The end of the 1381 peasants' revolt: London's mayor, Walworth, killing Wat Tyler before King Richard II.

There are two images of the gold-crowned Richard II here. In the nearer, later one the boy king looks on the killing at the left, while in the other on the right he is shown earlier bravely talking to the massed peasants, who were led by Jack Straw and Watt Tyler. Walsingham cites a 'confession' by Straw asserting that the rebels' purpose was to kill King Richard, "all landowners, bishops, monks, canons, and rectors of churches", create new laws, and burn London. Chaucer mentions the fierceness of this rebellion in his Nuns' Priest's Tale (4583-6):

So hideous was the noise, ah, ben'citee!
Certes he Jack Straw and his menie,
Ne made never shoutes half so shrill,
When that they woulde any Fleming kill.

Shakespeare devotes a whole play to the ultimate overthrow of Richard's reign, not by peasants but by hostile relatives. He also shows a similarly anarchic peasants' rebellion led by Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2, IV.ii. Since both authors were royal emloyees neither is sympathetic to such rebellions. British Library Royal MS 18, dated c. 1385-1400: courtesy of the Yorck Project, under GNU Free Document License.