The Story Of The Peasant's Revolt | Peasant's Revolt Of 1381 | Timeline

[Music] this is Smithfield today of course it's famous as a meat market but 600 years ago it literally was a field just outside London then on the 15th of June 1381 it became the stage for one of the most significant events in British history the climax in an extraordinary fortnight that saw ordinary British working men and women rise up and claim their own place in history for the very first time it was called the peasants revolt an event that saw people daring to challenge the rigid rules of medieval society to rebel in 14th century Britain was to risk everything and with the stakes so high this tale involves scenes more bloody than the market scene ever since [Music] the 14th century has been called the world's worst century it was a terrible time to live on top of plague famine and continual Wars there was oppression from the harshest of regimes when they could bear it no more the people's response shook the nation to its core the peasant revolt wasn't a riot it was a revolution its impact was so shocking the historians from the ruling class deliberately hushed up its true significance they hid the achievements of ordinary people by scoring them as rioting yokels I want to restore the men and women who stood here to their rightful place in history I want to bring a whole cast of unknown heroes blinking into the limelight and with the help of experts I want to show how oppressed people organized to transform their world and how betrayal and tragedy shattered that dream [Music] uncovering the truth about the peasants revolt means embarking on an epic journey of discovery what the peasants did in 1381 does echo down the centuries to us and it does have a resonance in terms of our own experience today it's the most important event in the social history of the English middle ages it set the pattern for later centuries of revolt in retracing the course of the revolution I'll be finding out just who some of these extraordinary men and women were and how exactly they managed the planning and logistics of their remarkable campaign what they never told me at school was that it all started where I come from this explained me when I was growing up here in the 1950s already there was ribbon development virtually from Eastham to southend-on-sea but it was very different in the Middle Ages all the places that I knew in my childhood wore from stone Woodford and barking and Brentwood they were just little villages and I'm rather proud to say that it was the men and women of those villages who masterminded and led the peasants revolt politicians today talk about the fight for the hearts and minds of Essex man well in 1381 they definitely lost it the politicians of the time were taking as they now say around here and diabolical Liberty it was May 13 81 and the English had been clobbered by a new tax the hundred years war with the French was dragging on and it was really expensive so in order to pay for it they brought in a poll tax which meant that every adult in the country had to pay the same amount whether they were the 14th century equivalent of a Jag owner or the proud possessor of a Ford Fiesta Margaret Thatcher's community charge was nicknamed the poll tax because it was based on the same principle and 600 years later it still didn't seem fair but it wasn't the tax itself that started the revolt at first people seemed to be paying the trouble began when the government did it sums there was a shortfall all over the country people had been dodging the new tax by dropping off the official registers in Essex over a third of the population disappeared if the authorities had turned a blind eye to the tax evasion then the problem could have been avoided but they decided to send commissioners in to chase up the defaulters and what really sent people over the edge was the brutal deeply personal way that these commissioners behaved they go into a village and really start chucking their weight about what caused most offence was the way they treated village women these tax officials would stick their hands up young women's skirts to find out if they were virgins or if they were married and therefore eligible to pay the poll tax the peasants revolt was sparked by this kind of outrageous behavior and the man who put a stop to all this was a baker Thomas Baker from the village of bobbing on the Essex coast what we know about Thomas Baker was that he was brave the Chronicles say that no one dared to make the first move for fear that they would suffer irrevocable harm but Thomas Baker had the courage to organize a deputation from surrounding villages and confront the commissioner at Brentwood the commissioners name was John Bampton on the 30th of May he pitched up at Brentwood with only a token bodyguard blissfully unaware of what may in store Banton set up a makeshift table in the middle of the village and all round in the angry people jostling lots of people from the surrounding villages there's a really ugly mood and out of it stepped Thomas Baker and he said to Bampton all of these folks have already paid their taxes there's no way you're going to get a penny more out of them and Bampton immediately ordered the arrest of a hundred people in the crowd that certainly wasn't going to happen he completely misjudged their moves a riot started and Banton's men had to flee before they were beaten up no one knew it at the time but that was the start of the peasants revolt and it was a baker that started it I'd never even thought of Baker's as peasants but Thomas de Baker had a very firm place in a social order that had been fixed for centuries and to understand the peasants revolt you have