He was only fifteen years of age;* but when he heard the rebels were posted in Smithfield, he rode boldly forth, surrounded only by the Mayor of London and a few attendants, to parley with them. He rode forward alone to speak to Wat Tyler, who presently left his own men, and came towards the king’s retinue. It is said that the unfortunate smith laid his hand in a threatening way on the hilt of his dagger. Be this as it may, William Walworth, the Mayor of London, angry at what he termed the rebel’s insolence, smote him on the head with his mace.* Wat Tyler rolled to the ground, and some of the attendants at once killed him with their daggers. The insurgents, when they saw their leader fall, bent their bows to avenge his death; but the young king rode forward to them with great presence of mind, told them that Tyler was a traitor, and that he himself would be their leader. He then placed himself at their head, and led them away into the fields towards Islington, the rebels following him in a bewildered way.
* Richard II was born in Bordeaux on January 6th, 1367, which means that in the summer of 1381 he was in fact still fourteen, though in his fifteenth year.
* The accounts of Wat’s death vary in their details, but they agree that William Walworth, Mayor London, was instrumental in it. Jean Froissart, writing some twenty-five or thirty years later, said that Tyler was insolent and renewed a heated argument, begun sometime before, with one of the King’s squires. Richard lost patience and ordered Tyler’s arrest, which he resisted; Walworth knocked Tyler from his horse with a sword stroke to the head, and one John Standish provided the coup de grace. Henry of Huntingdon said that Walworth acted because Tyler grabbed the bridle of the King’s mount; he too mentions Standish as giving the final blow.