Talk:Wat Tyler

March into London
I don't have time to do anything about this myself right now, but most of the sources I have consulted on this subject seem to agree that Tyler marching fifty thousand men into London is a pretty gross overestimation, considering the population of London was only about 40k at the time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.96.197.115 (talk) 03:56, 18 March 2010 (UTC) call: 07799781406 about the changes

Early life
I've deleted all the stuff taken from the Victorian novel. It is a fictional source and little or nothing is actually known of Tyler's early life: see for instance his DNB entry, and every historical work on the Peasants' Revolt. To say that "historians have reconstructed" his early life from The Life and Adventures of Wat Tyler is absurd. They've done no such thing. It would be rather less accurate than an attempt to "reconstruct" the life of William Wallace with Braveheart as your only source.


 * My edit got reverted but I've deleted the stuff again, with a fuller explanation in the "edit summary" box. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.10.100.97 (talk) 01:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Text from historyguide.org - copyvio?
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 * To fix this problem, I removed this content and kept simply the external link to this content on historyguide.org. --David Edgar 14:15, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Dagger symbol on CoL coat of arms
Someone removed the reference to the red dagger on the corp of London arms but it seems legit e.g.: 

Probably vandalism but it would be interesting to know.

veghead 21:09, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Ack! I'm wrong! According to the City of London page it's the symbol of the martydom of St Paul. Clarification anyone ? veghead 21:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes, definitely the Sword of St Paul as patron of London, on the cross of St George for England. The London Diocese coat of arms is also a pair of crossed swords for the same reason. 79.72.80.60 (talk) 13:41, 7 October 2009 (UTC) Tony S

Dartford
This article does not make any mention of Dartford, where Wat Tyler lived for a large portion of his life. Maybe this is not a significant part of his life, but Dartford make a big deal of being the home of Wat Tyler, and there are at least three pubs that make a big point of being connected to Wat Tyler in some way, maybe Dartford should be mentioned in some way? 86.0.172.155 19:40, 10 October 2006 (UTC)


 * There is no connexion whatsoever between Tyler and Dartford. There is no known evidence that he ever lived or worked there and was certainly not born there.  Hearsay has a lot to answer for.  So too do pubs'promotional advertising. 2A00:23C4:A4D5:B000:518A:ED8B:EF4:AC88 (talk) 13:49, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

Freemasons
Isn't there some question as to whether Wat Tyler was an actual individual. There is a school of thought that there was freemason involvement in this revolt and that the name was a made up name for a prominent or anonymous freemason based on the question "what tyler are you?" used in masonary ritual. Please, someone, shoot me down in flames.

Given that it's not really clear there were any freemasons in 1381, this seems unlikely. (There's the Regius Poem of 1390 as evidence, but it seems to be referring to an organization of actual stonemasons, as it gives advice about being one; to my knowledge Tyler's revolt was not primarily composed of operative stonemasons.) teucer 14:06, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Probably the best reference for this claim would be the book "Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry" by John J. Robinson. It is the most credible, scholarly, and balanced writing I have read on the subject of the history of freemasonry prior to 1717. I'd cite the reference myself except my local public library, for some reason, has chosen to suppress this book since I read it several years ago. ;-) Garth of the Forest (talk) 19:41, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

John Standwich quote
needs marking as a quote

Inconsistencies re: date and place of birth
I've removed the following sentence from the beginning of the article's second paragraph:


 * In 1320, six years after the Battle of Bannockburn and in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Edward II, the wife of Walter Hilliard, a roof tiler of the small village of Broxley, in Kent, gave birth to a son.

Then I married Wat Tyler and had 13 kids with him! These details concerning both the time and place of Tyler's birth are contradicted by the statement, two sentences later, that


 * Historians believe he was born in Essex, but they are not sure when, and it is unclear when he crossed the Thames Estuary to Kent, where he would lead the revolt.

