In 1447 a petition was presented to Parliament by four priests of the City, viz. William Litchfield, Allhallows the Great: Gilbert, St. Andrew’s Holborn; John Cote, St. Peter’s Cornhill: and John Neil, St. Thomas Acons Hospital, and St. Peter Colechurch; praying for permission to set up schools of grammar in their respective parishes. They base their request on the small and insufficient number of schools in London compared with the great number that had existed in former days. What schools were they? FitzStephen mentions three in the time of Henry II. What grammar schools were founded between 1150 and 1450? Every monastery it is said had its school. Certainly the novices and the wards of the Abbot were under instruction: their place was assigned to them in the Cloisters and there were rules as to their supervision. But the sons of the citizens were not admitted to these schools. The King replied that the schools might be established or provided, subject to the approval of the Archbishop. We have now arrived at a strange and not wholly intelligible event, the rising of the Kentish men and their occupation of London. The most important of these rebellions, known as that of Jack Cade, was one among many which showed the temper of the people. The reverses in France, where all that Henry V. had won was lost, never to be recovered; the exactions and taxations; the many cases in which persons were accused of treason and thrown into prison in order that others might obtain their lands; created a widespread discontent, which, in these risings, became the wrath which seizes on the sword and demands the ordeal of civil war. There were at least three other leaders in Kentish risings, one called Blue Beard, another named William Parminter and a third named John Smyth. In Wiltshire the Bishop of Salisbury was dragged from the altar and brutally murdered; and the insurgents in that county were reckoned at 10,000 men. Why they rose, and what were their grievances, are shown in the remarkable document in which they are set forth. As for the people who took part in these risings, it is certain that they were by no means the common labourers and villeins, such as those who went out with Wat Tyler. It is also certain that they chose as their leader one who had some knowledge of war. And it must be remembered that the men who flocked to the standard of Mortimer were as well armed, and as good soldiers, as any whom the King could collect or could command.