Peasant Politics and Class Consciousness: The Norfolk Rebellions of 1381 and 1549 Compared

Abstract

The county of Norfolk was heavily involved in England's two largest peasant rebellions, in 1381 and 1549. There is no question that each revolt commanded widespread popular support, and as is argued below, the rebels were drawn from a cross-section of the rural population. Whether or not these were peasant rebellions is partly a question of whether one regards the rural population of Norfolk as peasants, an issue discussed elsewhere.2 However, they were also peasant rebellions in another sense. Other large popular revolts of this period, such as the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, or the Western Rebellion of 1549 involved alliances between gentlemen and the commons or ordinary rebels. They were provoked partly by discontent over religion, taxation and bad government, which united members of these two social classes.3 By contrast, the rebellions in Norfolk in 1381 and 1549 were centrally concerned with the nature of the manorial system and terms of tenure, issues that split lords and tenants into two competing groups. Conceived in Marxist terms, as Rodney Hilton put it, these rebellions were manifestations of conflict between the two main classes in late medieval England, lords and peasants.4