On the 28th of October, the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude, the citizens met at the Guildhall for the election of the new Mayor. The Aldermen and the more “discreet” citizens—it is one of them who tells the tale—proposed the name of Philip le Tayllor. According to usage, their nominee ought to have been accepted; but the people in the body of the Hall refused to accept him, and cried out with a great tumult, “Nay, nay, we will have no one but Walter Hervey,” and against the will of the Aldermen—one pictures a good deal of hustling and pushing—they placed their own man in the seat of the Mayor. It is not surprising that the same kind of accusations, which had formerly been brought against William Longbeard and Thomas FitzThomas, were now brought against Walter Hervey. He is said to have persuaded and promised the people that he would keep them free from all tallages, extortions, and tolls, and that they believed his word, and followed him by thousands, even in multitudes, without number. We remember that 50,000 are said to have followed Longbeard. The charge of gaining over the people by grand promises is very likely true; the demagogue has always resorted to the same methods of persuasion; in the end to the detriment or the ruin of the cause. One understands that the more popular leaders of London between 1190 and 1272 were men who desired, above all things, to render impossible the burden of unequal taxation, and to give the commons a voice in the management of their own affairs. This twofold aim is really one, because it was believed that the people, if they had the power, would exercise it wisely and justly. The leaders, however, did not realise that the average man understands by justice the shifting of his burden to the shoulders of some other man, and he is quite careless who that other man is. Hervey, however, had the people with him. The Aldermen, finding themselves thrust, in this rude way, out of power, repaired to Westminster to lay the matter before the King’s Council. They were followed by Hervey himself, accompanied by a vast multitude of his supporters. The case of the Aldermen was put with much ability: it was not the loss of their own power which they so much minded, as the chance that another civil war might be caused through the unruly pride of the populace.