at the bridge foot they threat them of London because the gates of the bridge were closed, saying how they would bren all the suburbs and so conquer London by force, and to slay and bren all the commons of the city.  There were many within the city of their accord, and so they drew together and said:  ’Why do we not let these good people enter into the city? they are your fellows, and that that they do is for us,’ So therewith the gates were opened, and then these people entered into the city and went into houses and sat down to eat and drink.  They desired nothing but it was incontinent brought to them, for every man was ready to make them good cheer and to give them meat and drink to appease them.

Then the captains, as John Ball, Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, went throughout London and a twenty thousand with them, and so came to the Savoy in the way to Westminster, which was a goodly house and it pertained to the duke of Lancaster.  And when they entered, they slew the keepers thereof and robbed and pilled the house, and when they had so done, then they set fire on it and clean destroyed and brent it.  And when they had done that outrage, they left not therewith, but went straight to the fair hospital of the Rhodes called Saint John’s,[1] and there they brent house, hospital, minster and all.  Then they went from street to street and slew all the Flemings that they could find in church or in any other place, there was none respited from death.  And they brake up divers houses of the Lombards and robbed them and took their goods at their pleasure, for there was none that durst say them nay.  And they slew in the city a rich merchant called Richard Lyon, to whom before that time Wat Tyler had done service in France; and on a time this Richard Lyon had beaten him, while he was his varlet, the which Wat Tyler then remembered and so came to his house and strake off his head and caused it to be borne on a spear-point before him all about the city.  Thus these ungracious people demeaned themselves like people enraged and wood, and so that day they did much sorrow in London.

[1] This is called afterwards ’l’Ospital de Saint Jehan du Temple,’ and therefore would probably be the Temple, to which the Hospitallers had suceeded.  They had, however, another house at Clerkenwell, which also had been once the property of the Templars.

And so against night they went to lodge at Saint Katherine’s before the Tower of London, saying how they would never depart thence till they had the king at their pleasure and till he had accorded to them all (they would ask, and) that they would ask accounts of the chancellor of England, to know where all the good was become that he had levied through the realm, and without he made a good account to them thereof, it should not be for his profit.  And so when they had done all these evils to the strangers all the day, at night they lodged before the Tower.