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 POLITICAL HISTORY refused to send it unless they would pay the cost, in which case he pro- mised four hundred lances. The Duke of Lancaster also, who was now playing the part of Achilles sulking in his tent, left the castle of Pevensey undefended, and when urged to send a force there said, ' Let them destroy it to the foundations, I have power to rebuild it again.' ' This treacherous supineness of the local lords was again displayed in 1380, when the French made a successful attack on Winchelsea, driving back the Abbot of Battle, who had again come gallantly to its defence, capturing one of his monks and burning the town. On this occasion not only did the Earl of Arundel fail to render the assistance he could have given, but he prevented those, his inferiors in power but superiors in valour, who would have gone to the rescue.^ Judging from his later success as admiral we may acquit the Earl of cowardice, but must con- clude that he was guilty of acting from deliberate selfish policy in the interests of the Duke of Lancaster, who was at this time in treasonable correspondence with the enemy ,^ and whose designs may be conjectured from the statement of one of the French wounded left behind after the engagement at Rottingdean, that if John of Gaunt had been King of England there would have been no French raids.* Nor was the treachery of the nobles the only cause of weakness in the defence of the coast, for the numbers of the Commons had been terribly reduced by the devastations of the Black Death in 1349, and the two later out- breaks of plague in 1361 and 1366, so much so indeed that nine town- ships on the sea coast within the rape of Pevensey which had formerly been of great assistance in repelling invasions became desolate and uninhabited.^ The social condition of the peasantry at this time will be dealt with elsewhere," but the corruption and incapability of the government and the burden of taxation and especially of the inquisitorial impost of the poll-tax are in themselves causes sufficient to explain the great rising of June I 38 I . This began in Kent and almost simultaneously in Essex, and rapidly spread to the neighbouring districts, Sussex and Bedford being mentioned by Froissart as the other counties which took a leading part in the movement ; and this is confirmed by the appearance of Sussex as one of the five sources of the insurgents who destroyed the Savoy and murdered the Chancellor.' Few details of the rising in Sussex have been preserved, but they are sufficient to show that it possessed the usual features of being directed against the great spiritual and lay lords and especially against the Duke of Lancaster. Thus, the Abbot of St. Alban's farm buildings at Coombes were burnt down,* and the insurgents broke into the Earl of Arundel's castle of Lewes and destroyed the windows and gates and wrecked the buildings, burning rent-rolls and other muniments and appropriating ten casks of wine." 1 Chron. Anglics a Mon. Sancti Albani (Rolls Ser.), 167-9. ^ ^^^^- ^7°- 3 Ibid. 278. * Ibid. 168. 6 Mins. Accts. 71 17. « See section on ' Social and Economic History.' ' Pat. 4 Ric. II. p. 3, m. 4d. B Gesta Abbatum (RoUs Ser.), iii. 363. » Pat. 6 Ric. II. p. 2, m. iid. 511