Hilton, R. H., 'Peasant Movements in England before 1381', The Economic History Review 2 (1949), 117-136

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Quick Summary

The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 did not erupt from a ‘hitherto passive population’

  • There were peasant movements before 1381 that deserve attention
  • Peasant resistance to oppression became significant in the thirteenth century
  • No economic reason why peasants should transfer their agricultural surplus to their lords
Key Conclusion

Hilton explores acts of rebellion and resistance perpetrated by peasants during the two centuries that preceded the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The article contends that owing to the ‘uniqueness’ of the Peasants’ Revolt, historians have been inclined to consider the event as a ‘bolt from the blue’. However, Hilton argues that the ‘social, economic and political causes of discontent’ did not emerge from a ‘hitherto passive population’. While it is true that ‘at no other time was the English peasantry able to make itself felt politically as in May and June [1381]’, there were peasant movements before 1381 that deserve attention (p. 117).

Content Overview

Hilton observes that peasant resistance to ‘seigneurial pressure’ (oppression by their lords) first became significant in England in the thirteenth century. Early signs of resistance can be seen in the royal courts where individuals challenged the demands placed upon them by their lords. Such clashes were ‘heralds of the storm’ (p. 125). Records from the Abbey of Ramsey between 1279 and 1311 reveal 146 ‘separate convictions for the deliberate non-performance of labour service’ (p. 127). Later, in the fourteenth century, hatred of the Statute of Labourers – which restricted peasant wages – led to organized attacks against the sessions of the Justices of Labourers who enforced the legislation, such as in Middlesex in 1351 and Lincolnshire in 1352.

Further Findings

Hilton provides a description of feudal society, with a ‘landowning military aristocracy on the one hand, and a vast class of peasant-producers, working individual family holdings but also organized in village or hamlet communities, on the other’. The article contends that there was no ‘economic reason’ why peasants should transfer their agricultural surplus to their lords. While the feudal relationship may have afforded peasants some level of protection from violence in the ‘chaos of the ninth and tenth centuries’, that element of protection was of minor importance by the eleventh and twelfth centuries (p. 118). In fighting against economic oppression, peasants were also fighting for their ‘wider human rights’ (p. 135).

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