The rising of the commons of Kent in 1450 under their captain, Jack Cade, was the protest of people--sick of the misrule at home and of the mismanagement of affairs abroad--driven to take up arms against an incapable government that would not heed gentler measures. It was not such a peasant revolt as Wat Tyler had led, this rising of the fifteenth century. It was largely the work of men of some local importance, and country squires were active in enrolling men, employing the parish constable for that purpose in a good many parishes.[70] For years discontent had been rife. Henry VI., a weak, religious man, more fit for the cloister than the throne, had lost the great statesmen of the early years of his reign. The Duke of Bedford, good Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and Cardinal Beaufort were all dead, and Richard, Duke of York, by far the ablest man left among the nobles, had been banished to the government of Ireland. The Duke of Suffolk became the chief minister of the crown in 1445, and all the disasters of the war in France and of corrupt maladministration in England were laid at his door. Suffolk was responsible for the king’s marriage with the penniless princess, Margaret of Anjou, who, ambitious and self-willed, proved the worst possible counsellor for Henry. And the price of this marriage was the territories of Anjou and Maine, which were ceded to Margaret’s father, besides a heavy tax of one-fifteenth of all incomes demanded by Suffolk in payment for his expenses in arranging and carrying out the undesirable wedding. The years of Suffolk’s ministry saw nothing but defeat and disgrace as the hundred years’ war with France drew to its end. The victories of Edward III. and Henry V., and all the wealth of life and treasure poured out so lavishly by England, had come to nothing, and by 1451 all France save Calais was lost. Popular discontent turned to action early in 1450 against Suffolk and his fellow ministers. At the opening of parliament Suffolk was impeached as a traitor, along with Lord Say-and-Sele, the treasurer, and Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury; and Suffolk, without even demanding a trial by his peers, threw himself on the king’s mercy. Henry was satisfied with the banishment of his fallen minister for five years; but when Suffolk went on board, the sailors of the vessel that was to take him across seas decreed a capital sentence, and after a rough court-martial trial the Duke of Suffolk was beheaded on May 2nd in a small boat off the coast of Dover, and his body left on the sands. Four months earlier, Moleyns, Bishop of Chichester, who had only just resigned the keepership of the Privy Seal, and was known as a supporter of Suffolk’s, had been slain by the sailors of Portsmouth, when he arrived at that town with arrears of pay long overdue to the troops. Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, survived till the end of June, and then, at the time when Cade was marching on London, he was dragged away from