to know where everyone stood in the pecking order I've driven all the way down from Brentwood to Penn off in South Wales down the m4 which is a heck of a drive I contain in order to see if I could get something of a feel of what medieval barking and Billericay and Dagenham would have been like at this reconstructed village to err untutored eyes these buildings all seemed pretty much the same even though that's a barn that belongs to the pig man this one over here is the Baker's house Thomas Baker would probably have lived somewhere like this but they all knew what their place was in this very close knit hierarchy for instance inside the Baker's house it all looks pretty impoverished in fact the Baker had got all he needed to survive what made his life a misery was that he was officially a serf he could own land and property but he still belonged to the lord of the manor serfdom meant he couldn't move or work for anyone else or even marry his daughter off without permission even the top man in the village the Reeve was bound by the same system he had plenty of space lots of possessions nice furniture a few acres to farm he was like a successful small businessman but he was still thought of as a peasant because he was under the control of the lord of the manor nevertheless everything ticked along quite nicely as long as there was plenty of food on the table but then in the middle of the 14th century something happened that changed [Music] in 1348 the black death swept into britain there was no cure communities such as these were devastated the Black Death killed up to half of all the people in Europe to put that into some kind of context we all know of someone who was killed in the first or second world war and if you add up all the people killed in the world wars in Bosnia in the civilian massacres of Hitler and Stalin it still only comes to 3.7 percent of the European population if you wanted to duplicate the effect of the Black Death on Europe you'd have to have 20 world wars well in many ways the Black Death was a disaster for many peasant communities lots of village communities were completely destroyed whole communities were obliterated and the Black Death is seen as a kind of punishment visited by God or mankind for its sinfulness but if you're lucky enough to survive the onslaught of the plague then great opportunities unfolded for you what kind of opportunities well there was plenty of land available land had be short before the Black Death in the wake of the Black Death there's a super abundance of it and also wages begin to rise really quite dramatically so you could be much more mobile you could be more mobile and also you could hope to earn a great deal more your you and the consumer power of the peasantry is growing in this period so how did the employers cope with this shortage of labour well they try to buck the market essentially the government acting on their behalf introduces legislation to restrict the movement of labour and also restrict wage levels and this obviously produces considerable tension and discontent and then this huge tax gets dumped on people yes series of pressures are building within the peasant community within the peasant economy you've got restrictive legislation coming from the center and on top of this you've also got a novel form of tax the like of which has never been seen before king richard ii was only 14 when the revolt started people didn't blame him for the oppression and chaos they believed the king was divinely appointed and trusted him implicitly the only problem was that he was young you couldn't expect a little kid to rule on his own so when things started to go from bad to worse people began to blame his advisors who seemed to be doing pretty nicely out of all the disasters the most hated figure was John of Gaunt the King's uncle he helped Institute the poll tax people suspected him of siphoning off funds for his own use and joining gaunt on the peasants most hated list were two churchmen Archbishop of Canterbury Simon Sudbury who was Chancellor of England and the treasurer Robert Hales together they were responsible for organizing the get-tough collection of the poll tax [Music] cup of tea please take away please know it wasn't unusual in the Middle Ages for churchmen to hold down top political and economic jobs and it wasn't unusual for them to carry on their duties in a pretty unchristian way but Sudbury and Hales made loan sharks today seem like the Salvation Army the fact that the commissioners were so extraordinary heavy-handed was completely down to them the bacon roll is hot what amazes me is why people didn't snap sooner they'd have a plague they've had landlords trying to force down their wages they've had to pay for wars in France with an unfair tax which always seems to end up in the nobilities pockets but commissioners sexually assaulting their women that pushed them over the edge the pens revolt had started when Thomas de baker's men had kicked out the tax commissioners from Brentwood the backlash came almost immediately the next day another tax officer turned up in Brentwood with a small troop of soldiers to calm the crowd and quell the riot but they completely underestimated the strength of popular feeling it was dangerous to rebel against the Kings representative but these were people who'd passed the point of no return they didn't care that they were committing treason for the first time the rebellion turned violent six of the Kings men were beheaded the rest fled the rebels had crossed a line there was no going back the English nobility saw the people who worked for them as little more than savages but within a few days these people would organize a revolt with a