of the Black Death,
and the strikes which followed, the country was on the verge of revolt
(SS244, 245). This new tax was the spark that caused the explosion.
The money was roughly demanded in every poor man's cottage, and its
collection caused the greatest distress. In attempting to enforce
payment, a brutal collector shamefully insulted the young daughter of
a workman named Wat Tyler. The indignant father, hearing the girl's
cry for help, snatched up a hammer, and rushing in, struck the ruffian
dead on the spot.

Tyler then collected a multitude of discontented laborers on
Blackheath Common, near London, with the determination of attacking
the city and overthrowing the government.

John Ball, a fanatical priest, harangued the gathering, now sixty
thousand strong, using by way of a text lines which were at that time
familiar to every workingman:

"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"

"Good people," he cried, "things will never go well in England so long
as goods be not in common, and so long as there be villeins (S113) and
gentlemen. They call us slaves, and beat us if we are slow to do
their bidding, but God has now given us the day to shake off our
bondage."

251. The Great Uprising of the Laboring Class, 1381.

Twenty years before, there had been similar outbreaks in Flanders and
in France. This, therefore, was not an isolated instance of
insurrection, but rather part of a general uprising. The rebellion
begun by Tyler and Ball (S250) spread through the southern and eastern
counties of England, taking different forms in different districts.
It was violent in St. Albans, where the peasants, and farm laborers
generally, rose against the exactions of the abbot, but it reached its
greatest height in London.

For three weeks the mob held possession of the capital. They pillaged
and then burned John of Gaunt's palace (SS247, 249). They seized and
beheaded the Lord Chancellor and the chief collector of the odious
poll tax (S250). They destroyed all the law papers they could lay
hands on, and ended by murdering a number of lawyers; for the rioters
believed that the members of that profession spent their time forging
the chains which held the laboring class in subjection.

252. Demans of the Rebels; End of the Rebellion.

The insurrectionists demanded of the King that villeinage (S113)
should be abolished, and that the rent of agricultural lands s