GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. 85 



Meeting the royal barge at Rotherhithe, as it was passing 

 from the Tower, they claimed an interview, and, enraged 

 it the king's declining to entertain their requisitions imme- 

 diately, they entered London, burned the Duke of Lancaster's 

 new palace, and sacked the hospital of St. John. With the 

 view, it is supposed, of shewing their antipathy to John of 

 Gaunt, they issued a declaration, to the effect that no man 

 named John should be king. Part of their wrath was directed 

 igainst the Flemings, whom they looked on as interlopers, 

 For they thought, as many, and more enlightened persons have 

 thought since, that the competition of these foreigners dimin- 

 ished their own profits. Walsingham says that the mob 

 dragged thirteen of these Flemings out of the church of the 

 Austin Friars, and seventeen from another church. This 

 violation of sanctuary was an aggravation of their offence. 

 But the same author states, with evident satisfaction, that 

 the Bishop of Norwich refused sanctuary to the Norfolk in- 

 surgents, when the fugitives took shelter in the churches, 

 Decause the outbreak was hostile to the church where pro- 

 tection was sought. 



The mayor and aldermen of London were anxious, it is 

 said by some authors, to attack the rebels, who were now 

 Besting from their excesses in a drunken sleep. But, accord- 

 ing to others, the civic authorities behaved themselves in 

 much the same way as their successors did, four hundred 

 years after, in the No Popery riots. Froissart asserts that 

 the mayor and aldermen were dissuaded from any display 

 Df valour by the remonstrances of the Earl of Salisbury, who 

 recommended fair words, and argued that if the nobles were 

 repulsed in any attack on the peasants every thing would 

 be lost. But the city councils were not unanimous. Three 

 out of the twelve aldermen sided with the rebels. 



The king and his mother, with some few of the nobles, and 

 Simon Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor, 

 were guarded by a slender garrison in the Tower. On Friday 

 morning the people threatened the king that, in case he 



