‘The third, that all men from thenceforth might be enfranchised to buy and sell in every country, city, borough town, fair, market and other place within the realm of England.
‘The fourth, that no acre of land holden in bondage or service should be holden but for fourpence, and if it had been holden for less aforetime, it should not hereafter be enhanced.’
Stow adds: ‘These and many other things they required. Moreover, they told him [the King] he had been evilly governed till that day, but from that time he must be governed otherwise.’
After consultation with his courtiers the King conceded everything asked by Wat Tyler. They agreed that serfage should be abolished, and that all servile dues should be commuted for a rent of fourpence per acre, and a general pardon was pronounced on all. Clerks were set to work to draw up charters of liberation and pardon in proper legal form for every village and manor, as well as for every shire.[43]
While these arrangements were going on, the soldiers, who could have kept the Tower with ease, were ordered or at least permitted, to let in the mob. This appears to have been part of the agreement, and we cannot but brand it as a wicked compact, as it was clearly the duty of the Court to protect its servants.
The unfortunate Leg, the farmer of the poll tax, was murdered, and a learned friar, the friend and adviser of John of Gaunt, was torn in pieces as a substitute for his patron. In the chapel, Archbishop Sudbury and Hales were torn from the altar and hurried to Tower Hill, where their heads were struck off and straightway placed on London Bridge.
John Ball was said to be among the first who entered the Tower, and to have directed the outrages. The mob suffered the Princess of Wales to escape by boat, when she went to the Queen’s Wardrobe, which had been given to Queen Philippa, and was afterwards called the Tower Royal in the Vintry Ward. In some accounts it is said that she went to the Wardrobe in Carter Lane, but this is a mistake. The King, after his return from Mile End, joined his mother at the Queen’s Wardrobe.
On Friday and Saturday, as they received their charters, the bulk of the insurgents left London and returned to their homes, leaving the residue and more dangerous masses behind them.
Mr. Trevelyan relates how the King and his nobles rode out from the Queen’s Wardrobe through Ludgate and Temple Bar, passed along the Strand by the smouldering ruins of the Savoy to Westminster. This was on Saturday the 15th of June. The royal party was met at the doors of the Abbey by a sorrowful procession of monks in penitential garb, bearing the Cross before them. The King dismounted and kissed the Cross. The nobles, the courtiers and men-at-arms entered the church and performed with unusual fervour the acts of piety. The reason why the monks were in this subdued condition was owing to the fact that a violation of sanctuary had just occurred.[44]