Then the ungracious people there assembled, perceiving their captain slain, began to murmur among themselves and said: "Ah, our captain is slain, let us go and slay them all;" and therewith they arrayed themselves on the same place in manner of battle, and their bows before them. Then the king began a great deed; howbeit, all turned to the best: for as soon as Tyler was on the earth, the king departed from all his company, and all alone he rode to these people, and said to them: "Sirs, what aileth you? Ye shall have no captain but me: I am your king: be all in rest and peace." And so the most part of the people that heard the king speak and saw him among them, were shamefast and began to wax peaceable and depart.
LONDON LICKPENNY (Early Fifteenth Century).
This poem is generally ascribed to John Lydgate, a disciple of Chaucer, but the authorship is doubtful. Whatever its poetical merit may be, it is full of interest as a picture of contemporary life in London, and the description of the adventures of the poor countryman, endeavouring to obtain legal justice in the metropolis, lacks neither pathos nor humour.
Source.—Minor Poems of Lydgate, edited by Halliwell, p. 103.
To London once my stepps I bent,
Where trouth in no wyse should be faynt,
To Westmynster-ward I forthwith went,
To a man of law to make complaynt,
I sayd, "For Marys love, that holy saynt!
Pity the poore that wold proceede;"