erview with the king, with a view to a redress of their
grievances, repaired to the appointed place of rendezvous. But of the
rest, a large party turned toward London, in hopes of pillage and
plunder. Others remained near the Tower. This last party, as soon as
the king and his attendants had gone to Mile-End, succeeded in forcing
their way in through the gates, which, it seems, had not been left
properly guarded, and thus gained possession of the Tower. They
ransacked the various apartments, and destroyed every thing which came
in their way that was at all obnoxious to them. They broke into the
chamber of the Princess of Wales, Richard's mother, and, though they
did not do the princess any personal injury, they terrified her so
much by their violence and noise that she fainted, and was borne away
apparently lifeless. Her attendants carried her down the
landing-stairs on the river side, and there put her into a covered
boat, and rowed her away to a place of safety.

The people in the Tower did not all get off so easily. The Archbishop
of Canterbury was there, and three other prelates of high rank. These
men were particularly obnoxious to the rioters, so they seized them,
and without any mercy dragged them into the court and cut off their
heads. The heads they put upon the ends of poles, and paraded them in
this way through the streets of London.

In the mean time, the king, followed by a numerous train of
attendants, had proceeded to Mile-End, and there met the insurgents,
who had assembled in a vast concourse to receive him. Several of the
attendants of the king were afraid to follow him into the danger to
which they thought he was exposing himself by going among such an
immense number of lawless and desperate men. Some of them deserted him
on the way to the place of meeting, and rode off in different
directions to places of safety. The king himself, however, though so
young--for he was now only about sixteen years of age--had no fear. As
soon as he came to the meadow at Mile-End, where the insurgents had
now assembled to the number of sixteen thousand, he rode forward
boldly into the midst of them, and opened the conference at once by
asking them what they desired.

The spokesman whom they had appointed for the occasion stated their
demands, which were that they should be made free. They had hitherto
been held as serfs, in a bondage which exposed them to all sorts of
cruelties and oppressions, since they were amenab