The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Alexander L. Kaufman

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

To Mandy, Cindy, and Abraham

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Alexander L. Kaufman Auburn University at Montgomery, USA

© Alexander L. Kaufman 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Alexander L. Kaufman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East Suite 420 Union Road 101 Cherry Street Farnham Burlington Surrey, GU9 7PT VT 05401-4405 England USA www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Kaufman, Alexander L. The historical literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion. 1. Cade’s Rebellion, 1450 – Historiography. I. Title 942’.043’0722–dc22 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kaufman, Alexander L. The historical literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion / Alexander L. Kaufman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-6703-2 (alk. paper) 1. Cade’s Rebellion, 1450. 2. Cade’s Rebellion, 1450—Historiography. 3. Cade’s Rebellion, 1450—Sources. 4. Social conflict—England—History. 5. Great Britain—History—Henry VI, 1422–1461. I. Title. DA257.K38 2009 942.04’3—dc22 2009011269 ISBN ISBN 9781409401391 (ebk.V)

Contents

Acknowledgments   Abbreviations    Introduction  

vii ix 1

1 Ideologies of Representation   2 “Men Calle Hyt in Kent the Harvyste of Hedys”: Figurative Language and Jack Cade’s Rebellion   3 Jack Cade’s Carnivalesque Midsummer Celebration   4 John Payn and the Case of the Purloined Apparel   5 The Characterization of Jack Cade   6 Jack Cade and the Specter of Robin Hood  

61 93 131 149 175

Conclusion  

195

Appendix: The Chronology of Jack Cade’s Rebellion    Bibliography   Index

199 203 221

19

Acknowledgments

This book has its origins at Purdue University’s Department of English. As a doctoral student, I was fortunate to have a highly supportive and truly gifted gathering of medievalists. Shaun F. D. Hughes steered me in the right direction; indeed, it was his suggestion that I focus solely on the various representations of Cade’s Rebellion. Shaun’s encyclopedic knowledge of all things medieval, theoretical, and bibliographical was a great boon to this project. Ann W. Astell has always been a scholarly and personal inspiration. Her commitment to her students’ work and success is exemplary, and she has continued to provide helpful suggestions. Thomas H. Ohlgren has been a mentor without peer. Time and again, he has been there for those difficult questions, and he continues to be the person whom I can turn to when scholarly issues arise. For their assistance and moral support, I would also like to name Dorsey Armstrong, Irwin Weiser, and Paul Whitfield White. My colleagues at Auburn University Montgomery’s Department of English and Philosophy have been highly supportive of my research and teaching. This project has benefitted from much of their input, and I wish to thank them all, particularly Michel Aaij, Oliver Billingslea, Jan K. Bulman, Steven J. Daniell, Robert C. Evans, Mollie Folmar, W. B. Gerard, Alan Gribben, Samantha Harvey, Eric Sterling, and Susan Willis. The library staffs of Purdue University and Auburn University Montgomery have been instrumental to this book. I would especially like to thank Karen Williams, the head of Interlibrary Loan at Auburn University Montgomery; she was able to obtain some hard-to-find books and microfilms, and her keen efforts helped to expedite my research. I was able to personally view many of the primary documents that formed the basis of this project. I would like to thank the staff of the reading rooms of the British Library, Lambeth Palace Library (particularly Deputy Archivist Rachel Cosgrave), and the London Guildhall Library (especially Principal Archivist Charlie Turpie). This project is partially supported by a grant from the Auburn University Montgomery Research Grant-in-Aid program. This grant allowed me to travel to England and to purchase several microfilms. I would like to thank Auburn University Montgomery’s Faculty Research Council and Fariba Deravi for their very helpful award. An early version of Chapter 3 appeared in Nottingham Medieval Studies 51 (2007). I would like to thank Michael Jones for allowing me to include a revised and expanded version of my essay in this book. An early version of Chapter 1 was presented at Purdue University’s Third Annual Comitatus Medieval Studies Conference in 2005. Versions of Chapter 3 were presented in 2006 at the Thirtieth

viii

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Annual Mid-America Medieval Association Conference, Emporia University and at Auburn University’s English Forum. Early versions of Chapter 6 were read in 2008 at the Forty-Third International Congress on Medieval Studies and also at Auburn University Montgomery’s Liberal Arts Seminar. Several scholars have provided valuable feedback, both written and verbal. I would particularly like to thank Jack Baker, Thomas Hahn, Peter W. Fleming, Mica Gould, Edward Donald Kennedy, Stephen Knight, and Molly Martin. The staff of Ashgate Publishing has been nothing but professional and supportive. Erika Gaffney was an early advocate for the book, and Whitney Feininger’s editorial skills helped the project come to fruition. Ann Allen offered many good suggestions regarding the formatting of the book. Nick Wain, Ashgate’s Desk Editor, was indispensable during the book’s final stages. Lister M. Matheson, who read an earlier version of the book while I was a doctoral student, was the outside referee for Ashgate. I would like to thank Ashgate and Lister for agreeing to disclose his identity. His comments, particularly those that related to the readings of the various manuscripts, cleared up many of my questions of transcription. Any errors that may be present, however, are my own. The greatest debt goes to my family, particularly Faith, Les, Eve, and Deb Kaufman; Pauline Freedman; Christine Kane; and Wayne Davis. They have been a constant source of encouragement. This book is dedicated to my wonderful wife Mandy, and our two joys, Cindy and Abraham, all of whom cheered me on with their love and continue to do so.

Abbreviations

BL London, British Library CPR Calendar of Patent Rolls EETS Early English Text Society e.s. Extra Series Kew, NA Kew, National Archives MED Middle English Dictionary n.s. New Series OED Oxford English Dictionary o.s. Original Series s.s. Supplemental Series STC A Short-Title Catalogue of Books

Introduction

What we know of Jack Cade’s Rebellion (1450) derives in large part from the fifteenth-century chronicles of London, which scholars have returned to in order to understand the revolt and its chronology, Cade’s motivations, and the impact this event had upon the citizens of London. The Cade Rebellion is, in many ways, a microcosm of the turbulent fifteenth century. To study it and to attempt to understand it will give readers a perspective on a century that saw the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the bulk of the Wars of the Roses, the explosion of the mercantile economy, the dissolution of the estates system, and the birth of the printing press. By reading the chronicles of London, readers get a series of historical, literary, cultural, and ideological perspectives into the lives of Londoners and the operations of local and national government. This project examines the fifteenth-century chronicles’ entries of the Cade Rebellion, which is the event that dominates many of the London chronicles. Instead of seeing the chroniclers’ representation of the rebellion as a single, unified grand narrative, I argue that the multiple representations of the event provide scholars with various points of reference into the literary, historical, political, and cultural environment of fifteenth-century England, and that each entry of the revolt is unique and should be treated as such. The Cade Revolt and its various representations serve as the prime example as to how the chroniclers shaped their work with literary devices, ideological strategies, and their own sense of historical interpretation. To step forward into the theoretical foundations of historiography and problems of historical representation is central to this study. The theoretical implications of the construction of a historical narrative must be considered when attempting to establish a deeper meaning of this or any historical event. Theories of 

  There have been few book-length scholarly studies devoted to Cade’s Rebellion. For a thorough examination of the causes and outcomes of the rebellion, see I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). G. Kriehn, The English Rising in 1450 (Strasburg: Heitz, 1892) is a concise account of the rebellion and its participants, although the numbers of people involved in the rebellion that Kriehn estimates have been, in some instances, reduced considerably by current scholars such as Harvey and Griffiths. For other treatments of the Cade Revolt see R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981; repr., Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1998), 610–65, still a very concise and accurate account of the chronology of the events; R. L. Storey, The End of the House of Lancaster, rev. ed. (Guilford: Sutton Publishing, 1999), 61–8; John L. Watts, “Polemic and Politics in the 1450s,” in The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, ed. Margaret Lucille Kekewich and others (Phoenix Mill, Eng.: Alan Sutton for the Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1995), 3–42.



The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

historiography are used in this study to demonstrate the complexities that a chronicler might face when attempting to write about an event that was divisive and violent. Thus, the theories of historiography and historical representation that I use in this study are employed so as to illuminate the past and provide us as readers of this historical event with an understanding of how the Cade Rebellion was interpreted and why it was written in the means chosen. One of the first issues at hand for this project is the general neglect of fifteenthcentury chronicles. Recent studies of the late English chronicle tradition have been mainly relegated toward the examination of continuations in the Brut. However, the London chronicles of the fifteenth century remain a unique body of writings. As Edward Kennedy notes, “The practice of the [London] chroniclers was to borrow one or more copies, transcribe, omit some information from the older account, and add new information, much of it based upon their own observations.” There has yet to be an examination of this body of historical writings that considers the implications of the ideological bent of its authors/compilers; why the authors/ compilers chose to arrange the material in the manner they did; what their reasoning was for including some materials while omitting others; and what social and political movements affected the composition, compiling, and arrangement of these literary and historical documents. As a hub of mercantile enterprise, London grew less hospitable to the chivalric and monarchical ideals that defined the high Middle Ages. The city and its historical stenographers and authors are writing themselves and their own growing mercantile class into the annals and chronicles of the nation and of the city. The mayor and the sheriff, and not the king, form the basis of organization for the chronicles; as such, they and their social class are the main audience for these widely circulated pieces of historical writing. There are some scholars who continue to dismiss the literature of the fifteenth century. Most traditional anthologies of British literature provide students with a small taste of the poetry and prose that the century produced. Some scholars’ derision of the corpus of fifteenth-century writings is aimed directly at the chronicle tradition. There are two quotations that come to mind, and both are from highly respected scholars in their respective fields. The first is from Friedrich W. D. Brie in his preface to The Brut: “As literature, the Chronicle is as worthless—except a few inserted poems—as a mediæval Chronicle possibly can be. But nobody will

   The most recent studies being Lister M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 180 (Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1998), and Julia Marvin, ed. and trans., The Oldest Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicle: An Edition and Translation. Medieval Chronicles 4 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006).   Edward Donald Kennedy, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, Volume 8: Chronicles and Other Historical Writings (New Haven, CT: Archon, 1989), 2650.

Introduction



expect to stop a wedding-guest by reciting mediæval history.” The other remark is Christine Carpenter’s, who is still a leading scholar in fifteenth-century studies; it is from the opening chapter of her study on the Wars of the Roses: Contemporary or near-contemporary narrative accounts are largely devoid of any explanation for what happened … To sum up, no coherent account of the politics of the Wars of the Roses could be written from chronicle evidence alone; to a great extent, all that could be produced from them is a purposeless list of events. There is none of the psychological insight and acute analysis of events to be found in earlier histories, especially those of the late twelfth to early fourteenth centuries.

The Middle English prose Brut, like many of the chronicles that I examine, does have its moments where the level of literary sophistication is suspended. However, time and again I was amazed at the ability of the chroniclers to compose an interesting and exciting series of passages on the Cade Rebellion. Some of the chronicle writers were so proficient at their craft that I too became caught up in their rhetorical arguments and ideological beliefs. Cade and his savage insurrection is a polarizing moment for many of the chroniclers, for it is in their description of this event that many of their remarkable skills as historiographers are displayed. As such, many of the chronicle writers are persuasive; they possess the ability to craft a narrative in such a way so as to put forth their own spin on the event. Not only was a London chronicler writing for himself, he was also writing for his employer, his townspeople, the members of his guild, and London’s ruling oligarchy. Moreover, in reference to Carpenter’s comment, Cade’s Rebellion and its place in fifteenth-century chronicles should be seen within the greater context of the Wars of the Roses. After all, Henry VI, Richard Duke of York, Sir John Fastolf, and various Londoners were key players in the 1450 Revolt as well as in events that occurred both before and after the mid-century mark. In that respect, the various fifteenth-century chronicles, and especially the London chronicle group, by-andlarge treat the rebellion as a historical event of such importance that the revolt is, in many of the chronicles, the event. More space and detail within the London chronicles is devoted to the Cade Revolt than many other historically significant events, such as coronation ceremonies of the royal family, the death of kings, the arrival of Edward IV in 1461, and various battles of the Wars of the Roses. While   Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o.s., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), ix–x.   Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 4–5. The emphasis is mine.   Of course, the one exception is the pro-Yorkist narrative of the Arrival of Edward IV; however, it should be viewed as a full prose historical narrative and not a chronicle. For



The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

some of the later chronicles, like Richard Hill’s Chronicle or Arnold’s Chronicle, contain more complete and detailed entries after 1450, nonetheless, to describe any historical list as “purposeless” is a discredit to the authors and composers of the chronicles. Indeed, most of these chroniclers had some agenda—literary, political, or both—when writing the various chronicle entries, and this bias is clearly seen in their record of Cade’s Rebellion. Until recently, the majority of the chronicles of London of the fifteenth century have been relegated to codicological studies. Many of the chronicles that I will examine have received only the most cursory of examinations: a summary of the chronicle’s contents, the identification of the chronicle’s possible author, its relations to other chronicles, and its probable date of composition. A thematic study of these chronicles that considers the ideological implications of fifteenth-century England, including the growing mercantile class, the dynamics of legitimation and usurpation of the crown, and growing class conflicts in relation to the Cade Revolt, has not been attempted until now. Charles Kingsford and Antonia Gransden have been, for the better part of a century, the scholars responsible for placing these and other London and English chronicles into their historical and literary contexts. The vast majority of scholarly activity by these two authors has been relegated to the development of the chronicle, the literary relations between chronicles, and the general historic context in which the texts were written. That is not to say that the research of Kingsford and Gransden, which contains little theoretical background, is of little consequence for this project, for nothing can be further from the truth. In reality, their respected works, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century and the two parts of Historical Writing in England, are formalist in nature, yet each work has an organic quality to it, seeing many literary and political relations among the chronicles. There are limits to Kingsford’s theoretical examinations of these chronicles as historical documents. For example, Kingsford, and even Gransden, often view certain chronicles as Yorkist or Lancastrian “propaganda” but leave it at that. Regarding the Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire in 1470, Kingsford states the following: There can be little doubt that we have in it an official account put forward on the King’s behalf by someone who had accompanied him on his journey … There is in it a deliberate purpose to implicate Warwick and Clarence in the Lincolnshire Rebellion. Thus it is a purely partisan document; but it is of great value for

an edition, see John Bruce, ed., Historie of the Arrivall of Edward IV. Camden Society, o.s., 1 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1838; repr., New York and London, AMS Press, 1968).   Charles L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1962); Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England: c. 550 to 1307 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), and Historical Writing in England ii: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982).

Introduction



its detailed account of Edward’s movements, and for his communications with Warwick and Clarence.

Kingsford was definitely a man of his time, and thus any structuralist or poststructuralist theory would have been decades removed from his writings. Gransden, however, wrote her two massive and influential studies of English historical writing in the wake of some of the most groundbreaking theories on the composing, disseminating, and reading of texts, historical and otherwise. Although Gransden is a historian who often writes of the literary qualities of historical poetry and prose, there are very few instances where current theoretical issues regarding the writing of history as literature are addressed. Mary-Rose McLaren’s The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing is an important study of the formulation of the corpus and the chief variations found amongst the manuscript groups. In her introduction, McLaren identifies forty-four extant manuscripts of London chronicles, and states that the “purpose of this study is not to comment on other fifteenth-century sources, nor to compare the London chronicles to them. Rather, my aim is to put the modern reader in contact with the London chronicles in a way that has not been attempted.”10 McLaren groups the London chronicles into three categories: those copied entirely by their owners for personal use, those professionally copied (perhaps in a workshop) and then continued by their owners, and those that were kept by civic organizations or municipal agencies as “semiofficial records.”11 In the first half of her book, McLaren focuses on questions of authorship and source material. She also examines the chroniclers’ aims in writing, their exterior interests, and what biases (overt or subtle) the chroniclers generally exhibit. McLaren places the chronicles into a classification system according to their contents, vocabulary, and structure of historical accounts. The second half of McLaren’s study is an annotated edition of the London Chronicle that is Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42. While McLaren’s approach toward the London chronicles is a bit mechanistic (that is, she believes that objects and events belong to set classes or phenomena, and thus is inherently different from both Kinsford’s and Gransden’s formist approach to the historic records), her conclusions regarding audience, authorship, and context are very much the same as Kingsford and Gransden. McLaren’s classification system of the chronicles, though, does provide another means of dissecting these texts; indeed, they are a series of events whose authorship and nature can be classified. 

 Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 173–4.  Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing, With an Annotated Edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002). 10  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 3, 10. McLaren’s number for forty-four manuscripts appears to be a few short; see below. 11  Ibid., 4. 

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion



There exists an elusive quality to many of the historical facts of Cade’s Rebellion, yet as Alan Munslow observes, “narrative as the medium for historical reconstruction, although it is not an adequate form of explanation, is not an obstacle to the enterprise.”12 One of the aims of this project is to follow the spirit of those medievalists and cultural theorists who have embraced the linguistic turn and who see the value in deconstructing historical texts. This is not to say that the entire scholarly community has not embraced current or recent theories of literary analysis when studying medieval historical writings such as chronicles, for two such studies are Robert Albano’s Middle English Historiography13 and Gabrielle Spiegel’s theoretically-sophisticated study, The Past as Text, the latter being a ground-breaking study of medieval historiography.14 Spiegel’s book is divided into two parts, the first being “Theory” and the second “Practice.” In many ways, Spiegel’s study is a wake-up call to medieval historians who have, intentionally or not, ignored the discursive nature, the literary modes, and the ideological implications of medieval histories, chronicles, annals, and correspondences. The theorist who dominates Spiegel’s work is Jacques Derrida, and his early works (particularly Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Dissemination) form the basis for much of Spiegel’s argument. Spiegel comments that in examining medieval chronicles, she was employing a technique of interpretation that was coming to the fore in literary study itself and that, in its largest sense, has been termed the “linguistic turn.” The principle effect of the “linguistic turn,” for historians, has been to alert us to the mediating force of language in the representation of the past, and thus help us to understand that there is no direct access to historical events or persons, so that all historical writing, whether medieval or modern, approaches the past via discourses of one sort or another.15

As Spiegel demonstrates, the need to apply contemporary literary techniques of structuralist, post-structuralist, and postmodern theories to historical writings of the Middle Ages is a necessity. And I say that it is a necessity because the application of these said theories to the London chronicles and their unique representations of the Cade revolt will only further underscore the importance of these documents as texts that speak of a particular place and time. These chronicles reflect the political and social dimensions of fifteenth-century England and thus illustrate what particular events were recorded and why and how events were recorded and disseminated. Moreover, the application of this methodology to these chronicles will show that 12

 Alun Munslow, Deconstructing History (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 56.  Robert A. Albano, Middle English Historiography. American University Studies Series IV, English Language and Literature 168 (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). 14   Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 15  Ibid., xvi–xvii. 13

Introduction



we are not as far removed from the late Middle Ages as we think. Many of the issues regarding historical representation and theories of historiography that are so ingrained in and with twentieth and twenty-first century events and concepts have their origins in late-medieval historical writings. In his book Metahistory, Hayden White suggests that historical discourse is a form of fiction writing that can be classified and studied on the basis of its structure and its language.16 To White, modern historical texts are anything but objective and accurate representations of the past. Historians and philosophers, White believes, operate under vague assumptions in arranging, selecting, and interpreting events. White articulates his point in this manner: Historiography is an especially good ground on which to consider the nature of narration and narrativity because it is here that our desire for the imaginary, the possible, must contest with the imperatives of the real, the actual. If we view narration and narrativity as the instruments with which the conflicting claims of the imaginary and the real are mediated, arbitrated, or resolved in a discourse, we begin to comprehend both the appeal of the narrative and the grounds for refusing it.17

The term “metahistory” has largely been associated with White. In general, metahistory is the philosophy of history, and it examines the various principles that relate to the notion of historical progression and the narratives that describe it. White sees metahistory as a term and as a form of writing that is similar to metafiction and metanarrative, and that objective history is virtually impossible. In White’s book The Content of the Form, the theorist devotes a good portion of his first chapter, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality,” to medieval annals and chronicles. White argues that a chronicle “often seems to wish to tell a story, aspires to narrativity, but typically fails to achieve it,” and yet in a seemingly paradoxical fashion the failure of a chronicle to tidy up the narrative’s closure is often accomplished in a “storylike way.”18 Connected with the narratival issues of a chronicle are two distinct issues related to the nature of historical representation: the mode of emplotment that the writer chooses, and the ideological implications behind what events are recorded and in what stylistic manner. White’s “modes of emplotment” as well as his notion of “ideological implications” of historical texts are often helpful in uncovering the (sometimes) hidden machinations at work behind the production of a text.19 White, in explaining 16

 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). 17  Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 4. 18  Ibid., 5. 19  For a discussion for Hayden White’s use of emplotment, ideology, as well as argument in examining a historical text, see Metahistory, 5–38.



The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

his use of ideological implications, decides to follow Karl Mannheim’s earlier theories of ideological thought.20 Regarding ideology, White argues that he is “concerned with the work of intellectuals who seek to transform or sustain the status quo by appeal to specific conceptions of the historical process,” and that the “four basic ideological positions identified by Mannheim [Conservative, Liberal, Radical and Fascist], however, represent value systems that claim the authority of ‘reason,’ ‘science,’ or ‘realism.’ This claim tacitly commits them to public discussion with other systems that claim a similar authority.”21 However, while many of White’s theories of historiography form a merited part of the discourse of historical representation, at times his modes of historiographical styles can be too fixed and rigid. Regarding White’s early theories of historical representation, Dominic LaCapra has stated the following concern: [White’s] initiatives have at times gone too far in assimilating history to rhetoric and poetics, especially when the latter are narrowly constructed in terms of projective (or meaning-endowing) tropes or presumably fictive narrative structures, to the detriment of recognizing both a less restrictive conception of rhetoric and the importance of truth claims and research in historiography on the level of not only references to events but also of larger narrative and interpretive structures.22

What LaCapra and others have argued is that some of White’s early theories are too limiting in their structralist mien, and that the rigid nature of his taxonomy could, paradoxically, limit a historical reading of a text instead of creating a series of multiple readings of a written historical event. F. R. Ankersmit further acknowledges the seemingly great divide amongst theorists and historians regarding the ethical merits of White’s concepts: Now, no historical theorist has been more influential in introducing the linguistic turn in historical theory than Hayden White, and it need not surprise us therefore that White became a famous object of historians’ ire. Since the publication of White’s Metahistory historians—from Gertrude Himmelfarb at one end of the spectrum of historical writing to Carlo Ginzburg at the opposite end—

20  For Karl Mannheim’s examinations of political ideology, see his Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Sills (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1946). 21   White, Metahistory, 22–3. White has replaced Mannheim’s term “Fascism” with “Anarchism,” the latter being a product of Romanticism that fed into the fascist thought and action of the twentieth century. 22  Dominick LaCapra, History and Reading: Tocqueville, Foucault, French Studies (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 181–2.

Introduction



have fulminated against White and condemned his views as a dangerous and irresponsible caricature of what historical writing is.23

In regard to some of the London chronicles (Bale’s Chronicle comes immediately to mind), such an application of a sometimes-limiting theoretical model would not be useful. This is not to say that all of White’s early work, and here I am referring to Metahistory and Tropics of Discourse, is inconsequential and useless to the study of the London chronicles of the fifteenth century—far from it. Some chronicles can be read as having one mode of emplotment, or one trope, or one form of ideology. However, some chronicles (and their writers) are far too sophisticated. The ideology of Bale’s Chronicle cannot be interpreted as either “conservative” or “radical,” for as we will see the ideology is both of these and none of these terms in its support and rejection of the status quo. The ideology in Bale’s Chronicle is flexible, and it is one that (by the end of the Cade episode, and for that matter by the close of the chronicle) is difficult to pin down. What may help us examine the ideology of Bale’s Chronicle and of the other London chronicles that describe Cade’s Revolt is a more flexible working definition of ideology. In his book Ideology: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton addresses the very problematic nature of defining ideology. After listing sixteen acceptable current definitions of the term, Eagleton concludes, “ideology has to do with legitimating the power of a dominant social group or class.”24 Eagleton then describes six different strategies that are involved in this process of ideological legitimation: unifying, action-oriented, rationalizing, legitimating, universalizing, and naturalizing; he concludes that “any actual ideological formation, all six of these strategies are likely to interact in complex ways.”25 Furthermore, what one constitutes as a dominant power/ideology is, as Eagleton states, not as simple as White suggests: Ideologies are usually internally complex, differentiated formations, with conflicts between their various elements that need to be continually renegotiated and resolved. What we call a dominant ideology is typically that of a dominant social bloc, made up of classes and fractions whose interests are not always at one; and these compromises and divisions will be reflected in the ideology itself.26

At times in this study, I also echo the terminology of persuasion put forward by Hugh Rank in his heavily disseminated piece that discusses techniques of propaganda.27 23

 F. R. Ankersmit, Historical Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 252. 24   Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 5. Eagleton’s italics. 25  Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction, 5–6. 26  Eagleton, Ideology, 45. 27  Hugh Rank, “Learning about Public Persuasion: Rational and a Schema,” in The New Languages: A Rhetorical Approach to the Mass Media and Popular Culture, ed. Thomas H.

10

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Rank produces a schema where one can intensify a dominant ideological position through repetition, association, and composition techniques. By contrast, an opposition ideology can be downplayed through written and communicative techniques of omission, diversion, and confusion. I maintain that the London chronicles that include the Cade Revolt employ all of these rhetorical and literary techniques. The methodological application of theorists such as Hayden White and Terry Eagleton will provide us with a more thorough understanding of the sociopolitical construction, dissemination, and contextualization of these London chronicles and their description of the rebellion. The revolt was violent and chaotic, and the seasonal and calendrical time of Whitsun festivities had a profound impact on the inception of the rebellion. Therefore, the theories of the carnivalesque, as first put forth by Mikhail Bakhtin, are extremely relevant and weigh heavily upon the overall causes and consequences of the uprising. Because the corpus of fifteenth-century London chronicles is quite large, the following is a summary of the English chronicles of the fifteenth century that will be used throughout this project. These summaries of the chronicles that are presented here are designed to give the most basic information regarding each chronicle—its probable author, the unique literary or compositional characteristics, and the dates it covers. The summary information for each chronicle has been culled from various sources, including McLaren’s The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, Gransden’s Historical Writing in England II, Kennedy’s A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, Volume 8: Chronicles and Other Historical Writings, Kingsford’s English Historical Literature, Matheson’s The Prose Brut, and of course the introductory material to the editions of each chronicle. I have separated the chronicles into two areas: London chronicles, and chronicles associated with the London chronicle group. Of course, not all London chronicles will be discussed here and in the chapters that follow. Some London chronicles, including some very important ones such as Cotton Julius B II, end before the Cade Rebellion. In addition, several chronicles, such as Charles Wriothesley’s Chronicle as well as the newly-edited Frowyk Chronicle, begin after 1450.28 Also, some chronicles contain very brief accounts of the Cade Rebellion, Ohlgren and Lynn M. Berk (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 118–34. This text is a revised version of his audio recording “Teaching Counter-Propaganda Techniques,” NCTE #74035, 1976. Rank has since published an on-line version of his “Intensify/Downplay Schema”: http://webserve.govst.edu/users/ghrank/Schema/intro_s.htm. 28  Charles Wriothesley, A Chronicle of England During the Reigns of the Tudors, from 1485 to 1559, ed. William Douglas Hamilton. Camden Society, n.s., 11, 20 (London: 1875, 1877; repr., London and New York: Johnson Reprint Company, 1965). The newly edited Frowyk Chronicle, British Library MS Harley 541, forms part of a thirty-two-page booklet owned by the wealthy London merchant Sir Thomas Frowyk. Its contents include a list of London mayors and sheriffs from 1189 up to and including the mayoralty of William Estfeld in 1437. The chronicle covers the years 1482 to 1487, and provides a contemporary record of the death of Anne Neville and the death and burial place of Richard III. For the Frowyk Chronicle, its provenance, ownership, and an edition of the London chronicle, see

Introduction

11

and these entries are so miniscule that it would be a difficult task to discuss any relevant material.29 And lastly, several London chronicles that cover the time period of the Cade Revolt chronicles have not been edited. There is the consensus that the entries within these unedited chronicles are all very similar, too brief, and perhaps inferior to entries of related and already edited chronicles.30 Complete London chronicles begin their entries at 1189, which is the year of Richard I’s accession and also the year London’s governmental structure was initiated. Originally written in Latin, the oldest London chronicle is the Liber de Antiquis Legibus, written in 1274, and it is ascribed to Arnold Fitz Thedmar, a London alderman.31 The London chronicles are organized around the mayoral year, which begins on October 29 when a new mayor is elected; this mode of organization is different from most other chronicles, which organize events around the regnal year. Many London chronicles are eyewitness reports of civic and national events and most have a Yorkist bias.32 1. Robert Bale’s Chronicle covers the years 1189 to 1461. The manuscript is Trinity College Dublin MS 509 (formerly Trinity College Dublin MS E.5.9) and can best be described as a commonplace book. Trinity College Dublin MS 604 contains the final year of the chronicle. The author of the chronicle, Robert Bale, was supposedly a lawyer and judge in London. The chronicle is a first-hand account of many London events, including royal

Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, “The Making of a Minor London Chronicle in the Household of Sir Thomas Frowyk (died 1485),” The Ricardian 10, no. 126 (1994): 86–103. McLaren did not acknowledge the Frowyk Chronicle in her very thorough bibliography of London chronicles. 29   This includes the Cade entry for the Bradford manuscript, which is edited by McLaren and included in her book. The change of hands in 1440 marked a glaring change of styles; the entries changed from detailed and expansive to merely that of a list of mayors and sheriffs and a brief note on what happened that year. In fact, the chronicler erroneously recorded the following in 1447: “Normandy was lost. the duke of fuffthorp slayd & Jak Cade & lord Say beheded,” McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 212. The chronicler, seeing his error, deletes all but the first sentence but does not re-record it in the proper space. 30   This would include the London chronicle British Library MS Harley Roll C 8; the London chronicle found in John Colyn’s commonplace book, British Library MS Harley 2252; College of Arms MS Arundel 19 (1); Bodleian Library MS Bodley 506; and Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 359. Excerpts of Harley 2252, including an excerpt of the London chronicle, can be found in Ulrich Frost, Das Commonplace Book von John Colyns: Untersuchung und Teiledition der Handschrift Harley 2252 der British Library in London (Frankfort: Peter Lang, 1988), and for the London chronicle see 142–56. 31   Thomas Stapleton, ed., Liber de Antiquis Legibus. Camden Society, o.s., 34 (London, 1846; repr., New York and London: AMS Press, 1968). 32  Kennedy, A Manuel, 2648–9.

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

12

processions and a detailed account of the Cade Revolt.33 2. The Great Chronicle of London is London Guildhall Library MS 3313 and covers the years 1189 to 1512. The chronicle has two distinct parts: one from 1189 to 1439 and the second from 1439 to 1512. The second half has been attributed to Robert Fabyan, a claim that McLaren does not support. The chronicle is highly critical of Edward III and presents detailed accounts of the reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV. Thomas and Thornley, in their edition of the chronicle, note the chronicle’s many inaccuracies. The manuscript may have belonged to John Stow, John Foxe, and Edward Hall.34 3. The New Chronicles of England and France is a combination of a London chronicle and also an English and French chronicle. Written by Robert Fabyan, a Draper, it spans the years of the founding of Albion to Henry VII’s ascension in 1485. A second continuation, most likely written by Fabyan, continues the chronicle to 1509. It is divided into seven books in reference to the Seven Joys of Mary. The majority of Book Seven resembles a London chronicle, for it begins each entry, starting with the year 1189, with the traditional names of the mayor and sheriffs. It presents a favorable picture of Henry VII and decidedly negative illustrations of Edward IV and Richard III. There are three manuscripts. The first part of the chronicle (from Brutus to the death of Philip II of France in 1223) is preserved in Holkham Hall MS 671, and the second part (from Richard I to 1485), is in British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI and in Harvard University, Houghton Library MS England 766. Robert Pynson used Harvard MS England 766 for his 1516 printed edition, The Newe Chronycles of Englande and of Fraunce, STC 10656.35 I have consulted the Cotton Nero manuscript and cite from it. 4. Gregory’s Chronicle is British Library MS Egerton 1995, and it covers the years 1189 to 1469/70. It is an incomplete chronicle, with no entry for 1453/54. It has been attributed to William Gregory, Skinner, sheriff of London (1436–37) and mayor (1451–52). Gregory died on January 23, 1466/67, and another composer may have begun writing entries as early as 1450. These later entries have a good deal of humor in them, and they also describe at various times a possible friendship between the chronicler and 33

 McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277; Kennedy, A Manual, 2651; Ralph Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 66–74. Flenley’s edition spans the years 1437–60. 34  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 26–8; Kennedy, A Manual, 2651–2; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 231–2; A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicles of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr., Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983). 35  Kennedy, A Manual, 2654–5; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 245–8; McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 26.

