The Peasants. They drank all our wine

One of the towns that escaped serious damage during the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381was Lewes.
There is a curious sense of injustice about this because it was the Archdeacon of Lewes who triggered the whole huge thing.
A somewhat bumptious John Bampton (also spelled Brampton) was one of the heavies around King Richard II who couldn’t wait to curry the King’s favour by jumping into political confrontations where other henchmen feared to tread literally.
When a group of peasants in Essex refused to pay their taxes, our John dutifully sprang onto his horse, dug his heels into its flanks and set off with a couple of servants to sort them out.
Alas, the good Archdeacon had failed to understand the depth of anger among working folk, who were fed up with seeing their money spent on a wanton way of life, where the court made merry and they ended up paying the bill.
It’s not clear if King Richard was a culprit in the merrymaking. He was only 14, and despite his royal status, was denied entry into many pubs who could have lost their licence if they had served him.
But whether he enjoyed a pint or not, the King was a bellicose boy and kept tampering with the French in the One Hundred Years War, another costly endeavour.
England had lost a large chunk of its workforce through the Black Death, Bubonic Plague, which had decimated the English population and caused a manpower shortage.
The peasants were in no mood to be bullied and Brampton’s intervention caused a fracas which saw his servants killed and he barely escaping with his life.
The confrontation triggered a mass revolt and an army of peasants swept across England, killing, murdering, robbing, burning, pillaging, and sometimes having uninvited liaisons with female villagers.
The rioting grew and a new leader, an ex-soldier named Wat Tyler took up the sword and, rampaging across the country, attacked famous British icons such as Canterbury Cathedral, The Tower of London and other establishment buildings. Without fear or favour, they murdered senior court officials and royal favourites whom they encountered along the way.
The churchman from Lewes had lit a fire which was spreading swiftly across the country, wreaking death and destruction on a scale previously unknown.
It was inevitable that the mayhem should reach Lewes.
The mob entered the town and whether they had knowledge aforehand, made straight for the Castle.
Here, great quantities of wine were stored and when these 14th century peasants romped their not so merry way across Sussex, the local vino already had a thousand years of know how behind it.
In other words, it was damn good. The Lewes Priory had also opened, run and won an enviable reputation for inns which provided outstanding food and drink.
The leader of the rebellion, Mr. Tyler was no fool and while no minutes were kept of his war cabinet meetings, he obviously alerted his fellow peasants, to the fact they could be onto a good thing in Lewes.
And they were.
This army of ruffians and vagabonds tipped off about this fountain of sweet tasting nectar, had made haste to Lewes to discover where the lake of Sussex wine was concealed in the castle, while their colleagues were ravaging the nation, including London,
The raiding party, heeding the advice of boss, Watt, broke down the Castle gates, supped for a few days in his lordships cellar, mastered their hangovers with a couple of aspirin, then swaggered off to Hampshire, Surrey and all parts West, leaving Lewes intact, if short of a few barrels of Sussex wine.
Until recently, modern Sussex vineyards have been ignored. They worked in the shadow of our French cousins and were considered a novelty rather than a serious product in the wine markets of the globe. That has now changed, and English wine consistently wins blind tastings and has challenged the French vintages especially in sparkling wine. Some English vineyards go back to Roman times and produce a wine that is not only excellent to the taste but is rooted in history.
The Domesday Book records 40 vineyards in England shortly after the invasion of 1066.
But the industry struggled a bit because of the close relationship of British Royalty and French dominions during the Plantagenet era.
Then the British government imposed huge taxes on French imports in the 18th century and English wines bounced back, even though a new competitor in fortified wines such as Sherry and Port entered the sector.
There were 139 vineyards during Henry VIII rein, which produced wine that won the favour of such worthies as Samuel Pepys and the London Coffee House set.
Free trade reversed its fortunes in the nineteenth century and English wine was dealt a death blow when World War One brought about a shortage of sugar and the need for arable land to produce food on the home front.
But you can’t keep a good Sussex grape down and in 1936, fresh vines were planted and slowly but surely the industry grew in depth and stature until today a Sussex vineyard, Ridgeview, supplies sparkling wine to Her Majesty Queen Elisabeth and a variety of wines to number 10 Downing Street.
So, Wat Tyler’s men headed for a Lewes wine cellar with a bit of history behind it and decent wines suited to a drunken evening; a nice little or rather a large tipple.
And tipple they did. They drank his lordship out of house and home, stole a few stones from the castle walls, the purpose of which is unknown but undoubtedly added to the rich English language idiom ‘Stoned’, then left the town intact.
So the Archdeacon of Lewes John Bampton, or Brampton (was it the wine that caused him not to remember his own name?) started the peasants revolt, but it was fine English wine in Lewes that ended it peacefully, at least as far as the town is concerned.
The episode didn’t end happily for Wat Tyler. After promises of amnesty from Richard, the king reneged on his vow, as Prince’s are sometimes wont to do, and the mob were defeated at a final confrontation near London and most were put to death in the agonising ways the nobility had of despatching their opponents in 14th century England. But the vineyards of Sussex live on, now rapidly being restored to the glory they have enjoyed since the advent of Roman vineyards, planted in a time more than 2000 years ago and a Sussex rather more volatile socially in that era than it is today.