No sooner is Tyler acclaimed as leader at Maidstone than the commons of Kent are flocking to the standard of revolt. The cry is for “King Richard and the Commons,” and it goes hard with any who refuse to take the oath. John of Gaunt is the enemy. John of Gaunt is held to be responsible for all the mischief wrought on the coast towns of Kent by the privateer fleets of the Scots and the French, for the raiding of Rye and Winchelsea. (Only in the previous year these fleets had invaded the Thames as far as Gravesend.) John of Gaunt is the head and front of the misrule that bled the land with poll-taxes. John of Gaunt is the incarnation of the landlord rule that would keep the labourer in bondage for ever. So bitter is the feeling against John of Gaunt, and so acute the fear that he is aiming at the crown, that a vow is taken by the men of Kent that no man named “John” shall be King of England. John of Gaunt was the common enemy. But John of Gaunt was far away on the Scottish border, and there were enemies near at hand to be dealt with. The manor-houses of Kent were attacked; in a few cases, where their owners were notoriously bad landlords, were burnt. The main thing, however, was to obtain the rent-rolls, the lists of tenants and serfs, and all the documents of the lawyers. These papers were seized and destroyed by the peasants, for no assurance of freedom was possible while such evidence of service could be produced. These documents were the legal instruments of landlord rule; and as the people had risen to end this rule, a beginning had to be made by destroying the machinery. There was no general reign of terror in the country; there was nothing of the ferocity of the Jacquerie in France; no slaughter of landlords; and no common destruction of property. The nobility seemed to expect judgment at the hands of the people, and those who were at Plymouth making preparation for their invasion of France put to sea as quickly as possible when news came of the rising.[64] But the people had risen not for blind vengeance or for civil war, and the class who suffered badly at the rising were the lawyers rather than the landlords. It was the lawyer’s hand that the peasants saw and felt, and not the mailed fist, for the lawyer was not only the land agent of the lord of the manor, he was also the judge in matters of dispute between landlord and tenant, and it was he who kept the lists of villeins and serfs, and in the service of his lord did not scruple to manipulate those lists. In those first days of the rising, when yeomen and more than one landholder joined the army of revolt,[65] and all who were willing to cry “King Richard and the Commons” were counted as supporters, the worst that the landlord suffered (except in extreme cases) was the loss of his papers, but the lawyer who clung to his office was often hanged without mercy, as a scourge to the commonwealth.