n those days
at least the value of 4_s._ at the present day, required of the
poorest peasant. A second poll-tax in =1380= exacted no less than
three groats from every peasant, and from every one of his unmarried
children above the age of fifteen. In =1381= a tiler of Dartford in
Kent struck dead a collector who attempted to investigate his
daughter's age in an indecent fashion. His neighbours took arms to
protect him. In an incredibly short time the peasants of the east and
south of England rose in insurrection.

4. =The Peasants' Grievances.=--The peasants had other grievances
besides the weight of taxation thrown on them by a Parliament in which
they had no representatives. The landlords, finding it impossible to
compel the acceptance of the low wages provided for by the Statute of
Labourers (see p. 248), had attempted to help themselves in another
way. Before the Black Death the bodily service of villeins had been
frequently commuted into a payment of money which had been its fair
equivalent, but which, since the rise of wages consequent upon the
Black Death, could not command anything like the amount of labour
surrendered. The landlords in many places now declared the bargain to
have been unfair, and compelled the villeins to render once more the
old bodily service. The discontent which prevailed everywhere was
fanned not merely by the attacks made by Wycliffe's poor priests upon
the idle and inefficient clergy, but by itinerant preachers
unconnected with Wycliffe, who denounced the propertied classes in
general. One of these, John Ball, a notorious assailant of the gentry,
had been thrown into prison. His favourite question was--

When Adam delved and Eve span
Who was then a gentleman?

5. =The Peasants' Revolt. 1381.=--From one end of England to another
the revolt spread. The parks of the gentry were broken into, the deer
killed, the fish-ponds emptied. The court-rolls which testified to the
villeins' services were burnt, and lawyers and all others connected
with the courts were put to death without mercy. From Kent and Essex
100,000 enraged peasants, headed by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, released
John Ball from gaol and poured along the roads to London. They hoped
to place the young Richard at their head against their enemies the
gentry. The boy was spirited enough, and in spite of his mother's
entreaties insisted on leaving the Tower, and being rowed across the
Thames to meet the insurgents on the Surrey s