specific agenda and carry it out with ruthless efficiency Thomas the Baker from fobbing had lit the torch of freedom within a matter of days it would engulf the land in fire when an angry crowd beheaded the Kings tax collectors at Brentwood they kicked off other outbreaks of violence and unrest rioting swiftly spread across Essex and beyond four days later anger at the poll tax exploded in Kent this is ten was made on the south side of the Thames at first glance you wouldn't imagine that it's crawling with history but it was here that the peasants revolt stop being just a bunch of riots over a long hot summer and started to become something much more like a military campaign just down the road is the rebels first major target Les Mis Abbey now you may think it's a pretty soft target and a million miles away from the poll tax but in fact Abbey's like this one and the vast majority of the land in England and the Abbott's who ran them who like the managing directors of financial institutions not only that but they were employers so all the tax records would have been in there these tax ribbons were led by a man called Abel Kerr from Erath a nearby port on the Thames Abel brought his men here and surrounded the Abbey faced with an angry mob of peasants and fearing for the monastery in his life the abbot surrendered with limited resources Abel had secured his first victory then he went across the river into Essex and try to mobilize men there picked up a hundred men in barking brought them back to here and continued the mayhem but Mike when I was a kid on the borders of London and Essex we never went south of the river I think the first time I ever went was when as a holiday to Folkston when I was about 12 wouldn't it have been the same then quite the opposite in the 14th century there was a tremendous estuary culture the Thames here was full of boats flying to and fro between Essex and Kent the only land crossing was London Bridge down the river there but here tremendous agricultural region in Kent ramones agricultural region Essex produce livestock people trade hundreds of boats to and fro but Mike Abel went to barking and back here in a flash I think there are a lot of the logistics of this rebellion and a lot of issues to do with medieval travel that we need to explore and experiment with undoubtedly he must have used horses see one of the things about the Chronicles is that they're great at telling us what happened but absolutely useless in telling us how it happened so we've brought Mike in as mr. how it happened and your first challenge is to work out how Abel and his horsemen would across the river do you think you can do that certainly I will Don the mantle of the rebels and represent their journey through this uprising so while Mike starts the business of retracing one part of the revolt with Abel ker I'm heading back north of the river [Music] because what made the revolt so confusing for the authorities was that it was springing up all over the place before they had time to react Essex was the birthplace of the revolt and events there were moving at breakneck speed at exactly the same time as Abel ker and his men were surrounding less Knar savvy in Kent the ringleaders and founders of the rebellion were launching their manifesto here walking in Essex [Music] The Chronicles of the time dismissed the peasants as disorganized rabble but the summit held here on the 2nd of June 1381 provides a vital clue to the true nature of the revolt they weren't just a bunch of troublemakers the agenda was put together by leading respected members of their communities who thought they were being really patriotic by defending traditional rights on the 2nd of June they declared their intention to destroy divers Li Jie's of the King which means to get rid of Sudbury and Gorm's and those they thought were corrupting the king and to have no laws in England only those that they themselves moved to be ordained this was dynamite the assertion that people could actually rule themselves and they made sure that everyone was going to hear that message they sent messages out into the surrounding villages these people were well organized weren't they they were organized certainly around areas like Colchester which was the heart of the Great Society and we think in villages all around the southeast of England that would have been a nucleus of radicals who've been organizing for some time so do you reckon that there were radical cells dotted all over the country which all kind of keyed in to this feeling of revolt certainly in the southeast and the counties around London if you look at the rhymes and the coded messages that were sent to us they should have coded messages they did send out coded messages that's right well I have one here this is a good example of one of the surviving messages these based by the way were found in the pockets of rebels but here's one I'll read it briefly John shed some time so Mary priests of York and now in Colchester greet a--the well John nameless and John Miller and John Carter and biddeth piers plowman to go to his work and chastise well hob the robber I didn't understand a word of that what's it mean well the Crypt if you've written that we have to interpret from the Middle English now if I can just translate quickly yes please do John check John the shepherd that that that's a New Testament reference sometimes since a Mary priest of York that refers to John Bull who was an important leader of the rebellion who was excommunicated hence sometimes greeted well John nameless everyman ordinary folk and John Miller and John Carter it's a trades people working people and biddeth Piers Plowman to go to his work and chastise well