when

Justice of law is held;
The privilege of royalty
Is safe, and all the barony
Worshipped is in its estate.
The people stands in obeisance
Under the rule of governance.

Chaucer is less explicit, and may have been too little of a politician by
nature to care for preserving an outward consistency in his incidental
remarks concerning the lower classes. In his "Clerk's Tale" he finds room
for a very dubious commonplace about the "stormy people," its levity,
untruthfulness, indiscretion, fickleness, and garrulity, and the folly of
putting any trust in it. In his "Nun's Priest's Tale" he further enlivens
one of the liveliest descriptions of a hue-and-cry ever put upon paper by
a direct reference to the Peasants' Rebellion:--

So hideous was the noise, ah bencite!
That of a truth Jack Straw, and his meinie
Not made never shoutes half so shrill,
When that they any Fleming meant to kill.

Assuredly, again, there is an unmistakably conservative tone in the
"Ballad" purporting to have been sent by him "to King Richard," with its
refrain as to all being "lost for want of steadfastness," and its
admonition to its sovereign to

...shew forth the sword of castigation.