Essex Sessions of The Peace 1351,
1377-1379
Essex Archaeological Society, Occasional
Paper No. 3 (1953)
Edited with an introduction by
Elizabeth Chaplin Furber
This is one
of a short series of extracts taken from this Occasional Paper, no longer
available from our storeroom. Members of
the Essex Society for Archaeology and History may receive a digital copy of the
book by subscribing to the ESAH Digitisation Project.
Chapter 2
The Men of Essex in the Great
Revolt
THAT the activities of the justices
of the peace, and of the separate
justices of labourers, in enforcing the labour laws contributed largely to the Great Revolt is beyond dispute. Since one of the peace rolls printed in this volume deals with the years just prior to 1381 and since disturbances first occurred
in Essex, it is necessary,
in order to appreciate the full significance of the proceedings before the justices of the peace, to relate in some detail
the course of the revolt
in that county.
The political, economic, and social discontent and disorder following the Black Death resulted in the rising which first broke out in Essex in
May 1381. Both
rural and urban workers 'who had survived the plague had greatly
benefited by the economic crisis which it had caused,
and they wished to maintain and even increase their prosperity.’
The labour laws enacted by a reactionary government were powerless
to stem the tide of new economic forces. While these
laws retarded to a certain
extent the rise in wages
and the flight
of villeins and labourers, the records of convictions under them show the extraordinary frequency of their violation; they served rather
to increase the bitterness of the labouring
classes and to lead to violent outbreaks against the justices of the peace charged with enforcing them.
The ranks of the rebels
were swelled by many rural priests and chaplains. Even in more normal times their moral and intellectual calibre was frequently not of the best, and their economic
condition was often wretched. After the Black Death
large numbers of young clerks who had not reached
the canonical age and of men with no learning and of doubtful antecedents were ordained, and the rise in prices made their economic position
even worse. In the towns,
where specialized industry
was rapidly developing, the grievances against the labour laws were complicated by the bitterness
of the workers against the ruling oligarchies, and against foreign capitalists and artisans whose immigration had been encouraged by the government. The war with France had produced an increase in disorder and a decline in morals. The government had been driven
to augment taxation
for the unsuccessful war. Sir Robert
Hales, the treasurer,
and Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, both honest men, paid with their lives for the failure
of their predecessors to realize - and to convince the country - that it was time to end the war.
The poll tax, granted
by the parliament of 5 November 1380, brought to the surface the smouldering discontent in the country. Unlike the poll taxes of 1377 and 1379, it fell more heavily upon the
poor than upon the rich, and was especially hard on the poorer villages. All lay persons over fifteen years of
age were to pay three groats (one
shilling); in the villages,
the rich were to help the poor, but no one was to pay less than a groat or more than twenty shillings. The remedy resorted to by the people to evade the tax became patent when the returns came in early in 1381. Every shire showed an incredible decrease since 1377 of adults liable
to the impost. In Essex, population
figures dropped from 47,962
to 30,748. The government took immediate steps, and on 16 March issued commissions for inspectors to
scrutinize the lists and to compel evaders to
pay tax.
As a result of the activities
of these commissioners, disturbances broke out in Essex
early in May. The
men of Fobbing refused to give
a penny more for the poll tax, and, when threatened by the royal commissioner, asked aid from the neighbouring villages. On 30 May, John Gildesburgh , John Bampton and other justices of the peace
went to Brentwood to deal with the disorders, whereupon the men of Fobbing, joined
by others from far and
near, made 'congregations' and
assaulted the justices with bows and arrows.
On 2 June
Justice of the Common Pleas, Robert Bealknap, sent to Brentwood to punish the rioters, narrowly escaped with his life. Led
on by such persons as John Smyth, of Rainham, who rode around Chafford hundred giving the signal for revolt, men from all parts of the county began flocking to the standard
of rebellion. On 10 June the insurgents looted and destroyed property of the Hospitallers, of whom Treasurer Hales was prior, at
Cressing Temple, sacked Admiral Edmund de la Mare's manor of Peldon,
and burned or carried off bundles of Admiralty papers. Some of the rebels
crossed the Thames
to help the Kentishmen who had risen at about the same time.
