The same vengeance was wreaked on the Treasurer and the Chief Commissioner for the levy of the hated poll-tax, the merchant Richard Lyons who had been impeached by the Good Parliament.

Richard meanwhile had ridden round the northern wall of the city to the Wardrobe near Blackfriars, and from this new refuge he opened his negotiations with the Kentish insurgents.

Many of these dispersed at the news of the king's pledge to the men of Essex, but a body of thirty thousand still surrounded Wat Tyler when Richard on the morning of the fifteenth encountered that leader by a mere chance at Smithfield.
Hot words passed between his train and the peasant chieftain who advanced to confer with the king, and a threat from Tyler brought on a brief struggle in which the Mayor of London, William Walworth, struck him with his dagger to the ground.

"Kill! kill!" shouted the crowd: "they have slain our captain!" But Richard faced the Kentishmen with the same cool courage with which he faced the men of Essex.

"What need ye, my masters ?" cried the boy-king as he rode boldly up to the front of the bowmen.