priest of Kent..’ When the peasants broke at last into revolt over the poll-tax, the contagion soon spread from Essex into Kent.
   The insurrection began in Essex at the end of May 1381, and on 4 June a mob headed by Robert Cave, a baker, entered Dartford, ‘making divers assemblies and congregations against the King’s peace.’ Two days later they were several thousands strong, and attacked the castle of Rochester, forcing the constable, Sir John Newton, to capitulate. After delivering Robert Belling, who was imprisoned there, they marched to Maidstone, where they chose Wat Tyler to be their leader.⁸⁴  He was by no means the sole instigator of the movement; for on 8 and 9 June spontaneous outbreaks occurred all over the county. On the 10th Tyler seized Canterbury, and his followers pillaged the archbishop’s palace; he stayed only to put to death three citizens denounced to him as traitors by the local mob, and next day marched off with his levies to London, though pillaging and rioting continued for some days at Canterbury after his departure. At Maidstone on the 11th they released John Ball from the archbishop’s prison, and on the 12th the main body of his contingent encamped on Blackheath, while some of the more ardent pushed on to Southwark and Lambeth, sacking the prisons of the Marshalsea and the King’s Bench, and the archbishop’s palace.
   To secure the removal of vexatious exactions and restrictions appears to have been the aim of the malcontents, who put to death all persons connected with the law, and destroyed all rolls and ancient records.⁸⁵
   On the 14th, Richard made his perilous journey from the Tower to Mile End and gave a personal hearing to the grievances of the insurgents, procuring a temporary pacification by promises of charters and redress of grievances. But to secure the punishment of ‘traitors’ the Kentishmen determined at once to take the law into their own hands; and while the king was still engaged at Mile End, Wat Tyler and a few personal followers returned to the rioters who were surrounding the Tower. They were unaccountably allowed by the guard to pour into the building itself and rushed through every part of it until they found Archbishop Sudbury and the treasurer, Sir Robert Hales, whom with some other persons they dragged out and beheaded.⁸⁶
   When he rode back from Mile End to find the rebels in the Tower, the king took refuge in the queen’s wardrobe near St. Paul’s, where his mother, the Fair Maid of Kent, was already in hiding. While his clerks set to work to engross charters for the villeins, the tumult and disorder grew until it became impossible for the well-disposed to delay any longer taking action in self-defence. But the king’s councillors, before resorting to arms, exposed him to the now still greater peril of a second interview with the mob, this time at Smithfield. The fresh demands made by Tyler in a long conversation held by him with the boy king are a matter of general rather than local interest, but matters were brought to a crisis by the audible remark of a Kentishman riding behind the king, who exclaimed that he recognized Tyler and knew him to be one of the most notorious highwaymen and thieves in his county. This
   ⁸⁴  Tyler has generally been regarded as belonging to Kent, but some authorities make him an Essex man (Oman, Great Revolt of 1381, 36).
   ⁸⁵  Walsingham, Hist. Angl. (Rolls. Ser.), i, 454-5  As to destruction of archbishop’s records see Cal. Pat. 1396-9, p. 509. Collectors of subsidies in Kent who had had their accounts burnt during the insurrection were allowed subsequently to account upon oath. Rot. Parl. (Rec. Com.), iii, 393^b.
   ⁸⁶ Polit. Hist. of Engl. 42-49. Walsingham, op. cit. i, 458-61.