e various
parties of the insurgents were encamped in and around London, the
glare of their fires flashing on the buildings and lighting up the
sky, and their shouts, sometimes of merriment and sometimes of anger,
filling the air. The peaceable inhabitants passed the night in great
alarm. Some of them endeavored to conciliate the good-will of the
insurgents by offering them food and wine. The wine, of course,
excited them, and made them more noisy than ever. Their numbers, too,
were all the time increasing, and no one could foresee how or when the
trouble would end.

The next morning, a grand consultation among the rebels was determined
upon. It was to be held in a great open space called Smithfield--a
space set apart as a cattle-market, at the outskirts of London, toward
the north. All the leaders who had not returned to their homes were
present at the consultation. Among them, and at the head of them,
indeed, was Wat Tyler.

The king that morning, it happened, having spent the night at the
private house down the river where his mother had sought refuge after
making her escape from the Tower, concluded to go to Westminster to
attend mass. His real motive for making this excursion was probably to
show the insurgents that he did not fear them, and also, perhaps, to
make observations in respect to their condition and movements, without
appearing to watch them.

He accordingly went to Westminster, accompanied and escorted by a
suitable cortege and guard. The mayor of the city of London was with
the party. After hearing mass at Westminster, the king set out on his
return home; but, instead of going back through the heart of London,
as he had come, he took a circuit to the northward by a road which, as
it happened, led through Smithfield, where a great body of the
insurgents had assembled, as has already been said. Thus the king came
upon them quite unexpectedly both to himself and to them. When he saw
them, he halted, and the horsemen who were with him halted too. There
were about sixty horsemen in his train.

Some of his officers thought it would be better to avoid a
re-encounter with so large a body of the insurgents--for there were
about twenty thousand on the field--and recommended that the king's
party should turn aside, and go home another way; but the king said
"No; he preferred to speak to them."

He would go, he said, and ascertain what it was that they wanted more.
He thought that by a friendly colloquy with