f the revolted peasants and artisans, under
the leadership partly of men who had arisen among their own class,
partly of certain persons of higher position who had sufficient reason
for throwing in their lot with them.

[Illustration: Extension of the Peasant's Insurrection of 1381.
Engraved by Bormay & Co., N.Y.]

The culmination of the revolt was at the time of the execution of the
great ministers of government on Tower Hill on the morning of the
14th. At that very time the young king had met a body of the rebels,
mostly made up of men from Essex and Hertfordshire at Mile End, just
outside of one of the gates of London. In a discussion in which they
stated their grievances, the king apparently in good faith, but as it
afterward proved in bad, promised to give them what they demanded,
begged them to disperse and go to their homes, only leaving
representatives from each village to take back the charters of
emancipation which he proceeded to have prepared and issued to them.
There had been no intentional antagonism to the king himself, and a
great part of the insurgents took him at his word and scattered to
their homes. The charters which they took with them were of the
following form:--

"Richard, by the grace of God, King of England and France, and Lord of
Ireland, to all his bailiffs and faithful ones, to whom these present
letters shall come, greeting. Know that of our special grace, we have
manumitted all of our lieges and each of our subjects and others of
the County of Hertford; and them and each of them have made free from
all bondage, and by these presents make them quit. And moreover we
pardon our same lieges and subjects for all kinds of felonies,
treasons, transgressions, and extortions, however done or perpetrated
by them or any of them, and also outlawry, if any shall have been
promulgated on this account against them or any of them; and our most
complete peace to them and each of them we concede in these matters.
In testimony of which things we have caused these our letters to be
made patent. Witness, myself, at London, on the fifteenth day of June,
in the fourth year of our reign."

The most prominent leaders remained behind, and a large body of
rioters spent the rest of Friday and the following night in London.
The king, after the interview at Mile End, had returned to the Tower,
then to the Queen's Wardrobe, a little palace at the other side of
London, where he spent the night with his mother. In t