The England of Chaucer and Langland, that poetical England whose prose took so long to come to shape, was already, as we have seen, the parliamentary England that has continued up to this day. She defended her interests, bargained with the king, listened to the speeches, sometimes very modest ones, that the prince made her, and answered by remonstrances, sometimes very audacious. The affairs of the State being even then the affairs of all, every free man discussed them; public life had developed to an extent with which nothing in Europe could be compared; even bondmen on the day of revolt were capable of assigning themselves a well-determined goal, and working upon a plan. They destroy the Savoy as a means of marking their disapprobation of John of Gaunt and his policy; but do not plunder it, so as to prove they are fighting for an idea: "So that the whole nation should know they did nothing for the love of lucre, death was decreed against any one who should dare to appropriate anything found in the palace. The innumerable gold and silver objects there would be chopped up in small pieces with a hatchet, and the pieces thrown into the Thames or the sewers; the cloths of silk and gold would be torn. And it was done so."[681] Many eloquent speeches were delivered at this time, vanished words, the memory of which is lost; the most impassioned, made on heaths or in forest glades, are only known to us by their results: these burning words called armed men out of the earth. These speeches were in English; no text of them has been handed down to us; of one, however, the most celebrated of all, we have a Latin summary; it is the famous English harangue made at Blackheath, by the rebel priest, John Ball, at the time of the taking of London.[682] Under a quieter form, which might already be called the "parliamentary" form, but often with astonishing boldness and eloquence, public interests are discussed during this century, but nearly always in French at the palace of Westminster. There, documents abound; the Rolls of Parliament, an incomparable treasure, have come down to us, and nothing is easier than to attend, if so inclined, a session in the time of the Plantagenets. Specimens of questions and answers, of Government speeches and speeches of the Opposition, have been preserved. Moreover, some of the buildings where these scenes took place still exist to-day.[683]