THE XVTH AND XVlTH CENTURIES 75 



supporters, came together in force, under the headmen 

 of their hundreds, to support this wild Irishman, who 

 to the peasants was * John Amendall.' Cade's men 

 gathered in the first instance at Blackheath, but with- 

 drew to Sevenoaks, where they defeated a royal force 

 sent after them. Later they returned to the neighbour- 

 hood of London, camping at Southwark, on the south 

 side of the river. Cade, who assumed the name of 

 ' Mortimer,' rode unmolested through London and 

 proclaimed himself * Lord of the City ' ; but a few days 

 after this adventure he was beaten in a battle on 

 London Bridge. His followers, to whom pardon was 

 promised, scattered to their homes, but Cade himself 

 was caught and executed. 



People, it is important to note, quarrelled not only in 

 the counties, but in the law courts, by that time con- 

 structed on the modern basis, and as a result many 

 lawyers, a new class created to plead in the new courts, 

 became rich. 



tit was in this century that the development of 

 enclosures the cutting of pieces of land out of the 



manorial estate, fencing them in and con- 

 Enclosures, verting them to private use went on on 



such a scale as to be considered for the first 

 time a very serious matter. It will be clearly under- 

 stood that most estates were, at the beginning of 

 this period, still cultivated on the communal lines 

 already described ; peasants had, as a rule, their small 

 strips of land scattered over the open arable fields, 

 their plots in the meadowland, and their common 

 rights of pasturage and rights to wood for fuel 

 and other purposes, over the commons, woods and 

 wastes. i 



