Richard was in Normandy in 1196, and Longbeard having banded together 15,000 men in London, under an oath that they would stick by him and each other, went to the king and laid their grievances before him. Richard heard the appeal sympathetically enough, for after all, as long as the money was forthcoming, he had no particular desire that the pockets of rich burghers should be spared at the expense of the poor, but left matters in the hands of Archbishop Hubert the justiciar. Longbeard returned to London, and with his 15,000[24] workmen in revolt, bid an open defiance to the justiciar.
Only a fragment of one of Longbeard’s speeches has been preserved, a solitary specimen of popular oratory in the twelfth century.[25]
Taking a passage from the prophet Isaiah for his text: “Therefore with joy shall ye draw water from the wells of the Saviour” (Isaiah xii, 3), the agitator delivers his message.
“I am,” he saith, “the saviour of the poor. You the poor, who have endured the hard hands of the rich, draw ye from my wells the waters of sound doctrine, and this with joy, for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters, and the People are the waters. I will divide the humble and faithful from such as are proud and froward. I will divide the just from the unjust, even as light from darkness.”
For a time Longbeard was too strong for the justiciar. Archbishop Hubert had no force at his disposal for the invasion of London, for a battle with Longbeard and his league.
At a great gathering of citizens, held in St. Paul’s Churchyard, the justiciar’s men sent to arrest Longbeard had been driven out of the city with violence. All that Hubert could do was to give orders for the arrest of any lesser citizens found outside London, and two small traders from the city actually were taken into custody at the town of Stamford on Mid-Lent Sunday, 1196, under this authority.
But the aldermen grew more and more frightened at Longbeard’s bold speeches and his big public meetings, and weakness and cowardice began to demoralise the league. The people, who had risen for “liberty and freedom,” fell away from their leader, and FitzOsbert was left with a comparatively small band to face the anger of the justiciar.
Backed up by the city fathers, Hubert’s officers again attempted to seize the agitator. Longbeard, hardly pressed, snatched an axe from one of his assailants—a citizen named Godfrey—and slew him; and then retreated, overwhelmed by numbers, to take refuge in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside. There was a right of sanctuary in this church, a right not to be denied to the commonest felon.
But what were rights of sanctuary to the justiciar—bent on hunting his prey to the death? He commanded Longbeard “to come out and abide by the law,” and gave orders to his men that, failing instant obedience, he was to be dragged out.
Longbeard’s answer was to climb up into the church tower, and thereupon Hubert ordered the tower to be set on fire, and this was done. And now the only chance of life for William Longbeard and his followers was to cut their way through the host of their enemies and make a bold rush for safety. It was a remote chance at the best, but sooner that than to perish in the burning tower.