ABSTRACT
The Revolt to which allusion has just been made has been described by one of our greatest and most careful historians 1 as “one of the most portentous phenomena to be found in the whole of our history”; nor has the criticism 2 of those who have endeavoured to minimise its results succeeded in depriving it of its historical importance. “The extent of the area over which it spread, the extraordinary rapidity with which intelligence and communication passed between the different sections of the revolt, the variety of cries and causes which combined to produce it, the mystery that pervades its organisation, its sudden collapse and its indirect permanent results, give it a singular importance both constitutionally and socially.” 3 It is therefore of interest to note the various influences which produced such an uprising, and to examine the various grievances which the villeins of the fourteenth century endeavoured to redress by such revolutionary methods. The revolt was undoubtedly serious, and would certainly have had far more sanguinary consequences, had it occurred later than it actually did. Fortunately the working classes of England were not so utterly ground down beneath the heel of their superiors as was the case across the Channel, and they resented their injuries sooner, otherwise England might have witnessed a few centuries later that volcanic upheaval of a slow peasantry, enraged by ages of seigneurial oppression, which burst with such terrific and long-contained violence over eighteenth century France. Fortunately, also, the upper classes of England seem to have taken warning in time from what happened in 1381, and did not in actual fact, whatever they may have said and thought, proceed to such foolish extremities as would have infallibly endangered both their property and their position.
