250.  The New Tax; the Tyler and Ball Insurrection (1381).

In order to raise money, the government resolved to levy a new form of tax,—­a poll or head tax,—­which had been tried on a small scale during the last year of the previous reign.  The apttempt had been made to assess it on all classes, from laborers to lords.

The imposition was now renewed in a much more oppressive form.  Not only every laborer, but every member of a laborer’s family above the age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages of an able-bodied man for at least several days’ work.[1]

[1] The tax on laborers and their families varied from four to twelve pence each, the assessor having instructions to collect the latter sum, if possible.  The wages of a day laborer were then about a penny, so that the smallest tax for a family of three would represent the entire pay for nearly a fortnight’s labor.  See Pearson’s “England in the Fourteenth Century.”

We have already seen that, owing to the ravages of the Black Death, and the strikes which followed, the country was on the verge of revolt (SS244, 245).  This new tax was the spark that caused the explosion.  The money was roughly demanded in every poor man’s cottage, and its collection caused the greatest distress.  In attempting to enforce payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of a workman named Wat Tyler.  The indignant father, hearing the girl’s cry for help, snatched up a hammer, and rushing in, struck the ruffian dead on the spot.

Tyler then collected a multitude of discontented laborers on Blackheath Common, near London, with the determination of attacking the city and overthrowing the government.

John Ball, a fanatical priest, harangued the gathering, now sixty thousand strong, using by way of a text lines which were at that time familiar to every workingman: 

“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”

“Good people,” he cried, “things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins (S113) and gentlemen.  They call us slaves, and beat us if we are slow to do their bidding, but God has now given us the day to shake off our bondage.”

251.  The Great Uprising of the Laboring Class, 1381.

Twenty years before, there had been similar outbreaks in Flanders and in France.  This, therefore, was not an isolated instance of insurrection, but rather part of a general uprising.  The rebellion begun by Tyler and Ball (S250) spread through the southern and eastern counties of England, taking different forms in different districts.  It was violent in St. Albans, where the peasants, and farm laborers generally, rose against the exactions of the abbot, but it reached its greatest height in London.

For three weeks the mob held possession of the capital.  They pillaged and then burned John of Gaunt’s palace (SS247, 249).  They seized and beheaded the Lord Chancellor and the chief collector of the odious poll tax (S250).  They destroyed all the law papers they could lay hands on, and ended by murdering a number of lawyers; for the rioters believed that the members of that profession spent their time forging the chains which held the laboring class in subjection.