hop the robber hug the robber was the nickname of robber tales he was the treasurer for the government he was a hated a hated figure we had to understand here that one of the causes of the rebellion was a hatred of Taxation this was an anti poll-tax rebellion on a grand scale now this is a very specific instruction chastise him well this is a deadly instruction they know what they're saying it means very clear messages implied that you can read that you know what's going on on a national scale that there's some kind of network that you can take the messages to how come people were so well briefed and so organized I think in every village would have been somebody who could read who had been educated that the local Abbey they would have relied on somebody standing on a little tussock or upon a barrel reading out the coded messages interpreting them for the audience but you know I think you have to understand communication in terms of the technology and the the society of the day in in the same way as today anti-globalization protesters rely on on the internet or an email in the 60s people listened to their Trani radios for the latest news of latest demonstration or back in 1381 that's how people did it so they I think although the technology changes the sense of excitement and exhilaration at the latest piece of information or the latest story from London it's kind of the same it's the same feeling of being in a movement the same feeling of liberation the same feeling of excitement and not quite knowing what's going to happen next but knowing that you want to be involved these messages were shooting out from Essex in all directions to signal the start of the revolt this explains why the South of England seems to spontaneously combust in the summer of 1381 and that brings us back to our own medieval traveler Mike Loades is on the first stage of a journey that will take him through Kent and eventually to London but first like a Booker he has to get across the Thames he's asked me to meet him at Tilbury Docks which doesn't sound very medieval Mike I know this place my granddad used to work down here when I was a kid he was a steward on a boat exactly like that for the Union Castle life so surely that's your answer we get the horses on there and take them across well far from being the answer it ships like that that are our problem in what way during the last few centuries the Thames has been dredged into a deep channel and that has made it much wider and a much stronger current it's more tidal because of boats like that in the 14th century it would have been a narrower gentler much easier crossing ok so the app is burning on the other Bank Abel curse come over here to get some men from Essex to go back to Kent how does he get across how does he get the horses across well I've been looking into it my first thought well the answer is going to be a thames worry because that's a traditional thames cargo craft and what they found out was that they're not deep enough and we'd have to tack a lot to get across there and the boom wouldn't clear the horses heads so that was out I thought maybe some kind of barge but then we've got issues of loading them and getting them down and the jetties aren't in place so would they have been much traffic along here during the 14th century wouldn't it have been pretty stop that from a year empty like it is now I'm sure it'd have been colossal because don't forget at this time the only bridge across the Thames was London Bridge and that's miles upriver so I'm sure they were applying to and fro all the time with cattle and sheep and produce ok so if we haven't got a roll-on/roll-off theory what are we gonna do well it is so tidal it is so choppy it would be too dangerous for the horses so I've decided to try my luck and take them on the Tilbury passenger ferry I'm not sure this one's too happy about it no I know but I'm taking two along with me because I've got a long ride now we're going down to Canterbury and riding back and we need a relay of horses so I'm going to try and get these two on the fairy [Music] six days into the revolt Abel kur headed back to Kent with a hundred men from Essex he landed in Dartmouth [Music] two days later Abel boosted with reinforcements launched the first rebel strike on a major military target [Music] they moved from Dartford on to Rochester a week after the start of the revolt the peasants had the confidence to attack one of the best defended fortresses in the land Rochester Castle and a fearsome reputation the peasants risked everything just to free a serf from the dungeons there was a chap called Robert Belling who'd been living in Gravesend for some time and one of the King's Knight's turned up and said oh I recognize you you're one of my runaway serfs you're my property I want you back and Belling said I'm not and a big dispute broke out and while they were waiting to decide who was right Belling was banged up here in Rochester castle the local people were absolutely furious it became a cause celeb on the 6th the rioters from Dartford turned up here and surrounded the castle now look at this place its purpose built to withstand a siege when King John arrived here in the Year 1215 it took siege engines and tunnels before the castle surrendered but the Darth has been arrived and the doors opened there must have been a heck of a lot of support for them both outside the castle and inside at the heart of each of these momentous events were individual men and women and amazingly 600 years later we know who some of them were the peasants revolt wasn't just about the workers there were all sorts ordinary blokes like soldier Thomas wooden he'd been paid 30 pounds up front to sail for