Primate was dragged from his sanctuary and beheaded.  The same vengeance was wreaked on the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the levy of the hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by the Good Parliament.  Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall of the city to the Wardrobe near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents.  Many of these dispersed at the news of the king’s pledge to the men of Essex, but a body of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard on the morning of the fifteenth encountered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield.  Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain who advanced to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with his dagger to the ground.  “Kill! kill!” shouted the crowd:  “they have slain our captain!” But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage with which he faced the men of Essex.  “What need ye, my masters?” cried the boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen.  “I am your Captain and your King; follow me!” The hopes of the peasants centred in the young sovereign; one aim of their rising had been to free him from the evil counsellors who, as they believed, abused his youth; and at his word they followed him with a touching loyalty and trust till he entered the Tower.  His mother welcomed him within its walls with tears of joy.  “Rejoice and praise God,” Richard answered, “for I have recovered to-day my heritage which was lost and the realm of England!” But he was compelled to give the same pledge of freedom to the Kentishmen as at Mile-end, and it was only after receiving his letters of pardon and emancipation that the yeomen dispersed to their homes.

[Sidenote:  The general revolt]

The revolt indeed was far from being at an end.  As the news of the rising ran through the country the discontent almost everywhere broke into flame.  There were outbreaks in every shire south of the Thames as far westward as Devonshire.  In the north tumults broke out at Beverley and Scarborough, and Yorkshire and Lancashire made ready to rise.  The eastern counties were in one wild turmoil of revolt.  At Cambridge the townsmen burned the charters of the University and attacked the colleges.  A body of peasants occupied St. Albans.  In Norfolk a Norwich artizan, called John the Litster or Dyer, took the title of King of the Commons, and marching through the country at the head of a mass of peasants compelled the nobles whom he captured to act as his meat-tasters and to serve him on their knees during his repast.  The story of St. Edmundsbury shows us what was going on in Suffolk.  Ever since the accession of Edward the Third the townsmen and the villeins of their lands around had been at war with the abbot and his monks.  The old and more oppressive servitude had long passed