It was only by threats of death that verdicts of guilty could be wrung from Essex jurors when the leaders of the revolt were brought before them.

Grindecobbe was offered his life if he would persuade his followers at St.Albans to restore the charters they had wrung from the monks.

He turned bravely to his fellow-townsmen and bade them take no thought for his trouble.

"If I die," he said, "I shall die for the cause of the freedom we have won, counting myself happy to end my life by such a martyrdom.

Do then to-day as you would have done had I been killed yesterday." But repression went pitilessly on, and through the summer and the autumn seven thousand men are said to have perished on the gallows or the field..