John Ball and the Peasants’ Revolt
This public lecture will look at how Ball’s ideas about the Bible and apocalyptic transformation would have been understood in 1381, particularly among peasant audiences.
Piers Plowman and the Great Uprising of 1381
The Great Uprising of 1381 saw a group of dissatisfied peasants and their supporters march on London with demands that the king abolish serfdom and a new poll tax. The revolt remains one of the most widespread insurrections in English history, and it was inspired, in part, by the famous medieval poem Piers Plowman.
Courage Under Fire: Richard II and the Peasants’ Revolt
The Peasants’ Revolt tested the mettle of teenaged king Richard II in unimaginable ways.
The 1381 Rising in Bury St Edmunds: The Role of Leaders and the Community in Shaping the Rebellion
This article explores the relative role of leaders and communities within Bury St
Edmunds, a town in western Suffolk under the lordship of the Abbey of St Edmunds.
‘Arrayed as if for War’: Tactical innovation and technological change in Late Medieval and Early Modern rebellions (1381-1554)
Rebellion in Late-Medieval and Early Modern England has generally been regarded as posing little military threat to the realm, with conflicts between loyalists and insurgents commonly dismissed as one-sided routs of hopelessly outclassed, poorly armed peasants.
The 1381 Rising in Bury St Edmunds: The Role of Leaders and the Community in Shaping the Rebellion
The 1381 Rising in Bury St Edmunds: The Role of Leaders and the Community in Shaping the Rebellion By Joe Chick PONS AELIUS:…
Cross-Border Representations of Revolt in the Later Middle Ages: France and England During the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453)
Combing through more than eighty chronicles from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century, we have only been able to find some fifteen examples of popular revolt in England and France being reported by authors from the other side of the channel.
Intercession and Motherhood: The Queenships of Philippa of Hainault and Anne of Bohemia
In this post, author Conor Byrne discusses the rule of two medieval queens: Anne of Bohemia and Philippa of Hainault.
‘Falseness Reigns in Every Flock’: Literacy and Eschatological Discourse in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
The literature of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, a miscellany of fourteenth-century poetry and prose penned before, during, and after the insurrection, often stresses the importance of literacy to the nonaristocratic population of England.
INTERVIEW: A Conversation with SD Sykes about Plague Land
My interview with fiction author, SD Sykes about her fantastic medieval crime novel, Plague Land.
The Black Death, Economic and Social Change and the Great Rising of 1381 in Hertfordshire
What drove medieval people to such desperation that they felt they had no other course of action other than revolt? Was this a spontaneous reaction to a perceived injustice or a desperate response to years of simmering resentment?
The English Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
Life for the revolutionary peasants was structured by feudal ties and obligations. The villein was tied to the soil until he could buy his freedom. He lived in a wattle and daub hut with his family and animals on a floor of mud. Work began at dawn on his few (often separated) strips of land; he was obligated to work on his lord’s land three days a week, tend and shear his sheep, feed his swine, and sow and reap his crops.
The commons in medieval England
Why was the same term ‘commons’ used to describe both a part of the English legislature and a large gathering of rebellious people? How had this double meaning come about and what did it imply for the workings of politics in late medieval England?
The Mind’s Eye: Reconstructing the Historian’s Semantic Matrix Through Henry Knighton’s Account of the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
The Mind’s Eye: Reconstructing the Historian’s Semantic Matrix Through Henry Knighton’s Account of the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381 Sarah Marilyn Steeves Keeshan Master of Arts,…
Flemings in the Peasants’ Revolt, 1381
While the Peasants’ Revolt has been studied in depth by generations of medieval historians, the same cannot be said of England’s foreign-born inhabitants, and the largest group among these, the so-called Flemings (a term which was also applied to those from other principalities in the Low Countries besides Flanders).
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
A Hotbed for Dissidence: Southeast England in the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381
What were the causes and circumstances that led not only to the ebullient revolt in Southeast Europe, but also to ist relative success?