CHAPTER XXVIII.
RICHARD II.—1377 to 1399.
How Richard the Second sent men round the country to gather the taxes; how Wat Tyler killed one of them and collected an army; how he met the King in Smithfield, and was killed by the Mayor; how King Richard behaved cruelly to his uncles; how he was forced to give up the crown to his cousin Henry of Hereford, and died at Pomfret.
Richard the Second was only eleven years old when his grandfather, King Edward the Third, died. He was made king immediately. The people, who loved him for the sake of his good and brave father, the Black Prince, were very peaceable and quiet in the beginning of his reign. But his uncles, who were clever men, and wanted to be powerful, did not agree very well with one another.
When Richard was about sixteen, a civil war had very nearly taken place. I will tell you how it happened.
The king was not so well brought up as he ought to have been, and he loved eating and drinking and fine clothes, and he made a great many feasts, and gave fine presents to his favourites, so that he often wanted money before it was the right time to pay the taxes. It happened, as I said, when the king was about sixteen, that he wanted money, and so did his uncles, who were in France, where the French and English still continued to fight now and then. The great lords sent the men who gathered the king’s taxes round the country, and one of them, whose business was to get the poll-tax, that is, a tax on everybody’s head, was so cruel, and so rude to the daughter of a poor man named Wat Tyler, that Wat, who could not bear to see his child ill-used, struck him on the head with his hammer and killed him.
Wat Tyler’s neighbours, hearing the noise, all came round, and, finding how much the taxgatherer had vexed Wat, they took his part, and got their friends to do the same, and a great many thousands of them collected together at Blackheath, and sent to the king, who then lived in the Tower of London, to beg him to listen to their complaints, and not to allow the noblemen to oppress them, nor to send to gather taxes in a cruel manner. The king did not go to them, but he read the paper of complaints they sent, and promised to do his people justice. A few days afterwards, the king, with his officers, met Wat Tyler, and a great many of the people who had joined him, in Smithfield, and spoke to him about the complaints the people had made. The Mayor of London, who was near them, fancied Wat Tyler was going to stab the king, so he rode up to him and killed him.
Wat Tyler’s friends now thought it best to make peace with the king; so for this time the civil war was stopped.
Death of Wat Tyler.
I have told you this story, to show you what mischief is done by cruelty and injustice. It was unjust to collect the taxes at a wrong time, and for a bad purpose. It was cruel in the taxgatherer to behave ill to Tyler’s daughter. That injustice and cruelty brought about the death of the tax-man, and that of Wat Tyler, who seems to have been a bold, brave man, wishing to do what was right.