Tales From the Tower of London Read Online Free PDF

many additional recruits that Froissart said ‘they departed [there] and all the people of Canterbury with them. . . . And in their going they beat down and robbed houses . . . and had mercy of none.’
    Now turning back to the west, the mob moved slowly towards London, solidifying their plans. The only person to whom they would pay allegiance was King Richard. Everyone else in the ruling class, from the greatest nobleman to the humblest lawyer, was to be forced out of office and put on trial. Halfway along the 40-mile stretch between Canterbury and the capital lies the town of Rochester, and here the rebels seized the castle, ransacked it and took the family of Sir John Newton, the constable, prisoner. Newton himself was sent to London with a message for the king: Richard would meet with the rebels at Blackheath in three days to hear their demands. If Newton failed to deliver the message, or if the army was called out, his family would be killed. Over the next two days, Tyler’s army plodded steadily westward. Unknown to them, another rebel army even larger than their own was also converging on London from Essex, north-east of the capital.
    For some reason, word of the rebels’ approach took the King’s Council and the government completely by surprise; certainly they should have been aware of the level of discontent in the country, and the tax riots could hardly have escaped their attention. Possibly, it was the sheer size of the uprising that overwhelmed them. The combined force of Tyler’s army and the Essex men has been estimated at more than one hundred thousand – nearly twice the population of London itself and three times the size of the largest medieval army ever assembled. Certainly it did not help matters that the government’s driving force and chief military mind, John of Gaunt, was in Scotland at the time.
    Trying to come to grips with an unprecedented situation, the Council sent messengers to Windsor to bring King Richard to the safety provided by the Tower and the 1,200 troops stationed there. The Queen Mother, Joan (known as the Fair Maid of Kent), was also rushed to the Tower where she and her son were joined by virtually everyone in the government. The king’s uncle, the Earl of Buckingham, along with the Earls of Suffolk, Kent, Salisbury and Warwick were there, along with Sir Robert Hales, the Lord Treasurer, John Legge, who had devised the poll tax, and Simon Sudbury the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England. With them was Willian Walworth, a successful fishmonger serving as that year’s Lord Mayor of London. Everyone had their own idea of how to deal with the mob, but the king insisted that the only right thing to do was to meet them and hear their demands.
    On 12 June 1381, the king and his ministers left the Tower by barge, sailing eastward to Greenwich, where they planned to disembark and walk the mile and a half to Blackheath. Even before they approached the mooring site, they could hear the shouting multitude. Tyler and the Kent contingent had come to Greenwich to meet them. Despite the king’s efforts to land and open a dialogue, the crowd only screamed and taunted him and his ministers. According to Froissart, ‘And when they saw the king’s barge coming, they began to shout, and made such a cry, as though the devils of hell had been among them. . . . And when the king and his lords saw the demeanour of the people, the best assured of them were in dread.’
    In fact, Richard tried repeatedly to speak with the mob, shouting ‘I have come to speak with you – tell me what you want’, but his words were drowned out by shouts and insults. Left to his own devices, Richard might have continued his efforts, but Chancellor Sudbury, Warwick and Suffolk all knew they were in serious personal danger and urged the king to return to London and the safety of the Tower. Reluctantly, Richard agreed. But when the barges turned to leave, the action enticed the crowd to follow.
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