Spurring his horse, he rode boldly to the front of the mob.

"What need ye, my masters?" he cried. "That man is a traitor. I am your
captain and your king. Follow me!"

His words touched their hearts. With loud shouts of loyalty they
followed him to the Tower, where he was met by his mother with tears of
joy.

"Rejoice and praise God," the young king said to her; "for I have
recovered to-day my heritage which was lost, and the realm of England."

It was true; the revolt was at an end. The frightened nobles had
regained their courage, and six thousand knights were soon at the
service of the king, pressing him to let them end the rebellion with
sword and spear.

He refused. His word had been passed, and he would live to it--at least,
until the danger was passed. The peasants still in London received their
charters of freedom and dispersed to their homes. The city was freed of
the low-born multitude who had held it in mortal terror.

Yet all was not over. Many of the peasants were still in arms. Those of
St. Albans were emulated by those of St. Edmondsbury, where fifty
thousand men broke their way into the abbey precincts, and forced the
monks to grant a charter of freedom to the town. In Norwich a dyer,
Littester by name, calling himself the King of the Commons, forced the
nobles captured by his followers to act as his meat-tasters, and serve
him on their knees during his repasts. His reign did not last long. The
Bishop of Norwich, with a following of knights and men-at-arms, fell on
his camp and made short work of his majesty.

The king, soon forgetting his pledges, led an army of forty thousand men
through Kent and Essex, and ruthlessly executed the peasant leaders.
Some fifteen hundred of them were put to death. The peasants resisted
stubbornly, but they were put down. The jurors refused to bring the
prisoners in guilty, until they were threatened with execution
themselves. The king and council, in the end, seemed willing to
compromise with the peasantry, but the land-owners refused compliance.
Their serfs were their property, they said, and could not be taken from
them by king or parliament without their consent. "And this consent,"
they declared, "we have never given and never will give, were we all to
die in one day."

Yet the revolt of the peasantry was not without its useful effect. From
that time serfdom died rapidly. Wages continued to rise. A century after
the Black Death, a laborer's work in England "