Introduction
In 1381, a tax collector came to Wat Tyler’s home in Kent and demanded his daughter pay the new poll tax — a desperate attempt to raise money for war in France from a workforce depleted by the Black Death. The taxman indecently assaulted her, and Tyler killed him. This was the spark that lit the Peasants’ Revolt, which GK Chesterton saw as a turning-point in the history of Parliament.
The occasion of the protest, and the form which the feudal reaction had first taken, was a Poll Tax;* but this was but a part of a general process of pressing the population to servile labour, which fully explains the ferocious language held by the government after the rising had failed; the language in which it threatened to make the state of the serf more servile than before. The facts attending the failure in question are less in dispute. The mediaeval populace showed considerable military energy and co-operation, stormed its way to London, and was met outside the city by a company containing the King and the Lord Mayor, who were forced to consent to a parley. The treacherous stabbing of Tyler by the Mayor gave the signal for battle and massacre on the spot.
The peasants closed in roaring, "They have killed our leader"; when a strange thing happened; something which gives us a fleeting and a final glimpse of the crowned sacramental man of the Middle Ages. For one wild moment divine right was divine.
The King was no more than a boy;* his very voice must have rung out to that multitude almost like the voice of a child.
* For the story, see The Peasants’ Revolt. The Black Death some forty years earlier had depleted the workforce, making it difficult to raise much-needed revenue for the Treasury and the Hundred Years’ War with France. The new poll-tax was charged not only on the working man but on each member of his family over fifteen years old, regardless of sex or income, and brutally enforced.
* Richard II was born in Bordeaux on January 6th, 1367, which means that in the summer of 1381 he was fourteen.
Word Games
Sevens Based on this passage
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Variations: 1.expand your answer to exactly fourteen words. 2.expand your answer further, to exactly twenty-one words. 3.include one of the following words in your answer: if, but, despite, because, (al)though, unless.
Jigsaws Based on this passage
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
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