Placards of the rebels’ complaints and grievances, one of which was secured for his master by Sir John Fastolf’s servant Payn, from the Blackheath camp,45 were condensed by the captain, or by his secretary Henry Wilkhouse, public notary and procurator of the bishop of Rochester,46 into five requests for presentation to the king. Henry should resume his lost demesnes in order to re-establish his power and dignity: he should banish from his presence and punish according to the law ‘all the false progeny of the duke of Suffolk’, and replace them by the lords of his blood, York, Exeter, Buckingham and Norfolk, York being specifically referred to as exiled from his presence; those who had encompassed the death of Gloucester should be punished, together with those who had lost the overseas possessions: ‘and our true lords, knights and esquires, and many a good yeoman lost and sold ere they went, the which is great pity to hear’. They wanted the removal of abuses of the law immediately affecting them: extortions of green wax,47 judgements of King’s Bench, the insufferable purveyance for Henry’s household and the statute of labourers. They demanded relief from the corrupt practices of certain named influential local individuals: Stephen Slegg, William Crowmer, William Isle and Robert Est.48 The misdeeds of such royal servants and servants of the ‘great rulers of the shire’ were linked with abuses perpetrated by members of Henry’s household government on the national plane. This was chiefly because the courtier Lord Say, treasurer of England, chamberlain of the household, Warden of the Cinque Ports, constable of Dover castle, chief recipient of Henry’s bounty in Kent and Sussex, and a great ruler of the shire from his seat of Knole castle near Sevenoaks, personified both. Specific local complaints included interference with the free election of the knights of the shire, corruption in the choice of tax collectors and in levying taxes, extortion by the sheriffs and under-sheriffs, false charges of treason, laid so that those who had the king’s ear could get the lands of those accused, tax concessions made to the barons of the Cinque Ports, which then had to be made up out of the county quota, feigned indictments for alleged hunting offences, illegal exactions of castle ward dues throughout the shire, enforced by the court of Dover castle, and the remoteness of the justices of the peace sessions from much of the county, five days’ journey being necessary to get to them from the west of Kent.
Rebellions normally lift the lid on the state of the realm and reveal its inside workings. This Kentish rising was no exception. The opinion of Sir John Fortescue on the root cause of rebellion, a rare event among the common people of England, is apposite here: ‘when they lack good they will arise, saying that they lack justice’.49 The picture revealed is one of endemic, corrupt local government and justice, its failings exacerbated by sudden, severe economic depression caused by political events. The great lords of Kent, both lay and ecclesiastical, were constantly absent on royal service and the localities ruled by their agents. The community of the shire looked to parliament, now moved off to the remote Midlands, for redress of all the multifarious grievances summed up in the phrase ‘lack of governance’. They were determined to assist the Commons in parliament in their efforts to obtain reform and redress.
The ‘Lower House’ in parliament had made a scapegoat of the king’s chief executive for the accumulating failures of past policies. The king’s opposition to his impeachment and the only slight success of their resumption bill suggested that Henry was not amenable to change. These requests of the men of Kent, the most articulate section of the kingdom, presented from a local viewpoint but basically identical with the Commons’ demands, now met the same negative response. Robert Bale’s London chronicle, which is noteworthy for its precise chronology50 of these years, shows that much of the king’s considerable army was moved to within sight of the Blackheath camp at Henry’s command that same Monday 15 June, after his herald’s return. The following morning he at first proposed to move against them himself, but was persuaded to delay while a deputation consisting of the duke of Buckingham and the two archbishops, all three commissioners of the peace for Kent, plus his friend the bishop of Winchester and the constable, Viscount Beaumont, went to reason with them. They returned with the captain’s specific requests, having bound themselves to return by a fixed time to deliver the king’s answer. But this answer never arrived because Henry simply refused to consider them. Instead, on the Wednesday, the rebel host received intelligence that Henry was indeed taking the field in person against them. Such a respectable assembly would not face the king’s banner in the field, which would be manifest treason, so they dispersed under cover of darkness, leaving an empty heath for him to occupy on the Thursday morning.
