Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic proceeds into autumn with the first wave merging seamlessly into a second, the messages from history begin to seem ever more relevant. The chaotic and ineffectual handling of the crisis in the United Kingdom reminds us of the serious impact that epidemics can have on every aspect of everyday life, not least through their potential for seismic impact on the economy, on social relations and on politics. Nowhere was this more evident than in the long tail to the Black Death of 1348, which culminated in the so-called Peasants Revolt during the Summer of Blood in 1381.
The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, caused by the gram-negative Coccobacillus, Yersinia pestis, carried by rat fleas, is claimed to have been the most fatal pandemic in human history, with deaths estimated at between 75 and 100 million worldwide. Arriving from continental Europe in the summer of 1348, the plague spread at between one and five miles a day and is estimated to have killed about half of the population of England. In his book, Summer of Blood, The Peasants Revolt of 1381, medieval historian Dan Jones provides a compelling account of the ensuing consequences and the bloody events of that May and June that changed the country forever. 1
One of the main economic consequences of the high death toll of the plague was to dramatically increase the pay bargaining power of the so-called lesser people, who had until then been largely bound to manorial Lords as yokels, serfs and peasants. In a land of three social classes they had until then bumped along, navigating a path between the noblesse oblige of their masters to provide them with a degree of protection in return for the obligation of their labour and loyalty, but often characterised by outrageous exploitation. Their strengthened position following the plague led to growing tension, as many sought to free themselves from the bounds of serfdom.
It was against this background that the seeds were sewn for what was to come. The so-called 100 years’ war with France was grinding on as Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, died and were succeeded by the boy king Richard II under the malicious influence of his uncle, John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster, a figure not unlike Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s adviser, Dominic Cummings, whose arrogance, meddling and hatred of London’s elites had led him to be detested by clerics, merchants and peasants alike. The rebellion itself was sparked by the novel imposition by parliament of three poll taxes in rapid succession on the peasants to take advantage of what the landed classes saw as their new wealth. This was to fund the failing overseas military adventures at a time of deteriorating economic prospects. These poll taxes, the first in 1377 and two in 1380, compounded the insult of aggressive new labour laws designed to prevent the peasants from negotiating improved terms and conditions from their enhanced post-plague bargaining position.
The straw that broke the country’s back was the third poll tax in December 1380 that played into the hands of the charismatic and visionary, preacher and rabble-rouser, John Ball, and his ally, one-time soldier and adventurer, Wat Tyler. According to Dan Jones, the rebellion that began in the towns of Essex and Kent in May 1381 was aimed at what ordinary people saw as a long and worsening period of corrupt, incompetent government and a lack of social justice. With a radical cabal at its centre that wished to see a complete overhaul of England’s government, their zeal swept along honest but discontented working folk who agreed that things ought to be better.
Beginning on Thursday, 13 June, the start of the Corpus Christi festival weekend, a rapidly escalating insurrection of thousands converged on London from Essex and Kent. Beginning with the destruction of John of Gaunt’s stunning Savoy palace on the Thames riverside, the next few days saw a paralysis of government, the collapse of public order and hundreds of revenge beheadings in the streets of the capital before the imposition of military rule restored order and instigated a counter terror. Wat Tyler’s death at the hands of London Mayor Sir William Walworth in a standoff with King Richard’s inner circle of loyal knights at Smithfield, marked the beginning of the collapse of the revolt. John Ball, having been captured in Coventry as he escaped north, was hanged, beheaded, disembowelled and quartered on 15 July.
History may not be a hard science, but the cliché that those who are ignorant of their history are doomed to repeat it can have resonance. The convergence of the elements of the Peasants Revolt: a pandemic; a disgruntled and polarised population; egregious failures of leadership and a fractured economy together with the emergence of messianic leaders peddling simplistic nostrums, feels very familiar in 2020. Nine months into a pandemic every much as serious in its own way as the Black Death of 1348, we are faced with a mounting economic and public health crisis from the twin threats of exit from the European Union and the advent of the COVID-19 virus, rising anger over the failures of government and its leaders to rise to the challenge, and the beginnings of insurrection in Kent focused on the increasing numbers of desperate migrants arriving on the county’s shores.
The breakdown of trust between the governors and the governed lies at the heart of the current crisis. Will we be the victims of a re-run of 1381, as in the film ‘Groundhog Day’, or can we rise above it, learn the lessons of history and of the Great Plague, and find a way to galvanise leadership and bring the organised efforts of society together to defeat the enemy and emerge stronger and fit for the future?