In the Parliament which met in January, 1380, the Commons complained loudly of the extravagance of the expenditure. They demanded that the king's council should be dismissed; that the king should govern only by the aid of the usual crown officers—the chancellor, treasurer, privy seal, chamberlain, and steward of the household; and that these ministers should be chosen by Parliament. These unexampled demands were all granted: a committee of finance was appointed, to consist of Lords and Commons; and such a concession as had never yet been made was granted, and three representatives of cities—two aldermen of London and one of York—were put upon it. In the autumn, being informed that the subsidies which they voted were inadequate to defray the debts of the State, they pronounced the demand "outrageous and insupportable." This was bold language; the result was, of the many schemes to meet the difficulty, the fatal capitation tax, which threw the country into a general convulsion. This was a tax of three groats per head on every male and female above fifteen years of age. In towns it was to be regulated by the rank and ability of the inhabitants, in order to render it easier to the poor, so that no person should pay less than one groat, nor more than sixty, for himself and wife.
This poll-tax was the drop to the full cup. The people were already writhing under the continued exactions for the French wars, and this tax drove them to desperation. What added gall to its bitterness was that it was farmed out to some of the courtiers, who again farmed it out to foreign merchants, whose collectors proceeded with a degree of harshness and insolence which irritated the people beyond endurance. It was soon discovered that the amounts which came into the treasury would by no means reach the sum calculated upon. Commissions were then issued to inquire into the conduct of the collectors, and to enforce payment in cases where favour had been shown, or where due payment had not been made.
The people soon grew obstinate, and declared boldly they would not pay. Hereupon the commissioners treated them very severely, and they again, on their part, resenting this severity, began secretly to combine for resistance, and proceeded to chase away, wound, or even kill the officers of the law.
One of these commissioners, Thomas de Bampton, sat at Brentwood in Essex, and summoned the people of Fobbings before him. They declared that they would not pay a penny more than they had done. Bampton then menaced them, and ordered his sergeant-at-arms to arrest them. But they drove him and his men away. Whereupon Sir Robert Bealknap, the chief justice of the Common Pleas, was sent into Essex to try the recusants; but they denounced him as a traitor to the king and country, made him glad to get away, and cut off the heads of the jurors and clerks of the commission, which they stuck upon poles, and carried through all the neighbouring towns and villages, calling on the people to rise. In a few days the commons of Essex were in a general insurrection, and had found a leader in a vagabond priest, who called himself Jack Straw.
They attacked the house of Sir Robert Hales, the Lord Treasurer of England, who was also Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. Ample provision had just been made for a chapter-general of the order, and there was in the house abundance of meats, wines, clothes, and other things for the knights brethren. The people ate up the provisions, drank the wine, and destroyed the house.
They then sent letters and messengers into all the neighbouring counties, and not only the peasantry of Kent, but of Norfolk and Suffolk, were soon up in arms. But the incident which caused the whole immediately to break into flame was this:—One of the collectors of the tax at Dartford, in Kent, went to the house of one Wat Tyler, or Walter the Tyler, who, Froissart says, was "indeed a tyler of houses, an ungracious patron." He demanded the tax for a daughter of Wat, whom the mother contended was under fifteen, the age fixed by the law. The insolent tax-gatherer declared he would prove that, and was proceeding to the grossest outrage, when Wat came running in at the outcries of the wife and daughter, and knocked out the scoundrel's brains with his hammer. The neighbours applauded Wat's spirit, and vowed to stand by him; "for," says the chronicler, "the rude officers had in many places made the like trial."
The news of this exciting occurrence, and the insurrection of the men of Kent, spread rapidly over the whole country, from the Thames to the Humber; through Hertford, Surrey, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and, Lincoln. In every place they chose some leader, whose assumed names still remain in their letters and proclamations, as Jakke Milner, Jak Carter, Jak Treweman, and Jon Balle. They were invited by the letters from Kent to march to London, where "the Commons should be of one mind, and should do so much to the king that there should not be one bondman in all England." They are reported soon to have mustered 60,000 from the counties round London, making free with houses and provisions as they marched along.
But the great stream appears to have come from Kent and the south. One of their first visits was to Sir Simon Burloy, the guardian of the king, at Gravesend. Sir Simon had claimed a man living in that town as his bondman, in spite of the legal plea set up that he had resided there more than a year and a day. He demanded 300 pounds of silver for the man's freedom; but this was refused, and Sir Simon sent his prisoner to Rochester Castle. The men of Kent, now joined by a strong body from Essex, marched on Rochester, took the castle by surprise, and not only liberated this man, but other prisoners.
At Maidstone Wat Tyler was elected captain of the insurgent host, and the democratic preacher, John Ball, as its chaplain, who took for the text of his first sermon the good old rhyme—
"When Adam dove and Eve span.
Who was then the gentleman?"
Wat Tyler and his host entered Canterbury on the Monday after Trinity Sunday, 1381, where John Ball denounced death to the archbishop, who had often imprisoned him, who, however, luckily was absent. But they broke open the archbishop's house; and, as they carried out the wealthy pillage, they said, "Ah! this Chancellor of England hath had a good market to get together all this riches. He shall now give an account of the revenues of England, and the great profits he hath gathered since the king's coronation."
