It seems co-incidental that aims of the peasants in England during the 1300's were expressed in America by a man with the same surname as one of the instigators.

Jimbert

 

The Peasant’s Insurrection in England:

This was the most famous of the risings, occurring in 1381. It has been chronicled enough to give a clear picture of the cause and its goals. Its foundation was laid in the last quarter of the 14th century.

Complaint was made in Parliament by both Lords and Commons in 1377 that in various parts of the country that the peasants “affirm them to be quit and utterly discharged of all manner of serfdom. They gather themselves together in great routs and do menace the servants of their lords, and will not suffer any distress or other judgment to be made upon them.�?

So in England the lower classes of Cambridge intervened in one of the frequent conflicts between the university and the town. Then the inhabitants of two villages in Essex refused to pay their poll tax and beat the tax collectors and ran them out of town. Then it became a full-scale riot.

The populace of Kent and Essex rose; of Kent they made themselves masters of Canterbury, Maidstone and Rochester; they seized country gentlemen and their families as hostages; stopped pilgrims on the way to Canterbury and made them go down on their knees and swear, “to be faithful to King Richard and his commons,�?never to agree to any tax except the familiar fifteenths, and “never to accept a king named John�?(as in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the king’s uncle suspected of usurping his nephew). The mob in Essex was doing the same.

The leaders were Thomas Barker and Jack Straw in Kent Essex; Geoffrey Dyer a dyer in Norfolk; Robert Cave, a baker, Abel Kerr, and Walt Tyler in Kent. The mobs from the various areas converged in London, looking for approval of the king, who fled by boat and did not return until the maniacs left.

Arriving at Southwark, they, with the assistance of the city alderman, they entered the city, finding support from the commoners as well as artisans and city proletarians. They burned the palace of John of Gaunt, the Temple (the abode of the lawyers), and the building of the Knights Hospitallers. They murdered several of the Flemings and sent the Germans fleeing for safety. Some raided the wine cellars of the elite and drank themselves senseless while others committed murder.

The king looked on from the safety of the Tower as he watched the city burn in the distance and listened to the sounds of the drunken mob. He met with some of the rioters the next day at Mile End and heard their demands. An agreement was made, but was not to be honored by the king, who sent most of the rebels home. Other rioters punished the “traitors�? several of the town’s ministers and beheaded them and put their head on poles and paraded them through the streets.

After another day of rioting there was another meeting and more demands were made. The confessions they later made were constructed by the chroniclers and may not have been their own words. But they admitted plans to remove all the clergy; killing the nobles and taking their land; to kill the judges, lawyers and ministers of the government and killing the king and electing their own leaders.

Their downfall was recorded by Froissart, who was either present or interviewed an eyewitness. The king, on horse, with his courtiers, the mayor of London and other city officials rode into the open square of Smithfield to meet with Walt Tyler and other of the rebels. Tyler, who may have been drunk, rode forward to greet the king and grasped his hand. He then guzzled some beer and rinsed out his mouth. He then tossed about a dagger from one hand to the other. Two of the king’s men then dashed forward, dragged Tyler from his horse and stabbed him to death.

The mob first thought that their leader was being knighted. When they realized that their leader was assassinated they drew their bows at the king and his men. King Richard (age fourteen) may or may not have rode forward to the mob seeking peace and their loyalty. But the crowd dispersed and vacated London. The magistrates that assisted the mob were arrested and put on trial.

The insurrection had spread, however, in all directions, with riots affecting ten counties, their cities towns, villages, abbeys, castles and monasteries, 75 incidents in all. There was pillaging, arson and justices of the peace were murdered amid other acts of rebellion. They also burned and destroyed charters and court rolls. These were the records of their services, rents and disabilities. The lawyers who kept the records were beheaded.

The nobles, knights, gentry, even some prelates struck back to end the rebellion and punishment, including execution, was served with trial and conviction. The king revoked all promises made to the rioters and ordered everyone home and back to their duties. Special court sessions were held with the guilty either hung or beheaded and Parliament forgave the nobles and the others for ignoring the law.

The king’s proposal for the abolishment of serfdom was rejected, but Parliament announced a general pardon for all but a few of the mad dogs and Englishmen, and before the year was over all was forgotten.

The two times the rebels met with the king, at Mile End and Smithfield, the rebels presented a list of demands. They were the cahiers of a Fourth Estate. They were seeking the end of serfdom and its burdensome fines and disabilities. The were also seeking the end of compulsory service to employers under the Statutes of Laborers, no more toll payments in the local markets, and to be charged no more than four pence an acre for rent of land (a rate of a dollar an acre) and the freedom to use of all woods, to hunt and to fish. They wanted pardon for the rebellion and the release of any who had been imprisoned. They sought the execution of fifteen “traitors�? ministers they considered to behind their sufferings and a few other demands, all hopeless aspirations.

THE REVOLUTIONARY ERA

The three most prominent humorists of the American Revolution were John Trumbull (1750�?831), Mercy Otis Warren (1728�?814), and Royall Tyler (1757�?826). One of the Hartford Wits, Trumbull was the author of a two-part mock-heroic poem, M'Fingal (1776, 1782), which satirized both British Loyalists and American Patriots. Warren was a Patriot who anonymously authored five satiric closet dramas between 1773 and 1779, the best-known of which is The Group (1775).

In The Contrast (1787), Tyler introduced to the American stage the character of Jonathan, the comic Yankee, creating in him a discernible American identity. In The Group, which employs comedy as a tool for propagandistic ridicule, Warren uses derogatory and ridiculous names such as Meagre, Hateall, Crusty Crowbar, and Dupe to expose and accentuate the greed, self-serving motives, and hypocrisy of Tory sympathizers.

For his part Tyler, also a Patriot, employed the strategies of British Restoration comedy in The Contrast to juxtapose the simplicity, virtue, and innocence of Jonathan, a country bumpkin, and the artificial and pretentious manners and speech of urban sophisticates like Dimple, a Europeanized American. Tyler's play, which clearly privileged the virtuous and naïve Jonathan and which offered a corrective to a potentially false, supercilious, standard of America's national manners, afforded the audience the opportunity to examine itself honestly and to determine what manners, fashions, and values to adopt.