The king took very summary measures for the punishment of the rioters. Bell the preacher was arrested and sent to the Tower. A commission of _oyer_ and _terminer_ was forthwith opened at the Guildhall, and the whole of the prisoners, to the number of two hundred and seventy-eight, were marched through the streets, tied with ropes, and put upon their trial. Lincoln the ringleader and other thirteen were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; for execution whereof ten pairs of gallows were put up in divers parts of the city: “before each of the Compters, at Newgate, St. Martin’s, Aldersgate, and Bishopgate, which gallows were set on wheels, to be removed from street to street and door to door as the prisoners were to be executed.” Lincoln suffered death, but the rest were reprieved pending the king’s pleasure. He lay at his manor of Greenwich just then, and thither the mayor, recorder, and divers aldermen repaired to beg mercy for the city. But Henry VIII. was not to be easily appeased. He still blamed the city authorities for not checking these disorders in a more determined fashion, and referred them for answer to his chancellor the cardinal. Wolsey granted them his favour for a consideration, and counselled them to again petition the king. They came to him, therefore, at his palace of Westminster, to the number of four hundred men, in their shirts, bound together with ropes, and with halters about their necks, and were at first sharply rebuked by the cardinal, who told them they deserved death. But at the earnest entreaty of the attendant lords, who were much moved by the humiliating sight, they were pardoned and dismissed. The gallows in the city were taken down, and all in durance were set free. Thus ended the “black waggon,” as the procession of citizens was called, but “not, as it is thought, without paying a considerable sum of money to the cardinal to stand their friend, for at that time he was in such power he did all with the king.”[33]