True it is that this William Walworth, being a man wise, learned, and of an incomparable manhood,[182] arrested Wat Tyler, a presumptuous rebel, upon whom no man durst lay hand, whereby he delivered the king and kingdom from most wicked tyranny of traitors. The mayor arrested him on the head with a sound blow, whereupon Wat Tyler, furiously struck the mayor with his dagger, but hurt him not, by reason he was well armed. The mayor, having received his stroke, drew his basiliard, and grievously wounded Wat in the neck, and withal gave him a great blow on the head; in the which conflict, an esquire of the king’s house, called John Cavendish, drew his sword, and wounded Wat twice or thrice even to the death; and Wat, spurring his horse, cried to the commons to revenge him: the horse bare him about eighty feet from the place, and there he fell down half dead; and by and by they which attended on the king environed him about, so as he was not seen of his company: many of them thrust him in divers places of his body, and drew him into the hospital of St. Bartholomew, from whence again the mayor caused him to be drawn into Smithfield, and there to be beheaded. In reward of this service (the people being dispersed) the king commanded the mayor to put a bascinet on his head; and the mayor requesting why he should do so, the king answered, he being much bound unto him, would make him knight: the mayor answered, that he was neither worthy nor able to take such estate upon him, for he was but a merchant, and had to live by his merchandise only; notwithstanding, the king bade him to put on his bascinet, and then with a sword in both his hands he strongly stroke him on the neck, as the manner was then; and the same day he made three other citizens knights for his sake in the same place; to wit, John Philpot, Nicholas Brember, and Robert Launde, alderman. The king gave to the mayor one hundred pounds land by year, and to each of the other forty pounds land yearly, to them and their heirs for ever. After this, in the same year, the said Sir William Walworth, founded in the said parish church of St. Michael a college of a master and nine priests, or chaplains, and deceased 1385, was there buried in the north chapel by the choir; but his monument being amongst other by bad people defaced in the reign of Edward VI., and again since renewed by the fishmongers, for lack of knowledge of what before had been written in his epitaph, they followed a fabulous book, and wrote Jack Straw instead of Wat Tilar, a great error meet to be reformed there and elsewhere; and therefore have I the more at large discoursed of this matter.