The Rise of the Democracy Part 6

It was a popular rising in 1450, but it was not a peasant revolt. Men of substance in the county rallied to Cade's banner, and in many parishes in Kent the village constable was employed to enrol willing recruits in the army of disaffection.[41]

The peasant revolt was at bottom a social movement, fostered and fas.h.i.+oned by preachers of a social democracy. Cade's rising was provoked by misgovernment and directed at political reform. It was far less revolutionary in purpose than the revolt that preceded it, or the rising under Ket a hundred years later.

The discontent was general when Cade encamped on Blackheath with the commons of Kent at the end of May, 1450. Suffolk, the best hated of Henry VI.'s ministers, had already been put to death by the sailors of Dover, and Lord Say-and-Sele, the Treasurer, was in the Tower under impeachment.

Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, another Minister, was hanged by his infuriated flock in Wilts.h.i.+re, and Bishop Moleyns, of Chichester, Keeper of the Privy Seal, was executed in Portsmouth by a mob of sailors. Piracy prevailed unchecked in the English Channel, and the highways inland were haunted by robbers--soldiers back from France and broken in the wars.

The ablest statesman of the day, the Duke of York, was banished from the royal council, and there was a wide feeling that an improvement in government was impossible until York was recalled.

Whether Cade, who was known popularly as "Mortimer," was related to the Duke of York, or was merely a country landowner, can never be decided. The charges made against him after his death were not supported by a shred of evidence, but it was necessary then for the Government to blacken the character of the Captain of Kent for the utter discouragement of his followers. All we _know_ of Cade is that by the Act of Attainder he must have been a man of some property in Surrey--probably a squire or yeoman.

The army that encamped on Blackheath numbered over 40,000, and included squires, yeomen, county gentlemen, and at least two notable ecclesiastics from Suss.e.x, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of Lewes. The testimony to Cade's character is that he was the unquestioned and warmly respected leader of the host. The Cade depicted by his enemies--a dissolute, disreputable ruffian--was not the kind of man to have had authority as a chosen captain over country gentlemen and clerical landowners in the fifteenth century.

The "Complaints" of the commons of Kent, drawn up at Blackheath and forwarded to the King and his Parliament, then sitting at Westminster, called attention in fifteen articles to the evils that afflicted the land.

These articles dealt with a royal threat to lay waste Kent in revenge for the death of the Duke of Suffolk; the wasting of the royal revenue raised by heavy taxation; the banishment of the Duke of York--"to make room for unworthy ministers who would not do justice by law, but demanded bribes and gifts"; purveyance of goods for the royal household without payment; arrest and imprisonment on false charges of treason by persons whose goods and lands were subsequently seized by the King's servants, who then "either compa.s.sed their deaths or kept them in prison while they got possession of their property by royal grant"; interference by "the great rulers of the land" with the old right of free election of knights of the s.h.i.+re; the mismanagement of the war in France. A certain number of purely local grievances, chiefly concerned with the maladministration of justice, were also included in the "Complaints," and five "Requests"--including the abolition of the Statutes of Labourers--were added.

Henry and his counsellors dismissed these "Complaints" with contempt. "Such proud rebels," it was said, "should rather be suppressed and tamed with violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer." But when the royal troops moved into Kent to disperse the rising, Cade's army cut them to pieces at Sevenoaks. Henry returned to London; his n.o.bles rode away to their country houses; and after a fruitless attempt at negotiations by the Duke of Buckingham and the Archbishop of Canterbury,[42] the King himself fled to Kenilworth--leaving London at the mercy of the Captain of Kent.

