The Peasants Revolt with Helen Carr | History Hit LIVE on Timeline

hello everybody welcome welcome this week on history hit live on timeline when we talk about the peasants revolt you don't believe how cool this is we've got historian helen carr here who is one of history's greatest friends um and a brilliant author historian in their own right tv broadcast everything um remember everyone we are here at uh 8 am pacific time 11 a.m eastern time 4 p.m uk time every single friday always just let us know what topics you'd like us to cover as always everybody you can support the channel if you like with the super comment function very thank you for all the donations that you've sent in the past um and that means i will definitely ask one of your questions uh to helen as well helen thank you very much for joining us it's a pleasure nice to be here well we're very excited you've made some films history about this uh before we've walked before we watch one of your films or we um talk to you let's just check out what the mighty tony robinson a favorite of everybody who loves timeline let's check out what the mighty tony robinson thinks about the peasants revolt have a look at one of his documentaries the peasants revolt was the most astonishing popular uprising of the middle ages it was a response to a century that was hell to living on top of plague famine and war the government had imposed a poll tax in 1381 the people snapped within two weeks a mixture of farmers tradesmen and landless laborers were on the brink of overthrowing the social order the rebels had marched on london to present their demands for justice to the boy king richard ii in person well well there we are some very clean looking uh angry 14th century people there hello should we even call this the peasants revolt is that a is that a weird thing to call it well in some ways it is a bit of a misnomer i mean at this point in the 14th century peasants did make up around 90 percent of the population but they weren't actually called peasants at the time they were called rustics or the chroniclers call them rusticis um but i think what's important to say about the peasants revolt is it wasn't actually just peasants who were rebelling it was mainly laboring classes so carpenters um also low order clergy reeves menorah officials and even bayless i think it's really unfair just to think that it was um you know this common misconception of these pitchfork wielding surfs it really wasn't like that hey team sorry about that i had some issues with my connection here i'm off site at the moment have you seen i've borrowed an office turns out that wi-fi isn't as good as it should be um helen how you doing what's the what tommy what's um what were the kind of long-term reasons uh the underlying reasons why there was unrest in this period so this was a post-black death economy um so in 1349 something called the ordinance of labour's was introduced by the king edward iii and this was a way of regulating working classes so after the black death a large amount of these labouring classes surfs peasants um died from the plague or in some places up to 50 of people so some of the landowners were actually left with very few people to work for them so these people who who did survive tried to better themselves which you know is fair enough they tried to ask for higher wages um they tried to move up in the ranks of society but this was particularly uncomfortable for the nobility um and so that's when the ordinance was introduced and that was a way of pushing people down and regulating them making it making sure that they couldn't earn above what they were earning in a pre-plagued economy um also this around 1381 so let's sort of look before the peasants revolt at 1380. this is when um there was a very young king on this very richard ii he was only he was only 13 at the time and he turned 14 in 1381. um 14 is the asian medieval society where a man is consid a boy is considered to be a man so up until this point he was relying on counsellors advisors a series of continual councils as they were called um and they weren't particularly good advisors the realm was um the realm was in a pretty precarious situation um so people were dissatisfied with the way that the that the country was being run um so what is particularly important what really precipitated the peasants revolt was the poll tax so by 1381 um three taxes had been introduced in a period of four years and it got to the point where this was particularly crippling so this was three raised to three growths for anybody who was aged over the age of 15. um and if you think about you know our our levels of tax being raised significantly that frequently it became unpayable for many people we've got a few uh we got philip blair does not like edward iii on on on the questions um we uh on and also rito you can get this hat at the history hit shop go and check it out but who are the main characters on the establishment side we've got the thumbs down forever the third here uh you've mentioned richard ii who else do we need to know about yeah so um so what happened was in 1380 there was the parliament that instigated the next poll tax and this was initiated by the chancellor who's the archbishop of cannesbury called simon sudbury and the treasurer called robert hales now in this parliament they agreed that it was important that another tax was introduced to protect the realm from uh threats of french invasion for example because many uh french ships were attacking the english coastline um and they considered that the working classes were the only people who who would be able to put up this level of tax this was all agreed and everything went off happy as larry um the only other um i suppose instigator was john of gaunt but that but that actually is a common misconception that he was um he he enforced the the poll tax he didn't really he wasn't even at this parliament he was away in scotland he was just unpopular in particular in the city of london who joined the revolt at its at its height so these were the main three protagonists of the revolt not including rich the second oh i can't hear you dan well there lots of