{347} The two priests, Jack Straw and John Ball, were hanged. Lester and Wistbroom, who had assumed the title of "Kings of the Commons" in the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk, suffered the same fate. About fifteen hundred rioters were executed. It was found necessary to fix them to the gibbet with iron chains; their friends came by night to carry off their bodies. The Parliament had assembled, publicly approving of the abolition of the concessions granted to the villeins during the struggle. "We would never have consented to them," said the barons, "even had we all been compelled to perish on the same day." For the moment, there was some talk of abolishing servitude; but the opposition was so strenuous, the proprietors of fiefs declared so loudly that their serfs belonged to them by right, and that they could not be deprived of them without their consent, that the idea was immediately abandoned, and the high treason law was voted, condemning "riots, disturbances, and other analogous things," in terms as dangerous as they were vague. The king demanded money, the commons claimed a complete amnesty; neither would begin to make concessions. The Parliament at length yielded; the tax upon wool and leather was prolonged for five years, and the king proclaimed the amnesty; he was about to wed Anne of Bohemia, soon known throughout the whole of her kingdom as "the good queen." The Bishop of Norwich was fighting in Flanders, in support of the citizens of Ghent hard pressed by their count, recently a victor at the battle of Rosebecque, where Philip van Arteveldt had been killed; and the uncles of the king contended with each other for the authority in England. The Earl of Cambridge had been made Duke of York, and the Earl of Buckingham Duke of Gloucester. {348} Henry Bolingbroke, son of the Duke of Lancaster, had become Earl of Derby; at the same time, the king had made Earl of Suffolk and Duke of Ireland, his favorites Michael de la Pole and Robert de Vere, obscure persons, whom the Princess of Wales had placed beside her son, by reason of her jealousy towards his uncles; and who contributed, by their influence, to the struggles and disputes of the government. The princess had recently died, having succumbed beneath the weight of the anxieties caused by one of her sons, Lord John Holland; he had recently assassinated one of the servants of the king, and was unable to quit the church in which he had taken refuge. Plot succeeded plot--denunciation to denunciation. At length, the Duke of Lancaster started out for Spain, in order to sustain the pretensions of his wife to the throne of Castile; and he contrived, after two campaigns, to marry his eldest daughter to the heir of Henry of Transtamare, thus assuring the crown to her children. The Scots had crossed the frontier, and King Richard entered Scotland. France was preparing a great armament.