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The Story of London. Henry B. Wheatley
were cut off from communication with all outside London. It is remarkable that we are able to record the daily proceedings of the mob which took place more than six centuries ago; still we can be fairly certain that the events which dovetail into one another are to a great extent correctly reported. The chief difficulty arises when we consider the speeches of the several actors. Chroniclers like John Stow are very picturesque in their descriptions, and often put words into the mouths of their puppets which are evidently written for the purposes of effect. Even when the words are probably historical there is some doubt as to whether they have not been attributed to the wrong persons.
On Monday, June 10th, Canterbury had been overrun, and on Wednesday, the 12th, the main body of the rebels from Kent were crowded together on Blackheath. John Ball preached to them from the text which has come down to us in the familiar couplet—
‘Whan Adam dalf and Eve span,
Wo was thanne a gentilman,’
and he kept his audience enthralled with his eloquence.
Messengers were sent by the King to demand the cause of the rising, and brought back the answer that the Commons were gathered together for the King’s safety. The King’s mother—Joan, Princess of Wales, and widow of Edward, the Black Prince, who had been on a pilgrimage to the shrines of Kent—was allowed by the rebels to enter the city.
Mr. Trevelyan tells us how a conference was proposed: ‘The rebels invited the King to cross the river and confer with them at Blackheath. He was rowed across in a barge accompanied by his principal nobles. At Rotherhithe, a deputation from the camp on the moor above was waiting on the bank to receive them. At the last moment prudence prevailed, and Richard was persuaded not to trust himself on shore. The rebels, shouting their demands across the water, professed their loyalty to Richard, but required the heads of John of Gaunt, Sudbury, Hales, and several other ministers, some of whom were at that moment in the boat. The royal barge put back to the Tower.’[40]
Stow tells us that the watchword of the peasants was ‘With whom hold you?’ and the answer was ‘With King Richard and the true Commons.’ The Chronicler adds: ‘Who could not that watchward, off went his head.’
Mr. James Tait, the author of the excellent life of Wat Tyler in the Dictionary of National Biography, mentions ‘a Proclamation in Thanet Church, on the 13th June, [which] ran in the names of Wat Tyler and John Rackstraw, but the St. Albans insurgents who reached London on Friday the 14th were divided as to which was the more powerful person in the realm, the King or Tyler, and obtained from the latter a promise to come and shave the beards of the abbot, prior and monks; stipulating for implicit obedience to his orders.’
The men of Essex were outside Aldgate in great numbers, and as the day advanced the leaders became fearful as to their condition. They had no means of breaking into the city, and if they remained long where they were they would inevitably have been starved.
‘Walworth guarded the bridge, and sent to the peasants, bidding them, in the name of the King and the city, come no nearer to London.’[41] If there had been no treachery it would have been easy to keep the rebels outside till they were forced by hunger to desist from their endeavours to enter, for time was on the side of the besieged, but the peasants had friends and well-wishers within, and the city being divided against itself, fell.
Mr. Trevelyan writes: ‘A committee of three aldermen rode out to Blackheath to deliver [Walworth’s] message. Two of them, Adam Carlyll and John Fresh, faithfully performed their mission. But the third alderman, named John Horn, separated himself from his two colleagues, conferred apart with the rebel leaders, and exhorted them to march on London at once for they would be received with acclamation into the city. After this treachery he did not fear to return to the city, and brought some of the peasants with him and lodged them in his house. He even advised Walworth to admit the mob.’[42]
The rioters burnt the Marshalsea prison, situated in the High Street, Southwark, and set the prisoners free. Others gutted Lambeth Palace to show their hatred of the archbishop, but he was not there.
On Thursday morning, 13th June, Horn, the disaffected alderman, rode out to Blackheath to confer with the rebels, and he urged them to come to the bridge, where they would find friends. He had an ally in Walter Sybyle, alderman of Bridge Ward, who in virtue of his office took command on the bridge, and he announced that he would let the rebels in by the bridge gate in spite of all opposition. Then Walworth, the Mayor, finding that he was powerless, gave leave to Wat Tyler’s followers to enter the city on condition that they paid for everything they took, and did no damage.
The Kentish rebels poured into the city over the bridge, and at the same time the men of Essex were let in at Aldgate. The first cry of the mob as they entered the city—their defiant answer to the Mayor’s condition—was ‘To the Savoy! To the Savoy!’ the house of John of Gaunt, outside the city liberties and by the riverside, which was burnt and entirely destroyed. In the accounts of the Savoy for 1393–1394 mention is made of the annual loss of £4, 13s. 4d.—‘the rent of fourteen shops belonging lately to the manor of the Savoy annexed, for each shop by the year, at four terms, 6s. 8d., the accomptant had nothing, because they were burnt at the time of the insurrection, and are not rebuilt.’ In these accounts the Rising of 1381 is referred to as ‘The Rumor.’
Sir Robert Hales, the Treasurer, was a marked man, and his manor house at Highbury was burnt and utterly destroyed. Jack Straw’s Castle, which was built on the site of Highbury Castle, retained the name of the second leader of the revolt almost to our own time. Later in the same day the Priory of the Order of St. John at Jerusalem, at Clerkenwell, of which Hales was prior, was burnt by the men of Essex, who in their march to London had previously attacked the Priory of the Order at Cressing, Essex.
Stow informs us that the Commons passed through the city and did no harm, they took ‘nothing from any man, but bought all things at a just price, and if they found any man with theft they beheaded him.’ This, however, was soon changed; first they were joined by the dangerous classes in the city who were glad of an opportunity of punishing their enemies the Flemings by the riverside and the lawyers of the Temple; then the prisons of Fleet, Newgate and Westminster were broken open, and hordes of rascality were added to those contributed by the Marshalsea. To add to these elements of disorder the men became drunk with wine supplied by the rich citizens, and we hear no more of restraints. Gross outrages against property and life now follow one another rapidly. Much damage was done in Fleet Street and the Temple. The rolls and records of the lawyers were burned or otherwise destroyed. The royal account books suffered in the same way. Stow relates that the insurgents ‘determined to burne all Court-rolles and old muniments, that the memory of antiquities being taken away, their lords should not be able to challenge any right on them from that time forth.’ Not content with destroying the documents, they desired to destroy the producers of documents. Again Stow tells us that ‘they took in hand to behead all men of law, as well apprentises as utter-barristers and old justices, with all the jurers of the country whom they might get into their hands, they spared none whom they thought to be learned, especially if they found any to have pen and ink they pulled off his hood, and all with one voice crying, “Hale him out and cut off his head.” ’
The only place of safety was the Tower, and here the young King watched the flames in several parts of the city, and listened to the turbulent cries of the mob on all sides of him. Just beneath, on the east side near St. Katherine’s Hospital, was an encampment of the rebels who clamoured for the murder of the Chancellor and others who had taken refuge in the Tower. This was an eventful day for all, crowded with actions more than enough to terrify a boy suddenly called upon to act.
The Council were hurriedly called together, and after considering the serious dangers which surrounded them, agreed to a policy of concession. The rebels, however, were invited to meet the King at Mile End on the following day.
On Friday, the 14th June, the King and his Court went to Mile End to hear the demands of Wat Tyler and his followers. We learn from the Stow MS. (referred to above), that when they arrived the Commons came to the King, and all knelt to him, saying, ‘Be welcome, our lord King Richard, if it please you, and we will not have any other King than you; and Wat Tighler,