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He kept, however, a watchful eye on Fitz-Osbert; and seizing a favourable opportunity, attempted to commit him to custody; but the criminal, murdering one of the public officers, escaped with his concubine to the church of St. Mary le Bow, where he defended himself by force of arms. Diceto, p. 691. It was during the crusades that the custom of using coats of arms was first introduced into Europe.
There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out of the discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far more heavily taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion in WILLIAM FITZ-OSBERT, called LONGBEARD. He became the leader of a secret society, comprising fifty thousand men; he was seized by surprise; he stabbed the citizen who first laid hands upon him; and retreated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he maintained four days, until he was dislodged by fire, and run through the body as he came out.
Longbeard, who acquired the names of the Advocate and King of the Poor, is affirmed to have had above fifty thousand of the lower orders associated with him by oaths which bound them to follow whithersoever he led. Fitz-Osbert was first dragged at a horse's tail to the Tower, and then to the Elms in West Smithfield, where he was hanged, with nine of his followers.
There was one William Fitz-Osbert, commonly called LONGBEARD, a lawyer, who had rendered himself extremely popular among the lower rank of citizens; and, by defending them on all occasions, had acquired the appellation of the advocate or saviour of the poor.
The large sums, however, which he was obliged to raise by taxation to meet the expenses of the war, in the exhausted state to which the country had been reduced provoked much popular dissatisfaction; and the third year of the king's absence in particular was distinguished by the remarkable commotion excited by William Fitz-Osbert, styled Longbeard, a citizen of London, who is admitted to have possessed both eloquence and learning, and whose whole character and proceedings might not improbably, if he had had his own historian, have assumed a very different complexion from what has been given to him.
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