The undisputed high character of Cade’s followers is all against the portrait painted by the government after his death; when, anxious to blacken the good name of so resolute a leader, it was made out that he was merely a disreputable ruffian. The landowners of Kent and Sussex would never have accepted for their captain a mere swashbuckling blackguard. They rallied to him as a Mortimer, seeing in him a likeness to Richard, Duke of York.[72] If his real name was Cade, then he was probably a squire or yeoman, for Cade was no uncommon name round Mayfield and Heathfield in Sussex, and Cades were landed proprietors near Reigate as late as the seventeenth century. It was enough that, chosen Captain of Kent, Cade, or Mortimer, was known and trusted as a brave, upright man of good character and ability.[73] Whether descended from nobles or of good Sussex stock was a small matter to men in earnest for the changes and reforms the country needed. Ashford was the heart of the rising, and from Ashford the host marched to Blackheath, where, at the beginning of June, the camp was fixed. The army, estimated at 46,000, included 18 esquires, 74 county gentlemen, and some five clerks in holy orders, who were presently joined by the Abbot of Battle, the Prior of Lewes, and twenty-three county gentlemen from Sussex. Cade at once explained that they must deal directly with the king if they were to get relief from their present burdens, and then set to work to draw up the bill of “the complaint and requests” of the commons of Kent, while the rank and file laboured “to dyke and stake the camp all about, as it had been in the land of war.” But war had not yet been declared, and for the present discipline was loose in the camp at Blackheath.[74] “As good was Jack Robin as John at the Noke, for all were as high as pig’s feet; until the time that they should come and speak with such states and messengers as were sent unto them. Then they put all their power into the man that was named captain of all their host.” On June 7th the king was at Smithfield with 20,000 soldiers, and messengers were promptly despatched to Blackheath to know the meaning of the insurrection. Cade answered by showing the petition he had drawn up, and mentioned that they had assembled “to redress and reform the wrongs that were done in the realm, and to withstand the malice of them that were destroyers of the common profit, and to correct and amend the defaults of them that were the king’s chief counsellors.” He then sent off the “bill of complaints” to the king and to the parliament then sitting at Westminster, “and requested to have answer thereof again, but answer he had none.” The “complaint” was received with contempt, and the opinion of the king’s counsellors was that “such proud rebels should rather be suppressed and tamed with violence and force than with fair words or amicable answer.”