with lots of revolts in this period um and is this just one that we remember because of the scale or was there something really unusual about this um no there was some small sort of uprisings during this period but this one this was significant i mean this was the this was the largest um social rebellion in in british history um it was it was enormous and i think that edward iii had been quite a popular king um i know that one of the one of you watching the moment doesn't particularly like edit the third but he was quite a popular king it's not so much um into his later years but generally he was successful at war the people um respected him and loved him um so it was really only in the minority of richard ii that the general populace fell out of out of love with the establishment and i don't think the establishment we're treating them particularly fairly either um so no the peasants role really was the the largest of all of them that happened before how did it how did it begin how did this revolt flare up yeah so i mentioned robert hales who was the treasurer um so when it was agreed in the 1380 parliament in northampton that they were going to introduce this this new poll tax initially he suggested that it would be taken two separate payments so one in the winter and one in the spring to make it uh more affordable for people easier to pay they didn't they didn't actually take into account that the money would be coming in too slowly and so instead they just whacked this into one great big payment um so that's when tax collectors were dispatched all around the country and people for example in places like essex were starting to avoid the tax because they couldn't they couldn't afford to pay it um and at that point commissions of inquiry were sent over to places like essex to try and exalt the tax from people um and they were often quite harsh they behave quite badly there are some examples of these commissioners inspecting girls virginities to um determine whether they were old enough to be paying the tax or whether they were married um and people obviously understandably felt oppressed they didn't they couldn't pay this this this sort of money um and they started to attack them they started to attack the tax click the bailiffs and some of these commissioners and this started in brentwood in essex when the tax collector called john bowsen was attacked and chased out of the town um and i think it really escalated in here in the countries in the counties in the south what's um were these uh again was was what stage did this evolve into something more than just a little local difficulty i mean what would it did was was it from the beginning something of a national emergency or or was it a slow burn to convince the rulers in london that something was up i think it was actually quite um i think it was quite slow but i don't think that they really feared anything until the rebels actually arrived in london um it was a it was a real snowball effect um there's they seem to have a band of rebels seem to have accumulated in essex and made two different factions in essex and kent and then both move towards london and i think there is evidence of letters being passed between them letters being sent to other counties trying to um to get people to rise up together and as a united front be able to confront the establishment to confront the oppressors and march towards the king who they saw as the only person who was able to liberate them from what they saw is this unfair treatment um so i think that from from day one i think their incentive was to march to london but they it was just this cumulative snowball effect of people it's like they were just gathering people along the way and there is um in the sources they the chroniclers who are uh who aren't particularly impartial they're pretty vinci they do vindicate the rebels but they um they talk about the uh the rebels threatening people in various towns to burn their property if they didn't actually join in um so that i mean that that could have been a possibility but like i said you can't really rely on these chroniclers because they were generally um against the the rustics as they called them um and do any leaders emerge at this stage yeah so the most famous is obviously is what tyler um we don't really know much about what tyler he only appears during this point and he was literally he was a man from essex and he was literally a tyler of houses um hence his surname so he was a laborer and i think that he was probably just arguing for um a wage increase he wanted to better himself like many people who were um who are arguing the same the same cause um but what did he did emerge is as a very good leader and i think that he he definitely strove for um for fair treatment but he he also wanted to do this peacefully i don't think that he was trying to lead a violent revolt um he definitely promoted um promoted clemency and he promoted um discussion rather than rather than rage and anger and stealing and etc and violence basically um and then there was john ball so john paul he was a priest he was a low order clergyman who preached for social egalitarianism there's um some there's one school of thought that he was a supporter of john who of john wycliffe who was a lollard um but i don't really know if there's much evidence in that but he um you know he he once he checked the order of things you know the term the the phrase when adam delved in eve span who was then the gentleman that was very much what he was arguing for and he used to deliver these electrifying sermons to people and you can imagine these groups of rebels surrounding this man who is convincing them you do not need to be oppressed who are these leaders who are these kings these nobles who are they to tell you that you are lesser so you can understand why people felt so um riled up when they had been facing this constant oppression since well since then since the the last plague and and how does that progress go because essex for those of you many of you watching abroad uh essex is a neighboring county to london so they didn't have far to go to get to the capitol did they no they actually they