Further reinforcements for Henry’s host, notably from Lancashire and Cheshire, continued to arrive throughout that day and night. He now allowed the vanguard of his army to deploy their forces to hunt down the retreating rebels in the Kentish countryside. Among the leaders of this foray were the earl of Northumberland, lords Rivers, Scales and Grey, Sir Humphrey Stafford of Grafton and William Stafford, both kinsmen of the duke of Buckingham and of the archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Thomas Stanley, the controller of the household and other household men, John Sutton, Lord Dudley, Sir Robert Wing-field and Thomas Daniel, Henry’s esquire of the body. On Thursday afternoon he received the shock news that the Staffords had been routed and slain with many of their men, somewhere in wooded country between Bromley and Sevenoaks. On the Friday morning, when Henry ordered the host to stand to arms for further pursuit of the rebels, he was faced with mutiny in his own ranks. A great shout of ‘destroy the traitors about the king’ went up and a call to finish the captain’s work For him.
A weak volte face by Henry now followed under this sudden pressure, in marked contrast to his refusal to consider the petitions of his loyal rebels only three days previously. First Lord Say and William Crowmer were arrested and despatched to the Tower.51 He issued a proclamation against traitors, which was taken to mean further arrests of some not present, including Thomas Daniel, and this quieted the host. But the incipient mutiny had revealed its unreliability and a lame dispersal back through the city now began. Henry himself withdrew to nearby Greenwich, returned up-river to the city on 20 June, and then retired to Westminster. From here, having qualms about the safety of Lord Say, he sent secretly to the Tower for him to join him, but the constable, the young duke of Exeter, declined to sanction his release. Henry had decided to flee out of harm’s way, back to his Lancaster estates, and was unmoved by a deputation of the mayor of London and his fellows sent to Westminster to implore him to stay with them to face the reassembling rebels.52 In marked contrast to his predecessor Richard II, who in his youth had personally confronted his rebellious peasants in almost identical circumstances at Mile End in 1381, Henry had no spirit for a personal encounter. By 26 June, if not before, he was in Berkhamsted castle. It was the council who ordered the Tower to be victualled against siege on 30 June.53 By 7 July Henry had withdrawn to the Midlands and was secure in the castle of Kenilworth with levies from the four northern counties and from Cheshire and Lancashire alerted to his call.54
The rash sorties of the household men into the hostile Kent countryside between 18 and 20 June had thus destroyed the king’s apparent position of strength at Blackheath and rekindled the dying rebellion. On Tuesday 23 June the captain re-established his camp at Blackheath and finally moved to occupy Southwark on Thursday 2 July. A supporting great fellowship now came out of Essex and occupied Mile End outside Aldgate the same day. There were undoubtedly sympathizers within the city itself, since at noon that day Cade was able to cross over London Bridge and cut the drawbridge ropes, so from that Friday afternoon until the following Sunday evening the men of Kent crossed into the city and returned to Southwark at will. They pillaged the house of Alderman Philip Malpas, the chief of Cade’s opponents within the city, and contrived to get hold of Say and Crowmer. Some twenty persons, including the dead duke of Suffolk and his duchess, the bishop of Salisbury, Lord Say, William Crowmer, Thomas Daniel, John Say and other hou
sehold members, were indicted at the Guildhall before the Chief Baron of the Exchequer, Peter Ardern, and two other judges, Nicholas Assheton and Robert Danvers. These commissioners were members of a powerful commission of oyer and terminer for London and the suburbs, headed by Lord Scales, keeper of the Tower, the mayor, Thomas Chalton, and the Chief Justice, issued by the council from Westminster on 1 July, both as a concession and as a precaution against anticipated disorders.55 The treasurer of England, Lord Say, was arraigned in person at the Guildhall. When he tried to claim trial by his peers he was dragged from the court and summarily executed by Cade’s men in Cheapside. Crowmer was executed at Mile End among the Essex men. On the Sunday a joint force of citizens and the Tower garrison under Lord Scales attempted to bar the bridge to the rebels and fought them all night to a standstill, with many casualties on both sides, including among the slain Mathew Gough, veteran captain of the French wars, and an alderman, John Sutton. Finally, on the Monday morning, during a truce, the two archbishops and the bishop of Winchester crossed over to persuade the captain and his men to accept a royal pardon, prepared at the instigation of Queen Margaret, who was still at Greenwich. This was issued to some 3,000 of them that day and the next, 6 and 7 July. It is the enrolment of these pardons which enables the composition of the rebellion to be ascertained with such accuracy. With the exception of the captain’s own pardon, which was in any case granted under his false name, all of them were honoured to the letter.
