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In the late 14th century, England was recovering from the Black Death, fighting an expensive war and struggling with a labor shortage that had upended the traditional social order. When the government imposed a deeply unpopular tax, anger spread rapidly throughout villages and towns. Within a matter of days, thousands of people marched on London. Powerful officials were killed, and a teenage king faced the greatest popular uprising medieval England had ever seen. Learn more about the peasants riot of 1381 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Square. There's a local cafe I visit where paying is almost effortless. They use Square, and whether I'm tapping a card or leaving a tip, the whole process takes just a few seconds. That smooth checkout means the staff can spend less time wrestling with technology and more time dealing with customers. That's what Square does for businesses. It brings payments, point of sale, inventory, staffing and online sales together in one system. Its AI powered tools can handle routine tasks, while real insights help owners make smarter decisions. Square can work for someone opening their first location or a business expanding into several. With free plus and premium plans, transparent pricing and no long term contracts, Square helps you run your business more smoothly, bringing payments, operations and insights together in one place. So you're ready for whatever next. Right now, listeners can get up to $200 off square hardware when you sign up at square.com godaily that's sq U-A-R-E.com godaily get started with Square and build a setup that works the way you do. This episode is sponsored by Babbel. As longtime listeners know, I've spent over a decade traveling around the world and have visited most of the countries on earth. As such, I know firsthand the power of learning at least a few words and phrases in the language of any country you might be visiting. I picked up a bit wherever I've been to, but it's always been a challenge if you haven't learned anything beforehand. And that's why I've started using Babbel. I've begun working on two languages that I've always been the weakest at, French and German. Babbel is built for real life, not vocabulary lists or verb charts, but real conversation. Practice lessons are quick, practical and built by more than 200 language experts, not AI. Babbel's award winning app has sold over 25 million subscriptions and is backed by a 14 day money back guaranteed. If you've got summer travel coming up, now is the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babbel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to Babbel.com daily. That's Babbel B-A-B-B-E-L.com daily for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply. England in the second half of the 14th century was a society still reeling from catastrophe. The Black Death had first swept across the country in 1348 and 1349, killing perhaps a third to a half of the population. And further outbreaks in 1361 and 1369 kept mortality high and the population depressed for decades afterward. The demographic collapse had an effect that the peasantry understood very well, even if the nobility resisted acknowledging it. Labor had become scarce, and scarce labor should have commanded higher wages and better terms. Serfs and free laborers alike found themselves for the first time in generations, in a position to bargain. Manors that had once been worked by an abundance of tenants now stood short handed, and landlords who wanted their fields plowed and their harvests brought in had to compete for workers who could simply walk to the next village and and asked for better terms. The ruling class responded not by accepting this new reality, but by trying to legislate it away. In 1349 the Crown issued the Ordinance of Laborers, followed in 1351 by the Statute of Laborers, which attempted to freeze wages at pre plague levels and compel able bodied men and women to accept work at those fixed rates rather than seek better pay elsewhere. The law also restricted the movement of laborers, since lords depended on being able to hold tenants in their place. These laws were in effect, an attempt to use the state to reverse a market reality that had shifted decisively in the peasants favor. Needless to say, the peasants were highly resentful of these new laws. Enforcement of these laws fell to justices of the laborers and later to justices of the peace, whose fines and prosecutions became a running irritant rural life for an entire generation. The statute did not achieve its economic goal since wages continued to drift upwards in practice, but it did succeed in generating a durable sense of grievance among those who found themselves fined or threatened for seeking wages that the market would otherwise have freely given. Underlying this immediate friction was the long standing system of villainage which I mentioned in the episode on feudalism. Villains, which is spelled V I L L E I n s not villains like a Disney villain, were essentially serfs and were legally subordinated to their lords, owing mandatory labor services as well as fees and fines for marriage or inheritance. They faced strict restrictions regarding where they could reside and whom they could marry without a License, creating a stark and increasingly galling contrast with the higher wages and greater freedoms enjoyed by free laborers. As free wage labor became more lucrative and more visible, the burdens of villainage came to feel less like an ancient and unremarkable fact of life and more like an artificial imposition that benefited only the lord of the manor. On top of this already tense social landscape, the government had a financial crisis. The Hundred Years War against France, which England had been fighting on and off since 1337, remained enormously expensive and, by the late 1370s, going badly. The military campaigns in France produced very little in terms of money, but exacted a heavy financial toll. And the government of the young king, Richard ii, who had come to the throne as a boy of 10 years old in 1377 under the regency of his uncle John of Gaunt, needed money that it didn't have. Parliament's answer in 1377, 1379, and again in 1380 was to authorize a poll tax, a levy charged not according to land or wealth, but as a flat sum per head of population above a certain age. The first poll tax was modest and roughly graduated, but the third poll tax, granted by parliament in November of 1380 set a flat rate of one shilling per adult. While it was later adjusted to allow the wealthy in a community to help cover the poor, in practice it it meant that the burden on ordinary villagers was heavier than any previous tax and fell with particular weight on regions that had already contributed to the first two collections. Tax evasion was widespread, and when the government's assessors compared the returns against expected population figures in the spring of 1381, the shortfall was so large that commissioners were dispatched into the counties to investigate fraud and collect what was owed. The revolt began, by most accounts, in the village of Fobing in Essex, where in late May of 1381, a royal commissioner named Thomas Bampton arrived to investigate why the local poll tax return seemed incomplete. The villagers refused to pay the additional sums and demanded and drove Bampton's clerks away, and the resistance spread quickly to neighboring villages. In Essex, when a royal justice named Robert Belknap was sent to punish the offenders and identify and penalize the ringleaders, he too was confronted by an armed and organized crowd, forced to swear that he would never again sit in such a commission, and sent away with several of his clerks, reportedly killed, Essex was in open revolt. Within days, Kent rose almost simultaneously, and it was in Kent that the rebellion found its leadership and organization. The town of Dartford and the city of Rochester saw early Risings and Rochester Castle was stormed. To free a prisoner that was held there, the rebels of Kent had went to Maidstone, where they're said to have released from the archbishop's prison the radical priest John Ball, who had been excommunicated and imprisoned for years for preaching against the social order and the wealth of the church. Ball had provided the revolt with its most famous expression. He argued that inherited social distinctions had no foundation in Christianity. He is traditionally associated with the following. