This thesis provides an analysis of material relating to the peasants" revolt of 1381 found in the records of royal judicial agencies. A number of previously unknown sources of information about the rising are described. Commission records help to establish the main features of the pattern of development and geographical distribution of the disturbances in Kent, Essex and East Anglia. King's bench records are extremely heterogeneous in character, but Ar, mainly of interest for the information they provide about the unrest in London and other towns. The private litigation against the rebels permits extremely detailed investigation of the background of the insurgents and also allows rebel bands to be identified. Escheators' accounts and exclusions from the general pardon have been overrated as sources, but, together with gaol delivery records, provide some details of incidents in counties for which information about the rising is otherwise patchy. Judicial records emphasise the importance of local tensions and private quarrels in the rising. They suggest that the rapid spread of the troubles across a large part of the country was mainly due to the pursuit of local and personal grievances of this sort. The varied background of the participants in the rising probably reflects the strong local and personal elements in the disturbances. The judicial records also indicate that the events in London did not form the focal point of the rebellion in the way suggested in the chronicles. The demands presented at Mile End and Smithfield were not necessarily representative of the views of the bulk of insurgents. It appears that many of the rebels were more interested in short term personal gain than thoroughgoing reform of the social and political order.

The medieval historian engaged with the systems of power and authority that surrounded him. In his account of the Peasants' Revolt in late medieval England, the ecclesiastical historian Henry Knighton (d. 1396) both reinforced and challenged the traditional order. This thesis explores the ways in which his ideological perspectives shaped his understanding of the events of June 1381 and how this understanding was articulated through the structure, language, and cultural meaning of the historical text. The reconstruction of authorial intention and reclamation of both Knighton and the medieval reader as active participants in the creation of history challenge a historiography that has long disregarded Knighton as an unremarkable historical recorder. Instead, they reveal a scholar whose often extraordinary approach to the rebels and traditional authorities expresses a great deal about the theory, practice, and construction of power and authority in late medieval England.