Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/220

 their fellow-citizens. The Londoners had been at white heat since the previous afternoon, and now they could be restrained no longer. They rushed out, armed or unarmed, and, gathering volume as they went, made straight for Lord Percy's. The Marshal had fled, but the crowd released the prisoner and sacked the house. From thence they marched upon the Savoy; and Lancaster's palace, rich with the spoils of France and Castile, had a very narrow escape.

Percy had fled to the Duke, and the two together were said to have crossed the river and appealed to the Princess of Wales at her palace in Kennington. There are two or three versions of the manner in which Lancaster escaped the vengeance of the mob; but it is clear that the Princess befriended him at this crisis, and made terms between him and the enraged citizens. The latter are reported to have demanded a fair trial for the Bishop of Winchester and Peter de la Mare. Probably it was only the leaders of the mob who made these stipulations, and not the city authorities.

We know more than enough of the Duke of Lancaster to account for the bitterness displayed against him at this period of his life. The disasters with which the decade had begun, the not very honourable peace concluded with France and Castile at Bruges, his repeated attacks on the bishops and on the city, his close relations with the most corrupt persons about the Court, his apparent rivalry with the popular Prince of Wales, his opposition to the Good Parliament, his unscrupulous packing of the