Chapter V: Part 5

John of Gaunt was the common enemy. But John of Gaunt was far away on the Scottish border, and there were enemies near at hand to be dealt with. The manor-houses of Kent were attacked; in a few cases, where their owners were notoriously bad landlords, were burnt. The main thing, however, was to obtain the rent-rolls, the lists of tenants and serfs, and all the documents of the lawyers. These papers were seized and destroyed by the peasants, for no assurance of freedom was possible while such evidence of service could be produced. These documents were the legal instruments of landlord rule; and as the people had risen to end this rule, a beginning had to be made by destroying the machinery. There was no general reign of terror in the country; there was nothing of the ferocity of the Jacquerie in France; no slaughter of landlords; and no common destruction of property.

The nobility seemed to expect judgment at the hands of the people, and those who were at Plymouth making preparation for their invasion of France put to sea as quickly as possible when news came of the rising.[64] But the people had risen not for blind vengeance or for civil war, and the class who suffered badly at the rising were the lawyers rather than the landlords. It was the lawyer’s hand that the peasants saw and felt, and not the mailed fist, for the lawyer was not only the land agent of the lord of the manor, he was also the judge in matters of dispute between landlord and tenant, and it was he who kept the lists of villeins and serfs, and in the service of his lord did not scruple to manipulate those lists.

In those first days of the rising, when yeomen and more than one landholder joined the army of revolt,[65] and all who were willing to cry “King Richard and the Commons” were counted as supporters, the worst that the landlord suffered (except in extreme cases) was the loss of his papers, but the lawyer who clung to his office was often hanged without mercy, as a scourge to the commonwealth.

Tyler was at Canterbury on Monday, June 10th, and here Archbishop Sudbury’s palace was ransacked for papers, and his tenant-rolls burnt. Beyond this, and a rough exhortation to the monks to prepare to elect a new archbishop, no injury was done. The following day Tyler was back at Maidstone, and his men burst open the archbishop’s prison and released John Ball, with all others who had incurred ecclesiastical displeasure. This accomplished, with John Ball, the people’s poor priest, in the midst of them, 30,000 men of Kent--yeomen, craftsmen, villeins and peasants--set out for London under Wat Tyler’s command.

Blackheath was reached at nightfall on Wednesday, June 12th, and a camp fixed; but a few indefatigable rebels hastened on to Southwark that same night to burst open the Marshalsea and King’s Bench prisons. John Wraw was at Blackheath, and after a short conference with Wat Tyler, hastened back to Suffolk to announce that the hour of rising had struck.

Near Eltham Tyler had overtaken the young king’s mother, the widow of the Black Prince, returning from a pilgrimage, and had promised that no harm should befall her or her women from his host. Reassured, the princess and her company went on their way in safety to the Tower of London, where Richard and his council were assembled, and told of the great uprising.

Judges had already been despatched into Kent at the first news of the disorders, but had turned back before reaching Canterbury, not liking the look of things.

Early on Thursday morning, June 13th, the camp at Blackheath was astir. It was Corpus Christi day and a solemn festival. After mass had been said before all the people, John Ball preached on his old theme of equality and brotherhood. “For if God had intended some to be serfs and others lords He would have made a distinction between them at the beginning.” He went on to speak of the work to be taken in hand at once.

“Now is the opportunity given to Englishmen, if they do but choose to take it, of casting off the yoke they have borne so long, of winning the freedom they have always desired. Wherefore let us take good courage and behave like the wise husbandman of scripture, who gathered the wheat into his barn, but uprooted and burned the tares that had half-choked the good grain. Now the tares of England are her oppressive rulers, and the time of harvest has come. Ours it is to pluck up these tares and make away with them all--the evil lords, the unjust judges, the lawyers, every man indeed who is dangerous to the common good. Then should we all have peace for the present and security for the future. For when the great ones have been rooted up and cast away, all will enjoy equal freedom, all will have common nobility, rank and power.”

The sermon was received with bursts of cheers, and the people shouted that John Ball should be archbishop, “for that the present archbishop and chancellor, Simon Sudbury, was but a traitor.”

Later that morning Sir John Newton arrived at the Tower with a message from Tyler, asking for an audience with the king. All along it was the belief of the commons that the king had but to hear the tale of their wrongs and redress would be speedily obtained.

“Hold no speech with the shoeless ruffians,” was the advice of Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer. But Richard agreed to an interview, and presently rowed down the Thames in the royal barge as far as Rotherhithe with the Earl of Suffolk (President of the Council), and the Earls of Salisbury and Warwick.

The river bank was crowded with the commons of Kent, and Wat Tyler and John Ball urged the king to land and listen to the message his subjects brought. They were promptly rebuked by the Earl of Salisbury[66] for their boldness:

“Gentlemen, you are not properly dressed, nor are you in a fit condition for the king to talk to you.”

Instead of landing, Richard listened to the counsels of fear and pride, and the royal barge was turned and rowed back swiftly to the Tower.

Wat Tyler and the men of Kent, with thousands more from Surrey, at once marched on to London Bridge, where they destroyed the houses of ill-fame that clustered round the south side of the bridge. The prisons had been pulled down the night before, and now the brothels were burnt to the ground and their inmates dismissed--that the new City of God of John Ball’s vision might be cleansed of its old foulness. These places of infamy, rented by Flemish women, were the property of William Walworth, the Mayor of London; and their destruction filled him with rage against the invaders.

