“The Tower, lad, the Tower!”
CHAPTER XVII
All through the night those who were awake in the city heard the rebels howling in the suburbs outside the walls. They had ransacked wood lodges and pulled down palings, and made great fires in the streets and open places, so that a yellow glare streamed up into the sky. At low tide some of them had swum the river and waded about on the mud under the water gate of the Tower, hooting and shouting, and jeering at the guards on the walls. At one time there were so many of them in the water that they looked like a swarm of big black rats whom fire had driven out of a merchant’s warehouse.
The King’s Council, sitting soon after dawn, realised its own helplessness and the danger of rousing a more ugly temper in the mob, for the Tiler and the leaders had threatened to burn the suburbs if the gates of the city were not opened. William Walworth himself rode out to see it done, but the news had spread before him, shouted hither and thither from Aldgate to Black Friars. The meaner folk had put on holiday clothes, and were swarming in the streets, making a motley of many colours, with the women, in clean wimples, and the young wenches with ribbons in their hair. Some of them broke into the churches and rang the bells, so that the whole city was a jangle of exultation. The wealthier folk, the brethren of the richer guilds and companies, kept close in their houses with doors barred and shutters up, all the able men in harness, and with arms ready to hand.
On London Bridge a crowd had gathered to see the bridge gate opened, and the river below was crowded with boats. Walworth and his men had trouble to push through. Horns and trumpets were blown, handbells rung, drums beaten, and from beyond the gate came the answering roar of the peasants. The gates were to be opened, and all these savage, simple souls took it for a surrender, the throwing wide of a new and spacious season, the beginning of the end of long tyrannies and oppressions. No more forced work upon roads and bridges, no more forced hewing of my lord’s wood, of ploughing his land and harvesting his corn; no more gross manor rights, no heriots, no fines, no reliefs, no dishonouring of brides; no more takes, no more arbitrary statutes, no more grindings at the lord’s mill. All men were to be free to give service for a free wage. All men and women were to wear the clothes they pleased, to go whither they pleased, to serve whom they pleased. The gates were to be opened. The great lords had surrendered!
The people on the bridge cheered Walworth the Mayor, for their hearts were with the men of Kent. The sun shone, the bells jangled. It was like May Day, and a new season was coming in.
A certain soldierly orderliness marked the marching of the peasants over London Bridge, and Walworth, who saw them cross, turned and spoke to the City Fathers who were with him.
“These sheep are not without shepherds. We shall have news to hear before nightfall.”
John Ball and Wat the Tiler headed the multitude, riding side by side, the priest carrying a wooden cross, the Tiler a naked sword. Five hundred bowmen in one company followed them, marching in step, their caps set jauntily, their belts stuck full of arrows. A wagon rumbled behind these bow-bearers, drawn along by a crowd of men who shouted and pointed their fingers at things allegorical.
Father Merlin sat in the front of the wagon, holding a steelyard on a staff, and the crowd called him Father Justice. Behind him, on two stools, were Isoult and Guy the Stallion, each clad in scarlet and white, the swashbuckler wearing a pasteboard crown, Isoult a garland of white roses. King Jack and Queen Jill were their pageant names, and it was said that they symbolised the right of the people to rule.