in? Have they not taken my
name as their battle-cry? And do ye think this falsehood veils nothing
but the simple truth of just complaint?"

"Was their rising, then," asked St. John, in evident surprise, "wholly
unauthorized by you?"

"So help me Heaven! if I would resort to arms to redress a wrong, think
not that I myself would be absent from the field! No, my lords, friends,
and captains, time presses; a few words must suffice to explain what as
yet may be dark to you. I have letters from Montagu and others, which
reached me the same day as the king's, and which clear up the purpose
of our misguided countrymen. Ye know well that ever in England, but
especially since the reign of Edward III., strange, wild notions of some
kind of liberty other than that we enjoy have floated loose through the
land. Among the commons, a half-conscious recollection that the nobles
are a different race from themselves feeds a secret rancour and
mislike, which, at any fair occasion for riot, shows itself bitter and
ruthless,--as in the outbreak of Cade and others. And if the harvest
fail, or a tax gall, there are never wanting men to turn the popular
distress to the ends of private ambition or state design. Such a man has
been the true head and front of this commotion."

"Speak you of Robin of Redesdale, now dead?" asked one of the captains.

"He is not dead. [The fate of Robin of Redesdale has been as obscure as
most of the incidents in this most perplexed part of English history.
While some of the chroniclers finish his career according to the report
mentioned in the text, Fabyan not only more charitably prolongs his
life, but rewards him with the king's pardon; and according to the
annals of his ancient and distinguished family (who will pardon, we
trust, a license with one of their ancestry equally allowed by history
and romance), as referred to in Wotton's "English Baronetage" (Art.
"Hilyard"), and which probably rests upon the authority of the life of
Richard III., in Stowe's "Annals," he is represented as still living in
the reign of that king. But the whole account of this famous demagogue
in Wotton is, it must be owned, full of historical mistakes.] Montagu
informs me that the report was false. He was defeated off York, and
retired for some days into the woods; but it is he who has enticed
the sons of Latimer and Fitzhugh into the revolt, and resigned his
own command to the martial cunning of Sir John Coniers. This Robin of
Red