hould be
fixed by Parliament at a uniform rate in money. They also insisted
that trade should be free, and that a general unconditional pardon
should be granted to all who had taken part in the rebellion.

Richard promised redress; but while negotiations were going on,
Walworth, mayor of London, struck down Wat Tyler with his dagger, and
with his death the whole movement collapsed almost as suddenly as it
arose. Parliament now began a series of merciless executions, and
refused to consider any of the claims to which Richard had shown a
disposition to listen. In their punishment of the rebels, the House
of Commons vied with the Lords in severity, few showing any sympathy
with the efforts of the peasants to obtain their freedom from feudal
bondage.

The uprising, however, was not in vain, for by it the old restrictions
were in some degree loosened, so that in the course of the next
century and a half, villeinage (S113) was gradually abolished, and the
English laborer acquired that greatest yet most perilous of all
rights, the complete ownership of himself.[1]

[1] In Scotland, villeinage lasted much longer, and as late as 1774,
in the reign of George III, men working in coal and salt mines were
held in a species of slavery, which was finally abolished the
following year.

So long as he was a serf, the peasant could claim assistance from his
master in sickness and old age; in attaining independence he had to
risk the danger of pauperism, which began with it,--this possibility
being part of the price which man must everywhere pay for the
inestimable privilege of freedom.

253. The New Movement in Literature, 1390 (?).

The same spirit which demanded emancipation on the part of the working
classes showed itself in literature. We have already seen (S246) how,
in the previous reign, Langland, in his poem of "Piers Plowman," gave
bold utterance to the growing discontent of the times in his
declaration that the rich and great destroyed the poor.

In a different spirit, Chaucer, "the morning star of English song,"
now began (1390?) to write his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories
in verse, supposed to be told by a merry band of pilgrims on their way
from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, London, to the shrine of St. Thomas
Becket in Canterbury (S170).

There is little of Langland's complaint in Chaucer, for he was
generally a favorite at court, seeing mainly the bright side of life,
and sure of his yearly allowance