when sir John Newton heard that answer, he desired nothing else and so
took his leave of the king and of the lords and returned again into
his vessel, and passed the Thames and went to Blackheath, where he had
left more than threescore thousand men. And there he answered them
that the next morning they should send some of their council to the
Thames, and there the king would come and speak with them.[4] This
answer greatly pleased them, and so passed that night as well as they
might, and the fourth part of them fasted for lack of victual for they
had none, wherewith they were sore displeased, which was good reason.

[4] 'Les quatre pars d'eux,' 'four-fifths of them.'

All this season the earl of Buckingham was in Wales, for there he had
fair heritages by reason of his wife, who was daughter to the earl of
Northumberland and Hereford; but the voice was all through London how
he was among these people. And some said certainly how they had seen
him there among them; and all was because there was one Thomas in
their company, a man of the county of Cambridge, that was very like
the earl. Also the lords that lay at Plymouth to go into Portugal were
well informed of this rebellion and of the people that thus began to
rise; wherefore they doubted lest their viage should have been broken,
or else they feared lest the commons about Hampton, Winchester and
Arundel would have come on them: wherefore they weighed up their
anchors and issued out of the haven with great pain, for the wind was
sore against them, and so took the sea and there cast anchor abiding
for the wind. And the duke of Lancaster, who was in the marches of
Scotland between Moorlane and Roxburgh entreating with the Scots,
where it was shewed him of the rebellion, whereof he was in doubt, for
he knew well he was but little beloved with the commons of England;
howbeit, for all those tidings, yet he did sagely demean himself as