A Fine and Terrible Mystery – Episode 11: The Fall of London

This is Episode 11 in a series of posts about the mysterious life of Sir Thomas Malory, author of Le Morte d’Arthur.  Episode 1 can be found here.

Jack Cade:   I thank you, good people: there shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my score; and I will apparel them all in one livery, that they may agree  like brothers and worship me their lord.
Dick:  The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers...
All:  Oh brave! 

(One reenters with the heads of Lord Saye and his son-in-law on spikes) 
Jack Cade:  But is not this braver? Let them kiss one another, for they loved well when they were alive.  (The heads on spikes are made to kiss)  Now part them again, lest they consult about the giving up of some more towns in France.
- Shakespeare, King Henry VI, part 2, Act 4

No, that’s not a scene from this season’s “Game of Thrones,” though it could be.  Shakespeare’s sprawling trilogy about the age in which Malory lived is difficult for the uninitiated with its sweeping review of major events and prodigious cast.  Even Shakespeare had trouble keeping straight three successive Earls of Warwick:  in one place attributing the accomplishments of the first to the third.  Yet not surprisingly it has some extraordinarily powerful drama.  Jack Cade’s rebellion is particularly notable for its skillful macabre comedy of horror born of social chaos.

In March of 1551, a warrant was issued against Malory for an alleged attempt on the Duke of Buckingham’s life 14 months before. The Duke of Buckingham and sixty followers arrested him on the following July 25^th.  Nothing I’ve uncovered of Malory’s life before the attack explains it or the great delay in its prosecution.  Are there clues to be found in the lives of his nemesis Buckingham or the Earl of Warwick?  Perhaps. 

It’s appropriate to consider the events of those months and one signal event in particular.

King Henry VI was born in December of 1421; his father, King Henry V, died in August of the next year.  At first the council of peers ruling in the infant king’s name did so effectively, compromising and navigating administrative ambiguities, such as the role of the Lord Protector, Humphrey of Gloucester, Henry V’s brother (under whom, you may recall, Malory had served in France.)  In 1445, Henry VI, now 24, was married to Margaret, the fifteen year-old daughter of Duke René of Anjou, a match engineered by William de la Pole, who was made Duke of Suffolk for his efforts.  In spite of her youth Margaret soon became a significant force in the King’s court and she formed an alliance with Suffolk, the Duke of Somerset and the Duke of Buckingham.

By late 1440s the court had become polarized.  The Queen’s party had exploited their power, impoverishing the Exchequer through appointments and gifts to their supporters and inept management of their French territories.  They had engineered the arrest of Gloucester on charges of treason in 1447.  (He died under suspicious circumstances five days later.)  In February of 1449 a speech in the Commons complained “that murder, theft, manslaughter were increasing daily.”  By February of 1450 the Commons had had enough.  They forced the impeachment of Suffolk for “high, great, heinous and horrible treasons.”  Suffolk avoided trial and submitted himself to the sole judgment of the King.

On March 17, all the Lords attending Parliament were summoned to the King’s private chamber with a gable window over a cloister at the Palace of Westminster.  Suffolk knelt before King Henry, the great list of charges was read and Suffolk proclaimed his loyalty and innocence on all of them.  It’s a telling moment.  Arguably, the most powerful peer in the land had been forced to judgment for capital offenses by popular pressure.  If it could happen to him, it could happen to anyone and no one was safe.  The King passed judgment:  Suffolk was found innocent of the charges but guilty of other “misprisons,” lesser charges, and sentenced to five years in exile.

I personally expect the event and sentence was a piece of legal theatre devised by all the lords in concert, to secure their positions, appease the Commons and restore public order.

It didn’t work.  Suffolk was chased from London.  At the beginning of his channel crossing, his boat was intercepted by another, “The Nicholas of the Tower.”  He was taken on board, summarily tried for his crimes by those on board and sentenced to death.  His head was struck off and his corpse was left on Dover beach with the head posted on a pike, possibly a gruesome pun on his name.  But his companions were released unharmed.  We don’t know who was ultimately responsible, although two men from Kent, Richard Lennard, a shipman, and Thomas Smith, a yeoman, were later indicted for participating in the incident before the Duke of Buckingham.  Was it the Duke of York, who was serving as the King’s lieutenant in Ireland at the time, the Duke of Warwick, the Duke of Norfolk, the enraged commons of Kent?

Certainly the commons of Kent feared they would be punished for it.  A rumour spread that the King intended to turn the entire county into a royal forest.  The result was rebellion.  On June 6, 1450, the Parliament, being held in Leicester learned that Kent was in revolt, led by one Jack Cade, a “captain of Kent” who was also going by the aristocratic name “John Mortimer,” which linked him to any royal pretentions of the Duke of York.  Dan Jones in his recent popular history characterizes Cade as an “effective captain capbable of articulating a sophisticated program of reform,” who counted the son of a peer amongst his followers, which is far from Shakespeare’s street-smart opportunist.

Henry VI returned to London and authorized two forces to repress the revolt, one under Viscount Beaumont and another under the Duke of Buckingham.  By June 11^th, the rebels were encamped at Blackheath, just south of Greenwich.  Negotiations proved fruitless.  The rebels retreated into Kent pursued by the King’s forces.  Near Tonbridge, two relatives of the Duke of Buckingham, another Sir Humphrey Stafford and William Stafford and a force of 400 were slaughtered.  London dissolved into riot and disorder.  Henry ordered the arrest of Lord Saye, a prominent beneficiary of Suffolk’s largesse and others but it was to no avail in quelling the disorder.

On June 25^th the King and his court deserted the capital for the safety and canons of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire.  Cade returned to Blackheath, then captured Southwark and fought his way over the bridge.  His followers pillaged London.  Saye was pulled out of imprisonment in the Tower and executed.  Shakespeare’s scene is accurate.  Finally, on July 5^th, the Lord Mayor with Lord Scales and Mathew Gough collected a force and after a bloody twelve hour street fight on the bridge managed to expel the rebels.  The rebellion then collapsed and Cade was subsequently apprehended and killed in Kent.

The capital and the country had seen nothing like it since the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, seventy years before.  That time King Richard II, just 14, had remained in London and had played an important role in ending the rebellion.  This time the King abandoned the city, leaving it to suffer riot, murder and wholesale destruction for 11 days.  The lesson was that the King could not guarantee the safety of his greatest city and wealthiest subjects.  When the Duke of York returned from Ireland in September calling for reform, the Queen’s party was never so vulnerable, and none more so, perhaps, than the Duke of Buckingham.  Not only had he witnessed Suffolk’s fall and the rebellion, he’d lost two of his family.

It was a “wolf time,” to use the Anglo Saxon phrase meaning a time of insecurity when everyone is forced to look after only themselves.  The Pastons’ letters record that the Duke of Norfolk was doing everything he could to solidify his position in East Anglia.  No doubt the Duke of Buckingham was doing the same in Warwickshire where he held Maxstoke Castle,20 miles from Sir Thomas Malory’s home at Newbold-Revel.

Episode 12 can be found here.