During the latter years of King Edward III., John of Gaunt became very unpopular. “The good Parliament” (1376) remonstrated against the expense of his unsuccessful wars in Spain, Scotland, and France, and against the excessive taxation. The duke imprisoned the Speaker, and banished wise William of Wyckeham from the king’s person, but in vain attempted to alter the law of succession. In Wat Tyler’s rebellion the duke’s palace was the first to be destroyed. A refusal to pay oppressive poll-tax led to a riot at Fobbing, a village in Essex; from this place the flame spread like wildfire through the whole county, and the people rose, led by a priest named Jack Straw. At Dartford, a tiler bravely beat out the brains of a tax-collector who had insulted his daughter. Kent instantly rose, took Rochester Castle, and massed together at Maidstone, under Wat, a tiler, and Ball, a preacher. In a few days a hundred thousand men, rudely armed with clubs, bills, and bows, poured over Blackheath and hurried on to London.[197] In Southwark they demolished the Marshalsea and the King’s Bench; then they sacked Lambeth Palace, destroyed Newgate, fired the house of the Knights Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, and that of the Knights of St. John at Highbury, and seizing the Tower, beheaded an archbishop and several knights. All Flemings hidden in churches were dragged out and put to death. Yet, with all this intoxication of new liberty, the claims of these Kentish men were simple and just. They demanded--The abolition of slavery; the reduction of rent to fourpence an acre; the free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and lastly a general pardon. At the great bivouacs at Mile End and on Tower Hill, Wat Tyler’s men required all recruits to swear to be true to King Richard and the Commons, and to admit no monarch of the name of John.[198] This last clause of the oath was aimed at John of Gaunt, to whom the people attributed all their misery. On June 13, 1381, a deluge of billmen, bowmen, artisans, and ploughmen rolled down on the Savoy. The duke was at the time negotiating with the Scots on the Borders, while his castles of Leicester and Tutbury were being plundered. The attack was sudden, and there was no defence. A proclamation had previously been made by Wat Tyler, that, as the common object was justice and not plunder, any one found stealing would be put to death.