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? Delved meant dug and span meant spun, and gentleman in this context was referring to a manor lord. The argument was that Adam and Eve had worked without lords ruling over them. Therefore, aristocratic privilege was a human invention rather than part of God's original order. From this point, the movement acquired its most recognizable leader, Wat Tyler, about whom relatively little reliable biographical detail survives beyond his prominence as the commander who emerged to lead the Kentish mob. Under Tyler's direction, the rebels marched on Canterbury, entered the cathedral, and demanded assurances from the monks there. But before turning north towards London, the rebels goals, as they articulated them at this stage, centered on the abolition of villainage, an end to the hated poll tax and the statute of laborers, and more significantly, a demand to speak directly with the young King Richard ii, whom the rebels believed was their natural ally against corrupt officials. This distinction between loyalty to the king's person and hatred of his counselors was a recurring and important feature of the entire revolt. The rebels did not initially present themselves as opponents of the monarchy, but as subjects seeking the king's protection against bad advisors. By the second week of June 1381, the Essex rebels, under a leader sometimes called Jack Straw, and the Kentish rebels under Wat Tyler were converging on London from the north and the south. A substantial portion of the London populace, angered by their own economic status and resentful of foreign merchants and the wealthy elite governing the city, sympathized with or actively assisted the Rebels Advance. On June 12, the mob from Kent reached Blackheath, just outside the city, where John Ball is reported to have preached a famous sermon on the equality of all people. The following day, June 13, the rebels entered London because sympathetic citizens opened the gates at London Bridge and Aldgate. Once inside, the rebels moved with discipline against specific targets. Rather than descending into an indiscriminate riot. They went directly to the Savoy palace, the London residence of the regent John of Gaunt, whom they regarded as the chief author of their oppression, and burned it to the ground. Chroniclers of the rebellion record that the rebels deliberately destroyed the palace's treasures rather than looting them, throwing gold and silver into the Thames and declaring themselves seekers of justice rather than thieves. They executed at least one of their own who was caught stealing. Foreign merchants, particularly Flemish traders, who were resented as economic competitors by London's own artisans and workers, were singled out and a number of them were killed. The following day, June 14, the 14 year old King Richard II rode out to meet the rebels in what was intended as a negotiation to draw the crowd away from further violence in the city, Richard granted, or at least appeared to grant remarkably sweeping concessions. He agreed to abolish villainage, to fix rents at a modest rate, to grant a general pardon for the events of the uprising, and to permit free trade throughout the kingdom without the restrictions that had bound peasant labor and movements. Many of the Essex rebels, satisfied with these concessions and trusting in the king's word, began to disperse and head home. But even as Richard met the crowd at Mile End, a separate contingent of rebels made their way into the Tower of London itself, which had been left under defended. And there they seized and beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who also held the office of chancellor. They also executed the treasurer, Robert Hales, and several other officials whom the rebels held responsible for the poll tax and the general misgovernment of the realm. Of their heads were displayed on London Bridge, showing that the rebels considered these men, rather than the king, to be the true objects of their anger. The climax of the uprising came the next day on June 15th at Smithfield, just outside the city walls, where Richard met once more with the remaining rebels, now principally led by Wat Tyler. Tyler presented an even more radical set of demands, which included the abolition of all lordships save that of the king, the redistribution of the church's wealth amongst the common people, and the establishment of a single legal status for all Englishmen. During the meeting, a scuffle broke out in which Tyler was killed by one of the king's attendants and died of his wound shortly afterwards. In the tense moments that followed, with the rebel crowd on the verge of violence, the young king rode forward alone towards the rebels and in a considerable act of courage for a 14 year old, called out that he would be their leader and give them all that they sought, urging them to follow him out of the city. Once the main mob had dispersed, Richard and his government abandoned all of their concessions to the rebels. The charters of freedom were revoked. According to one traditional account, Richard told petitioners that they were villains and would remain villains. Royal commissioners traveled throughout the effective counties to arrest suspected leaders and participants. Trials were often rapid and executions were used to restore authority. Wat Tyler was already dead. John Ball was captured near Coventry and brought to St. Albans, where he was tried in the king's presence and executed on July 15 by being hung, drawn and quartered. Jack Straw and numerous other local leaders were also executed. In the short term, the revolt appeared to be a complete failure. However, Parliament and the governing elite were deeply shaken. They recognized that attempting to extract large sums directly from ordinary households could provoke coordinated resistance. No comparable nationwide poll tax was imposed in medieval England ever again, while the Peasants Revolt failed to secure its immediate demands. The revolt revealed just how much England had changed since the Black Death and how difficult it had become to preserve serfdom, wage controls and feudal obligations. It didn't end serfdom, but it was the beginning of the end. It also left behind a powerful example of ordinary people organizing against taxation and political corruption. The uprising was defeated, but the social system it challenged was already beginning to disappear. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show Notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: Everything Everywhere Daily

