liament. The new
peasant was still legally a slave, and was to learn it by one of those
turns of fortune which confound a foolish faith in the common sense of
unwritten constitutions. The French Wars gradually grew to be almost as
much of a scourge to England as they were to France. England was
despoiled by her own victories; luxury and poverty increased at the
extremes of society; and, by a process more proper to an ensuing
chapter, the balance of the better mediaevalism was lost. Finally, a
furious plague, called the Black Death, burst like a blast on the land,
thinning the population and throwing the work of the world into ruin.
There was a shortage of labour; a difficulty of getting luxuries; and
the great lords did what one would expect them to do. They became
lawyers, and upholders of the letter of the law. They appealed to a rule
already nearly obsolete, to drive the serf back to the more direct
servitude of the Dark Ages. They announced their decision to the people,
and the people rose in arms.

The two dramatic stories which connect Wat Tyler, doubtfully with the
beginning, and definitely with the end of the revolt, are far from
unimportant, despite the desire of our present prosaic historians to
pretend that all dramatic stories are unimportant. The tale of Tyler's
first blow is significant in the sense that it is not only dramatic but
domestic. It avenged an insult to the family, and made the legend of the
whole riot, whatever its incidental indecencies, a sort of demonstration
on behalf of decency. This is important; for the dignity of the poor is
almost unmeaning in modern debates; and an inspector need only bring a
printed form and a few long words to do the same thing without having
his head broken. The occasion of the protest, and the form which the
feudal reaction had first taken, was a Poll Tax; but this was but a
part of a general process of pressing the population to servile labour,
which fully explains the ferocious language held by the government after
the rising had failed; the language in which it threatened to make the
state of the serf more servile than before. The facts attending the
failure in question are less in dispute. The mediaeval populace showed
considerable military energy and co-operation, stormed its way to
London, and was met outside the city by a company containing the King
and the Lord Mayor, who were forced to consent to a parley. The
treacherous stabbing of Tyler by the Mayor g