"
"Nay," said I, "I come not from heaven, but from Essex."
As I said the word a great shout sprang from all mouths at once, as
clear and sudden as a shot from a gun. For I must tell you that I
knew somehow, but I know not how, that the men of Essex were gathering
to rise against the poll-groat bailiffs and the lords that would turn
them all into villeins again, as their grandfathers had been. And the
people was weak and the lords were poor; for many a mother's son had
fallen in the war in France in the old king's time, and the Black
Death had slain a many; so that the lords had bethought them: "We are
growing poorer, and these upland-bred villeins are growing richer, and
the guilds of craft are waxing in the towns, and soon what will there
be left for us who cannot weave and will not dig? Good it were if we
fell on all who are not guildsmen or men of free land, if we fell on
soccage tenants and others, and brought both the law and the strong
hand on them, and made them all villeins in deed as they are now in
name; for now these rascals make more than their bellies need of
bread, and their backs of homespun, and the overplus they keep to
themselves; and we are more worthy of it than they.
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