THE REVOLUTION STOPS HERE?: Leicestershire and the Rebellion of 1381

Leicestershire has often been considered something of a backwater when it comes to the 1381 Revolt.1 In most modern work on the rebellion, when the county is mentioned at all, it is usually only to note that, around the 17th or 18th of June, some 1200 inhabitants of Leicester assembled southeast of the town at Gartree Hill. Once gathered, they loyally prepared to repel insurgent peasants rumoured to be marching from the south, bent on destroying the Leicestershire possessions of their local lord, the Duke of Lancaster, a well known focus of rebel hatred.2 Though the confrontation between the townspeople and the rebels never came to pass, this brief drama remains our main impression of the town’s, and the county’s, part in the rising. Unsurprisingly, then, the events in Leicester and environs have sat more comfortably in Lancastrian historiography, especially the life of John of Gaunt, than in that of the revolt per se. 3 Aside from this non event, only a couple of other disturbances in Leicestershire are mentioned in modern discussions of the revolt, and usually in quite dismissive language. Such commentaries almost always base their discussion of events in the county on Knighton’s Chronicle, a source which, as we will see, has its weaknesses. 4 In other words, due to an embedded historiographical tradition and the considerable reliance on one narrative source, most modern accounts of Leicestershire’s connection with the Great Rising are generalised, shop worn, and tell only a small part of the county’s story.