On July 2nd Cade crossed London Bridge on horseback, followed by all his army. The Corporation had already decided to offer no opposition to his entry, and one of its members, Thomas c.o.c.ke, of the Drapers' Company--later sheriff and M.P.--had gone freely between the camp at Blackheath and the city, acting as mutual friend to the rebels and the citizens. All that Cade required was that the foreign merchants in London should furnish him with a certain number of arms and horses, "and 1,000 marks of ready money"; and this was done. "So that it was found that the Captain and Kentishmen at their being in the city did no hurt to any stranger."[43]

On the old London stone, in Cannon Street, Cade laid his sword, in the presence of the Mayor and a great mult.i.tude of people, and declared proudly: "Now is Mortimer lord of this city." Then at nightfall he went back to his headquarters at the White Hart Inn in Southwark.

The following day Lord Say-and-Sele, and his son-in-law, Crowmer, Sheriff of Kent, were removed by Cade's orders from the Tower to the Guildhall, tried for "divers treasons" and "certain extortions," and quickly beheaded.

Popular hatred, not content with this, placed the heads of the fallen minister and his son-in-law on poles, made them kiss in horrible embrace, and then bore them off in triumph to London Bridge.

A third man, one John Bailey, was also hanged for being a necromancer; and as Cade had promised death to all in his army convicted of theft, it fell out that certain "lawless men" paid the penalty for disobedience, and were hanged in Southwark--where the main body of the army lay.

Cade's difficulties began directly after Lord Say-and-Sele's execution.

London a.s.sented willingly to the death of an unpopular statesman, but had no mind to provision an army of 50,000 men, and, indeed, had no liking for the proximity of such a host. Plunder being forbidden, and strict discipline the rule, the urgent question for the Captain of Kent was how the army was to be maintained.

Getting no voluntary help from the city. Cade decided that he must help himself. He supped with a worthy citizen named Curtis in Tower Street on July 4th, and insisted before he left that Curtis must contribute money for the support of the Kentish men. Curtis complied--how much he gave we know not--but he resented bitterly the demand, and he told the tale of his wrongs to his fellow-merchants.[44] The result was that while Cade slept in peace as usual at the White Hart, the Mayor and Corporation took counsel with Lord Scales, the Governor of the Tower, and resolved that at all costs the Captain of Kent and his forces must be kept out of the city. After the treatment of Curtis the fear was that disorder and pillage might become common.

On the evening of Sunday, July 5th, and all through the night battle waged hotly on London Bridge, which had been seized and fortified before Cade was awake, and by the morning the rebels, unsuccessful in their attack, were glad to agree to a hasty truce.

The truce gave opportunity to Cardinal Kemp, Archbishop of York, the King's Chancellor, to suggest a lasting peace to Cade. Messengers were sent speedily from the Tower, where Kemp, with Archbishop Stafford, of Canterbury, had stayed in safety, to the White Hart, urging a conference "to the end that the civil commotions and disturbances might cease and tranquillity be restored."

Cade consented, and when the two Archbishops, with William Waynfleet, Bishop of Winchester, met the Captain of Kent in the Church of St.

Margaret, Southwark, and promised that Parliament should give consideration to the "Complaints" and "Requests" of the commons, and that a full pardon should be given to all who would straightway return home, the rising was at an end.

Cade hesitated, and asked for the endors.e.m.e.nt of the pardons by Parliament; but this was plainly impossible because Parliament was not sitting. The bulk of the commons were satisfied with their pardons, and with the promise that Parliament would attend to their grievances. There was nothing to be gained, it seemed, by remaining in arms. On July 8th, the rebel army had broken up, taking the road back to the towns and villages, farms and cottages in Kent, Suss.e.x, and Surrey. Cade, with a small band of followers, retreated to Rochester, and attempted without success, the capture of Queenborough Castle. On the news that the commons had dispersed from Southwark, the Government at once took the offensive. Alexander Iden was appointed Sheriff of Kent, and, marrying Crowmer's widow, subsequently gained considerable profit. Within a week John Cade was proclaimed by the King's writ a false traitor throughout the countryside, and Sheriff Iden was in eager pursuit--for a reward of 1,000 marks awaited the person who should take Cade, alive or dead.