Other sources seem to confirm that the circumstances of Tyler's birth are unknown; and anyway, the deleted sentence has a novelistic tone inappropriate to an encyclopedia article. Dodiad 00:04, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Need to get squared away on birth. If he was born in 1341, he would have been five years old when he fought in the Battle of Crecy and 15 at the Battle of Poitiers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.0.185.244 (talk) 04:28, 22 July 2008 (UTC)


 * See my comment below. The main source of this wikipedia article is a NY times review of an anonymous, highly romaniticized and fictionalized "biography" of Wat Tyler published in 1851 and, I would guess, aimed at children. Read it yourself --- it is now available on Google Books. We just don't have the kind of detailed information offered by this book, and article, for any 14th century people (not even royalty). PaddyLeahy (talk) 05:13, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I'll see if I've got time to go to Grays library when I go to see my Mum in a week or so, they used to have a display about Wat Tyler. Alanthehat (talk) 22:04, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I've found a claim for him being born in Brenchley, and added it to the article. Mjroots (talk) 11:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

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Fiction?
"From Life and Adventures of Wat Tyler, the Brave and Good, published in 1851, historians have reconstructed his youth, prior to his appearance as a historical figure."

Much of the detailed material in this article appears to be drawn from this source (including the description of his death). By "prior to his appearance as a historical figure", I guess is meant "in a period of his life for which there are no WP:Reliable sources". For "historians", I would guess you should read "some victorian writer of historical fiction". PaddyLeahy (talk) 13:01, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Update: the actual source obviously this 1852 NY Times review of the book, which it notes was published by Collins and "has no references".PaddyLeahy (talk) 13:11, 28 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Second update: the full text is now available on Google books. Its actual title (per the scanned title page) is Life and Adventures of Wat Tyler, the Good and Brave. The book is anonymous. I submit that anyone who takes a look at this publication and still considers it a reliable source should not be editing history articles. PaddyLeahy (talk) 05:19, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

After reading this article (and the Peasants' Revolt one) I'm at a loss as to what is actually known about Tyler, what is thought to be true according to a weight of evidence, and what has been imagined by Victorian yarn-spinners, radical campaigners or anyone else. Anyone in a position to clarify this a little? Millichip (talk) 09:06, 8 September 2008 (UTC) Template:UnsignedIP -->

baselard article claims William Walworth used a baselard rather than a sword. Which article is correct?Rdmoore6 (talk) 19:22, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Charles Oman source
There's some interesting introspection about how reliable different sources are about Wat Tyler in Charles Oman's Great Revolt of 1381

There's a digital version here: http://books.google.com/books?id=IXVnAAAAMAAJ Cosmo7 (talk)

Proposing merger with Peasants' Revolt
I am proposing that the contents of this article be merged into Peasants' Revolt. Peasants' Revolt is a well-written featured article, but this is a weak article that just summarizes and repeats the same information as Peasants' Revolt. In truth, it seems that virtually nothing is known about Wat Tyler except for his role in said revolt. Even his date of birth is unknown. I challenge anyone to find substantive and verifiable information about Wat Tyler’s life that is not already covered in the article Peasants' Revolt. However, if the Wat Tyler article can never be anything more than a summarization of the Peasants Revolt article, then why not just merge them?LoosingIt (talk) 04:43, 8 November 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with you LoosingIt that this article is not satisfactory as it stands. However, I don't believe it should be merged with the Peasants' Revolt article, at least not yet. It does seem that not much is known definitively about Wat Tyler, but his name alone has carried meaning. I mean that there's the individual person himself but also the symbolic or representative meaning he has. I'd be willing to do more research on this to see if there are further sources that could be used in order to improve the article. Nathan43 (talk) 18:17, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I've found several sources that don't seem to have been used so far, and I will work on incorporating them into the article in the next few weeks. Nathan43 (talk) 00:50, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course, the reason little is known about the life of Wat Tyler beyond the Peasants' Revolt is that he was not of the aristocracy or high clergy; yet his individual and symbolic meaning is immense. According to Alastair Dunn ("The Peasants'Revolt - England's Failed Revolution of 1381") "There are few commoners in English history who have left a more lasting imprint on the popular consciousness than the leaders of the Great Rising of 1381." Surely it would be a poor reflection on Wikipedia if there were no article on this man whose import and effect has been so great. Nathan43 (talk) 18:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
 * The fact that the Peasants' Revolt is also known as "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" is reason enough for the articles not to be merged. Wat Tyler is only known for his role in the Revolt because he was neither a king nor an archbishop. He was not known for anything afterwards because he was assassinated. Meanwhile, Froissart is clear: "...[the]unhappy men of London began to rebel ...and sent word to the foresaid countries that they should come to London and bring their people with them, promising them how they should find London open to receive them and the commons of the city to be of the same accord, saying how they would do so much to the king that there should not be one bondman in all England... This promise moved so them of Kent, of Essex, of Sussex, of Bedford and of the countries about, that they rose and came towards London to the number of sixty thousand. And they had a captain called Water Tyler, and with him in company was Jack Straw and John Ball: these three were chief sovereign captains, but the head of all was Water Tyler'', and he was indeed a tiler of houses..." (My bold & italics) He was "the head of all"! I think it's incumbent upon Wikipedia to have an entry on Wat Tyler himself. I'm still gathering resources but am firmly against any merger. Nathan43 (talk) 13:30, 8 January 2019 (UTC)


