xvi LAND REFORM 



sive centuries. Those who took part in them (yeomen 

 as well as peasants) are usually described as " rebels," 

 "fanatics," "idle and vagrant persons," etc., while 

 their leaders are nicknamed and caricatured. 



Looking beneath the detraction, misrepresentation, 

 and tainted party colouring, which generally follow 

 defeated efforts, it will be found that the root cause 

 of these revolts was the intolerable agrarian oppres- 

 sion which existed. These uprisings were forlorn 

 attempts of desperate men to keep by force those 

 rights in the land on which their well-being and 

 very lives depended, and from which they were being 

 steadily ousted under baron -made law or by the 

 •'strong hand" under no law at all. A study of 

 those uprisings, and the causes of them, is absolutely 

 necessary in order to trace and understand the social 

 history of England down to the present time. 



Read by this light it will be found that the 

 *'Wat Tylers," "Jack Straws," "John Balls," 'Jack 

 Cades," and others were the inevitable outcome of 

 the almost incredible cruelty and oppression under 

 which the peasantry were suffering. Kett, the great 

 yeoman — called "Kett the Tanner" — Is always de- 

 scribed as the " rebel leader " of the widespread 

 Norfolk revolt in the sixteenth century. His army 

 of sixteen thousand husbandmen was at last defeated, 

 not however by Englishmen, the mass of whom were 

 on his side, but by foreign mercenaries. He him- 

 self was hanged in chains as a traitor. But it is 

 time that he was spoken of, not as a "traitor," but as 

 a brave leader of men, just in action, moderate in 

 demands, and one who, when the people know their 

 own, will be looked upon as a hero who laid down his 



