CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
RICHARD THE SECOND, THE BOY WHO QUELLED A TUMULT.
A vast, disorderly rabble thronged the great open space of Smithfield, in London, on one side of which stood the venerable Abbey of Saint Bartholomew, now occupied by the hospital of that name.

The men who composed it were rough and wild, and, for the most part, shouted and clutched their clubs and bows in a meaningless sort of way, which plainly showed that they were not very clear in their own minds as to the object of their assembling together, but that they came and shouted and threatened because their leaders did so.
These leaders were few in number, and but that they were mounted, and armed with swords and daggers, not to be distinguished from their followers, for they were rough, wild men--men too whose occupation seemed to be more in the way of herding cattle and plying their hammers than leading an army of 20,000 rioters, or brandishing their swords against a government.
Yet, though many of these rebels seemed not to comprehend the why and the wherefore of their demonstration, there were not a few who looked very much--nay, cruelly--in earnest, who talked vehemently and scowled, and seemed, by the way they gripped their arms, determined to enforce their demands against any man, be he noble, or baron, or king.

From some of the groups one might have heard excited utterances like the following:-- "We will have our rights or die! Why do our leaders halt ?" "The king is expected!" "Nay, then, let us slay him, who is the head of all our wrongs!" "Not so; the king has already granted what we first demanded; and we are gathered now because Wat Tyler demands yet more." "God save Wat Tyler! Was it not he who struck the first blow against the tyrant ?" "It was.

The nobles demanded a poll tax on every man, woman, boy, and girl in the land; and when one of their collectors would exact it from Wat Tyler, at his place in Dartford, and (disbelieving his word concerning the age of his young daughter) vilely insulted the maiden, he arose and slew the wretch with his hammer.

And so this business began." "Huzzah for Wat Tyler! Down with the tyrant!" "Nay, friend; our cause was a good one when it began, but since then Wat and his friends have, to my mind, done us and themselves damage by their bloodthirstiness and their unreasonableness.