Tyler Insurrection
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a popular revolt in England during the minority of Richard II., headed by Wat Tyler, a soldier who had served in the French wars, and Jack Straw, an Essex peasant. Its immediate occasion was the imposition in 1381 of a poll tax of three goats on every adult, to defray the cost of the disastrous French war; and the first blow struck was the death of a tax gatherer, who had offered an insult to the daughter of a blacksmith in Essex. From Essex the revolt spread over Norfolk, Suffolk, Sussex, and Surrey, but its strength lay in the 100,000 men of Kent, who marched on London, passing quaint rhymes from man to man, and putting to death every lawyer whom they found. The nobles fled, paralyzed with fear, while the artisans of London flung open the gates of the city. Soon the stately palace of John of Gaunt at the Savoy, the new inn of the lawyers at the Temple, and the houses of the foreign ambassadors were in flames, while a band under Tyler himself broke into the Tower and dragged out and put to death Archbishop Sudbury, the Prior of St. John, and the treasurer and chief commissioner in the levy of the hated poll tax. At Mile End, without the city, the young king met the great mass of the peasants, whom he overawed by his fearless demeanor, and induced them to disperse by promising them charters of freedom and amnesty. However, 30,000 remained with Wat Tyler to watch over the fulfillment of the royal pledge, and this body Richard met by chance next morning at Smithfield. In the conference which ensued, William Walworth, the Mayor of London, exasperated at the insolence of Tyler, stabbed him with his dagger, and in the scene of confusion which ensued, the king, with great presence of mind, addressed the populace, led them to Islington, and commanded them to disperse. The death of Tyler paralyzed the people, while it revived the courage of the nobility. The king, in violation of his pledge, led an army of 40,000 men through Kent and Essex, and spread terror by the severity of his executions, while in Norfolk and Suffolk the revolt was stamped out with the most ruthless cruelty.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The narrative Collier's gave in 1921 is still broadly the sequence historians accept, but almost nothing else about the entry survives: the event is now called the Peasants' Revolt or the Great Rising of 1381, and the label "Tyler Insurrection" has vanished from use. The tax was three groats (fourpence), not "three goats", and modern historians treat it as the trigger rather than the cause, pointing instead to the Statute of Labourers and wage controls imposed after the Black Death. The crowd figures "100,000 men of Kent" and 30,000 at Smithfield are now read as chronicle exaggeration, and the rebels are no longer seen as simply peasants but as a coalition including artisans, village constables and jurors; the preacher John Ball, unmentioned here, is now given at least as much prominence as Tyler. When Margaret Thatcher's community charge provoked riots in 1990, Wat Tyler's name was invoked across British newspapers.
Written for this edition, 2026.