Introduction

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

36

13

Doctor William Ive of Wickham College, Winchester. These personal and individual traits are unlike the early entries of the chronicle.36 A Short English Chronicle is found in Lambeth Palace MS Lambeth 306, and it covers the years 1189 to 1465. The chronicle provides detailed, eyewitness accounts of Cade’s Revolt and the ascension of Edward IV.37 Richard Arnold’s Chronicle has no extant manuscript. The commonplace book, attributed to Richard Arnold, a supposed haberdasher, contains a London chronicle. The book exists in two printed editions: STC 782 and STC 783; the former edition contains the London chronicle that covers the years 1189 to 1502, while the latter extends the chronicle to 1519. This commonplace book contains the earliest copy of the poem “The Nut Brown Maid.”38 Richard Hill’s Chronicle is found in Oxford, Balliol College MS 354, a commonplace book owned by Richard Hill, a London Grocer who was born in Hillend. The chronicle covers the years 1414 to 1536. It begins imperfectly, and the initial entries (up to around 1475) are very brief. The later entries show an interest in civic processions, executions, and Joan of Arc.39 The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London is found in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII and covers the years 1189 to 1556. The entries are more detailed for the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary. It was discovered in the Grey Friars church in London. Nichols and Howlett suggest that Brother Andrew Bavard (d. 1508) compiled the chronicle, while Kingsford contends that the chronicle is the work of an anonymous friar.40 Bodleian Library MS Gough London 10 spans the years 1189 to 1470, with one additional entry for 1495. The anonymous author, possibly the

 McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 276; Kennedy, A Manual, 2650–51; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 229–30, 233–5; James Gairdner, ed., Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), iii–viii. 37  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277; Kennedy, A Manual, 2651; James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles. Camden Society, n.s., 28 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1880), i–xv. 38  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277–8; Kennedy, A Manual, 2652–3; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 232. 39  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277; Kennedy, A Manual, 2653; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 232; David R. Parker, The Commonplace Book in Tudor London: An Examination of BL MSS Egerton 1995, Harley 2252, Lansdowne 762, and Oxford Balliol College MS 354 (Lanham, MD and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), 49–50, 78–80; Roman Dyboski, ed., Songs, Carols, and other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill’s CommonplaceBook. EETS, e.s., 101 (London: Oxford University Press, 1908; repr., 1937), xv–xvi; W. P. Hills, “Richard Hill of Hillend,” Notes and Queries 177 (1939): 452–6. 40  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277; Kennedy, A Manual, 2653; Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London (Aberdeen: The University of Aberdeen Press, 1915; repr., Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1965), 1–2; John

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The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

city chamberlain Miles Adys (1479–84), knew much of municipal life. Up to 1440, MS Gough 10 resembles the Short English Chronicle and British Library MS Haley 565.41 10. British Library MS Cotton Julius B. I covers the years 1189 to 1483 and is one of the earliest London chronicles of the fifteenth century. It has been edited together with British Library Harley 565, which covers the years 1189 to 1443, as A Chronicle of London, 1189–1483. The edition comprises the years 1189 to 1443 from Harley 565, and 1444 to 1483 from Cotton Julius B. I. The early entries are brief and contain a mixture of civic and national information.42 11. British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. XVI begins imperfectly at 1216 and ends in 1509. The chronicle has four changes of hands: 1440, 1441, 1441, and 1496. From 1440 to 1496 the chronicle is not close in relation to any other London chronicle and presents a unique narrative of the Cade material.43 12. A Short Chronicle of Events is a brief chronicle covering the years 1431 to 1471 and is to be found in John Vale’s commonplace book, British Library MS 48031A. The chronicle, most likely written by Vale for his employer, the notable Draper Sir Thomas Cook, places the blame of Henry VI’s fall on the shoulders of the king’s counselors.44 The following chronicles contain accounts of the Cade Rebellion, and while they are not “pure” London chronicles each one contains certain compositional elements that bear a resemblance to those chronicles previously mentioned. Each chronicle discussed below includes a narrative of the Cade Revolt. In fact, the chronicles in this group, by-and-large, contain narratives of the revolt that are, in many cases, more complete than those of “pure” London chronicles. The chronicles here belong to the Brut chronicles of the fifteenth century as well as to the Polychronicon tradition. The Brut chronicles of the fifteenth century were derived, in part, from London chronicles. Just as the men who lived and worked in London were responsible for the compiling of the London chronicles, the majority of the Brut Gough Nichols, ed., Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London. Camden Society, o.s., 53 (London: Nichols and Sons, 1852), xxxiii–xxxiv; and Richard Howlett, ed., The Chronicle of the Grey Friar’s of London, in Monumenta Franciscana. Rolls Series 4 (London: Longman and Trübner, 1882), 2: lii–liii. 41  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 277; Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 103; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 74–81. 42  N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrell , ed., A Chronicle of London, 1089–1483 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, [etc.], 1827; repr., Felinfach: Llanerch, 1995); McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 100–104, 276. 43  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 276; Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 95–102; Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905; repr., Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1977), xv–xviii. 44  Kekewich, et al., John Vale’s Book, 1–12, 178–80.

Introduction

15

chronicles of the fifteenth century were also the products of Londoners. These Brut and Polychronicon texts included passages of civic-minded observations of their city in a (mainly) pro-Yorkist tone. Nevertheless, while both the Brut and the London chronicles share overlapping entries, particularly in the later sections of the chronicles, they emerge from two distinct pools of writing: the Brutus legend and the civic lists of mayors and sheriffs. John Trevisa completed his translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon in 1387, and it had a direct influence on several fifteenth-century chronicle writers, including “John Warkworth” and John Benet, the latter a Londoner who developed his own chronicle partially on a model of Trevisa’s translation.45 1. The Middle English prose Brut. At last count, at least 193 manuscripts survive worldwide. The manuscript used here is British Library MS Additional MS 10099; it belongs to what Matheson has categorized as the Common Version to 1461 (CV-1461) and is written in one hand. Matheson has argued that the sources used in the manuscript’s continuation for 1419 to 1461 cannot be the exemplar for Caxton’s Chronicles of England, and that British Library Additional MS 10099 cannot be a copy from a print of Caxton’s work. More than likely, British Library Additional MS 10099 was made from a manuscript exemplar prepared specifically for the press for sale in two forms: elaborate presentation copies for (royal) patrons, or ordinary copies for the growing (mercantile) middle class; British Library Additional MS 10099 belongs to the latter.46 2. An English Chronicle 1377–1461 is an edition of two manuscripts. For many years the chronicle was referred to as Davies’ or Davies’s Chronicle, after J. S. Davies who first edited Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34 as An English Chronicle in 1856. MS Lyell 34 belongs to what Matheson has categorized as a group of Peculiar Texts and Versions (PV) of the Middle English prose Brut. William Marx re-edited An English Chronicle in 2003, using Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608 (also a Peculiar Text and Version of the Middle English prose Brut) as the base manuscript for the years 1377 to the first two sentences for 1451; at that point ten folios are

45

  Gransden, Writing in England ii, 220–22; Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 2629–37, 2656–61. Lister M. Matheson, ed., “Warkworth’s” Chronicle: The Chronicle Attributed to John Warkworth, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, in Death and Dissent: Two Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, ed. Lister M. Matheson. Medieval Chronicles 2 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1999), 61–124. 46  Matheson, The Prose Brut, xxi–xxxi, 164–7; Lister M. Matheson, “Printer and Scribe: Caxton, the Polychronicon, and the Brut,” Speculum 60 (1985): 593–614; Lister M. Matheson, “Historical Prose,” in Middle English Prose: A Critical Guide to Major Authors and Genres, ed. A. S. G. Edwards (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 209–12; Kennedy, A Manual, 2634–7.

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The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

missing and the remainder of Marx’s edition is derived from Lyell 34.47 3. John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, Trinity College, Dublin MS E.5.10, is a Latin chronicle that covers the years from creation to 1462. The chronicle has been attributed to John Benet, a vicar of Harlington in Bedfordshire (1443–71) who died in 1474. The text is based on the Polychronicon; however, the Brut may have been used for the entries of 1333 to 1377, and a version of the Brut similar to An English Chronicle may have been used as source material for the entries from 1422 to 1440. The Cade narrative appears to be, like those found in Bale’s Chronicle, Gregory’s Chronicle, and An English Chronicle, a first-hand account. It is believed that Benet wrote the chronicle some years before 1471.48 Six chapters, a conclusion, and an Appendix (wherein I provide a short chronology of Cade’s Rebellion) follow this introduction. Chapter 1 focuses on the problematic nature of the representation of ideological belief systems. Using Eagleton’s six ideological strategies as a guide, I examine the chroniclers’ descriptions of the rebellion. The chroniclers do not offer a homogeneous ideology to their readers, but instead they utilize various strategies, sometimes within a single chronicle, to craft their narrative. Chapter 2 is an examination of the chroniclers’ utilization of political and literary language, in particular the use of the literary tropes (specifically alliteration, and metonymic and metaphorical language) that the chroniclers employ to heighten the reality of the political situation in London during the summer of 1450. The figurative language of the chroniclers’ narrative of Cade’s Rebellion is, I argue, a result of the chroniclers’ exposure to this traumatic event. Chapter 3 examines two distinct carnivalesque scenes of the Cade Revolt: those present in Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle, 1377–1461. When Cade dons elaborate attire and marches through the streets of London, he parodies the London civic ceremony of the Midsummer Watch, an event that occurred during the Whitsun festivities where the ruling oligarchy of London gathered in a procession to safeguard the most important homes from robbery. In Chapter 4, I scrutinize the authorial intent of John Payn as he writes to John Paston I. Payn’s letter is written fifteen years after the rebellion, yet it provides us with a 47  Matheson, The Prose Brut, 256–7, and for a discussion of the Peculiar Version for Lyell 34 see 287–90, and for Library of Wales MS 21608 see 290–94; William Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377–1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34. Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), xi–cv; William Marx, “Middle English Manuscripts of the Brut in the National Library of Wales,” Cylchgrawn Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru, The National Library of Wales Journal 27 (1991–92): 361–82, esp. 373–6. 48   G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, eds, John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, in Camden Miscellany XXIV. Camden Fourth Series, vol. 9 (London: Royal Historical Society and University College London, 1972), 153–74; Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 254–7; Matheson, The Prose Brut, 21.

Introduction

17

first-hand account of his involvement with the revolt. Chapter 5 focuses on the chroniclers’ use of emplotment and its inter-connected feature and byproduct of characterization. When recording the Cade Rebellion, the chroniclers often use plot and character templates; in doing so, the chroniclers push the historical narrative of the chronicle further away from a purely historical text and into the realm of literary fiction. Chapter 6 introduces the legendary figure of Robin Hood to the context of the revolt. The texts of Robin Hood, as well as his place within the social and historical world of outlawry and transgression, hold much in common with the exploits of Jack Cade and his force. It appears that those who participated in Cade’s Rebellion knew of the Robin Hood tradition and utilized many of the outlaw’s philosophies. In reference to the goals of this project, I would like to echo Dominick LaCapra’s perspective on the relationship between historical texts and the historians who study them, and to the area of literary studies, which is a field that (at certain times in the history of intellectual thought) has been dismissed by positivist historians as a mode of thinking that has no place in intellectual history. LaCapra puts forth this point: “I continue to believe that historians have much to learn from disciplines such as literary criticism and philosophy where debates over the nature of interpretation have been particularly lively in the recent past.”49 LaCapra’s goal is over twenty years old, and in many respects it has not been realized; even so, in medieval studies it has been attempted, but not embraced, by most historians. Even the most recent work on the London chronicles by Mary-Rose McLaren uses out-dated theoretical terms to discuss the content and the form, to borrow Hayden White’s phrase, of this socially, historically, and literary important body of work. Mary Carruthers states that there are two stages involving the making of an authority. “The first,” she says, “is the individual process of ‘authoring,’ and the second is the matter of ‘authorizing,’ which is a social and communal activity. In the context of memory, the first belongs to the context of an individual’s memory, the second to what we might conveniently think of as public memory.”50 The London chronicles of the fifteenth century are the authority on Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450; therefore, to read and study them brings us closer to the authors, their individual memories, and their unique historical narrative. A final note on the editions of the chronicles used. Because a number of the editions of these chronicles are from the nineteenth century, and because a number of scholars have commented on editorial inconsistencies that exist in these editions, I have consulted the manuscripts of the majority of these chronicles. Where an edition differs significantly from its manuscript source, I provide a transcription from the manuscript and note the pages in which the edited version is found. I have silently expanded all abbreviations. In several of the manuscripts, 49  Dominick LaCapra, History and Criticism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985), 9–10. 50  Mary Carruthers, The Book of Medieval Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 189.

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The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

scribes used the graphemes “Y” or “y” as abbreviations for “th,” mostly in the word “the.” For ease of readability, and since these were scribal abbreviations, I have silently transcribed all of these “Y’s” as “th.” The Tironian sign used in Latin for “et” and in English to represent “and (—),” is here transcribed as “&.” Since capitalization of proper nouns was inconsistent in medieval manuscripts, I have chosen to regularize the capitalization of proper nouns in the transcriptions. Punctuation follows modern guidelines. In medieval manuscripts, the virgule “/” is a versatile marker for a pause, much like the “.” (or point). I have chosen to replace the virgule with the appropriate modern punctuation.

Chapter 1

Ideologies of Representation

The Wars of the Roses (c. 1437–1509) can be seen as the event that marked England during the later Middle Ages, and the Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450 can be seen as a microcosm of the societal and governmental problems that affected the nation and its people. So perfectly located temporally in the center of the fifteenth century, Jack Cade’s Rebellion indeed bore some resemblance to the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381. The analogies made between the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the Cade Rebellion (particularly the individuals who took part in the two uprisings) are, to a great extent, valid. The Peasants’ Revolt took place mainly in Essex, Kent, and East Anglia—the area where Cade and his band began their insurrection. However, the personage of Cade (a person who used aliases, believed that he was related by blood to the Duke of York, and altogether arrogant) is contrasted sharply with the leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt and their seemingly democratic aims. Cade’s Rebellion, in addition to a sizable number of peasants, also featured a large collective of artisans, merchants, and guild members. Indeed, the listing of those names of people who were involved with Cade’s uprising and then pardoned provides a cross section of fifteenth-century middle-class London and Kent, the epicenter of the revolt. By the fifteenth century, the traditional estate model (the clergy, the nobles, and the peasants) that dominated England in the Middle Ages was beginning to collapse. New social and economic forces were beginning to create societal and political change; however, class distinctions were 

  These dates for the Wars of the Roses are taken from Christine Carpenter’s study, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1–3. Carpenter does not use the traditional dates of 1455–85 when discussing the wars, for she believes that the political events from the late 1430s need to be recounted and explained. Moreover, Henry VII’s reign and his solidification of the Houses of York and Lancaster prior to the unchallenged ascension of Henry VIII is included as vital moments in the whole of the Wars of the Roses.   See James Gairdner, “Jack Cade’s Rebellion,” The Fortnightly Review 8, n.s., (1870): 442–55, esp. 448–9; R. B. Dobson, ed., The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1983); and Rodney H. Hilton and Trevor Aston, eds., The English Rising of 1381 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). For a brief selection of accounts of the 1381 Rising in London chronicles, see Mary-Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing, With an Annotated Edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 268–9. Steven Justice, in his study Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 151–63, also comments on the Peasants’ Revolt in relation to midsummer, Pentecost, and the festivities associated with Corpus Christi.

