Summer of Blood: The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Dan Jones

the chronicles next comes a sense of unstoppable disorder-the flashpoint in Brentwood spreading like flames through tinder, and erupting into a fire that consumed the whole of the south-east of England. In fact, during the first ten days of June the rebels’ progress was phenomenally coherent, well organised and purposeful, as they unleashed a campaign aimed against agents of central government in the shires, and finally the national government itself. In south Essex, the Brentwood and Fobbing rebels continued to travel the county, raising villages, organising new sworn chapters or rebels, ensuring the coherence of the revolt and spreading the word that on Thursday, 6 June, the rebellion was to begin in earnest. It seemed that the authorities were powerless. Their usual monopoly of violence and control had been suddenly, ruthlessly broken by a group of ordinary working folk operating with an astounding level of organisation and coherence, and with a penchant for gruesome, summary dispensation of natural justice.

      The first thing that each new village saw as the leading Kent rebels visited during that week was three gory standards. As Belknap was chased from the county, he had been compelled to give up the names of the jurors that had informed him of the perpetrators of the first Brentwood rising on 30 May. The rebels had tracked down three of them, severed their heads from their bodies and stuck them on poles. The bloody trophies went everywhere the rebel companies rode, their blackened, decaying features a warning: the time to rise had come, and the cause must be heeded.

FIVE A GENERAL AND A PROPHET

      The Kentishmen, hearing of things most of them already desired, without delay assembled a large band of commons and rustics in the same manner as the men of Essex: in a short time they stirred up almost the whole province to a similar state of tumult.

      THOMAS WALSINGHAM

       Kent

      By Thursday, 6 June, all of Essex and Kent was in uproar. Voices declaring for the rebellion pealed, with the urgency of church bells, from village to village, and the rule of law began to dissolve into the rule of rough rebel justice.