France with the army but he jumped ship at Dartford and joined the rebels storming Rochester Castle you'd never call Sir Thomas Raven a peasant even though he was an MP and the bailiff of Rochester Castle he was an enthusiastic supporter of the revolt but the man who emerged as overall leader was a tradesman we know that because his name has echoed down the centuries I don't remember much from my school but one name that sticks in my head probably sticks in yours too is what Tyler when the revolt started there were lots of local leaders but when they got here to Maidstone they elected one national leader what which was short for Walter and he really was a Tyler probably worked on the roofs of Abbey's and churches that kind of thing other than that we know virtually nothing about him some say he was a local radical others that he was from Dartford or even Essex but it was here that he came to the fore in Maidstone where he was elected leader and where he helped to rescue another of the leading lights of the revolt John Ball who was being held as a prisoner in the Archbishop's palace which is now a registry office what Tyler and his men wrecked the palace and broke out in the jail freeing John Ball and the other prisoners why on earth wouldn't Archbishop have a prison I suppose it all turns really on our understanding what an archbishop he is in the late 14th century and thinking that an archbishop is a really a powerful Prince but she thicker yes yeah and and none greater than the Archbishop of Canterbury and having two major domains which he's going to use a prison for people who fall foul of his ecclesiastical courts and he's going to use it for people who have offended in his local manners which he over his vast estates and are going to be brought here for to be jailed and at the same time what was John Paul doing in prison well John Paul is in prison because he is acting as a radical preacher and it seems he's been in prison three or four times and that he's brought in each time for operating as a preacher without license and also because the text of his sermons and the text of his teaching is radically undermining of the traditional authority of the church in England and what was he a radical he's a radical because he he wishes to reform the church from within in terms of its care for the poor and the sick and the distribution of arms and he's a radical because he wishes to go back fundamentally to the way the church was long ago he's symptomatic of a new attitudes among the clergy wasn't just John ball they rescued John ball is just one among many prisoners at that time we probably ought to give more importance to those other prisoners people who are local rebels in the officials courts but also those who from the thirteen 70s despite the fact that they could be retained and taken into warfare in northern France actually refused to do that and it's quite clear that the area around meister and indeed Tunbridge was an area of a hotbed for that kind of those kind of refuseniks if you like those kind of people who would not fight even as late as May in 1381 militia groups were being raised in Kent and each of those militia groups had its own leader and a little band of potential fighters who have been raised to fighting as the French and the Castilians it's immediately a recruiting ground of course for the peasant revolt twelve days in the peasant revolt had become a crusade the rebels were organized they had a manifesto and were using targeted violence to achieve their aims after destroying the Archbishop's prison they headed off for Simon Sudbury's HQ 30 miles away in Canterbury he was the chief poll tax enforcer and the rebels wanted his blood they marched into Canterbury on the morning of the 10th joined that with the local people routed out and executed all those who are identified as traitors and then pitched up here at the Cathedral they burst in and completely disrupted high-mass which would have been deeply offensive in itself then demanded the removal of Archbishop Sudbury and that John bull should be put in his place now these chairs would have been here this whole area would have been one vast open space with the people completely cut off from the priests by that choir screen over there but the rebels ignored all that they marched straighten this whole place which would have been so quiet normally would suddenly have been full of angry voices and people demanding that Archbishop Sudbury come in front of them the whole thing must have seemed like complete anarchy but of course Sudbury wasn't here he was far too shrewd a political animal he was up in London not in his Abbey Church but they'd gone too far to give up now instead they launched a lightning strike on London what would happen when this tidal wave of angry peasants reached the capital after only 12 days of the peasants revolt a carefully ordered medieval world have been blown apart most of southern England was beyond the rule of law in search of an end to unfair taxes and serfdom the rebels had broken open jails and invaded the headquarters of the Church Canterbury Cathedral then the Chronicles tell us they embarked on a daring strategy to attack the capital itself the stories seemed scarcely possible so we're going to put them to the test after the raid on the Cathedral were told that the rebels set off on mass for London on the morning of the 11th and that 60,000 of them turned up at Blackheath on the outskirts of the capital the following evening but that seems a heck of a long way to go for such a large crowd in such a short time so Mike and his team are going to put the Chronicles to the test and see how easy it would have been to have done that much in what 