The insurgents felt a special animosity against lawyers, whom they considered mercenary instruments in the hands of the nobles for oppressing them. They hung all the lawyers that they could get into their hands, and after burning the Savoy they went to the Temple, which was a spacious edifice containing the courts, the chambers of the barristers, and a vast store of ancient legal records. They burned and destroyed the whole.
It is said, too, that there was a certain man in London, a rich citizen, named Richard Lyon, who had formerly been Walter the Tiler's master, and had beaten him and otherwise treated him in a cruel and oppressive manner. At the time that he received these injuries Walter had no redress, but now the opportunity had come, he thought, for revenge. So he led a gang of the most desperate and reckless of the insurgents to Lyon's house, and, seizing their terrified victim, they dragged him out without mercy, and cut off his head. The head they stuck upon the top of a pike, and paraded it through the streets, a warning, as they said, to all cruel and oppressive masters.
A great many other heads, principally those of men who had made themselves particularly obnoxious to the insurgents, were paraded through the streets in the same manner.
After spending the day in these excesses, keeping all London in a state of dreadful confusion and alarm, the various bands began to move toward night in the direction of the Tower, where the king and his court had shut themselves up in great terror, not knowing what to do to escape from the dreadful inundation of poverty and misery which had so suddenly poured in upon them. The rioters, when they reached the Tower, took possession of a large open square before it, and, kindling up great bonfires, they began to make arrangements for bivouacking there for the night.
CHAPTER X. THE END OF THE INSURRECTION.
A.D. 1381
Anxiety and embarrassment of the king.-Consultations in the Tower.-Various counsels.-Mile-End.-A meeting appointed with the rioters at Mile-End.-The king meets the insurgents at Mile-End.-Parley with them.-The king accedes to their demands.-Effect of the concessions.-Preparation of the decrees.-Scenes in the night in and around London.-The next morning.-The king meets the insurgents at Smithfield.-Another parley.-Walter advances.-His orders to his men.-Doubt about the fairness of the accounts.-Conversation between Walter and the king.-Walter gets into a quarrel with the king's squire.-Walter is at last assaulted and killed.-Excitement among his men.-Courage and coolness of the king.-Alarm conveyed to London.-Troops brought to the ground.-The insurgents surrender their banners and disperse.-The king's interview with his mother.-Final results of the rebellion.
In the mean time, within the Tower, where the king and his courtiers now found themselves almost in a state of siege, there were continual consultations held, and much perplexity and alarm prevailed. Some of Richard's advisers recommended that the most decisive measures should be adopted at once. The king had in the Tower with him a considerable body of armed men. There were also in other parts of London and vicinity many more, amounting in all to about four thousand. It was recommended by some of the king's counselors that these men should all be ordered to attack the insurgents the next morning, and kill them without mercy. It is true that there were between fifty and one hundred thousand of the insurgents; but they had no arms, and no organization, and it was not to be expected, therefore, that they could stand a moment, numerous as they were, against the king's regular troops. They would be slaughtered, it was said, like sheep, and the insurrection would be at once put down.
Others thought that this would be a very hazardous mode of proceeding, and very uncertain as to its results.
"It is much better," said they, "that your majesty should appease them, if possible, by fair words, and by a show of granting what they ask; for if we once attempt to put them down by force, and should not be able to go through with it, we shall only make matters a great deal worse. The commonalty of London and of all England would then join them, and the nobles and the government will be swept away entirely from the land."
These counsels prevailed. It was decided not to attack the rioters immediately, but to wait a little, and see what turn things would take.
The next morning, as soon as the insurgents were in motion in the great square, they began to be very turbulent and noisy, and to threaten that they would attack the Tower itself if the king did not open the gates to them. It was finally determined to yield in part to their requests.
There was a certain place in the suburbs of London known by the name of Mile-End-so called, perhaps, because it was at the end of a mile from some place or other. At this place was an extended meadow, to which the people of London were accustomed to resort on gala days for parades and public amusements. The king sent out a messenger from the Tower to the leaders of the insurgents with directions to say to them that if they would all go to Mile-End, he would come out and meet them there.
They took him at his word, and the whole immense mass began to set itself in motion toward Mile-End.
They did not all go there, however. Those who really desired to have an interview with the king, with a view to a redress of their grievances, repaired to the appointed place of rendezvous. But of the rest, a large party turned toward London, in hopes of pillage and plunder. Others remained near the Tower. This last party, as soon as the king and his attendants had gone to Mile-End, succeeded in forcing their way in through the gates, which, it seems, had not been left properly guarded, and thus gained possession of the Tower. They ransacked the various apartments, and destroyed every thing which came in their way that was at all obnoxious to them. They broke into the chamber of the Princess of Wales, Richard's mother, and, though they did not do the princess any personal injury, they terrified her so much by their violence and noise that she fainted, and was borne away apparently lifeless. Her attendants carried her down the landing-stairs on the river side, and there put her into a covered boat, and rowed her away to a place of safety.
The people in the Tower did not all get off so easily. The Archbishop of Canterbury was there, and three other prelates of high rank. These men were particularly obnoxious to the rioters, so they seized them, and without any mercy dragged them into the court and cut off their heads. The heads they put upon the ends of poles, and paraded them in this way through the streets of London.
In the mean time, the king, followed by a numerous train of attendants, had proceeded to Mile-End, and there met the insurgents, who had assembled in a vast concourse to receive him. Several of the attendants of the king were afraid to follow him into the danger to which they thought he was exposing himself by going among such an immense number of lawless and desperate men. Some of them deserted him on the way to the place of meeting, and rode off in different directions to places of safety. The king himself, however, though so young-for he was now only about sixteen years of age-had no fear. As soon as he came to the meadow at Mile-End, where the insurgents had now assembled to the number of sixteen thousand, he rode forward boldly into the midst of them, and opened the conference at once by asking them what they desired.
The spokesman whom they had appointed for the occasion stated their demands, which were that they should be made free. They had hitherto been held as serfs, in a bondage which exposed them to all sorts of cruelties and oppressions, since they were amenable, not to law, but wholly to the caprice and arbitrary will of individual masters. They demanded, therefore, that Richard should emancipate them from this bondage, and make them free.
It was determined by Richard and his counselors that this demand should be complied with, or, at least, that they should pretend to comply with it, and that decrees of emancipation for the different counties and districts which the various parties of insurgents had come from should be immediately issued. This decision seemed to satisfy them. The leaders, or at least a large portion of them, said that it was all they wanted, and several parties immediately began to set out on their return to their several homes.