32 THE DOVER ROAD 



family jealousies of the Dukes of York, Suffolk, 

 Somerset, and Buckingham. The king was unpopular 

 with half his subjects, and all of them raged with 

 wounded pride and grief at the loss of France. The 

 name of Mortimer was a power in the land, and the 

 head of that ancient family Avas the Duke of York, 

 who had probably the greatest following of feudatory 

 tenants in England. To take advantage both of the 

 prevailing discontent and of the Mortimer prestige 

 came Jack Cade, an Irish adventurer, at the head of 

 twenty thousand followers, and encamped on Black- 

 heath. Cade was undoubtedly the Duke of York's 

 catspaw, but his sudden success in gaining adherents 

 is something of a mystery ; for, although he proclaimed 

 himself a cousin of the duke, he was an obviously 

 ignorant clown, a fact seized upon by Shakespeare 

 with grand effect in Henry VI, part i, act 4, where he 

 makes Cade's companions to be Dick the Butcher, 

 Smith the Weaver, and others of a like humble estate, 

 whose asides upon Cade's proclaiming himself a 

 Mortimer and his wife a descendant of the Lacies are 

 very amusing. " My father was a Mortimer," says 

 Cade, to which Dick the Butcher rejoins, whispering 

 behind his hand, that " he was an honest man, and 

 a good bricklayer ; " while as to his wife's descent 

 from the Lacies, he remarks that " she was, indeed, 

 a pedlar's daughter, and sold many laces " — a punning 

 speech that, were it the work of a modern dramatist, 

 would be received with a howl of execration. 



Cade retired from Blackheath to Sevenoaks on an 

 equal force being sent to oppose him, but there 

 turned at bay n\)o\\ his pursuers, and the Royal army 

 dispersed, leaving London at the mercy of this rabble- 

 ment. There the fickle mob wavered and Cade fled, 

 presently to suffer the fate that befell so many in 

 those bloody days. 



The last occasion on which Blackheath has figured 

 largely was really romantic. The date 1660, the 

 occasion the Restoration of His Gracious Majesty 



