What Three Factors Contributed to the Peasants’ Revolts of 1381
In the thousands of years of history of human civilization, there were hundreds of revolts were started by peasants who were at the lowest level of society. In this essay, the significant peasants’ revolts that happened in England in 1381 are going to be analysed as to what were the contributing factors. The contributing factors are far more complicated, but it is explainable from the social and economic background in the Medieval Age, the plague in 1350s, and the leadership among peasants.
Feudalism is a social system and serfdom contributes to an economic system were features in the Medieval Age in England, and these two features provided the most important background for the revolts. Feudalism is that one king had all of the land in a country, and the king granted the land to barons, and the barons also could grant the land to some knights. The King and Lord would grant rights of occupation to the peasant male and his family and allegiance were in return in time of conflict (Lordsandladies, n.d.). However, the servile peasants were at the lowest level of society would not be granted land, and only a few ever achieved some control over a lifelong lease of the land- like renting for life. They only could have a piece of land to work from the landlords in a manor, but they had to work on the landlord’s land for the landlords without wages. The peasants had to hand in most of productions for the landlords, and they did not have any rights and always had to have the permission from the landlords to do some things such as leaving manor, marriage. (Fryde, 1996) The peasants were constrained on the land with the landlords, so this is called serfdom. Also, their living standards were really harsh, and the discontent was intensifying chronically over centuries. (Fryde, 1996). However, since the economy of commodity currency had been developed in urban and rural areas from 14th, the servile peasants could pay currency to complete their feudal duty or even buy their freedom. The peasants were able to break the constraint with the landlords. (Meng, 2009). It is obviously more and more peasants wanted to be free from the landlords. That was the beginning of emancipation of the serfs, and the foreshadowing of the revolts had been set up.
The natural factor must be considered, the plague had made significant impacts on society in Medieval Age, and these social impacts also became the special contributing factors of the peasants’ revolts in 1381. One main impact that the plague made in 14th centuries was that a large number of population had declined, because the plague had high mortality rate and people could not deal with the plague because of lack of the medical techniques and ignorance. About the half of the population had declined in England in the 1350s, and 80% of the population were peasants , so the labours were utterly lacking. Therefore, peasants had higher wages at that time, and the landlords had to offer better terms in order to competet for tenants. (Cowie, 1972). However, afterwards, the landlords were always trying to keep down wages of workers and make second serfdom for those freed peasants. That was the main reason that intensified the discontent of peasants and friction between peasants and landlords. Peasants could not stand losing the precious freedom that they once had, and those landlords were obviously making a history of reversing. The friction between peasants and landlords had been intense, so the conflict was in the inevitable and immediate. Finally, the Poll Tax triggered the Great Rising in 1381.
After those social and natural factors, the internal factor Leadership was also an important factor. In Peasants’ Revolts of 1381, there were important leaders had sprung up, and they were even more important especially when most of peasants were not well educated. Wat Tyler was a soldier who had attended Hundred Years War between England and France.
