R URAL R EVOLTS AND S TRUCTURAL C HANGE

IN THE L OW C OUNTRIES,
T HIRTEENTH E ARLY F OURTEENTH C ENTURIES
Bas J. P. van Bavel

Introduction

he historiography of rural revolts in the later Middle Ages is dominated by

the three major revolts in France, England and Germany. Hundreds of
studies have been written on the Jacquerie of 1358, the English Peasants
Revolt of 1381, and the German Peasants War of 1525.1 Partly as a result of the
high quality of these studies, as perhaps most notably Bond Men Made Free by
Rodney Hilton, but also the work by Peter Blickle,2 these three revolts form the
paragon of the rural revolt. This might lead to unjustified assumptions about the
causes of later medieval revolts, for instance because of the timing of the French
and English revolts, both occurring shortly after the Black Death. It is only logical
that elements connected to this demographic catastrophe, such as attempts by lords
For their suggestions I should like to thank Jan Dumolyn (University Gent) and Hans Mol (Fryske
Akademy).
1

See the historiographical overview by Samuel K. Cohn, Revolts of the Late Middle Ages and
the Peculiarities of the English, in this volume, and for the Peasants War, see Peter Blickle,
German Agrarian History During the Second Half of the Twentieth Century, in Rural History
in the North Sea Area: An Overview of Recent Research (Middle AgesTwentieth Century), CORN
Publication Series, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 14775 (esp. pp. 15255).
2
Rodney Hilton, Bond Men Made Free: Medieval Peasant Movements and the English Rising
of 1381 (repr. London: Routledge, 2003 with a new introduction by Christopher Dyer), and Peter
Blickle, Die Revolution von 1525 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004). Both of these classic works,
originally written in 1973 and 1975 respectively, have had a new edition recently.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

to maintain the level of rents and the increasing bargaining power of labour due to
labour shortages, and the reduced respect for authority, figure prominently among
the explanations for these revolts.3 This even more so since rural revolts occurring
just before the Black Death, in a period of rising population numbers, are largely
absent from the historiography.
Geographically, too, there is major lacuna, since the Low Countries are mostly
missing from this picture. The discussion of the revolts in the Low Countries is
often limited to urban examples, mainly taken from highly urbanized Flanders.4
However, in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, in the period before the
Black Death, the south-eastern shores of the North Sea saw some of the biggest
rural revolts of late medieval Europe, with large parts of the rural population of
whole regions rising against their rulers. These revolts occurred in coastal Frisia,
Stedingen, Drenthe, Holland, and coastal Flanders, with two of these belonging to
the very few successful rural insurrections of the period. Despite their historical
significance, these revolts have not received much attention,5 perhaps also because
much of the limited research on them is published in Dutch and German.
This contribution aims to bring these revolts in the Low Countries to the fore
and place them in a wider social and economic context. In order to do this, and to
analyse and understand these revolts better, use is made here of the research done
in recent years into the social distribution of property in the late medieval Low
Countries, especially at a regional level, which attempts to understand the longterm development of regional social property structures. Linking these new insights with the data on the rural revolts can perhaps allow us to comprehend these
better. It will be investigated whether the insurgents were those who had profited
from preceding developments and were gaining in the field of property distribution, and now tried to consolidate their gains, or those who were losing out to
other social groups. Also, it will be investigated to what extent the revolts, and their
success or failure, brought about fundamental changes in social property structures.
How do these revolts fit in the process of structural changes taking place in the late

A line of reasoning implicitly criticized by Rodney H. Hilton, Peasant Movements in

England before 1381, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 2 (1949), 11736, who pointed to the
beginning of significant peasant resistance in England already in the early thirteenth century.
4

See, for instance, Popular Protest in Late-Medieval Europe: Italy, France, and Flanders, ed. by
Samuel K. Cohn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), which focuses almost solely
on urban revolts in Flanders and northern France.
5

Except for the Flemish revolt, they are all absent from the extensive overview by Hilton, Bond
Men Made Free, pp. 6395.

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251

medieval Low Countries? In trying to answer these questions, I will also compare
these with the series of smaller revolts in the Flemish towns of the decades around
1300, in order to extend the comparison and to arrive at broader conclusions.

Rural Revolts in the Low Countries, Thirteenth to the Early Fourteenth

Centuries
When assessing the occurrence of revolts, or armed resistance of the rural population against authorities or self-proclaimed authorities, in the medieval Low
Countries, immediately a marked geographical and chronological concentration
becomes apparent. Geographically these revolts are concentrated in the northern
coastal zones of the Low Countries. The heart of this coastal area was Frisia, or
Greater Frisia the designation for an area stretching from Holland in the West
to far into present-day Germany in the east. Here, and in the directly surrounding
regions, revolts and armed resistance had been a recurrent phenomenon during the
eleventh and twelfth centuries,6 but the incidence of revolts intensified and
reached a clear peak in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.
One of the biggest of revolts took place in Stedingen, an area in the delta of the
river Weser, north of Bremen. This region was situated east of the proper Frisian
territory, but still closely related to it, since it was inhabited by Hollanders and
mainly Frisians who cleared and reclaimed the area for settlement from the late
eleventh century onwards. These settlers were attracted by the freedom, secure
property rights, and low taxes offered to them. By the early thirteenth century,
Stedingen had developed into a society of well-off peasants, with a large degree of
freedom.7 The Archbishop of Bremen and the Count of Oldenburg, however, tried
to curtail the rights of the rural population, and to raise taxes, which led to a revolt

Heinrich Schmidt, Hochmittelalterliche Bauernaufstnde im sdlichen Nordseekstengebiet, in Grundherrschaft und Buerliche Gesellschaft im Hochmittelalter, ed. by Werner Rsener
(Gttingen: Verffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fr Geschichte, 1995), pp. 41342 (esp.
pp. 41628).
7

This libertas of the Stedingers is also mentioned in an early fourteenth-century source, the
Rasteder Chronik. It would be incorrect, however, to equate this freedom with the nineteenth/twentieth-century liberal notion of freedom, as rightly remarked by Rolf Khn, Freiheit als
Forderung und Ziel buerlichen Widerstandes, 11.13. Jh., in Die abendlndische Freiheit vom 10.
zum 14. Jahrhundert: der Wirkungszusammenhang von Idee und Wirklichkeit im europischen
Vergleich, ed. by Johannes Fried, Vortrge und Forschungen, 39 (Sigmaringen: Jan Thorbecke,
1991), pp. 32587 (esp. pp. 32534).

