppressors and claim.
- [35:14]
Narrator
The liberty they have long been denied. As the crowd listens, some look up. Their eyes catch our Robin flying up now into the setting sun, bobbing down over the heath towards the heart of England, towards the capital city, London.
- [35:39]
Anthony Delaney
London. I can't stop. I can't stop. I'm so sorry.
- [35:43]
Maddy Pelling
You are fired from this podcast. Goodbye.
- [35:45]
Anthony Delaney
It's fine. Let's talk a little bit about this slogan. We love a slogan. Okay, I need to break it down a little bit. When Adam delved and Eve spanner, who then was a gentleman. Right. Oh, okay, okay. Can I guess what this means?
- [36:00]
Maddy Pelling
I mean, it's not immediately obvious to our modern ears, is it? But go on. What's Your interpretation?
- [36:05]
Anthony Delaney
My interpretation is we have invented a class structure. So, like Adam delved, he was working the ground Eve span. I mean, very gendered work models there, but that's absolutely fine. Who then was a gentleman? As in, like this class structure that we've imposed upon English society is not the natural order or the God given order. It's man made.
- [36:26]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, absolutely. That. You know, in the Garden of Eden, there was no hierarchy.
- [36:31]
Anthony Delaney
There also was no Garden of Eden. So there is that.
- [36:34]
Maddy Pelling
Well, and there was also inevitably, the gender hierarchy. And then Eve was blamed for everything. So.
- [36:39]
Anthony Delaney
And also no Adam and Eve. Sorry.
- [36:42]
Maddy Pelling
So John Ball, basically, what are you on about? But this idea that society has created a rod for its own back in making this hierarchy and that nobody was set above anyone else in the original state of human beings as God intended it, which, you know, of course is very much a framework of thinking that would immediately appeal and be legible to people in the 14th century. So you can understand why this is the slogan, because of its religious tone. It's powerful.
- [37:14]
Anthony Delaney
Right now, you talked about tone there. And the one thing I will say is the tones off for me on that doesn't feel very 14th century. That doesn't feel. Basically what I'm saying is, you're lying to me. Did he even say it?
- [37:27]
Maddy Pelling
I mean, who knows? So there is discussion potentially that John Ball may well have been in prison in Bishop Stortford in Essex the day before this. So was he there? Did he say it?
- [37:40]
Anthony Delaney
It's so interesting, isn't it? Because it's one of the gifts and one of the problems of medieval history in many ways, because, you know, if we were dealing with this from an 18th, 19th century point of view, we would know because it would be so well documented and the information would have been printed the next day and it have been disseminated and blah, blah, blah. But then when you're here, like, we don't even know if one of the main players was actually there. And it's just so interesting and tantalizing and fun, actually, in terms of the ways in which. And this is like huge respect to medieval historians because the work that they have to do to piece together these types of histories, it's phenomenal. It's not even all in bloody English, 98% of the time or not English that we would understand easily at least. So, like, it's great. It's incredible that people are able to piece these. These histories together so cohesively. Not me and you like, but other people, evidently.
- [38:31]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah. Okay. So we have reached the point now where the rebels are on the edge of London. We have this slogan. We have this righteous cause for liberty and equality and fair treatment for the peasantry who, let's not forget, are the majority of the population in England at this time. This is a dangerous moment, right?
- [38:54]
Anthony Delaney
We're on the road, we're heading to London and this is coming to a head now. And that's what we're going to explore in Episode two. So please join us next week where we'll continue this history. If you've enjoyed this episode, go back and listen to our other back catalogue of medieval episodes. And if you're specifically interested in medieval history, then Gone Medieval with Matt Lewis and Eleanor Jaenega is absolutely going to be for you. So go and check them out too. Also on the History hit network. Until next time, happy listening.
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