Episode: The Peasants' Revolt of 1381

Host: Gary Arndt
Date: August 4, 2026

Main Theme and Purpose

In this episode, Gary Arndt examines the causes, events, and aftermath of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 in England. The episode explores how social upheaval following the Black Death and the economic demands of the Hundred Years’ War led to one of the most significant and violent uprisings in medieval English history. Gary explains key players, pivotal events, and the broader implications for England’s social and political landscape, combining concise historical analysis with memorable storytelling.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. England After the Black Death

Demographic Collapse:
The Black Death of 1348-49 and recurring outbreaks greatly reduced England’s population, causing profound changes to the workforce and social dynamics.
“The Black Death had first swept across the country in 1348 and 1349, killing perhaps a third to a half of the population. The demographic collapse had an effect that the peasantry understood very well, even if the nobility resisted acknowledging it. Labor had become scarce, and scarce labor should have commanded higher wages and better terms.” (06:40)
Peasant Leverage:
Labor scarcity allowed peasants, for the first time in generations, to bargain for better wages and conditions.

2. Efforts to Suppress Wages and Mobility

Ordinance and Statute of Laborers:
The government attempted to freeze wages and restrict laborer movement through laws in 1349 and 1351.
Peasant Resentment:
These laws became a major source of ongoing grievance.
“These laws were in effect, an attempt to use the state to reverse a market reality that had shifted decisively in the peasants' favor.” (08:17)

3. Serfdom and Villainage

Social Structure:
The system of "villainage" entrenched laborers in a subordinate role, with severe constraints on marriage, residence, and economics.
Contrast with Free Labor:
The rise of free wage labor made villainage feel increasingly unjust.