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

in 1204, proclaimed by the Thing or popular assembly. The Stedingers defended

themselves by building fortifications and forming militias, while refusing to pay
these taxes and tithes. Archbishop Gerhard II of Bremen excommunicated the
peasants in 1228, under the accusation of worshipping evil spirits and other pagan
practises.8 The Archbishop even convinced the Pope to declare a crusade against
the rebels in 1232. An army of crusaders was initially repelled by the Stedingers, although many men, women, and children were killed by the bloodthirsty crusaders,
of whom some two hundred perished. Finally, the Archbishop managed to defeat
the Stedingers in the battle of Altenesch in 1234 with a large army of crusaders,
with noblemen from all over the Low Countries, led by the Duke of Brabant and
including the Counts of Guelders, Cleves, Holland, Jlich, and Berg, the Bishop
of Utrecht, and many noblemen from Flanders and Brabant.9 Some five to six
thousand Stedingers were killed during and after the battle. Subsequently, in order
to subdue the region, the victorious Archbishop, the Count of Oldenburg, and his
vassals built several fortifications in the region and distributed properties of the
vanquished rebels among the noblemen who had participated in the crusade.
Also in the first half of the thirteenth century, more or less simultaneous with the
Stedingen revolt, a revolt broke out in Drenthe (122540). This was a region in the
north-east of the present-day Netherlands, where the slow occupation of the infertile
sandy soils had brought the peasants into possession of much of the land. Attempts
to change the strong position of peasant freeholders and their fairly autonomous
organizations from without were fiercely and successfully resisted, to the shame of
the Bishop of Utrecht. The Drenthe peasants feared that the Bishop, increasing his
princely power in Drenthe, wanted to bring them more firmly under his political
overlordship, or even reduce them to serfdom, and strongly opposed him.10 The
Bishop tried to crush their resistance with a large army of noblemen, including the
Counts of Holland, Guelders, Bentheim, and Cleves, and supported by the Bishops

Rolf Khn, Die Verketzerung der Stedinger durch die Bremer Fastensynode, Bremisches
Jahrbuch, 57 (1979), 1585.
9
Rolf Khn, Die Teilnehmer an den Kreuzzgen gegen die Stedinger, Niederschsisches
Jahrbuch, 53 (1981), 139206.
10

Bernard H. Slicher van Bath, Drenthes vrijheid, Bijdragen voor de Geschiedenis der
Nederlanden, 1 (1946), 16196 (esp. pp. 17071), stressing the fear of the Drents for manorialism,
and F. H. J. Dieperink, De Drentse opstand tegen het bisschoppelijke gezag in 1227, in Dieperink,
Diederik Thodorus Enklaar, and W. Jappe Alberts, Studin betreffende de geschiedenis van OostNederland van de dertiende tot de vijftiende eeuw (Utrecht: Bijdr. Inst. ME, 1953), pp. 137, stressing more their antipathy against the levying of tithes and the princely authority of the Bishop.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

253

of Cologne and Mnster, but they were defeated in 1227 by the Drents, who killed
the Bishop and some four hundred nobles, who were hunted down in the swamps
by peasant men and women, fighting like wild animals.11 More battles followed,
with the later bishops supported by Frisians from Friesland proper and, on other
occasions, also by noblemen from Twente and Salland, to the south of Drenthe
who were rewarded with a papal indulgence. In 1240, this struggle ended in compromise. The princely overlordship of the Bishop of Utrecht would not be resisted
anymore, but he was not able to impose heavy punishments on the Drents. Also,
the few elements of manorialism present there decayed in following years. This
power contest thus ended in a draw, or perhaps even a moral victory for the Drents.
In 127475 a revolt by the countrymen of the Kennemerland, in the north of
Holland, was later joined by the populations of Waterland and West Frisia.12 This
revolt did not come out of the blue; the Westfrisians had already had a dozen
armed clashes with the Count of Holland and his representatives in the century
before, using ambushes and other guerrilla tactics to attack their Holland enemies,
and in 1256 even succeeding in killing the Count of Holland, King William II.13
The rebels demanded respect for their self-governing powers and for their customary organization of the distribution and levying of local and central taxes. They
resisted the growing power of noblemen and comital representatives, who undermined the power of villages, and eroded their rights and customs in general. The
rebels destroyed most of the fortified houses of the noblemen in the region and
threatened to move ever further south. Frightened, the Count of Holland decided
to meet most of the demands made by the rebels, thus bringing the revolt to an end
in 1275. The concessions in the sphere of self-government in local justice, fiscality,
water management, and the administration of collective goods were laid down in
a charter granted to Kennemerland by Count Floris V.14 Later on, this charter with
some slight alterations was also granted to the rural population of Waterland and
West Frisia. This, however, was not the end of revolts in the northern parts of

11

Gerrit Overdiep, De slag bij Ane, 1227 (Peize: [n.pub.], 1977), pp. 2734.

12

D. P. Blok, Drie boerenopstanden uit de dertiende eeuw, Academiae analecta, 56 (1994),

7796 (p. 79).
13

Ronald P. de Graaf, Oorlog om Holland, 10001375 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996), pp.

