Rebellion of Jack Cade

aThe Regent Bedford.bHumphrey, Duke of Glo’ster.‘The Rootais dead, the Swanbis gone,cThe last Duke of Exeter.The fiery Cressetchath lost his light.Therefore England may make great moanWere not the help of God Almight’.dRouen Castle.The Castledis won where care begun,eThe Duke of Somerset.The Portè-culliseis laid adown;fThe Cardinal Beaufort.Yclosèd we have our Velvet HatfThat covered us from many stormes brown.67gThe Duke of Norfolk, who had gone on pilgrimage to Rome in 1447. (Dugdale.)The White Liongis laid to sleep,hThe Duke of Suffolk.Thorough the envy of th’ ApèhClog;And he is bounden that our door should keep;That is Talbot, our good dog.iLord Fauconberg who was taken prisoner by the French at the capture of Pont-de-l’Arche.The Fisherihas lost his angle hook;Get them again when it will be.kRobert, Lord Willoughby.Our Millè-sailkwill not about,It hath so long gone empty.lThe Earl of Warwick.The Bearlis bound that was so wild,For he hath lost his Ragged Staff.mThe Duke of Buckingham.The Carte-nathemis spoke-lessFor the counsel that he gaf.nThomas Daniel. He and the two next are courtiers.The Lilynis both fair and green;oJohn Norris.The Conduitorunneth not, I wean.pJohn Trevilian.The Cornish Choughpoft with his trainqThe King.Hath made our Eagleqblind.rEarl of Arundel.The White Hartris put out of mindBecause he will not to them consent;Therefore, the Commons saith, is both true and kind,Both in Sussex and in Kent.sLord Bouchier.The Water Bougesand the Wine BotelltPrior of St. John’s.With the Fetterlock’stchain bene fast.uThe Duke of Exeter.The Wheat Earuwill them sustainAs long as he may endure and last.wThe Earl of Devonshire.The Boarwis far into the West,That should us help with shield and spear.xThe Duke of York, who had been sent into Ireland to be out of the way.The Falconxfleeth and hath no restTill he wit where to bigg his nest.’Almost concurrently with the news of Suffolk’s murder came tidings, mentioned by William Lomner in the very same letter, of another disaster in France, more gloomy, if possible, than any that had occurred before.Defeat of Sir T. Kiriel.A force under Sir Thomas Kiriel had been sent to the aid of the Duke of Somerset in Normandy after the loss of Rouen. It disembarked at Cherbourg, and proceeding towards Caen, where the duke had now taken up his position, besieged and took Valognes. They were now in full communication with the garrisons of Caen and Bayeux, when they were suddenly attacked at the village of Fourmigni, and routed with great slaughter. Between three and four thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the field; Kiriel himself was taken prisoner; even the brave Matthew Gough (well known to Frenchmen of that day as Matago) found it needful to fall back with his company of681500 men for the safeguard of Bayeux, which a month afterwards he was compelled after all to give up to the enemy.68.1Meanwhile the Parliament, which had been prorogued over Easter, was ordered to meet again at Leicester instead of Westminster. The reason given for the change of place was still, as before, the unhealthiness of the air about Westminster; and doubtless it was a very true reason. It is possible, however, that the political atmosphere of London was quite as oppressive to the Court as the physical atmosphere could be to the Parliament. During their sitting at Leicester a much needed subsidy was voted to the king, and an Act passed for the application of certain revenues to the expenses of the Royal Household in order to stop the exactions of purveyors. But they had hardly sat a month when the session was suddenly put an end to from a cause which we proceed to notice.45.1Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 132.46.1Rymer, xi. 53.46.2Rolls of Parl.v. 73. That Gloucester secretly disliked Suffolk’s policy, and thought the peace with France too dearly bought, is more than probable. At the reception of the French ambassadors in 1445, we learn from their report that Henry looked exceedingly pleased, especially when his uncle the French king was mentioned. ‘And on his left hand were my Lord of Gloucester, at whom he looked at the time, and then he turned round to the right to the chancellor, and the Earl of Suffolk, and the Cardinal of York, who were there, smiling to them, and it was very obvious that he made some signal. And it was afterwards mentioned by———— (blank in orig.), that he pressed his Chancellor’s hand and said to him in English, “I am very much rejoiced that some who are present should hear these words. They are not at their ease.”’—Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 110-11.47.1An interesting and valuable account of the death of Duke Humphrey, from original sources, will be found inThe Hall of Lawford Hall, pp. 104-13.48.1Rymer, xi. 173.48.2SeeStevenson’sWars of the English in France, ii. [639] to [642].48.3Rymer, xi. 97, 108, 151, 182, 189, etc.49.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [714, 715].49.2Stevenson’sWars, i. 198.Seealso a letter of the 18th Feb. 1448, of which an abstract is given in vol. ii. of the same work, p. 576.50.1Chron. de Mat. de Coussy(in Buchon’s collection), p. 34.50.2Rymer, xi. 199, 204. Stevenson’sWars, i. 207.51.1Basin,Histoire de CharlesVII.etc. i. 150-1.51.2Hist. Croylandensis Continuatioin Fulman’sScriptores, p. 519.51.3Basin, i. 192.52.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [592].53.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 473; ii. 573.53.2Stevenson’sReductio Normanniæ, 406.53.3Ibid.402.53.4Ibid.406.54.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 275, 278, etc.55.1Reductio Normanniæ, 251.55.2Ibid.503.55.3‘Eodem anno [26 Hen.VI.], Rex visitans boreales partes Angliæ usque Donelmense monasterium, quasi omnes domini et alii plebei illius patriæ in magna multitudine quotidie ei in obviam ostendebant, quare, concilio habito, minus formidabant interrumpere trugas inter ipsum et Regem Scotiæ prius suis sigillis fidelitatis confirmatas; sed posterius hujus trugarum interruptio vertebatur Anglicis multo magis in dispendium quam honorem, quia recedente Rege Scoti magnam partem Northumbriæ bina vice absque repulsu destruxerunt, et juxta Carlele erant ex Anglicis capti et interfecti ad numerum duorum millium; et sic tandem Rex Angliæ cum ejus concilio pro saniori deliberatione cum damnis ad pacem inclinare reducitur.’—Incerti Scriptoris Chronicum(Ed. Giles), Hen.VI.p. 36.55.4Reductio Normanniæ, 254.56.1Rolls of Parl.v. 147.57.1Rolls of Parl.v. 143, 171. Even when the new Parliament met at Westminster on the 6th November it was obliged to adjourn to the City of London on account of the unhealthiness of the air. We must remember that Westminster was then little better than a flat muddy island, with a vast extent of marshy land and stagnant pools between Pimlico and the Thames.58.1Æneæ Sylvii Epp.80, 186.58.2According to his friend, Æneas Sylvius, the mode of death inflicted on him was decapitation. (Opera, 443.)58.3Rolls of Parl.v. 176.59.1W. Worc.Rolls of Parl.v. 200. I find by an entry in theControlment Roll, 30 Hen.VI., that on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1451, William Tailboys and nineteen other persons belonging to South Kyme, in Lincolnshire, were outlawed at the suit of Elizabeth, widow of John Saunderson, for the murder of her husband.60.1Rolls of Parl.v. 176.61.1So it is stated in the impeachment. According to the inquisition on Suffolk’s death, his son was born on the 27th September 1442, and was therefore at this time only in his eighth year.—Napier’sHistorical Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme, 108.61.2Rolls of Parl.v. 179-182.62.1Rolls of Parl.v. 182.62.2Ibid.63.1Rolls of Parl.v. 183.63.2Ibid.64.1Rymer, xi. 268.64.2W. Worc. 468, 469.64.3English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 69.65.1Paston Letters, Nos. 120, 121.65.2Even the passage above referred to would probably be an illustration of this if the original letter were examined. As we have reprinted it from Fenn, it stands thus: ‘Right worshipful Sir, I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say,and have so wesshe this little bill with sorrowful tears that uneathes ye shall read it.’ The words in italics would probably be found to be an interlineation in the original, for though they stand at the beginning of the letter, they were clearly written after it was penned, and the only reason why they were inserted was to excuse the illegibility of the writing.66.1Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 525.66.2Wright’sPolitical Poems(in Rolls series), ii. 232.66.3Ibid.222, 224.68.1Berry’s narrative in Stevenson’sExpulsion of the English from Normandy, 336.Wars of the Engl.ii. [360].Paston Letters, No. 120.Rebellion of Jack CadeThe murder of the Duke of Suffolk had not made things better than they had been before. The ablest of the ministers, who had hitherto guided the king’s counsels, was now removed, but his place was left for a time altogether unsupplied. The men of Suffolk’s party, such as Lord Say, Viscount Beaumont, and Thomas Daniel, still remained about the king, and were nearly as unpopular as he had been. The offices formerly held by Suffolk were divided among them and their particular friends.68.2Even if the Court had desired to call in men of greater weight, they were not then at hand. The Duke of Somerset was in France, and the Duke of York in Ireland; so that some time must have elapsed before either of them could have taken part in public affairs at home. Meanwhile it was said that the resentment of the Court for Suffolk’s69murder would be visited upon the county of Kent; and the county of Kent was of opinion that it suffered abuses enough already. The exactions of the king’s officers, both in the way of taxation and purveyance, were felt to be extortionate and capricious. The collectors of the revenue were appointed by the knights of the shire, and these, instead of being freely chosen by the people, were but the nominees of a few great men who compelled their tenants to vote according to their pleasure. There were, besides, grave cases of injustice in which people were accused of treason, and kept in prison without trial, on the information of persons about the Court who had influence to obtain grants of their lands from the Crown.Cade’s Rebellion.Hence arose Jack Cade’s rebellion, a movement which we must not permit ourselves to look upon as a vulgar outbreak of the rabble. Whole districts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex rose in arms, clamouring for redress of grievances; and it is certain that the insurgents met with a large amount of sympathy, even from those who did not actually take part with them.69.1As their leader, they selected a man who called himself Mortimer, and who, besides some experience in war, was evidently possessed of no small talent for generalship. It afterwards turned out that his real name was Cade, that he was a native of Ireland, and that he had been living a year before in the household of Sir Thomas Dacre in Sussex, when he was obliged to abjure the kingdom for killing a woman who was with child. He then betook himself to France and served in the French war against England. What induced him to return does not appear, unless we may suppose, which is not unlikely, that some misdemeanour when in the service of France made the French soil fully as dangerous to him as the English. In England he seems to have assumed the name70of Aylmer, and passed himself off as a physician. He married a squire’s daughter, and dressed in scarlet; and when the rebellion broke out in Kent he called himself John Mortimer, a cousin of the Duke of York.The first disturbances took place at Whitsuntide in the latter end of May. In the second week of June70.1a considerable army from the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex encamped upon Blackheath. The king, who, on receiving news of the rising, had dissolved the parliament then sitting at Leicester, arrived in London on Saturday the 13th, and took up his quarters at the priory of St. John’s, near