In 1381, English peasants rebelled against their feudal lords. It wasn’t the first rebellion of its kind, but it was an indication of the growing popularity of ideas about personal and economic liberty that would shape the coming centuries. It was also, as all revolutions are, a response to the gross injustices of the time. In A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, Barbara Tuchman writes: “What had happened in the last thirty years, as a result of plague, war, oppression, and incompetence, was a weakened acceptance of the system, a mistrust of government and governors, lay and ecclesiastical, an
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