impartiality upon rich and poor-and then add to all this a Minority, a young king surrounded by courtiers either self-seeking or incompetent and what can the crisis be but a convulsion, at once extensive and formidable? When we come to speak of the Revolt itself, we are at once met by certain most singular and striking features. It is a rising of the people that has few parallels, if any, in history. The peasantry of France had risen in 1358: but that rising the rising of the Jacquerie, as it was called-was a desperate revolt of the utterly down-trodden. It was simply a fierce expression of suffering that had become intolerable. Desperate it was in every sense; without organisation, without programme-marked by atrocities on the part of rebels and of those who put them down. It was also confined in area, and shortlived. Shortlived indeed this of 1381 was-but this rather because the rebels were deluded by the treachery of the Government into the belief they had gained the end of their revolt, than because they were actually reduced or forced into submission. The French rising, again, was a rising of a single class, the peasantry-the English of many different classes, with many different cries, though, as it would seem, with one common organisation. It is true that cruelties were committed on both sides in both revolts. But those committed during the English sink into insignificance when compared with those committed during the French. In a word, the one revolt was the outbreak of the utter depression of an ignorant peasantry-the other of the growing intelligence of many different classes rising in resistance to encroachments on their liberties by a demoralized gentry. The one revolt took place at a time of complete prostration, misery and destitution: the other in "times, all things considered, of unexampled prosperity." Very different, again, is the Revolt of 1381 from that of 1450, commonly called Jack Cade's. The latter was much more limited in its extent, and was of a more strictly political character than *Rogers' History of Prices, i., the earlier Rising. Jack Cade, indeed, was a pretender to the throne with supporters among the gentry, who were opposed to the party, who they asserted exercised an undue and sinister influence at Court. Wat Tyler, on the other hand, was a man of the people, and did not pretend to be anything else. There is, indeed, one point of resemblance between the two Risings: failure in war with France and heavy taxation were the immediate cause in either case. ? How must we account for the combination which is implied in the fact that the Insurrection spread over Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Essex, Hertford, Middlesex, Herts, Sussex, Kent and Somerset To begin with, the Labourers' Statutes make frequent mention of Covines and Congregations, thus implying that the long struggle between Capital and Labour had had for one of its consequences combination and co operation among the operatives. Probably, too, most of us underrate the extent to which means of traffic was developed in those far-back days, and the amount of intercourse that actually existed between one part of the country and another. We owe infinite gratitude for information on this subject to Mr. Thorold Rogers. He considers that the principal means of communication was found in the itinerant. priests. They were of course a privileged order in their religious capacity. They acted commonly as scribes. Mr. Rogers notices that "any change in the form of writing," in those days, "is as sudden as it is universal," and that this is so, because the scribes these itinerant priests--are a migratory class. "Common carriers," too, he tells us, "traversed the road between Oxford and Newcastle, between Oxford and Southampton, and took the responsibility of carrying money as well as goods." Many other facts might be cited relating, for example, to the care taken in the preservation of roads and bridges, which tend to the same conclusion of larger intercourse between the different parts of the country than we are in the habit of supposing. The following, as of great local interest, I will venture to quote. One of the ordinances of the Holy Cross Gild of Birmingham, was and kept in good repar "Allso there be mainteigned aciouns two great stone bridges and divers ffoule and dangerous high wayes, the charge whereof the towne of hitselffe ys not hable to mainteign. So that the lacke thereof will be a greate noysaunce to the kinges maties subjectes to and from the marches of Wales, and an utter ruyne to the same towne, being one of the fayrest and most profitable townes to the kingos highnesse in all the shyre." In addition to these indications of extensive intercourse between one part of the country and another, we must take into account the constant pilgrimages; pilgrimages, which when they were no longer prompted by the old spirit of genuine piety do not seem to have become less numerous. The author of "Piers the Plowman" sardonically remarks that pilgrims "Went forth in here way with many wise tales, And hadden leve to lye all here lyf after." If we do not incline to so severe a view as this, we can account for the