4. Financial Crisis and the Poll Tax

Hundred Years’ War:
England’s ongoing and expensive conflict with France put heavy demands on royal finances.
Introduction of the Poll Tax:
In 1377, 1379, and finally in 1380, the government imposed a flat per capita tax—the poll tax—which was particularly burdensome on the lower classes.
“The third poll tax, granted by Parliament in November of 1380, set a flat rate of one shilling per adult. It meant that the burden on ordinary villagers was heavier than any previous tax and fell with particular weight on regions that had already contributed to the first two collections.” (11:12)
Tax Evasion and Escalation:
Widespread evasion led authorities to send commissioners to enforce collection, sparking outrage in communities.

5. Outbreak of the Revolt

Initial Uprising in Essex:
The disturbance began in Fobbing, Essex, in May 1381 after royal officials insisted on further payments.
Spreading Rebellion:
Resistance spread quickly to neighboring villages, and soon involved both Essex and Kent.
“Essex was in open revolt. Within days, Kent rose almost simultaneously, and it was in Kent that the rebellion found its leadership and organization.” (15:28)

6. Radical Leadership and Ideology

John Ball:
Radical priest, recently released from prison, gave the revolt its ideological edge; his famous sermon at Blackheath called into question social hierarchy:
“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” (17:49)
Wat Tyler:
Emerged as leader in Kent, organizing the rebels and shaping their demands—abolition of villainage, repealing the poll tax and wage controls, and direct communication with King Richard II.

7. March on London

Sympathy in London:
Many Londoners supported or aided the rebels, who entered the city on June 13, 1381.
Targeted Actions:
The rebels targeted symbols of unpopular rule, notably burning the Savoy Palace.
“They went directly to the Savoy palace, the London residence of the regent John of Gaunt, whom they regarded as the chief author of their oppression, and burned it to the ground.” (22:00)
Avoiding Indiscriminate Violence:
The episode highlights that the rebels avoided random riot and focused on particular targets—punishing theft among their own ranks and singling out enemy officials and foreign traders.

8. Concessions and Betrayal

King’s First Meeting (June 14):
Richard II, age 14, met with the rebels, granting sweeping (but ultimately insincere) concessions, prompting many to disperse.
Violent Escalation:
While negotiations occurred, other rebels stormed the Tower of London and executed high officials.
Smithfield Confrontation (June 15):
A more radical set of demands was presented; Wat Tyler was killed in a confrontation with royal attendants.
“During the meeting, a scuffle broke out in which Tyler was killed by one of the king's attendants…” (26:51)
King’s Courage:
Richard II quelled potential violence by directly addressing the rebels:
“The young king rode forward alone towards the rebels and in a considerable act of courage for a 14 year old, called out that he would be their leader and give them all that they sought, urging them to follow him out of the city.” (27:14)

9. Aftermath and Historical Impact

Revocation and Repression:
The crown immediately revoked all concessions and ruthlessly hunted down rebellion leaders—executing John Ball, Jack Straw, and others.
Long-Term Effects:
While the revolt failed to secure immediate changes, it permanently altered policy:
“No comparable nationwide poll tax was imposed in medieval England ever again… the revolt revealed just how much England had changed since the Black Death and how difficult it had become to preserve serfdom, wage controls and feudal obligations.” (29:12)
Symbolic Legacy:
Despite failure, the Peasants’ Revolt became an enduring symbol of popular resistance to oppressive taxation and political corruption.

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

On Peasant Grievances:
“These laws were in effect, an attempt to use the state to reverse a market reality that had shifted decisively in the peasants’ favor.” (08:17, Gary Arndt)
John Ball’s Sermon:
“When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?” (17:49, John Ball quoted)
On the Savoy Palace:
“They went directly to the Savoy palace, the London residence of the regent John of Gaunt, whom they regarded as the chief author of their oppression, and burned it to the ground.” (22:00, Gary Arndt)
King Richard’s Promise:
“The young king rode forward alone towards the rebels and in a considerable act of courage for a 14 year old, called out that he would be their leader and give them all that they sought, urging them to follow him out of the city.” (27:14, Gary Arndt)
On Lasting Change:
“No comparable nationwide poll tax was imposed in medieval England ever again… While the Peasants’ Revolt failed to secure its immediate demands, it revealed just how much England had changed since the Black Death and how difficult it had become to preserve serfdom, wage controls and feudal obligations.” (29:12, Gary Arndt)

