Six things I like about Tilda Rolfe Paul Dowswell
Tilda is a 14 year old peasant girl from the village of Aylesford in Kent. In 1381 she finds herself front and centre in the great upheaval known as The Peasants’ Revolt. Traveling to London she is caught up in the chaos the revolt creates and needs every ounce of her strength, intelligence and courage to survive.
1) I like her name. Tilda is short for Matilda – a common enough name from Medieval times. I chose it because it sounds ‘old’ but isn’t too much of what we might think of as an old-lady name like Agnes, Joan or Mabel – other common names from this era. One of my favourite actors is Tilda Swinton (We Need to Talk About Kevin, The Chronicles of Narnia), so that also sealed it for me.
Her surname – Rolfe – derives from the Scandinavian words for renown and wolf. Other sources say it comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for peasant. Both of these origins seem appropriate.
2) Tilda is a bonny girl with thick black curly hair. If she was alive today she’d be the sort of girl who liked playing rugby or rowing. She spends her days working in the fields and is a dab-hand with a slingshot, which she uses to drive away the birds who come to eat the seeds her father is sowing.
3) She has befriended a wild squirrel, which comes and goes to her peasant hut, to be petted and fed scraps. Tilda names her Catherine – a royal name suitable for a princess or a queen – and calls her ‘Your Highness’ when she comes to visit. She tells the squirrel ‘I don’t mind looking after you, you love me back… But Lord William Laybourne I could do without helping him at all. And his stuck up son…’ Laybourne is the lord of the local manor, who treats his peasants with disdain. Whenever Laybourne goes to talk to them Tilda notices ‘he had the expression and manner of a man in the presence of a powerfully unpleasant smell.’
4) Tilda is a thinker. She doesn’t accept everything she’s been told, and knows in her heart there should be a better life for her. She has heard the words of the radical preacher John Ball, and knows all about the injustices in her world. She remembers too the words of the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, which she has heard in church: ‘And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour… It is the gift of God.’ That, most definitely, is not the destitute life they are currently leading.
5) Tilda and her dad Thomas have a strong bond. He looks after his only child with love and devotion and she is a loyal daughter. His wife died in childbirth and they both understand each other to be the most important thing in their life. Unlike his daughter, Thomas has no real urge to escape from the village. When she suggests they run away he says ‘We haven’t got much in this world have we, sweet Matilda? But if we ran away we’d have absolutely nothing.’
Thomas is much more cautious than his daughter and very reluctant to rise up against the crown. ‘I love my daughter,’ he tells mutinous villagers trying to recruit him to the rebellion. ’She’s already lost her mother and I don’t want her to see her father hanged. Or, God forbid, have her hang beside me.’
6) Tilda knows who she is and what she is worth. She wants more to her life than endless farm work, the prospect of one of the village oafs for a husband, motherhood, and the ever-present fear of death that accompanied the birth of a child. Most of all she wants to be able to read and write and find out more about the world outside the narrow confines of her village.
As the story progresses, Tilda realises the opportunities presented by this great uprising may never come again and she and her father set off with thousands of other peasants to present their demands for a better life to Richard II, the King of England. They are taking a great risk, leaving behind everything they know and facing the very real risk of death – from the King’s men and from the forces of anarchy the rebellion ignites.
- Thanks to Paul Dowswell for your time with this guest post. The Great Revolt by Paul Dowswell is available now from Bloomsbury Education. (RRP £6.99)
