and drove them roughly from the town. The
discontents leading to the outbreak of 1381 were,
perhaps, as much political as social or economic:
the men of Fobbing and the neighbourhood were for
the most part fishermen who had had first-hand
experience of the results of the Government's
mismanagement of the French War, for the carrying
on of which the poll tax had been levied. That
Government had been unable to protect the English
shores from constant ravaging and plundering by
French ships and only a short time before these events
French pirates had sailed up the Thames and burnt
and harried in the neighbourhood of Gravesend.
It is interesting to notice that the risings spread
along the East Coast as far as Scarborough, where
the French raids had also stopped.
The Government, on hearing Bampton's report,
sent Robert Belknap, Chief Justice of the Court of
Common Pleas, on a special commission to punish
the rioters, who, in the meantime, had prepared for
resistance. Belknap was attacked by an armed
multitude when he attempted to hold the Court and
although he escaped, after swearing on the Bible
never fo hold another such session, three of his clerks
and three of the local jurors were killed. These
outrages at Brentwood were naturally followed by a
general outbreak throughout the country, accompanied
by much riot and plundering, special attention being
paid to the harrying of lawyers and the destruction of
manor houses and manorial records. A few days
after the first resistance in Essex, the Kentish peasants
broke out into revolt ; they crossed the Thames,
conferred with the Essex rebels around Barking
and took back with them to Kent a hundred Essex
men, who joined them in the outbreaks at Dartford
and Rochester. Historical evidence seems to show,
in fact, that Wat Tyler more probably came from
Essex than from Kent.
A feature of the rising was the savage attack on
the Flemings. There is a tradition that men suspected
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