Timestamps for Key Segments

[06:40] – Social aftermath of the Black Death and labor shortages
[08:17] – Statute of Laborers and peasant grievances
[11:12] – Introduction and effects of the poll tax
[15:28] – Outbreak and rapid spread of the revolt in Essex and Kent
[17:49] – John Ball’s sermon and radical ideology
[22:00] – March on London and burning of the Savoy Palace
[26:51] – Smithfield meeting, Wat Tyler’s death
[27:14] – King Richard’s intervention to pacify the rebels
[29:12] – Consequences and legacy of the revolt

Tone and Style

Gary Arndt narrates with clarity, precision, and a focus on the practical realities and human stories underlying the historical record. The tone remains objective, informative, and engaging, with occasional direct quotations bringing events and characters to life.

Summary

This episode concisely yet vividly traces the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, demonstrating how economic transformation, government overreach, and the assertion of ordinary people's rights collided to challenge—and ultimately reshape—the feudal order. Despite its failure as an immediate movement, the revolt marked the irreversible decline of serfdom and left behind an indelible legacy of popular resistance.

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Transcript1 lines

[00:00]
A
In the late 14th century, England was recovering from the Black Death, fighting an expensive war and struggling with a labor shortage that had upended the traditional social order. When the government imposed a deeply unpopular tax, anger spread rapidly throughout villages and towns. Within a matter of days, thousands of people marched on London. Powerful officials were killed, and a teenage king faced the greatest popular uprising medieval England had ever seen. Learn more about the peasants riot of 1381 on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by Square. There's a local cafe I visit where paying is almost effortless. They use Square, and whether I'm tapping a card or leaving a tip, the whole process takes just a few seconds. That smooth checkout means the staff can spend less time wrestling with technology and more time dealing with customers. That's what Square does for businesses. It brings payments, point of sale, inventory, staffing and online sales together in one system. Its AI powered tools can handle routine tasks, while real insights help owners make smarter decisions. Square can work for someone opening their first location or a business expanding into several. With free plus and premium plans, transparent pricing and no long term contracts, Square helps you run your business more smoothly, bringing payments, operations and insights together in one place. So you're ready for whatever next. Right now, listeners can get up to $200 off square hardware when you sign up at square.com godaily that's sq U-A-R-E.com godaily get started with Square and build a setup that works the way you do. This episode is sponsored by Babbel. As longtime listeners know, I've spent over a decade traveling around the world and have visited most of the countries on earth. As such, I know firsthand the power of learning at least a few words and phrases in the language of any country you might be visiting. I picked up a bit wherever I've been to, but it's always been a challenge if you haven't learned anything beforehand. And that's why I've started using Babbel. I've begun working on two languages that I've always been the weakest at, French and German. Babbel is built for real life, not vocabulary lists or verb charts, but real conversation. Practice lessons are quick, practical and built by more than 200 language experts, not AI. Babbel's award winning app has sold over 25 million subscriptions and is backed by a 14 day money back guaranteed. If you've got summer travel coming up, now is the time to start so you can actually use what you learn on the trip. Right now, Babbel is offering listeners up to 60% off. Go to Babbel.com daily. That's Babbel B-A-B-B-E-L.com daily for up to 60% off. Rules and restrictions may apply. England in the second half of the 14th century was a society still reeling from catastrophe. The Black Death had first swept across the country in 1348 and 1349, killing perhaps a third to a half of the population. And further outbreaks in 1361 and 1369 kept mortality high and the population depressed for decades afterward. The demographic collapse had an effect that the peasantry understood very well, even if the nobility resisted acknowledging it. Labor had become scarce, and scarce labor should have commanded higher wages and better terms. Serfs and free laborers alike found themselves for the first time in generations, in a position to bargain. Manors that had once been worked by an abundance of tenants now stood short handed, and landlords who wanted their fields plowed and their harvests brought in had to compete for workers who could simply walk to the next village and and asked for better terms. The ruling class responded not by accepting this new reality, but by trying to legislate it away. In 1349 the Crown issued the Ordinance of Laborers, followed in 1351 by the Statute of Laborers, which attempted to freeze wages at pre plague levels and compel able bodied men and women to accept work at those fixed rates rather than seek better pay elsewhere. The law also restricted the movement of laborers, since lords depended on being able to hold tenants in their