did march through rochester um and they they targeted rochester cast and i think this was to liberate um some of the prisoners perhaps one particular prisoner we're not really sure um and they laid they laid siege as much as they could lay siege to rochester castle i mean watch the cars if anybody's seen it you can put pictures of it it's this edifice that stands on the side of the med way and looks over the midway um and this castle was attacked in the barons war and there's this great story about in the barons war um under king john in 1215 they were launching boiling pig fats onto the walls of this castle but they couldn't quite bring it down so it's amazing to think that this band of rebels managed to get inside the castle how did they do that well i think what they were really successful at doing was convincing um whoever was protecting um whatever castle or territory to submit i don't really know how they did that but they they did it continuously throughout the revolt um so they actually persuaded the constable of the castle to um surrender and they took him as prisoner and they liberated um the prisoners of rochester castle and then they moved on towards london they entered from the south and they came together on on black heath hi everybody welcome back thank you for sticking with us thank you for sticking with us i'm reliably informed that was not my fault so i'm very excited and i'm thrilled frankly helen carr is here the brilliant historian of the 14th century she is just telling us about the peasants revolt she is telling us most importantly about the sacking of the king's son well the king's uncles palace i mean this is extraordinary and then the savoy palace being sacked in the center of london tell us how about how bad was the damage yeah well i think it was the i think it was the worst damage building in the entirety of the peasants revolt it was it was brought down to the ground i think the actual um story about how it was destroyed is fascinating so the rebels they they managed to get entry i don't know how they managed to get in perhaps they were letting but the savoy wasn't particularly well protected um they they they got into the palace and they were in john and grant's property they were opening trunks and pulling out all of his clothing his jewels um it was a real kind of invasion of privacy and they actually even uh they found one of his items of clothing was called a jack which is like a um jacket like it's almost like a circle but it's something that you place um over over the shirt and they impaled it on top of a on top of a spear so they made this sort of mock like mannequin of john of gaunt's and they attacked it with both arrows and bows and arrows and they were hacking at it with knives and axes um it was it was really brutal and during the attack on the survivor i think is really important to to stipulate is the fact that they didn't steal anything there was jewels and wealth everywhere there were tapestries there were bed hangings there were um there were jewels there was there was incredibly expensive plate but they stole nothing and anybody who did try and steal was struck down by one of the other rebels because the point was to destroy the wealthy it wasn't to steal from the wealthy um they were trying to destroy their oppressors um not play into their hands as as as villains and criminals um so as they were destroying jonathan's goods they built this pyre in the great hall as as people will know who are interested in the medieval period any magnate or king had what's called a great hall which is this huge dining hall in the center of your home um and they built this enormous pyre and set it alight and meanwhile while they were doing that some of the other rebels um found their way down to the to the cellars and john agung kept an enormous supply of fine wine from gascony um down in the cellars and you know these people were quite used to drinking ale um not wine wine was quite strong in comparison and they had a revel as the quantities call it it was a rebel down in the cellars and they were getting increasingly drunker and drunker and as this umpire was getting larger and larger rebels upstairs were rolling these great barrels onto this pyre thinking that they were filled with jewels but actually they were filled with gunpowder and so as this these barrels ignited there was this blast this huge inferno which brought the savoy palace crumbling down um and the rebels who were in the cellar were drunk and trapped and they had they ended up with a pretty sticky um sticky end and the savoy palace was really just left in total ruins um so yes the the name the savoy is littered all around the astrand today there's pubs the savoy tap there's the savoy hotel all of that um area of london today which i think is amazing it still um still memorializes this amazing palace that was destroyed in that one day um and there is the only thing that remains now is uh i think in the chapel there are some of the foundations but that was it so of all of the buildings that the rebels sacked the savoy um i think was damaged the worst and then there's the savoy which was a royal palace but then the ultimate royal palace the tower of london for the only time in its thousand-year history yeah and it gets within the walls what happens there yeah well uh so richard the second had been persuaded to go and meet with the rebels he'd been persuaded to go and treat with them up on mile end um he had taken refuge up until this point in the tower of london um and he would watch from the windows of the white tower as his city was in flames um so he had no choice other than to eventually go out ride out and meet with them and hear what their grievances were so he did this but he left his two advisors in the tower of london for their protection but then also potentially for his as well if he's going to be meeting with the rebels so this was the chancellor simon sudbury and the treasurer robert hales so they stayed in the tower as richard rode out bravely he rode through old gate and up into mile end where he met with with a band of rebels now as richard did this and he parlayed with the rebels