en, or have exulted since, over his defeat.

Seeing Wat down, his men immediately bent their bows to avenge his fall.
If the young King had not had presence of mind at that dangerous moment,
both he and the Mayor to boot, might have followed Tyler pretty fast. But
the King riding up to the crowd, cried out that Tyler was a traitor, and
that he would be their leader. They were so taken by surprise, that they
set up a great shouting, and followed the boy until he was met at
Islington by a large body of soldiers.

The end of this rising was the then usual end. As soon as the King found
himself safe, he unsaid all he had said, and undid all he had done; some
fifteen hundred of the rioters were tried (mostly in Essex) with great
rigour, and executed with great cruelty. Many of them were hanged on
gibbets, and left there as a terror to the country people; and, because
their miserable friends took some of the bodies down to bury, the King
ordered the rest to be chained up--which was the beginning of the
barbarous custom of hanging in chains. The King's falsehood in this
business makes such a pitiful figure, that I think Wat Tyler appears in
history as beyond comparison the truer and more respectable man of the
two.

Richard was now sixteen years of age, and married Anne of Bohemia, an
excellent princess, who was called 'the good Queen Anne.' She deserved a
better husband; for the King had been fawned and flattered into a
treacherous, wasteful, dissolute, bad young man.

There were two Popes at this time (as if one were not enough!), and their
quarrels involved Europe in a great deal of trouble. Scotland was still
troublesome too; and at home there was much jealousy and distrust, and
plotting and counter-plotting, because the King feared the ambition of
his relations, and particularly of his uncle, the Duke of Lancaster, and
the duke had his party against the King, and the King had his party
against the duke. Nor were these home troubles lessened when the duke
went to Castile to urge his claim to the crown of that kingdom; for then
the Duke of Gloucester, another of Richard's uncles, opposed him, and
influenced the Parliament to demand the dismissal of the King's favourite
ministers. The King said in reply, that he would not for such men
dismiss the meanest servant in his kitchen. But, it had begun to signify
little what a King said when a Parliament was determined; so Richard was
at last obliged to give way, and t