Then one John Legge undertook to supply the deficit, if he had the authority of the crown to act as special commissioner to collect the tax. The appointment was made, with the result that the methods of the tax-collectors provoked revolt, and Legge lost his life over the business. The rising began in Essex, when the villagers of Fobbing, Corringham, and Stanford-le-Hope were summoned to meet the tax-commissioner at Brentwood. Unable to pay, they fell upon the collectors and killed them. The government met this assault by sending down Chief Justice Belknap to punish the offenders. But as the judge merely had for escort a certain number of legal functionaries, and as the blood of the people was up, Belknap was received with open contempt, and, forced to swear on the Bible that he would hold no other session in the place, was glad to escape from the town without injury. And with this defiance and overpowering of the king’s officers the signal was given, the beacon of revolt well lighted. It was June 2nd, Whit Sunday, when the Chief Justice was driven out of Brentwood; two days later Kent had risen at Gravesend and Dartford. At Gravesend Sir Simon Burley, the friend of Richard II., seized a workman in the town, claiming him as a bondsman of his estate, and clapped him in Rochester Castle, refusing to hear of release unless £300 was paid. At the same time word went about that the tax-collector at Dartford was insulting the women, and that, in especial, the wife and daughter of one John Tyler had been abused with gross indecency. Whereupon this John Tyler, “being at work in the same town tyling of an house, when he heard thereof, caught his lathing staff in his hand, and ran reaking home; where, reasoning with the collector, who made him so bold, the collector answered with stout words, and strake at the tyler; whereupon the tyler, avoiding the blow, smote the collector with his lathing staff, so that the brains flew out of his head. Wherethrough great noise arose in the streets, and the poor people being glad, everyone prepared to support the said John Tyler.”[62] Robert Cave, a master baker of Dartford, led the people straight off to Rochester; and the castle having been stormed, and all its prisoners released, Sir John Newton, the governor of the castle, was retained in safe custody. And now the time had come for good generalship and discipline in the ranks, if the fire of revolt was to burn aright. Accordingly at Maidstone, on June 7th, Wat Tyler is chosen captain of the host; and proof is quickly given that the rising is not for mob rule or general anarchy, but to redress positive and intolerable wrongs. (Five Tylers are mentioned in the records of the Peasant Revolt: Wat Tyler, of Maidstone; John Tyler, of Dartford, who slays the tax-collector, and is not heard of again; Walter Tyler, of Essex; and two Tylers of the City of London--William, of Stone Street, and Simon, of Cripplegate.)