84 SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS, AND THE 



the Roman vengeance which he exacted for the outrage, and 

 of the applause and sympathy which followed on his deed. The 

 poll-tax, however, could hardly have been the occasion of 

 the outbreak, for, as we shall see below, the fact of simul- 

 taneous action in Kent and Norfolk makes it certain that 

 the uprising was concocted, and could not have been due to 

 an accident. It is probable that some time elapsed between 

 Tyler's murder of the tax-gatherer and the beginning of the 

 march from Kent. Mr. Hallam has adverted to the fact that 

 there were no villains in Kent, the birth of a person in that 

 county having been held by the law-courts as a bar to 'the 

 process by which a lord reclaimed his villain, that known by 

 the name of the writ c de nativitate probanda.' I can con- 

 firm this statement negatively, for I have seen no trace of 

 personal servitude, or of any among the peculiar incidents 

 of customary holding, in the numerous accounts of Kentish 

 estates which it has been my fortune to examine. Nor were 

 the poll-taxes excessive d . The first was fairly graduated, was 

 levied on the king's uncles as well as on the peasantry the 

 Duke of Lancaster having been rated at five hundred and twenty 

 times the payment of the labourer nor was the tax levied 

 on married women. In imposing the second taxe, though it 

 was not, to all appearance, quite so just, care was taken that 

 the rate should not be oppressive. The maximum payment 

 for a man and his wife was to be sixty groats, the minimum 

 to be one. The limit of age in the first poll-tax was sixteen, 

 in the second fifteen, years. 



The insurrection broke out on the Monday before Corpus 

 Christi day, that is, June the tenth, 1381, under the leader- 

 ship of Tyler in Kent. Communications had been made, and 

 a thorough understanding entered into, with the villains of 

 Bedford, Sussex, Essex, Norwich, and other counties. On 

 their road to London they liberated Ball from Maidstone 

 gaol, and finally encamped on Blackheath. They constrained 

 Sir John Manley to communicate their demands to the king. 



d Rot. Parl. iii. 57. Rot. Parl. iii. 88. 



