As for Blackheath, it seems that when, in older days, people had assignations on the Dover Road, they generally selected this place for the purpose; whether they were kings and emperors that met; or ambassadors, archbishops, rebels, or rival pretenders to the crown, they each and all came here to shake hands and interchange courtesies, or to speak with their enemies in the gate. It is very impressive to find Blackheath thus and so frequently honoured by the great ones of the earth; but it is also not a little embarrassing to the historian who wants to be getting along down the road, and yet desires to tell of all the pageants that here befell, and how the high contending parties variously saluted or sliced one another, as the case might be. Indeed, to write the history of Blackheath would be to despair of ever seeing Dover, and so, instead of beginning with Aulus Plautius, or any of the masterful Roman generals who doubtless had something to say to those cerulean Britons on this spot, I will skip the centuries, and only note the more outstanding and interesting occasions on which the heath has figured largely. Hie we then from the first to the fourteenth century, when, in 1381, Wat, the Tiler of Dartford, encamped here as leader of a hundred thousand insurgents. The fount and origin of this famous rebellion has ever been popularly sought in the historic incident of Dartford, in which the tax-gatherer lost his life; but a discontent had long been smouldering among the people, which needed only an eloquent happening of this nature to be fanned into a flame. The Poll Tax was one of the greatest grievances of the time, and the high rent of land was even more burdensome. The price of land might, perhaps, have been borne with, for it was of gradual growth, and regulated more or less by the law of supply and demand, but the Poll Tax was a new burden, and one exacted harshly from the people by the nobles among whom the Government had farmed it. Then, too, the state of serfdom in which the _villeins_ existed was odious to them at this lapse of time, when men began to aspire to something better than to be the mere pawns of kings and nobles, sent to fight for feudalism on foreign battlefields, or in fratricidal conflicts at home. The days were drawing to a close when it was possible for kings to issue prescriptions for the seizing of artisans to be set to work on the building of royal palaces and castles; documents couched in this wise: "To our trusty and well-beloved Richard, Earl of Essex: Know ye that it is our pleasure that you do take and seize as many masons, carpenters, braziers, and all kinds of artificers necessary to the reparation of our Castle of Windsor, and that this shall be your warrant for detaining them so long as may be necessary to the completion of the work."