ABSTRACT
The English Uprising of 1381 (the so-called Peasants’ Revolt) was the closest medieval England got to a successful revolution prior to the seventeenth century. Some of the leading figures of the realm (including the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor Simon Sudbury) were beheaded, as political, legal, and ecclesiastical buildings were attacked (although in a disciplined manner) in London itself. The uprising may have seemed sudden, but it was linked to a number of longer-term trends, including conflict over greater demands that peasants and laborers could make following the Black Death. There seems to have been a coherent vision of a new order for England which became most closely associated with the priest John Ball. He looked to a time when all things were held in common (taken from Acts of the Apostles and its reception), that the moment had arrived to enact this radical transformation (with reference to eschatological material from the Bible), and that the existing hierarchies were an imposition by aristocratic elites to consolidate their power and exploit laborers (with reference to Adam and Eve), which had to now be transformed. Ball also envisaged himself as the new religious leader in England—an idea grounded in popular support. This chapter looks at Ball and the 1381 revolt followed by an assessment of its long reception history. There is a particular focus on how the uprising was, and can be, connected with historical materialist questions about the transformation from feudalism to capitalism, and understandings of Ball’s relationship to revolutionary societal change in the future.
