On July 2nd all the charters of manumission and royal pardons were declared formally annulled, and sheriffs were strictly forbidden to release any prisoners. It was not till August 30th an amnesty was granted to those suspected of taking part in the rising. In the autumn parliament refused to ratify the charters, and the lawyers declared that without the consent of parliament the charters were illegal. So there was an end to all Wat Tyler and the peasants had risen to obtain, and well might it seem that the rising had been in vain.[69] Yet it was not altogether in vain that John Ball had rung his bell and died for his faith, that Wat Tyler had led the peasant folk of Kent to do battle for freedom. The poll-tax was stopped for one thing. And villeinage was doomed. “The landlords gave up the practice of demanding base services; they let their lands to leasehold tenants, and accepted money payments in lieu of labour; they ceased to recall the emancipated labourer into serfdom or to oppose his assertion of right in the courts of the manor and the county.” (W. Stubbs.) The great uprising brought out the desire for personal liberty in the labouring people of England that has never since been utterly quenched. It was the first insistence that peasants and serfs were men of England. “It taught the king’s officers and gentle folks that they must treat the peasants like men if they wished them to behave quietly, and it led most landlords to set free their bondsmen, and to take fixed money payments instead of uncertain services from their customary tenants, so that in a hundred years’ time there were very few bondsmen left in England.” (F. York Powell.) If Wat Tyler died as a man should for the cause he loves, few of those who trampled on the cause of the peasants were to know the paths of peace in later years. Richard died in prison at the hands of Henry Bolingbroke, John of Gaunt’s son, whom Tyler had let depart in safety when the Savoy was in flames. The Earls of Suffolk and Warwick died exiled fugitives. The Earl of Salisbury, fleeing from Henry V., was hanged in the streets of Cirencester. Chief Justice Tressilian was hanged for a traitor in 1387, and Sir Simon Burley was beheaded. This worldly wealth is nought perseverant Nor ever abides it in stabilitie. Jack Cade, the Captain of Kent 1450 AUTHORITIES: William of Worcester, Gregory, Mayor of London, 1451–2; _Collections of a London Citizen_; _an English Chronicle_; _Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles_ (Camden Society); Fabyan--_Ellis Letters_ (second series), _Issue Rolls, Devon, Rolls of Parliament, Paston Letters_, vol. i, with introduction by Dr. Gairdner; Orridge--_Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion_; Durrant Cooper--_John Cade’s Followers in Kent and Sussex_; J. Clayton--_True Story of Jack Cade_; Dr. G. Kriehn--_The English Rising in 1450_, Strasburg, 1892. JACK CADE, THE CAPTAIN OF KENT 1450