r will the revenues
or burthens of the town. Such a position afforded an opening for
corruption and oppression of the most galling kind; and it seems to have
been a general impression of the unfair assessment of the dues levied on
the poor and the undue burthens which were thrown on the unenfranchised
classes which provoked the first serious discontent. In the reign of
Richard the First William of the Long Beard, though one of the governing
body, placed himself at the head of a conspiracy which in the
panic-stricken fancy of the burghers numbered fifty thousand of the
craftsmen. His eloquence, his bold defiance of the aldermen in the
town-mote, gained him at any rate a wide popularity, and the crowds who
surrounded him hailed him as "the saviour of the poor." One of his
addresses is luckily preserved to us by a hearer of the time. In mediaeval
fashion he began with a text from the Vulgate, "Ye shall draw water with
joy from the fountain of the Saviour." "I," he began, "am the saviour of
the poor. Ye poor men who have felt the weight of rich men's hands, draw
from my fountain waters of wholesome instruction and that with joy, for
the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from
the waters. It is the people who are the waters, and I will divide the
lowly and faithful folk from the proud and faithless folk; I will part
the chosen from the reprobate as light from darkness." But it was in vain
that he strove to win royal favour for the popular cause. The support of
the moneyed classes was essential to Richard in the costly wars with
Philip of France; and the Justiciar, Archbishop Hubert, after a moment of
hesitation issued orders for William Longbeard's arrest. William felled
with an axe the first soldier who advanced to seize him, and taking
refuge with a few adherents in the tower of St. Mary-le-Bow summoned his
adherents to rise. Hubert however, who had already flooded the city with
troops, with bold contempt of the right of sanctuary set fire to the
tower. William was forced to surrender, and a burgher's son, whose father
he had slain, stabbed him as he came forth. With his death the quarrel
slumbered for more than fifty years. But the movement towards equality
went steadily on. Under pretext of preserving the peace the
unenfranchised townsmen united in secret frith-gilds of their own, and
mobs rose from time to time to sack the houses of foreigners and the
wealthier burgesses. Nor did London stand