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still apparent. B. Brogden Orridge, in his Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion, comments on the make-up of the rebellion: “It has been admitted, indeed, that Cade drew to himself some ‘tall men’ of this country; yet it is not known how many were of old and good families, many remaining to this day. It is worth while at the outset to give their names.” What follows in Orridge’s study is a listing of all individuals who were involved in Cade’s uprising as well as their occupations. Orridge’s list is taken from the records of the Calendar of Patent Rolls. Orridge, unlike the somewhat random listing of the individuals pardoned as it is recorded in the Calendar of Patent Rolls, chose to group the people under their professions. Thus, Orridge placed a degree of social and economic value over the people who took part in the rebellion, which was an element of classification not explicitly stressed in the mid-fifteenth-century record. Orridge’s list begins with “1 Knight— Cheyne, John, of East Church, in the Isle of Sheppey” and includes “18 Esquires,” “74 Gentlemen,” and “two ‘Holy-water clerkes,’ being the persons who carried the holy water.” While the main force of Cade’s Rebellion consisted of “husbandmen and labourers,” the variety of occupations held by his supporters (barbers, masons, vintners, mercers, and shipmen, just to name a few occupations) shows the extent to which the rebellion struck an initial nerve with the growing middle class. There is no single reason why the revolt took place. 1450 was a contentious year, and the events that preceded the revolt in the summer (the sudden loss of Normandy to the French, the murder of Bishop Moleyns, a series of unpopular reforms that Henry VI enacted, and the impeachment and murder of William duke of Suffolk) did not sit well with the populace. Many of the London chronicles describe in some form (detailed and lengthy narratives for some, brief entries for other chronicles) the events that precede Cade’s Rebellion and the inherently violent and socially disruptive nature of the revolt and its aftermath. There remains the general consensus that the London chronicles are a body of texts that clearly show a bias towards York. Edward Kennedy has commented that while “the Bruts were originally written for a Lancastrian audience, the London chronicles reflect the Yorkist politics and anti-Scottish, anti-Flemish and anti-French attitude of the leaders of London.” Antonia Gransden states that the London chronicles “emphasize the Yorkist claim throughout, and end on a note of triumph of Edward IV, which had clearly provided an incentive for their composition.” Gransden’s belief that an ideological mode that is present is several sections of a historical 

 See Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).   B. Brogden Orridge, Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion (London: John Camden Hotton, 1869), 24.   Orridge, Illustrations, 25–9.   Edward Donald Kennedy, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500, Volume 8: Chronicles and Other Historical Writings (New Haven, CT: Archon, 1989), 2649.   Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 222. Italics mine.

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record is representative of the ideological belief of the entire record is faulty. For a scholar to declare that the ideological foundation of a historical text (such as a pure chronicle as defined by Berel Lang), or a historical text with literary qualities (such as the Brut and London chronicles), or even a work of fiction which aspires to historicity (for example, the many history plays of Shakespeare) is one dimensional does a great disservice to chroniclers’ craft and the complex nature of writing history. The aim of this chapter is to place Terry Eagleton’s ideological strategies alongside the London chronicles’ accounts of the Cade Rebellion and examine the modes of ideology that the London chroniclers use. By examining the ideological bias of the writers when they chronicled the Cade episode, we will see that many of the London chronicles that contain a description of the Cade Rebellion represent varying degrees of ideological representation. Thus, the chroniclers of London who recorded and composed these narratives should not be viewed as a writing collective who possessed a homogeneous ideological strategy. On the contrary, they must be understood as a multifaceted body of writers and chroniclers who (at times) grapple with the aims of the rebellion, how to represent it, and especially what ideological strategy/strategies to use when reflecting upon the highly politicized event. I have decided to begin my analysis with the London chronicle that presents what many consider to be the most authoritative and accurate recounting of the Cade Rebellion: Bale’s Chronicle. I have chosen to group certain London chronicles that share compositional and authorial similarities together, thus showing the (sometimes) unified mode of the ideological strategies put forward by the composers. Bale’s Chronicle and The Rebels’ Petitions In her study The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, Mary-Rose McLaren performs a “close-reading” of the account of the Cade Rebellion found in MS Trinity College Dublin 509 (hereafter referred to as Bale’s Chronicle) and in particular of the visual imagery used by the chronicler in describing Cade, particularly his royal investiture, and the language that the chronicler employs to possibly present his view of the uprising. As McLaren sees it, “the chronicler seems to suggest that Cade fell victim to the disorder he protested against. His rebellion is not only an event to be factually recorded, but also an illustration of the king’s failure and of the results of evil counsel.” McLaren has chosen a single chronicle to examine Cade’s Rebellion. While she admits that “[t]his text does not present the most detailed 

 For Berel Lang’s views on the nature of the chronicle, and how only the most literal of chronicles are to be viewed as the authentic historical record, see Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990; repr., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 140–50.   McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 70.

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account of Cade’s Rebellion (Vitellius A. XVI is also an eyewitness record, and is more detailed than Bale’s Chronicle),” she nonetheless focuses her attention on Bale’s Chronicle because “unlike Vitellius A. XVI, we can be fairly sure that it was written and continued by its owner.”10 Nevertheless, in her study we are privy to only a single representation of this historically and socially important event. The questions of ownership and authorship of Bale’s Chronicle are, like the owners and authors of many archaeological remnants of historical records and literature, not set in stone. As Gransden notes, while the chronicle has been attributed to Robert Bale, a public notary, civil judge, and London citizen, “the evidence is weak.”11 Whoever was the true author and owner of Bale’s Chronicle, what is presented in the chronicle regarding the events of Cade’s Rebellion is, as Flenley himself comments, “the fullest we possess, and there are not a few other events in which Bale supplements, often in a minor way, our knowledge of the thoughts and acts of men who lived in the storm and stress of the early years of the Wars of the Roses.”12 England during the Wars of the Roses, in both its early and later stages, was a country in which allegiances were fluid. It was quite common for individuals of varying rank and class to switch sides (sometimes willy-nilly) from York to Lancaster, or vice versa. In the matter of Cade’s Rebellion, it appears that those taking part in the upheaval, as well as those persons who recorded it, often modified or altered their allegiances. In the matter of Bale’s Chronicle, the chronicler himself is one whose position shifts, for in the early stages of the rebellion the chronicler has a decidedly positive opinion of Cade, the leader’s host, and the aims of the uprising: Item the Tewesday folowyng the seid capitaigne came agein to the seid heth with his ffelawship which he ded ageinst his ligeaunce all þough his desires wer good & for the well of þe land as he surmitted to have laboured by the which mean he gate the hertes of þe greet part of the comons of the land.13

However, later in the chronicle, as the events of the rebellion unfold and there is a good deal of death and bloodshed (and ultimately the beheading of Cade), the position of the chronicler appears to change:

10

 Ibid., 67.   Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 233. For a more thorough discussion of the question of authorship and ownership of Bale’s Chronicle, see Ralph Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 66–70. Flenley mistakenly names Robert Bale as the editor of Richard Arnold’s Customs of London, 70. 12  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 74. 13   Transcription from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 205; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132. 11

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Item the same night & on the Sonday folowyng þe same capiteigne & his peple appointed to have serched & had diverse worthymen and their goodes of the citee. And the same Sonday the capitaigne beheded in Suthwerk a gentilman which þe men of Essex delivered to him called Thomas Mayn of Colchester … And the same night and on þe morowe unto iiij of the bell the peple of the citee & the capitaigne & his meyne countred & met to gider on London Brigge & in Suthwerk & moch peple were slayn and hurt on eiþer partie.14

How does one account for this shift in the position of the chronicler? McLaren approaches this change through an analogy of how one constructs a work of literature. While not using any theoretical models, McLaren states that the account of the rebellion is “concerned not only with recording events, but with the philosophical questions of how order and disorder interact and how order might be achieved and maintained.”15 While the events of Cade’s Rebellion in Bale’s Chronicle do have a certain mode of emplotment, a tragedy perhaps, McLaren only lightly touches upon this notion of history as plotted course. And what is not examined is the relationship between the problematic nature of this emplotment and the events that were recorded; instead, McLaren states that the events of Cade’s Rebellion have been “factually recorded” as an “illustration of the king’s failure and of the results of evil counsel.”16 Here we have two distinct issues in regards to the nature of historical representation: the mode of emplotment chosen, and the ideological implications behind what events were recorded and in what fashion. The force that supported Jack Cade in principle and in action should not be seen as a like-minded collection of people. Instead, they were a heterogeneous collective that, as seen in the various types of people who took part in the revolt (as represented by their varying occupations both genders were represented), possibly shared a unifying ideology, which was perhaps put forth by Cade himself. This initial ideological position was intended to be a disruption of the local government in protest to Henry VI’s actions and inactions. As Bertram Wolffe notes, the “final spark to action” was the retaliation over the death of Suffolk: The duke’s headless body had been found on Dover sands and, according to the first article of the rebels’ complaint, William Crowmer, sheriff of Kent and Sussex, son-in-law to the treasurer, Lord Say, had taken custody of it and threatened that the king would now turn the whole county of Kent into a deer forest, in punishment.17

14   Transcription from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 207; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 133–4. 15  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 70. 16  Ibid., 70. 17  Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981; repr., and rev. 2001), 232.

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Cade and his followers had five requests for the king: resume his lost demesnes in order to re-establish his power and dignity; remove the abuses of the law that affected people, such as the “insufferable purveyance of Henry’s household”; grant relief from the corrupt practices of local governmental officials; banish “all the false progeny of the duke of Suffolk”; and punish those who had taken part in the death of the duke of Gloucester as well as those who had lost overseas possessions.18 These five indictments brought against the king are the unifying ideologies of those taking part in Cade’s Rebellion. But what is interesting is that the chronicler of Bale’s Chronicle does not name any of these indictments that Cade and his men brought against Henry VI. In this respect, Bale’s Chronicle may not be “a fine example of an eyewitness account” as McLaren suggests.19 For whatever reasons, the chronicle has not included two of the most crucial pieces of information regarding Cade’s Revolt: why they revolted and what they hoped to accomplish. It can be suggested that the chronicler may not have known the specifics of the rebels’ petitions, but he must have known something about their aim and their position; why else would the chronicler align himself at first with the notion that Cade and his troops’ “desires wer good & for the well of þe land.”20 In the case of the author of Bale’s Chronicle, there appears to be a good deal of what Eagleton refers to as the form of ideology that obscures part of the social reality, or what Hugh Rank terms as downplay.21 In this form of ideological mystification, Eagleton states that this form of ideology “retains an emphasis on false or deceptive beliefs but regards such beliefs as arising not from the interests of a dominant class but from the material structure of society as a whole.”22 In Bale’s Chronicle we do not hear from Cade or the rebels; indeed, we are privy to their actions only through the select filter of the chronicler. If the actions of Cade and his men are to be interpreted as having an initially positive agenda—although we are unsure why the chronicler sees it as positive, for he never explains his reasoning—and then later as having a negative agenda (as seen in the in the many recordings of murder and plundering), then the final section on Cade and its highly ambiguous language can only further problematize this question of ideological implication: 18

  Wolffe, Henry VI, 234. Wolffe further notes that there were numerous local complaints made, including extortion by the sheriff, false charges being levied, and the remoteness of the justice of the peace, 234–5. 19  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 67. 20   Transcription from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 205; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132. 21  Hugh Rank, “Learning about Public Persuasion: Rational and a Schema,” in The New Languages: A Rhetorical Approach to the Mass Media and Popular Culture, ed., Thomas H. Ohlgren and Lynn M. Berk (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 118–34. 22   Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction (London and New York: Verso, 1991), 30. Eagleton further comments that the most celebrated form of this type of ideology is Marx’s theory of the fetishism of commodities.

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And þan the seid capitaigne ffledde & his men departed & soo his power seased & at noon after he was slayn in his defence and þan be heded & his heed set on London Brigge & his body brought to the kyngs bench & from thens drawen deed þurogh the citee on þe pavement unto the Tyborn & quartred & his quarters sent to diverse places of the land … ffor the world was þat tyme so strange that tyme that noo man might well ride nor goo in noo cooste of þis land without a strength of ffelauship but þat he wer robbed.23

The chronicler, it seems, is unable to formulate his own conclusions about Cade, the rebellion and its outcomes, or the ultimate significance of the uprising. We as readers are left with the image of Cade’s body being mutilated and paraded through the city, which is a violent image of punishment as a spectacle. Michel Foucault has argued thusly on this type of scene: [T]he punishment was thought to equal, if not exceed, in savagery the crime itself to accustom the spectators to a ferocity from which one wished to divert them, to show them frequency of crime, to make the executioner resemble a criminal, judges murderers, to reverse roles at the last moment, to make the tortured criminal an object of pity and admiration.24

The chronicler has again obscured this portion of the narrative; all we have is Cade’s body and the bodies of his people who were “hanged & beheded for the same rysyng & sturing doon by the capitaigne.”25 Also present in this above passage is the very real notion that while Cade’s Rebellion was put down and the leaders executed, this action did not make the area and its people any more law-abiding or secure. The chronicler, however, is still unable to pass judgment on Cade. Cade’s name and his ideology were to be appropriated by other people who continued with small uprisings, and the title “Captain of Kent” was used as a catchphrase among insurgents.26 In another uprising, this one in the spring of 1452 in Postwick, Norwich, Roger Church, the bailiff of Blofield hundred in Norfolk, told his fellowship that a good name for their captain would be John Amendale, an alias that Jack Cade used.27 In Cade’s Revolt aliases were common among his company, and its leaders had their identities hidden, at least for a time, under

23

  Transcription from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, pages 207–8; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 134–5. 24  Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1977), 9. 25   Transcription from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 207; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 134. 26  I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 133. 27  Ibid., 161–2.

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such names as “King of the Fairies,” “Queen of the Fairies,” and “Robin Hood.”28 These three aliases that Cade’s followers exploit reveal an aspect of the revolt that some scholars have explored in minimal detail: the highly-charged air of carnival that is present during the revolt, and which overtakes Cade and his band as they proceed to institute their own form of rule, government, and order on the city and its people. It must be remembered that Cade’s Rebellion was a real representation of his and his followers’ ideological beliefs. There was nothing theoretical about their actions; that is, Cade did not simply sit and ponder his ideological bent or his belief system and how either or both conflicted with Henry VI’s interests. Instead, Cade actually acted upon his own concept of power and rule. This was ideology at work; it was visable, and it affected others. Regarding Eagleton’s six ideological strategies, of particular interest to us when we consider the carnivalesque nature of the Cade Rebellion is the idea of action-oriented beliefs. These beliefs are not a set of “speculative theoretical systems” but rather the transference of those epistemic concepts of ideology into the real and practical world.29 Inherent in actionoriented ideologies is the need for an ideology to work on both the practical and theoretical level. As Eagleton himself states, action-oriented ideologies “combine in a coherent system factual content and moral commitment, and that is what lends them their action-guiding power.”30 Cade’s Rebellion was one revolt where its moral commitment to its adherents’ ideological system was present both in its horrendous actions and also in its series of written grievances. These formal written grievances effectively give the rebel force a voice, a voice that is, at times, mocked and obscured by the writers of the London chronicles. This was not a rebellion that simply “took place.” More accurately, the rebellion was planned. Cade and his followers had a series of moral criteria for initiating the rebellion, a series of demands and complaints directed toward the crown. These were complaints that they staunchly believed were in need of immediate rectification. These lists of grievances exist in three different versions, and at present there are a total number of eight copies that are extant.31 Of the three versions, the copy 28   Ibid., 65. We will return to the figure of Robin Hood and his presence in Cade’s Rebellion in Chapter 6. 29  Eagleton, Ideology, 47–8. 30  Ibid., 48. Eagleton examines Mark Seliger’s study Ideology and Politics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976), and comments that, for Seliger, ideologies “blend beliefs and disbeliefs, moral norms, a modicum of factual evidence and a set of technical prescriptions, all of which ensures concerted action for the preservation or reconstruction of a given social order,” 48. 31   Version I exists in British Library MS Cotton Roll IV 50 and in British Library MS Harley 545, fols. 136v-137v, the latter was owned by John Stow who used the copy in a later version of his Chronicles of England, the 1631 edition entitled Annals or a Generall Chronicle of England. This version by Stow has been printed in R. B. Dobson, ed., The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (London, 1970), 336–42. Version II exists in four copies:

