The following day the bulk of the commons departed from Southwark for their farms and cottages in Kent and Surrey and Sussex. Cade watched them go. His own mind was made up. Not till parliament should give him a pardon of indisputable legality would he lay down his arms. With a small band of followers he set off for Rochester, sending what goods and provisions he had by water. The rising was at an end, and nothing more was heard in parliament, or elsewhere, of the famous charter of “complaints” and “requests.” With the break-up of the insurgent army, the government woke to activity. Alexander Iden was appointed sheriff of Kent, and marrying Crowmer’s widow, subsequently gained considerable profit. Within a week the king’s writ and proclamation, declaring John Cade a false traitor, was posted throughout the countryside, and Cade, defeated in an attempt to get possession of Queenborough Castle, was a fugitive with the reward of 1,000 marks on his head, alive or dead, and with Sheriff Iden in hot pursuit. Near Heathfield, in Sussex, Iden came up with his prey, early on Monday, July 13th. Cade died fighting. A broken man, worn and famished, friendless and alone, he still had his sword. The spirit of Mortimer, Captain of Kent, flickered up in the presence of his enemies--it were better to die sword in hand fighting for freedom than to perish basely by the hangman. So Cade fought his last fight in the Sussex garden, and fell mortally wounded, overpowered by the sheriff and his men. In all haste Iden sent off the dead body to London; it was identified by the hostess of the White Hart, and three days later the head was stuck on London Bridge. The body was quartered and portions sent to Blackheath, Norwich, Salisbury, and Gloucester, for public exposure. The sheriffs of London, upon whom the gruesome task fell of despatching these remains, complained bitterly of the cost of this proceeding, “because that hardly any persons durst nor would take upon them the carriage for doubt of their lives.”[81] Iden got his 1,000 marks reward, besides getting the governorship of Rochester Castle, at a salary of £36 per annum. Cade was “attainted of treason” by act of parliament, and all his goods, lands, and tenements made forfeit to the crown. A year later another act of parliament made void all that had been done by Cade’s authority during the rising. In January, 1451, Henry VI. went into Kent with his justices, and this royal visitation was known as the harvest of heads; for in spite of Cardinal Kemp’s pardons, twenty-six men of Canterbury and Rochester implicated in the rising were hanged. So the last echoes of the rising died away, and corruption and misgovernment remained. But the commons of Kent and their captain had done what they could, and in the only way that seemed possible, to get justice done, and their failure was without dishonour. Sir Thomas More and the Freedom of Conscience 1529–1535