“And when the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor.” (Roger of Hoveden.) Whereupon up rose William Longbeard, the son of Osbert, and made his memorable protest against these rascally proceedings, to go down to history as the first popular agitator in England. An exceptional man was this Longbeard, a man of commanding stature and great strength, ready witted, something of an orator and a lawyer, who “burning with zeal for righteousness and fair play made himself the champion of the poor,” holding that every man, rich or poor, should pay his share of the city’s burdens according to his means. Longbeard was not of the labouring people himself. He was a member of the city council, though by no means a rich man. He had distinguished himself as a crusader in 1190, making the journey to Portugal against the Moors; and a vision of St. Thomas Becket had appeared to him and his fellow Londoners when their ship was beset by storms off the coast of Spain. Longbeard was known to the king, and he was already hateful to the ruling class because he had declared that Richard was being defrauded by financial corruption of the money raised for the crown. He had also accused his brother of treason in 1194, but the case was not proved. Richard was in Normandy in 1196, and Longbeard having banded together 15,000 men in London, under an oath that they would stick by him and each other, went to the king and laid their grievances before him. Richard heard the appeal sympathetically enough, for after all, as long as the money was forthcoming, he had no particular desire that the pockets of rich burghers should be spared at the expense of the poor, but left matters in the hands of Archbishop Hubert the justiciar. Longbeard returned to London, and with his 15,000[24] workmen in revolt, bid an open defiance to the justiciar. Only a fragment of one of Longbeard’s speeches has been preserved, a solitary specimen of popular oratory in the twelfth century.[25] Taking a passage from the prophet Isaiah for his text: “Therefore with joy shall ye draw water from the wells of the Saviour” (Isaiah xii, 3), the agitator delivers his message. “I am,” he saith, “the saviour of the poor. You the poor, who have endured the hard hands of the rich, draw ye from my wells the waters of sound doctrine, and this with joy, for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters, and the People are the waters. I will divide the humble and faithful from such as are proud and froward. I will divide the just from the unjust, even as light from darkness.” For a time Longbeard was too strong for the justiciar. Archbishop Hubert had no force at his disposal for the invasion of London, for a battle with Longbeard and his league.