On 15 June 1381 the boy king Richard II met the rebel captain Wat Tyler for the last time, in the open ground at Smithfield outside London’s walls. Within minutes Tyler lay dying on the cobbles, cut down by the Lord Mayor before thousands of armed rebels — and a fourteen-year-old king rode alone into the crowd to save the day. It is the most astonishing scene of the whole Peasants’ Revolt.
In June 1381 a fourteen-year-old king rode out, twice, to meet an army of rebels who had beheaded his chancellor and held London in their fists. What Richard II did in those two days at Mile End and Smithfield would define — and ultimately undo — the rest of his reign.
For a single fortnight in June 1381, a man of whom history knows almost nothing led England’s poor to the gates of London, faced down a king twice, and came within a heartbeat of overturning the medieval order. Then, at Smithfield, Wat Tyler was cut down in front of his own army.
