An anonymous chronicler wrote about Wat Tyler’s Rebellion shortly after it took place in 1381. The author was hostile to the rebels yet understood their motives quite well. After converging on London from various parts of southern England, the rebels, led by men like Wat Tyler, demanded that the king end the unjust taxes collected by local officials. The fourteen-year-old King Richard II (r. 1377–1399) eventually met with them and seemed to give in to their demands, but another meeting the next day led to Tyler’s death and the dispersal of the demonstrators. The excerpt here chronicles the very beginning of the movement, before the march on London.

Because in the year 1380 the subsidies [taxes] were over lightly granted at the Parliament of Northampton and because it seemed to divers lords and to the commons that the said subsidies were not honestly levied, but commonly exacted from the poor and not from the rich, to the great profit and advantage of the tax-collectors, and to the deception of the king and the commons, the Council of the King ordained certain commissions to make inquiry in every township how the tax had been levied. Among these commissions, one for Essex was sent to one Thomas Bampton [one of the tax collectors]. . . . He had summoned before him the townships of a neighboring hundred, and wished to have from them new contributions. . . .

Among these townships was Fobbing, whose people made answer that they would not pay a penny more, because they already had a receipt from himself for the said subsidy. On which the said Thomas threatened them angrily. . . . And for fear of his malice the folks of Fobbing took counsel with the folks of Corringham, and the folks of these two places . . . sent messages to the men of Stanford. . . . Then the people of these three townships came together to the number of a hundred or more, and with one assent went to the said Thomas Bampton, and roundly gave him answer that they would have no traffic with him, nor give him a penny. . . .

And afterwards the said commons assembled together . . . to the number of some 50,000, and they went to the manors and townships of those who would not rise with them, and cast their houses to the ground or set fire to them. At this time they caught three clerks of Thomas Bampton, and cut off their heads, and carried the heads about with them for several days stuck on poles as an example to others. For it was their purpose to slay all lawyers, and all jurors, and all the servants of the king whom they could find.

Source: Charles Oman, The Great Revolt of 1381 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906), 186–88.

Question to Consider

What did the author consider to be the main causes of the rebellion?