"And doth for to understand he hath rung your bell.
Now Might and Right, Will and Skill,
God speede every dele!"
Some of them were drunken, others white and wild for lack of sleep. Ragged they were, armed with mallets, cudgels, cruel knives. A-many had the long bow which all the English must practise to twang; but there was dearth of arrows, and not all the bows were strung. Of all these the men of Kent were best armed and most seemly clad, and they had arisen to right their brothers' wrong, and to make known that all men should be free.
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
they sang; and then because they saw Stephen at the window, they began to cry out to bid the King come to his people. Now the King stood behind Stephen in the shadow.
“If old Archbishop Simon is to scape,” quoth he, musing, “now 's time, the while the people is drawn away hither. Go, one, to the Archbishop, and bid him try the stairs and the water-gate, if so be he may flee in a little boat.”
“The King!—The King!” cried the mob. “Let us in! John Ball hath rungen your bell!”
Stephen leaned out of window and made a sign with his hand that they should cease, and after a little their clamour had sunk to murmurings and he could be heard.
“Ye shall withdraw to Mile End,” Stephen shouted. “Thither will the King come to parley with you. And I make no doubt he shall grant whatsoever ye shall ask in reason.”
Then began the tumult anew:—
“Mile End!—Mile End, to meet the King!” they cried, and there was a surging this way and that; for some would go at once to the meeting-place, others strove to come nigher the walls of the Tower.