English History Year 7: The Peasant´s Revolt

Recently, Year 7 re-enacted the Peasant´s Revolt. We began the lesson by looking at a real peasant´s motives for joining the march, identifying the long and short-term causes, and then we discussed which was his greatest motivation and why.

Last week the pupils wrote speeches convincing the peasants to join them in their march to London. Today “60,000” of them rioted in the streets of the Humanities classroom, burnt documents and set fire to nobles´ houses, freed prisoners, and murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury among others. Then they met with Richard, the 14-year-old king, and made their demands.

We then discovered that there were different accounts of what happened next, and acted out the different versions involving the death of the peasant leader, Wat Tyler. Next lesson we will look at more first-hand accounts of Tyler´s death, and analyse why they are different by considering bias and motive. We will also create a living graph representing the political temperature throughout the whole revolt, focusing on cause and effect. These were exciting but frustrating times for the poor and downtrodden!