STORY OF THE ENGLISH LAND 23 



names of Tyler, Kett, Wrawe, Cade, Straw, 

 Ball and Grindecobbe have either passed into 

 quasi-oblivion or are used as synonyms for 

 a reckless adventurer or a ruffian. For the 

 attitude of the governing classes towards the 

 peasants at this period no modern parallel 

 suggests itself except in the case of certain 

 mixed communities of Europeans and negroes. 

 The intermixture of hatred and dread which 

 sometimes animates a white populace in 

 relation to the blacks is reflected in the 

 vocabulary habitually employed by chroniclers 

 like Holingshed, Walsingham and Froissart 

 when they describe the brave villagers of 

 England. 



The main causes of failure in the case of 

 these peasant risings were the absence of able 

 leaders and the lack of effective combination 

 between the disaffected areas of the country. 

 The removal of Kett's able leadership broke 

 down all further resistance in Norfolk, despite 

 several signal successes against the royal 

 forces. The peasants who were massed on 

 Blackheath were masters of the situation, 

 but there was nobody to step into the place 

 of Wat Tyler, their murdered leader. Never 

 once in the whole course of English history 

 did the monarch come forward to espouse the 

 j ust rights of the poor villagers. Only once did 



