THE KING AND THE BONDMEN.
 Buut while this peaceable interview was taking place at
 Mile End, a body of the villans who had remained in
 the city, had forced their way into the Tower, deter-
 mined to have vengeance. They pulled the knights
 by the beard and mocked them with foul abuse, and
 rolled themselves on the king's bed, and rioted in his
 sumptuously furnished rooms, shouting that it was now
 their turn to reign and live with pomp and pride in a
 king's palace. All the lords and ladies who were in
 the Tower were treated with the grossest indignity;
 and the Archbishop and the Lord High Treasurer, who
 had called them "shoeless ribalds," were dragged
 from their place of refuge to the open place on Tower
 Hill, and there beheaded, amidst the shouts of the
 multitude. All sorts of insulting epithets were heaped
 upon them as they were hurried along, and all who
 could get near gave them rude cuffs and blows, asking
 in mockery whether a villan's knock could do any
 harm. No sooner had the heads of the two unfortu-
 nate noblemen fallen than they were set up on spears,
 and carried about in wild triumph, and at sight of the
 horrid spectacle, the bondmen sent up a furious shout,
 which struck dismay into the hearts of all who heard
 it. What was to be done ? whose turn would come
 next? The king was obliged to betake himself to his
 palace at Westminster, while the villans, joined by all
the rabble of the metropolis, and made bolder by suc-
cess, wantonly destroyed all that excited their dis-
pleasure. They stopped all the Lombards and other
foreign merchants and traders from France and Italy,
whom they met in the thoroughfares, and bade them
say the words-bread and cheese; and any one of the
strangers who could not pronounce the words as well
as an Englishman, was immediately put to death, the
mob shouting all the time that as they would have no