Smithfield. He had with him 20,000 men under arms, but for some reason or other did not set out against the rebels till the following Thursday, the 18th.70.1They, meanwhile, had withdrawn in the night-time,70.2and the king and his host occupied their position on Blackheath. The royal forces, however, proceeded no further. Only a detachment, under Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother William, was sent to pursue the insurgents. An encounter took place at Sevenoaks on the 18th,70.3in which both the Staffords were killed. Their defeat spread dismay and disaffection in the royal camp. The noblemen who had accompanied the king to Blackheath could no longer keep their men together, the latter protesting that unless justice were done on certain traitors who had misled the king, they would go over to the Captain of Kent. To satisfy them, Lord Say was arrested and sent to the Tower; but even with this concession the king did not dare presume upon their loyalty. He withdrew to Greenwich, and the whole of his army dispersed. The king himself returned to London by water, and made preparations during the next two or three days to remove to Kenilworth. The mayor and commons of the city went to him to beseech him to remain, offering to live71and die with him, and pay half a year’s cost of his household. But all was to no purpose. The king had not even the manliness of RichardII.at Smithfield, and he took his departure to Kenilworth.71.1The city, thus deserted by its sovereign, knew not for a time what to do. A party within the Common Council itself ventured to open negotiations with the insurgents, and Alderman Cooke passed to and fro under the safe-conduct of the Captain.71.2To many it may have seemed doubtful loyalty to support the government of Lord Say and his friends against an oppressed population. On the 1st day of July71.3the insurgents entered Southwark. On the 2nd a Common Council was called by the Lord Mayor to provide means for resisting their entry into the city; but the majority voted for their free admission, and Alderman Robert Horne, who was the leading speaker against them, was committed to prison for his boldness.The rebels enter London.That same afternoon the so-called Mortimer and his followers passed over London Bridge into the city. The Captain, after passing the drawbridge, hewed the ropes asunder with his sword. His first proceedings were marked by order and discipline. He issued proclamations in the king’s name against robbery and forced requisitions, but he rode through the different streets as if to place the capital under military government; and when he came to London Stone, he struck it with his sword, saying, ‘Now is Mortimer lord of this city.’ Finally, he gave instructions to the Lord Mayor about the order to be kept within his jurisdiction, and returned for the night to his quarters in Southwark. On the following morning, Friday the 3rd, he again entered the city, when he caused Lord Say to be sent for from the Tower. That no resistance was made to this demand by Lord Scales, who had the keeping of the fortress, may seem strange. But there was a reason for it which most of the chroniclers do not tell us. The king had72been obliged to listen to the grievances of his ‘Commons’ and to withdraw his protection from his favourites. He had granted a commission ‘to certain lords and to the mayor and divers justices, to inquire of all persons that were traitors, extortioners, or oppressors of the king’s people.’72.1Lord Say was accordingly formally arraigned at a regular sessions at the Guildhall. But when the unfortunate nobleman claimed the constitutional privilege of being tried by his peers, the pretence of law was finally laid aside. A company of the insurgents took him from the officers and hurried him off to the Standard in Cheap, where, before he was half shriven, his head was cut off and stuck upon a long pole. A son-in-law of his named Crowmer, who was then very unpopular as sheriff of Kent, met with a similar fate. He was beheaded in Cade’s presence at Mile End. Barbarity now followed violence. The lifeless heads of Say and Crowmer were carried through the streets, and made to kiss each other. At the same time one Bailey was beheaded at Whitechapel on a charge of necromancy, the real cause of his death being, as it was reported, that he was an old acquaintance of Cade’s who might have revealed something of his past history.It may have been the expectation of inevitable exposure that induced Cade now to relax discipline, and set an example of spoliation himself. He entered and pillaged the house of Philip Malpas, an alderman known as a friend of the Court, and therefore unpopular in the city. Next day he dined at a house in the parish of St. Margaret Pattens, and then robbed his host. At each of these acts of robbery the rabble were sharers of the spoil. But, of course, such proceedings completely alienated all who had anything to lose, and the mayor and aldermen began to devise measures for expelling Cade and his followers from the city. For this end they negotiated with Lord Scales and Matthew Gough, who had then the keeping of the Tower.For three days successively Cade had entered the city with his men, and retired in the evening to Southwark. But on Sunday, the 5th of July, he for some reason remained in Southwark73all day. In the evening the mayor and citizens, with a force under Matthew Gough, came and occupied London Bridge to prevent the Kentish men again entering the city.Battle on LondonBridge.The Captain called his men to arms, and attacked the citizens with such impetuosity, that he drove them back from the Southwark end of the bridge to the drawbridge in the centre. This the insurgents set on fire, after inflicting great losses on the citizens, many of whom were slain or drowned in defending it. Matthew Gough himself was among those who perished. Still, the fight was obstinately contested, the advantage being for the moment now with one party and now with the other. It continued all through the night till nine on the following morning; when at last the Kentish men began to give way, and a truce was made for a certain number of hours.A favourable opportunity now presented itself for mediation. Although the king had retired to Kenilworth, he had left behind him in London some leading members of his council, among whom were Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York,73.1then Lord Chancellor, and Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester. The former had taken refuge in the Tower, under the protection of Lord Scales; and he called to him the latter, who lay concealed at Holywell.73.2A conference was arranged between them and the insurgents, and both the Cardinal and Bishop Waynflete73.3with some others crossed the river and met with Cade in St. Margaret’s Church in Southwark. In the end matters were satisfactorily arranged, and the bishop produced two general pardons prepared by the Chancellor, the74first for the Captain himself, and the second for his followers. The offer was embraced with eagerness. The men were by this time disgusted with their leader, and alarmed at the result of their own acts. By thousands they accepted the amnesty and began to return homewards. But Cade, who knew that his pardon would avail him little when the history of his past life came to be investigated, wisely made friends to himself after the fashion of the Unjust Steward. He broke open the gaols of the King’s Bench and Marshalsea, and formed a new company out of the liberated prisoners.74.1He then despatched to Rochester a barge laden with the goods he had taken from Malpas and others in London, and prepared to go thither himself by land. He and his new following appear to have been still in Southwark on the 8th of July, but to have passed through Dartford to Rochester on the 9th, where they continued still in arms against the king on the 10th and 11th.74.2An attempt they made upon the castle of Queenborough was resisted by Sir Roger Chamberlain, to whom a reward was given in the following year in acknowledgment of his services.74.3Meanwhile a proclamation was issued offering a reward of a thousand marks for Cade’s apprehension, and ten marks for that of any of his followers; ‘for,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘it was openly known that his name was not Mortimer; his name was John Cade; and therefore his charter stood in no strength.’74.4The feeble remains of the rebellion were already quarrelling about the booty Cade had conveyed out of London. Their leader now took horse and escaped in disguise towards the woody country about Lewes. He was pursued by Alexander Iden, a gentleman who had just been appointed sheriff of Kent in place of the murdered Crowmer.Capture and death of Cade.Iden overtook him in a garden at Heathfield, and made him prisoner, not without a scuffle, in which Cade was mortally wounded, so that on being conveyed to London he died on the way. It only remained75to use his carcass as a terror to evil-doers. His head was cut off and placed upon London Bridge, with the face looking towards Kent. His body was drawn through the streets of London, then quartered, and the quarters sent to four different places very widely apart,—one of them to Blackheath, one to Norwich, one to Salisbury, and one to Gloucester.75.1If the dispersion of traitors’ limbs for exhibition in many places could have effectually repressed disloyalty, the whole realm ought now to have been at rest. The quarters of another Kentish rebel, who, under the name of Bluebeard, had raised disturbances in the preceding February, were at that moment undergoing public exhibition in London, Norwich, and the Cinque Ports. Those of two others were about this time despatched by the sheriffs of London to Chichester, Rochester, Portsmouth, Colchester, Stamford, Coventry, Newbury, and Winchester. The heads of all these wretches were set upon London Bridge, which in the course of this miserable year bore no less than twenty-three such horrid ornaments.75.2Further disturbances.But with all this, sedition was not put down, even in the county of Kent; for I find by the evidence of authentic records that a new rising took place in August at Feversham, under one William Parminter, who, undeterred by the fate of Cade, gathered about him 400 men, and called himselfthe secondCaptain of Kent. This affair is quite unnoticed by historians, and all I know of it is derived from a pardon to one of those engaged in it.75.3But even Parminter was not the last ‘Captain of Kent’ that made his appearance this year; for the very same title was immediately afterwards assumed by one John Smyth, for whose capture a reward of £40 was ordered to be paid to the Duke of Somerset on the 3rd of October.75.4And the chroniclers, though they do not mention these disturbances, tell us that such things were general over76all the kingdom. In Wiltshire, at the time that Cade was at Blackheath, William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, had one day said mass at Edington, when he was dragged from the altar by a band of his own tenants and murdered in his alb and stole at the top of a neighbouring hill. He was the second bishop who had been murdered that year by the populace. Another insurrection in the same county in August is mentioned in a letter of James Gresham’s, the number of the insurgents being reported at nine or ten thousand men.76.1These instances may suffice as evidence of the widespread troubles of the time.Sir John Fastolf.Of the degree of private suffering and misery inflicted in particular cases by these commotions we have a lively picture in Letter 126. At the time when Cade and his followers were encamped upon Blackheath, Sir John Fastolf, a noted warrior of the time, of whom we shall have much to say hereafter, was residing at his house in Southwark. He was a man who had not succeeded in standing well with his contemporaries, and the fact may have contributed not a little to the sensitiveness of a naturally irascible character. In one engagement with the French76.2he was actually accused of cowardice, a charge which he seems afterwards satisfactorily to have disproved. For some years, however, he had given up soldiering and returned to his native country, where he served the king in a different manner as a member of his Privy Council. But in this capacity too he was unpopular. His advice should have been valuable at least in reference to the affairs of France; but it does not seem to have been taken. The warnings and counsels which he gave with reference to the maintenance of the English conquests in France he caused his secretary, William Worcester, to put in writing for his justification; but though his admonitions were neglected by those to whom they were addressed, popular rumour held him partly accountable for the loss of Normandy. Of this opinion some evidence was given in the course of Cade’s insurrection.As a member of the King’s Council Fastolf thought it77right to send a messenger to ascertain what were the demands of the insurgents.John Payn and the rebels.He therefore commanded one John Payn, who was in his service, to take a man with him and two of the best horses of his stable, and ride to Blackheath. When he arrived there, Cade ordered him to be taken prisoner. To save his master’s horses from being stolen, Payn gave them to the attendant, who galloped away with them as fast as he could, while he himself was brought before the Captain. Cade then asked him what he had come for, and why he had caused his fellow to run away with the horses. He answered that he had come to join some brothers of his wife, and other companions who were among the insurgents. On this some one called out to the Captain that he was a man of Sir John Fastolf’s, and that the two horses were Sir John’s. The Captain raised a cry of ‘Treason!’ and sent him through the camp with a herald of the Duke of Exeter before him, in the duke’s coat-of-arms. At four quarters of the field the herald proclaimed with anOyezthat Payn had been sent as a spy upon them by the greatest traitor in England or France, namely, by one Sir John Fastolf, who had diminished all the garrisons of Normandy, Le Mans, and Maine, and thereby caused the loss of all the king’s inheritance beyond sea. It was added that Sir John had garrisoned his place with the old soldiers of Normandy, to oppose the Commons when they came to Southwark; and, as the emissary of such a traitor, Payn was informed that he should lose his head.He was brought to the Captain’s tent, where an axe and block were produced. But fortunately he had friends among the host; and Robert Poynings, Cade’s swordbearer and carver, who afterwards married John Paston’s sister Elizabeth, declared plainly that there should die a hundred or two others if Payn were put to death. He was therefore allowed to live on taking an oath that he would go to Southwark and arm himself, and return to join the Commons. He accordingly carried to Fastolf a statement of their demands, advising him at the same time to put away his old soldiers and withdraw himself into the Tower. The old warrior felt that the advice was prudent; he left but two of his servants in the place, and78but for Payn the insurgents would have burned it to the ground. The faithful dependant, however, had to pay the full penalty of his master’s unpopularity. He seems to have entertained the rioters for some time at his own cost. Afterwards the Captain took from him some valuable clothes and armour, and sent men to ransack his chamber of bonds, money, and other stores. The insurgents also robbed his house in Kent, and threatened to hang his wife and children. Finally, on the night of the battle on London Bridge, Cade thrust him into the thickest of the combat, where he continued six hours unable to extricate himself, and was dangerously wounded.To have passed through all this was surely a severe enough trial; yet after that commotion he had further trouble to endure. He was impeached by the Bishop of Rochester, and thrown into the Marshalsea by command of the queen. He was also threatened to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, in order that he might accuse his master Fastolf of treason; but in the end his friends succeeded in procuring for him a charter of pardon. To earn this, however, as we find from the document itself, he had to appear before the king in person, during a progress which he made in Kent the year after the rebellion, and, amid a crowd of other supplicants whose bodies were stripped naked down to their legs, humbly to beg for mercy.78.168.2SeeNo. 123. William Worcester says Lord Beauchamp was made treasurer, and Lord Cromwell the king’s chamberlain. Lord Beauchamp’s appointment is on thePatent Rolls. SeeCalendarium Rot. Patent, p. 294.69.1The late Mr. Durrant Cooper, in an interesting paper read before a meeting of the Kent Archæological Society, examined the long list of names given on thePatent Rollof 28 HenryVI., and proved from them that the insurrection was by no means of a very plebeian or disorderly character. ‘In several hundreds,’ he says, ‘the constables duly, and as if legally, summoned the men; and many parishes, particularly Marden, Penshurst, Hawkhurst, Northfleet, Boughton-Malherbe, Smarden, and Pluckley, furnished as many men as could be found in our day fit for arms.’70.1These dates were given differently in previous issues of this Introduction. For a rectification of the chronology of the rebellion I am indebted to Kriehn’sEnglish Risingin 1450, pp. 125 and following.70.2According to No. 119 of our collection this retreat would appear to have been on the 22nd June, but that date is certainly an error.70.3The 18th June is given as the date of Sir Humphrey Stafford’s death inInquis. post mortem, 28 HenryVI.No. 7.71.1W. Worc.—Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles(edited by me for the Camden Soc.), 67.—Chronicle inMS.Cott. Vitell. A. xvi.71.2Holinshed, iii. 632.71.3I leave this part of the story as it was originally written, though here, too, the chronology seems to require rectification, especially from sources since published, for which the reader may consult Kriehn’s work, p. 129.72.1MS.Vitellius A. xvi. fol. 107, quoted by Kriehn, p. 92.73.1Inaccurately called Archbishop of Canterbury by Fabyan and others. He was not translated to Canterbury till 1452.73.2Hall’sChronicle. Holy Well was a mineral spring to the north of London, much frequented before the Reformation, when it was stopped up as being considered a place of superstitious resort. A century afterwards it was discovered anew by a Mr. Sadler, from whom the locality is named to this day Sadler’s Wells.73.3Some doubt seems to be thrown on Hall’s statement that both prelates crossed the river, as earlier writers say the Chancellorsentpardons under the Great Seal. William Worcester, moreover, makes no mention of the cardinal, but says that the Bishop of Winchester and others of the king’s council spoke with the Captain of Kent. But the ‘Short English Chronicle’ in theThree Fifteenth Century Chronicles, edited by me for the Camden Society in 1880 (p. 68), does exactly the reverse, and omitting all reference to the Bishop of Winchester, says: ‘And forthewithe went the Chaunseler to the Capteyne and sessed him and gave him a chartur and his men an other.’74.1Hall’sChronicle.74.2SeeAct of Attainder, 29 Hen.VI.Rolls of Parl.vi. 224.74.3Devon’sIssue Rolls, 471. Davies’English Chron.67.74.4Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 68.75.1W. Worc. Fabyan. Davies’English Chronicle(Camden Soc.), 67. Ellis’Letters, 2nd Series i. 115.75.2Ellis,ib.MS.Vitell. A. xvi.75.3Seedocument in Appendix to this Introduction; also Devon’sIssue Rolls, p. 472. It would seem as if the entry there dated 5th August ought to have been 5th September, as Parminter does not seem to have been taken even on the last day of August.75.4Nicolas’sProceedings of the Privy Council, vi. 101.76.1SeeNo. 131.76.2The Battle of Patay.78.1SeeAppendix to Introduction.Sidenote:Battle on London Bridge.final . missingThe Dukes of York and SomersetThe Duke of York.Cade’s rebellion was attributed by the Court to the machinations of the Duke of York. The disturbances that had prevailed for some months previously seem to have been partly associated with his name. When Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, was murdered in the beginning of the year, the malcontents talked of inviting York over from Ireland to redress the wrongs of the people. The79exclusion of York and other lords of royal blood from the king’s councils was also made an express ground of complaint by the Kentish insurgents. The repetition of his name in the mouths of the disaffected was anything but grateful to the party then in power. It was construed as being in itself an evidence of his disloyalty. But the popular complaints as to his treatment were both just and reasonable, for it was a matter that concerned the public weal. The rank, wealth, and lineage of the Duke of York, his connection with the blood-royal, his large possessions, and finally his well-proved ability both as a general and an administrator—all marked him out as one who ought to have been invited to take a leading part in the government of the realm; but a faction about the king had taken care to keep him as much as possible at a distance from the Court. Moreover, it had maligned and aspersed him in his absence, so that it would have been positively insecure for himself to allow the charges to accumulate. A time had clearly come when it was no longer his duty to obey the orders of others. His enemies were becoming more and more unpopular every day, and the only hope of improving the administration of affairs depended upon his taking the initiative.Comes over from Ireland.He accordingly determined to avail himself of the privilege due to his rank, and lay his requests at the foot of the throne. A little before Michaelmas he came over from Ireland, collected 4000 of his retainers upon the Welsh Marches, and with them proceeded to London. His coming, although unsolicited by the king and without leave asked, was nevertheless not altogether unexpected. Attempts were made to stop his landing at Beaumaris, and bodies of men lay in wait for him in various places to interrupt his progress. For this, however, he could not have been unprepared. He knew well the hatred entertained towards him at the Court, for he had experienced pretty much the same thing years before in going to Ireland, as now in coming from it. Although he was sent to that country in the king’s service, and as the king’s lieutenant, there were persons commissioned to apprehend him at several points in his journey thither; and now80on his return similar efforts were made to prevent his advance to London. As regards himself they were altogether fruitless; but it is not improbable that they succeeded in deterring many of his followers from joining him. William Tresham, the Speaker of the last Parliament, having received a summons from the duke to meet him, was waylaid and murdered in Northamptonshire by a body of the retainers of Lord Grey of Ruthin. For two months the murderers went at large. The sheriff of the county durst not arrest them, and it was only on the meeting of Parliament that a special act was passed for their punishment.80.1York, however, pursued his way, in spite of all opposition, to the royal presence, and great was the dismay of those then about the king. According to an act passed against him nine years later, his approach was not unaccompanied by violence. He and his followers, it is said, came in warlike array to Westminster Palace, and ‘beat down the spears and walls’ in the king’s chamber. If so, we should infer that his access to the king was opposed even at the last moment. But the opposition was ineffectual, and the reception he met with from Henry himself did not indicate that the king at all resented his conduct.It must have been on his first interview with Henry that he presented a petition and received a reply from him, which are printed in Holinshed as follows:—Richard, Duke of York: his letter to King Henry80.2