22846.
14
Peter C. M. Hoppenbrouwers, Op zoek naar de kerels: De dorpsgemeente in de dagen van
graaf Floris V, in Wi Florens . . . De Hollandse graaf Floris V in de Samenleving van de Dertiende
Eeuw, ed. by D. E. H. de Boer, E. H. P. Cordfunke, and H. Sarfatij (Utrecht: Uitgeverij Matrijs,
1996), pp. 22442 (esp. pp. 22829).

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

Holland. In 1297 the Westfrisians rose again, but their militia was defeated by the
Count of Holland and his noblemen, with probably three to four thousand rebels
killed in battle. In the years 130610 there was another revolt, of which hardly
anything is known from the sources, and in 1324 and 1346 the northern regions
rose again.15 In all these cases, the rural revolts were ignited by fiscal matters and
grievances about the centralization of public administration, and were intended to
defend regional liberties.
A similar struggle between the rural population and the advancing power of
territorial lords can be observed in central parts of Frisia too, such as in Friesland
proper. Here, no territorial lord held any princely power, although the Count of
Holland tried to claim this. In 1345 he attacked Friesland by sea, with an armada
of three hundred to five hundred ships, carrying an army of about fifteen thousand
noblemen and soldiers. However, he was defeated by the Frisians in the battle of
Stavoren, where most of the Holland army was killed, including the Count
himself.16 This could be labelled a revolt, but perhaps rather was the defence or
resistance against self-proclaimed sovereignty by an outsider.
The biggest revolt in the late medieval Low Countries broke out in coastal
Flanders. Here, from 1323 onwards, a rural revolt combined with discontent in the
Flemish towns about taxation, the monopolization of power by a small, closed
patriciate, and abuses in town government, in what became the biggest and longestlasting revolt of later medieval Western Europe.17 The uprising in the Flemish
countryside was induced by resentment about the abuses of taxation, the more
since they were destined for indemnity payments to the hated French king. Perhaps
unrest was also fuelled by socio-economic changes including the introduction of
short-term leasing, the rise of wage labour, the extension of urban landownership,
15
Peter C. M. Hoppenbrouwers, Rebels with a Cause: The Peasant Movement of Northern
Holland in the Later Middle Ages, in Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions in the Late
Middle Ages, ed. by Wim P. Blockmans and Antheun Janse (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), pp.
44582.
16

Antheun Janse, Grenzen aan de Macht: De Friese Oorlog van de Graven van Holland
Omstreeks 1400 (s-Gravenhage: SDU. Uitgeverij, 1993), pp. 5459. For the wider context, see J. A.
Mol, Graaf Willem IV, de Hollands-Friese oorlog van 1344/1345 en de Friese kloosters, in Negen
eeuwen Friesland-Holland: Geschiedenis van een Haat-LiefdeverHouding, ed. by Philippus H.
Breuker and Antheun Janse (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1997), pp. 94108.
17
Jacques Sabbe, Vlaanderen in Opstand 13231328: Nikolaas Zannekin, Zeger Janszone en
Willem de Deken (Brugge: Van de Wiele, 1993), pp. 2235, 5562 and 7785; William H.
TeBrake, A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 13231328
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), pp. 5760, 7186, 11222 and 13956.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

255

mounting debts of peasants, and new forms of social inequality. Such changes were
strong in coastal Flanders at the time. Hatred at first turned against comital bailiffs
and tax-collectors, who were taken prisoner by the insurgents, increasingly supported by the non-patrician population of several towns. In the second phase of the
revolt, demands and actions of the insurgents became more radical, aimed against
the nobility and patriciate, against large landownership and the levying of tithes,
thus acquiring a revolutionary character. The core of the revolt was again formed
in the countryside, with peasants and semi-proletarianized countrymen, led by
members of the peasant elite and prosperous farmers, joining forces with the
artisans and craftsmen from many Flemish cities. The rural insurgents used the
organizations they had developed in the High Middle Ages, such as the village communities and assemblies, and they used their century-long experience in association. Village leaders were delegated to regional bodies, giving coherence to the revolt, and captains were chosen to lead the revolt and to replace the comital bailiffs.
These captains convened courts and collected public taxes and revenues, providing
a strong organization for the revolt, with public authority over the major part of
Flanders fairly effectively taken over by the insurgents for several years.
Nobility and princes from all over Western Europe feared that the revolt would
be an example to other regions. They set aside all their internal conflicts to fight
this threat jointly, supported by the pope, using his religious weapons of interdict
and excommunication. An army of three thousand to four thousand mounted
noblemen and twelve thousand soldiers and foreign mercenaries, led by the King
of France, the Count of Holland, and the Dukes of Bretagne and Burgundy,
defeated the rebels in 1328.18 In the final battle, near Cassel, more than three
thousand insurgents were killed. The repression was harsh, with the horrific execution of the leaders of the revolt (burning some of them with hot iron and breaking
their arms and legs before killing them), the execution of thousands of insurgents,
sometimes without a trial, the confiscation of the goods of the insurgents, the
imposition of enormous indemnity payments, and the withdrawal of the privileges
and by-laws of towns and rural districts. All this was intended to prevent people
from ever contemplating a revolt again.
Thus, four big rural revolts took place in the Low Countries in a time span of
just over a century before the Black Death, along with several smaller revolts or
disturbances. Striking is the degree of success of these revolts, either spanning
several years before their suppression or being victorious.

