Riots and Rebellions
Maidstone as a centre of riots and
rebellions? Yet at times it was.
In the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381 against a poll
tax and the control of wage levels, thousands attacked Canterbury
and Rochester and moved on to Maidstone where they looted William
Topclyffe’s manor house at the Mote. At Maidstone, Wat Tyler
was chosen to lead the revolt. There is a possibility that he
was a Maidstone man whilst his principal lieutenant, Jack Straw,
was perhaps born at Offham. Another leading rebel was John
Ball, a priest, who had been incarcerated for life in the
Archbishop’s gaol in the High Street. He preached social
equality, his text being ‘when Adam delved and Eve span, who was
then the gentleman?’ The revolt reached London in June where
it ended with the Lord Chancellor, the Archbishop of Canterbury and
other leading figures, together with Tyler himself, killed and
Straw hung, drawn and quartered at St Albans.
Several Maidstone men were tried and sentenced
to execution although it is possible that the sentence was not
carried out. The Revolt ended in June but in September a
large number from Maidstone and neighbouring villages gathered on
Boughton Heath intending to enforce concessions which the boy King
Richard II had made to Tyler but which were subsequently
revoked. It was a local attempt to rekindle revolt
which came to naught.
1450 saw Cade’s Rebellion led by the Irishman,
Jack Cade, against the House of Lancaster. It commenced in
Kent and many Maidstone men joined the rebels who were heavily
defeated in London. Cade was killed at Heathfield whilst many
were content with the promise of a pardon. The town of
Maidstone was collectively pardoned and that pardon was extended to
Maidstone rebels, of whom fifty five are known by name.
In 1483 the Duke of Buckingham, a cousin of
the Earl of Richmond (later Henry VII) sought to replace Richard
III by Henry. The rallying point for Eastern England focussed
on Earl Rivers, then resident at the Mote. Some 5,000 men
from Kent, Surrey and Sussex assembled on Penenden Heath. The
rebellion was unsuccessful but that mattered not since Richard was
killed in battle eighteen months later and Henry VII became King of
England.
In 1549 there were riots around Maidstone at
the enclosure of common land which had been available to the
inhabitants generally for grazing, gathering of firewood,
etc. With lawfully endorsed enclosures this became the
property of landowners who excluded others.
The Wyatt Rebellion, with religious
connotations,occurred in 1554. Sir Thomas Wyatt of Allington
led a rebellion from Kent with the aim of preventing the marriage
of the catholics, Mary Tudor and Phillip II of Spain. On
25th January Wyatt read a proclamation in Maidstone High
Street and urged townspeople to join him. Some 1500 men
marched on Rochester and eventually reached London where they were
defeated. A number of arrests were made including William
Green and William Smythe, both of whom became mayors of Maidstone
in 1560 and 1564 respectively. In all some 78 Maidstone men
were indicted and Wyatt was executed. Maidstone’s town
charter was revoked and the town remained disenfranchised until
Elizabeth I granted a new charter five years later.
Two other riots deserve a mention. In
1765 a group of prisoners in Maidstone gaol stabbed the
gaoler with his own broadsword and rendered the chaplain
unconscious. The prisoners were liberated and the armoury
seized. Convicts fired weapons and several inhabitants of
East Lane (now King Street) were wounded. Three days later
the convicts were engaged by troops at Plaxtol and the ringleaders
were killed whilst other rioters were tried and executed.
The Swing Riots of the 1830s were occasioned
by sipposed undercutting of farm labourers’ wages by Irish workmen
and employment being put at risk by the introduction of threshing
machines. Throughout the south of England this led to ricks
being burned and farm machinery smashed. Towns were scarcely
affected but there was an involvement of some Maidstone men.
It was reported to the Home Office that the town was ‘infested by
radicals, chiefly journeymen artificers’. On 29th
October 1830 John Adams, a Maidstone cobbler, led 300 men to nearby
farms demanding and receiving money ‘for refreshments’. The
following day a larger group of men marched on Maidstone.
Magistrates and a troop of soldiers met them just outside the town
and the ringleaders were arrested. The Home Secretary Robert
Peel, fearing disorders, ordered two pieces of artillery to be sent
to Maidstone but in the event they were not needed.