How about you? Welcome to Dance Those History here. In 1381, England was shaken by one

of the most widespread significant popular uprisings of the medieval period. It's known

as the Pesnitz Revolt. It began in Essex, in response to the grasping demands of a government

that was out of touch. A clumsy, tyrannical, local official lit the spark, but ignited

into, well, a revolution, I guess. It is a subject that has always fascinated me, and

there's a new team on the case, the new outfidden town. They're called the People of 1381.

A group of academics historians, but look at as much as they've been signals to the hands

on us, who were the people that took part in the Pesnitz Revolt? Where was it happening?

And the answer is, it was a lot bigger, a lot more widespread geographically and socially

than we knew before. This was a Pesnitz Revolt where they face down the king in East London.

They stormed the Tower of London, the impregnable Bastion built in the Sunday the Roman fortifications

of London by the Norman kings of England to keep their biggest and most valuable city

quiet and pacified. It was stormed. The only time it's ever fallen in history was during

the Pesnitz Revolt. They harassed the royal family, executed a few royal counsellors,

and generally tore around the place having good time.

John of Gauntz Palace, the Savoye Palace, was completely demolished. The king's uncle

was obviously particularly unpopular. People been talking about the mid-14th century a lot

recently because of its resonance to black death, which precedes the Pesnitz Revolt by

generation, but of course the effects were still very much being felt and is an important

contributory factor, means that we're now in an era of other pandemics fascinated by what

is coming next, what societal change will happen as a result of what we've been through.

Well, perhaps this project and this part and this new research will help us think about

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