Meanwhile malcontents from London had arrived in Essex and on 11 June the Essex rebels set out for London to join the men of Kent, who were under
the leadership of John Ball, 'sometime St. Mary's priest of York, but now of Colchester', and Wat Tyler, possibly
a tiler from Essex.
On 12 June occurred the unsuccessful attempt at a meeting between Richard
II and the insurgents at Blackheath. On the night of 12-13 June the alderman, William
Tonge, opened Aldgate
to the men of Essex,
who had encamped at Mile End. Together with the Kentishmen, who had also gained
admittance to the city, they proceeded to burn the priory of St. John's Clerkenwell, headquarters of the Hospitallers in England, and the Savoy, palace of the duke of Lancaster. At Mile End, on 13 June, the king met the rebels, probably largely men from Essex, and promised to give them charters of liberty,
to abolish market monopolies and all restrictions on buying and selling, to grant a general amnesty
for irregularities committed
during the rising, and to take the insurgents under his protection. The more moderate rank and file of the Essex
men then probably
started for home; but, while at Mile End the king was temporising on the punishment
of his 'traitor' ministers, a small band slipped off to London and murdered the chancellor and the treasurer. The indiscriminate massacre of Flemings, of partisans of the duke of Lancaster, of 'men of law', and of anyone against whom any of the rebels had a particular
grudge went on apace.
With the death of Wat Tyler at Smithfield, 15 June, the peak of the rebellion
was passed, but disorders continued in Essex and other counties. On 17 June the men of Harwich and other towns
on the estuary of the Stour pulled down the house
of Thomas Hardyng at Manningtree,
possibly because he was a notorious forestaller and had had unsavoury dealings
with the hated Flemings. On the nineteenth, men from Barstable and Rochford hundreds, led by a former servant of Geoffrey Dersham, carried off livestock, pots, pans, and other goods, worth about 25l., from his manor of Barn Hall in Downham. The rebels
also plundered the manors of John de Gildesburgh and John Bampton, and perhaps
killed the latter.
After order
had been restored in London
the king set out for Essex where the insurrection seemed slowest to die down. He reached Waltham
on 23 June. To a deputation of
peasants from Billericay and the surrounding towns, who demanded a formal confirmation of the Mile End
charters and freedom from attending
manorial courts except for the view of frankpledge twice a year, the king declared: 'Villeins ye
are still, and villeins ye shall
remain'. The Essex men were not ready to submit without a
fight, and a band of
them,
largely from Chelmsford
and Barstable hundreds, put up barricades
on the edge of a wood near Billericay. On
2 July part of the royal army under
Thomas of Woodstock and Sir Thomas
Percy cut down five hundred of the
rebels; the rest escaped through the woods in their rear. The majority then
laid down their arms, but one band
fled north by Colchester and was
finally routed near Sudbury in Suffolk by a body of local loyalists under Lord Fitzwalter and Sir John Harleston.
Another band fled towards
Huntingdon and was dispersed by men of that place.
Meanwhile the king had proceeded
to Chelmsford where Chief Justice
Robert Tresilian was holding sessions, and, on 2
July, issued a proclamation formally
revoking the charters
granted at Mile End. As a result of the proceedings
at Chelmsford, and later
in the king's bench, relatively few men of Essex seem to have been executed. On 14 December 1381 parliament declared a general
amnesty for all the rebels except
247 individuals, including about fifteen
men of Essex. The Great Revolt was ended. The rebels gained nothing from it; a period of
reaction followed. Yet the events of 1381 'give a human and spiritual
interest to the economic facts of
the period, showing the peasant
as a man half beast
and half angel, not a mere item in the bailiffs' books'. We must now turn to the consideration
of the rolls of the sessions
of the peace in Essex,
which throw light on conditions in the county before the rising. Unfortunately these rolls reveal
more of the 'beast' than of the 'angel' in the man of Essex.