aThe Regent Bedford.

bHumphrey, Duke of Glo’ster.

‘The Rootais dead, the Swanbis gone,

cThe last Duke of Exeter.

The fiery Cressetchath lost his light.

Therefore England may make great moan

Were not the help of God Almight’.

dRouen Castle.

The Castledis won where care begun,

eThe Duke of Somerset.

The Portè-culliseis laid adown;

fThe Cardinal Beaufort.

Yclosèd we have our Velvet Hatf

That covered us from many stormes brown.

gThe Duke of Norfolk, who had gone on pilgrimage to Rome in 1447. (Dugdale.)

The White Liongis laid to sleep,

hThe Duke of Suffolk.

Thorough the envy of th’ ApèhClog;

And he is bounden that our door should keep;

That is Talbot, our good dog.

iLord Fauconberg who was taken prisoner by the French at the capture of Pont-de-l’Arche.

The Fisherihas lost his angle hook;

Get them again when it will be.

kRobert, Lord Willoughby.

Our Millè-sailkwill not about,

It hath so long gone empty.

lThe Earl of Warwick.

The Bearlis bound that was so wild,

For he hath lost his Ragged Staff.

mThe Duke of Buckingham.

The Carte-nathemis spoke-less

For the counsel that he gaf.

nThomas Daniel. He and the two next are courtiers.

The Lilynis both fair and green;

oJohn Norris.

The Conduitorunneth not, I wean.

pJohn Trevilian.

The Cornish Choughpoft with his train

qThe King.

Hath made our Eagleqblind.

rEarl of Arundel.

The White Hartris put out of mind

Because he will not to them consent;

Therefore, the Commons saith, is both true and kind,

Both in Sussex and in Kent.

sLord Bouchier.

The Water Bougesand the Wine Botell

tPrior of St. John’s.

With the Fetterlock’stchain bene fast.

uThe Duke of Exeter.

The Wheat Earuwill them sustain

As long as he may endure and last.

wThe Earl of Devonshire.

The Boarwis far into the West,

That should us help with shield and spear.

xThe Duke of York, who had been sent into Ireland to be out of the way.

The Falconxfleeth and hath no rest

Till he wit where to bigg his nest.’

Almost concurrently with the news of Suffolk’s murder came tidings, mentioned by William Lomner in the very same letter, of another disaster in France, more gloomy, if possible, than any that had occurred before.Defeat of Sir T. Kiriel.A force under Sir Thomas Kiriel had been sent to the aid of the Duke of Somerset in Normandy after the loss of Rouen. It disembarked at Cherbourg, and proceeding towards Caen, where the duke had now taken up his position, besieged and took Valognes. They were now in full communication with the garrisons of Caen and Bayeux, when they were suddenly attacked at the village of Fourmigni, and routed with great slaughter. Between three and four thousand Englishmen were left dead upon the field; Kiriel himself was taken prisoner; even the brave Matthew Gough (well known to Frenchmen of that day as Matago) found it needful to fall back with his company of681500 men for the safeguard of Bayeux, which a month afterwards he was compelled after all to give up to the enemy.68.1

Meanwhile the Parliament, which had been prorogued over Easter, was ordered to meet again at Leicester instead of Westminster. The reason given for the change of place was still, as before, the unhealthiness of the air about Westminster; and doubtless it was a very true reason. It is possible, however, that the political atmosphere of London was quite as oppressive to the Court as the physical atmosphere could be to the Parliament. During their sitting at Leicester a much needed subsidy was voted to the king, and an Act passed for the application of certain revenues to the expenses of the Royal Household in order to stop the exactions of purveyors. But they had hardly sat a month when the session was suddenly put an end to from a cause which we proceed to notice.

