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Rh to meet the opposition of Van Buren, who had failed to secure the nomination in the regular Democratic convention, and of James K. Polk, the regular Democratic nominee. Tyler accepted the Baltimore nomination, but on the 20th of August withdrew from the contest. From this time until the eve of the Civil War he held no public office, but his opinions on political questions continued to be sought, and he was much in demand as a speaker on public occasions. In December 1860, when South Carolina adopted its ordinance of secession, Tyler, though sympathizing with the state, took firm ground against disunion and exerted himself in behalf of peace. The legislature of Virginia appointed him a commissioner to confer with President Buchanan and arrange, if possible, for the maintenance of the status quo in the matter of Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour; but his efforts were unavailing. He did not abate his activity, however, and the Peace Congress which assembled at Washington on the 4th of February 1861, pursuant to a resolution of the Virginia legislature, and over which he presided, was largely the result of his labours. The constitutional amendment proposed by the conference, however, did not meet with his approbation, and his action in signing and transmitting the resolution to Congress was merely formal. On the 13th of February, while absent in Washington on this mission, he was elected to the Virginia convention at Richmond, and took his seat on the 1st of March. In the convention he advocated immediate secession as the only proper course under the circumstances. He continued to serve as a member of the convention until it adjourned in December, in the meantime acting as one of the commissioners to negotiate a temporary union between Virginia and the Confederate States of America. He was also a member of the provisional Confederate Congress from May 1861, when the capital of the Confederacy was removed from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond. He was elected a member of the House of Representatives of the permanent Congress, but died on the 18th of January 1862, in Richmond, before that body assembled.

President Tyler was twice married, first in 1813 to Miss Letitia Christian (1790-1842), and second in 1844 to Miss Julia Gardiner (1820-1889). His son, (b. 1853), graduated at the university of Virginia in 1875, and practised law at Richmond, Virginia, from 1882 to 1888, when he became president of the College of William and Mary. Among his publications, besides Letters and Times of the Tylers, are Parties and Patronage in the United States (1890); Cradle of the Republic (1900); England in America (1906) in the “American Nation” series, and Williamsburg, the Old Colonial Capital (1908).

The principal authority for the life of Tyler, aside from speeches, messages and other documents, is Lyon G. Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers (3 vols., Richmond, Va., 1884-1896).

 TYLER, MOSES COIT (1835-1900), American author, was born in Griswold, Connecticut, on the 2nd of August 1835. At an early age he removed with his parents to Detroit, Michigan. He entered the university of Michigan in 1853, but in the next year went to Yale College, from which he graduated A.B. in 1857, and received the degree of A.M. in 1863. He studied for the Congregational ministry at the Yale Divinity School (1857-1858) and at the Andover Theological Seminary (1858-1859), and held a pastorate at Owego, New York, in 1859-1860 and at Poughkeepsie in 1860-1862. Owing to ill-health, however, and a change in his theological beliefs, he left the ministry. He became interested in physical training, and for some time (partly in England) wrote and lectured on the subject, besides other journalistic work. He became professor of English language and literature in the university of Michigan in 1867, and held that position until 1881, except in 1873-1874 when he was literary editor of the Christian Union; from 1881 until his death on the 28th of December 1900 at Ithaca, New York, he was professor of American history at Cornell University. In 1881 he was ordained deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church and in 1883 priest, but he never undertook parochial work. Most important among

his works are his valuable and original History of American Literature during the Colonial Time, 1607-1765 (2 vols., 1878; revised in 1897), and Literary History of the American Revolution, 1763-1783 (2 vols., 1897). Supplementary to these two is his Three Men of Letters (1895), containing biographical and critical chapters on George Berkeley, Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow. In addition he published The Brawnville Papers (1869), a series of essays on physical culture; a revision of Henry Morley's Manual of English Literature (1879); In Memoriam: Edgar Kelsey Apgar (1886), privately printed; Patrick Henry (1887), an excellent biography, in the “American Statesmen” series; and Glimpses of England: Social, Political, Literary (1898), a selection from his sketches written while abroad.

See “Moses Coit Tyler,” by Professor William P. Trent, in The Forum (Aug. 1901), and an article by Professor George L. Burr, in the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1901 (vol.i.).  TYLER, WAT [or ] (d. 1381), English rebel, a man of obscure origin, was a native either of Kent or of Essex. Nothing definite is known of him previous to the outbreak of the peasant revolt in 1381, but Froissart says he had served as a soldier in the French War, and a Kentishman in the retinue of Richard II. professed to identify him as a notorious rogue and robber of Kent. The name Tyler, or Teghler, is a trade designation and not a surname. The discontent of the rural labourers and of the poorer class of craftsmen in the towns, caused by the economic distress that followed the Black Death and the enactment of the Statute of Labourers in 1351, was brought to a head by the imposition of a poll tax in 1379 and again in 1381, and at the end of May in the latter year riots broke out at Brentwood in Essex; on the 4th of June similar violence occurred at Dartford; and on the 6th a mob several thousands strong seized the castle of Rochester and marched up the Medway to Maidstone. Here they chose Wat Tyler to be their leader, and in the next few days the rising spread over Kent, where much pillage and damage to property occurred. On the 10th Tyler seized Canterbury, sacked the palace of Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, and beheaded three citizens as “traitors.” Next day he led his followers, strengthened by many Kentish recruits, on the road to London, being joined at Maidstone by John Ball (q.v.), whom the mob had liberated from the archbishop's prison. Reaching Blackheath on the 12th, the insurgents burnt the prisons in Southwark and pillaged the archbishop's palace at Lambeth, while another body of rebels from Essex encamped at Mile End. King Richard II. was at the Tower, but neither the king's councillors nor the municipal authorities had taken any measures to cope with the rising. The drawbridge of London Bridge having been lowered by treachery, Tyler and his followers crossed the Thames; and being joined by thousands of London apprentices, artisans and criminals, they sacked and burnt John of Gaunt's splendid palace of the Savoy, the official residence of the treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, and the prisons of Newgate and the Fleet. On the 14th Richard II., a boy of fourteen, undertook the perilous enterprise of riding out to confer with the rebels beyond the city wall. At Mile End the king met Wat Tyler; a lengthy and tumultuous conference, during which several persons were slain, took place, in which Tyler demanded the immediate abolition of serfdom and all feudal services, and the removal of all restrictions on freedom of labour and trade, as well as a general amnesty for the insurgents. Richard had no choice but to concede these demands, and charters were immediately drawn up to give effect to them. While this was in progress Tyler with a small band of followers returned to the Tower, which they entered, and dragged forth Archbishop Sudbury and Sir Robert Hales from the chapel and murdered them on Tower Hill. During the following night and day London was given over to plunder and slaughter, the victims being chiefly Flemish merchants, lawyers and personal adherents of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster. Meantime the people 