This was the time when England had completed her loss of all her great
French conquests. The people charged the loss principally upon the Earl
of Suffolk, now a duke, who had made those easy terms about the Royal
Marriage, and who, they believed, had even been bought by France. So he
was impeached as a traitor, on a great number of charges, but chiefly
on accusations of having aided the French King, and of designing to
make his own son King of England. The Commons and the people being
violent against him, the King was made (by his friends) to interpose to
save him, by banishing him for five years, and proroguing the
Parliament. The duke had much ado to escape from a London mob, two
thousand strong, who lay in wait for him in St. Giles’s fields; but, he
got down to his own estates in Suffolk, and sailed away from Ipswich.
Sailing across the Channel, he sent into Calais to know if he might
land there; but, they kept his boat and men in the harbour, until an
English ship, carrying a hundred and fifty men and called the Nicholas
of the Tower, came alongside his little vessel, and ordered him on
board. ‘Welcome, traitor, as men say,’ was the captain’s grim and not
very respectful salutation. He was kept on board, a prisoner, for
eight-and-forty hours, and then a small boat appeared rowing toward the
ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen to have in it a block, a
rusty sword, and an executioner in a black mask. The duke was handed
down into it, and there his head was cut off with six strokes of the
rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover beach, where the
body was cast out, and left until the duchess claimed it. By whom, high
in authority, this murder was committed, has never appeared. No one was
ever punished for it.
There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the name of
Mortimer, but whose real name was Jack Cade. Jack, in imitation of Wat
Tyler, though he was a very different and inferior sort of man,
addressed the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad
government of England, among so many battledores and such a poor
shuttlecock; and the Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty
thousand. Their place of assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by
Jack, they put forth two papers, which they called ‘The Complaint of
the Commons of Kent,’ and ‘The Requests of the Captain of the Great
Assembly in Kent.’ They then retired to Sevenoaks. The royal army
coming up with them here, they beat it and killed their general. Then,
Jack dressed himself in the dead general’s armour, and led his men to
London.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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