The Peasants' Revolt
IT was, of course, far more than a peasants' revolt, as the authors of this new monograph point out : there were a great many causes for the disturbance, which indeed was a symptom of a profound social change, of the sort that manifests itself whenever the political structure fails to correspond with the actualities of living. It is an extremely interesting point in history, and the new study—the first whole book devoted to it since Sir Charles Oman's book in 1906—is a thorough piece of work, well based on authorities (though it is a pity that references are not given when quotations are made), the only notable omission from the list of authorities being the work of Andre Reville and Petit Dutaillis, La Revolte des Travailleurs en Angleterre, 1381.
It is an exciting book, in the main competently written (there are some tiresome repetitions), but the reader may be irked by the partisanship of the authors, for which indeed one feels nothing but sympathy, which nevertheless obtrudes. The authors are aware of this, and, accusing Oman of the opposite partisanship, claim that at any rate they never falsify facts. They do not, as far as can be judged without fresh reference to the sources : but it is, in a way, a dis- tortion if every man on the government side is in all ways a scoundrel, every rebel almost a saint. This sometimes leads to irrelevance, as in the lengthy passage about Edward III.'s lasciviousness. It is hardly fair, since we are ill-informed, for instance, as to the love-life of Wat Tyler. There is, perhaps, only one place where evidence is somewhat hastily glozed over. Dr. Kriehn, we are told (the reference at the end is to some numbers of the American Historical Review), has " proved that king and noples, knights and courtiers, merchants and traders, planned and' executed a cowardly murder " in the affray in which Wat Tyler lost his life. That may be so, but it is a pity that the present authors did not at least suggest something of the evidence the proof was based on. It is a little disconcerting to be met with this sudden appeal to an authority.
Certainly the behaviour of the Government after the revolt was an extreme instance of betrayal, of lack of good faith, in marked contrast to the behaviour of, for instance, the admirable Grindcobbe, who has some claims to be the real saintly hero of the rebellion. We may respect him more even than John Ball, intensely moved by the miseries he saw, or Wat Tyler, evidently an admirable leader and organiser, though Lister, or Litster, the leader in Norfolk, also claims admiration. It is feared that we shall never know much more than we now do about how the rebellion was originally organised. That it was planned, and well planned, is certain : it was thought out in a spirit of moderation with definite objectives—chiefly charters and manor rolls—arid only a very few "traitors" were marked down for execution. Flaring up first along the lower reaches of the Thames, it spread to all the home counties, many of the south-western ones, and reached up as far as Yorkshire ; and in their final chapter the authors make a number of interesting sugges- tions as to how it might all have been worked. These are matters of opinion, but what is less so is the statement that the revolt, though brutally crushed (not so bloodily as similar movements on the Continent) was not useless. A few years later the things against which the peasants and others had rebelled were broken down, and it is possible to regard the affair as the beginning of the social revolution in England. It remains an intensely moving and dramatic episode which deserves commemoration. BONAMY DoBRA.
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