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of Version II, found in Lambeth Palace Library MS Lambeth 306, is the only one whose contents can be said to have been originally composed contemporaneous to the events of the rebellion, for the date listed on the manuscript is 4 June, 1450.32 Version II of the petitions is also the more detailed, organized, and one could say severe of the three different lists of grievances; it begins with a prologue of sorts: These ben the poyntes, mischeves and causes of the gederynge and assemblynge of us zyoure trew legemene of Kent, the weche we trist to God for to remedye with helpe of hym oure Kynge oure Soveraigne lorde and alle the comyns of Inglond and to dye therefore.33

Version III of the petitions also identifies the individuals involved in the insurrection as “the trewe comyns of your soueraign lord the Kyng,” and what follows in the complaint are their “desires.”34 There is an inherent belief system in these grievances, especially in Version II, where it is obvious that an “us” versus “them” mentality exists in the minds of the rebels. For example, Henry VI is “above his lawe and that the lawe is made to his plesure,” that “yt is to remembre that theese false traytours wulle suffer no mane to coome to the Kynges presense for noe cause withoutune brybe,” and that the King has had: …ffalse counsayle, ffor his lordez ern lost, his marchundize is lost, his comyns destroyed, the see is lost, ffraunse his lost, hymself so pore that he may not [pay] for his mete nor drynk; he oweth more than evur dyd kynge in Inglond, and zit dayly his traytours that beene abowte hyme waytethe whereevur thynge schudde coome to hyme by his law, and they aske hit from hyme.”35

MS Lambeth 306, fols. 49r-51r (a sixteenth-century copy made by Stow); Magdalen College Library, Oxford, MS 306, possibly the copy that John Payn brought back from Blackheath for Sir John Falstaff; British Library MS Harley 543, fols. 165r–6v; and Bodleian MS Eng. Hist. C 272, a late-sixteenth century copy. Version III exists in British Library MS Cotton II 23, and in British Library MS Harley 545, fols. 137v–8r. Harvey reproduces all three versions of these grievances, selecting the copy of British Library Cotton IV 50 for Version I; the Magdalen College, Oxford, MS 306 copy for Version II; and the British Library MS Cotton II 23 copy for Version III. See Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450, 186– 91 for her transcriptions. For a study on the political discourse of the Cade Rebellion, including the language of the indictments and the chronicle accounts, see David Grummitt, “Deconstructing Cade’s Rebellion: Discourse and Politics in the Mid Fifteenth Century,” in The Fifteenth Century VI: Identity and Insurgency in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Linda Clark (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), 107–22. 32  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450, 188. 33  Ibid., 188–9. 34  Ibid., 191. 35  Ibid., 189.

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Cade and his followers use the language and the form, the stilo regio, of a proper governmental proclamation, and they infuse it with their own coded text of antiestablishment rhetoric. They have, in a very real way, taken what may be considered the language of the master (such as the language of civic and royal proclamations), subsumed the forms, the tone, and the phrasings, and then appropriated these literary and rhetorical elements to meet their own needs—indeed the needs of some of the crown’s own subjects. Two of the petitions even contain Latin phrases, adding yet another level of (some might say crude) sophistication and authority to the documents, its composers, and the aims of the rebels. But Version II of the grievances ends in a somewhat unusual fashion. After a series of fourteen complaints against Henry VI (including his character, his decisions, and his lords), the document concludes with a poem, and not a very good one at that: God be oure gyde, and then schull we spede, Who so evur say nay, ffalse for ther money reulethe. Trewth for his tales spellethe. God seende vs a ffayre day! Awey, traytours, awey!36

While these four lines of verse may have been used as a rallying call for the insurgents, no one is certain what if anything this poem accomplished. However, when we take a more critical look at the poem and its place in the document, two items are very much notable. First, the poem disrupts the form of the grievance document. The petitions of Version II are ordered in Roman numerals, and each grievance is clearly illuminated in a (mostly) concise manner with very little figurative language. The very nature of the form of a poem is highly figurative; it is, here, a work of “literature” in the very broadest sense, and thus it may disrupt the very authorial nature of this, or any, historical record. Second, the content and the form of the poem, it could be argued, undermine the authority of the people associated with the grievances document. While wanting to be seen as a force of institutional power whose own ideologies could be imposed upon others, the rebels wrote in the “master’s voice” to achieve their presumed goals of the insurrection. Yet the poem presents us with a paradox; namely, the content at times may be read as infantile and churlish. Indeed, these are two personal characteristics with which Cade and his followers do not want any connections. Of course, even if there were no physical rebellion, the poem and the entire grievance that precedes it would have been a powerful document of public protest, one in which its author and the people whose ideas it represented would have felt triumphant in its wide circulation. A written (one might even say codified) argument was here placed in writing; thus, the written complaint gave the rebels a voice—granted not as moralizing as John Gower’s—that gained the crown’s immediate attention.

36

 Ibid., 190.

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If the goal of the Cade Rebellion was to promote political and social change through the presentation and dissemination of the group’s ideological beliefs, then the hope for this societal transformation to be actualized failed in the violent battles in and around London wherein so many were killed. Yet there is another scene within Bale’s Chronicle that paradoxically undermines Cade’s desired legitimacy; it is a coronation scene that parodies and mocks a royal coronation and procession or, more than likely, a civic procession. Here we have the power of the visual image, of the encoded details inherently codified within the clothes worn by Cade and his actions while wearing them. While Cade may been understood as a force of political and physical power—as a person who could command attention and respect from his followers and his enemies—his effectiveness as leader of his own action-oriented ideologies is diminished once he is adorned with a straw crown and velvet sable gown, his sword drawn, and he and his company parade through Cheap and behead three men. McLaren, too, states that Cade saw the power in the visual dynamic of being seen as one who commands and dispenses acts of violence at will: “[Cade] established this power, according to the chronicler, firstly through visual representation and then maintained it through violence.”37 If Cade’s ideologies were concepts that were designed to be acted upon and realized, then the chronicler who recorded this unique coronation and drunken mob scene—a scene in which Cade’s ideologies were enacted and realized—revealed to readers the heightened carnivalesque atmosphere of Cade’s crowning and subsequent procession. If Bale’s Chronicle is said to have a Yorkist bias, there is almost none of that partiality in the Cade material, and certainly none exists in this particular scene. When recording this particular moment at hand, the chronicler of Bale’s Chronicle appears to be more concerned about the violence in and around London and of the effects this violence has on the country and the authority of the crown; who is king at the time of this section of the Cade Rebellion does not appear to be a concern of the chronicler’s.38 Kingsford has commented that Bale’s Chronicle is a “valuable and contemporary original, though it shows a Yorkist bias and a partiality for Warwick the kingmaker.”39 However, when examining the lengthy section on the Cade Revolt, the chronicler does not reveal any Yorkist bias. While it appears that the chronicle as a whole may have a certain ideological bent regarding the red or white rose, this form of ideology does not appear in any of the Cade material. The chronicler is, in the Cade section, very much a neutral eyewitness to the proceedings. Flenley himself notes that the account of the revolt in Bale’s Chronicle “reads like that of a man who heard the shout and saw the whole thing.”40 Henry VI is never judged by the chronicler as one who acted in a poor manner when dealing with the insurrection, nor is his character attacked. As such, aldermen like Philip Malpas and Robert 37

 McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 69.   Chapter Three focuses specifically on this particular episode. 39  Kingsford, English Historical Literature, 95. 40  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 131, n. 2. 38

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Horne, both of whom held Yorkist allegiances, were never viewed in sympathetic terms by the chronicler; moreover, if the chronicler were a true Yorkist, one would have believed that he would have spoken out regarding Malpas and Horne’s mistreatment at the hands of the rebels. In fact, since both men were regarded as selfish and uncaring, the chronicler, by reporting their misfortunes, may have been a bit enthusiastic about the crimes perpetrated against these two citizens. The silence of the Bale Chronicler may perhaps hint at a sense of satisfaction: Malpas and Horne have finally gotten what they deserve. Later in Bale’s Chronicle, the text may be promoting Yorkist ideologies, but at the same time it may also be unifying certain ideological tendencies which were quite common in the London chronicles, namely the opinion of the Capital and the vocal and powerful mercantile class. The action-oriented nature of Cade’s and his followers’ ideology presents in Bale’s Chronicle a highly charged carnivalesque atmosphere. Once Cade and his band enter London, the temptation of misrule and the virtual lack of any sort of governmental opposition fueled the already highly charged festive atmosphere into a mini-rebellion. The Commonplace Books John Vale’s Commonplace Book, Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, Richard Arnold’s Chronicle, Gregory’s Chronicle, A Short English Chronicle, Bodleian Library MS Gough 10, and John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462 are seven manuscripts and commonplace books that contain London chronicles. All are unique collections, and all hold particular relevance to the larger corpus of fifteenth-century historical writings, particularly the chronicles of London. All of these collections contain a mixture of ballads, poems, prose writings, and other ephemera typical of a medieval commonplace book. All seven contain a London chronicle wherein the Cade episode is recorded. Most scholars agree that the London chronicle within Hill’s Book is based in large part on the London chronicle contained within Arnold’s Chronicle. As a commonplace book, Vale’s Book is arguably of greater historical importance than either Hill’s, Arnold’s, or British Library MS Egerton 1995, for Vale’s Book contains, among other documents, two of the rebels’ articles of petition (Harvey’s Versions I and III that were discussed above) that the rebels drafted in response to Henry VI and his reign. The multifaceted nature of Vale’s Book, the various political writings, and the sequence in which the documents are arranged only add more uncertainty regarding Vale’s own unifying belief towards the political events of the fifteenth century. Even the editors of Vale’s Book have been left with no firm answers as to the purpose of the volume.41 Therefore, to attempt an ideological analysis of Vale’s attitudes toward 41  Margaret Lucille Kekewich, “Preface,” in The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book, ed., Margaret Lucille Kekewich and others (Phoenix Mill, Eng.: Alan Sutton for the Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1995), ix–x.

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Cade and the revolt would be problematic, and this is certainly due in large part to the inclusion of the rebels’ articles of petition. By including the two versions of the complaints of the rebels in the commonplace book, Vale performed an interesting and provocative feat: he created an instant archive, one that existed almost contemporaneous to the historical event that he himself was preserving. We like to think of the composition of chronicles as scribal events that happen simultaneous to the action being described, or at least right soon after; this appears to be the case with Bale’s Chronicle, but this is not so with Vale’s Chronicle and the scribe’s temporal and physical placement of the petitions within his book. These petitions appear to be inserted by Vale over a decade after the Cade Rebellion; consequently, one of the petitions was re-circulated in June 1460, possibly by Yorkist forces during the June–July revolution.42 Vale, the scribe, has created an interesting quandary for us modern scholars who attempt to deconstruct the meaning of Vale’s placement of these petitions within the larger collection. Why include these petitions? Were they meant to be viewed as a reminder to the owner of the book of the dangers of popular rebellion and of waging a mini-war against the king of England? Were these petitions to be seen as pieces of a by-gone history, of a nostalgic record of the Cade Rebellion and the rebels’ demands, something akin to what John Stow would carry out when compiling and writing his 1570–75 editions of A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, which indeed included material on Cade? Or should the inclusion of these petitions be viewed as the scribe’s overall negative attitude toward the divisive and harmful nature of this rebellion and other ones? By the time Vale included these petitions, they still had political and social relevance, for the Wars of the Roses were at their peak of destruction. The petitions could be interpreted as a souvenir of sorts, an artifact from a lost remnant of a section of English society bent on continuing a rebellion that was ultimately defeated and viewed as the antithesis of the crown’s sovereign nature. To draw a modern analogy, the inclusion of the petitions by Vale may be seen as similar to the actions of soldiers serving in foreign wars who brought home various pieces of enemy cultural material—helmets, flags, guns, and documents—as a reminder of their victory (militarily, ideologically) over their foe. These cultural artifacts, still stored and archived in many homes today (and many forgotten, one of the results of archiving), reflect the moral (and perhaps physical) superiority the soldiers felt and continue to feel regarding their actions against an enemy culture and its manifestations. However, there is something inherently fetishistic about the desire to collect, keep, and some cases hide these artifacts. This desire to keep, store, and archive material is symbolic not only of collectors of war memorabilia (even those who did not serve, but chose to amass a collection for personal reasons, some of

42

 Ibid., xi, 30–31. As John L.Watts states, “Clearly enough, this ten-year-old material still served the purposes of Yorkist complain: the same themes and the same grounds for action are to be found in polemics which were unmistakably theirs,” in “Polemic and Politics in the 1450s,” ibid., 30.

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which are nefarious), but it also is symbolic of Vale’s need to collect and archive select documents. When reading though the contents of commonplace books such as Vale’s Book, one is ultimately drawn to Jacques Derrida’s study Archive Fever. This work is a critical examination of the Freudian archive and of the psychoanalytic nature of the multiplicity of memories. Derrida states the following regarding his analytic venture: [T]he hypotheses have a common trait. They all concern the impression left, in my opinion, by the Freudian signature on its own archive, on the concept of the archive and of archivization, that is to say also, inversely and as an indirect consequence, on historiography. Not only on historiography in general, not only on the history of the concept of the archive, but perhaps also on the history of the formation of a concept in general.43

Derrida posits that Freud suffered from mal d’archive, and that most of society today, and Derrida himself alludes to this, is also experiencing an archive fever (or a disorder) that relates to the process of archivization. The desire to archive, it appears to Derrida, is explicitly tied to the horrors and the incongruous nature of the Holocaust. As Derrida points out, there is an inherent paradox to this psychological disorder of archiving, and that “what is troubling here is undoubtedly what troubles and muddles our vision … what inhibits sight and knowledge, but also the troubled and troubling affairs … the troubles secrets, of plots, of clandestineness, of halfprivate, half-public conjurations, always at the unstable limit between public and private, between the family, the society, and the State … With the irreplaceable singularity of a document to interpret, to repeat, to reproduce, but each time in its original uniqueness, an archive ought to be idiomatic, and thus offered and unavailable for translation, open to and shielded from technical iteration and reproduction … The trouble de l’archive stems from a mal d’archive. We are en mal d’archive: in need of archives.”44 The same drive to archive this end can be said to live within archivists such as John Vale and Richard Hill. There was (and there remains) an almost insatiable (death?) drive to archive as well as to store and maintain the histories of actions and thoughts. If Vale’s process of archivization appears to muddle our thoughts in regards to the scribe’s overall method and purpose, then the same could be said about Vale’s own intentions. Paul Strohm, in his examination of a temporal archive present within Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, does not see Derrida’s concept of the archive as one that is rooted in Freud’s concept of a death drive, where the fever of the archive and of archivization is “a fever of repetition, a bias in favor of nonrenewal.” Instead, Strohm sees the archive as an entity that is more “constructive” and “potentially 43   Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 5. The italics are Derrida’s. 44  Ibid., 90–91.

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progressive.” Strohm comments thus: “This is the ‘institutional’ sense in which the archive is seen as a repository of meanings that await discovery. In this aspect, the archive does not arrest time, but rather exists as an unstable amalgam of unexhausted past and unaccomplished future. Open towards the future—that is, toward the activities of future interpreters—the archive consists of texts that await meaning, part of whose realization includes what they ‘will have meant.’”45 While texts always await meaning, it is usually contingent upon those texts being made available to readers, scholars, and for these individuals to possess the desire to formulate their own meanings and interpretations of the said text. This of course sounds remarkably similar to Stanley Fish’s notion that there exist a multiplicity of readers and authors of a single text.46 Roland Barthes, in his essay “The Death of the Author”, however, says that the “explanation of the work is still sought in the person of its producer, as if, through the more or less transparent allegory of fiction, it was always, ultimately, the one and the same person, the author, which was transmitting his ‘confidences.’”47 Michel Foucault’s seminal essay “What is an Author?” argues that an author is the “ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.”48 To be sure, Vale did not construct his archive willy-nilly; nevertheless, what drove him to do so and what did he hope he and others would gain—in an ontological and also an ideological sense—remains elusive. When we do examine the placement of the rebels’ manifesto in Vale’s Book within the context of the text of the short London chronicle that is also included in the commonplace book, the probable ideological manifestations of Vale’s political belief system become clearer. Given the intense mental nature of archiving, Eagleton’s third ideological strategy, that of an ideology that is rationalizing, appears to be the type of ideology present in the Cade material of John Vale’s Book. Eagleton declares that, at its root, rationalization is a “psychoanalytic category, defined by J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis as a ‘procedure whereby the subject attempts to present an explanation that is either logically consistent or ethically acceptable for attitudes, ideas, feelings, etc., whose true motives are not perceived.’”49 The Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, which is found in Vale’s Book on folios 119v–121r, rationalizes the fall of Henry VI in highly sympathetic terms. Vale sees Henry as a victim, a king who “falls victim to low-born counselors, 45   Paul Strohm, Theory and the Premodern Text. Medieval Cultures 26 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 80. 46  Stanley Fish, “Is There a Text in this Class,” Critical Inquiry 2, no. 3 (1976): 465–86. 47  Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 50. 48  Michel Foucault, “What is an Author?” in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in PostStructuralist Criticism, ed. José Harari (New York: Cornell University Press), 141–60 at 159. 49  Eagleton, Ideology, 51. The quote from Laplanche and Pontalis can be found in J. Laplanche and J. B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycho-Analysis, trans. Donald NicholsonSmith (New York: Norton, 1974), 375.

