Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-29 00:00:00

issu
out of church, in such language as
the following :

" Ah, my good people, matters go not
well to pass in England, not shall do,
till everything be common, and that there be
no villeins nor gentlemen, but that we be all united
together, and that the lords be no greater masters
than we. What have we deserved, or why should-
we thus be kept in bondage ? We all come from
one father and mother—Adam and Eve—whereby
can they show that they are greater lords than we
be ? Saving by that, they cause us to win and
labour for what they dispend. They are clothed
in velvet, and camlet furred with ermine, and we
are vestured with poor cloth. They have their
wine, spices, and good bread, and we have the
drawing out of the chaff, and drink water.
They dwell in fair houses, and we
have the' pain and travel, rain and wind
in the fields ; and by that which cometh
of our labours they keep and maintain their
estates. We be called their bondmen, and without
we do willingly their service we be beaten ; and
we have no Sovereign to whom we can complain,
nor that will hear us, nor do us right. Let us go
to the King, he is young, and show him what
bondage we be in, and show him how we will
have it otherwise, or else we will provide us
of some remedy • and if we go together, all
manner of people who be now in bondage
will follow us, to the intent to be made
free." (2)
For enunciating these plain spoken and
honest truths poor John Bull got shnt up, in
prison, but on being released some months after-
wards, such punishment did not deter' him from
continuing to go amongst the people, and giving
even more emphatic utterance to the same things.
One can readily enough imagine the effect which
such democratic notions as the above, delivered in
such homely and forcible phraseology, would have
upon the minds of a people smarting under the
yoke of no mere imaginary, but positive wrongs ;
while their influence would be greatly strength-
ened by the fact that they were proclaimed by one
who sprung from themselves, and whose class to
whom he belonged, they knew to be suffering
from similar indignities and an oppression scarcely
less grievous than their own. When we can
remember indeed, even in our own times, men, who
having assumed to themselves the post of political
leaderships, and with far fewer pretensions to lay
claim to the honest purposes which marked the
earnestness of this straight forward and out-
spoken Kentish priest ; some of them in fact, who
have rather distinguised themselves by the
absence of any such political virtue ; when we
can remember, say, how such political Charlatans
as these have been successful on occasions in
stirring up feelings of anarchy and insurrection
among those to whom they addressed their
pernicious doctrines, it cannot be a matter of
wonder, that the people of whom I am
now writing, rude, unlettered, and ignorant of
even the most common rules of political intrigue,
should have listened with attentive ear to the
denunciation of their wrongs thus startlingly put
before them, and yielded themselves up submis-
sively to the guidance of any leader who might
chance to spring up to demand, and do battle with
them for their restitution (3). Such an opportunity
was soon afforded them. In the autumn of the
year 1380, the Parliament made known to the
Commons that the subsidies which they had
granted were inadequate to defray the debts of the
State, and they therefore demanded more. The
people cried out against it, but in spite
of this expression of popular opposition, the
Parliament persisted in framing new schemes to
raise money, and, amongst others, issued one which
is familialy known in history by the name of the

" poll tax:" This was a tai of three groats per
head on every male and female above fifteen years
of age. In towns it was to be regulated by the
rank and ability of the inhabitants, in order to
render it easier to the poor, so that no person
should pay less than one groat, nar more than
sixty for himself and wife.

This " poll tax," says a modern writer, (4) was
*ho drop to tho imp The penrile were already
writhing under the continued exactions for the
French wars, and this tax drove them to despe-
ration. What added gall to the bitterness was that
it was farmed out to some of the courtiers, who
again farmed it to foreign merchants, whose
collectors proceeded with a degree of harshness
and insolence which irritated the people beyond
endurance. It was soon discovered that the
amount which came into the treasury would by
no means reach the sum calculated upon. Com-
missions were then issued to _enquire into the
conduct of the collectors, and to enforce payment
in cases where _favour had been shown, or where
due payment had not been made-
The people became bold, and declared at once
that- they would not pay, And hence this
fatal tax threw the country into a complete
state of open rebellion. Those who resisted
it first lived in Essex, and soon after its
attempted enforement, nearly the whole of the
inhabitants in this county were ma state of general
insurrection. The feeling, as might be expected,
rapidly extended itself to the neighbouring coun-
ties. From Kent, the rising of the people there
spread like wildfire over the whole country, from
the Thames to the Number; through Hertford,
Surrey, Susses, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge,
and Lincoln, each of which districts selected their
own leader. Their numbers are said to have
reached the large amount of sixty thousand men.
At Maidstone, where they collected, they pro-
ceeded to fix upon one general leader, and almost
unanimously.elected Wat Tyler as their captain,
and the chartist preacher, John Ball, as their
chaplain. And here the latter preached them his
first sermon, selecting as his text the following
Aistich

When Adam delved, and Eve span,

•Who was then the gentleman
It is not my intention, nor indeed does it belong to
my purpose, to follow in the footsteps of this
insurgent mass, and notice the different atrocities
and world of pillage committed by them as they
proceeded through :the country on their march.
These undoubtedly ,must have been very great,
and could scarcely, in fact, be otherwise, when we
reflect upon the uneducated condition of those who
formed it, all of them full of wild excitement, and
smarting under generations of wrongs. To those
who may take an interest in the reading of such
details, I can 'only refer them to the numerous
histories .of England extant, where they will find
them duly recorded. My notion of such a history
as the present is, that it should simply deal with
the record of human. principles, and their eventual
Action on society, not in detailing the records of
wars and butcheries. I quite agree, in opinion,
with a modern writer, who says (5) that historians,
by devoting nearly all their faculties, their
passions, and, their lives ; their eloquence, their
learning, and their logic, to the martial rather
than the social history of their respective countries,
have done more than all other men put together to
perpetuate the false taste for sanguinary fame ;
and consequently, to curse their fellow-men with a
growth of warriors, rather than of the true heroes
of our race—those who combat errors, and who
establish in our midst the triumphs of mind. Had
historians placed these in the foremost ranks, and
spoken of the mere physical warriors in more
moderate and just terms, the world would have
presented to-day a very different aspect ; and,
mstead of Europe armed to the teeth, not so much
to defend as to offend the respective peoples, and
with its myriads groaning under a leaden
despotism, which is oppressing not only its limbs,
but its brain, we should have already advanced
far beyond the railway and the electric telegraph,
into the regions of beneficent science, and seen

(2) Froissarts' Chronicles.
• (3) It has been thought by some historians that the
preaching of Wycliffe had no little effect in rousing the
people at this period to a state of rebellion, and perhaps
there may be some little truth in it. " The people,"
says one historian, " once made acquainted with the
doctrines of human right, justice, and liberty, abounding.
in the Bible, and pervading it as its very essence, could
only regard the knowledge as a direct call from God to
rise, rend the bondage of their cruel slavery, and ass time
the rank of men."

(4) History of Bub..lands. Edited by William Howitt
(5) William Howitt.