Walworth made some attempt to fortify London Bridge by placing iron chains across the bridge; and he gave orders for the drawbridge to be pulled up, in order that a passage might be prevented. But on Tyler’s threat that he would burn the bridge if a way was not quickly made for him, Alderman Sibley (who, with Aldermen Horne and Tonge, supported the claims of the revolutionaries on the City Corporation) had the chains removed and the draw-bridge lowered, and Alderman Horne met Tyler at the city gate and bade him welcome.

Fifty thousand men followed Tyler in London, and the city was now at the mercy of the peasant army. Walworth, who had no want of spirit, declared to the king and his council in the Tower that 6,000 soldiers could be raised in the city, but “fear had so fallen upon the soldiery that they seemed half dead with fright.” Sir Robert Knolles with 600 men-at-arms guarded the Tower.

It was now that Wat Tyler’s great qualities of leadership and the good discipline of his army were seen. With London in his hands, he warned his followers that death would be the instant punishment for theft; and proclaimed to the citizens, “We are indeed zealots for truth and justice, but we are not thieves and robbers.” Every respect was to be shown to the persons and property of the people of London, and wrath was only to fall on John of Gaunt and the ministers of the crown, and the lawyers--the enemies, as it seemed to Tyler, of the good estate of England. In return, the citizens offered bread and ale freely to the invaders, and London artisans joined their ranks in large numbers.

The archbishop’s palace at Lambeth was soon stormed, and all the records it contained were destroyed; the building itself was left uninjured.

At four o’clock in the afternoon the Savoy Palace of John of Gaunt, by the Strand, was in flames; and all its wealth of treasure, rich tapestries and costly furniture, rare vessels of gold and silver, precious stones, and art work of priceless value, heaped up on a bonfire or ground to powder. The Duke of Lancaster’s jewelled coat, covered with gems, was set up as a target and riddled with arrows, before it was cut into a thousand pieces and pounded to dust. One wretched man was caught attempting to sneak off with a silver cup; and being taken in the act, was put to death as Tyler had decreed. The Savoy was burnt to the ground, but no one interfered with its inhabitants; and Henry, Earl of Derby, John of Gaunt’s son (who was to reign in Richard’s stead as Henry IV.), passed out with all his servants unmolested. The wine-cellar proved fatal to certain of the host, who, drinking freely, perished, buried under the fallen building.

From the Savoy the army of destruction passed to the Temple, the head-quarters of the Knights Hospitallers, of whom Sir Robert Hales was president, and a hive of lawyers. The Temple was burnt, but no lives were lost; for the lawyers, “even the most aged and infirm of them, scrambled off with the agility of rats or evil spirits.”

At nightfall the priory of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell, the prisons at the Fleet and at Newgate, and the Manor House at Highbury, had all been demolished; and the men of Essex, led by Thomas Faringdon, a London baker, were at Mile End; while William Grindcobbe, with a body of men from St. Albans, lay at Highbury.

In vain Walworth urged the king and his royal council to act. Richard had sent to Tyler asking for a written statement of the grievances of the commons, and had been told in reply that the king must meet his commons face to face, and hear with his own ears their demands. In the evening Walworth proposed that the garrison at the Tower should be despatched against Tyler, “to fall upon these wretches who were in the streets, and amounted to 60,000, while they were asleep and drunk. They might be killed like flies,” Walworth added, “for not one in twenty had arms.”

But the handful of soldiers at the Tower were in mortal terror of the peasant host, and “all had so lost heart that you would have thought them more like dead men than living.”

The Earl of Salisbury checked Walworth’s rash proposals. “If we begin what we cannot carry through,” he observed, “we shall never be able to repair matters. It will be all over with us and our heirs, and England will be a desert.”

An open conflict with Tyler and his 60,000 was a very hazardous proceeding. Who could be sure of escape if it came to battle? So far Tyler had only struck at the chief ministers and the lawyers, and why should others risk their lives in such a quarrel? Besides, it was said that Wat Tyler and a mad priest of Kent were for doing away with all nobles, and for making all men equal, and caution was necessary in dealing with men who held such strange opinions. England without its nobility would be a desert, and at all costs such an irreparable calamity as the loss of England’s nobility must be prevented.

So Walworth got no help in his plans for resistance; and when that night a messenger from Tyler warned the king that if he refused to meet the commons of England in open conference, the people would seize the Tower, Richard sent word in reply promising to meet his subjects on the morrow at noon at Mile End, and there hear their complaints.

Tyler accepted the king’s word, and after sleeping with his men hard by the Tower, at St. Catherine’s Wharf, was at Mile End betimes. Here he met Grindcobbe, and hearing that the people of Hertfordshire had trouble with the abbot at St. Albans, bade Grindcobbe return and accomplish freedom for the abbot’s tenants and serfs.

Richard went to Mile End with no large retinue, and two of his companions, the Earl of Kent and Sir John Holland, left him at Whitechapel and galloped off in craven fear of the multitude that thronged the road. Richard, though he was only fifteen, displayed both courage and cunning when confronted with Tyler. He knew that the discontent in the country was directed against the government, and not against the king, and that the misrule could not fairly be laid to his charge. Besides, he was the son of the Black Prince, and the people showed no signs of hostility. His policy was to yield and to wait an opportunity for regaining power.

