On the morning of the 14th of June a proclamation was spread throughout London, recommending the crowd which surrounded the Tower and demanded the heads of the chancellor and treasurer, to retreat towards Mile End. The king promised there to come to them and to grant their requests. A portion of the mob obeyed; when Richard arrived with a weak retinue at the meeting-place (his brothers, the Earl of Kent and Lord John Holland, had quitted him on the road), he saw himself surrounded by sixty thousand peasants. Their tone was respectful, and their requests, which then appeared monstrous, do not create the same impression at the present day. They demanded the definitive abolition of servitude; the power to sell and purchase in all markets; and a general amnesty for the past. To this they added a strange claim to fix the amount of rental on lands. The king promised all that they wished, and immediately caused to be made a large number of copies of the charter which he had thus granted. {345} These were distributed among the insurgents; the men of Essex and Hertford retired in a body; but the malcontents of Kent had remained in the capital, and had not appeared at the meeting-place in Mile End. Scarcely had the king retired when these dangerous foes attacked the Tower, beheading the councillors who had taken refuge therein, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the treasurer, Sir Thomas Hale, and several others. The Princess of Wales, while yet in bed, saw a furious mob spring into her chamber. No injury was done to her, and her attendants were enabled to throw her, fainting with fright, into a little boat; she was conveyed to a house in the city belonging to the king, who there came and joined her when he had learnt the sad news of the massacre at the Tower.