18

TeBrake, Plague of Insurrection, pp. 11922.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

Social Profile of the Clashing Parties

It is difficult to obtain a clear idea of the social composition of the rebellious countrymen due to lack of sources.19 We have to content ourselves with contemporary
or later chronicles, often written by clerical authors, who spent little energy on
describing the rebels or simply used pejorative clichs to designate them. The contemporary chronicle by Emo, abbot of the nearby Abbey of Bloemhof, describes
how the Drenthe rebels consisted of two groups: some rebellious noble leaders
from Drenthe and the Drenthe population. This last group, or the two groups
together, are designated as the Drents, as in the passage where the episcopal noblemen were slaughtered by the Drents and died pitifully.20 The detailed narrative on
Groningen and Drenthe, written during the revolt, also designates the insurgents
as the Drents, but also as the whole of Drenthe (tota Drenta).21 Also interesting
is the passage which describes how the women of the land (mulieres de terra) also
fought in the battle, not yielding to the men in bloodthirstiness. Similarly, the
rebels in Stedingen are designated with the name of their region, as in the charters
issued by the Pope in 1231 and 1233: de hominibus qui Stedigni dicitur. The
chronicle of the Monastery of Rastede uses the same term: eosdem Stedicgos.22
The contemporary chronicle of Bloemhof mentions how Dominican monks
preaching against the Stedingers mentioned them in the same breath with two
other rebellious people of the first half of the thirteenth century as equal to each
other in disobedience: Stathingos, Threntones et Fivelgones pares esse propter
inobedientiam.23 All these sources employ the name of the region to designate the

19

See the careful reconstruction by Christopher Dyer, The Rising of 1381 in Suffolk: Its
Origins and Participants, in Dyer, Everyday Life in Medieval England (London: Hambledon,
1994), pp. 22139.
20
Kroniek van het Klooster Bloemhof te Wittewierum, ed. by Hubertus P. H. Janse and Antheun
Janse (Hilversum: Verloren, 1991), p. 223.
21

Een Verhaal over Groningen, Drente, Coevorden en Allerlei Andere Zaken onder Verschillende
Utrechtse Bisschoppen (Quedam Narracio de Groninghe, de Thrente, de Covordia et de Diversis aliis
sub Diversis Episcopis Traiectensibus), ed. by Hans van Rij (Hilversum: Verloren, 1989), pp. 44, 48,
50, and 68.
22

Bremisches Urkundenbuch, vol. I, ed. by Diedrich R. Ehmck and Wilhelm von Bippen
(Bremen: Historische Kommission, 1873), nos 166 (1231) and 176 (1233), and Historia monasterii Rastedensis, in MGH Scriptores, 25, ed. by Georg Waitz (Hannover: Hahn, 1880), pp.
495512 (esp. pp. 50406).
23

Kroniek van het Klooster Bloemhof, ed. by Janse and Janse, pp. 24041.

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257

rebels. This implies a regional character of the revolt and broad support within the
population of the region.
Sometimes the sources are more specific about the rebels. In his chronicle from
the mid-fourteenth century, Johannes de Beke describes how in 1275 the common
people of Kennemerland (vulgus Kinemarie) rebelled against the noblemen,24 indicating the ordinary background of the rebels. The writer of a contemporary
chronicle described the Kennemer people (Kenemarorum gens) in 1324 as hostile
towards noblemen and very proud, specifically labelling them as peasants: dictis
rusticis.25 In Stedingen, the people starting the revolt were the incole terre illius,
which probably means the owner-occupiers of the land in this region.26 It is explicitly mentioned in the sources that one family from the gentry joined the revolt,
but all further noblemen were expelled. The Stedinger revolt was clearly carried out
and organized by the non-noble rural population. The only case where a direct
insight in the total composition of the rebellious forces can be gained is that of
coastal Flanders, thanks to two inventories drawn up in order to confiscate the
goods of the insurgents. The biggest inventory gives an overview of the real property
of 3185 insurgents killed at the Battle of Cassel.27 Of these, 28 per cent owned no
real property (or were living-in youngsters), while 9 per cent owned only a house,
and 63 per cent a house and some land. Most of the latter owned less than two hectares, a third two to eight hectares, and a small fraction (3 per cent of the total)
owned more than eight hectares. The majority were therefore smallholding peasants.
In these four revolts, although also a few local noblemen were sometimes
involved, the bulk of the rebels consisted of peasants, with a large share of the rural
population of that particular region actively involved in the revolt. The rebels often
employed the existing organizations of rural society, like the rural communities.
This applied to coastal Flanders, as noted above, but also for West Frisia, where

24
Chronographia Johannis de Beke, ed. by Hans Bruch (s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1973), p. 219;
Johannes de Beke, ed. by Hans Bruch (s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1982), p. 142.
25

Willem Procurator Kroniek, ed. by Marijke Gumbert-Hepp (Hilversum: Verloren, 2001), pp.
34447.
26

Heinrich Schmidt, Zur Geschichte der Stedinger: Studien ber Bauernfreiheit, Herrschaft
und Religion an der Unterweser im 13. Jahrhundert, Bremisches Jahrbuch, 60/61 (1982/83),
2794 (esp. pp. 3840).
27
TeBrake, Plague of Insurrection, pp. 13944; J. Mertens, Les Confiscations dans la Chtellenie du Franc de Bruges aprs la bataille de Cassel, Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor
Geschiedenis (1968), 23984, although the latter inventory only lists the most propertied among
the rebels.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

villagers were used to choosing their delegates for regional meetings, the warven,
while all adult Westfrisians met once a year on a general assembly, where decisions
about defence were taken, with the obligation of all Westfrisians over twelve years
old to fight when Westfriesland was invaded.28 As they rose in 1275 the Westfrisians could build on their communitas communitatum Westfrisie and their general
warf, with its well-developed organization, which included its own counsellors and
seals. Equally strong inter-local or regional organizations existed in neighbouring
Kennemerland, where the whole community revolted against the nobles.29
In all of the revolting regions, the ordinary population of the countryside traditionally had a large degree of personal freedom and firm property rights to the land.
The common feature of these regions was a virtual absence of manorialism. In
Holland, only on the most fertile parts were some traces of manorial organization
to be found, but in the large peat areas these were absent. In Drenthe, too, manorialism was very weak. The soil here was too poor to render this system profitable,
and the position of the landowning peasants had become secure due to their leading role in the gradual process of land reclamation in the preceding centuries.
Frisia cannot be characterized as a peasant society, since the region was rather
characterized by substantial farmers and a large group of gentleman-farmers and
lower noblemen (the hoofdelingen). Still, it had in common with the other regions
that the feudal system and classical manorialism had always been weak, coupled
with a longstanding tradition of freedom for a relatively large segment of the
population. At the latest in the eleventh century some idea of Frisian freedom had
crystallized.30 Relatively many people here were free, held free property, and had
full access to offices and political participation. This was legitimized by the socalled Privilege of Charlemagne,31 in which the Emperor according to the Frisian
tradition, or invented tradition, had granted the Frisians their freedom and self-

