t>EASANT REVOLTS 123 



and drawing," nine or ten being hanged on one 

 beam. 



John Ball was arrested and brought to trial at St. 

 Albans. He "confessed to his abominable wicked- 

 ness," and was convicted of having *' monstrously out- 

 raged the King's Majesty " and sentenced to death. 

 On 15 July, some weeks after Wat Tyler's murder, 

 he was " hanged, drawn, and decapitated in the 

 presence of the king, and his body having been quar- 

 tered was sent to four cities of the realm." (Walsing- 

 ham.) 



The proceedings were all done in the king's name, 

 but some of them were so fiendish that they could not 

 possibly have been thought of by a boy of fifteen.^ No 

 doubt they were the acts of the minions in whose 

 tutelage he was, and of the great magnates by whom 

 he was surrounded, and who, when the danger was 

 over, let loose their vengeance on those who had 

 caused the trouble. All the leaders of the rebellion to 

 a man were put to a cruel death, and they were re- 

 garded by the old chroniclers as men unfit to live.'' 



The proper method for the student of history to 

 pursue is to discard the biassed opinions of these 

 writers, to take the facts recorded and the inferences 

 to be drawn from them, to mark the current events 



1 The friends and relations of those executed at St. Albans stealthily 

 removed the bodies from the gibbets. Strict orders were sent to the 

 bailiffs to cause chains to be made and to compel these people " to bring 

 back the same bodies to the gallows and to hang them on these chaines 

 so long as one piece might sticke to another." (Holinshed, Vol. II, 

 p. 750). This appears to be the origin of hanging in chains. 



' Walsingham gives, in order, the names of the principal leaders : — 

 Wat Tyler, the chief; John Straw, John Wraw, a lewd and naughty 

 priest ; Helyer, John Kyrkely, John Stanlynge. Stow and other writers 

 add : Alan Theder, Thomas Scotte, Radolf Rugge, Robert Westbrun, 

 John Grindecobbe, and John Lettestre, captain of the Norfolk rebels. 



