AUTHORITIES: Walsingham; Knyghton--(Rolls Series); Wright’s _Political Songs_--(Rolls Series); Froissart; Professor Oman--_Great Revolt of 1381_, containing translation of a chronicle of the rising in the Stow MSS., first published in _English Historical Review_, 1895; André Réville--_Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs_ (1898); Dr. G. Kriehn--_American Review_, 1902; Edgar Powell--_Rising of 1381 in East Anglia_; Dr. James Gairdner--_Lollardy and the Reformation_; G. M. Trevelyan--_England in the Age of Wycliff_; J. Clayton--_Wat Tyler and the Great Uprising_. [Illustration: KING RICHARD II. (_From the Panel Painting in the Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey._)] WAT TYLER AND THE PEASANT REVOLT 1381 The Peasant Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler, was not only the first great national movement towards democracy, it was the first uprising of the English people in opposition to all their hitherto recognised rulers in Church and State, and it was the first outburst in this land against social injustice.[59] The Black Death in 1349 and the pestilence that ravaged the country in 1361 and 1369 upset the old feudal order. The land was in many places utterly bereft of labour, and neither king nor parliament could restore the former state of things. Landowners, driven by the scarcity of labour, went in for sheep farming in place of agriculture, and were compelled to offer an increase of wages in spite of the Statutes of Labourers (1351–1353) which expressly forbade the same:-- “Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three-score years, and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighbourhood two years before the pestilence.” This act remained the law until the fifth year of Elizabeth. “Free” labourers, landless men but not serfs, wandered away to the towns or turned outlaws in the forests. Serfs--only a small number of the population, for the Church had always recommended their liberation, even while abbots and priors retained them on Church estates, and Edward III. had encouraged granting freedom in return for payment in money--escaped to those incorporated towns that promised freedom after eighteen months’ residence. Villeins and lesser tenants commuted the service due from them to their landlords by money payments, and so began the leasehold system of land tenure. For thirty years preceding the Peasant Revolt the social changes had bred discontent, and discontent rather than misery is always the parent of revolt. An early statute of Richard II., framed for the perpetual bondage of the serfs, heightened the discontent.