Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/369

 pardon the same our lieges and bondmen all their felonies, betrayals, transgressions and extortions of whatsoever kind, committed or perpetrated by themselves or others, as well as any outlawry, if any such shall have been pronounced against them, or any of them, in consequence of these events; and furthermore we grant them, and each of them, absolute peace. In testimony whereof we have caused these our letters patent to be drawn up. As witness our hand, at London, on the fifteenth day of June, in the fourth year of our reign."

It was on the faith of these charters that the men of Essex, Hertford, and other counties left London without striking a blow. Some at least of the King's promises were made of his own accord, when he bravely faced the seething crowds, before there had been any violence in the streets. At no time was he himself in duress or danger; and to contend that he ought not to keep terms with his subjects, when it would have been a point of honour to do so with a foreign enemy, was no more reasonable than it was to urge that a Plantagenet King in the later feudal age was not entitled to insist on the emancipation of the serfs.

The King's attendants and the City authorities,who had lost their nerve in presence of the immense crowds of rustics, seem to have taken heart again as soon as they had seen the dead body of Tyler, and the last contingent of the rebels had disappeared from the capital. The worst was over; henceforth the marshal could answer at any rate for the streets of London; and, if there were to be further troubles