#john ball

I'm not descended from Wat Tyler, I'm descended from someone who worked for him. According to family lore, my ancestor who fought in the Great Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was named Adam Attewell. As it turns out, there is a brief mention of Adam in the historical record that allows us to learn quite a bit about Adam's life.

Adam Attewell was a London butcher - which means we know he was a guildsman - who shows up in the judicial record as someone who during the very earliest days of the Revolt was an emissary from the people of London to the peasantry of Essex, calling on them to rise up in rebellion and promising that London would rise in support. He then seems to have later been "very prominent in the troubles in the capital." This pattern of behavior suggests that Adam was more than likely a member of John Ball's illegal organization known as the Great Society, part of the activist core that supported Wat Tyler's uprising from the beginning.

After Wat Tyler and his rebel forces seized the city of London, burning John of Gaunt's Savoy palace and seizing the Tower of London, they forced King Richard II into negotiations that revolved around a few key points:

the abolition of serfdom.

equality before the law.

redistribution of Church property to the people.

a purge of evil councilors from the King's councils, most notably including John of Gaunt's conservative faction.

a general amnesty for all rebels.

When William Walworth murdered Wat Tyler at Smithfield and then turned the London militia against Tyler's horrified supporters, he enabled King Richard II to abrogate all of his concessions and promises to the revolutionaries. This included the amnesty for rebels - John Ball would be drawn and quartered in King Richard's presence, royal troops would be sent out to suppress the later rising in the North of England and hunt down any rebel leaders who escaped the massacre in London - so it's an ominous sign that my ancestor's mention in the historical record comes from the "Essex indictments and the Sheriff's reports."

While I consider RIchard II to be an odious oath-breaking tyrant, on June 15th 1381, the king was utterly a broken and spent political force driven into total capitulation. It was William Walworth's use of murder and military repression that shattered the leadership of the Great Peasants' Revolt and allowed the royal government to organize a successful counter-revolution.

Dr. Morton #16

When Adam Delved and Eve Span who was then the Gentleman?

frontispiece from William Morris' book A Dream of John Ball, illustration by Edward Burne-Jones

t-shirts: https://www.etsy.com/uk/Bundschuhconspiracy/listing/552611326/

In the Heat of the Night. John Ball. New York: Harper & Row, (1965). First edition. Original dust jacket designed by Luiz Woods.