The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the 1340s, the high taxes resulting from the conflict with France during the Hundred Years' War, and instability within the local leadership of London.

The revolt has been widely referenced in socialist literature, including by the author William Morris, and remains a potent symbol for the political left, informing the arguments surrounding the introduction of the Community Charge in the United Kingdom during the 1980s.

[2] Though he commented that "which eighteenth- or nineteenth-century historian first used the doubly discredited phrase 'Peasants' Revolt' I have been unable to determine", Paul Strohm's first identified usage of the term was in John Richard Green's Short History of the English People in 1874.

[1] The name has been critiqued by modern historians such as Strohm and Miri Rubin, both on the grounds that many in the movements were not peasants, and that the events more closely resemble a prolonged protest or rising rather than a revolt or rebellion.

Taxes in the 14th century were raised on an ad hoc basis through Parliament, then comprising the Lords, the titled aristocracy and clergy; and the Commons, the representatives of the knights, merchants and senior gentry from across England.

[35] To complicate matters, the official statistics used to administer the taxes pre-dated the Black Death and, since the size and wealth of local communities had changed greatly since the plague, effective collection had become increasingly difficult.

[37][nb 2] Designed to spread the cost of the war over a broader economic base than previous tax levies, this round of taxation proved extremely unpopular but raised £22,000.

Archbishop Simon Sudbury, the new Lord Chancellor, updated the Commons on the worsening situation in France, a collapse in international trade, and the risk of the Crown having to default on its debts.

[64] William Langland wrote the poem Piers Plowman in the years before 1380, praising peasants who respected the law and worked hard for their lords, but complaining about greedy, travelling labourers demanding higher wages.

On 13 June, the rebels entered London and, joined by many local townsfolk, attacked the prisons, destroyed the Savoy Palace, set fire to law books and buildings in the Temple, and killed anyone associated with the royal government.

[83] Sir Simon de Burley, a close associate of both Edward III and the young Richard, had claimed that a man in Kent, called Robert Belling, was an escaped serf from one of his estates.

[120] According to the chronicler Henry Knighton it contained "such quantities of vessels and silver plate, without counting the parcel-gilt and solid gold, that five carts would hardly suffice to carry them"; official estimates placed the value of the contents at around £10,000.

[120] The interior was systematically destroyed by the rebels, who burnt the soft furnishings, smashed the precious metal work, crushed the gems, set fire to the Duke's records and threw the remains into the Thames and the city drains.

[145] There he appointed the military commander Richard FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, to replace Sudbury as Chancellor, and began to make plans to regain an advantage over the rebels the following day.

[163] As in London and the south-east, this was in part due to the absence of key military leaders and the nature of English law, but any locally recruited men might also have proved unreliable in the face of a popular uprising.

[164] On 12 June, Wrawe attacked Sir Richard Lyons' property at Overhall, advancing on to Cavendish and Bury St Edmunds in west Suffolk the next day, gathering further support as they went.

[167] A small band of rebels marched north to Thetford to extort protection money from the town, and another group tracked down Sir John Cavendish, the Chief Justice of the King's Bench and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.

[200] Fresh rumours, many of them incorrect, continued to arrive in Berwick, suggesting widespread rebellions across the west and east of England and the looting of the ducal household in Leicester; rebel units were even said to be hunting for the Duke himself.

[202] Violence continued over the coming weeks, and on 1 July a group of armed men, under the command of John de Gisbourne, forced their way into the city and attempted to seize control.

[218] Henry's quick action was essential to the suppression of the revolt in East Anglia, but he was very unusual in taking matters into his own hands in this way, and his execution of the rebels without royal sanction was illegal.

[225][nb 13] Tresilian soon joined Thomas, and carried out 31 executions in Chelmsford, then travelled to St Albans in July for further court trials, which appear to have utilised dubious techniques to ensure convictions.

[240] On 30 June, the King ordered England's serfs to return to their previous conditions of service, and on 2 July the royal charters signed under duress during the rising were formally revoked.

[255] The evidence from the court records following the revolt, albeit biased in various ways, similarly shows the involvement of a much broader community, and the earlier perception that the rebels were only constituted of unfree serfs is now rejected.

[259] Some were artisans, including, as the historian Rodney Hilton lists, "carpenters, sawyers, masons, cobblers, tailors, weavers, fullers, glovers, hosiers, skinners, bakers, butchers, innkeepers, cooks and a lime-burner".

[128] Other urban rebels were part of the elite, such as at York where the protesters were typically prosperous members of the local community, while in some instances, townsfolk allied themselves with the rural population, as at Bury St Edmunds.

[291] Mid-20th century Marxist historians were both interested in, and generally sympathetic to, the rebel cause, a trend culminating in Hilton's 1973 account of the uprising, set against the wider context of peasant revolts across Europe during the period.

[300] The revolt formed the basis for the late 16th-century play, The Life and Death of Jack Straw, possibly written by George Peele and probably originally designed for production in the city's guild pageants.

[301] It portrays Jack Straw as a tragic figure, being led into wrongful rebellion by John Ball, making clear political links between the instability of late-Elizabethan England and the 14th century.

[303] It was deployed as a cautionary account in political speeches during the 18th century, and a chapbook entitled The History of Wat Tyler and Jack Strawe proved popular during the Jacobite risings and American War of Independence.

[308] Conspiracy theorists, including writer John Robinson, have attempted to explain alleged flaws in mainstream historical accounts of the events of 1381, such as the speed with which the rebellion was coordinated.