45.1Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 132.46.1Rymer, xi. 53.46.2Rolls of Parl.v. 73. That Gloucester secretly disliked Suffolk’s policy, and thought the peace with France too dearly bought, is more than probable. At the reception of the French ambassadors in 1445, we learn from their report that Henry looked exceedingly pleased, especially when his uncle the French king was mentioned. ‘And on his left hand were my Lord of Gloucester, at whom he looked at the time, and then he turned round to the right to the chancellor, and the Earl of Suffolk, and the Cardinal of York, who were there, smiling to them, and it was very obvious that he made some signal. And it was afterwards mentioned by———— (blank in orig.), that he pressed his Chancellor’s hand and said to him in English, “I am very much rejoiced that some who are present should hear these words. They are not at their ease.”’—Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 110-11.47.1An interesting and valuable account of the death of Duke Humphrey, from original sources, will be found inThe Hall of Lawford Hall, pp. 104-13.48.1Rymer, xi. 173.48.2SeeStevenson’sWars of the English in France, ii. [639] to [642].48.3Rymer, xi. 97, 108, 151, 182, 189, etc.49.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [714, 715].49.2Stevenson’sWars, i. 198.Seealso a letter of the 18th Feb. 1448, of which an abstract is given in vol. ii. of the same work, p. 576.50.1Chron. de Mat. de Coussy(in Buchon’s collection), p. 34.50.2Rymer, xi. 199, 204. Stevenson’sWars, i. 207.51.1Basin,Histoire de CharlesVII.etc. i. 150-1.51.2Hist. Croylandensis Continuatioin Fulman’sScriptores, p. 519.51.3Basin, i. 192.52.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [592].53.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 473; ii. 573.53.2Stevenson’sReductio Normanniæ, 406.53.3Ibid.402.53.4Ibid.406.54.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 275, 278, etc.55.1Reductio Normanniæ, 251.55.2Ibid.503.55.3‘Eodem anno [26 Hen.VI.], Rex visitans boreales partes Angliæ usque Donelmense monasterium, quasi omnes domini et alii plebei illius patriæ in magna multitudine quotidie ei in obviam ostendebant, quare, concilio habito, minus formidabant interrumpere trugas inter ipsum et Regem Scotiæ prius suis sigillis fidelitatis confirmatas; sed posterius hujus trugarum interruptio vertebatur Anglicis multo magis in dispendium quam honorem, quia recedente Rege Scoti magnam partem Northumbriæ bina vice absque repulsu destruxerunt, et juxta Carlele erant ex Anglicis capti et interfecti ad numerum duorum millium; et sic tandem Rex Angliæ cum ejus concilio pro saniori deliberatione cum damnis ad pacem inclinare reducitur.’—Incerti Scriptoris Chronicum(Ed. Giles), Hen.VI.p. 36.55.4Reductio Normanniæ, 254.56.1Rolls of Parl.v. 147.57.1Rolls of Parl.v. 143, 171. Even when the new Parliament met at Westminster on the 6th November it was obliged to adjourn to the City of London on account of the unhealthiness of the air. We must remember that Westminster was then little better than a flat muddy island, with a vast extent of marshy land and stagnant pools between Pimlico and the Thames.58.1Æneæ Sylvii Epp.80, 186.58.2According to his friend, Æneas Sylvius, the mode of death inflicted on him was decapitation. (Opera, 443.)58.3Rolls of Parl.v. 176.59.1W. Worc.Rolls of Parl.v. 200. I find by an entry in theControlment Roll, 30 Hen.VI., that on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1451, William Tailboys and nineteen other persons belonging to South Kyme, in Lincolnshire, were outlawed at the suit of Elizabeth, widow of John Saunderson, for the murder of her husband.60.1Rolls of Parl.v. 176.61.1So it is stated in the impeachment. According to the inquisition on Suffolk’s death, his son was born on the 27th September 1442, and was therefore at this time only in his eighth year.—Napier’sHistorical Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme, 108.61.2Rolls of Parl.v. 179-182.62.1Rolls of Parl.v. 182.62.2Ibid.63.1Rolls of Parl.v. 183.63.2Ibid.64.1Rymer, xi. 268.64.2W. Worc. 468, 469.64.3English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 69.65.1Paston Letters, Nos. 120, 121.65.2Even the passage above referred to would probably be an illustration of this if the original letter were examined. As we have reprinted it from Fenn, it stands thus: ‘Right worshipful Sir, I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say,and have so wesshe this little bill with sorrowful tears that uneathes ye shall read it.’ The words in italics would probably be found to be an interlineation in the original, for though they stand at the beginning of the letter, they were clearly written after it was penned, and the only reason why they were inserted was to excuse the illegibility of the writing.66.1Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 525.66.2Wright’sPolitical Poems(in Rolls series), ii. 232.66.3Ibid.222, 224.68.1Berry’s narrative in Stevenson’sExpulsion of the English from Normandy, 336.Wars of the Engl.ii. [360].Paston Letters, No. 120.

45.1Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 132.

46.1Rymer, xi. 53.

46.2Rolls of Parl.v. 73. That Gloucester secretly disliked Suffolk’s policy, and thought the peace with France too dearly bought, is more than probable. At the reception of the French ambassadors in 1445, we learn from their report that Henry looked exceedingly pleased, especially when his uncle the French king was mentioned. ‘And on his left hand were my Lord of Gloucester, at whom he looked at the time, and then he turned round to the right to the chancellor, and the Earl of Suffolk, and the Cardinal of York, who were there, smiling to them, and it was very obvious that he made some signal. And it was afterwards mentioned by———— (blank in orig.), that he pressed his Chancellor’s hand and said to him in English, “I am very much rejoiced that some who are present should hear these words. They are not at their ease.”’—Stevenson’sWars of the English in France, i. 110-11.

47.1An interesting and valuable account of the death of Duke Humphrey, from original sources, will be found inThe Hall of Lawford Hall, pp. 104-13.

48.1Rymer, xi. 173.

48.2SeeStevenson’sWars of the English in France, ii. [639] to [642].

48.3Rymer, xi. 97, 108, 151, 182, 189, etc.

49.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [714, 715].

49.2Stevenson’sWars, i. 198.Seealso a letter of the 18th Feb. 1448, of which an abstract is given in vol. ii. of the same work, p. 576.

50.1Chron. de Mat. de Coussy(in Buchon’s collection), p. 34.

50.2Rymer, xi. 199, 204. Stevenson’sWars, i. 207.

51.1Basin,Histoire de CharlesVII.etc. i. 150-1.

51.2Hist. Croylandensis Continuatioin Fulman’sScriptores, p. 519.

51.3Basin, i. 192.

52.1Stevenson’sWars, ii. [592].

53.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 473; ii. 573.

53.2Stevenson’sReductio Normanniæ, 406.

53.3Ibid.402.

53.4Ibid.406.

54.1Stevenson’sWars, i. 275, 278, etc.

55.1Reductio Normanniæ, 251.

55.2Ibid.503.

55.3‘Eodem anno [26 Hen.VI.], Rex visitans boreales partes Angliæ usque Donelmense monasterium, quasi omnes domini et alii plebei illius patriæ in magna multitudine quotidie ei in obviam ostendebant, quare, concilio habito, minus formidabant interrumpere trugas inter ipsum et Regem Scotiæ prius suis sigillis fidelitatis confirmatas; sed posterius hujus trugarum interruptio vertebatur Anglicis multo magis in dispendium quam honorem, quia recedente Rege Scoti magnam partem Northumbriæ bina vice absque repulsu destruxerunt, et juxta Carlele erant ex Anglicis capti et interfecti ad numerum duorum millium; et sic tandem Rex Angliæ cum ejus concilio pro saniori deliberatione cum damnis ad pacem inclinare reducitur.’—Incerti Scriptoris Chronicum(Ed. Giles), Hen.VI.p. 36.

55.4Reductio Normanniæ, 254.

56.1Rolls of Parl.v. 147.

57.1Rolls of Parl.v. 143, 171. Even when the new Parliament met at Westminster on the 6th November it was obliged to adjourn to the City of London on account of the unhealthiness of the air. We must remember that Westminster was then little better than a flat muddy island, with a vast extent of marshy land and stagnant pools between Pimlico and the Thames.

58.1Æneæ Sylvii Epp.80, 186.

58.2According to his friend, Æneas Sylvius, the mode of death inflicted on him was decapitation. (Opera, 443.)

58.3Rolls of Parl.v. 176.

59.1W. Worc.Rolls of Parl.v. 200. I find by an entry in theControlment Roll, 30 Hen.VI., that on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1451, William Tailboys and nineteen other persons belonging to South Kyme, in Lincolnshire, were outlawed at the suit of Elizabeth, widow of John Saunderson, for the murder of her husband.

60.1Rolls of Parl.v. 176.

61.1So it is stated in the impeachment. According to the inquisition on Suffolk’s death, his son was born on the 27th September 1442, and was therefore at this time only in his eighth year.—Napier’sHistorical Notices of Swyncombe and Ewelme, 108.

61.2Rolls of Parl.v. 179-182.

62.1Rolls of Parl.v. 182.

62.2Ibid.

63.1Rolls of Parl.v. 183.

63.2Ibid.

64.1Rymer, xi. 268.

64.2W. Worc. 468, 469.

64.3English Chronicle, ed. Davies, p. 69.

65.1Paston Letters, Nos. 120, 121.

