For four years John was a prisoner, but well treated.  He was then allowed to resume his renovated throne; but failing to keep good his promises to the English, he came back to London by request, and died there in 1364.

The war continued under Charles, the new French monarch; and though Edward was an able and courteous foe, in 1370 he became so irritated because of the revolt of Limoges, notwithstanding his former kindness to its people, that he caused three thousand of her citizens to be put to the sword.

The Black Prince fought no more, but after six years of illness died, in 1376, with a good record for courage and statecraft.  His father, the king, survived him only a year, expiring in the sixty-fifth year of his age, 1377.

English literature was encouraged during his reign, and John Wickliffe, Gower, Chaucer, and other men whose genius greatly outstripped their orthography were seen to flourish some.

[Illustration:  A STRIKING ILLUSTRATION OF WAT TYLER’S CONTROVERSY WITH THE TAX RECEIVER.]

Edward III. was succeeded by his grandson, Richard, and war with France was maintained, though Charles the Wise held his own, with the aid of the Scotch under Robert II., the first of the Stuarts.

A heavy war-tax was levied per capita at the rate of three groats on male and female above the age of fifteen, and those who know the value of a groat will admit that it was too much.  A damsel named Tyler, daughter of Wat the Tyler, was so badly treated by the assessor that her father struck the officer dead with his hammer, in 1381, and placed himself at the head of a revolt, numbering one hundred thousand people, who collected on Blackheath.  Jack Straw and Rev. John Ball also aided in the convention.  The latter objected to the gentlemen on general principles, claiming that Adam was no gentleman, and that Eve had still less claim in that direction.[A]

[Footnote A:  Rev. John Ball chose as a war-cry and transparency these words: 

  “When Adam delved and Eve span,
  Where was then the gentleman?”

Those who have tried it in modern times say that to be a gentleman is no sinecure, and the well-bred author falls in with this sentiment, though still regarding it as a great boon.—­HISTORIAN.]

In this outbreak, and during the same year, the rebels broke into the city of London, burned the palaces, plundered the warehouses, and killed off the gentlemen wherever an alibi could not be established, winding up with the murder of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

During a conference with Tyler, the king was so rudely addressed by Wat, that Walworth, mayor of London, struck the rebel with his sword, and others despatched him before he knew exactly Wat was Wat.

Richard, to quiet this storm, acceded to the rebel demands until he could get his forces together, when he ignored his promises in a right royal manner in the same year.  One of these concessions was the abolition of slavery and the novel use of wages for farm work.  By his failure to keep this promise, serfdom continued in England four hundred years afterwards.