Later that morning Sir John Newton arrived at the Tower with a message from Tyler, asking for an audience with the king. All along it was the belief of the commons that the king had but to hear the tale of their wrongs and redress would be speedily obtained. “Hold no speech with the shoeless ruffians,” was the advice of Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer. But Richard agreed to an interview, and presently rowed down the Thames in the royal barge as far as Rotherhithe with the Earl of Suffolk (President of the Council), and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick. The river bank was crowded with the commons of Kent, and Wat Tyler and John Ball urged the king to land and listen to the message his subjects brought. They were promptly rebuked by the Earl of Salisbury[66] for their boldness: “Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor are you in a fit condition for the king to talk to you.” Instead of landing, Richard listened to the counsels of fear and pride, and the royal barge was turned and rowed back swiftly to the Tower. Wat Tyler and the men of Kent, with thousands more from Surrey, at once marched on to London Bridge, where they destroyed the houses of ill-fame that clustered round the south side of the bridge. The prisons had been pulled down the night before, and now the brothels were burnt to the ground and their inmates dismissed--that the new City of God of John Ball’s vision might be cleansed of its old foulness. These places of infamy, rented by Flemish women, were the property of William Walworth, the Mayor of London; and their destruction filled him with rage against the invaders. Walworth made some attempt to fortify London Bridge by placing iron chains across the bridge; and he gave orders for the drawbridge to be pulled up, in order that a passage might be prevented. But on Tyler’s threat that he would burn the bridge if a way was not quickly made for him, Alderman Sibley (who, with Aldermen Horne and Tonge, supported the claims of the revolutionaries on the City Corporation) had the chains removed and the draw-bridge lowered, and Alderman Horne met Tyler at the city gate and bade him welcome. Fifty thousand men followed Tyler in London, and the city was now at the mercy of the peasant army. Walworth, who had no want of spirit, declared to the king and his council in the Tower that 6,000 soldiers could be raised in the city, but “fear had so fallen upon the soldiery that they seemed half dead with fright.” Sir Robert Knolles with 600 men-at-arms guarded the Tower.