itude on the work
before them:

"Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take
it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom
they have always desired. Wherefore, let us take good courage and behave
like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his
barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good
grain. The tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of
harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with
them all--the wicked lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers--every man,
indeed, who is dangerous to the common good. Then shall we all have peace
in our time and security for the future. For when the great ones have been
rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom and nobility, rank
and power shall we have in common."

Thirty-thousand men--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins, and peasants, were at
Blackheath, and these were soon joined by thousands more from Surrey.

John Wraw and Grindcobbe came to consult with Wat Tyler, and then returned
to Suffolk and Hertford to announce that the hour had come to strike.

The Marshalsea and King's Bench prisons, and the houses of ill-fame that
clustered round London Bridge, were destroyed before Wat Tyler led his army
into the city. An attempt to meet the King in conference was frustrated by
the royal counsellors. Richard came down in the royal barge as far as
Rotherhithe, but was dissuaded by Sir Robert Hales, and the Earls of
Suffolk, Salisbury, and Warwick, from "holding speech with the shoeless
ruffians."

Richard rowed back swiftly to the Tower, and Tyler and his army swept into
London. The city was in the hands of the rebel captain, but the citizens
welcomed the invaders, and offered bread and ale when Tyler proclaimed that
death would be the instant punishment for theft.

John of Gaunt's palace at the Savoy, on the river strand, was the first
place to be burnt; but Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt's son (eighteen
years later to reign as Henry IV., in place of Richard), was allowed to
pass out uninjured, and a wretched man caught in the act of stealing off
with a silver cup was promptly executed.

The Savoy destroyed, the Temple--a hive of lawyers--was the next to be
burnt, and before nightfall the Fleet Prison and Newgate had been
demolished.

Again Tyler demanded conference with the King, and Richard, lying in the
Tower with his co