65.2Even the passage above referred to would probably be an illustration of this if the original letter were examined. As we have reprinted it from Fenn, it stands thus: ‘Right worshipful Sir, I recommend me to you, and am right sorry of that I shall say,and have so wesshe this little bill with sorrowful tears that uneathes ye shall read it.’ The words in italics would probably be found to be an interlineation in the original, for though they stand at the beginning of the letter, they were clearly written after it was penned, and the only reason why they were inserted was to excuse the illegibility of the writing.

66.1Contin. of Croyland Chronicle, p. 525.

66.2Wright’sPolitical Poems(in Rolls series), ii. 232.

66.3Ibid.222, 224.

68.1Berry’s narrative in Stevenson’sExpulsion of the English from Normandy, 336.Wars of the Engl.ii. [360].Paston Letters, No. 120.

The murder of the Duke of Suffolk had not made things better than they had been before. The ablest of the ministers, who had hitherto guided the king’s counsels, was now removed, but his place was left for a time altogether unsupplied. The men of Suffolk’s party, such as Lord Say, Viscount Beaumont, and Thomas Daniel, still remained about the king, and were nearly as unpopular as he had been. The offices formerly held by Suffolk were divided among them and their particular friends.68.2Even if the Court had desired to call in men of greater weight, they were not then at hand. The Duke of Somerset was in France, and the Duke of York in Ireland; so that some time must have elapsed before either of them could have taken part in public affairs at home. Meanwhile it was said that the resentment of the Court for Suffolk’s69murder would be visited upon the county of Kent; and the county of Kent was of opinion that it suffered abuses enough already. The exactions of the king’s officers, both in the way of taxation and purveyance, were felt to be extortionate and capricious. The collectors of the revenue were appointed by the knights of the shire, and these, instead of being freely chosen by the people, were but the nominees of a few great men who compelled their tenants to vote according to their pleasure. There were, besides, grave cases of injustice in which people were accused of treason, and kept in prison without trial, on the information of persons about the Court who had influence to obtain grants of their lands from the Crown.

Cade’s Rebellion.

Hence arose Jack Cade’s rebellion, a movement which we must not permit ourselves to look upon as a vulgar outbreak of the rabble. Whole districts of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex rose in arms, clamouring for redress of grievances; and it is certain that the insurgents met with a large amount of sympathy, even from those who did not actually take part with them.69.1As their leader, they selected a man who called himself Mortimer, and who, besides some experience in war, was evidently possessed of no small talent for generalship. It afterwards turned out that his real name was Cade, that he was a native of Ireland, and that he had been living a year before in the household of Sir Thomas Dacre in Sussex, when he was obliged to abjure the kingdom for killing a woman who was with child. He then betook himself to France and served in the French war against England. What induced him to return does not appear, unless we may suppose, which is not unlikely, that some misdemeanour when in the service of France made the French soil fully as dangerous to him as the English. In England he seems to have assumed the name70of Aylmer, and passed himself off as a physician. He married a squire’s daughter, and dressed in scarlet; and when the rebellion broke out in Kent he called himself John Mortimer, a cousin of the Duke of York.

The first disturbances took place at Whitsuntide in the latter end of May. In the second week of June70.1a considerable army from the counties of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex encamped upon Blackheath. The king, who, on receiving news of the rising, had dissolved the parliament then sitting at Leicester, arrived in London on Saturday the 13th, and took up his quarters at the priory of St. John’s, near Smithfield. He had with him 20,000 men under arms, but for some reason or other did not set out against the rebels till the following Thursday, the 18th.70.1They, meanwhile, had withdrawn in the night-time,70.2and the king and his host occupied their position on Blackheath. The royal forces, however, proceeded no further. Only a detachment, under Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother William, was sent to pursue the insurgents. An encounter took place at Sevenoaks on the 18th,70.3in which both the Staffords were killed. Their defeat spread dismay and disaffection in the royal camp. The noblemen who had accompanied the king to Blackheath could no longer keep their men together, the latter protesting that unless justice were done on certain traitors who had misled the king, they would go over to the Captain of Kent. To satisfy them, Lord Say was arrested and sent to the Tower; but even with this concession the king did not dare presume upon their loyalty. He withdrew to Greenwich, and the whole of his army dispersed. The king himself returned to London by water, and made preparations during the next two or three days to remove to Kenilworth. The mayor and commons of the city went to him to beseech him to remain, offering to live71and die with him, and pay half a year’s cost of his household. But all was to no purpose. The king had not even the manliness of RichardII.at Smithfield, and he took his departure to Kenilworth.71.1

The city, thus deserted by its sovereign, knew not for a time what to do. A party within the Common Council itself ventured to open negotiations with the insurgents, and Alderman Cooke passed to and fro under the safe-conduct of the Captain.71.2To many it may have seemed doubtful loyalty to support the government of Lord Say and his friends against an oppressed population. On the 1st day of July71.3the insurgents entered Southwark. On the 2nd a Common Council was called by the Lord Mayor to provide means for resisting their entry into the city; but the majority voted for their free admission, and Alderman Robert Horne, who was the leading speaker against them, was committed to prison for his boldness.The rebels enter London.That same afternoon the so-called Mortimer and his followers passed over London Bridge into the city. The Captain, after passing the drawbridge, hewed the ropes asunder with his sword. His first proceedings were marked by order and discipline. He issued proclamations in the king’s name against robbery and forced requisitions, but he rode through the different streets as if to place the capital under military government; and when he came to London Stone, he struck it with his sword, saying, ‘Now is Mortimer lord of this city.’ Finally, he gave instructions to the Lord Mayor about the order to be kept within his jurisdiction, and returned for the night to his quarters in Southwark. On the following morning, Friday the 3rd, he again entered the city, when he caused Lord Say to be sent for from the Tower. That no resistance was made to this demand by Lord Scales, who had the keeping of the fortress, may seem strange. But there was a reason for it which most of the chroniclers do not tell us. The king had72been obliged to listen to the grievances of his ‘Commons’ and to withdraw his protection from his favourites. He had granted a commission ‘to certain lords and to the mayor and divers justices, to inquire of all persons that were traitors, extortioners, or oppressors of the king’s people.’72.1Lord Say was accordingly formally arraigned at a regular sessions at the Guildhall. But when the unfortunate nobleman claimed the constitutional privilege of being tried by his peers, the pretence of law was finally laid aside. A company of the insurgents took him from the officers and hurried him off to the Standard in Cheap, where, before he was half shriven, his head was cut off and stuck upon a long pole. A son-in-law of his named Crowmer, who was then very unpopular as sheriff of Kent, met with a similar fate. He was beheaded in Cade’s presence at Mile End. Barbarity now followed violence. The lifeless heads of Say and Crowmer were carried through the streets, and made to kiss each other. At the same time one Bailey was beheaded at Whitechapel on a charge of necromancy, the real cause of his death being, as it was reported, that he was an old acquaintance of Cade’s who might have revealed something of his past history.

It may have been the expectation of inevitable exposure that induced Cade now to relax discipline, and set an example of spoliation himself. He entered and pillaged the house of Philip Malpas, an alderman known as a friend of the Court, and therefore unpopular in the city. Next day he dined at a house in the parish of St. Margaret Pattens, and then robbed his host. At each of these acts of robbery the rabble were sharers of the spoil. But, of course, such proceedings completely alienated all who had anything to lose, and the mayor and aldermen began to devise measures for expelling Cade and his followers from the city. For this end they negotiated with Lord Scales and Matthew Gough, who had then the keeping of the Tower.

For three days successively Cade had entered the city with his men, and retired in the evening to Southwark. But on Sunday, the 5th of July, he for some reason remained in Southwark73all day. In the evening the mayor and citizens, with a force under Matthew Gough, came and occupied London Bridge to prevent the Kentish men again entering the city.Battle on LondonBridge.The Captain called his men to arms, and attacked the citizens with such impetuosity, that he drove them back from the Southwark end of the bridge to the drawbridge in the centre. This the insurgents set on fire, after inflicting great losses on the citizens, many of whom were slain or drowned in defending it. Matthew Gough himself was among those who perished. Still, the fight was obstinately contested, the advantage being for the moment now with one party and now with the other. It continued all through the night till nine on the following morning; when at last the Kentish men began to give way, and a truce was made for a certain number of hours.

