PEASANT REVOLTS 139 



have ten hoops," and that " it shall be a felony to 

 drink small beer." 



The name "Jack Cade" is, to this day, a byword 

 denoting a low type of pillage, robbery, and everything 

 else of a predatory character. But, if we take the 

 facts contained in the old records, how different do the 

 character of the man and the aims of his followers 

 appear! The old historians, all in deadly opposition 

 to Cade, are practically agreed as to the incidents of 

 his rebellion. They show beyond dispute that he was 

 a brave soldier and an able general, who fought, with a 

 definite end in view, for the reform of the agrarian 

 grievances under which the rural classes were suffer- 

 ing. He called himself Mortimer, and was known 

 generally by that name throughout the rebellion. It 

 was afterwards, in the proclamation setting a price on 

 his head, that he was called Jack Cade. 



" The Commons of Kent," says the chronicler,^ 

 "assembled in great numbers, having for Captaine 

 John Cade, a certain young man of goodlie stature 

 and right pregnant of wit. . . . They marched to 

 Blackheath and there kept the field for more than a 

 month. . . . The king sent notable men to the said 

 Captaine to know the purpose and cause of the in- 

 surrection." The reply sent back was in the form of 

 a " Bill of requisites, by them made, of things to be 

 reformed wherein was nothing contained but seemed 

 reasonable." 



This Bill v/as composed of a number of items. 

 Item six ran as follows: — "Though divers of the 



' Holinshed's "Chronicles," Vol. Ill, p. 220. A much earlier chronicler 

 in 1 5 16 (Cade's rising" was in 1450), referring to the interview which the 

 king's messengers had with Cade, says, " They faude him right discrete 

 in his answerys ; how be it they could not cause hym to lay downe his 

 people and submyt hym vnto the kinge's grace." (Fabyan's "Chronicle.") 



