18 THE PEASANTS’ REVOLT OF 1381. 
not thirty years before, and to which their attention must have 
been forcibly directed, as they occurred while the French king, 
John, was a prisoner in England. They had reason to be thank- 
ful that the sound common sense, self-control, fairness, and order- 
loving nature of Englishmen prevented like excesses, almost too 
horrible to contemplate, from being perpetrated in this country. 
The lessons of history have, however, in times later than the 
fourteenth century been ignored ; had it been otherwise, we should 
have been spared many a dark page in the history of the world 
during the last five hundred years. 
