ABSTRACT
Already towards the end of May 1381, villagers in Essex were
the Northampton parliament of November-December 1380. The government’s response was to dispatch justices to try those indicted of violence towards the tax-gatherers, which simply precipitated further discontent and massive gatherings of people. A similar sequence of events occurred in Kent, possibly in part stimulated by messages from the Essex rebels. Discontent in this county seems to have been exacerbated by attempts by the agent of Sir Simon Burley, a close adviser of the king, to claim a man from Gravesend as a serf. His imprisonment in Rochester Castle was said to be one of the causes of the general rising, but a visitation of the king’s justices was probably, as in Essex, a more important factor.
