No man may come truth to, but if he sing 'si dedero.' True love is away that was so good, and clerks for wealth work them woe.

God do bote, for now is time." In the rude jingle of these lines began for England the literature of political controversy: they are the first predecessors of the pamphlets of Milton and of Burke.

Rough as they are, they express clearly enough the mingled passions which met in the revolt of the peasants: their longing for a right rule, for plain and simple justice; their scorn of the immorality of the nobles and the infamy of the court; their resentment at the perversion of the law to the cause of oppression.
[Sidenote: The Peasant Rising] From the eastern and midland counties the restlessness spread to all England south of the Thames.

But the grounds of discontent varied with every district.

The actual outbreak began on the 5th of June at Dartford, where a tiler killed one of the collectors of the poll-tax in vengeance for a brutal outrage on his daughter.