Wat Tyler

Extract

It is singular and instructive to mark how close is the resemblance between the popular discontents of different times and the spring as well as the progress of their action. During the fourteenth century the great body of the people, especially in England, was gradually rising in the scale of civilisation, and, at the same time that the pressure on them was increased, the simplest civic rights were denied them. During the age we are referring to, there was a contemporaneous movement of the lower classes—of the body of the people—in various countries. The stern slavery under the feudal system was relaxing. The voice of the serf, who so long in silence had endured his bondage, was at length more or less heard. The spirit of freedom, which heretofore had animated only the noble and the high-born, was now inflaming the hearts of those who, under the bonds of villain-service, had been part of the ownership of the soil. There was an almost simultaneous rising of the lower orders of the people, and its not being confined to any one country, can only be explained by general, and, doubtless, various causes affecting European society and governments at large.