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whose evil influence causes the death of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and a host of other disasters, including the loss of France, the rebellion of Jack Cade … and the downfall of the king himself.”50 The chronicle is a glowing portrait of Henry the man; in fact, his reign was an era of “grete nobley, worship, welthe and prosperite,” only to be undone by those … whos sinister counseill, envye and prepensed malice not aloonly caused the subvercion and falle mooste dolorous of the saide king Henry from his mooste roiall and excellente dignite and astate, but also caused execrabley many and divers grete mischefes, lossis, insurreccions and civile bataylis to thextreme pointe of the utmoste destruccion ad depopulacion of subgiettes and people.51

This rationalization on the part of Vale appears consistent throughout the brief chronicle, and it is present within the section of the Cade episode. Here, Cade himself is grouped into this collective of people who caused the subversion and fall of Henry VI: And also the iijde day of July in the same yere amischevous rebaude and an insurreccioner, called Jakke Cade of Kente, gretly destourbed the seid king in so moche he with his power cam into London withoute resistence and there did do be hede the lorde Say and Crowmer and after robbed and dispoiled the place of Philip Malpas, the whiche was amerchente of the same cite of grete substaunce and worship.52

Here, Cade is seen as just one in a succession of individuals who brought trouble to the king and thus caused his (fated, Vale might be arguing?) downfall. Of course this chronicle, and indeed the majority of Vale’s commonplace book, overlooks the decided opinion by scholars, and also by many contemporaneous fifteenth-century accounts, that Henry was by nature an ineffectual leader and king. If blame is to be placed for the reason for Henry’s downfall and deposition in 1461, this end was, as Bertram Wolffe argues, “primarily because of his own failings and not for the claims, ambitions or rights of his supplanter.”53 Eagleton informs us that inherent in many forms of ideological rationalization lies a degree of self-deception, and that this internal mental deception is expressed either by groups of a dominant or of an oppressed ideology. According to Eagleton, self-deception “is the condition in which one has wants or desires which one denies or disavows, or of which one is simply unaware.”54 In the case of Vale, we should ask this question: Why 50

  Watts, “Polemic and Politics,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 5.  Anne F. Sutton, Livia Visser-Fuchs, and Margaret Lucille Kekewich, “The Contents of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 178. 52  Ibid., 178. 53   Wolffe, Henry VI, 332. 54  Eagleton, Ideology, 53. 51

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repress? Vale had the rebels’ proclamations, and he should have been more than fully aware of their grievances against Henry and his policies, so why the need then to shift the cause and blame of the king’s downfall onto external forces? To say that Vale was “unaware” of the root cause of Henry’s fall, and also the reasons for the Cade Rebellion, would be erroneous. Furthermore, as his commonplace book and its contents show, Vale was keenly aware of fifteenth-century politics, its players, and its social trappings. The degree of self-deception Vale expresses in regards to the Cade Rebellion and its impact on the initial reign of Henry VI may in fact be the result of the scribe’s own desire for a greater sense of stability, both for himself and for the country. This act of self-deception most likely occurs and is actualized when Vale copies those portions of the commonplace book that seek to recontextualize the fifteenth century to equal Vale’s sense of historical representation. Vale may have been one of many Londoners who were even more dissatisfied with Edward IV. In 1469 Edward IV faced what Charles Ross described as a “sudden crumbling of his authority” and “a loss of popular support.”55 What stability there was in fifteenth-century London may have existed only within certain social and civic organizations, namely the guilds. For instance, the social and religious fraternities policed their own ranks; nonetheless, they were affected by the overall status and stability of the ruling government. Philip Malpas is named in Vale’s chronicle, and this is nothing new—both he and the robbery of his house are described in almost every account of the Cade Rebellion that is found in a London chronicle. The importance to which the owners of Vale’s Book (the Cook family, and especially Sir Thomas Cook, junior) played in the writing of the chronicle and the Cade entry cannot be overly stressed. Thomas Cook senior was a warden of the Drapers’ Company. Beginning in 1440 and lasting for seventeen years, he was one of the two wardens of London Bridge; he died at the end of 1457 or the beginning of 1458.56 Thomas Cook senior was a common London official, although he played a key role in The Drapers’ Company and its ruling oligarchy from 1420–40. His son achieved greater status and recognition: he secured aldermanry from 1449–56, was elected mayor of London in 1462, and as a reward for his deeds to the crown was named Knight of the Bath by Edward IV on May 24–25, 1465, before the new queen’s (Elizabeth

55

 Charles Ross, Edward IV (London: Methuen, 1974; repr., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 153. Watts argues, one could say over emphatically, that Cook the collector and Vale the scribe were overly hostile to the Yorkists and in particular to Richard Duke of York; see Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 24–42. 56  Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, “The Provenance of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 74–5. As is noted in Vale’s Book, there is difficulty in separating the affairs Thomas Cook, senior and junior, from 1440 until the death of the elder. Sylvia L. Thrupp’s entry for Cook conflates the two Cooks’ lives, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948; repr., 1962), 333.

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Wydeville) coronation.57 Cook the younger, though, was prone to bankruptcy and shifting political allegiances; in fact, like so many of his age in the fifteenthcentury he appeared to switch loyalties from one rose to the next at the drop of a hat. Sir Thomas Cook and others (Sir John Plummer, Grocer, who was knighted with Cook, Sir Robert Whittingham, and John Hawkins) were arrested for treason after Lancastrian agents were seized with letters on June 5, 1468.58 Cook was found not guilty of treason but guilty of misprision and was order to pay a fine of £8,000 to the king and 800 marks to the queen. After Edward IV fled the country in 1470, Cook regained his authority. However, Edward returned in 1471, and Cook was again imprisoned and was found guilty of misprision of treason by Markham the judge. Cook and others were found guilty of concealing a plot by the Lancastrians to invade England and of sending aid to them as well. For this offense Cook was incarcerated (first to the Bread Street Compter prison and then to the Kings Bench prison in Southwark) and soon released after paying the fine. Edward later dismissed Markham for this apparently light sentence.59 The remaining years of Sir Thomas Cook’s life were spent in house arrest; this sentence ended in 1472 when he was pardoned. He was subsequently appointed to a royal commission investigating the appeal of a merchant in a matter involving the admiralty court. Despite all of his fines, Cook died (in 1478) wealthy, passing most of his inheritance to his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Philip and Juliana Malpas.60 Again, that Philip Malpas and the robbery of his house are singled out in the short Vale chronicle is nothing new, but that Malpas, who was thought of in many circles and described in civic records in not-so-flattering terms, is described by Vale as a person “of grete substaunce and worship” is worth mentioning. Malpas is here mentioned in such glowing terms that it smacks almost of historical revisionism and certainly an instrument of ideological implementation and exaggeration. As we will see, The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London also portrays Malpas as an upstanding London citizen and, interestingly enough, as a hero of the battle of London Bridge. The case could be argued that Malpas is recorded in Vale’s London chronicle in such positive terms so as to legitimate the social and familial standings of the Cook and Malpas families, both of whom were by all accounts subjugated 57

 Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, “The Provenance of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 76–85; A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914–22), 1:134. 58  Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, “The Provenance of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 88. 59  Ibid., 88–90; Johnson, Drapers, 1:134–5; A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicle of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr., Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), 205–6. 60  Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, “The Provenance of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 92–7; Johnson, Drapers, 1:151; and B. Brogden Orridge, Some Account Of The Citizens Of London And Their Rulers From 1060 To 1867 (London: William Tegg, 1867), 26.

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to unfair treatment at the hands of Edward IV. Like Cook, Malpas attempted an escape in 1461, but he too was captured by the French and ransomed before he and his party could make land in Ireland.61 The promotion of the good will of Malpas—as well as the absence of any of that man’s ill traits—certainly serves the interests of both families. As Eagleton comments, a “group, for example, may overestimate its own political strength, but the fruit of this miscalculation may be some successful course of action it would not otherwise have embarked on. As far as ruling classes go, the illusion that they are acting in the common interest may buttress their self-esteem and thus, along with it, their power.”62 While this singling out of Malpas as a positive force in the Cade episode is virtually unique to the London chronicles, Vale also associates Malpas with the merchant oligarchy. This intensification device again unifies the mercantile, civic, and guild formations of London against the Cade Revolt; moreover, Malpas’ “good name” further unifies and naturalizes the ideologies of those merchants and civic officials who, by 1471 when the chronicle ends, were dissatisfied with Edward’s reign and who were also and politically and/or monetarily damaged by his return to power. Furthermore, Vale’s decision to include within the chronicle entry the detail that Malpas’ home was not only “robbed” but also “dispoiled” appears to universalize the fear so prevalent in medieval London: robbery. Inherent within this fear is the driving force of civic protection; that is, property owners and the community at large must protect London’s opulent dwellings from thieves. This civic duty—and the authority and power that the reigning civic officials possess to protect the homes of prominent London citizens—is subverted during Cade’s actions in London the Midsummer Watch. The entry in Vale’s Book for the Cade rebellion is brief, but when the passage is contextualized within the political and ideological framework of Cook, the owner of the commonplace book, the contents of the Cade entry (indeed, the contents of the entire short chronicle and even the composition of Vale’s entire commonplace book) show the complex nature of the scribe’s possible rhetorical and ideological intentions. Like the London chronicle entry of Cade’s Rebellion found within Vale’s Book, the chronicle entries that are included within Richard Hill’s commonplace book and Richard Arnold’s Chronicle are also brief, for the former contains two short sentences of significant information and the latter only one. Since Richard Hill (or his scribe) based the entries from 1413-90 on Arnold’s Chronicle, it will be best to discuss these two texts jointly. While both the Cade entries in Hill’s Chronicle and Arnold’s Chronicle are indeed similar, there are, nevertheless, notable differences in the composition of the entries for 1450, differences that possibly alter how one can read the ideological bent of the entries’ composers.

61  Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, “The Provenance of the Manuscript,” in Kekewich et al., Vale’s Book, 83. 62  Eagleton, Ideology, 55.

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Let us begin with the two entries for 1450. The Hill entry begins, as most London chronicles do, with the name of the mayor, Thomas Chalton, and the two sheriffs, Thomas Cannyngis and William Hewlyn, and continues thus: This yere Normandy was lost, & the Duk of Sowthfolk slayn in a ship called the Nych of Towr, & the Comens of Kent arrose with Jak Cade capten & entrid in to London & robbed Philip Malpas.63

The entry in Richard Arnold’s Chronicle for 1450 also contains the names of the same mayor and two sheriffs; however, the remainder of the entry reads as follows: This yere Normandy was lost; and Jak Cade rose in Kent, wyth moche peopell, and made a fray on London bredge.64

While it is unclear if Hill was the author of the chronicle, whoever was responsible for the Cade entry apparently saw a connection between the murder of Suffolk, the loss of Normandy, and the Cade Rebellion. While not a cause of the rebellion per se, the murder of Suffolk was often mentioned by the chroniclers as yet another sign of Henry VI’s inability to gain control over England’s affairs. The entry in Arnold’s text contains no mention of Suffolk or the ship the duke was on, the Nicholas of the Tower. What is most interesting about the Cade entry in Hill’s commonplace book, ideologically speaking, are two items: the inclusion of the commons of Kent arising with Cade, and the inclusion within the entry of Philip Malpas and the robbery of his home. Regarding Arnold’s Chronicle there are also two items of note: first, the reversal of Cade and the commons (i.e., who arose with whom); and second, the absence of Malpas and with it the notion that Cade and the commons simply made a “fray” on London Bridge. In Hill’s entry there is the connotation that the commons of Kent were the predominant force of the rebellion—which in fact they were—and that Cade was the person who joined them. Nowhere in this entry is any language that says Cade was their leader, or that he was a (or their) “captain,” which is a term that many chroniclers used to describe Cade. The association of the commons as a primary force that acts with Cade (and vice versa) puts forth a rationalizing point of view regarding the idea that the common people, particularly those of Kent, hold a propensity towards riot and rebellion.

63

  Transcribed from Oxford Baliol College MS 354, fol. 233r; Roman Dyboski, ed., Songs, Carols, and other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace-Book, EETS, e.s., 101 (London: Oxford University Press, 1908; repr., 1937), 145. 64  Francis Douce, ed., The Customs of London, Otherwise Called Arnold’s Chronicle (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payn, [etc.], 1811), xxxiv.

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The omission of Malpas in Arnold’s Chronicle, the chronicle that was the apparent source for Hill’s text, is a bit of a question mark. While it can be argued that Arnold simply omitted Malpas accidentally, the likelier answer may be that he did not have Malpas’ name in the chronicle that served as his source material: British Library MS Cotton Julius B. I, which itself contains a lengthier entry of the Cade Revolt than either Hill’s or Arnold’s Chronicle, but which does not mention Malpas or his (or another alderman’s) home being robbed.65 Still, this omission by Arnold should not be taken lightly. Malpas was a very well known person, for he was an alderman, a Draper, and in 1439 a sheriff of London. Arnold himself recorded the last bit of information in his London chronicle, so it was not as if Arnold was unaware of Malpas.66 Arnold’s omission of Malpas’ name could be seen as a means to unify the long-held belief by many Londoners that Malpas was a disreputable person, one who was stingy with his money and got what he deserved. Perhaps Arnold felt it best to leave him out of the chronicles of London all together, and never to speak his name. Arnold, a supposed haberdasher, himself a merchant but not a member of a guild, may not have wanted the readers of his commonplace book (Arnold included) to be confronted with Malpas and the Draper’s past dealings. That Hill or his scribe would include Malpas underscores, I believe, the degree to which the author is seeking to unify all guild members against the possible threat to their own sense of order and power. Malpas, in this regards, can be seen as a touchstone of what might occur to any guild member or ruling member of London’s oligarchy should another London riot happen. Again, the values and social status of the merchant class are implicit in this entry. In this text, the entry can be seen as a warning to any member of the ruling elite who may have been tempted to join or aid the rebellion: if you enlist the aid of the rebels— of the commons of Kent—you may be putting your property, and therefore your sense of identity, in peril. Richard Hill was a person who was so enamored with the mercantile world that large sections of his commonplace book are devoted to things related to the London guilds and business doings. David Parker has isolated a section of Hill’s book, “Section 8,” which is almost entirely devoted to items of interest to merchants: tables of weights and money, wine measures, customs on wool, and pen drawings of merchants’ stamps.67 While these business matters are interesting, none compare to the high degree of mercantile and civic pride present within the poem “Treatise of London,” a poem that is included within Hill’s commonplace book in “Section 9: Household and Literary Items.” Parker is right in qualifying the title and contents of Section 9, calling the section “fascinating if a little puzzling” as well as “varied 65

 N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrell, ed., A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, [etc.], 1827; repr., Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers, 1995), 136. 66  Douce, The Customs of London, xxxiii. 67  David R. Parker, The Commonplace Book in Tudor London: An Examination of BL MSS Egerton 1995, Harley 2252, Lansdowne 762, and Oxford Balliol College MS 354 (Lanham, MD and Oxford: University Press of America, 1998), 42–3, 67.

