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wandering craftsmen, and ne'er - do - well artisans.
Like those who joined David at the cave of
Adullam, "every one that was in distress, and
every one that was in debt, and every one that was
discontented " came and swelled the
tide of disaffection
and revolt. It had some terrible results. Sudbury,
the Archbishop of Canterbury was murdered,
John of Gaunt's magnificent palace of the Savoy was
plundered and burnt, and the Abbey of St. Edmundsbury
utterly devastated. The plunder of this great
monastic establishment "shows what vast agricultural
proprietors the monks had become. A thousand
horses, a hundred and twenty plough oxen,
two hundred cows, three hundred bullocks, three
hundred hogs, ten thousand sheep were driven off,
and granges and barns burned to the ground."^
But the rising was speedily quelled. Richard II.
arrested its progress with great courage and ability,
and a politic concession to the demands of the
people, whose condition he promised to ameliorate.
The ultimate results of the rising were of no unimportant
character. " The landlords gave up the
practice of demanding base services : they let their
lands to leasehold tenants, and accepted money payments
in lieu of labour
;
they ceased to recall the
emancipated labourer into serfdom, or to oppose his
assertion of right in the courts of the manor and
the county. Rising out of villenage, the new
freemen enlarged the class of yeomanry and
strengthened the cause of the Commons in the
country and in parliament; and from 1381 onwards
'
Green's "History of the English People," vol. i. p. 481.