For eight days, and eight days only, he plays his part on the stage of national events: commands with authority a vast concourse of men; meets the King face to face, and wrests from sovereignty great promises of reform; orders the execution of the chief ministers of the Crown, and then, in what seems to be the hour of triumph, is struck to the ground, and goes to his death.
Under the accredited leadership of Wat Tyler the revolt at once took form.
Five days were spent in Kent before the peasant army marched on London.

The manor houses were attacked, and all rent rolls, legal documents, lists of tenants and serfs destroyed.

The rising was not a ferocious massacre like the rising of the Jacquerie in France; there was no general massacre of landlords, or reign of terror.

The lawyers who managed the landowners' estates were the enemy, and against them--against the instruments of landlord tyranny--was the anger of the peasants directed.

In the same way John of Gaunt, and not the youthful King, was recognised as the evil influence in government; and while a vow was taken by the men of Kent that no man named "John" should be King of England, the popular cry was "King Richard and the Commons," and all who joined in this were accounted friends of the insurgent populace.
Blackheath was reached on the evening of June 12th, and early the following morning, which was Corpus Christi Day, John Ball--released by a thousand hands from his prison at Maidstone--preached to the multitude on the work before them: "Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom they have always desired.