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and idiosyncratic.”68 Indeed, the “Treatise on London” could easily belong to other sections of the commonplace book that focus on literary pieces (like Sections 2 or 7), or Sections 3 or 8 where the former includes a multiplicity of items, such as a note of requirements for the Lord Mayor’s Banquet, a list of pewter dishes for the banquet, a list of crafts in London, and various statutes, and regulations for trades people. While Dyboski and Parker attribute the “Treatise of London” to William Dunbar, there remains no firm consensus as to whether the Scots poet was indeed the author.69 The poem was composed or recited during a banquet given by Sir John Shaa (a mayor, an alderman, and member of the Goldsmith Company) in honor of the Scottish ambassadors who were in London during Christmas week 1501 for the marriage of James IV to Henry VII’s daughter Margaret. The poem presents a glowing portrait of all things London. The refrain to all seven of the poem’s stanzas is striking in its power and simplicity and cements the popular idea of London as the New Troy: “London, thow art þe flowr of cyties all!” The poem celebrates the “wise”70 people who dwell within London’s walls; the mercantile class is “full of substance & might.”71 Stanza seven is by far the most laudatory of the merchants and their positive qualities: Ryche be thy merchantis in substance þat excellis; Fayre be þer wyffes, right lovesum, whit & small.72

The final stanza of the poem is a dedication to the current mayor, Sir John Shaa, who “ruleth prudently” with his “swerde of justice”; no lord in Paris, Venice, or Florence came close to his degree of “dignyte or honour,” and he was “A-bove all mayres” as a “right lodester & gwy.”73 The poem, much like Hill’s Cade entry and his London Chronicle as a whole, represents to a great degree the desire in which the author and especially the compiler and owner of the commonplace book sought to unify the mercantile class with the dominant ideology of the government of early Tudor England. The respect, authority, knowledge, and splendor of the mercantile community—guild members and their wives, aldermen, the mayor— equals that of the chronicle’s description of royal authority and of the symbolic displays of power present in the royal processions. The most detailed description of a royal procession in Hill’s Chronicle is that of Queen Anne’s procession from the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey on May 31, 1533.74 That Richard Hill 68

 Ibid., 67–9.  Dyboski, Songs, Carols, xxv; Parker, The Commonplace Book, 69. 70  Dyboski, Songs, Carols, 101, line 42. 71  Ibid., 100, line 7. 72  Ibid., 101, lines 45–6. 73  Ibid., 102, lines 48–55. MED, lōde-sterre (n.) (a) “The pole star;” (c) “a person or principle serving as a trustworthy guide;” (d) “an illustrious or much admired person, cynosure.” Dyboski glosses “gwy” as “guide,” 194. 74  Dyboski, Songs, Carols, 162–3; Parker, The Commonplace Book, 78–9. 69

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was a member of the Grocers’ Company would further add credence to the notion that the owner and compiler of the book and of the chronicle sought to further the ideological interests of the London civic oligarchy, thereby unifying the elite of London’s own belief system through the association of their own civic ceremonies and business practices with the greater good of the ruling political family. Like the commonplace books that are Vale’s, Arnold’s, and Hill’s, British Library MS Egerton 1995 is a fifteenth-century commonplace book of professional quality. Indeed, it was commissioned to a professional scribe. Egerton 1995 contains seventeen texts, including The Seven Sages of Rome, a version of “Erth upon Erthe,” The Siege of Rouen, as well as short tracts typical of commonplace books: directions on bloodletting, animal terms, and how to predict the weather.75 For our purposes, the item of prime interest in Egerton 1995 is A Chronicle of London, also known as Gregory’s Chronicle. Within Gregory’s Chronicle is a lengthy, most likely first-hand account of the Cade Rebellion. The scathing rhetoric that the chronicler uses to intensify the belief among many Londoners—particularly the wealthy merchants, aldermen and guild members—that the rebels and their leader were rebelling in London so as to disrupt the status quo of the city is a masterful example of vernacular writing. One can see how the intense language might have been used to rally the people of London around a shared enemy. Unlike Vale, who sought to contextualize the Cade Rebellion within the political framework of Henry VI, the chronicler of Gregory’s Chronicle does nothing of the sort. He does not attempt to rationalize the reasons for Cade’s rebellion and Henry’s loss of power; indeed, the chronicler does not seem to care at all about Henry VI or the political ramifications of his handling of Cade’s Rebellion. To say that the Gregory chronicler saw the rebel force as a disreputable and lowborn entity would be a gross understatement. As the Gregory chronicler exemplifies in later episodes of his text, the use of humor in the Cade entry at the expense of others is pervasive and (at times) downright nasty. When Cade and his army first occupy the ground at Blackheath, the Gregory chronicler has this to say: [A]nd there they made a fylde, dykyd and stakyde welle a-bowt, as hyt ben in the londe of warre, save only they kepte ordyr among them, for als goode was Jacke Robyn as John at the Noke, for alle were as hyghe as pygysfete, unto the tyme that they shulde comyn and speke with suche statys and massyngerys as were sende unto hem.76

The author’s quip regarding the rebels’ defensive positions and their ability to wage a ground war is one of the more glaring uses of heated rhetoric, and it is levied at 75  For a list of the contents see Parker, The Commonplace Book, 18–19; and James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), i–ii. 76   Gairdner, The Historical Collections, 190.

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the expense of Cade’s army. Gregory’s chronicler also singles out Cade’s host as a “mysavysyd feleschyppe,” and he declares “I wot not what to name hyt for the multytude of ryffe raffe.”77 Yet it is the repetition of the word “simple,” which is used by the chronicle three times over the course of four sentences, that intensifies his distain for the rebel force, its leader, their actions, and their (apparent, if we are to believe the chronicler) dumb-luck in making their strategic gains on London and its citizens: Ande in the evenynge they went whythe hyr sympylle captayne to hys loggynge; botte a certayne of hys sympylle and rude mayny a-bode there alle the nyght, weny[n]ge to them that they hadde wytte and wysdome for to have gydyde or put in gydyng alle Ingelonde, alsosone at they hadde gote the cytte of London by a mysse happe … And in the morne he come yn a-gayne, that sory and sympylle and rebellyus captayne whythe hys mayny.78

The implications of adults being labeled “simple” are manifold. We usually think of children as being of a simple mind; however, the chronicler here might also be characterizing Cade and his army as either weak or feeble, as a lowly or a common band of folk, or as being ignorant and foolish. It is quite possible that the chronicler is insinuating all of these traits. In contrast to the harsh language that describes the rebels is the praise-worthy rhetoric that is used to describe those who oppose the rebellion and who fight against Cade and his host. Henry VI, who is here at one of his many low points in his career, is nonetheless still referred to on two occasions as “our soverayne lorde.”79 When Sir Humphrey Stafford and William Stafford are slain, the latter is regarded by the chronicler as “one of the mannylste man of alle thys realme of Engelonde,” while Lord Scales is described as “the goode olde lorde.”80 The chronicler even goes as far as identifying the murderer and thief Hawarden, whom Cade beheads, as a “strong theff.” This marker of masculinity is one that the chronicler never employs when naming Cade or his company. Indeed, this chronicler seeks to legitimize the social and political interests of his own dominant class through the use of the repetition of the popularly held idea: the rebel forces were bumbling brutes, and their goal was to undermine the sovereignty of the king through traitorous acts. Even though the chronicler appears to be an eyewitness to the events, he purposefully omits any information regarding the inception of the revolt; moreover, any information on the petitions that the rebels circulate though London is likewise missing. These omissions further legitimize and rationalize the political motives of the chronicler’s ideology by downplaying any legitimate and rational reason for the apparent causes for the rebellion.

77

 Ibid., 190, 191.  Ibid., 192. 79   Gairdner, The Historical Collections, 190, 191. 80  Ibid., 191, 193. 78

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Gregory’s chronicler’s use of humor is divisive, and the rhetorical strategies and tactics further downplay, trivialize, and de-legitimize Cade’s force and their own action-oriented ideologies. As seen in other London chronicles, Gregory’s Chronicle also contains a (somewhat lengthy) description of the robbing of Philip Malpas’ house, including an inventory of what was taken. This solidifies the notion put forward in Vale’s Book that Malpas was of great importance and so was his property.81 The detailed list of the property stolen from Malpas’ residence as recorded in Gregory’s Chronicle reads as follows: And that Phylyppe Malpas was aldyrman, and they spoylyd hym ande bare away moche goode of hys, and in specyalle moche mony, bothe of sylvyr and golde, the valowe of a notabylle som, and in specyalle of marchaundys, as of tynne, woode, madyr, and alym, whythe grette quantyte of wollyn clothe and many ryche jewellys, whythe othyr notabylle stuffe of fedyr beddys, beddyng, napery, and many a ryche clothe of arys, to the valewe of a notable sum.82

Again, as in many of these archival commonplace books, we again see a rationalization on the part of the composer; hence, if these subordinate classes seek to legitimize their own action-oriented beliefs, the dominant social power and their livelihoods may be at risk. The scribe of Gregory’s Chronicle also marks Malpas’ first and last name in a unique way: it is underlined in red.83 This scribal action in the chronicle is used mainly for Latin words and phrases. That Malpas’ name is singled-out in this manner is unique, for it emphasizes the Drapers’ importance to the city and the chronicler. The London chronicle in Lambeth Palace Library MS 306, entitled A Short English Chronicle by James Gairdner, and the London chronicle found in Bodleian Library MS Gough 10 can be discussed together, for the chronicle entries within these manuscripts are similar, although as McLaren states they are “rarely identical.”84 Both of these entries present fairly objective chronologies of the events surrounding the Cade Rebellion, yet at certain moments the chroniclers’ bias (intentional or otherwise) regarding Cade, his actions, and the actions of the Londoners can be noted. A Short English Chronicle and MS Gough 10 present methodically written accounts of the rebellion, and the author of A Short English Chronicle first introduces Cade and reports on the leader’s doings. A Short English Chronicle tells us that the “comynes of Kent a rose,” and that they had “chosen hem 81

 Ibid., 192.  Ibid., 192. 83  British Library MS Egerton 1995, fol. 191r. 84  McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 114–15. McLaren also includes British Library MS Harley Roll C 8 in this group of London chronicles. The Cade entry in MS Harley Roll C 8 is very similar to those found in Lambeth Palace Library MS 306 and Bodleian Library MS Gough 10. The Cade entry for Harley Roll C 8 begins in the usual fashion: “In þat yere was Normandy lost and þe Duke of Suffolke slayne.” 82

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a capteyne the whiche namyd hym sylfe John Mortymer, whose very trew name was John Cade, and he was an Iresheman.”85 The chronicle then describes Henry VI preparing for battle and the rebels preparing for the battle at Blackheath. From the start, A Short English Chronicle has established Cade as a deceitful person and, seemingly just as bad, an Irishman; indeed, the “and” that is used as a conjunctive device intensifies the negative description of Cade. The chronicler repeats this knowledge of Cade’s identity toward the end of the Cade section. Right before Cade is captured and killed, we are again told that “hit was openly knowe that his name was nott Mortymer, his name was John Cade, and þerfor his chartor stode in no streynthe.”86 Apparently, Cade had on his person a written document (possibly sealed) that contained his fictional pedigree. In contrast, MS Gough 10 initially presents the rebels in somewhat positive terms, first noting that they “arose with grete power” and then describing the rebel force as communicators: “And they seid they were petycyoners and besought the kyng that certeyn thyngis that they felt hem agreved with myght be amended. But the kynge wolde nat graunt them.”87 Interestingly, MS Gough 10 records a level of dissent within the king’s force, which is a rare passage and one not often found in the multiple Cade episodes represented in the London chronicles. This political opposition can be seen when the chronicler records that certain lords, after seeing the Staffords slain, fear they would suffer the same fate “yff they followed the kyng and his traitors.”88 However, MS Gough 10, like Bale’s Chronicle, quickly dispenses with any utopian sentiments directed at Cade, his army, or their petitions. Once again, Malpas appears to be the turning point. The chronicler of MS Gough 10 writes that when Cade was “at seynt Magnus he made a crie that no man in his host upon peyne of dethe dispoyled no man in london and ayen at leden hall. And forthe wt he went to Malpas place and dispoiled all that was þerin and after rode oute to myle ende to the oste of Essex men and from thens ayen into Suthwerk the same nyght.”89 Once Cade is in London, Saye is killed, and the siege of London is underway, the chronicler of MS Gough 10 records that Scales and Matthew Gough were set to defend the city, for the latter is described as a “noble werreoure,” and that in the morning after the battle where Gough and Sutton joined them in death were other “worthy men of the cytee.”90 MS Gough 10 ends with a highly descriptive section of Cade’s death: [H]e was brought doun to Suthwerke in a litill carre opyn down to the myddill that men myght see hym: and was lefte in the kyngis bench: and on the Wednesday 85   James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. Camden Society, n.s., 28 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1880), 66. 86  Ibid., 68. 87  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 153–4. 88  Ibid., 154. 89  Ibid., 155. 90  Ibid., 156.

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nex followyng he was beheded and quartred, and on Thursday he was drawe fro the kyngs benche to Newgate and on Fryday the hedde was sett on London Brigge and the quarters kept still in Newgate and after they were set up in dyvers partys in Kent.91

The universal and action-oriented values of the rebels alluded to in the opening of the Cade entry in MS Gough 10—the amending of certain grievances first brought forth through dialogue and written discourse and then through battle—are, in the end, superseded by the rationalization that Cade’s force and their actions met a just end. Their actions were neither as noble nor as worthy as those who sought to defend the city. A Short English Chronicle, by contrast, does not record either Cade’s death or his dismemberment in such detail. What is evident, though, is that right from the start this chronicle presents Cade as a person who is seeking to legitimize his power and that Henry VI—the person who holds all power in England—is absent, choosing to leave London and letting Londoners fight for themselves. The chronicler records that the mayor of London beseeches Henry to “tarye in the cite and they wolde lyve and dye with him, and pay for his costes of housholde an halff yere; but he wold nott, but toke his jorney to Kyllingworthe.”92 Henry is not mentioned again in the Cade entry, either in A Short English Chronicle or in MS Gough 10, and so the justice that is dealt to Cade appears to derive from the power and authority of the ruling oligarchy of London. Henry flees London and turns down a generous offer of lodging; in turn, Londoners cement their power over the governance and control of the city—their city. It is a subtle rhetorical and ideological move, and it distances the king from Cade’s punishment and insinuates that London’s ruling class had greater influence and clout over civic matters than Henry. Therefore, like so many other London chronicles, A Short English Chronicle and MS Gough 10 succeed in unifying the power of the local government through the defeat of Cade and the rebel force. However, as Eagleton himself notes, even unified ideologies are never homogeneous, and that while the dominant class here unified is the London elite, nonetheless, there exists the (some would say hidden) force of the king’s power and authority unifying all in a naturalistic sense. Of course, the king still maintains and inhabits the dominant mode of ideology; in fact, it has been maintained for centuries, and to totally circumvent and invert his power would be a sizable challenge. The London chronicle found in John Benet’s commonplace book is, according to Harriss and Harriss, “clearly based on first-hand knowledge and is comparable in its fullness with that in Bale’s Chronicle.”93 Like Bale’s Chronicle, Benet’s 91

 Ibid., 157.   Gairdner, Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles, 67. 93   G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, ed., John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, in Camden Miscellany XXIV. Camden Fourth Series, vol. 9 (London: Royal Historical Society and University College London, 1972), 164. Excerpts of Benet’s Latin chronicle have been translated in Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii, 256; Keith Dockray, 92

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chronicle and its entry for the Cade Rebellion show a good deal of support for the rebel faction, their desire to reform certain governmental practices, and their disciplined behavior while encamped at Blackheath. At first, Benet seems to be in awe of Cade’s power and his ability to bring together some 50,000 men at Blackheath, calling Cade “valde audacem et discretum,” a “most daring/impudent and clever/subtle man.”94 Benet records how Cade put forward his proclamations to the Archbishop of York, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and to the Duke of Buckingham; however, “Audiens rex illos articulos renuit illos emendare,” that is, “When the king heard of Cade’s opinion, he refused to make the changes he asked.”95 Still, Benet appears to have some hope in Cade and his action-oriented­ ideologies, for the chronicler notes that the rebel force is patient, staying eight days in Blackheath. Moreover, Benet describes how neither Cade nor his force intended harm to the king or England, and that the rebel leader did not wish to harm anyone nor did he intend to plunder. To emphasize Cade’s political intent, Benet notes that Cade makes his proclamation.96 Armed now with 20,000 men, Benet describes how Cade leaves Southwark and enters London, “where he was enthusiastically welcomed by the people.”97 Benet, a Londoner and eyewitness, may have been one of those people, much like Bale’s chronicler, who held a sympathetic view of the rebels and of their very real complaints that they held towards Henry VI and his government. However, Benet is, like most of the London chroniclers, quick to distance himself and his fellow Londoners from Cade’s sudden turn toward violence. After a highly vivid account of how Saye was given a hasty confession and then rushed to the Standard where he was beheaded and his naked body dragged through the streets, Benet describes how Cade rides around the great London Stone and beats his sword on the symbolic object: [V]identes Londonienses quod fregerit capitaneus suam proclamacionem versi sunt contra Capitaneum.98 [When the Londoners saw how the captain had so infringed his own proclamation they turned against him.]99 Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou and the Wars of the Roses: A Source Book (Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 44–5; and Elizabeth Hallam, gen. ed., The Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses (Surrey: Bramley Books, 1996), 204–5. 94  Harriss and Harriss, John Benet’s Chronicle, 198; Dockray, Henry VI, 44; Hallam, Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses, 204. 95  Harriss and Harriss, John Benet’s Chronicle, 199. Translation: “When the king heard of Cade’s opinion, he refused to make the changes he asked,” in Hallam, Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses, 204. 96  Harriss and Harriss, John Benet’s Chronicle, 199. 97  Ibid., 199; Dockray, 44. 98  Harriss and Harriss, John Benet’s Chronicle, 201. 99  Dockray, Henry VI, 44.