28
de Graaf, Oorlog om Holland, pp. 21920; Hoppenbrouwers, Rebels with a Cause, pp.
47982.
29

Chronographia Johannis de Beke, ed. by Bruch, pp. 21921; Johannes de Beke, ed. by Bruch,
p. 142.
30

Wifred Ehbrecht, Gemeinschaft, Land und Bund im Friesland des 12. bis 14. Jahrhunderts,
in Die Friesische Freiheit des Mittelalters, ed. by Hajo van Lengen (Aurich: Ostfriesische Landschaft,
2003), pp. 13493 (esp. pp. 16163).
31
H. Schmidt, Friesische Freiheitsberlieferungen im hohen Mittelalter, in Festschrift fr
Hermann Heimpel zum 70. Geburtstag, part III, Verffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts fr
Geschichte, 36 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1972), pp. 51845 (pp. 53538); Oebele
Vries, Het Heilige Roomse Rijk en de Friese vrijheid (Leeuwarden: De Tille, 1986), pp. 2127.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

259

organization, an idea which held great popularity among the Frisians in the
thirteenth century.
In Holland and coastal Flanders, the freedom and secure hold over land of the
rural population originated in the fairly recent occupation of peat or coastal areas
by peasant-colonizers, in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. In Holland, the
numerous colonists, carrying out the hard clearing work, were granted their freedom and gained de facto ownership over the land. They only had to pay a small
nominal rent, as a recognition of the right of the count as territorial lord.32 The
issuer (or seller/vercoper) of the land, a territorial lord or large institution, often
only retained the tithes and the jurisdiction, often granted in feudal tenure to the
person or institution who actually organized and led the reclamation in question,
the locator.33 The land itself was controlled almost solely by free peasant-colonizers.
In other coastal areas too, large-scale reclamation resulted in the freedom of
peasants.34 Most notably, this was in the marshlands in the north of Germany,
where the settlers originated in part from Holland and other parts of the Low
Countries. Many characteristics of the occupation of Holland were copied in the
north-German/East-Frisian marshlands, such as the small recognition fee a peasant
would pay and their jurisdictional prerogatives, although the degree of freedom
obtained was less outspoken and less general than in Holland.35 Still, the Stedingers
drew on a similar background as many free Holland peasants.
The simultaneous developments in the Flemish coastal plains were in some
ways similar to those in the Holland peat area, in particular the freedom offered to
the hospites attracted to this area and the near absence of manorial organization.
But there were also differences. The Flemish count was not only a territorial lord,
but also a large landowner in the Flemish coastal plain, and he had handed over
many of his land rights to religious institutions and rich burghers, often by way of

32
Hendrik van der Linden, De Cope: Bijdrage tot de Rechtsgeschiedenis van de Openlegging der
Hollands-Utrechtse Laagvlakte (Utrecht: van Gorcum, 1955), pp. 16082, and van der Linden,
Het platteland in het Noordwesten met nadruk op de. occupatie circa 10001300, Algemene
Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 2 (1982), 6978.
33

van der Linden, De Cope, pp. 9395.

34

Bryce Lyon, Medieval Real Estate Developments and Freedom, American Historical Review,
63 (1957), 4761.
35
Walter Schlesinger, Flemmingen und Khren: Zur Siedlungsform niederlandischer Siedlungen des 12. Jahrhunderts im Mitteldeutschen Osten, in Die Deutsche Ostsiedlung des Mittelalters als Problem der Europischen Geschichte, ed. by Walter Schlesinger (Reichenau: Vortrge,
1975), pp. 20960.

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sale. Later embankments and winning of new polders, too, were mainly completed
through the investments made by rich burghers and institutions (c. 11801300).36
The result was that more large landownership developed here than in the Holland
peatlands, and this became mainly exploited by way of short-term leasing.37 Still,
here too, peasant landownership originally seems to have been dominant.
All five rebelling regions had in common that a relatively large share of the land
was held in free ownership by the ordinary rural population, without large-scale
manorialism or strong lordly power. In Drenthe and Holland even the great
majority of the land was owned by peasants, at around four-fifths of the land.38 The
situation in these regions was not found in all parts of the Low Countries. In
several regions, as in Salland, the Guelders river area, the Hesbaye, or Zeeland, this
share was only a quarter of the land or less, with most of the land in the hands of
noblemen and religious institutions. This clearly differed from the landownership
structures in the rebellious regions.
The five regions also had in common that the self-organization of the rural population was well developed. In regions such as northern Holland and Drenthe, the
village community held a strong position. In Drenthe, a region of infertile sandy
soils with large wastelands, the strength of the peasant communities was particularly expressed in their hold over the commons, which were managed by the village
boards formed mainly by free peasants.39 In East Frisia, West Frisia/northern

36

Erik Thoen, A Commercial Survival Economy in Evolution: The Flemish Countryside

and the Transition to Capitalism (Middle Ages19th Century), in Peasants into Farmers? The
Transformation of Rural Economy and Society in the Low Countries (Middle Ages19th Century)
in Light of the Brenner Debate, ed. by Jan L. van Zanden and Peter C. M. Hoppenbrouwers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2001), pp. 10249, esp. pp. 12526, and, for the power of the Flemish count, see
Dries Tys, Domeinvorming in de wildernis en de ontwikkeling van vorstelijke macht: Het
voorbeeld van het bezit van de graven van Vlaanderen in het IJzerestuarium tussen 900 en 1200,
Jaarboek voor middeleeuwse geschiedenis, 7 (2004), 3183.
37

