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.”