but riches and the utter destruction of the noblemen and to have London robbed and pilled; that was the principal matter of their beginning, the which they well shewed, for as soon as the Tower gate opened and that the king was issued out with his two brethren and the earl of Salisbury, the earl of Warwick, the earl of Oxford, sir Robert of Namur, the lord of Vertaing, the lord Gommegnies and divers other, then Wat Tyler, Jack Straw and John Ball and more than four hundred entered into the Tower and brake up chamber after chamber, and at last found the archbishop of Canterbury, called Simon, a valiant man and a wise, and chief chancellor of England, and a little before he had said mass before the king.  These gluttons took him and strake off his head, and also they beheaded the lord of Saint John’s and a friar minor, master in medicine, pertaining to the duke of Lancaster, they slew him in despite of his master, and a sergeant at arms called John Leg; and these four heads were set on four long spears and they made them to be borne before them through the streets of London and at last set them a-high on London bridge, as though they had been traitors to the king and to the realm.  Also these gluttons entered into the princess’ chamber and brake her bed, whereby she was so sore affrayed that she swooned; and there she was taken up and borne to the water side and put into a barge and covered, and so conveyed to a place called the Queen’s Wardrobe;[2] and there she was all that day and night like a woman half dead, till she was comforted with the king her son, as ye shall hear after.

      [2] The Queen’s Wardrobe was in the ‘Royal’ (called by Froissart
      or his copyist ’la Reole’), a palace near Blackfriars.

HOW THE NOBLES OF ENGLAND WERE IN GREAT PERIL TO HAVE BEEN DESTROYED, AND HOW THESE REBELS WERE PUNISHED AND SENT HOME TO THEIR OWN HOUSES

When the king came to the said place of Mile-end without London, he put out of his company his two brethren, the earl of Kent and sir John Holland, and the lord of Gommegnies, for they durst not appear before the people:  and when the king and his other lords were there, he found there a threescore thousand men of divers villages and of sundry countries in England; so the king entered in among them and said to them sweetly:  ’Ah, ye good people, I am your king:  what lack ye? what will ye say?’ Then such as understood him said:  ’We will that ye make us free for ever, ourselves, our heirs and our lands, and that we be called no more bond nor so reputed.’  ‘Sirs,’ said the king, ’I am well agreed thereto.  Withdraw you home into your own houses and into such villages as ye came from, and leave behind you of every village two or three, and I shall cause writings to be made and seal them with my seal, the which they shall have with them, containing everything that ye demand; and to the intent that ye shall be the better assured, I shall cause my banners to be delivered into every bailiwick, shire and countries.’