Mile End and the Rebels’ Demands: The End of Serfdom Promised
On 14 June 1381 the boy king Richard II rode out from the Tower to meet the rebels at Mile End, and there — in a field east of the city walls — he granted the unthinkable: the abolition of serfdom across England. Thirty clerks sat writing charters of freedom while the crowd cheered. It was the high-water mark of the Peasants’ Revolt, and it lasted barely a fortnight.