A favourable opportunity now presented itself for mediation. Although the king had retired to Kenilworth, he had left behind him in London some leading members of his council, among whom were Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York,73.1then Lord Chancellor, and Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester. The former had taken refuge in the Tower, under the protection of Lord Scales; and he called to him the latter, who lay concealed at Holywell.73.2A conference was arranged between them and the insurgents, and both the Cardinal and Bishop Waynflete73.3with some others crossed the river and met with Cade in St. Margaret’s Church in Southwark. In the end matters were satisfactorily arranged, and the bishop produced two general pardons prepared by the Chancellor, the74first for the Captain himself, and the second for his followers. The offer was embraced with eagerness. The men were by this time disgusted with their leader, and alarmed at the result of their own acts. By thousands they accepted the amnesty and began to return homewards. But Cade, who knew that his pardon would avail him little when the history of his past life came to be investigated, wisely made friends to himself after the fashion of the Unjust Steward. He broke open the gaols of the King’s Bench and Marshalsea, and formed a new company out of the liberated prisoners.74.1He then despatched to Rochester a barge laden with the goods he had taken from Malpas and others in London, and prepared to go thither himself by land. He and his new following appear to have been still in Southwark on the 8th of July, but to have passed through Dartford to Rochester on the 9th, where they continued still in arms against the king on the 10th and 11th.74.2An attempt they made upon the castle of Queenborough was resisted by Sir Roger Chamberlain, to whom a reward was given in the following year in acknowledgment of his services.74.3Meanwhile a proclamation was issued offering a reward of a thousand marks for Cade’s apprehension, and ten marks for that of any of his followers; ‘for,’ says a contemporary chronicler, ‘it was openly known that his name was not Mortimer; his name was John Cade; and therefore his charter stood in no strength.’74.4

The feeble remains of the rebellion were already quarrelling about the booty Cade had conveyed out of London. Their leader now took horse and escaped in disguise towards the woody country about Lewes. He was pursued by Alexander Iden, a gentleman who had just been appointed sheriff of Kent in place of the murdered Crowmer.Capture and death of Cade.Iden overtook him in a garden at Heathfield, and made him prisoner, not without a scuffle, in which Cade was mortally wounded, so that on being conveyed to London he died on the way. It only remained75to use his carcass as a terror to evil-doers. His head was cut off and placed upon London Bridge, with the face looking towards Kent. His body was drawn through the streets of London, then quartered, and the quarters sent to four different places very widely apart,—one of them to Blackheath, one to Norwich, one to Salisbury, and one to Gloucester.75.1

If the dispersion of traitors’ limbs for exhibition in many places could have effectually repressed disloyalty, the whole realm ought now to have been at rest. The quarters of another Kentish rebel, who, under the name of Bluebeard, had raised disturbances in the preceding February, were at that moment undergoing public exhibition in London, Norwich, and the Cinque Ports. Those of two others were about this time despatched by the sheriffs of London to Chichester, Rochester, Portsmouth, Colchester, Stamford, Coventry, Newbury, and Winchester. The heads of all these wretches were set upon London Bridge, which in the course of this miserable year bore no less than twenty-three such horrid ornaments.75.2

Further disturbances.

But with all this, sedition was not put down, even in the county of Kent; for I find by the evidence of authentic records that a new rising took place in August at Feversham, under one William Parminter, who, undeterred by the fate of Cade, gathered about him 400 men, and called himselfthe secondCaptain of Kent. This affair is quite unnoticed by historians, and all I know of it is derived from a pardon to one of those engaged in it.75.3But even Parminter was not the last ‘Captain of Kent’ that made his appearance this year; for the very same title was immediately afterwards assumed by one John Smyth, for whose capture a reward of £40 was ordered to be paid to the Duke of Somerset on the 3rd of October.75.4And the chroniclers, though they do not mention these disturbances, tell us that such things were general over76all the kingdom. In Wiltshire, at the time that Cade was at Blackheath, William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, had one day said mass at Edington, when he was dragged from the altar by a band of his own tenants and murdered in his alb and stole at the top of a neighbouring hill. He was the second bishop who had been murdered that year by the populace. Another insurrection in the same county in August is mentioned in a letter of James Gresham’s, the number of the insurgents being reported at nine or ten thousand men.76.1These instances may suffice as evidence of the widespread troubles of the time.

Sir John Fastolf.

Of the degree of private suffering and misery inflicted in particular cases by these commotions we have a lively picture in Letter 126. At the time when Cade and his followers were encamped upon Blackheath, Sir John Fastolf, a noted warrior of the time, of whom we shall have much to say hereafter, was residing at his house in Southwark. He was a man who had not succeeded in standing well with his contemporaries, and the fact may have contributed not a little to the sensitiveness of a naturally irascible character. In one engagement with the French76.2he was actually accused of cowardice, a charge which he seems afterwards satisfactorily to have disproved. For some years, however, he had given up soldiering and returned to his native country, where he served the king in a different manner as a member of his Privy Council. But in this capacity too he was unpopular. His advice should have been valuable at least in reference to the affairs of France; but it does not seem to have been taken. The warnings and counsels which he gave with reference to the maintenance of the English conquests in France he caused his secretary, William Worcester, to put in writing for his justification; but though his admonitions were neglected by those to whom they were addressed, popular rumour held him partly accountable for the loss of Normandy. Of this opinion some evidence was given in the course of Cade’s insurrection.

As a member of the King’s Council Fastolf thought it77right to send a messenger to ascertain what were the demands of the insurgents.John Payn and the rebels.He therefore commanded one John Payn, who was in his service, to take a man with him and two of the best horses of his stable, and ride to Blackheath. When he arrived there, Cade ordered him to be taken prisoner. To save his master’s horses from being stolen, Payn gave them to the attendant, who galloped away with them as fast as he could, while he himself was brought before the Captain. Cade then asked him what he had come for, and why he had caused his fellow to run away with the horses. He answered that he had come to join some brothers of his wife, and other companions who were among the insurgents. On this some one called out to the Captain that he was a man of Sir John Fastolf’s, and that the two horses were Sir John’s. The Captain raised a cry of ‘Treason!’ and sent him through the camp with a herald of the Duke of Exeter before him, in the duke’s coat-of-arms. At four quarters of the field the herald proclaimed with anOyezthat Payn had been sent as a spy upon them by the greatest traitor in England or France, namely, by one Sir John Fastolf, who had diminished all the garrisons of Normandy, Le Mans, and Maine, and thereby caused the loss of all the king’s inheritance beyond sea. It was added that Sir John had garrisoned his place with the old soldiers of Normandy, to oppose the Commons when they came to Southwark; and, as the emissary of such a traitor, Payn was informed that he should lose his head.

He was brought to the Captain’s tent, where an axe and block were produced. But fortunately he had friends among the host; and Robert Poynings, Cade’s swordbearer and carver, who afterwards married John Paston’s sister Elizabeth, declared plainly that there should die a hundred or two others if Payn were put to death. He was therefore allowed to live on taking an oath that he would go to Southwark and arm himself, and return to join the Commons. He accordingly carried to Fastolf a statement of their demands, advising him at the same time to put away his old soldiers and withdraw himself into the Tower. The old warrior felt that the advice was prudent; he left but two of his servants in the place, and78but for Payn the insurgents would have burned it to the ground. The faithful dependant, however, had to pay the full penalty of his master’s unpopularity. He seems to have entertained the rioters for some time at his own cost. Afterwards the Captain took from him some valuable clothes and armour, and sent men to ransack his chamber of bonds, money, and other stores. The insurgents also robbed his house in Kent, and threatened to hang his wife and children. Finally, on the night of the battle on London Bridge, Cade thrust him into the thickest of the combat, where he continued six hours unable to extricate himself, and was dangerously wounded.

To have passed through all this was surely a severe enough trial; yet after that commotion he had further trouble to endure. He was impeached by the Bishop of Rochester, and thrown into the Marshalsea by command of the queen. He was also threatened to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, in order that he might accuse his master Fastolf of treason; but in the end his friends succeeded in procuring for him a charter of pardon. To earn this, however, as we find from the document itself, he had to appear before the king in person, during a progress which he made in Kent the year after the rebellion, and, amid a crowd of other supplicants whose bodies were stripped naked down to their legs, humbly to beg for mercy.78.1

