He led a group of rebels from Canterbury to London to oppose the collection of a poll tax and to demand economic and social reforms.

While the brief rebellion enjoyed early success, Tyler was killed by officers loyal to King Richard II during negotiations at Smithfield, London.

They demanded that each labourer be allowed to work for the employer of his choice and sought an end to serfdom and other rigid social demarcation.

The uprising was opposed by a significant part of English society in those regions, including nobility and wealthy religious establishments.

Regardless of the basis of that story, by June 1381, when groups of rebels from across the country began a coordinated assault on London, Wat Tyler had emerged as a leader of the Kentish forces.

On 13 June, Tyler with other rebels of Kent crossed London Bridge to enter the city, as Stow recorded in his Summary and Annals.

Once in the city, they attacked civil targets, destroying legal records, opening prisons, sacking homes, and killing individuals they thought were associated with the royal government.

[7][8] In response, the king, Richard II (then 14 years old), met with the rebels on 14 June 1381 and agreed to make many concessions and to give full pardons to all those involved in the rebellion.

At first, the meeting seems to have gone well, with Tyler treating the king in a friendly, if overly familiar, manner, and Richard agreeing the rebels "should have all that he could fairly grant".

Sir John Newton (a servant of the king) insulted Tyler by calling him "the greatest thief and robber in all of Kent".

[13] John Gower commented on Wat Tyler in his 14th-century poem Vox Clamantis:: I:IX  "The jay's voice is wild and he has only learnt the art of speaking from the classes with whom the Latin poet is identified.

He is the protagonist in Pierce Egan the Younger's novel Wat Tyler, or the Rebellion of 1381 (1841), a highly radical text published at the height of the second phase of the Chartist movement that argued for republican government in England.

In Charles Dickens' Bleak House (1853), his name is invoked by Sir Leicester Dedlock as an example of what would happen if any concessions were made to "some person in the lower classes".

[16] Wat Tyler is also mentioned in Redburn by Herman Melville[17] and in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.

Provisional IRA member and hunger striker Bobby Sands referenced "Wat the Tyler" and his poor in one of his wider-known poems written while in prison, "The Rhythm of Time".