Over a century ago Bishop Stubbs wrote that Cade’s rebellion, more than anything else in the reign, proved Henry’s utter incapacity for government.56 It was a political demonstration of his loyal subjects from four counties, supported by all sections of the community except the lords, although the substantial gentry element in it kept out of the limelight; a localized expression of a deep national sense of humiliation and frustration. The king, when confronted by several thousand of his loyal subjects demanding redress, had declined to consider their petitions and had raised his standard in the field against them. They dared not and would not fight him face to face and dispersed, but he simply threw away his enormous personal advantage as their sovereign. He allowed sections of his army under his hated household men to ravage the countryside in pursuit, and they met with sharp defeat in the process. This led to mutiny in his own forces who then showed sympathy with the rebels, so Henry abandoned his army and his capital and withdrew to his private Lancastrian domains. He had handled rebellion at home as badly as he had previously managed the affairs of his French kingdom in the loss of which lay the basic cause of all his troubles from 1449.
1 Sudeley (Butler) 1441, Millbrook (Cornwall) 1442, Lisle (Talbot) 1444, Saye and Sele (Fiennes) 1447, Beauchamp of Powicke 1447, Hoo 1448, Rivers (Wydeville) 1448, Stourton 1448, Rougemont-Grey (Grey) 1449, Egremont (Percy) 1449. There had only been two previous such creations of baronies by patent: Beauchamp of Kidderminster in 1387 and Fanhope (Cornwall) in 1432. Sir John Cornwall married into the royal family (Henry IV’s sister). The 1442 Millbrook patent was probably a confirmation after Henry came of age of the 1432 patent.
2 Edward Brook, Lord Cobham, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, 1445; Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby, Henry Percy, Lord Poynings, 1447; William Beauchamp, Lord St Amand, William Bonville, Lord Bonville, William Bourchier, Lord Fitzwarren, Henry Bromflete, Lord de Vescy, February 1449.
3 Dukes: Somerset John Beaufort) 1443, Exeter (John Holand) 1444, Buckingham (Humphrey Stafford) 1444, Warwick (Henry Beauchamp) 1445, Somerset (Edmund Beaufort) 1448, Suffolk (William de la Pole) 1448. Marquises: Dorset (Edmund Beaufort) 1443, Suffolk (William de la Pole) 1444. The short-lived title of Marquis of Dublin (1385–6), conferred by Richard II on Robert de Vere in the Irish peerage, may be taken as a solitary precedent here. Earls: Dorset (Edmund Beaufort) 1441, Shrewsbury (John Talbot) 1442, Wiltshire (James Butler) 1449, Worcester (John Tiptoft) 1449, Warwick (Richard-Nevill, recognized by right of his wife) 1449. In addition Kendal went to John Beaufort in 1443 by creation and Pembroke to William de la Pole, marquis of Suflolk in 1447. Viscounts: Beaumont (John, Lord Beaumont, count of Boulogne) 1440, Bourchier (Henry, Lord Bourchier, count of Eu) 1445. These 17 creations and elevations thus involved only 12 individuals.
