Popular Protest in Late Medieval English Towns, 1196-1452

For popular revolt in late-medieval English towns the assumption has been that little happened there. The theatre of medieval English class conflict, instead, was the countryside, where revolt has been studied more thoroughly in England than for any area of medieval Europe. From a reading of over ninety chronicles, the voluminous Calendar of Patent Rolls, and numerous other crown and municipal records, the project has redressed this imbalance. It has uncovered and analysed around 700 incidents of popular protest, 1196 and 1452. For the first time, moreover, research on English revolts in towns has been placed in a wider comparative continental context and has shown profound differences between England and the continent in the trajectories and character of revolt. Economic and ecological factors played less a role in sparking revolt in England than on the continent: the ebb and flow of English revolts, instead, was more dependent on high politics—dynastic and baronial conflict and at moments of weak kingship. The project has demonstrated that the difference in popular protest between England and the continent resulted from the precociousness of the English state, its structure of courts and law enforcement and the growth of centralized royal power over the two-and-a-half centuries of this study. Because of this development of repressive forces, the character of popular protest in late medieval England began to resemble more closely that found on the continent during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the gulf between the ruled and rulers had widened.