Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/356

 The serf, in fact, was better off without a leader, without genius, without arms or provision of any kind. His cause was enough for his need; the mute and stolid protest of these swarming thousands of self-emancipated slaves was all that was necessary—and it was necessary—to break their chains. The slaughter of the lawyers and manor stewards, the burning of the court-rolls and service-lists, the beheading of the Archbishop and Treasurer, the destruction of buildings in London—these incidents of the brief servile war were not sufficient in themselves to stamp it with the bloody mark of many a better organised revolution. The true character of the movement is seen in the perfect, almost childish, loyalty of the serfs to their King, in the admirable behaviour of the crowds which quietly dispersed when he had personally promised them redress, and in the equally admirable behaviour of the young monarch so long as he was under the influence of his mother. The plain significance of these facts was that the demands of the serfs were natural and right; and Richard and his best advisers saw them to be right.

If only all could have ended there—if Walworth had never cut down the defenceless spokesman of the rebels during his colloquy with the King,—if the hangings and quarterings which followed had been confined to men who were proved guilty of murder, and if Parliament had held itself pledged to grant the redress which Richard had promised, things might have gone better with England for the next hundred years, As Fuller says in his familiar