4. Kim Aldis: Twenty nine years ago I stepped out of a shop in Brixton and a
hundred yards away a car exploded marking the start of a year of the worst
civil unrest in UK living memory. These images have been sitting in the
bottom of a drawer since then.
11. John Ball preaches to the rebels at Blackheath: Royal MS 18
E.I, f. 165v. Netherlands, S. Last quarter of 15th cent., before
1483.
12. Indictment by jurors from Orford in Suffolk relating to disturbances in Ipswich.
Documents such as these enabled the French scholar André Reville in 1898 to illustrate
the extent and seriousness of the disturbances in East Anglia.
The National Archives, KB 9/166/1 m. 29
13. Indictment for attack on priory of Breadsall Park in Derbyshire, 18 June
1381. On the following day, the Derbyshire insurgents seized the royal
castle at Horsley, raised the banner of St George and fixed the heads of
some of the men they had earlier executed to the castle gate:
The National Archives, KB 27/531 rex m. 20d
14. Proceedings in the court of King’s Bench against insurgents in Scarborough
The National Archives, KB 27/500 rex m. 12
15. Petition (in French) relating to lawsuits following the unrest at
Bridgwater in Somerset. The revolt is here described as ‘the
great rumour which was at London’.
The National Archives, SC 8/102/5051
16. Sources for the Revolt in Kent
• Wide range of chronicles, including Anonimalle
Chronicle, Walsingham, Knighton, Westminster
Chronicle, Froissart
• Manorial records
• Town records, including London Letter Book, Plea
and Memoranda and Hustings Rolls
• Informal records and letters eg the copy of the
manumission issued to the men of Kent at Mile
End (in the keeping of William Appledorefield)
17. Sources for the Revolt in Kent
COMMISSION RECORDS: Just 1/400; KB 9/43
KING’S BENCH: prosecutions at crown suit; trespass
prosecutions; private appeals by widows; informal
records in recorda files
COMMON PLEAS: trespass prosecutions eg by John of
Gaunt for the destruction of the Savoy
GAOL DELIVERY records
PARLIAMENTARY RECORDS: parliamentary rolls, petitions
CHANCERY: Patent Rolls, Close Rolls, Warrants, various
writ files
EXCHEQUER: Issue rolls, Receipt Rolls, Memoranda Rolls
18. A visualisation by Mitchell Whitelaw of the University of
Canberra of 57000 series in the collection of the National
Archives of Australia. The area of each square is proportional to
the number of shelf metres that series occupies, while the size of
the grey void in each square is related to the number of
described items in the series.
http://mtchl.net/the-visible-archive/
19. How does the digital coverage of events in 1381 compare with the
digital resources available for the study of more modern events,
such as the Gordon Riots four hundred years later?
20. Eighteenth Century Collections Online derived from English Short Title Catalogue, so
provides comprehensive coverage of printed works, but OCR unreliable
21.
22. Women tried at the Old Bailey for participation in the Gordon Riots:
www.oldbaileyonline.org
23. The same trial expressed as XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
24.
25. Red pins (proportional in size to the number of cases), show the crime locations of the
83 Old Bailey trials for riot during the century, over half of which concerned the
Gordon Riots (June 1780). The green pins indicate location of shops - suggesting the
motive of these riots was not looting
www.locatinglondon.org
26.
27. André Reville’s pioneering study which was previously difficult to obtain is
now available for download (and searching) via the Internet Archive
28.
29. Digitisation of primary sources
• Chronicle texts re-edited but not available
online. Focus on illuminated manuscripts.
• Strong editorial emphasis on canonical literary
manuscripts (Chaucer, Piers Plowman)
• Virtually no digitisation of manorial records or
town archives
• Extensive coverage of royal administrative
records, but in variously unsatisfactory forms
30. Thomas Walsingham, Chronicon Anglie, British Library, Harley MS. 3634, f. 125, one
of two sample images in the British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts
31. The death of Wat Tyler in a deluxe four
volume set of Froissart’s Chronicles
produced by the Bruges bibliophile
Louis de Gruuthuse between 1470 and
1475, and illuminated by the Master of
the Dresden Prayer Book and the
Master of Margaret of York
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de
France, MS. Fr. 2644, f. 159v
33. Rebels seek an audience with Richard II. Miniature by
the Boethius Master, Paris, c. 1410-20. Perhaps the
earliest depiction of the revolt?
Besançon Bibliothèque municipale ms. 865, f. 73.
38. Image of petition from John Creek of Wymondham, allegedly a
ringleader of the revolt in Norfolk, protesting his innocence:
The National Archives, SC8/262/13099
44. Trial in King’s Bench of Joanna, wife of John Ferrour, of Rochester, accused of
participating in the destruction of the Savoy Palace, taking by boat to Southwark a
chest belonging to John of Gaunt containing 1,000 pounds sterling, and participating
in the execution of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prior of the Hospitallers
The National Archives, KB 27/482 rex m. 39d
45. John Hooke of Uckfield in Sussex accused in 1423 of
assembling a company ‘so large that it resembled the
congregation formerly made by Jack Rackstraw’, which went by
night to attack and destroy property of Thomas Huchon
The National Archives, KB 27/650 rex m. 25
48. Indictments taken in West Kent by commission against the rebels. These documents describe
attacks on Malling Abbey and on the house of Nicholas Herring, a prominent local official, at
Maidstone
49. E. Powell and G. M. Trevelyan, The Peasants’ Rising and the Lollards (1899)
50. Establishing which tenants of
Malling Abbey participated
In the revolt:
The National Archives,
KB 9/43, m. 14
