As soon as Bernard could rein in his horse again and bring him round, he galloped up to the spot where De Langurant had fallen, and found him attempting to raise himself up from the ground. At the same time, the horsemen whom De Langurant had left in the wood, and who had been watching the combat from their place of ambush, seeing their master unhorsed, began to put themselves in motion to come to his rescue. Bernard, who was a man of prodigious strength, reached down from his horse as he rode over his fallen enemy, and seized hold of his helmet. His horse, in the mean time, going on, and Bernard holding to the helmet with all his force, it was torn off from its fastenings, and De Langurant's head was left unprotected and bare.
Bernard threw the helmet down upon the ground under his horse's feet. Then drawing his dagger, he raised it over De Langurant's head, and called upon him to surrender.
"Surrender!" said he. "Surrender this instant, or you are a dead man."
The men in ambush were coming on, and De Langurant hoped they would be able to rescue him, so he did not reply. Bernard, knowing that he had not a moment to spare, drove the dagger into De Langurant's head, and then galloped away back through the gates into the town, just in time to avoid the troop of horsemen from the ambush, who were bearing down at full speed toward the spot, and were now just at hand.
The gates of the town were closed, and the drawbridge was taken up the moment that Bernard had entered, so that he could not be pursued. The horsemen, therefore, had nothing to do but to bear away their wounded commander to the nearest castle which was in their possession. The next day he died.
* * * * *
While the barons and knights were thus amusing themselves at the beginning of Richard's reign with fighting for castles and provinces, either for the pleasure of fighting, or for the sake of the renown or the plunder which they acquired when they were fortunate enough to gain the victory, the great mass of the people of England were taxed and oppressed by their haughty masters to an extent almost incredible. The higher nobles were absolutely above all law. One of them, who was going to set off on a naval expedition into France, seized, in the English sea-port which he was leaving, a number of women, the wives and daughters of the citizens, and took them on board his ship, to be at the disposal there of himself and his fellow grandees. For this intolerable injury the husbands and fathers had absolutely no remedy. To crown the wickedness of this deed, when, soon after the fleet had left the port, a storm arose, and the women were terrified at the danger they were in, and their fright, added to the distress they felt at being thus torn away from their families and homes, made them completely and uncontrollably wretched, the merciless nobles threw them overboard to stop their cries.
Taxes were assessed, too, at this time, upon all the people of the kingdom, that were of an extremely onerous character. These taxes were farmed, as the phrase is; that is, the right to collect them was sold to contractors, called farmers of the revenue, who paid a certain sum outright to the government, and then were entitled to all that they could collect of the tax. Thus there was no supervision over them in their exactions, for the government, being already paid, cared for nothing more. The consequence was, that the tax-gatherers, who were employed by the contractors, treated the people in the most oppressive and extortionate manner. If the people made complaints, the government would not listen to them, for fear that if they interfered with the tax-gatherers in collecting the taxes, the farmers would not pay so much the next time.
Richard himself, of course, knew nothing about all these things, or, if he did know of them, he was wholly unable to do any thing to prevent them. He was completely in the power of his uncles, and of the other great nobles of the time. The public discontent, however, grew at last so great that there was nothing wanted but a spark to cause it to break out into a flame. There was such a spark furnished at length by an atrocious insult and injury offered to a young girl, the daughter of a tiler, by one of the tax-gatherers. This led to a formidable insurrection, known in history as Wat Tyler's insurrection. I shall relate the story of this insurrection in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IX. WAT TYLER'S INSURRECTION.
A.D. 1381
Real name of Wat Tyler.-State of the country.-Names of Walter's confederates.-Character of these men.-Condition of the lower classes at this time.-Ball's proposal.-Other orators.-Their discourses.-Mixture of truth and error in their complaints.-Necessary inequality among men.-The true doctrine of equality.-Origin of Wat Tyler's insurrection.-The tax-gatherer in Walter's family.-Intolerable outrage.-The tax-gatherer killed.-Plan of the insurgents to march to London.-Re-enforcements by the way.-Oaths administered.-The Archbishop of Canterbury.-Case of Sir John Newton.-Sir John Newton is sent as an embassador to the king.-Interview between Sir John and the king at the Tower.-Sir John returns to the insurgents.-The king goes down to meet the insurgents.-Scene on the bank of the river.-Parley with the insurgents.-The king retires.-The insurgents resolve to go into London.-The bridge.-Excitement in the city.-The gates opened.-The insurgents occupy the streets of London.-Destruction of the Duke of Lancaster's palace.-Destruction of the Temple.-Assassination of Richard Lyon.-Excesses of the mob.-They bivouac near the Tower.
The insurrection to which a large portion of the people of England were driven by the cruel tyranny and oppression which they suffered in the early part of King Richard's reign is commonly called Wat Tyler's insurrection, as if the affair with Wat Tyler were the cause and moving spring of it, whereas it was, in fact, only an incident of it.
The real name of this unhappy man was John Walter. He was a tiler by trade-that is, his business was to lay tiles for the roofs of houses, according to the custom of roofing prevailing in those days. So he was called John Walter, the Tiler, or simply Walter the Tiler; and from this his name was abridged to Wat Tyler.
The whole country was in a state of great discontent and excitement on account of the oppressions which the people suffered before Walter appeared upon the stage at all. When at length the outbreak occurred, he came forward as one of the chief leaders of it; there were however, several other leaders. The names by which the principal of them were known were Jack Straw, William Wraw, Jack Shepherd, John Milner, Hob Carter, and John Ball. It is supposed that many of these names were fictitious, and that the men adopted them partly to conceal their real names, and partly because they supposed that they should ingratiate themselves more fully with the lower classes of the people by assuming these familiar and humble appellations.
The historians of the times say that these leaders were all very bad men. They may have been so, though the testimony of the historians is not conclusive on this point, for they belonged to, and wrote in the interest of the upper classes, their enemies. The poor insurgents themselves never had the opportunity to tell their own story, either in respect to themselves or their commanders.
Still, it is highly probable that they were bad men. It is not generally the amiable, the gentle, and the good that are first to rise, and foremost to take the lead in revolts against tyrants and oppressors. It is, on the other hand, far more commonly the violent, the desperate, and the bad that are first goaded on to assume this terrible responsibility. It is, indeed, one of the darkest features of tyranny that it tends, by the reaction which follows it, to invest this class of men with great power, and to commit the best interests of society, and the lives of great numbers of men, for a time at least, entirely to the disposal of the most reckless and desperate characters.