36 hours we know they went from Canterbury via Maidstone because they kicked off a lot of trouble though so that means that they were actually going in a bit of a curve a bit of a curve not straight up the a2 so we're going to follow a similar route but we are obviously going to have to wiggle a bit because we can't take these main roads with the horses I think at least some of us might get there we're certainly gonna give it a go would you like to give it a go with us I am probably the world's worst Horseman but I'm gonna go splendid I think you ought to wear this would you help with how well we've got a wonderful horse for you called mallanna and she'll make you look good she's very steady very good and you just gonna have to sit there and grit your teeth and put up with the pain I'll look cool you promise me oh yeah this is Malala this is mommy I've done this for a long time got my leg up Oh we want to establish if 60,000 peasants really could get to London in a day and a half okay let's go to London we're giving ourselves every advantage although most of the peasants would have been on foot we're using the fastest mode of medieval transport we've got changes of horses lined up and the advantage of 21st century planning and communications but there are some obstacles the medieval peasants wouldn't have had these roads would have had in the 14th century well I think once we're out of the precincts if it would have been dirt roads because it's that's what all draft thought was horse transport and that is much kinder to horses stuff make a noise this isn't it well I think noise stress is going to be one of our most tiring factors yeah [Music] one thing certain the medieval peasant must have had a hardy of bottomland me after an hour so I was starting to suffer and then disaster struck this is what happened we rode along for about an hour and then I had to stop for a bit because I had to get off and do a bit of filming and they rode on because they were already later they needed to catch up time and by the time I finished filming we couldn't find him and so we've been looking for them ever since so we've lost radio contact and we've lost telephone contact and I'm stuck here with all the film crew we gotta be here because we've got to swap over the horses because nowadays with animal welfare you can't ride the same set of horses for the whole 36 hours and we've completely lost the rest of the riders and in a funny sort of way maybe this is what it would have been like in small communities along the way not knowing what was going on so perhaps inadvertently we've recaptured the whole spirit of the peasants revolt maybe we've just fouled up but this enforced separation gave me the chance to investigate an equally important part of the revolt elsewhere at school what you learn about is the peasants marching from Canterbury but that's not even half the story north of the Thames thousands of peasants from hundreds of villages were forming the second arm of a coordinated pincer movement threatening to crush London people from all over East Anglia had joined the Essex rebels men like John Sumner from Manningtree near Ipswich we know he owned 400 marks worth of goods that over a hundred and thirty thousand pounds today his neighbor Robert Pearce was also a rich landowner both were totally unlike a caricature of a peasant Pearson Sumner joined 40 others from their village the focus of their anger was still the injustice of the poll tax along the road the Manningtree Man United with others their road to London was marked by a carefully targeted campaign of violence the first stop was here and coggle shawl in Essex headquarters at the chief tax collector for Essex this is his house here they yanked him out of his window beheaded him in the street and stuck his head on a pole then they ransacked the whole house looking for the hated green sealed poll tax documents which they destroyed they might be able to replace the tax collector but how would they know who to tax then the rebels headed five miles down the road to the manner of the Knights Hospitaller at Cresson temple this was the order run by the poll-tax villain Robert Hales they were joined there by others from all over the county who chosen the manor as a rendezvous point and incredibly the enormous barns are still standing these were people who lived in hovels and little cottages and we used two buildings the size of small parish churches this was architecture designed by the enemy and it wouldn't have been empty like it is today it would have been jam-packed from floor to ceiling with peas and beans and corn and barley and where would the profits have gone not for the local people it would have all gone to the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller in Malta and there wasn't just one of these things there was another one just as big right there they must have really hacked the local people off so why didn't they burn them down the answer is because they were country folk what they did set fire to was over there behind those walls the offices and the kitchens and the refectory of the monks as far as country folk were concerned these were useless but these were seriously useful do you think that they did an enormous amount of damage when they were here yeah they must have done an enormous amount of damage at the time for there was stored food and and wine for the general chapter of the Knights Hospitallers by order of Robert Hales and apparently the rebels ate all the food and drank all the wine The Chronicle says a chronicle account says it was 3 casks of wine which is 3 barrels or the equivalent of 9,200 gallons and 450 litres that is quite a lot and they were quite