Peasants' Revolt - Fobbing riot
Who Fought
Villagers from Fobbing, Corringham and Stanford on one side; royal commissioner John Bampton and subsequently Sir Robert Belknap on the other.
History & Significance
The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Uprising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years' War, and instability within the local leadership of London. The revolt heavily influenced the course of the Hundred Years' War by deterring later Parliaments from raising additional taxes to pay for military campaigns in France.
Interpretations of the revolt by academics have shifted over the years. It was once seen as a defining moment in English history, in particular causing a promise by King Richard II to abolish serfdom, and a suspicion of Lollardy, but modern academics are less certain of its impact on subsequent social and economic history.
The revolt has been widely used in socialist literature, including by the author William Morris, and remains a potent symbol for the political left, informing the arguments surrounding the introduction of the Community Charge in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.
The term "Peasants' Revolt" does not occur in contemporary chronicles, which did not give the events a specific title, and the term "peasant" did not appear in the English language until the 15th century. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was generally known as "the Insurrection of Wat Tyler". Though he commented that "which eighteenth- or nineteenth-century historian first used the doubly discredited phrase 'Peasants' Revolt' I have been unable to determine", Paul Strohm's first identified usage of the term was in John Richard Green's Short History of the English People in 1874. The name has been critiqued by modern historians such as Strohm and Miri Rubin, both on the grounds that many in the movements were not peasants, and that the events more closely resemble a prolonged protest or rising rather than a revolt or rebellion. Alternative terms include "the 1381 Rising" and "the English
The Peasants' Revolt was fed by the economic and social upheaval of the 14th century. At the start of the century, the majority of English people worked in the countryside economy that fed the country's towns and cities and supported an extensive international trade. Across much of England, production was organised around manors, controlled by local lords – including the gentry and the Church – and governed through a system of manorial courts. Some of the population were unfree serfs, who had to work on their lords' lands for a period of time each year, though the balance of free and unfree varied across England, and in the south-east serfdom was relatively rare. Some serfs were born unfree and could not leave their manors to work elsewhere without the consent of the local lord; others accepted limitations on their freedom as part of the tenure agreement for their farmland. Population growth led to pressure on the available agricultural land, increasing the power of local landowners.
The ground they fought on
The site of Peasants' Revolt - Fobbing riot lies on Thames Group, bedrock that formed in the Eocene. The rock here is clay, silt, sand and gravel.
On 30 May 1381, when the commissioner John Bampton attempted to arrest Fobbing villagers who had refused to explain their non-payment of tax, a riot erupted in which the villagers tried to kill him; Bampton barely escaped to London, and when Sir Robert Belknap was sent to investigate just days later on 2 June, he was also attacked, by which time Essex and Kent were already in full revolt.
- No specific casualties recorded in the sources; John Bampton escaped and Sir Robert Belknap was attacked but outcomes for individuals are not detailed.
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