place. These laws were in effect, an attempt to use the state to reverse a market reality that had shifted decisively in the peasants favor. Needless to say, the peasants were highly resentful of these new laws. Enforcement of these laws fell to justices of the laborers and later to justices of the peace, whose fines and prosecutions became a running irritant rural life for an entire generation. The statute did not achieve its economic goal since wages continued to drift upwards in practice, but it did succeed in generating a durable sense of grievance among those who found themselves fined or threatened for seeking wages that the market would otherwise have freely given. Underlying this immediate friction was the long standing system of villainage which I mentioned in the episode on feudalism. Villains, which is spelled V I L L E I n s not villains like a Disney villain, were essentially serfs and were legally subordinated to their lords, owing mandatory labor services as well as fees and fines for marriage or inheritance. They faced strict restrictions regarding where they could reside and whom they could marry without a License, creating a stark and increasingly galling contrast with the higher wages and greater freedoms enjoyed by free laborers. As free wage labor became more lucrative and more visible, the burdens of villainage came to feel less like an ancient and unremarkable fact of life and more like an artificial imposition that benefited only the lord of the manor. On top of this already tense social landscape, the government had a financial crisis. The Hundred Years War against France, which England had been fighting on and off since 1337, remained enormously expensive and, by the late 1370s, going badly. The military campaigns in France produced very little in terms of money, but exacted a heavy financial toll. And the government of the young king, Richard ii, who had come to the throne as a boy of 10 years old in 1377 under the regency of his uncle John of Gaunt, needed money that it didn't have. Parliament's answer in 1377, 1379, and again in 1380 was to authorize a poll tax, a levy charged not according to land or wealth, but as a flat sum per head of population above a certain age. The first poll tax was modest and roughly graduated, but the third poll tax, granted by parliament in November of 1380 set a flat rate of one shilling per adult. While it was later adjusted to allow the wealthy in a community to help cover the poor, in practice it it meant that the burden on ordinary villagers was heavier than any previous tax and fell with particular weight on regions that had already contributed to the first two collections. Tax evasion was widespread, and when the government's assessors compared the returns against expected population figures in the spring of 1381, the shortfall was so large that commissioners were dispatched into the counties to investigate fraud and collect what was owed. The revolt began, by most accounts, in the village of Fobing in Essex, where in late May of 1381, a royal commissioner named Thomas Bampton arrived to investigate why the local poll tax return seemed incomplete. The villagers refused to pay the additional sums and demanded and drove Bampton's clerks away, and the resistance spread quickly to neighboring villages. In Essex, when a royal justice named Robert Belknap was sent to punish the offenders and identify and penalize the ringleaders, he too was confronted by an armed and organized crowd, forced to swear that he would never again sit in such a commission, and sent away with several of his clerks, reportedly killed, Essex was in open revolt. Within days, Kent rose almost simultaneously, and it was in Kent that the rebellion found its leadership and organization. The town of Dartford and the city of Rochester saw early Risings and Rochester Castle was stormed. To free a prisoner that was held there, the rebels of Kent had went to Maidstone, where they're said to have released from the archbishop's prison the radical priest John Ball, who had been excommunicated and imprisoned for years for preaching against the social order and the wealth of the church. Ball had provided the revolt with its most famous expression. He argued that inherited social distinctions had no foundation in Christianity. He is traditionally associated with the following. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? Delved meant dug and span meant spun, and gentleman in this context was referring to a manor lord. The argument was that Adam and Eve had worked without lords ruling over them. Therefore, aristocratic privilege was a human invention rather than part of God's original order. From this point, the movement acquired its most recognizable leader, Wat Tyler, about whom relatively little reliable biographical detail survives beyond his prominence as the commander who emerged to lead the Kentish mob. Under Tyler's direction, the rebels marched on Canterbury, entered the cathedral, and demanded assurances from the monks there. But before turning north towards London, the rebels goals, as they articulated them at this stage, centered on the abolition of villainage, an end to the hated poll tax and the statute of laborers, and more significantly, a demand to speak directly with the young King Richard ii, whom the rebels believed was their natural ally against corrupt officials. This distinction between loyalty to the king's person and hatred of his counselors