4 J. S. Roskell, ‘The Problem of the Attendance of the Lords in Medieval Parliaments’, B.I.H.R., XXIX (1956), 153–204, from which the following figures are extracted:
Date of Assembly
1435
1439
1449
1449–50
1453–4
1459
Parliaments
Total Peers summoned
80
92
105
97
Maximum attendance of peers at one session
24
46i
27
66ii
Great Councils
Total attendance at one session of Great Councils
30
38
33
28
i) Special meeting in king’s chamber at his command to hear his sentence on Suffolk.
ii) Special session to take an oath of allegiance to King Henry and Prince Edward.
5 The palatine counties of Cheshire and Durham not sending members.
6 S.R., II, 156, 162, 170, 243, 340.
7 Totals from J. C. Wedgwood and Anne D. Holt, History of Parliament 1439–1509 Biographies (H.M.S.O., 1936), and Household accounts, mainly P.R.O., E. 101/410/6:
Date of Parliament
1439
1442
1445
1447
1449 (1)
1449–1450
1450–1451
1453
1455
1459
1460
Possible total membership of the Lower House
264
268
268
272
276
278
280
288
288
250
288
Number of names known
108
268
122
272
274
272
268
278
204
167
164
Number of members of household elected
24
31
25
53
49
35
30
61
26
34
14
Number of these elected for boroughs
4
12
7
24
22
19
15
25
17
13
8
Number of holders of crown lands present
10
15
8
21
27
12
7
18
15
11
8 From 1442: Plymouth and Downton; from 1447 Windsor and Wooton Bassett; from 1449 Westbury, Haytesbury and Hindon; from 1453 Gatton, Bramber, Coventry, Poole and Steyning. Some of these had occasionally returned members in the previous century.
9 Similar conclusions reached both by J. S. Roskell, The Commons in the Parliament of 1422 (Manchester U.P., 1954), 133, and Roger Virgoe, ‘The Parliament of 1449–50’ (unpublished London Ph.D. thesis, 1964), 136.
10 Paston Letters, I, 150, 157, 160, 161, 337, 340, 341.
11 See the masterly article by K. B. McFarlane, ‘Parliament and “Bastard Feudalism’”, T.R.H.S., XXVI (1944), 53–79, based on the records of the graduated income taxes of 1411 and 1435 and discussion of the disputed elections of the 1450s.
12 Studies in English Trade in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Eileen Power and M. M. Postan (London 1933), 128–9.
13 Ibid., 330–60 (fi
gures for individual ports), 402 (consolidated table).
14 J. Otway-Ruthven, A History of Medieval Ireland (London 1968), 379.
15 ‘Articles of the duke of York against the bishop of Chichester’ (B.L. MS Harley 543, fols 161r-163r, in the hand of John Stow).
16 R.P., V, 147–8; Bale’s Chronicle in Six Town Chronicles (ed. Flenley), 125; cf. John Bcnct’s Chronicle, 195.
17 See above, 193.
18 R.P., V, 176ff.
19 ‘William Worcester’, ‘Annales’, printed in Wars of the English in France, ed. Stevenson, Wars, II, pt. ii, 766.
20 It is hard to find any contemporary who had a good word to say for him, although they did exist; the chronicler of the abbey of Crowland remembered him with gratitude for his vigorous defence of the abbey’s rights against Thomas Lord Dacre in 1447.
21 C.P.R., 1446–1452, 187–8, 189, 210–2; P.R.O., E.28/77/53 (3 June 1448); Paston Letters, I, 96–8; The Crowland Continuator in Ingulph’s Chronicle of the Abbey of Croyland, ed. & trans. H. T. Riley (London 1854), 405. See also R. L. Storey, ‘Lincolnshire in the Wars of the Roses’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, XIV (1970), 77–8.
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