Jack Cade (an Irishman whose real name was John Mortimer) was the leader of one of the great popular rebellions in England’s history.
Originating in Kent in 1450, this was mainly a peasant rebellion, but also attracted clergymen, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and soldiers returning from wars in France. The rebels, many thousand strong, marched on London and at Blackheath on June 3rd 1450 Jack Cade issued his proclamation:
They say that the king should live upon the commons, and that their bodies and goods be the king’s; the contrary is true, for then needeth he never Parliament to sit to ask good of his commons
The rebels retreated after a week, but then on June 8th defeated part of the royal army near Sevenoaks, and took possession of London. They captured and beheaded the Lord Treasurer and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
On July 5th and 6th the rebels and the royalist forces fought until both sides were exhausted. A truce was called and Cade presented his demands. Assured by royalist leaders that their demands would be met and that their leaders would be pardoned, the rebels dispersed to their villages to take in the harvest.
The assurances were meaningless. The royalist troops marched into Kent and picked off the rebel leaders in their villages one by one. Cade himself was captured at Heathfield in Sussex and killed on July 12th. The reprisals were extensive and for months afterwards rebel leaders were hunted down, tortured and beheaded. A contemporary report observed: ‘Men call it in Kent the harvest of heads.’[1]
Shakespeare’s version
In Henry VI, part 2, Jack Cade is ridiculed as a vainglorious pretender to the throne, full of wild and populist promises. In Act 4, scene 2, he declares that ‘all the realm shall be in common’ and addresses his followers:
And you that love the commons, follow me.
Now show yourselves men; 'tis for liberty.
We will not leave one lord, one gentleman:
Spare none but such as go in clouted shoon
Whereupon a follower of Cade speaks the immortal line: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’
[1] William Gregory, Chronicle of London, entries for 1450 and 1451.
