now went from village to village persuading
or compelling the people to join them. In Kent the villagers seized
pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and forced them to take an oath to
resist any tax except the old taxes, to be faithful to "King Richard
and the Commons," to join their party when summoned, and never to
allow John of Gaunt to become king. A riot broke out at Dartford in
Kent, then Canterbury was overrun and the sheriff was forced to give
up the tax rolls to be destroyed. They proceeded to break into
Maidstone jail and release the prisoners there, and subsequently
entered Rochester. These Kentish insurgents then set out toward
London, wishing no doubt to obtain access to the young king, who was
known to be there, but also directed by an instinctive desire to
strike at the capital of the kingdom. By Wednesday, the 12th of June,
they had formed a rendezvous at Blackheath some five miles below the
city. Some of the Essex men had crossed the river and joined them,
others had also taken their way toward London, marching along the
northern side of the Thames. At the same time, or by the next day,
another band was approaching London from Hertfordshire on the north.
The body of insurgents gathered at Blackheath, who were stated by
contemporary chroniclers, no doubt with the usual exaggeration, to
have numbered 60,000, succeeded in communicating with King Richard, a
boy of fourteen years, who was residing at the Tower of London with
his mother and principal ministers and several great nobles, asking
him to come to meet them. On the next day, Corpus Christi day, June
12th, he was rowed with a group of nobles to the other bank of the
river, where the insurgents were crowding to the water side. The
confusion and danger were so great that the king did not land, and the
conference amounted to nothing. During the same day, however, the
rebels pressed on to the city, and a part of the populace of London
having left the drawbridge open for them, they made their way in. The
evening of the same day the men from Essex entered through one of the
city gates which had also been opened for them by connivance from
within. There had already been much destruction of property and of
life. As the rebels passed along the roads, the villagers joined them
and many of the lower classes of the town population as well. In
several cases they burned the houses of the gentry and of the great
ecclesiastics, destroyed tax and court rolls and other