The conference at Mile End began with a request from Richard to know what was required of him. Tyler answered that first all traitors should be executed, and to this demand the king agreed. Then four definite proposals were put forward by Wat Tyler:

1. A free and general pardon to all concerned in the rising.

2. The total abolition of all villeinage and serfdom.

3. An end to all tolls and market dues,--“freedom to buy and sell in all cities, burghs, mercantile towns, and other places within our kingdom of England.”

4. All customary tenants to be turned into lease-holders whose rent should be fixed at 4d. an acre for ever.

Richard at once assented to these requests, and to prevent any uncertainty and remove all doubt or suspicion of good faith, thirty clerks were set to work on the spot to draw up charters of manumission, and to present banners to each county represented.

Then Richard bade the people return home in peace, bearing the king’s banner in token that the king had granted the request of his subjects. One or two from each village remained to carry the charters of freedom signed and sealed by royal warrant.

Richard was taken at his word. Thousands of the peasants dispersed that day believing their cause had triumphed. Nothing could be plainer than the charters of manumission:--“Know that of our special grace we have manumitted all our liege and singular subjects and others of the county of Hertford, freed each and all of their old bondage, and made them quit by these presents; pardon them all felonies, treasons, transgressions, and extortions committed by any and all of them, and assure them of our _summa pax_.”

So ran the document which the peasants of Hertford bore, and similar charters were given to the counties of Bedford, Essex, Kent, and Surrey.

Richard was also taken at his word concerning the execution of traitors, and by the authority of Wat Tyler, Archbishop Sudbury, the chancellor, Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer, and John Legge, the poll-tax commissioner, were dragged out of the Tower and beheaded on Tower Hill. When Richard returned from Mile End the heads of these three men were on the gate of London Bridge.

Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, deserved a better fate, for he was an amiable and gentle priest, and “lenient to heretics.” As chancellor he shared the punishment of a government deservedly hated, but there were many who deplored his death.

The soldiers at the Tower offered no resistance, but joked and fraternised with the people.

(John of Gaunt’s chaplain, William Appleton, some of Legge’s subordinates, and Richard Lyons also perished that day on Tower Hill. Of these, Richard Lyons was a thoroughly corrupt person, who five years earlier had been convicted of gross usury and of fraudulently “forestalling” in the wool trade, and had escaped the penalty of the law on being sentenced to pay a heavy fine and suffer imprisonment. At one time he had been a member of Edward III.’s council, and in that capacity had enriched himself and his friends at the expense of the nation.)

A cry was raised in London that night against the Flemings, and many of these industrious aliens, whose only offence was the employment of cheap labour, were put to death, denied even the right of sanctuary when they fled to the altar of the church of the Austin Friars. The houses of certain unpopular citizens were also fired, and it went hard with all who refused to shout for “King Richard and the Commons.”

But Tyler gave no sanction to the attack on the Flemings, and though the London mob took the law into its own hands and dealt roughly with those whom it disliked, there is no evidence of general rioting and disorder. To the end the peasant folk in London remembered the brotherhood John Ball had proclaimed, and respected their fellows, and their good order is a lasting tribute to their leaders.

Tyler, with the bulk of the men of Kent and Surrey, remained in the city, and the king hearing of what had happened at the Tower, decided to pass the night at the Wardrobe, by St. Paul’s, whither his mother had gone when the Tower was invaded.

Tyler, in spite of all that had been obtained at Mile End, was not satisfied. The peasants and serfs had been freed by royal warrant, but the landlords remained in possession of power, and there was no promise of better government, no word as to the restoration of the old common rights in the land, or the repeal of the savage forest laws. Reforms had been won, but the changes were not strong enough to ensure a social revolution.

Once more, on the Saturday, June 15th, Richard was invited to meet his subjects, and again he declared his willingness, summoning his commons by proclamation to meet him that afternoon at Smithfield, in the square outside St. Bartholomew’s Priory.

It seemed on the morning of June 15th as though the rising had succeeded triumphantly. The peasants had their charters of manumission, the nobles were thoroughly alarmed and cowed, the soldiery powerless, and Wat Tyler and his men still held the City of London.

Holding such an advantage, Tyler determined to make the king decree further reforms, and when the two met at Smithfield, the confidence of victory could be seen in the peasant leader’s bearing.

Richard, with two hundred retainers, and with Henry, Earl of Derby, the Earls of Suffolk and Salisbury, Sir Simon Burley, and Walworth, the mayor, were on the east side of the square, the great priory at their back.

Tyler and his army drew up on the west side, and when Walworth opened the proceedings by calling on Wat Tyler to speak with the king, Tyler, seated on a little horse, rode out into the middle of the square with a single attendant. There he dismounted, dropped on one knee before the king, and shook him heartily by the hand. He bade Richard be of good cheer, and declared that within a fortnight he should have even more thanks from the commons than he had won already. “You and I shall be good comrades yet,” Tyler added.

Richard, in some embarrassment, enquired why the commons did not return home, and Tyler answered with a great and solemn oath that no one should leave the city until they had got a further redressing of all their grievances. “And much the worse will it be for the lords of this realm if this charter be refused,” he concluded.

