A HISTORY OF SURREY 



burnt the Court Rolls, 1 and the townsmen of Guildford complained in 

 1383 that their charters were lost in the disturbances of 1381. The 

 county town was probably in the hands of the mob, who burnt the 

 charters after their common practice. The privileges of the probi 

 homines of the corporation were an object of indifference to the villeins, 

 and no doubt of dislike to the unprivileged workmen in the town. We 

 do not hear that they mastered the castle, where many of them expiated 

 their offence later in the year. The main body of insurgents entered 

 Southwark on June 1 2 and broke open the Marshalsea and King's Bench 

 prisons, plundered the houses of obnoxious persons, and incited doubtless 

 by the Lollard and Franciscan preachers who were with them, demol- 

 ished the houses of ill-fame which the bishop of Winchester leased to 

 Walworth the Lord Mayor, who sub-let them to ' the frows of Flanders.' 

 The Essex men, on the same day, sacked the palace of the archbishop at 

 Lambeth and burnt the Chancery Records. There must therefore have 

 already been communication by boat with the Essex, Middlesex and 

 Hertfordshire men who were in London. The bridge was still being 

 held by the authorities with the drawbridge up. On June 13 the 

 Surrey men 'cried to the warders of the bridge to let it down, whereby 

 they might pass, or else they would destroy them all.' 2 These Surrey 

 men were doubtless the people of the Surrey side of the Thames, ap- 

 pealing to their London neighbours. So the mob passed over, and 

 Sir William Walworth avenged the cause of order and his own private 

 injuries together upon Wat the Tiler. 



But with the dispersal of the mob from London, undirected, puzzled 

 perhaps and terrified at their own success, the state of confusion by no 

 means ceased in the southern counties. The ruling classes drew armies 

 together, and put down the Essex villeins after severe fighting, and 

 marched through the counties south of the Thames with sword and 

 halter. An extraordinary commission was appointed to deal with the 

 offenders in Surrey and Sussex. At its head was the Earl of Arundel and 

 Surrey, with William de Percy the sheriff, and five leading gentlemen. 

 Guildford Castle, the common gaol of the two counties, was full of 

 prisoners, and the earl was directed to . bestow the rest in his castles of 

 Arundel and Lewes. The number at Guildford was too great to be kept 

 securely, and one had escaped. Violent suppression was being answered by 

 new threatenings of insurrection. In December, 1381, the Patent Rolls, 

 whence we gather these particulars, show that commissioners were ap- 

 pointed to preserve the peace, separate bodies for Surrey and Sussex with 

 the earl at the head of each. They were commanded to arrest persons 

 meeting in unlawful assemblies or who incited to insurrection, to suppress 

 assemblies and to put down rebels by armed force. The words of the 

 commission reveal to us the villeins and others they were not by any 

 means only villani in the technical sense who were involved in the risings 



1 Chertsey Ledger Book, fol. 173^. Not all however, fora Court Roll of Thorpe is said by Manning 

 and Bray to be in existence of an older date than 1381. 

 a Stowe. 



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