Tim Soens and Erik Thoen, The Origins of Leasehold in the Former County of Flanders,
in The Development of Leasehold in Northwestern Europe, c. 12001600, ed. by Bas J. P. van Bavel
and Phillip R. Schofield (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), pp. 3155.
38

Bas J. P. van Bavel, Structures of Landownership, Mobility of Land and Farm Sizes: Diverging Developments in the Northern Parts of the Low Countries, c. 1300c. 1650, in Landholding
and Land Transfer in the North Sea Area (Late Middle Ages 19th Century), ed. by Bas J. P. van
Bavel and Peter C. M. Hoppenbrouwers (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 13148 (esp., pp.
13235).
39

Jan L. van Zanden, The Paradox of the Marks: The Exploitation of Commons in the
Eastern Netherlands, 12501850, Agricultural History Review, 47 (1999), 12544.

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261

Holland, and coastal Flanders the self-organization of the rural population was
expressed also in the area of water management. In these coastal areas, the village
community, at the same time jurisdictional, fiscal, military, and ecclesiastical unity,
often overlapped with the organization for water management.40 The latter organizations were formed as coniurationes of colonist associations bound by an oath, as
most clearly in peatland Holland and the adjacent parts of the Nedersticht Utrecht.
Here, already in the twelfth century or perhaps even before, free confederations
were responsible for water management, stimulated by the constant threat of the
water, necessitating cooperation and communal organization. The territorial lord
tried to obtain more grip on these organizations, particularly from the thirteenth
century onwards, but his success remained limited, without corroding the communal essence. In Holland, even the big regional water district boards remained to
a large extent autonomous, as in the large district of Rijnland, where in the thirteenth century communis terrae consiliarii made up the common council. This
council was not appointed by the Count of Holland, but it had the right of cooptation, again pointing to its communal roots. In coastal Flanders, in the course
of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, this situation became eroded, as water
management boards increasingly became dominated by wealthy landowners,41 but
in the other regions a broad participation of the rural population remained.
In Frisia, the self-organization of the rural population perhaps went furthest.
By the weakness of feudal organization and the near absence of authority of territorial lords, a tradition had developed of free people feeling themselves directly
placed under the king, without a role for princes or territorial lords in between.
They had started to organize their autonomous communities already in the eleventh century, perhaps with a prominent role of local powerful, but with a broad
participation of free countrymen in public matters developing already in the
twelfth century. The rural associations had little to gain anymore from the rise of
territorial lords, or rather they feared to lose, and thus resisted their ambitions. In
the thirteenth century, the organization of communities here further proceeded,
with the appearance of the redjeven/consules/grietmannen, judges and representatives, appointed by the community.42 At the same time, in the Frisian districts
40
Hendrik van der Linden, Recht en Territoir: Een Rechtshistorisch-Sociografische Verkenning
(Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972), pp. 1026.
41

Tim Soens, Polders zonder poldermodel? Een onderzoek naar de rol van inspraak en overleg
in de waterstaat van de laatmiddeleeuwse Vlaamse kustvlakte (12501600), Tijdschrift voor sociale
en economische geschiedenis, 3 (2006), 336.
42

Ehbrecht, Gemeinschaft, Land und Bund, pp. 15460.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

some twenty-five terrae or lands developed, with their own boards, consisting of
the joint representatives of the land. This was a crown on the dominance of selfgovernment of the Frisian communities, remaining unbroken up to the fifteenth/
sixteenth centuries.
It was particularly this independent nature and the autonomous associations
of the Frisians and East Frisians, without any control of secular or higher ecclesiastical authorities, that nettled the territorial lords, church leaders, and noblemen.
This appears, for instance, at the Bremer Synod in 1231, as the Stedingers were
condemned of superstitious practises because of their sworn associations.43 The
people of Fivelgo were reproached with a similar transgression, as around 1235
they had sworn a communal oath against the bishop. As the Abbot of Bloemhof
remarked in his contemporary chronicle,44 this was a clear violation of canon law,
since this condemns the craftiness of such a sworn association and explicitly prohibits the associations. The communal and associative character of the revolts came
perhaps clearest to light in the revolt of the Kennemers in 1275, who apparently
aimed for an extension of communality over a much wider area. As explicitly stated
in a mid-fourteenth-century chronicle,45 they aimed to bring the entire princebishopric of Utrecht (covering large parts of the present-day Netherlands) into one
common community (in vulgarem communitatem redigere) with all people brought
together in community (in the Dutch version of the chronicle: alle dat Sticht
Utrecht ghemeent volc maken).
In these struggles, the opposite side in the revolt was headed by a count, princebishop, or king. In all cases these territorial lords could count on a strong support
and solidarity of secular and ecclesiastical noblemen. Noblemen and princes, up to
hundreds of kilometres away from the revolting region, came to fight. Sometimes
this solidarity even crossed long quarrels or rivalries, as with the counts/princes of
Holland, Utrecht, and Guelders, who stepped over their century-long political
rivalry in order to combat the revolting Drents in united action. A second striking

43

Otto G. Oexle, Gilden als soziale Gruppen in der Karolingerzeit, in Das Handwerk in vorund frhgeschichtlicher Zeit, part I, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gttingen,
122, ed. by Herbert Jankuhn and others (Gttingen: Verffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts
fr Geschichte, 1981), pp. 284354, esp. pp. 32223.
44
45

Kroniek van het Klooster Bloemhof, ed. by Janse and Janse, pp. 24243.