Then Richard bade Tyler say what charter it was the commons demanded.

“First, then,” said Tyler, “let no law but the law of Winchester prevail throughout the land, and let no man be made an outlaw by the decree of judges and lawyers.[67] Grant also that no lord shall henceforth exercise lordship over the commons; and since we are oppressed by so vast a horde of bishops and clerks, let there be but one bishop in England; and let the property and goods of the holy Church be divided fairly according to the needs of the people in each parish, after in justice making suitable provision for the present clergy and monks. Finally, let there be no more villeins in England, but grant us all to be free and of one condition.”

“All that you have asked for I promise readily,” Richard answered, “if only it be consistent with the regality of my crown. And now let the commons return home since their requests have been granted.”

In the presence of his nobles and the hearing of his people the king had promised that the demands of his subjects should be granted.

For Wat Tyler the victory seemed complete, and now that the battle was won he called out that he was thirsty, and complained of a parched throat. The days had been strenuous, and Tyler longed for a draught of the good home-brewed beer of his native county. His attendant brought him water, and Tyler rinsed out his mouth with it, to the disgust of the king’s courtiers. Then beer was brought in a mighty tankard, and Tyler drank a deep draught to the health of “King Richard and the Commons.” He remounted his little horse, while the nobles stood by in silent and sullen anger, “for no lord or counsellor dared to open his mouth and give an answer to the commons in such a situation.” Had they not heard it proclaimed that henceforth all were to be free and equal in the land?

A “valet of Kent,” some knight in the royal service, broke silence, muttering loudly his opinion that Wat Tyler was the greatest thief and robber in all Kent.

Tyler caught the abusive words, and immediately ordered his attendant to cut down the man who had spoken in this insulting fashion.

The “valet” edged back within the ranks of the king’s party, and Tyler drew his dagger. Walworth, sharing to the full the rage of the nobles at the capitulation of the king, and yet anxious to avoid a conflict, shouted that he would arrest all those who drew weapons in the royal presence. Tyler struck impatiently at Walworth, but the blow was harmless, for the mayor had armour on beneath his jerkin.

Before Tyler could defend himself the mayor retaliated. Drawing a short cutlass he slashed at Tyler, wounding him in the neck so that he fell from his horse. And with the fall of their leader fell all the promised liberties of the peasants, and the rising collapsed.

Two knights, Ralph Standish and another, plunged their swords into him while he was on the ground. Still, mortally wounded though he was, Tyler managed to scramble on to his little horse. He rode a yard or two, gave a last call on the commons to avenge his death, and then dropped to the ground to rise no more.

Had the commons at once attacked the king’s party, they would have conquered. But confusion fell upon the people, and there was no one ready to take command. “Let us stand together,” “We will die with our captain or avenge him,” “Shoot, lads, shoot,”--the various cries went up, and the bowmen looked to their weapons.

But Richard, with the presence of mind that marked his dealings with the people at Mile End, turned the doubt and uncertainty to his own advantage. He rode out boldly into the middle of the square, reminded the people that he, and not Tyler, was their king, and bade them follow him into the fields and receive their charters.

There was no reason to refuse obedience, no reason to mistrust the king. Tyler had always spoken well of Richard, and the people themselves had seen him only yesterday sign their charters, and had heard him in Tyler’s presence, only a few minutes ago, promise to do the will of the commons. It was not by the king’s hand that their leader had been slain.

A small band carried Tyler’s body into the Priory of St. Bartholomew, while the rest of the peasants followed Richard into the fields that stretched from Clerkenwell to Islington. Here he held them until Sir Robert Knolles arrived with 700 soldiers, for Walworth had lost no time in spreading the news that Tyler was dead, and in raising a troop for the king. By Richard’s orders the commons were dispersed when the soldiery arrived, the men of Kent, now broken and dispirited, being marched through the city, and left to take their way home.

That very night Walworth and Standish were knighted for what they had done, and in the morning Wat Tyler’s head stared horribly from London Bridge.

“My son, what sorrow I have suffered for thee this day,” cried the king’s mother, when Richard came to the Wardrobe.

“I know it well, madam,” answered the king; “but rejoice with me now, and thank God that I have this day won back my heritage of England, so nearly lost.”

The great uprising was over. Wat Tyler had fallen, as it seemed, in the very hour of victory.

By Walworth’s orders, Jack Straw and two prominent men of Kent were hanged on the night of June 15th, without the formality of trial. Jack Straw, an itinerant priest sharing John Ball’s views, it is said, explained before he died what had been in the minds of the leaders of the revolt. They had meant to get rid of the supremacy of the landlords altogether, and to substitute for the established clergy a voluntary ministry of mendicant friars; the boy-king was to be enlisted in the cause of the revolution before the monarchy was finally abolished; and in place of parliament and royal council each county was to enjoy self-government.[68]

No longer in the presence of danger, the king and his ministers struck fiercely at the rebels.

On June 18th a general proclamation was issued ordering the arrest of all malefactors and the dispersal of all unruly gatherings. On June 22nd, Chief Justice Sir Robert Tressilian went on assize, and “showed mercy to none and made great havock.” John Ball was taken at Coventry and, with Grindcobbe, hanged at St. Albans on July 15th.

