The plot did change, momentarily, on 8 January 1400. The townspeople were presented with a rare opportunity to intervene decisively in the politics of the kingdom, using the occasion to pursue their long struggle. After the failure of the ‘Epiphany Plot’ to kill Henry of Lancaster and restore Richard of York to the throne, the Ricardian earls of Kent and Salisbury, accompanied by Sir Ralph Lumley, Sir Thomas Blount, Sir Benedict Sely and thirty other esquires, made their escape up the Thames Valley, arriving at Cirencester after dark. They took over the Ram Inn, abutting the marketplace, where the landlord was William Tanner. None of the chroniclers tell us how the movement began, only that the lords and their retainers were quickly put under siege by ‘an armed crowd of local villeins all armed with bows and sticks’, led by John Cosyn, possibly the bailiff, and some local merchants, including Reginald (or Reynold) Spicer, a wealthy woolmonger whose memorial brass, dated 1442, describes him as ‘a merchant of this town’ and displays him with his four wives.