at my land was another band of rebels um including a woman called joanna farah who managed to get inside the tower of london and you're right it hasn't this this fortress has never been breached and how so how did they reach it that's a good question again i think they did it through coercion or was there somebody who was on their side who allowed them entry but there's no way that they they managed to get in by a siege that that that didn't happen they didn't have siege engines they didn't have um the devices that they would need to be able to conduct something like that somebody let them in so they made their way into the tower of london into the into the keep and they they immediately went and targeted the who they saw with their oppressors simon sudbury and robert hales who were both in the chapel um so they were found on their knees praying um and these rebels stormed in and simon sudbury allegedly stood up um and said something along the lines of you know forgiveness my children or some something like that and they dragged him out by his hair and robert hales the treasure was dragged out screaming um and they were dragged up onto tower hill and these two men were beheaded um simon sudbury had dreadful end it took eight blows to take his head off and i can't remember the church that it is in now that's definitely something you can google but as um his head actually still survives today and you can see if you google it it's not a pretty pretty macabre uh site but yes paul simon sudbury and robert hales were were executed along with them a couple of other people who were found inside the tower of london including brother william appleton who was um one of john of gaunt's i think he's jonathan's physician um he was also dragged out just purely through having a connection to john of gaunt but these weren't the only people who suffered um death i think you know during the revolt there was um particular animosity towards foreign people in london um a group of flemish people were ushered inside a church in farringdon and the church was satellite um it was it was violent in in many different aspects it was violent on on side of the rev on side of the nobility but it was also the people who suffered as well so we're going to watch a short clip now on storming the tower this is one of the most extraordinary moments of the peasants robot let's take a look where the rebels arrived they found the drawbridge was down and the doors were open the king or someone close to him was clearly on their side on one level they were like kids let loose in a sweet shop they've rampaged through the corridors they burst into the queen's bedroom they ransacked her drawers they bounced up and down on her bed but that was just the fun part they knew what they were really after the blood of the poll tax traitors sudbury and hails and co must have known what was coming to them as this great crowd of men and women swept through the tower sudbury tried to escape but he was spotted by a woman as he scrambled into a boat and was dragged away and thrown into this chapel the country's number one bishop and tax collector had got nothing left to do but pray tony robinson running into the tower there that was exciting love that documentary make sure you go and check that out on timeline everybody we're with helen carr um she she loves john of gaunt so there's there's a heavy bit of bias going on towards john again here but to whether they had it coming to him or not his palace was destroyed and all his contacts were beaten up and killed um helen what about the king what about his nephew john gaunt was off safely in on the scottish border but richard and his mother were very much in town i was the royal family yeah so joan of kent so some um there are a couple of chronicle accounts that suggest janet kent was actually in the tower of london at the time and um one of the one of the rebels ran up to the royal suite and gave her a kiss which left her in such shock that i think she fainted um but i'm not sure how accurate that was i think jane of kent was installed somewhere for safety whether that was um at the tower or whether it's somewhere else um i think it probably wasn't the tower but i'm not sure about the whole peasants kissing thing um so after richard met with the peasants on milan and then he came back to town to discover that his two advisors heads now were impaled on spikes in london bridge um yeah that was obviously um that was obviously problematic for him so another meeting was arranged um at smithfield so richard brought with him the the mayor of london william woolworth and some of his close advisers including his half brother james holland sorry not james holland john holland i'm thinking of the historian and um and so he came and met with the rebels at smithfield and this would have been an intimidating sight for for richard i mean you've got on the one hand you've got rebels who are waving the flag of saint george you know we're loyal royal followers we love you our king and then on the other side there are uh there are rebels holding holding spikes with people's heads on so this is quite conflicting and remember richard's only 14 and how is he supposed to deal with this so he agrees to um to hear the terms of the rebels leader what tyler and this is the second time they've done this so he's already agreed to the rebels terms before at marlend um during which was when simon sudbury and robert hales were were killed um but he agrees to hear more terms and at this point tyler makes some quite radical suggestions some quite radical terms you know he he pushes for um disestablishment of of the church he asks for too much he pushes for too much um and i think before this i think that some of the some of the terms that he had initially pushed for were in preparation i think there is there is evidence of some charters being drawn up to show that um to grant some of the freedoms that he had requested but he pushed he pushed him too hard and it's difficult to say exactly what he said that initiated and or antagonized the nobility but he said something because a skirmish broke out so apparently what happened was he um