The Earl of Suffolk went down to Suffolk with 500 lances on June 23rd, and John Wraw, with twenty others, including four beneficed clergy, was quickly taken and hanged. Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, grandson of Edward III.’s minister, suppressed the rising in Norfolk, and walked beside Litster to the gallows.

At least a thousand peasant lives were sacrificed to the law under Tressilian’s sentence.

At Waltham a deputation came to Richard to ask if it were true that the royal promises and charters were annulled, and the king’s answer left no room for doubt, for it breathed all the hatred and contempt of the commons that Tyler had striven to end:

“O vile and odious by land and sea, you who are not worthy to live when compared with the lords whom ye have attacked; you should be forthwith punished with the vilest deaths were it not for the office ye bear. Go back to your comrades and bear the king’s answer. You were and are rustics, and shall remain in bondage, not that of old, but in one infinitely worse. For as long as we live, and by God’s help rule over this realm, we will attempt by all our faculties, powers, and means to make you such an example of offence to the heirs of your servitude as that they may have you before their eyes, and you may supply them with a perpetual ground for cursing and fearing you.”

In despair at this rough ending to all their cherished hopes of freedom, the Essex peasants made a last attempt to fight for liberty, and on June 28th, at Great Baddow and Billericay, more than 500 fell before the king’s soldiery.

On July 2nd all the charters of manumission and royal pardons were declared formally annulled, and sheriffs were strictly forbidden to release any prisoners. It was not till August 30th an amnesty was granted to those suspected of taking part in the rising. In the autumn parliament refused to ratify the charters, and the lawyers declared that without the consent of parliament the charters were illegal.

So there was an end to all Wat Tyler and the peasants had risen to obtain, and well might it seem that the rising had been in vain.[69]

Yet it was not altogether in vain that John Ball had rung his bell and died for his faith, that Wat Tyler had led the peasant folk of Kent to do battle for freedom. The poll-tax was stopped for one thing. And villeinage was doomed. “The landlords gave up the practice of demanding base services; they let their lands to leasehold tenants, and accepted money payments in lieu of labour; they ceased to recall the emancipated labourer into serfdom or to oppose his assertion of right in the courts of the manor and the county.” (W. Stubbs.)

The great uprising brought out the desire for personal liberty in the labouring people of England that has never since been utterly quenched. It was the first insistence that peasants and serfs were men of England. “It taught the king’s officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years’ time there were very few bondsmen left in England.” (F. York Powell.)

If Wat Tyler died as a man should for the cause he loves, few of those who trampled on the cause of the peasants were to know the paths of peace in later years.

Richard died in prison at the hands of Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son, whom Tyler had let depart in safety when the Savoy was in flames. The Earls of Suffolk and Warwick died exiled fugitives. The Earl of Salisbury, fleeing from Henry V., was hanged in the streets of Cirencester. Chief Justice Tressilian was hanged for a traitor in 1387, and Sir Simon Burley was beheaded.

This worldly wealth is nought perseverant
Nor ever abides it in stabilitie.

Jack Cade, the Captain of Kent

1450

AUTHORITIES: William of Worcester, Gregory, Mayor of London, 1451–2; _Collections of a London Citizen_; _an English Chronicle_; _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_ (Camden Society); Fabyan--_Ellis Letters_ (second series), _Issue Rolls, Devon, Rolls of Parliament, Paston Letters_, vol. i, with introduction by Dr. Gairdner; Orridge--_Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion_; Durrant Cooper--_John Cade’s Followers in Kent and Sussex_; J. Clayton--_True Story of Jack Cade_; Dr. G. Kriehn--_The English Rising in 1450_, Strasburg, 1892.

JACK CADE, THE CAPTAIN OF KENT

1450

The rising of the commons of Kent in 1450 under their captain, Jack Cade, was the protest of people--sick of the misrule at home and of the mismanagement of affairs abroad--driven to take up arms against an incapable government that would not heed gentler measures.

It was not such a peasant revolt as Wat Tyler had led, this rising of the fifteenth century. It was largely the work of men of some local importance, and country squires were active in enrolling men, employing the parish constable for that purpose in a good many parishes.[70]

For years discontent had been rife. Henry VI., a weak, religious man, more fit for the cloister than the throne, had lost the great statesmen of the early years of his reign. The Duke of Bedford, good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and Cardinal Beaufort were all dead, and Richard, Duke of York, by far the ablest man left among the nobles, had been banished to the government of Ireland. The Duke of Suffolk became the chief minister of the crown in 1445, and all the disasters of the war in France and of corrupt maladministration in England were laid at his door. Suffolk was responsible for the king’s marriage with the penniless princess, Margaret of Anjou, who, ambitious and self-willed, proved the worst possible counsellor for Henry. And the price of this marriage was the territories of Anjou and Maine, which were ceded to Margaret’s father, besides a heavy tax of one-fifteenth of all incomes demanded by Suffolk in payment for his expenses in arranging and carrying out the undesirable wedding. The years of Suffolk’s ministry saw nothing but defeat and disgrace as the hundred years’ war with France drew to its end. The victories of Edward III. and Henry V., and all the wealth of life and treasure poured out so lavishly by England, had come to nothing, and by 1451 all France save Calais was lost. Popular discontent turned to action early in 1450 against Suffolk and his fellow ministers. At the opening of parliament Suffolk was impeached as a traitor, along with Lord Say-and-Sele, the treasurer, and Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury; and Suffolk, without even demanding a trial by his peers, threw himself on the king’s mercy. Henry was satisfied with the banishment of his fallen minister for five years; but when Suffolk went on board, the sailors of the vessel that was to take him across seas decreed a capital sentence, and after a rough court-martial trial the Duke of Suffolk was beheaded on May 2nd in a small boat off the coast of Dover, and his body left on the sands. Four months earlier, Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, who had only just resigned the keepership of the Privy Seal, and was known as a supporter of Suffolk’s, had been slain by the sailors of Portsmouth, when he arrived at that town with arrears of pay long overdue to the troops. Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, survived till the end of June, and then, at the time when Cade was marching on London, he was dragged away from the very altar of Erdington Church, in Wiltshire, when he had said mass, and put to death on a hill there by the infuriated people of his diocese.[71]