Chronographia Johannis de Beke, ed. by Bruch, pp. 21921, and Johannes de Beke, ed. by
Bruch, p. 142. In writing these passages, Beke drew from a reliable, contemporary Utrecht source,
which is now lost: D. P. Blok, Bekes bron voor de Kennemer opstand, in Egmond tussen kerk en
wereld, ed. by G. N. M. Vis (Hilversum: Verloren, 1993), pp. 22528.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

263

aspect is the support of the Church for the noble/princely party, either by way of
the active involvement of bishops in the repression, as most notably in the cases of
Stedingen and Drenthe, or by way of the employment of religious weapons, such
as the interdict (in coastal Flanders), the offering of indulgences for the combatants
of the rebellion (as in Drenthe), or even the proclamation of a crusade by the pope
(as in Stedingen). The possibility to draw noble and ecclesiastical support from a
very wide area proved a great asset in the repression of these regional revolts.

Wider Social and Economic Context

These rebelling regions thus each had a tradition of freedom and communal association in the countryside, enabling fairly broad groups in rural society to participate in jurisdiction, legislation, religion, water management, and exploitation of
land. How can the occurrence of the general, massive wave of revolts, in the thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries, in these regions be explained? The key seems
to lie in the infringements on the social, economic, and political position of the
rural population in these regions, coming from various sides and intensifying
exactly in this period.
One set of changes is found in the rise of the factor markets, a rise which undermined the cohesiveness of rural societies and which effects undermined the relatively even spread of power and property in these regions. Markets for goods had
become more important in the Low Countries already in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, but now in the thirteenth/early fourteenth centuries also land,
lease, labour, and capital markets started to emerge.46 The decisive period in the
emergence of land and lease markets in the Low Countries was in the thirteenth
century, as the system of competitive, short-term leasing started to spread and the
land market took off.47 This resulted in increasing competition and social polarization, and also led to the erosion of rural communities. Also, the rise of wage labour
and new forms of social inequality and economic dependency gave rise to social
dislocations and conflict, thus fuelling other discontent. The clearest example of

46

Bas J. P. van Bavel, Markets for Land, Labour and Capital Between Town and Countryside,
12 16 th Centuries: Northern Italy and the Low Countries Compared, unpublished paper
(Utrecht, 2007).
th

47
Bas J. P. van Bavel, The Land Market in the North Sea Area from a Comparative Perspective, 13th18th Centuries, in Il mercato della terra secc. XIII XVIII: Atti delle Settimane di Studi
e altri convegni, vol. XXXV , ed. by Simonetta Cavaciocchi (Prato: Istituto Internazionale di Storia
Economica, 2003), pp. 11945.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

this is found in coastal Flanders, where these elements resulted in a rupture in

social property structures. In several parts of coastal Flanders, peasants started
losing their landownership in the late thirteenth century, going hand in hand with
the introduction and spread of the competitive system of short-term leasing and
the sale of rents on land, further sharpening the process of polarization.48
Perhaps even more important in sowing the seeds of discontent in these regions
was a particular set of socio-political factors. In this field, too, the thirteenth
century saw various changes, creating tension particularly with the tradition of selforganization developed in these regions. The eleventh to twelfth centuries had seen
the emergence of territorial principalities in the Low Countries. Some regionally
powerful lords grew into territorial lords, gradually making their power more territorial instead of personal, and slowly removing rivalling claims within this territory,
a process well underway in the twelfth century, as well-documented for the Niederrhein area.49 In the thirteenth century, a next phase started, with the princes extending and intensifying their administrative and fiscal power over their territories and
aiming to eliminate enclaves or unclear border zones, as a last phase in the territorialization of their principalities. In all four regions this process can be observed,
including the tensions this provoked. Partly, these were the result of the introduction of fiscality and a growing tax pressure, felt as an infringement of the existing
absence or light weight of levies in these regions. But also there was the introduction of princely officers and central administration, forming attacks on selfgovernment and a reduction of the power of local communities. The tension this
provoked was even sharpened by the fact that the extension of princely territorial
organization went hand in hand with a strengthening of the noble element, with
noblemen appearing in the wake of growing princely power, in their capacity of
administrators, military governors, or bailiffs, while exactly in these regions the noble
presence always had been weak. This must have been felt by the rural population
as an erosion of the tradition of independence and freedom from feudal elements.
The tradition of freedom and communal association in the countryside and the
real and perceived infringements of these relative freedoms in the thirteenth

48
Tim Soens and Erik Thoen, Appauvrissement et endettement dans le monde rural: tude
comparative du crdit dans les diffrents systmes agraires en Flandre au bas Moyen ge et au dbut
de lpoque Moderne, in Il mercato della terra, ed. by Cavaciocchi, pp. 70320.
49

Hermann Aubin, Die Entstehung der Landeshoheit nach niederrheinischen Quellen: Studien
ber Grafschaft, Immunitt und Vogtei (Bonn: Institut fr Geschichtliche Landeskunde der Rheinlande, 1961), pp. 380422, and Wilhelm Janssen, Niederrheinische Territorialbildung: Voraussetzungen, Wege, Probleme, in Soziale und wirtschaftliche Bindungen, ed. by Edith Ennen and
Klaus Flink (Kleve: Stadtarchiv Kleve, 1981), pp. 95113.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

