We are told in an antient chronicle, written in Norman French, formerly belonging to the abbey of St. Mary's at York, that the rebels under Wat Tyler went to the Temple and pulled down the houses, and entered the church and took all the books and the rolls of remembrances which were in the chests of the LEARNERS OF THE LAW in the Temple, and placed them under the large chimney and burnt them. ("Les rebels alleront a le TEMPLE et jetteront les measons a la terre et avegheront tighles, issint que ils fairont coverture en mal array; et alleront en l'esglise, et pristeront touts les liveres et rolles de remembrances, que furont en leur huches deins LE TEMPLE DE APPRENTICES DE LA LEY; et porteront en le haut chimene et les arderont."[566]) And Walsingham, who wrote in the reign of Henry the Sixth, about fifty years after the occurrence of these events, tells us that after the rebels, under Wat Tyler and Jack Straw, had burnt the Savoy, the noble palace of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, they pulled down the place called Temple Barr, where the apprentices or learners of the highest branch of the profession of the law dwelt, on account of the spite they bore to Robert Hales, Master of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, and burnt many deeds which the lawyers there had in their custody. ("Quibus perpetratis, satis malitiose etiam locum qui vocatur Temple Barre, in quo _apprenticii juris_ morabantur _nobiliores_, diruerunt, ob iram quam conceperant contra Robertum de Hales Magistrum Hospitalis Sancti Johannis Jerusalem, ubi plura munimenta, quæ Juridici in custodiâ habuerunt, igne consumpta sunt.")[567] In a subsequent passage, however, he gives us a better clue to the attack upon the Temple, and the burning of the deeds and writings, for he tells us that it was the intention of the rebels to decapitate all the lawyers, for they thought that by destroying them they could put an end to the law, and so be enabled to order matters according to their own will and pleasure. ("Ad decollandum omnes juridicos, escaetores, et universos qui vel in lege docti fuere, vel cum jure ratione officii communicavere. Mente nempe conceperant, doctis in lege necatis, universa juxta communis plebis scitum de cætero ordinare, et nullam omnino legem fore futuram, vel si futura foret, esse pro suorum arbitrio statuenda.") It is evident that the lawyers were the immediate successors of the Knights Templars in the occupation of the Temple, as the _lessees_ of the earl of Lancaster.