continued frequency of pilgrimages by supposing that a custom, which had ceased to be an act of religious self-sacrifice, remained as an entertaining fashion. The revolt then was widespread; and this implied organization which would have been impossible, excepting in times when men in different counties had learnt how to communicate with each other with something like expedition. The organization is in any case surprising, if we regard the classes from which the rebels were drawn-but the earlier covines, and the general mental activity of the age, along with the above considerations are, perhaps sufficient to account for it. But we must hasten on to the events of the revolt itself. The poll tax, to which reference has already been made, was inquisitorial; it was to support a presumed leader, who was, in at least many parts of the country, exceedingly unpopular; it was to pay for an unsuccessful war; and its collection was marked by a dastardly outrage upon a young girl. The father, one John Tyler, of Maidstone, that is of a county which was already kindled into revolutionary fervour by the preaching of John Ball, killed the culprit. John Ball, by the way, was at the time lying in Canterbury Prison, the archbishop, as Froissart naively remarks, having strangely scrupled to put him to death, "which would have been far better." John Tyler's act of retribution was the beginning-but things were evidently ripe for the insurrection. Townsmen and Peasants-men from all the neighbouring counties-were speedily roused. Froissart makes the same remark here as he does in the account of the Rising of the Jacquerie, that the majority acted merely like sheep-following purely hap-hazard, without motive or purpose: and Walsingham says that the alternative was offered-either to cast in their lot with the rebels or to be put to death. Kent was the chief scene of action. And there two emphatic declarations were made in their manifestoes. The revolt was in behalf of King Richard and the Commons; it was against John of Gaunt; no king of the name of John was to be tolerated. John Ball was released from prison; indeed, the rebels designed him for the archbishopric of Canterbury. We are told that the insurgents soon numbered 100,000; popular rhymes were composed as political cries. On Tuesday, June the 11th, they began their march towards London, and after many an act of violence, though apparently not of plunder, they reached Blackheath the next day. There Ball, it is said, had an audience of 200,000, and preached on the appropriate text When Adam delved and Eve span, Things seemed ominous enough; 100,000 or 200,000 was a dangerous multitude. Then it was rumoured 30,000 within the city itself were for the rebels. One John Newton, a knight, was sent, leaving his children behind as hostages for his good conduct, as emissary from the rebels to the Tower. The young king--then only 14 years old, but a son of the Black Prince-despite the remonstrances of his chancellor, Sudbury, and his treasurer, Hales, who were to pay dearly for their advice-determined to go as the knight urged him to do. But the first conference between the young king and his deeply-moved subjects ended abruptly. Once more the vast multitude is set in motion on the great city they march, famished and wrathful, carrying destruction in their path. The gates were thrown open, for resistance seemed hopeless. They entered, satisfied their hunger and thirst; then, an appetite which was hardly less keen, that of vengeance upon John of Gaunt. The Savoy, the noblest of buildings, was reduced to ashes. Plunder was forbidden; one man, who was carrying off booty, was thrown into the fire. Legal documents, and, where possible, their composers were everywhere destroyed. Indeed we must admit that during that Thursday their brutal passions got the better of the rebels. Flemings and other foreigners, as usual, were the most frequent victims of popular fury. This is the one feature of the rebellion to which Chaucer alludes, and, this is only by way of illustration, in the famous scene in the Nun's Priest's Tale, of the confusion which the raid of the fox introduced into the farmyard:- "So hideous was the noise, ah bencité! That of a truth Jack Straw, and his meinic When that they any Flemings meant to kill.” Then came the long summer's night, and the masses seething all through its awful hours just outside the Tower, their cries being, as Froissart remarks, as though the very devils from hell were among them. Next morning, Friday, June the 14th, the young king is again forward to play his part; he arranges a rendezvous at Mile End. But four hundred, Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Ball at their head, remain behind, gain entrance into the Tower, and there, despite the presence of twelve hundred trained soldiers, insult the high-born tenants, including the Princess of Wales, who, according to Froissart, swooned from very alarm. Unfortunately this was not all: Robert Hales, Treasurer, and John Leg, Commissioner of Taxes, were beheaded; and what forms a far larger figure in the records of the age-Archbishop Sudbury had his head literally hewed off: eight strokes were |