A longer story and a heavier doom was that of the ’prentice lads who upon ‘Evil May-day,’ as it was afterwards called, raised a tumult in the city against the competition of foreign workmen, who were about this time established in great numbers in the suburbs. One John Lincoln, a meddlesome city broker, was so much exercised at this foreign interference that he went about seeking a parson who would declaim against it from the pulpit. One Dr. Bell or Bele, who was to preach at the Spital Church, agreed to read from the pulpit a bill which this Lincoln had drawn up, and which set forth the wrongs suffered by native artificers and merchants. Dr. Bell followed the reading by an inflammatory sermon upon the text _Pugna pro Patria_, by which “many a light-headed person took courage and openly spoke against” the foreigners. As divers ill things had been done of late by these strangers, the people’s rancour was kindled most furiously against them. Conflicts took place in the streets between “the young men of the city” and the strangers, so that several of the former were committed to Newgate. Among others Stephen Studley, skinner, and Stephenson Betts. Then arose “a secret rumour that on May-day following the city would slay all the aliens.” News thereof reached Cardinal Wolsey, who summoned the Lord Mayor, and desired him to take all due precautions. It was settled by agreement between the Corporation and the cardinal that every citizen should be commanded to shut up his doors after nine at night, and keep his servants within. It so chanced that Alderman Sir John Mundy the same night, coming from his ward, found two young men playing at the bucklers, and many others looking on. The order for early closing had not indeed been fully circulated as yet. Sir John Mundy ordered the combatants to desist, and on their hesitation was for sending them to the Compter. But the apprentices rose against the alderman, crying, “’Prentices! clubs! clubs!” A crowd soon collected, the alderman took to flight, and by eleven at night there were in Cheap six or seven hundred “serving-men, watermen, courtiers, and others,” and out of St. Paul’s Churchyard came some three hundred more. The mob, growing riotous, attacked the Compter and released all prisoners confined therein for “hurting the strangers”; thence they went to Newgate and set free Studley and Betts. Gaining courage by these excesses, they ranged the streets, throwing sticks and stones, spoiling all they found. The strangers were the principal victims. The house of one Mewtas, a Picard, and those of other Frenchmen residing at the Greengate, Leadenhall, were broken open and plundered. The riot continued till three in the morning, “at which time they began to withdraw, but by the way were taken by the mayor and others, and sent to the Tower, Newgate and the Compters to the number of three hundred.”