s and good comrades in the days to come.
But the horse-play changed into dreadful earnest when they found that
Richard had escaped their grasp, and the discovery of Archbishop Sudbury
and other ministers in the chapel changed their fury into a cry for blood.
The Primate was dragged from his sanctuary and beheaded. The same vengeance
was wreaked on the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the levy of the
hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by the
Good Parliament. Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall of
the city to the Wardrobe near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he
opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents. Many of these
dispersed at the news of the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body
of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard on the morning
of the fifteenth encountered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield.
Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain who advanced
to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief
struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with
his dagger to the ground. "Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd: "they have slain
our captain!" But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage
with which he faced the men of Essex. "What need ye, my masters?" cried the
boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen. "I am your
Captain and your King; follow me!" The hopes of the peasants centred in the
young sovereign; one aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil
counsellors who, as they believed, abused his youth; and at his word they
followed him with a touching loyalty and trust till he entered the Tower.
His mother welcomed him within its walls with tears of joy. "Rejoice and
praise God," Richard answered, "for I have recovered to-day my heritage
which was lost and the realm of England!" But he was compelled to give the
same pledge of freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only
after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that the yeomen
dispersed to their homes.

[Sidenote: The general revolt]

The revolt indeed was far from being at an end. As the news of the rising
ran through the country the discontent almost everywhere broke into flame.
There were outbreaks in every shire south of the Thames as far westward as
Devonshire. In the north tumults broke out at Beverley and Scarborough, and
Yorkshire a