was trading trading words with the king and his and his advisors and i think they were quite it was getting quite heated um he asked for a cup of water to wash his mouth out because his mouth was dry it was hot he'd been marching it was dusty um and he washed his mouth out with water um in front of the king and he spat the water out on the floor in front of the king so you know hideous insult to the king um what tyler was um was then um attacked so so some of the kings um some of the king's men were were were you know brandishing all of these will be slurs against him like you villain you rogue um and they and he he responded he got quite aggressive um and so i think to protect the king william warth we're not exactly sure exactly who it was but what tyler and william wolf got into a bit of a skirmish and what tyler was stabbed um i think he was stabbed i think through the neck um and then all of these rebels were sort of standing across the field in shock waiting to see what was going to happen i mean this is their leader this is the person they've been sort of rallying behind and he has now he's been killed and and he was so it's unsure whether he was killed then or his when he was chased down and killed later on but let's say he was he was killed then so there's this moment where you're thinking is there going to be a battle are the rebels going to surge forwardness is going to be this this attack but instead richard bravely really bravely and um he and he really uses his initiative here he rides forward and he takes this moment with the death of one leader to become their leader and he stands before them and he urges them to disperse and he says i will grant you your freedoms go back to your homes disperse be done with this be done with the with the fighting and and they agree and it is that's it and then they just off they go they just go back to their homes does richard actually um is he true to his word well that's that's another story there's a lesson from all peasant uprisings of medieval early modern period which is never ever disperse yeah once you disperse they're going to come for you what does in fact let's watch a bit more of tony robinson and then we'll finish up just just asking you what were the uh what was the long term impact let's check this out an institution founded by simon sudbury the hated archbishop who'd enforced the poll tax his head had been hacked off by the rebels at the tower of london we know that the summer of 1381 was gloriously hot but if you want proof of the fact it's here sudbury supporters rescued his head from the spike on which the rebels had stuck it and brought it back to this church it's in this little cupboard here there you go can you see that the air was so hot and dry that it actually mummified all the skin on the lower half of his skull that is the head of the man who collected the very first poll tax it was this that was paraded round on spike on the 14th of june 1381 and there you can see the sword marks where his head was hacked from his neck it's quite a bizarre historical relic and it's just about the only tangible thing i can show you from the peasants remold so brilliant historian helen carr that's what happened to lots of the rebels did the king go on a sweep through through the countryside or how did it work um yeah so richard wasn't um he didn't show clemency at all he he hunted them down he had them yeah he had them hunted down and he launched effectively a pacification of essex rebels were caught they were strung up um they were strung up from from trees and hung and some were hung quartered it was it was violent from his side at the end um and then this also extended into other parts of the country the bishop of norwich um uh bishop to spencer he went on a one-man crusade against uh against any of the rebels um in in norwich and he um there's a great there's a great chronicle description of this of this bishop that he um that he sort of recouted himself and this armor had a had this enormous sword and he gnashed his teeth like a great ball and um and sort of ushered all of these rebels into into one um into one place and he um and he had them all punished for their actions so this was um this was a country-wide um pacification it was really just to prove you do not rise up against your king the order the establishment is there for a reason and that is the way it's always going to be um and so that was the very uh innova lens to the to the peasants revolt um did it have a did they have a longer term impact yeah i think i think possibly later down the line but i think that this was a combination of things i don't think that it was just the peasants revolt that that had the impact i think it was a combination of that the the ordinance of labour is not really working um and the demand for higher wage it was a consistent thing for years to come well uh helen carr that's so kind of you for joining us on the podcast your book of john of gaunt is coming out soon and you are going to be on the history hit podcast so thank you very much indeed thank you dan as ever for having me and we're going to get you making some shows for history here next year for sure um thank you everyone for watching uh that's sorry about those technical difficulties we had um you can go and check out that tony robbins documentary on timeline you can go to the history hit shop and buy one of those or any other amusing bits of historical merch for those strange relatives or workmates this holiday christmas season um and don't forget to go to historyhit.tv to watch all the world's best history documentaries including stuff featuring helen carr so head over there use the code timeline get a special introductory offer in the meantime everybody we'll see you next friday bye bye you

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Keywords: history of the space race, history documentary, history hit, dan snow, full documentary, full length documentaries, full episode, vikings documentary, viking age, tv shows - topic, Hd documentary

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Length: 35min 4sec (2104 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020