58 BOROUGH OF LEWISHAM. 
Bridge on its way towards London over the marshes, but this is a 
point which yet awaits investigation, and, moreover, lies outside 
the area of our perambulation. 
It has been conjectured that the: Danes encamped on Black- 
heath in A.D. 1011, when, after taking Archbishop Alfege prisoner 
at Canterbury, they advanced towards London. They more 
probably came up the river in their ships, and seizing upon Green- 
wich they cruelly murdered the Archbishop there upon his refusal 
to allow himself to be ransomed. 
The first great. gathering on Blackheath, of which we have 
historical evidence, was that connected with the Peasant Revolt in 
the time of Richard II, commonly called Wat Tyler’s Rebellion. 
Tyler with Jack Straw and John Ball and their Kentish adherents, 
to the number of 100,000, after capturing the Castle of Rochester 
moved on to Blackheath, where they encamped prior to the descent 
on London. The mount on the Heath has been called Wat Tyler’s 
Mount, but on what authority, save uncertain tradition, cannot be 
determined. 
A scene of much magnificence must have been the meeting on 
the Heath between Henry IV and the Emperor Manuel Palaeologus, 
who came in 1400 to entreat for assistance against the Turks. But 
a far more interesting spectacle was that which took place on 
Saturday, 23rd November, 1415, on the return of Henry V from 
Agincourt. The night previous, coming from Canterbury, he had 
slept at Eltham, and on the Saturday morning at 10 o’clock the 
Lord Mayor and Aldermen of the City in their red robes and a 
great concourse of the citizens in red cloaks with red and white 
hoods, came out to Blackheath where they met the King, and with 
great acclamations escorted him to the City. There had probably 
never before been such a scene of popular enthusiasm. In the 
next year the Mayor and citizens again repaired to Blackheath to 
meet the Emperor Sigismund, who with a large retinue was 
escorted by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Bedford 
and the Duke of Ciarence. Henry himself awaited their arrival at 
St. Thomas’s Watering Place. After Henry’s marriage with 
Catherine of France he brought her to England to be crowned in 
1421, and before entering the City she was lodged for the night at 
Eltham, and on the following day she was met on Blackheath by 
a numerous company of the citizens in white cloaks with red hoods 
and capes, men of every craft in their diverse garments on horse- 
back, and minstrels with clarions ‘‘in honour and comfort of the 
King and Queen and the glorious and royal sight of strangers that 
came with them from over-sea.’’ It was a sadder company that 
assembled once more on the Heath the next year to meet the dead 
King’s body, and escort it with all honour to its resting-place in 
Westminster Abbey. 
It was on Blackheath that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, met 
Margaret of Anjou in 1428, and escorted her to his house in Green- 
wich, and in 1431 King Henry VI was met here as usual by the 
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