ABSTRACT
Revolt is the rising which has become known as 'the Peasants' Revolt' without any further qualification and has been seen as the most serious social revolt which occurred in medieval England. Indeed, the divergence in background among the different groups of rebels may reasonably raise the question whether the rising of 1381 is best described by its traditional name, whether it was in fact a peasants' revolt. The first outbreak occurred in Essex in the second half of May, in the form of resistance to taxation, by early June Kent also was in revolt, and by the second week of that month East Anglia too was affected. The climax of the East Anglian revolt came slightly later; there was widespread trouble in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire between 12 and 21 June, in which the main victims were the Chief Justice of the King's Bench, Sir John Cavendish, and the prior of Bury St Edmunds.