Widespread as the discontent was in 1450, there was no general movement throughout the land as in the days when John Ball and his companions bound the peasants together by village clubs. Kent, “impatient in wrongs, disdaining of too much oppression, and ever desirous of new change and new fangleness,” was well organised for revolt, and the men of Surrey and Sussex were ready to bear arms with Cade. Outside these counties no one is found to have taken the lead against the government. Kent and Sussex had their own reasons for revolt, for piracy swept the English Channel unchecked, and the highways were infested with robbers--soldiers broken in the war; and they had their leader--Mortimer, whom some called “John Mendall” and others, later, Jack Cade. So by the end of May a full list of grievances and necessary reforms was drawn up, and the commons of Kent had, for the second time in history, risen in arms and encamped on Blackheath, resolute to get redress from the king for their injuries.

The success of democratic revolt depends largely on the clear courage of its leaders and the complete confidence of the people in those they elect for their captains. In 1450 Jack Cade proved himself both clear-headed and brave, and the men of Kent followed him whole-heartedly.

To this day we are still in the dark as to the real name and family of the Captain of Kent. He was known popularly as “Mortimer,” and was so described in the “pardon” he received. He was a man of some property, or he would not have been attainted by special act of parliament, nor have enjoyed the confidence of the men of substance who accepted his generalship. He was known as an Irishman and as a soldier in the French wars, and it is likely enough that he served under the Duke of York both in France and Ireland. His strong advocacy of the claims of York favours the notion of kinsmanship; but, on the other hand, York was by far the ablest statesman of the day, and to demand his recall to the king’s council was no guarantee of family motives.

There was some talk at the time that Cade was called John Aylesmere, and that he was married to the daughter of a Surrey squire at Taundede. But there is no more evidence for these things than for the charges made against him in the warrant for his arrest, that he had once killed a woman in Sussex and had then fled to France and fought with the French arms.

The undisputed high character of Cade’s followers is all against the portrait painted by the government after his death; when, anxious to blacken the good name of so resolute a leader, it was made out that he was merely a disreputable ruffian. The landowners of Kent and Sussex would never have accepted for their captain a mere swashbuckling blackguard. They rallied to him as a Mortimer, seeing in him a likeness to Richard, Duke of York.[72] If his real name was Cade, then he was probably a squire or yeoman, for Cade was no uncommon name round Mayfield and Heathfield in Sussex, and Cades were landed proprietors near Reigate as late as the seventeenth century.

It was enough that, chosen Captain of Kent, Cade, or Mortimer, was known and trusted as a brave, upright man of good character and ability.[73] Whether descended from nobles or of good Sussex stock was a small matter to men in earnest for the changes and reforms the country needed.

Ashford was the heart of the rising, and from Ashford the host marched to Blackheath, where, at the beginning of June, the camp was fixed. The army, estimated at 46,000, included 18 esquires, 74 county gentlemen, and some five clerks in holy orders, who were presently joined by the Abbot of Battle, the Prior of Lewes, and twenty-three county gentlemen from Sussex.

Cade at once explained that they must deal directly with the king if they were to get relief from their present burdens, and then set to work to draw up the bill of “the complaint and requests” of the commons of Kent, while the rank and file laboured “to dyke and stake the camp all about, as it had been in the land of war.”

But war had not yet been declared, and for the present discipline was loose in the camp at Blackheath.[74] “As good was Jack Robin as John at the Noke, for all were as high as pig’s feet; until the time that they should come and speak with such states and messengers as were sent unto them. Then they put all their power into the man that was named captain of all their host.”

On June 7th the king was at Smithfield with 20,000 soldiers, and messengers were promptly despatched to Blackheath to know the meaning of the insurrection. Cade answered by showing the petition he had drawn up, and mentioned that they had assembled “to redress and reform the wrongs that were done in the realm, and to withstand the malice of them that were destroyers of the common profit, and to correct and amend the defaults of them that were the king’s chief counsellors.” He then sent off the “bill of complaints” to the king and to the parliament then sitting at Westminster, “and requested to have answer thereof again, but answer he had none.” The “complaint” was received with contempt, and the opinion of the king’s counsellors was that “such proud rebels should rather be suppressed and tamed with violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer.”