Near Heathfield, in Suss.e.x, Cade, broken and famished, was found by Iden, and fought his last fight on July 13th, preferring to die sword in hand than to perish by the hangman. He fell before the overwhelming odds of the sheriff and his troops, and the body was immediately sent off to London for identification.

The landlady of the White Hart proved the ident.i.ty of the dead captain, and all that remained was to stick the head on London Bridge, and dispatch the quartered body to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury and Gloucester for public exhibition.

Iden got the 1,000 marks reward and, in addition, the governors.h.i.+p of Rochester Castle at a salary of 36 a year.

By special Act of Attainder all Cade's goods, lands and tenements were made forfeit to the Crown, and statements were published for the discrediting of Cade's life.

No allusion was made in Parliament to the "Complaints" and "Requests," and, in spite of Cardinal Kemp's pardons, a number of men were hanged at Canterbury and Rochester for their share in the rising, when Henry VI. and his justices visited Kent in January, 1451.

The revolt failed to amend the wretched misrule. It remained for civil war to drive Henry VI. from the throne, and make Edward IV. of York his successor.

THE NORFOLK RISING UNDER ROBERT KET, 1549

A century after the rising of the commons of Kent came the last great popular rebellion--the Norfolk Rising, led by Ket. This insurrection was agrarian and social, concerned neither with the fierce theological differences of the time, nor with the political rivalries of Protector Somerset and his enemies in Edward VI.'s Council.

At the beginning of the sixteenth century England was in the main a nation of small farmers, but radical changes were taking place, and these changes meant ruin to thousands of yeomen and peasants.

The enclosure, by many large landowners, of the fields which for ages past had been cultivated by the country people, the turning of arable land into pasture, were the main causes of the distress.[45] Whole parishes were evicted in some places and dwelling houses destroyed, and contemporary writers are full of the miseries caused by these clearances.

Acts of Parliament were pa.s.sed in 1489 and 1515, prohibiting the "pulling down of towns," and ordering the reversion of pasture lands to tillage, but the legislation was ignored. Sir Thomas More, in his "Utopia" (1516), described very vividly what the enclosures were doing to rural England; and a royal commission, appointed by Cardinal Wolsey, reported in the following year that more than 36,000 acres had been enclosed in seven Midland counties. In some cases, waste lands only were enclosed, but landowners were ordered to make rest.i.tution within forty days where small occupiers had been dispossessed. Royal commissions and royal proclamations were no more effective than Acts of Parliament. Bad harvests drove the Norfolk peasantry to riot for food in 1527 and 1529. The dissolution of the monasteries in 1536 and 1539 abolished a great source of charity for the needy, and increased the social disorder. Finally, in 1547, came the confiscation by the Crown of the property of the guilds and brotherhoods, and the result of this enactment can only be realised by supposing the funds of friendly societies, trade unions, and co-operative societies taken by Government to-day without compensation.

All that Parliament would do in the face of the starvation and unemployment that brooded over many parts of England, was to pa.s.s penal legislation for the homeless and workless--so that it seemed to many that Government had got rid of Papal authority only to bring back slavery. The agrarian misery, the violent changes in the order of church services and social customs, the confiscation of the funds of the guilds, and the wanton spoiling of the parish churches[46]--all these things drove the people to revolt.

Early in 1549 the men of Devon and Cornwall took up arms for "the old religion," and were hanged by scores. In Norfolk that same year the rising under Ket was social, and unconcerned with religion. Lesser agrarian disturbances took place in Somerset, Lincoln, Ess.e.x, Kent, Oxford, Wilts, and Buckingham. But there was no cohesion amongst the insurgents, and no organisation of the peasants such as England had seen under John Ball and his companion in 1381.

In 1548 Somerset, the Lord Protector, made an honest attempt to check the rapacity of the landowners, but his proclamation and royal commission were no more successful than Wolsey's had been, and only earned for the Protector the hatred of the landowners.

