Over the last century, the 1381 revolt has been subject to fitful attempts at periodization, whether as an event in its own right, as part of the broader socioeconomic development of medieval England, or as a prologue to the reign of Richard II. The uneven geographical distribution of the rising, its brief but puzzling chronology, and the near total absence of written sources from the rebels’ perspectives, have combined to limit many attempts to achieve a full synthesis of this uprising. Debate even remains over nomenclature. The term “Peasants’ Revolt,” although misleading as a socioeconomic description and “deliberately avoided” by the author, still makes it into her book's subtitle. Juliet Barker can be excused this inconsistency, as the battle to call it anything else is, perhaps, a lost one.

While the structure of Barker's book does not depart radically from previous studies, she does paint a broad background in the opening chapter, “The State of the Nation,” and makes good use of the specialist literature in her characterization of urban society in the second chapter. Both “The State of the Nation” and “Urban Society” emphasize the non-noble and non-ecclesiastical leadership tiers of local society—the men (although not exclusively men) who made things happen by conjuring and juggling their delegated powers with their own commercial and familial interests, and through the nexus of economic clientage, trade, and exchange.

One of Barker's significant achievements in this work has been to give the reader a sense of the depth, breadth, and variety of the social, familial, and administrative interactions of farmers, local officials, gentlemen, and those who could exert a more powerful and direct political influence. She has uncovered multiple vectors of relationships, in which local landlords and bureaucrats donned and discarded successive and sometimes concurrent identities as rebel, victim, and oppressor.

The explanation for the surprising torpor manifested by so many of the nobility when faced with revolt is a compelling one: the mechanisms of royal commissions of the role of the sheriff and of the commissions of array were so well established that, once key decision makers had been eliminated both at the “national” and “local” levels, none was willing to act independently without royal writ. This takes us a long way from the model of confident magnates willing and able to deploy armed servants and retainers to enforce their will.

A further distinctive characteristic of this book is the attention Barker gives to the relationship between the liturgical calendar and the timings of rebel meetings. Indeed, her painstaking reconstruction of meeting and movement offers an interesting sociology of small-group behavior at a time of acute political crisis. While Barker avoids the pitfall of seeing the rebel movement of 1381 as Lollard inspired, and she tends to diminish the role of John Ball during the period of rebellion in London, she does nonetheless see more than merely a socioeconomic element to the grievances of townsmen and tenants against religious houses and senior prelates, while also highlighting the role of unbeneficed clergy as rebels. Adherence to Lollardy is hinted at as a possible retreat for, and reaction by, former rebels after 1381.

Reception of this book may in large part depend on reactions to some of Barker's more contentions claims, the most significant of which relate to the attitude of Richard II. For Barker (see chapter 9, “Mile End”) Richard II's acceptance of the demands presented to him on June 14, and the issuing of charters of manumission, was not merely an act of expediency but an indication of his personal wishes, which ran counter to those of his council. This of course raises a host of questions, not the least being the extent to which Richard was acting freely, but also whether he would have contemplated this action in other circumstances.

For Barker, the evidence for Richard's personal wishes can also be found in the fact that the letters of general manumission were not canceled until July 2, which was two weeks after order had been restored in London. An alternative reason for the delay could be found in the desire to use the belief in the charters as a temporary pacifying measure. However, for Barker (see chapter 15, “Suppression”) this delay represents the king condoning the rebel agenda. Such an attitude sits uneasily with the repressive measures undertaken at that very time by royal justices, notably Sir Robert Tresilian, and therefore would suggest contradictory and bifurcated responses, with the king and his officials still at odds in the aftermath of the rising.

Barker also attaches importance to the offer made to Parliament in November 1381, by the king's ministers, to repeal villeinage, if the Lords and Commons wished. For Barker, this lends further weight to the interpretation that the king wanted a royally sanctioned end to villeinage approved by Parliament. As the answer was resoundingly in the negative, then an alternative explanation could be that Richard II was merely asking a rhetorical question.

The question of rebel credence in the charters of manumission is also considered. For Barker, rebel belief in the charters as an expression of the king's intent helps to explain the asynchronous spread of the revolt, especially in areas that were sufficiently close to London to already be aware of Wat Tyler's defeat and death on June 15. This of course raises another question as to how naive the rebels were and whether they believed that the king would hold himself to promises exacted, if not under duress, then at least under the most unusual of political circumstances.

While Barker's claims about an alignment of interest between king and rebels are undoubtedly the most contentious features of her account, this book must nonetheless command attention even from those more doubtful of these interpretations. This study effectively links periphery and center; it establishes the often very localized and personal factors that helped to determine and shape individual loyalties; and it reveals the compromises needed between the various components of the polity to reestablish order in the aftermath and beyond.