e east of the city. In Essex and
the eastern counties the popular discontent was more social than political.
The demands of the peasants were that bondage should be abolished, that
tolls and imposts on trade should be done away with, that "no acre of land
which is held in bondage or villeinage be held at higher rate than
fourpence a year," in other words for a money commutation of all villein
services. Their rising had been even earlier than that of the Kentishmen.
Before Whitsuntide an attempt to levy the poll-tax gathered crowds of
peasants together, armed with clubs, rusty swords, and bows. The royal
commissioners who were sent to repress the tumult were driven from the
field, and the Essex men marched upon London on one side of the river as
the Kentishmen marched on the other. The evening of the thirteenth, the day
on which Tyler entered the city, saw them encamped without its walls at
Mile-end. At the same moment Highbury and the northern heights were
occupied by the men of Hertfordshire and the villeins of St. Albans, where
a strife between abbot and town had been going on since the days of Edward
the Second.

[Sidenote: Richard the Second]

The royal Council with the young king had taken refuge in the Tower, and
their aim seems to have been to divide the forces of the insurgents. On the
morning of the fourteenth therefore Richard rode from the Tower to Mile-end
to meet the Essex men. "I am your King and Lord, good people," the boy
began with a fearlessness which marked his bearing throughout the crisis,
"what will you?" "We will that you free us for ever," shouted the peasants,
"us and our lands; and that we be never named nor held for serfs!" "I grant
it," replied Richard; and he bade them go home, pledging himself at once to
issue charters of freedom and amnesty. A shout of joy welcomed the promise.
Throughout the day more than thirty clerks were busied writing letters of
pardon and emancipation, and with these the mass of the Essex men and the
men of Hertfordshire withdrew quietly to their homes. But while the king
was successful at Mile-end a terrible doom had fallen on the councillors he
left behind him. Richard had hardly quitted the Tower when the Kentishmen
who had spent the night within the city appeared at its gates. The general
terror was shown ludicrously enough when they burst in and taking the
panic-stricken knights of the royal household in rough horse-play by the
beard promised to be their equal