fortified when they sat on their way was this the only place associated with hails that got attacked know quite a few menace of the Knights Hospitallers were attacked and in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire three places in Cambridgeshire places in London besides Clarke and well the men of Highbury so it was a deliberate attack on the manners of the knights hospitalists and on Robert Hales himself how many people do you reckon turned up here we can be sure that at least hundred and ten people from 50 different parishes villages all over Essex turned up and one person from North Fleet and Kent interestingly presumably 410 got charged there must have been more than that here yes III guess so - it's very tricky to find to know something about the true number of but it must have been several hundreds who came together here on the morning of the 10th of June after destroying Crescent Temple the Essex rebels started their advance on London by nightfall on the 11th they were burning tax documents in Chelmsford meanwhile south of the Thames the other arm of the pincer movement was still pressing on the capital what Tyler and his men were making camp on the first night of the march from Canterbury to London somewhere around Maidstone Mike's made good progress following the same route without foot soldiers to hold him up he's pushed five miles beyond Maidstone but it's taken him all day actually surprisingly good surprisingly good they couldn't have done the same distance that we've done today on foot I think people on foot just keeping a steady pace would probably be only four or five hours behind and obviously as they're coming on they're gathering fresh people as they come so not everybody footsore as the others but it's already 10 o'clock at night so foot soldiers lagging four or five hours behind would have had a hell of a distance to make up already the idea that 60,000 peasants moved on mass through Kent is beginning to look implausible [Music] with twin peasant armies converging on London the city was gripped with rumour and panic the boy King Richard and his court including his hated advisors beater Swift retreat from Westminster to the Tower of London why was the clean hold up in the tower didn't he have all the resources of the crown available to the king and his chief ministers Archbishop Sudbury and Lord treasurer Hales have had to take the tower for his own security because of the reports that are reaching him of the sheer scale of the disturbances around London and the southeast we've got to remember that at this time there is no standing police force and there's no National standing army the professional soldiers of the crown are actually at the moment fighting in France and where they need it and so Richard has only a limited number of men at his disposal at this time okay so he's outnumbered in here what are they planning to do well clearly Richard in his ministers have got to come up with some kind of strategy to get the rebels out of London but he's a fourteen-year-old boy well it's remarkable how Rich's ministers behave like rabbits caught in a headlights and simply have been shocked by this national revolt that they were totally unprepared for so the young King seems to be the person who has to call the shots himself how easy would it have been for the rebels to break in here well what we see now is some of the most state-of-the-art defences of late medieval England the tower was an exceptionally well defended building in the 14th century there would have been even more perimeter defenses than what we see now and so if the garrison had been wanting to put up a stiff fight they could have done so with a fairly small number of men but the problem is that he doesn't have enough men to take the fight out of the tower and take on the rebels who are much superior in numbers so he's okay as long as he's here but there's nothing else that you can do absolutely he's got to sit tight the king could only wait for information meanwhile the rebels were pressing steadily on from Canterbury [Music] on the second day of their journey Mike and his men have put on a spurt thanks to some authentic medieval technology they've swapped horses these specialist Icelandic ponies are as close as we can get to the medieval horses called Angelus [Music] like relief to see you I thought you were lost well yeah it's been quite a leg of journey this one we've done about 18 miles fresh it's right these are not the horses you started out with my hope they shrunk a bit yeah these are Icelandic horses the significance is not that they're Icelandic but that Icelandic horses are ones that have kept the lateral gene and their words they've got a different type of walk if I show you yeah look how she's going if she goes along here like this look how she goes it's and I'm not bouncing up and down because what's happening is her legs are going these two are going that way than these two so it's a side-to-side motion so I'm just gently rolling in the saddle I haven't got all this action while I'm riding when you're traveling a long distance you want comfort and it's also a good thing for the horses because what they're doing is not putting the impact directly into the ground they're running like this yeah because even when we were just trotting on those metal surfaces because I had ridden for ages I came away pretty shaken yeah because you're getting that you're getting the maginot it's doing to that part of a horse's leg yeah now that wasn't an issue in the Middle Ages because they didn't have metal roads we've got a problem the tough little am blurs have got Mike within striking distance of their destination but we can't use them again today and