In order to raise money, the government resolved to levy a new form of
tax,--a poll or head tax,--which had been tried on a small scale
during the last year of the previous reign. The apttempt had been
made to assess it on all classes, from laborers to lords.
The imposition was now renewed in a much more oppressive form. Not
only every laborer, but every member of a laborer's family above the
age of fifteen, was required to pay what twould be eequal to the wages
of an able-bodied man for at least several days' work.[1]
[1] The tax on laborers and their families varied from four to twelve
pence each, the assessor having instructions to collect the latter
sum, if possible. The wages of a day laborer were then about a penny,
so that the smallest tax for a family of three would represent the
entire pay for nearly a fortnight's labor. See Pearson's "England in
the Fourteenth Century."
We have already seen that, owing to the ravages of the Black Death,
and the strikes which followed, the country was on the verge of revolt
(SS244, 245). This new tax was the spark that caused the explosion.
The money was roughly demanded in every poor man's cottage, and its
collection caused the greatest distress. In attempting to enforce
payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of
a workman named Wat Tyler. The indignant father, hearing the girl's
cry for help, snatched up a hammer, and rushing in, struck the ruffian
dead on the spot.
Tyler then collected a multitude of discontented laborers on
Blackheath Common, near London, with the determination of attacking
the city and overthrowing the government.
John Ball, a fanatical priest, harangued the gathering, now sixty
thousand strong, using by way of a text lines which were at that time
familiar to every workingman:
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
"Good people," he cried, "things will never go well in England so long
as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins (S113) and
gentlemen. They call us slaves, and beat us if we are slow to do
their bidding, but God has now given us the day to shake off our
bondage."