 * hi just passing through and wanted to say Wat Tyler certainly should have his own article. cheers! Mujinga (talk) 13:47, 19 April 2019 (UTC)


 * As arguably the most famous revolting peasant of all time, I think he merits his own article. PatGallacher (talk) 14:23, 19 April 2019 (UTC)
 * I would oppose this merge, for the reasons given above; Wat Tyler is the best-known of any of the persons involved in the Peasant's Revolt, with the exception of the King himself, so disposing of his bio page seems an odd move.
 * Also, how (practically) were you planning to do this? The PR page is already 105Kb, above the threshold for splitting bits off into subsidiary articles, of which Tyler's biography would be an obvious candidate. The last thing that article needs is to add another 14Kb of text. Or were you simply going to blank the page and add a redirect (ie. deletion by stealth)? There isn't a section there entitled 'Persons involved' (or somesuch) to anchor to, so a redirect would just dump the enquirer at the top of the PR page and leave them to winnow through for biographical detail on him. And, as there's very little, they'd probably assume we haven't done a very good job of writing him up. This way anyone who wants to know about Tyler as a person has all the information known about him (ie. not very much) collected in one place. A much better arrangement... Moonraker12 (talk) 20:43, 11 May 2019 (UTC)

There is grave danger of helping to eradicate Wat Tyler from the history books, so I am utterly opposed to the loss of this file. Nehpets Plihp, Regular User 20:36, 14 June 2019 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.231.87 (talk)

Unclear statements
The article currently says:

"Walworth slashed Tyler across the neck and head with his sword, and another of the king's servants, possibly Ralph de Standish, stabbed Tyler again, severely wounding him. Tyler managed to ride thirty yards before he fell from his horse. In the disorder that followed, he was taken to a hospital for the poor, but was tracked down by the mayor, brought back to Smithfield and publicly decapitated."

Does that mean Tyler was taken to a hospital alive? Or was his body taken to the hospital? Likewise was he alive when he was decapitated? These sentences are not very clear. 81.141.33.229 (talk) 11:23, 7 April 2020 (UTC)


 * I agree with you. And I don't think the details are known definitively. BTW I'd meant to work more on this article about a year ago but couldn't find the time Nathan43 (talk) 17:24, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

First Paragraph, Second Sentence
I suggest changing the second sentence from "He marched a group of rebels..." to "He led a group of rebels..." They weren't a trained army and there is no evidence that they marched all that way. Nathan43 (talk) 17:05, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

Date of birth
The inclusion of an utterly fictitious date of birth (4.1.1341) in this entry simply debases the whole text. If Wiki is going to include this sort of nonsense taken from un unprovenanced, unsubstantiated individual's family tree website without any proof as to its veracity then it means anyone can write any nonsense on Wiki and get away with it. A consequence of its inclusion here is that it has been repeated AS FACT on many other websites. Appalling. And not history. Just mischievous. For goodness' sake REMOVE it. 81.141.78.1 (talk) 20:34, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Birthplace
Similarly there is no evidence whatsoever that Brenchley was Tyler's birthplace beyond invented local lore. It is one of at least three other places that also lay 'claim' to being the birthplace. Why not put those down too? Adding the word 'disputed' does not clarify the matter at all. It is not 'disputed'; there is nothing to dispute. There is no evidence for it at all. It is simply inaccurate, misleading, fictitious hearsay and does Wiki's reputation as a source of public information no good at all. I'm a little tired of reading twaddle on wiki entries. Given that so many schoolchildren use it Wiki should be ashamed of the fact that it permits the publication of untruths. 2A00:23C4:A4D5:B000:88D5:400:FD83:F9F0 (talk) 22:19, 31 March 2024 (UTC)