13 Facts About Wat Tyler

1.

Wat Tyler led a group of rebels from Canterbury to London to oppose the institution of a poll tax and to demand economic and social reforms.

2.

Wat Tyler was fascinated by John Ball, his group having broken the radical priest out of jail.

3.

How Wat Tyler became involved with the revolt is unknown, although a much later 16th-century source indicates that a man of a similar name, John Wat Tyler, was its initiator.

4.

At first, the meeting seems to have gone well, with Wat Tyler treating the king in a friendly, if overly familiar, manner, and Richard agreeing the rebels "should have all that he could fairly grant".

5.

Sir John Newton insulted Wat Tyler by calling him "the greatest thief and robber in all Kent".

6.

Wat Tyler managed to ride thirty yards before he fell from his horse.

7.

Wat Tyler's head was placed atop a pole and carried through the city, then displayed on London Bridge.

8.

Wat Tyler is represented in Robert Southey's Wat Tyler, A Dramatic Poem, which was written in 1794 but not published until 1813.

9.

The first novel to feature Wat Tyler is Mrs O'Neill's The Bondman: A Story of the Days of Wat Tyler.

10.

Wat Tyler is the protagonist in Pierce Egan the Younger's novel Wat Tyler, or the Rebellion of 1381, a highly radical text published at the height of the second phase of the Chartist movement that argued for republican government in England.

11.

Wat Tyler is the protagonist of the penny dreadful serial novel Wat Tyler; or, The King and the Apprentice which appeared in weekly parts in The Young Englishman's Journal in 1867, and appears as a main character in William Harrison Ainsworth's Merry England; or, Nobles and Serfs.

12.

Wat Tyler is mentioned in Redburn by Herman Melville and in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain.

13.

Wat Tyler is the principal character in the historical novel, Now is the Time by Melvyn Bragg.