Page:The English Peasant.djvu/28

 The actual cause of the explosion was the Poll-tax of 1380, and the outbreak commenced the following summer in Kent.

John Ball was in prison in Canterbury, hither therefore the people surged, and the whole town being of their mind Ball was soon set free. The men of Kent marched triumphant to London, killing all the lawyers that fell in their way, burning the houses of the stewards of the manors, and flinging the rolls of the manor-courts into the flames.

When they reached London the poorer artizans within the city rose and flung open the gates. The people proudly boasted that they were seekers of Truth and Justice, not thieves or robbers, so instead of wasting their time in rioting, they went direct to their object which was to gain possession of the king. For though the people did not love their lords they had a firm faith in the king as the fountain of Justice and the avenger of the oppressed. Sad to say it was this beautiful faith that ruined their cause. Richard II., educated in that haughty contempt of labouring-men which comes out in Froissart's courtly Chronicle, where these very labourers are called vermin,—Richard II. played as false a part as any king ever played. In his eyes it seems to have been no more a crime for a prince to circumvent vile and odious rustics than to trap stoats and weasels; to catch them in his net and hang them by hundreds no worse than slaughtering wild hogs. With his pretty face he did to perfection the ingenuous young king, willing himself to become the leader of his people and to redress all their injuries. When they cried, "We will that you free us and our lands for ever, and that we be never named or held serfs!" "I grant it," was the ready reply, and thirty clerks were sent for, who sat hard at work, writing out charters of manumission. In the same glib manner the king stilled the Kentishmen, furious at the infamous assassination of their leader, Wat Tyler. The neck of the rebellion broken by this timely mixture of cajolery and truculence, and the danger over, Richard quickly threw off his mask. When the Commons of Essex came to remind him of promises hardly a fortnight old, he cried out contemptuously, "O vile and odious by land or sea, you are not worthy to live compared with the lords whom ye have attacked; you should be forthwith punished with the vilest of deaths were it not for the office you bear. Go