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BBC Terry Jones' Medieval Lives Documentary: Episode 1 - The Peasant Buy the book: BEING A PEASANT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES must qualify as one of the worst jobs in history – but then we’re only guessing because the peasants didn’t leave much record of their lives. Except once, in the summer of 1381, when they left an indelible mark on the history of England. It was quite astonishing. From out of nowhere, it seemed, tens of thousands of ‘peasants’ converged on London. Two large armed bodies of ‘commoners and persons of the lowest grade from Kent and Essex’*1 burst through the gates of the City of London and wreaked havoc. They demolished the home of John of Gaunt and some buildings around the priory of the Hospital of St John. The next day, the rebels in London burst into the fortress-palace of the Tower. They dragged out the prior of the hospital, who was the Royal Treasurer, along with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chancellor and a couple of other notables and beheaded them on Tower Hill... Buy the book:
