Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Houglande-mail: thefantompowa@fantompowa.org
They do not, however,
seem to have possessed any programme for the betterment
of lay society. Although both these revolts secured some
support from fairly widespread areas, this was not
strong, and they were easily suppressed. Jack Cade's rising in
1450, which affected mainly Kent and various neighbouring
counties, was a far more serious affair, and had
repercussions over a much wider area. It marked the
culmination of a series of political disorders, directed
primarily against Henry Vl's chief adviser, William de la
Pole, duke of Suffolk. One of his associates, Adam
Moleyns, bishop of Chichester, was murdered on 9 January,
he himself was committed to the Tower on the demand of
the Commons on 28 January and two sets of articles of
impeachment were laid against him. Although he was
pardoned by the King and sent into exile (presumably for
his own protection), there were riots against him after
his release from the Tower, and when he sailed from
England he was intercepted and murdered on 2 May. De la
Pole's unpopularity was essentially political and
personal; he was associated with the failure of the war
in France and was rightly suspected of exploiting royal
favour in the interest of himself and his friends (Ch.22;
147, pp.44, 62). Popular unrest had begun to develop even
before his death - commissions were appointed to
investigate insurrections in Kent on 2 February and in
Surrey on 11 April, and a London chronicle tells of the
arrest and execution, at an unspecified date, of a rebel
leader known as Bluebeard. (7; 22, p.158) By the end of
May the Kentishmen were marching on London, in June there
was a skirmish with royal forces, and they presented a
formal complaint of their grievances. On 4 July they
entered London, although the authorities there were able
to reassert themselves more rapidly than in 1381. On the
next day a pardon was offered to the rebels, who withdrew
from the city, although their leader Cade remained under
arms, putting himself outside the scope of the pardon,
and was killed on 12 July. Another prominent man at
court, the King's confessor, Bishop Ayscough of
Salisbury, was murdered at Edington in Wiltshire on 29
June. The troubles in Kent dragged on sporadically for
some two years; in August 1450 a certain William
Parmenter virtually proclaimed himself Cade's successor
by calling himself the second captain of Kent, in April
1451 there were troubles fomented by Henry Hasilden, and
in May 1452 there was yet further disorder (42).
What was the cause of
these disorders? The Kentishmen's statement of
grievances, comprising fifteen articles and five requests
to the King, throws some light on this (7; 11, pp.338-42)
The first article stated that there were rumours that
Kent was to be turned into a forest as a punishment for
Suffolk's death. This rumour may have done what the poll
tax did in 1381, set fire to a potentially explosive
situation, indeed one which had already shown signs of
bursting into flame. But it is clear that there were more
fundamental problems. Complaints were then made about the
exclusion of the lords of the King's blood from his
Council, obviously an allusion to the duke of York, about
purveyance of goods for the King's household, and about
extortion by sheriffs and their officers. Allegations of
treason were made concerning the loss of lands in France,
a matter which may have particularly concerned the
Kentishmen, whose vulnerability to raids was obvious, and
who may well have been alarmed by the issue of a
commission of array, and a command to set up warning
beacons, on 14 April. Complaint was made that there was
no free election of knights of the shire, and that those
elected knights had taken bribes for appointing
tax-collectors in it. The King was asked to take the duke
of York into his counsel, to punish those responsible for
the death of the duke of Gloucester and to end
extortions, particularly those by four named
persons. Apart from one passing
reference to the Statute of Labourers, social grievances
do not appear in the petition. More important are the
political demands, but most significant of all was local
discontent at the action of royal officials in the shire.
This was directed particularly at the sheriff, William
Crowmer, and his father-in-law, Lord Say, who as Sir
James Fiennes had been sheriff in 1442. Say had been
Treasurer since 1449, so the attacks on him link local
grievances with general hostility to the court. There is
good reason to believe that these attacks were well
justified, because after the defeat of the rising and
Cade's death, a commission, sent into Kent to investigate
extortions there, held inquests in various parts of the
shire between late August and late October 1450. At these
the jurors accused various officials, particularly those
named in the complaint, of extortion, disseisin, forcible
detention of goods and fabrication of warrants of arrest
for the purpose of extorting money (42). ln June too,
after an attempt to repel the rebels had failed, and the
leaders of the royal force, Sir Humphrey Stafford and
William Stafford, had been killed at Sevenoaks, the
government had tried to placate the Kentishmen by
arresting Crowmer and Say and sending them to the Tower,
and when Cade's men entered London in July, those two
were among their. earliest victims (16, p.l92). The
rebels also secured support in London from opponents of
the court party. The courtiers' most prominent associate
there was a draper, Philip Malpas, who had been chosen
alderman of Lime Street ward in 1448 only through royal
influence. His house was sacked during the revolt, and he
himself was discharged from office; although he lived for
almost twenty years more, he was not reappointed. Some of
Cade's allies in the city were men of position, although
the bulk of his support came from the poorer classes
(128, pp.l11, 115). The evidence suggests
that Cade's support was fairly widely based, and that the
strength of his leadership lay in his ability to act as
spokesmen for all the social groups which supported him.
The revolt was not purely one of the agricultural
classes, although a substantial number of those pardoned
for participation in it are described as 'husbandman' or
'labourer'. A number of those involved were artisans from
the Kentish towns, some of whom, particularly those
connected with the cloth trade, may have had a special
grievance, as a sharp decline in cloth exports after 1448
could well have caused local unemployment (66, pp.96-7).
Even more striking as a pointer to the greater importance
of political rather than social factors in the rebellion
was the participation of men from higher up the social
scale; over ninety participants are described as
'gentleman' or 'esquire', and there was even one knight
in the list of those pardoned, Sir William Trussel of
Aylmesthorpe, Leicestershire. It is not clear how far
there were similar local grievances to those of the
Kentishmen in some of the other shires which were
involved in the revolt, notably Sussex and Surrey,
although it is probable that the resentment of the
citizens of Salisbury at the powers which the bishop
exercised there may have been one factor behind the
murder of Ayscough (7; 147, pp.63, 66-8). As a leader, Cade was
able to maintain discipline among his men, at least until
they reached London, and his success in defeating the
force sent against him argues that he possessed some
military capacity. Possibly there was some breakdown of
control when he entered London, which may well have
contributed to a reaction against him on the part of the
citizens. The attack on Malpas's house certainly seems to
have alarmed them and led them to co-operate with the
authorities against the rebels (22,
p.161). As in 1381 there was no
specific disloyalty to the King - hatred was concentrated
on his advisers. This raises a further problem, whether
or not there was, as some Tudor writers believed, Yorkist
influence behind the rising. Certainly Cade's assumption
of the name Mortimer, by which he was known in the
earlier stages of the revolt, hints at Yorkist
connections. (Indeed he was pardoned under that name, and
the discovery that it was a false one provided an
additional pretext for its revocation.) But Richard of
York himself made no attempt to co-ordinate his movements
with Cade's, and the demands for his inclusion among the
King's advisers probably do no more than reflect dislike
of the existing court faction. It is worth spending
considerable time in examining the causes of the 1450
rebellion, because they contrast markedly with those of
the 1381 revolt. Cade and his supporters had no
constructive programme for social reform, and appeared to
be unconcerned about questions of servile status or land
rents. Such economic grievances as existed were probably
prompted by such immediate issues as the slump in the
cloth industry rather than by long-term agrarian
questions. The major grievances were political, although
not necessarily dynastic, and reflected discontent at the
abuse of power by the men who controlled the government.
The rising, the most extensive popular movement between
1381 and the sixteenth century, was relatively limited in
its aims and was certainly not directed at the overthrow
of the social order. During the Yorkist period
there were undoubtedly some movements of popular
discontent; in 1471 the Essex men seem to have joined
Fauconberg's attack on London because they felt that the
citizens were paying insufficient prices for dairy
supplies. A late and rather unreliable source also
explained some of the northern discontent in 1469 as the
result of the demands of the Hospital of St Leonard at
York for payments of sheaves from the northern counties
(13, p.121; 4O, p.218). But neither of these cases really
proves the existence of strong agrarian unrest; both show
that local discontent could be drawn into the political
struggles of contending dynasties and their magnate
supporters. ' In the early Tudor
period, the main occasions for insurrections seem to have
been fiscal. Two risings under Henry Vll followed
attempts to levy taxes; in 1489 the earl of
Northumberland lost his life at the hands of a force of
rebellious Yorkshiremen when he was trying to collect the
subsidy granted that year, and in 1497 the levying of a
tax for a war with Scotland led to a more serious revolt
in Cornwall. According to one account, the Cornishmen
felt that the affairs of the North were too remote to
interest them. A substantial army marched on London, and
although it was defeated, and their leaders put to death,
to do so the King had to divert the force which was being
prepared for the campaign in Scotland (73,
pp14-16).
From The Transformation of
Medieval England 1370-1529 by John A. F. Thomson. First
published by Longman, Harlow, Essex, England,
1983
Such popular
movements as occurred between 1381 and the early
sixteenth century must be seen against this background,
which goes far to explain their character. The grievances
which prompted them tended not to be social, but
political, fiscal, or even religious. The Lollard rising
of Sir John Oldcastle in 1414 had no social aims; indeed
the rebels do not appear to have had any programme at
all, beyond a vague idea of seizing the King (without any
very clear idea of what they would then do with him). The
revolt was essentially Oldcastle's attempted revenge for
his arrest in the previous year, and the only economic
motive which can be discerned among some of the rebels
was a possible hope of seizing some ecclesiastical
property. The rising at Abingdon in 1431 (with offshoots
in the Midlands and London), which contemporaries
associated with Lollardy, although on somewhat tenuous
grounds, was undoubtedly anti-clerical, and some rebels
seem to have put forward plans for ecclesiastical
disestablishment.