The Norfolk Rising was the one strong movement to turn the current that was sweeping the peasants into dest.i.tution. It failed, as all popular insurrection in England has failed, and it brought its leaders to the gallows; but for six weeks hope lifted its head in the rebel camp outside Norwich, and many believed that oppression and misery were to end.

The rising began at Attleborough, on June 20th, when the people pulled down the fences and hedges set up round the common fields. On July 7th, at the annual feast in honour of St. Thomas of Canterbury, at Wymondham, a mighty concourse of people broke down the fences at Hetherset, and then appealed to Robert Ket and his brother to help them.

Both the Kets were well-known locally. They were men of old family, craftsmen, and landowners. Robert was a tanner by trade, William a butcher.

Three manors--valued at 1,000 marks, with a yearly income of 50--belonged to Robert Ket: church lands mostly, leased from the Earl of Warwick.

Ket saw that only under leaders.h.i.+p and guidance could the revolt become a revolution, and he threw himself into the cause of his poorer neighbours with whole-hearted fervour. "I am ready," he said, "and will be ready at all times to do whatever, not only to repress, but to subdue the power of great men. Whatsoever lands I have enclosed shall again be made common unto ye and all men, and my own hands shall first perform it. You shall have me, if you will, not only as a companion, but as a captain; and in the doing of the so great a work before us, not only as a fellow, but for a leader, author, and princ.i.p.al."

Ket's leaders.h.i.+p was at once acclaimed with enthusiasm by the thousand men who formed the rebel band at the beginning of the rising. The news spread quickly that Ket was leading an army to Norwich, and on July 10th, when a camp was made at Eaton Wood, every hour brought fresh recruits. It is clear from Ket's speeches, and from "The Rebels' Complaint," issued by him at this time, that the aim of the leaders of the Norfolk Rising was not merely to stop the enclosures, but to end the ascendancy of the landlord cla.s.s for all time, and to set up a social democracy.

Ket's address at Eaton Wood was revolutionary:

"Now are ye overtopped and trodden down by gentlemen, and put out of possibility ever to recover foot. Rivers of riches run into the coffers of your landlords, while you are par'd to the quick, and fed upon pease and oats like beasts. You are fleeced by these landlords for their private benefit, and as well kept under by the public burdens of State, wherein while the richer sort favour themselves, ye are gnawn to the very bones.

Your tyrannous masters often implead, arrest, and cast you into prison, so that they may the more terrify and torture you in your minds, and wind your necks more surely under their arms.... Harmless counsels are fit for tame fools; for you who have already stirred, there is no hope but in adventuring boldly."

"The Rebels' Complaint" is equally definite and outspoken. It rehea.r.s.ed the wrongs of a landless peasantry, and called on the people to end these wrongs by open rebellion. The note of social equality is struck by Ket throughout the rising.

"The present condition of possessing land seemeth miserable and slavish--holding it all at the pleasure of great men; not freely, but by prescription, and, as it were, at the will and pleasure of the lord. For as soon as any man offend any of these gorgeous gentlemen, he is put out, deprived, and thrust from all his goods.

"The common pastures left by our predecessors for our relief and our children are taken away.

"The lands which in the memory of our fathers were common, those are ditched and hedged in and made several; the pastures are enclosed, and we shut out.

"We can no longer bear so much, so great, and so cruel injury; neither can we with quiet minds behold so great covetousness, excess, and pride of the n.o.bility. We will rather take arms, and mix Heaven and earth together, than endure so great cruelty.

"Nature hath provided for us, as well as for them; hath given us a body and a soul, and hath not envied us other things. While we have the same form, and the same condition of birth together with them, why should they have a life so unlike unto ours, and differ so far from us in calling?

"We see that things have now come to extremities, and we will prove the extremity. We will rend down hedges, fill up ditches, and make a way for every man into the common pasture. Finally, we will lay all even with the ground, which they, no less wickedly than cruelly and covetously, have enclosed.

"We desire liberty and an indifferent (or equal) use of all things. This will we have. Otherwise these tumults and our lives shall only be ended together."