68.2SeeNo. 123. William Worcester says Lord Beauchamp was made treasurer, and Lord Cromwell the king’s chamberlain. Lord Beauchamp’s appointment is on thePatent Rolls. SeeCalendarium Rot. Patent, p. 294.69.1The late Mr. Durrant Cooper, in an interesting paper read before a meeting of the Kent Archæological Society, examined the long list of names given on thePatent Rollof 28 HenryVI., and proved from them that the insurrection was by no means of a very plebeian or disorderly character. ‘In several hundreds,’ he says, ‘the constables duly, and as if legally, summoned the men; and many parishes, particularly Marden, Penshurst, Hawkhurst, Northfleet, Boughton-Malherbe, Smarden, and Pluckley, furnished as many men as could be found in our day fit for arms.’70.1These dates were given differently in previous issues of this Introduction. For a rectification of the chronology of the rebellion I am indebted to Kriehn’sEnglish Risingin 1450, pp. 125 and following.70.2According to No. 119 of our collection this retreat would appear to have been on the 22nd June, but that date is certainly an error.70.3The 18th June is given as the date of Sir Humphrey Stafford’s death inInquis. post mortem, 28 HenryVI.No. 7.71.1W. Worc.—Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles(edited by me for the Camden Soc.), 67.—Chronicle inMS.Cott. Vitell. A. xvi.71.2Holinshed, iii. 632.71.3I leave this part of the story as it was originally written, though here, too, the chronology seems to require rectification, especially from sources since published, for which the reader may consult Kriehn’s work, p. 129.72.1MS.Vitellius A. xvi. fol. 107, quoted by Kriehn, p. 92.73.1Inaccurately called Archbishop of Canterbury by Fabyan and others. He was not translated to Canterbury till 1452.73.2Hall’sChronicle. Holy Well was a mineral spring to the north of London, much frequented before the Reformation, when it was stopped up as being considered a place of superstitious resort. A century afterwards it was discovered anew by a Mr. Sadler, from whom the locality is named to this day Sadler’s Wells.73.3Some doubt seems to be thrown on Hall’s statement that both prelates crossed the river, as earlier writers say the Chancellorsentpardons under the Great Seal. William Worcester, moreover, makes no mention of the cardinal, but says that the Bishop of Winchester and others of the king’s council spoke with the Captain of Kent. But the ‘Short English Chronicle’ in theThree Fifteenth Century Chronicles, edited by me for the Camden Society in 1880 (p. 68), does exactly the reverse, and omitting all reference to the Bishop of Winchester, says: ‘And forthewithe went the Chaunseler to the Capteyne and sessed him and gave him a chartur and his men an other.’74.1Hall’sChronicle.74.2SeeAct of Attainder, 29 Hen.VI.Rolls of Parl.vi. 224.74.3Devon’sIssue Rolls, 471. Davies’English Chron.67.74.4Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 68.75.1W. Worc. Fabyan. Davies’English Chronicle(Camden Soc.), 67. Ellis’Letters, 2nd Series i. 115.75.2Ellis,ib.MS.Vitell. A. xvi.75.3Seedocument in Appendix to this Introduction; also Devon’sIssue Rolls, p. 472. It would seem as if the entry there dated 5th August ought to have been 5th September, as Parminter does not seem to have been taken even on the last day of August.75.4Nicolas’sProceedings of the Privy Council, vi. 101.76.1SeeNo. 131.76.2The Battle of Patay.78.1SeeAppendix to Introduction.

69.1The late Mr. Durrant Cooper, in an interesting paper read before a meeting of the Kent Archæological Society, examined the long list of names given on thePatent Rollof 28 HenryVI., and proved from them that the insurrection was by no means of a very plebeian or disorderly character. ‘In several hundreds,’ he says, ‘the constables duly, and as if legally, summoned the men; and many parishes, particularly Marden, Penshurst, Hawkhurst, Northfleet, Boughton-Malherbe, Smarden, and Pluckley, furnished as many men as could be found in our day fit for arms.’

70.1These dates were given differently in previous issues of this Introduction. For a rectification of the chronology of the rebellion I am indebted to Kriehn’sEnglish Risingin 1450, pp. 125 and following.

70.2According to No. 119 of our collection this retreat would appear to have been on the 22nd June, but that date is certainly an error.

70.3The 18th June is given as the date of Sir Humphrey Stafford’s death inInquis. post mortem, 28 HenryVI.No. 7.

71.1W. Worc.—Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles(edited by me for the Camden Soc.), 67.—Chronicle inMS.Cott. Vitell. A. xvi.

71.2Holinshed, iii. 632.

71.3I leave this part of the story as it was originally written, though here, too, the chronology seems to require rectification, especially from sources since published, for which the reader may consult Kriehn’s work, p. 129.

72.1MS.Vitellius A. xvi. fol. 107, quoted by Kriehn, p. 92.

73.1Inaccurately called Archbishop of Canterbury by Fabyan and others. He was not translated to Canterbury till 1452.

73.2Hall’sChronicle. Holy Well was a mineral spring to the north of London, much frequented before the Reformation, when it was stopped up as being considered a place of superstitious resort. A century afterwards it was discovered anew by a Mr. Sadler, from whom the locality is named to this day Sadler’s Wells.

73.3Some doubt seems to be thrown on Hall’s statement that both prelates crossed the river, as earlier writers say the Chancellorsentpardons under the Great Seal. William Worcester, moreover, makes no mention of the cardinal, but says that the Bishop of Winchester and others of the king’s council spoke with the Captain of Kent. But the ‘Short English Chronicle’ in theThree Fifteenth Century Chronicles, edited by me for the Camden Society in 1880 (p. 68), does exactly the reverse, and omitting all reference to the Bishop of Winchester, says: ‘And forthewithe went the Chaunseler to the Capteyne and sessed him and gave him a chartur and his men an other.’

74.1Hall’sChronicle.

74.2SeeAct of Attainder, 29 Hen.VI.Rolls of Parl.vi. 224.

74.3Devon’sIssue Rolls, 471. Davies’English Chron.67.

74.4Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 68.

75.1W. Worc. Fabyan. Davies’English Chronicle(Camden Soc.), 67. Ellis’Letters, 2nd Series i. 115.

75.2Ellis,ib.MS.Vitell. A. xvi.

75.3Seedocument in Appendix to this Introduction; also Devon’sIssue Rolls, p. 472. It would seem as if the entry there dated 5th August ought to have been 5th September, as Parminter does not seem to have been taken even on the last day of August.

75.4Nicolas’sProceedings of the Privy Council, vi. 101.

76.1SeeNo. 131.

76.2The Battle of Patay.

78.1SeeAppendix to Introduction.

Sidenote:Battle on London Bridge.final . missing

The Duke of York.

Cade’s rebellion was attributed by the Court to the machinations of the Duke of York. The disturbances that had prevailed for some months previously seem to have been partly associated with his name. When Adam de Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, was murdered in the beginning of the year, the malcontents talked of inviting York over from Ireland to redress the wrongs of the people. The79exclusion of York and other lords of royal blood from the king’s councils was also made an express ground of complaint by the Kentish insurgents. The repetition of his name in the mouths of the disaffected was anything but grateful to the party then in power. It was construed as being in itself an evidence of his disloyalty. But the popular complaints as to his treatment were both just and reasonable, for it was a matter that concerned the public weal. The rank, wealth, and lineage of the Duke of York, his connection with the blood-royal, his large possessions, and finally his well-proved ability both as a general and an administrator—all marked him out as one who ought to have been invited to take a leading part in the government of the realm; but a faction about the king had taken care to keep him as much as possible at a distance from the Court. Moreover, it had maligned and aspersed him in his absence, so that it would have been positively insecure for himself to allow the charges to accumulate. A time had clearly come when it was no longer his duty to obey the orders of others. His enemies were becoming more and more unpopular every day, and the only hope of improving the administration of affairs depended upon his taking the initiative.

Comes over from Ireland.

He accordingly determined to avail himself of the privilege due to his rank, and lay his requests at the foot of the throne. A little before Michaelmas he came over from Ireland, collected 4000 of his retainers upon the Welsh Marches, and with them proceeded to London. His coming, although unsolicited by the king and without leave asked, was nevertheless not altogether unexpected. Attempts were made to stop his landing at Beaumaris, and bodies of men lay in wait for him in various places to interrupt his progress. For this, however, he could not have been unprepared. He knew well the hatred entertained towards him at the Court, for he had experienced pretty much the same thing years before in going to Ireland, as now in coming from it. Although he was sent to that country in the king’s service, and as the king’s lieutenant, there were persons commissioned to apprehend him at several points in his journey thither; and now80on his return similar efforts were made to prevent his advance to London. As regards himself they were altogether fruitless; but it is not improbable that they succeeded in deterring many of his followers from joining him. William Tresham, the Speaker of the last Parliament, having received a summons from the duke to meet him, was waylaid and murdered in Northamptonshire by a body of the retainers of Lord Grey of Ruthin. For two months the murderers went at large. The sheriff of the county durst not arrest them, and it was only on the meeting of Parliament that a special act was passed for their punishment.80.1

York, however, pursued his way, in spite of all opposition, to the royal presence, and great was the dismay of those then about the king. According to an act passed against him nine years later, his approach was not unaccompanied by violence. He and his followers, it is said, came in warlike array to Westminster Palace, and ‘beat down the spears and walls’ in the king’s chamber. If so, we should infer that his access to the king was opposed even at the last moment. But the opposition was ineffectual, and the reception he met with from Henry himself did not indicate that the king at all resented his conduct.

It must have been on his first interview with Henry that he presented a petition and received a reply from him, which are printed in Holinshed as follows:—

Richard, Duke of York: his letter to King Henry80.2

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