With grievances old and new, it wanted but little to set the home counties in revolt, and so we find the cause of the Dartford tiler to have been warmly taken up, not only throughout his native Kent, but also, across the river, in Essex. The tiler's neighbours swore they would protect him from punishment, and, marching to Maidstone, appointed him leader of the commons in Kent. The Canterbury citizens, less enthusiastic, were overawed by the number of the rebels, and several of them slain; five hundred joining in the march to London, while a dissolute itinerant priest, that famous demagogue John Ball, was enlarged from prison and appointed preacher to the throng, rousing them to fury by the rough eloquence and apt illustration with which he enlarged upon his text-- When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman? [Sidenote: REBELS] From Blackheath to London marched this great rabble. The king, with his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby; the Archbishop of Canterbury, and a hundred knights and sergeants were retired for safety to the Tower, whence they issued by boat to receive the petitions of the insurgents. Ten thousand of them waited at Rotherhithe, and by their fierce yells and threatening appearance so terrified the king's attendants that, instead of permitting him to land, they took advantage of the tide, and returned. This behaviour disappointed Tyler, who saw no hope of concessions from the king's advisers. He and his men burst into London, and, joined by the discontented host from Essex and Hertfordshire, under the leadership of one John Rakestraw (who has come down to us through the ages as Jack Straw, and whose camping-ground on Hampstead Heath bears to this day the old inn known as "Jack Straw's Castle"), plundered the town, burning the Palace of the Savoy and all the buildings and records of the Temple. Fear eventually led the Court party to grant the four chief demands of the people: the abolition of slavery; the reduction of the rent of land to fourpence an acre; free liberty of buying and selling in all fairs and markets; and a general pardon for past offences. Had Tyler and Rakestraw been content with these concessions, it is probable that all would have been well; but their ambition had grown with success, and they trusted to further violence for greater advantage. Rushing into the Tower at the head of four hundred men, they murdered there the Archbishop of Canterbury and five others, and, retaining no less than twenty thousand followers in the City, intercepted the king as he rode out the following morning attended only by sixty horsemen. With boorish insolence, Tyler lay hold of the king's bridle, when Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, stabbed him in the throat. Falling from his horse, the rebel leader was despatched by an esquire. The courage and tact of the young king are historical, and the way in which he quelled the hostility of the insurgents, and drew their