was a recurring and important feature of the entire revolt. The rebels did not initially present themselves as opponents of the monarchy, but as subjects seeking the king's protection against bad advisors. By the second week of June 1381, the Essex rebels, under a leader sometimes called Jack Straw, and the Kentish rebels under Wat Tyler were converging on London from the north and the south. A substantial portion of the London populace, angered by their own economic status and resentful of foreign merchants and the wealthy elite governing the city, sympathized with or actively assisted the Rebels Advance. On June 12, the mob from Kent reached Blackheath, just outside the city, where John Ball is reported to have preached a famous sermon on the equality of all people. The following day, June 13, the rebels entered London because sympathetic citizens opened the gates at London Bridge and Aldgate. Once inside, the rebels moved with discipline against specific targets. Rather than descending into an indiscriminate riot. They went directly to the Savoy palace, the London residence of the regent John of Gaunt, whom they regarded as the chief author of their oppression, and burned it to the ground. Chroniclers of the rebellion record that the rebels deliberately destroyed the palace's treasures rather than looting them, throwing gold and silver into the Thames and declaring themselves seekers of justice rather than thieves. They executed at least one of their own who was caught stealing. Foreign merchants, particularly Flemish traders, who were resented as economic competitors by London's own artisans and workers, were singled out and a number of them were killed. The following day, June 14, the 14 year old King Richard II rode out to meet the rebels in what was intended as a negotiation to draw the crowd away from further violence in the city, Richard granted, or at least appeared to grant remarkably sweeping concessions. He agreed to abolish villainage, to fix rents at a modest rate, to grant a general pardon for the events of the uprising, and to permit free trade throughout the kingdom without the restrictions that had bound peasant labor and movements. Many of the Essex rebels, satisfied with these concessions and trusting in the king's word, began to disperse and head home. But even as Richard met the crowd at Mile End, a separate contingent of rebels made their way into the Tower of London itself, which had been left under defended. And there they seized and beheaded the archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, who also held the office of chancellor. They also executed the treasurer, Robert Hales, and several other officials whom the rebels held responsible for the poll tax and the general misgovernment of the realm. Of their heads were displayed on London Bridge, showing that the rebels considered these men, rather than the king, to be the true objects of their anger. The climax of the uprising came the next day on June 15th at Smithfield, just outside the city walls, where Richard met once more with the remaining rebels, now principally led by Wat Tyler. Tyler presented an even more radical set of demands, which included the abolition of all lordships save that of the king, the redistribution of the church's wealth amongst the common people, and the establishment of a single legal status for all Englishmen. During the meeting, a scuffle broke out in which Tyler was killed by one of the king's attendants and died of his wound shortly afterwards. In the tense moments that followed, with the rebel crowd on the verge of violence, the young king rode forward alone towards the rebels and in a considerable act of courage for a 14 year old, called out that he would be their leader and give them all that they sought, urging them to follow him out of the city. Once the main mob had dispersed, Richard and his government abandoned all of their concessions to the rebels. The charters of freedom were revoked. According to one traditional account, Richard told petitioners that they were villains and would remain villains. Royal commissioners traveled throughout the effective counties to arrest suspected leaders and participants. Trials were often rapid and executions were used to restore authority. Wat Tyler was already dead. John Ball was captured near Coventry and brought to St. Albans, where he was tried in the king's presence and executed on July 15 by being hung, drawn and quartered. Jack Straw and numerous other local leaders were also executed. In the short term, the revolt appeared to be a complete failure. However, Parliament and the governing elite were deeply shaken. They recognized that attempting to extract large sums directly from ordinary households could provoke coordinated resistance. No comparable nationwide poll tax was imposed in medieval England ever again, while the Peasants Revolt failed to secure its immediate demands. The revolt revealed just how much England had changed since the Black Death and how difficult it had become to preserve serfdom, wage controls and feudal obligations. It didn't end serfdom, but it was the beginning of the end. It also left behind a powerful example of ordinary people organizing against taxation and political corruption. The uprising was defeated, but the social system it challenged was already beginning to disappear. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show Notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.