Yet “the complaint,” which consisted of fifteen articles, was no revolutionary document. It contained protests against the royal threat to lay waste Kent in revenge for the death of the Duke of Suffolk; the diversion of the royal revenue raised by heavy taxation to “other men”; the banishment of the Duke of York “to make room for unworthy ministers who would not do justice by law, but demanded bribes and gifts”; the purveyance of goods for the royal household without payment; the arrest and imprisonment on false charges of treason of persons whose goods and lands were subsequently seized by the king’s servants, who then “either compassed their deaths or kept them in prison while they got possession of their property by royal grant”; the interference with the old right of free election of knights of the shire by “the great rulers of the country sending letters to enforce their tenants and other people to choose other persons than the common will is to elect”; the misconduct of the war in France, demanding inquiry and the punishment by law of those found guilty. Complaint was also made of various local grievances--the insecurity of property, the arbitrary conduct of the lords of the seaports, the extortion in taxation owing to sheriffs and under-sheriffs farming their offices, the fines exacted by sheriffs for non-compliance with the orders of the court of exchequer (whose writs were sealed with green wax) when no summons or warning had been given, and the “sore expense” incurred by there being only one Court of Sessions in the whole county.

Five “requests” were added to the bill of complaints. These expressed the desire of the commons that the king should reign “like a king royal”; that “all the false progeny and affinity of the Duke of Suffolk” should be banished from the king’s presence and brought to trial, and the Duke of York and his friends included in the royal council; that punishment should be meted out to those responsible for the death of the Duke of Gloucester; that the extortions practised daily by the king’s servants in the taking of goods from the people should cease; that the old Statute of Labourers for keeping down wages should be abolished; and that the “false traitors” and “great extortioners,” Lord Say and Crowmer, the sheriff of Kent, should be brought low.

In brief, the charter of the commons of Kent demanded the total expulsion of all Suffolk’s ministers and relatives from public service, the return of the Duke of York and his party to power, the suppression of the bribery, corruption, and extortion practised by the sheriffs and government servants, and the repeal of the Statute of Labourers.

It would have been well if Henry had heeded these complaints and requests. As it was he pushed on to Blackheath, in spite of murmuring in his army, and Cade, unwilling to risk a battle, and knowing that disaffection was at work in London, quietly withdrew to Sevenoaks. There was no spirit in the royal troops to suppress the rising, and many favoured the Captain of Kent. But two knights, Sir Humfrey Stafford and Sir William Stafford, kinsmen of the Duke of Buckingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and men of some military repute, decided to pursue the rebels and advanced to Sevenoaks with a small picked body of soldiers. Their defeat was complete. Both knights were slain, and those of their men who were not cut to pieces fled from the battle, or joined Cade’s host.

The result of this disaster to the royal plans was that Henry returned to London with an army that soon melted away, or broke into open disorder. Many of the nobles, who on receipt of the petition of the commons of Kent had called for violent measures against the rebels, now left the king, and, with their retainers, rode to their country estates. Henry, to appease the clamour of some of his own followers, ordered the arrest of Lord Say-and-Sele, the king’s treasurer, and of Sheriff Crowmer, and bade officers take them to the Tower. Parliament was dissolved, and Cade was busy in Kent gathering reinforcements, and doing what he could to repair locally the mischief of Suffolk’s rule before proceeding to London.[75]

As a last resource, Henry decided to treat with Cade by ambassadors, and on June 29th, when the commons were again encamped on Blackheath, came the Duke of Buckingham, and Stafford, Archbishop of Canterbury, for many years the king’s chancellor--a gentle old man, who, if he had made no stand against the misgovernment himself, was hardly to be blamed--to arrange, if possible, a peaceful settlement.

The conference came to nothing, for neither Buckingham nor the archbishop could promise Cade any positive redress of grievances, or the interview he sought with the king.

“These lords found him sober in talk, wise in reasoning, arrogant in heart, and stiff in opinions; one who that by no means would dissolve his army, except the king in person would come to him, and assent to the things he would require” (Holinshed.)

The failure of the mission was reported, and Henry, after appointing Lord Scales as guardian of the prisoners in the Tower, hastily fled to Kenilworth, although the lord mayor and citizens of London promised to stand by him if he would remain in the city. There was little of sovereignty in Henry VI., son of Henry V., the conqueror of Agincourt. Quiet he loved, and in religious exercises he found the satisfaction that others found in war and statecraft.

On the first of July the way was open for the commons to enter London. Suffolk, Bishop Moleyns, and Bishop Ayscough had all been summarily executed. Lord Say, the treasurer, alone remained of the discredited ministers. No opposition was offered to Cade by the citizens of London. The Common Council had discussed the rising, and at the Guildhall only one dissentient voice had been raised to the admission of the Captain of Kent to the city. One Horne, a stockfishmonger and alderman, alone objected to any recognition of the unlawful assembly of the commons, and he was sent to Newgate prison for safety, and on Cade’s entry fined 500 marks for his daring speech.

Negotiations had been opened between the City Council and the commons while the latter were at Blackheath, and Thomas Cocke (or Cooke),[76] a past warden of the Drapers’ Company, acted as the mutual friend of both parties. From Cocke the corporation learnt of Cade’s purposes, and that the city stood in no danger from the rising; and it was Cocke who carried instructions from Cade to the wealthy foreign merchants, requiring them to furnish horses, arms and money for his army.