265

century were thus crucial in the outbreak of these rural revolts. In this sense, there
are clear parallels with the towns in many parts of the Low Countries. Here, too,
in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries horizontal associations had developed, such
as merchant associations, fraternities, and parishes, fitting in the general urge of the
period to associate. Various associations of merchants emerged in the eleventh/
twelfth centuries, followed in many cities by the rise of more general burgher associations. These coniurationes, or communes, and their representatives, the iurati,
also show up first in the south of the Low Countries, as in Tournai, Saint-Omer,
and Cambrai, at the same time as the rise of similar associations or confederacies
emerged in the countryside. One goal of these communes seems to have been assuring internal peace and offering security to the people living in the growing centres
and conducting trade here. But another main goal was freedom of seigneurial arbitrariness and some self-government,50 to be obtained by struggling against lordly
influence and the power of the old, closed patriciates. A next group of people in the
towns associating themselves were the craftsmen, increasingly organizing themselves by way of guilds and operating as social and economic pressure groups.
These processes of association in town and countryside should be seen as expressions of the same urge. In urbanized parts of the Low Countries, such as inland
Flanders, French Flanders, and Artois, the emphasis was more on the urban
associations, while in coastal Flanders, Holland, Frisia, and Drenthe, being less
urbanized, it was more on the rural associations. But these processes in town and
countryside took place simultaneously, drew from a common source, and had
similar goals.
In view of this, and in view of the infringements on self-organization, which
were in part the same, it is not coincidental that in the towns of the Low Countries
also in the thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries a series of revolts can be observed. These are mainly found in the urbanized parts of the Low Countries, where
the towns were biggest. These revolts reacted against the closed patriciates that had
come to dominate most cities, but also against the rising excises and taxation, and
abuses in taxation. Also, resentment was in several cases directed against the territorial lord, who was trying to erode the independence of the urban community or
supporting the patriciate. In the towns too, tensions were arising out of the
emerging competitive markets for labour and capital, and the social polarization
that was a result of this, with small-scale producers fearing to lose their economic
independence.
50

Jan Dhondt, Les Solidarits mdivales: une socit en transition, la Flandre en

11271128, Annales ESC, 12 (1957), 52960.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

From the middle of the thirteenth century tensions and revolts regularly occurred in the towns, particularly cities of the Meuse Valley, such as Huy and Lige,
but also in Gent and later in several other Flemish cities.51 These urban uprisings
were mostly bloodily repressed, but some were successful. Sometimes the guilds
even acquired control over the urban government, as in Utrecht in 1274, although
in most cases the patriciate succeeded in rolling most of this position back again,
as in Utrecht in 1276, after a bloody battle won by the episcopal troops. In many
other towns, however, the success of the guild revolts was more lasting, particularly
in Flanders. The effect of this also radiated to other parts of the Low Countries,
where the guilds increasingly extended their influence over urban economy, society, and politics, often with the use of force against the old patriciates. Although
in many cases the old elites, supplemented with new rich, retained a large part of
their economic and political power,52 still the guilds would influence many Low
Countries towns for several centuries and often succeeded in defending the
position of small-scale, independent craft producers.
These urban struggles and revolts were not isolated from the rural ones. There
were clear similarities in the causes and motives of the urban and rural revolts in
this period, and sometimes they were directly connected. A well-known case is the
Flemish revolt of 132328, in which peasants and urban craftsmen fought side by
side, but an even clearer case is found in 1274 in Utrecht, also because the insurgents were very explicit about their common goals. After the rural rebels from
Kennemerland had defeated the noblemen and destroyed several castles in their
home region, they marched to Utrecht, the biggest metropolis of the northern Low
Countries, some fifty kilometers away. They approached the town and presented
themselves to the townspeople as the free people of Kennemerland (libera gens
Kinemarie). Next, they called upon the townspeople to join their struggle, and to
expel and banish all noblemen, who oppress and burden the community, in order
to distribute their properties among the poor.53 The urban craftsmen followed this
exhortation, took control of the town government, and expelled the noblemen and
patricians from the town. Next, they united in undivided friendship with the

51
Jan Dumolyn and Jelle Haemers, Patterns of Urban Rebellion in Medieval Flanders, Journal
of Medieval History, 31 (2005), 36993 (esp. pp. 37478).
52

Raymond van Uytven, Plutokratie in de oude demokratien der Nederlanden,

Handelingen: Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse maatschappij, 16 (1962), 373409.
53

Chronographia Johannis de Beke, ed. by Bruch, p. 221; Johannes de Beke, ed. by Bruch, pp.
14344.

RURAL REVOLTS AND STRUCTURAL CHANGE

267

Kennemer rebels. Not only were the goals of rural and urban rebels similar, but
clearly the initiative for this joint action was taken by the rural rebels.
The key to understanding this massive wave of revolts in the Low Countries
seems to lie in the infringements on the social, economic, and political position of
ordinary craftsmen, peasants, and farmers, coming from various sides and intensifying exactly in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. The gains made in
self-organization in these regions in the eleventh to thirteenth centuries now came
under pressure, particularly in the countryside, creating tension and revolts. In this
sense, there was a clear relation between the occurrence of intense and wellorganized rural revolts on the one hand and well-developed forms of rural selforganization on the other. This links up with the analysis by Peter Blickle for the
later medieval period, in which he stresses the fundamental role of the Gemeinde
in revolts in Germany.54 However, Blickle dates both rural community-building
and revolts later, in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, whereas at least in these
regions on the south-eastern shores of the North Sea rather the eleventh to thirteenth centuries were crucial in community-building, and the thirteenth to
fourteenth centuries saw rural self-organization becoming threatened. In the Low
Countries, and particularly in the coastal areas, rural revolts in this period were
that pronounced because of the long tradition of association and freedom, in part
going back into the early Middle Ages. This was a tradition at the regional level,
each region having its specific characteristics, which explains why the rural revolts
mostly remained a regional phenomenon, without the rural population of surrounding regions coming to the aid of the rebels. This is different from the big
fourteenth-century revolts in England and France, which crossed the boundaries
between regions. Still, despite their regional basis, and the fact that the opposing
noble or princely party could always draw on extra-regional or even international
support, these revolts in the Low Countries in many cases were successful and
formed a consolidation of gains made by these associations against possible threats.
On the other hand, even the successful revolts of this type created no shift in social
property relations; their nature was mainly defensive, in order to safeguard their
real or perceived traditions of the preceding wave of association.

54

Peter Blickle, Peasant Revolts in the German Empire in the Late Middle Ages, Social
History, 4 (1979), 22339.

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Bas J. P. van Bavel

Map 1. Regions and towns mentioned in the text.