A formidable rebellion broke out in Kent, under the leadership of one Jack Cade, A. D. 1450. Overtaxation, the bad management of the council, the extortion of the subordinate officers, the injustice of the king's bench, the abuse of the right of purveyance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the illegitimate control of elections were the chief causes of the rising of 1450. "The rising was mainly political, only one complaint was economical, not a single one was religious. We find not a single demand for new legislation. ... The movement was by no means of a distinctly plebeian or disorderly character, but was a general and organized rising of the people at large. It was a political upheaval. We find no trace of socialism or of democracy. ... The commons in 1450 arose against Lancaster and in favor of York. Their rising was the first great struggle in the Wars of the Roses." _Kriehn, Rising in 1450, Chapter IV., VII._ Cade and his rebels took possession of London; but they were beaten in a battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some followers continued to be turbulent and soon afterwards he was killed. _J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 7, section 6._ ALSO IN: _C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 3d series, chapter 7._ ENGLAND: A. D. 1455. Demoralized state of the nation. Effects of the wars in France. "The whole picture of the times is very depressing on the moral if not on the material side. There are few more pitiful episodes in history than the whole tale of the reign of Henry VI., the most unselfish and well-intentioned king that ever sat upon the English throne--a man of whom not even his enemies and oppressors could find an evil word to say; the troubles came, as they confessed, 'all because of his false lords, and never of him.' We feel that there must have been something wrong with the heart of a nation that could see unmoved the meek and holy king torn from wife and child, sent to wander in disguise up and down the kingdom for which he had done his poor best, and finally doomed to pine for five years a prisoner in the fortress where he had so long held his royal Court. Nor is our first impression concerning the demoralisation of England wrong. Every line that we read bears home to us more and more the fact that the nation had fallen on evil times. First and foremost among the causes of its moral deterioration was the wretched French War, a war begun in the pure spirit of greed and ambition,--there was not even the poor excuse that had existed in the time of Edward III.--carried on by the aid of hordes of debauched foreign mercenaries ... and persisted in long after it had become hopeless, partly from misplaced national pride, partly because of the personal interests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five