“Ye shall charge all Lombards and strangers, being merchants, Genoese, Venetians, Florentines and others this day to draw them together: and to ordain for us, the captain, twelve [sets of] harness complete, of the best fashion, twenty-four brigandines, twelve battle-axes, twelve glaves, six horses with saddle and bridle completely harnessed, and 1,000 marks of ready money.”

So ran the summons, which was duly obeyed.[77] For Cade had added the stern warning that “if this demand be not observed and done, we shall have the heads of as many as we can get of them.”

The corporation had really no choice but to welcome Cade. Kings and nobles had fled, and here was the Captain of Kent with 50,000 men come to do justice at their gates. London had suffered as badly as any place from the misgovernment of the country, and it was plain the commons of Kent were no army of maurauders, for no complaint had been heard of their ill doing in Kent, and their captain had treated with full civility the Duke of Buckingham and Archbishop Stafford.

So the keys of the city were presented to Cade, and at five o’clock on the 2nd of July the Captain of Kent, mounted on a good horse, rode across London Bridge, followed by all his army. In Cannon Street, in the presence of Sir John Chalton, the Lord Mayor, and a great multitude of people, Cade laid down his sword on the old London Stone and declared proudly, “Now is Mortimer lord of this city.” At nightfall he returned to his headquarters, the White Hart, a famous inn in Southwark, and next morning was betimes in the city. That day sentence was passed on Lord Say-and-Sele and on his son-in-law, Sheriff Crowmer. They were removed from the Tower by Cade’s orders, taken to the Guildhall, tried and condemned for “divers treasons,” and for “certain extortions,” and executed forthwith. Say was beheaded at the standard in Cheapside, and Crowmer at Mile End, and so bitter was the public feeling against these two men, and so fierce the popular hatred, that their heads were carried on poles through the city, and made to kiss in ghastly embrace before being placed on London Bridge.

These, with a third man named John Bailey, who was hanged with Cade’s permission for being a necromancer and a dabbler in magic and the black arts, were the only persons put to death while Mortimer was lord of the city. At Southwark, where the commons were now encamped, as at Blackheath, theft in the popular army was treated as a capital offence, and two or three “lawless men” were hanged. It was inevitable if discipline and good order were to be obtained in so vast a company that punishment should follow sharp and swift on all who brought discredit on the rising.

Lord Say and Sheriff Crowmer being dead, the city fathers saw no further purpose in Cade’s lordship, and they dreaded being called upon to contribute to the support of his army, for they knew that Cade needed money for his men. To the everlasting credit of the commons no charge was laid against them of riot or disorder. The city was in their hands for three days, yet no harm befell the citizens. On their captain alone has blame fallen for the events of those days in July.

The difficulties of the man were immense. He had rendered no mean service to the state by calling attention to the ills that plagued the country, and proposing remedies. He had roused a large body of Englishmen to demand a better government, and by the sharp method of the times he had got rid of a bad minister and a corrupt sheriff, so that public life was at least the healthier for the deliverance from two of its oppressors. And now he had this army of 50,000 men, all needing food and shelter--an orderly, well-disciplined body, no mob of mercenaries--and the city of London, with all its wealth, gave him nothing.

Cade had to get supplies. The commons of Kent could not live on the good will of the London people. Their captain was forced to levy toll where he could. At present all he had received was the tribute from the foreign merchants and 500 marks from the fishmonger Horne.

On July 3rd, the night of Say’s execution, Cade supped with Philip Malpas, Cocke’s father-in-law. Malpas was one of Suffolk’s party, a King Henry’s man, unpopular in the city, and though an alderman and a draper, an expelled member of the city council. Warned by Cocke, Malpas got rid of his valuables before Cade arrived. But the Captain of Kent found certain jewels belonging to the Duke of York in the house, and these he carried off.[78]

The following night Cade supped with a merchant named Curtis (Ghirstis according to Fabyan, Girste according to Stow) in the parish of St. Margaret Pattens and before he left insisted on a contribution to the war chest. Curtis paid, but he resented bitterly the abuse of his hospitality. It seemed to him, as it seemed to his fellow merchants to whom he told the tale of his wrongs, sheer robbery, and the following morning (Sunday, July 5th), while Cade rested quietly at the White Hart in Southwark, the city fathers were busy shaking their heads over the business, and grave anxiety filled their minds. This might be but the beginning of pillage; there were always materials in London for a riot, apart from Cade’s army.

“And for this the hearts of the citizens fell from him, and every thrifty man was afraid to be served in like wise, for there was many a man in London that awaited and would fain have seen a common robbery” (Stow.)[79]

In the course of the day mayor and corporation were in consultation with Lord Scales, the Governor of the Tower, with the result that decision was made to prevent Cade and the commons from re-entering the city. London Bridge was at once seized and fortified by the citizens, and Matthew Gough, a distinguished soldier in the French wars, was placed in command.

Cade, knowing nothing of the hostility he had created, took his ease that day--it was the last peaceful Sabbath he was to know. Towards evening he gave orders for the King’s Bench and Marshalsea prisons to be opened, and their inmates--for the most part victims of official extortion and injustice--to be released. This was done, and certain “lawless men” convicted of disobedience were haled off to be hanged; to the end there was no relaxing of discipline.