our original horses are worn out from the day before on the roads hour after hour on metal roads he doesn't do the amble he does the trot yeah and there he's getting concussion and this is it's not too bad but the early signs he's got a little bit of inflammation here yeah which means today because I saw this horse I don't want to push him through any discomfort so we're gonna have to walk now and and that hurts doesn't it well we know we could have done it yeah but we've got to look after the horses first so I think that's going to slow us down a lot now we'll just see how far we get desperate medieval peasants might have risked their horses but this is only telly as Mike hits the suburbs it's a question of how much further his horse can manage some he's alright he's sound he's not he's not he's not yet lame it's just that if I were to push him then he might become lame I'll see you in black hey see you in black over five hours later I'm waiting for Mike with my own rebel academic we're on black heath where 60,000 rebels gathered and it's 12 minutes past eight and Mike was supposed to be here at five o'clock and we're losing the light and it's starting to rain but at least we've got an authentic campfire very nice and warm unfortunately we haven't gotten any tax documents to burn on it as the rebels will have done in 1381 they did choose a fantastic spot to meet up there didn't there well it's nice and open nowadays this rather welcome to municipal area in 1381 it would have been more rough and ready but the most interesting thing is there would have been direct access back now look at this I'm afraid we got a cab we're expecting the clip-clop of three horses about doesn't go well done mate well done well done about another two hours after we left Judah so probably another 8 10 miles and then what happened well bluey was nobody's not lame lame but he was starting to be very gentle on that who fun I need you to look after the horse I'd call it a day stick yourself down there but so we didn't kind of make it but then in a way we did well very much so we did I mean we have covered at least the same distance and they did probably more yeah it's not a big deal for a medieval traveller to have covered that sort of distance on the rights of the horses yeah Mike it's not a big deal for a medieval traveller on the right kind of horses but hasn't this really blown out of the water this idea that thousands of people came up from Kent and Essex because you weren't gonna have many horses available there wasn't going to be that much grub available sure I think certainly the the idea that a single group descended on London from Canterbury is difficult to sustain in the light of this experiment what fascinates me about it is that it certainly demonstrates the need to use horses and the need to have backup and that's absolutely critical which seems to me to suggest possibly what's talking about a small group of horse riders who were really going around encouraging others to rise up coordinating events and really acting as something of a minute and spearhead in the move towards London the the suggestions was brought out from this experiment seems to be borne out by the judicial records of the proceedings against the rebels which suggests a similar sort of mix a few real militant leaders from Kent's coming up from Canterbury presumably horse riding in the same way that you did with other supporters who joined them as they assembled here on Blackheath does that work for you I wish would be enormous Lee I mean I see it as a strike force as people whipping up the fervor those who had the economic ability to do that travelling rules but you say small groups a hundred horsemen can you remember the sound of those am blurs cup three of them coming up imagine that a hundred times the dust the noise coming into a little village that was a huge event and it would have gathered like a snowball and closer we got to London more and more people so the kind of thing that I learned at school of thousands and thousands of ignorant peasants marching through the countryside and then ending up in London seems not to be the case but what we can see is the idea of flying pickets smart people experienced people people with good horses just a few of them coming here meeting up and whipping everything it's a much more varied complex picture than the classic view will lead us to believe well we've got the authentic place we've got the authentic rebels we've got the authentic campfire I suggest we turn it off and go down the Boozer game for that yes north of the Thames the other rebel army from Essex camped outside the city walls at Mile End these twin armies had blazed through the countryside in the capital people waited in trepidation as peasants from Kent and Essex threatened to change the country for good [Music] [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 1,592,466

Rating: 4.7758193 out of 5

Keywords: history documentary, peasants revolt, medieval documentary, tony robinson, documentary history, peasants revolt 1381, the peasants revolt, the peasants revolt 1381, timeline documentary, medieval history, tony robinson documentary, peasant revolt 1381, richard ii, john ball, english history, bbc documentary, medieval england, tower of london, medieval life, middle ages, medieval history documentary, peasant revolt, documentary movies - topic, channel 4 documentary

Id: 4kq9sbtFCR8

Length: 53min 20sec (3200 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 03 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/smork16]

It was a good documentary. Well worth watching.

[u/[deleted]]

I like his mixture of pathos and humour when he relates facts and details.