40 
HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
1138] 
tent to a head. The tax was imposed on all classes, but 
fell with special hardness on the peasants and the poorer 
people in the towns. Rebellions broke out in several parts of 
the kingdom, and for a time the rebels carried all before them. 
Near London a vast crowd of pecasants gathered .under 
the leadership of Wat Tyler. They releascd John Ball, a 
priest who for some ycars had been preaching to the people, 
inflaming them against the rich and those in authority, and 
who had been imprisoned for this. Ball harangucd the 
mob from the famous couplet,—- 
“When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman?” 
and so exeited them that they were ready for any excesses. 
They marched on London and entered the city. Riot and 
pillage followed. "The king met the mob to discuss their 
demands. These were that they should be free men; that 
land should be rented at a uniform rate; that they might 
buy and sell wherever they chose, and that all who had 
taken part in the uprising should be pardoned. The king 
agreed to all these demands; but in the meantime another 
mob had entered the Tower and had murdered the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury and the treasurer of the kingdom. 
The next day the king again met the rebels, and again 
agreed to their demands. In the midst of the discussion, 
Tyler threatencd to strike the Lord Mayor of London. He 
was himself struck down, and in a moment his followers 
were ready to begin a riot. There would probably have 
been a terrible slaughter if the boy king had not dashed 
away from his attendants to the front of the mob, and 
called out, “I am your king, and I will be your leader!” - 
This bold aetion of the king so pleased the mob that they 
returned to their homes well satisfied that they had won the 
victory. The rebellion in the other parts of the kingdom 
was sharply suppressed. A few of the leaders were 
executed, but on the whole there was little bloodshed after 
the uprising was over, Parliament refused to change the 
laws, so that for some time the condition of the peasants 
was but little improved,