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For in June, 1381, while John Wyclif still lived and wrote, Wat Tyler led his men to Blackheath in a rebellion which proved to be the beginning of freedom for the workers of England. And although at first sight there seems to be no connection between the two, it was the same spirit working in John Wyclif and Wat Tyler that made the one speak and the other fight as he did.
He is no revolutionist with a new gospel of reform, but, though content to accept the old traditions, he is the ruthless denouncer of abuses, and is thoroughly filled with the spirit which, four years after the second recension of his book, found expression in the Peasants Revolt of 1381.
When Saint Louis bought the Crown of Thorns from Baldwin in 1239, the commercial value of relics may, possibly, be said to have touched its highest point, but, in fact, the adoration of them had culminated with the collapse of the Second Crusade, and in another century and a half the market had decisively broken and the Reformation had already begun, with the advent of Wycliffe and the outbreak of Wat Tyler's Rebellion in 1381.
Also this seizure of property would doubtless have caused a convulsion as lasting as that which followed the insurrection of 1381, or as did actually occur in Ireland, had it not been for an unparalleled contemporaneous territorial and industrial expansion.
Giovanni de' Medici was not among them either because being under suspicion he was not invited or that entertaining different views he was unwilling to interfere. Rinaldo degli Albizzi addressed the assembly, describing the condition of the city, and showing how by their own negligence it had again fallen under the power of the plebeians, from whom it had been wrested by their fathers in 1381.
Hence, it appears, that the government which commenced in Florence at the death of Giorgio Scali, in 1381, was first sustained by the talents of Maso degli Albizzi, and then by those of Niccolo da Uzzano. The city remained tranquil from 1414 to 1422; for King Ladislaus was dead, and Lombardy divided into several parts; so that there was nothing either internal or external to occasion uneasiness.
The memorable Irish decree, "that all the English slaves in the whole of Ireland, be immediately emancipated and restored to their former liberty," was issued in 1171. Slavery in England was abolished by a general charter of emancipation in 1381.
Blackheath is not alluded to in Chaucer's poem, though it must have been famous at the time he was writing, for in 1381 Jack Straw, Wat Tyler, and their company were there gathered.
One day three years before, when he had been only six years old, the priest in Zirl, who was a very kindly and cheerful man, and amused the children as much as he taught them, had not allowed Findelkind to leave the school to go home because the storm of snow and wind was so violent, but had kept him until the worst should pass, with one or two other little lads who lived some way off, and had let the boys roast apples and chestnuts by the stove in his little room, and while the wind howled and the blinding snow fell without had told the children the story of another Findelkind, an earlier Findelkind, who had lived in the flesh as far back as 1381, and had been a little shepherd-lad "just like you," said the good man, looking at the little boys munching their roast crabs "over there, above Stuben, where Danube and Rhine meet and part."
They were Richard, born December 21, 1376, and died issueless, June 24, 1396; Elizabeth, born 1379, wife of Sir William Marny; Philippa, born 1381, wife of Robert Passele; Alice, born at Kilquyt, September 1, 1384, wife of Guy de Saint Albino; Joan, born 1393, died February 21, 1400. Philippa became a widow, September 30, 1393, and died September 13, 1399. II., 53; 21 Ric.
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