The Peasants Are Revolting!

The Peasant's Revolt of 1381 was the result of several factors , first enumerated and named in A Short History of the English People (John Richard Green, 1874), and analyzed endlessly since. (You can find several posts I've made on this here.) Distrust of government, belief in corruption of royal officials, anxiety over the French raiding southern England, and a poll tax of 12 pence per adult—the third in four years—made the average rural citizen say "Enough!"

The first signs of rebellion came when collectors of the poll tax were attacked in spring. This was followed by more resistance by attacking justices in Essex in May, and then a June uprising in Essex promised to rebel against all the king's laws. People started burning property, and an escheator (official in charge of claiming property for the Crown when, for instance, the previous owner died intestate) was beheaded and his records burned. Elsewhere, houses of officials and official records were being destroyed.

A leader appeared in the records, one Wat Tyler, who led the rioters into Canterbury, executing officials and freeing prisoners, after which they approached London. The group was joined by a radical priest, John Ball, southeast of London. Meanwhile London was experiencing a sympathetic uprising of citizens who burned the grandest house in London, the Savoy Palace, and the main building of the Hospitallers.

The rebels outside London entered, invading the Tower of London. They captured and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury, and others.

See my other posts for more detail, but let me say that most of the rebels were given pardons once the destruction stopped, except for the individuals who were responsible for more grievous destruction and murder. A list of "principle leaders and traitors" includes Walter Tyler (who had been killed earlier by the Mayor of London), Alan Threader, William Hawk, and John Stakpull. We know very little about John, but what we know leads to an interesting conjecture. I'll tell you about that next time.

Free vs. Unfree Peasants

A medieval peasant—for this term, we mean an agricultural laborer—could be free or unfree. Although serf would seem to be a useful term (deriving from Latin servus, "slave"), it doesn't appear in written records until the late 15th century. For the difference between free and unfree, I will use the terms freeman and villein.

A freeman was just that: a tenant who was free from owing service to the lord of the manor. He paid rent for the house and land. The percentage of freemen was small, maybe 10% in England.

The greater number of peasants on a manor were villeins, who also rented land and homes, but were obligated to spend time working the lord's fields as well. They were allowed to farm their own land as much or as little as they liked: they would at least try to be self-sufficient, but if they sold goods and made a profit, so much the better. The lord's permission was needed to leave the land and to marry.

Could a freeman become a villein? Imagine a drought or some other natural disaster that caused crop failure, or some destruction by criminals. The freeman could fall on hard times and be unable to pay rent, at which point he could make an arrangement to the lord of the manor, essentially indenturing himself for a period of time. During that time, defaulting on that deal by moving to another manor would be a bad idea.

Could a villein become a freeman? Well, he could run away; if he made his way to a city and survived for a year without being sought and caught, he was automatically free. That was a risky way. He could purchase his way out of bondage, by earning enough from his industry to pay off the lord. Here's the thing, though: when villeins made sufficient money to purchase their freedom, they didn't. The likeliest reason is that their unfree status entitled them to protections that. freeman did not have (see the above paragraph). Being unfree may seem like a burden, but it afforded security in ways that being a freeman did not.

This is not to say that peasants were content to "stay in their lane." In 1381, there was a significant revolt, which we'll talk about tomorrow.

What Skeletons Can Tell Us

[source]

Yesterday we mentioned Dr. Sharon DeWitte of the University of South Carolina, who examines skeletons from the Middle Ages to determine what she can about their lifestyle. So far, her research has included over 600 skeletons from the 11th through 14th centuries. She has particularly studied skeletons from the period just before and just after the Black Death. She found something curious:

“I found that a significantly higher number of people were living to really old ages after the Black Death. Many people lived beyond the age of 50 and particularly above the age of 70,” DeWitte said. “I honestly was surprised by how dramatic the difference was in their survival. I’ve analyzed risks of mortality within the pre-and post-Black Death populations, and the preliminary results suggest lower overall risks of mortality after the Black Death.” [source]

She attributes this to a few things: those who survived the Plague were more likely to be from a segment of the population that was healthier to begin with. Also, the population loss led to a food surplus that promoted greater health. We have already noted, for instance, the Statutes of Laborers, rules that were established (again and again) post-Plague to try to keep peasants from moving to other estates. The shortage of laborers meant workers had new opportunities to seek better wages that would lead to better living conditions.

In the future, she intends to collaborate with others to look at genetic variation in humans before and after the Plague. Perhaps she can learn how the massive "die off" perhaps reduced certain genes that made humans more susceptible to Plague, leaving future generations healthier.

Peasants

"Free"dom isn't "free"

Before discussing the first "Occupy" movement--the Peasants' Revolt of 1381--I thought I would first briefly address the topic of peasants.

One unexpected facet to life as a peasant in Medieval England was that you could be either free or unfree. There were, in fact, several levels of "free"dom represented by various terms:

• sokeman
• villan/villein
• bordar
• cottar/cottager
• slave

Being "free" had disadvantages as well as benefits. The unfree peasant was tied to a lord and that lord's domains. His fate and his family's was bound to that place, and he worked for the lord. The benefit, however, was that he had a place to live, and the lord was obligated to make sure his tenants thrived (or else he would lose his workforce).

You could free yourself by marrying a freeman, or else by running away and living elsewhere for a year without being discovered and dragged back (and likely punished with fines, etc.). Finding employment as a runaway peasant wasn't that easy, however.

Something curious arises from a study of inheritance records: medieval English peasants often had saved sufficient funds to purchase their freedom; purchasing their freedom is rare, however, as evidenced by how much money they leave to their inheritors. Why would this be?

The free peasant could rent land from a lord, or purchase and work his own land; his obligations to the lord (in the form of taxes/tithes) was less than that of the unfree peasant. The freeman could uproot and travel to greener pastures, if they were available. The lord, however, had no obligation to take pity on the freeman if the harvest was bad. Being free meant being free to sink or swim on your own. The unfree peasant had stable expectations for what he owed the lord that did not change from year to year and could be planned for. The lord could raise the rent on the freeman, if he felt like it. The unfree peasant was a dependent on whom the lord himself depended for labor. This symbiotic relationship lasted for centuries, until thrown off-kilter by the Bubonic Plague.

Statutes of Laborers

Controlling the Workforce

After the Black Death (1348-49 in England), the workforce was radically reduced. In a culture where 90%+ of the workforce was involved in agriculture, and every bit of it done by manual labor, this was potentially disastrous for lords who relied on peasants to plant and tend and harvest crops. The obvious solution was to offer better wages if peasants would leave their homes and settle in the lords' villages that had been deserted by the Pestilence.

This competition for labor did not sit well with most of society, who saw it as a disruption of the way things had been for centuries. The first Ordinance of Laborers was established by Edward III in 1349 to try to prevent the disruption of society that a "free market" could create. It stated:

• Everyone under the age of 60 must be willing to work
• Employers must not hire more workers than they need
• Wages must remain at pre-Pestilence levels
• Food prices must not be increased

Did it work?

• 1350 saw the Stature of Laborers that fixed the wages of laborers and artisans.
• 1356 saw regulations placed on the trade of masons. (Freemasons use this as proof that Freemasonry has been fighting "the Man" for centuries.)
• 1368 saw the Statute of Laborers reaffirmed.
• 1377 saw an act restricting the freedom of serfs to move from domain to domain.

Clearly, the laws had to be re-enacted because no one was listening. The attempt to suppress the freedom of the lower classes continued for the next two centuries; however, we will only concern ourselves with these few decades, because they led to the first occupy movement. I'll tell you about it tomorrow.