Froissart's description of the Peasants' Revolt is one of our main sources of information concerning this important event, and seems likely to be fairly accurate. He himself was, of course, an aristocrat, and was in no way disposed to be favourable to the "wicked rebels"; but he seems anxious to represent their case as fairly as possible, although he is plainly out of sympathy with the ideas and arguments of the rebels. It is noteworthy that the rising was almost simultaneous in many parts of the country, but its chief headquarters were in Kent, one of the most prosperous counties in the kingdom, where actual distress was least likely to be prevalent; and it is probable that the peasants in this county had benefited to no small extent by the economic changes which succeeded the Pestilence of 1349, and had improved both their material conditions and their intellectual outlook. The ideas of liberty which formed the motive of the revolt were somewhat vague, but were strengthened by numerous concrete instances of injustice and injury; and the concentration of the insurgents upon London forms one of a long series of indications of the importance of the city as the determining factor in vital issues. =Source.=—Froissart's _Chroniques_. In the mean season there fell in England great mischief and rebellion of the common people, by which deed England was at a point to have been lost without recovery.... It was a marvellous thing, and of poor foundation, that this mischief began in England, and to give ensample to all manner of people, I will speak thereof as it was done, as I was informed, and of the incidents thereof. There was an usage in England, and yet is in divers countries, that the noblemen have great franchises over the commons, and keep them in servage, that is to say, their tenants ought by custom to labour their lords' lands, to gather and bring home their corn, and some to thresh and to fan, and by servage to make their hay and to hew their wood and bring it home. All these things they ought to do by servage, and there be more of these people in England than in any other realm. Thus the noblemen and prelates are served by them, and specially in the counties of Kent, Essex, Sussex, and Bedford. These unhappy people of these said counties began to stir, because they said they were being kept in great servage, and in the beginning of the world, they said, there were no bondmen, wherefore they maintained that none ought to be bond, without he did treason to his lord, as Lucifer did to God.... And of this imagination was a foolish priest in the county of Kent, called John Ball, for which foolish words he had been three times in the Bishop of Canterbury's prison: for this priest used oftentimes on the Sundays, after mass, when the people were going out of the minster, to go into the cloister and preach, and made the people to