The Story of LondonWheatley, Henry B. (Henry Benjamin)
History
The Story of London
Wheatley, Henry B. (Henry Benjamin)
London (England) -- History
While these arrangements were going on, the soldiers, who could have
kept the Tower with ease, were ordered or at least permitted, to let in
the mob. This appears to have been part of the agreement, and we cannot
but brand it as a wicked compact, as it was clearly the duty of the
Court to protect its servants.
The unfortunate Leg, the farmer of the poll tax, was murdered, and a
learned friar, the friend and adviser of John of Gaunt, was torn in
pieces as a substitute for his patron. In the chapel, Archbishop Sudbury
and Hales were torn from the altar and hurried to Tower Hill, where
their heads were struck off and straightway placed on London Bridge.
John Ball was said to be among the first who entered the Tower, and to
have directed the outrages. The mob suffered the Princess of Wales to
escape by boat, when she went to the Queen's Wardrobe, which had been
given to Queen Philippa, and was afterwards called the Tower Royal in
the Vintry Ward. In some accounts it is said that she went to the
Wardrobe in Carter Lane, but this is a mistake. The King, after his
return from Mile End, joined his mother at the Queen's Wardrobe.
On Friday and Saturday, as they received their charters, the bulk of the
insurgents left London and returned to their homes, leaving the residue
and more dangerous masses behind them.
Mr. Trevelyan relates how the King and his nobles rode out from the
Queen's Wardrobe through Ludgate and Temple Bar, passed along the Strand
by the smouldering ruins of the Savoy to Westminster. This was on
Saturday the 15th of June. The royal party was met at the doors of the
Abbey by a sorrowful procession of monks in penitential garb, bearing
the Cross before them. The King dismounted and kissed the Cross. The
nobles, the courtiers and men-at-arms entered the church and performed
with unusual fervour the acts of piety. The reason why the monks were in
this subdued condition was owing to the fact that a violation of
sanctuary had just occurred.[44]
The insurgents had marched on Westminster, broken open the Exchequer,
destroyed the books and records, and violated the sanctuary. Richard or
John Inworth, warden of the Marshalsea, after the destruction of that
prison, had fled for refuge to Westminster Abbey. On their arrival the
mob found him at the shrine of Edward the Confessor, and having torn him
away carried him back to the city, where his head was struck off on the
block in Cheapside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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