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After a brief description of the battle of London, where Benet reports how Matthew Gough along with about forty Londoners and 200 Kentishmen are killed, the rebels are persuaded to accept the king’s general pardon. Cade is killed on July 12, and on July 15 he is quartered, beheaded, and his body drawn from Southwark to Newgate. Benet next makes an interesting remark, alluding to the form of justice administered to Cade: Et postea positum est caput eius super pontem London’cum non fuerit adiudicatus nec secundum legem condempnatus set tantum secundum voluntatem regis.100 [Afterwards, his head was placed on London Bridge, although he had not appeared before a court of law and had been condemned not according to the law, but according to the king’s wish.]101

Benet, it seems, believed that Cade did not receive a fair trial. Moreover, Benet may have felt that Cade was worthy of an audience with the king. Instead, the king has his “wish,” which can be interpreted as a desire not fully thought through and quite possibly not legal. The king circumvented the normal judicial procedures so as to put an end to the Cade Rebellion. This swift action by Henry did not result in the people of Kent and Essex reducing their ideas of rebellion; rather, it had the opposite effect: the people of Kent, Essex and Wiltshire rose once more in protest to the actions undertaken by their king and his counselors. This condemnation on Benet’s behalf of Henry’s actions during the Cade Revolt as well as his critique of the regime in the months that followed is unique among the London chronicles. While Bale’s Chronicle recognizes the initial “good intentions” of Cade and his force, neither the chronicle nor its composer approach the level of sympathy and condemnation leveled at Cade’s death and at Henry’s actions after the beheading of the rebels’ leader. Certainly the ideological construction of the Cade episode as it is represented within Benet’s Chronicle does not approach a conservative or a unifying strategy, a mode that is represented in some of the other London chronicles, such as The Grey Friars Chronicle, or Gregory’s Chronicle. Like Bale’s Chronicle, Benet’s ideological position (and therefore the chronicler’s overall, dominant ideology of the Cade episode) shifts. Therefore, Benet’s Chronicle is a text where multiple ideological positions are present. There is a strong strain of a moral voice present in Benet, one that is akin to certain action-oriented ideologies where the writer is working through the complex nature of what Eagleton terms the “factual content and moral commitment” of active ideologies.102 Benet is not quick to judge all those who took part in the revolt; he does not place a unifying belief system over the whole of the revolt, nor does he attempt to rationalize or legitimize the 100

 Harriss and Harriss, John Benet’s Chronicle, 201–2.  Hallam, Chronicles of the Wars of the Roses, 205. 102  Eagleton, Ideology, 48. 101

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current status quo. Benet does not attempt to explain and why or how the rebels were defeated. Benet, though, was not simply a passive observer of the revolt; instead, he was an active and thoughtful recorder and interpreter of the events that took place. Benet appears to be aware of what V. N. Voloshinov considers the monolithic and pessimistic conceptions of ideology that “would see ‘practical consciousness’ as no more than an obedient instantiation of ruling ideas.”103 Likewise, Benet recognized that the truce between the rebel force and the king had failed, and that even after the Cade Revolt Henry was unable to completely squelch all forms of rebellion. Benet, in the Cade section, appears to be putting forward an ideology of universalization; however, instead of acknowledging the universally shared values and interests akin to the crown and to the rebel force, he notes the apparent contradictions present in the values and interests of both. At the height of the violence in the Cade section, Benet is able to observe how both forces are engaging in a false universalization of their ideological belief system, attempting to conceal contradictions within their initial set of core beliefs. Cotton Vitellius F. XII: The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London This chronicle, found in the Grey Friars’ residence, is closely related in composition to the London chronicles in Richard Hill’s commonplace book and Arnold’s Chronicle. As with most London chronicles, it begins with the naming of the mayor and the sheriffs of London and then proceeds into the entry proper. Because the entry is relatively short, I will present it in full: Thomas Chalton, Mayor. Thomas Canyngs, William Hulyn, Shreffs, xxviij° Aº Thys yere Normandy was lost. And this yere came Jake Cade of Kent & made hym selfe a captayne with a gret multytude of pepulle vnto Blackehethe, and ther a bode. vij. dayes cotynually vnto that the kynge with hys lordes þat laye that tyme at Sent Johns in Smythfelde & in diuers placis came rydynge thurgh London toward Grenewyche. And thene Jake Cade flede & removyd fro thens toward Tunbryche, Maydstone, & Sevenoke. And ther hys men beheddyd a sqwere callyd Stanlaw. And in that contre ther was sir Humfry Stafford, knyghte, & William Stafford, sqwere, with certayne men of armes slayne. And in that mene tyme came a captayne of Essex with hys men & enterd in to the felde and that same tyme was Horne the alderman a restyd & the Satterday the iijde day of July the captayne rode thorrow London to Powles & to Newgatt & soo forth 103  Ibid., 50. Eagleton here is referring to V. N. Voloshinov’s work, Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (New York: Seminar Press, 1976).

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to Myle Ende. And ther was beheddyd one Cromer of Kent & one Baylly of Colchester & at the Stonderd in Cheppe was sir Roger Fenche beheddyd & at the Whyt Harte in Sothwarke one Hawardyne of Sent Martyns was beheddyd & Malpas of London drewe the cheynne of London Brygge. And ther was a gret battell made by nyghte a gaynst the towne & many men slayne & drownyd. And sarteyne aldermen of London was ther slayne. And the prisoners of the Kyngs Bench & Marchelsay delyveryd owte by Jake Cades commandment. And afterward he was slayne in Kent.104

Like the entry found in Richard Hill’s Chronicle and Arnold’s Chronicle, this entry begins with the statement that Normandy was lost and then proceeds at once to the Cade Revolt. The compilers may have been making an implicit link between the two events; in other words, the first caused or precipitated the second. The tone of this entry is, when compared to the entry that is found in the Gregory Chronicle, rather tame and straightforward. However, there is the connotation by the author of the Grey Friars Chronicle that Cade’s power and his title were illegitimate: Cade “made hym selfe a captayne.” In a certain sense, then, the chronicler right from the start presents a picture of resentment—Cade does not rightfully or properly earn his title, and no one of proper authority (a mayor or sheriff) has given him one. The final line of the entry states the end result of this rebellion rather plainly: after all was said and done, Cade is killed. The chronicler did not have to say that the killing of Cade was just or unjust, for the former was implied once it was written that Cade gained his power and authority through lies and deception. The chronicle can thus be seen as a legitimizing tool for the sovereignty of the crown. Moreover, the text purports to rationalize the very basic held belief that those lower individuals who usurp power will, nonetheless, be subjugated to the rules of the dominant class, and in the case of Cade, subjugated and killed. Philip Malpas is again mentioned in this chronicle; however, the robbery of his house and the plundering of its goods are not described. Instead, the chronicler has chosen to single out Malpas as the one person who drew the drawbridge of London Bridge in an attempt to keep the rebels out of London. Malpas is here represented as a hero, as one of the ruling mercantile class who attempted to save the city and its citizens after Cade’s forces went amuck. Indeed, the representation of any figure in quasimythical and heroic language (especially a person so polarizing as Malpas) is problematic when one considers the authenticity of this or any historical record. In this regard, the appearance of Malpas in the Grey Friars Chronicle as a supposed hero unifies the mercantile class and the ruling oligarchy of London in the belief 104   Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v. At the beginning of this entry, the marginalia, which is in a similar hand but difficult to read on account of the condition of the manuscript, reads as follows: “Jake Cade a gret insurrecsyon with much myscheff as þe storry shoyth.” Richard Howlett, ed., The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London in Monumenta Franciscana, Rolls Series 4 (London: Longman and Trübner, 1882), 2: 173.

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that they are the rightful protectors of the city. Under their force’s watch, the city, its inhabitants, and also its commerce will remain intact and viable. What is also of interest in the Grey Friars Chronicle’s entry for the Cade Rebellion is the complete absence of Henry VI. This omission by the author of the chronicle could be seen as a means to distance the chronicle as a whole (and the Cade section as well) from any Lancastrian reference. While one may have expected to read anti-Lancastrian rhetoric in a pro-Yorkist London chronicle, the absence of Henry and his retainers within the Cade entry effectively downplays the monarch’s role in this and other historical affairs. British Library Cotton MS Julius B. I: A Chronicle of London From 1089 to 1483 This London chronicle, which McLaren places in the St. John’s 57 Group, nonetheless resembles in its later entries the chronicles of the Egerton Group.105 The Cade entry is short and to the point, resembling in diction and tone the entry that is found in The Grey Friars Chronicle. The entry for the year 1450 begins, as so many London chronicles do, with the news that Normandy was lost, and that Suffolk was beheaded “in a ship called Nicholas of the Tower.”106 The chronicle does not present any information regarding the rebels’ petitions, their aims, or the initial attitude of the citizens of London toward the gathering of the insurgent forces. Instead, the chronicler reports that “the comens of Kent arose, and Jak Cade was theire capitayne, callyng hym self Mortymer, by whome were ij knyghts slayne at Sevenok in Kent, that is to sey Sir Humfrey Stafford and Sir William Stafford, brethern, and many of theire men.”107 The chronicler has here chosen to omit material that may have presented the rebel force in a different, less threatening light. Instead, it is clear to a reader of this Cade entry that the chronicler is attempting to unify the ideological belief system of the status quo through the identification of Cade as a person who has obtained an alias and thus eradicated any degree of legitimacy he and his nameless force once held. That the very brief entries of the Cade episode found in Arnold’s Chronicle and Richard Hill’s Chronicle failed to mention any of the petitions or discussions between Cade and Henry’s counselors can be ascribed to the lateness of each of the texts. However, Cotton Julius B. I is one of the earliest of the fifteenth-century London chronicles, and such glaring omissions of significant historical material and information germane to the Cade Rebellion may have been be the result of a chronicler who either did not possess a full account of the revolt or who chose to depict the rebel force as murderers 105

 McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 100–103.   Transcribed from British Library Cotton Julius B. I, fol. 85v; Nicolas and Tyrrell, A Chronicle of London, 136. 107   Transcribed from British Library Cotton Julius B. I, fol. 85v; Nicolas and Tyrrell, A Chronicle of London, 136. 106

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and robbers, which is how they come across in this entry. Once the Staffords are slain, the rebels “came ageyn to Blakheth and so over London Brige into London on Friday at after none and bigan to riful & robbe.”108 The chronicle then briefly describes the beheadings of Crowmer, Saye and Hawardyne, the fight on London Bridge where Gough and Sutton are killed, and how “the capitayne fledde into Sussex and thider was pursued and slayne.”109 It is here that the Cade entry ends, and we are left then with the notion that Cade deserved his punishment, regardless of his and his band’s legitimate concerns over the misuse of power in various levels of the government. There is a degree of a naturalizing ideology present in this chronicle entry, for when we read the entry it seems logical and just that Cade was caught and killed—after all, he pillaged, robbed, and killed the king’s men. British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. XVI The account of Cade’s Rebellion as it is recorded in Vitellius A. XVI is thorough, detailed, and precise, although it is generally not accepted as an eyewitness account of the events. Covering just over three folios of the manuscript, the chronicler of Vitellius A. XVI who recorded the Cade material signifies in his writing the importance that this civic and national event had on his (and therefore his city’s) sense of history. The chronicler, though, presents a narrative of the rebellion where, beginning with the introduction of the major players, it is clear that Cade—his force and their aims—are not highly regarded. The chronicler seeks to unify the belief that Cade and his force were single-minded in their purpose, namely to rob, and from the start he was not to be trusted: And when these lordes came to their Capeteyn namyd Jak Cade, otherwyse Mortymer, cosyn to the Duke of York as the saide Capitayne named hym self, he seid he and his people were commen to redresse many poyntes wherby the kynges subgettes and comons were grevously wrongid; but his fynall purpoos was to robbe, as after it shall appere. Wherfore the kyng and his counsaill, seyng the dowblenesse of this Capitayn, the xviijth day of the said moneth addressid his people toward theym; but whan the kynges people cam to the blak heth the Capitayn was goon.110

As we can see, Cade is judged as a duplicitous person, one who appears to be a voice for the common people of Kent and their grievances, which, nonetheless, are not mentioned in this or most other London chronicles. However, Cade has 108

  Transcribed from British Library Cotton Julius B. I, fol. 85v; Nicolas and Tyrrell, A Chronicle of London, 136. 109   Transcribed from British Library Cotton Julius B. I, fol. 85r; Nicolas and Tyrrell, A Chronicle of London, 136. 110  Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (London: Oxford University Press, 1905; repr., Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1977), 159.

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his own interests at the forefront of his actions. Again, the chronicler implies that there is something inherently (morally, perhaps ethically) wrong about Cade, and the chronicler’s judgment of the rebel’s character is scrutinized even further when it is recorded how the rebel should feel the need to disguise his true identity and give himself a noble pedigree. The chronicler, perhaps in hindsight, does not seem to be fooled by Cade’s lies. That the chronicler focuses on Cade’s identity and how he presents himself continues to be of interest as the narrative progresses. After the Staffords are slain, Cade “toke the Salet and the briganders of sir humfreis set full of gilt nailles, and also his gilt sporys, and arayed hym like a lorde.”111 While Cade was no lord, there appears to be a certain degree of comeuppance at the death of Cade, particularly after the leader had robbed and killed so many under false pretenses and a fake background. When Cade enters London he is described as an alien invader, striking the great London Stone with his sword “like a Conquerour.”112 But what is unique about this representation of the Cade episode is how Henry is portrayed. The narrative comes to a close after Cade is killed, beheaded and quartered. The king then steps into this hostile environment and brings order once again to the rebellious parts of England: And anone after the kyng Rode into Kent and commaundid his Justices to sit at Caunterbury, to Enquere who were accessariis and cawsers of this Insurreccion; and there were viij men Jugged to deth in oon day, and in other places moo. And from thens the kyng Rode into Sowthsex, and from thens in to the West Cuntre, where a litell before was slayn the Bisshop of Salisbury. And this yere wer so many juggid to deth that xxiij hedis stode vpon London Bryge. Vpon whos soules Jhesu haue mercy.113

Natural law has once again prevailed, and so the chronicler puts forth an ideology that embraces both a unifying and a naturalizing strategy. After all, medieval England was a society founded on and governed by the precepts of natural law, and Henry, a king chosen to uphold the moral and ethical law of God through his government’s actions, believed that the chosen outcome of the Cade revolt was just and in accordance to his concept of a naturalizing ideology. The Great Chronicle of London and The New Chronicles of England and France The Great Chronicle of London and Robert Fabyan’s New Chronicles were both based on the lost Main City Chronicle for the years 1440–85 (or to 1496, according to Thomas and Thornley), and that the second part of the former was written by 111

 Ibid., 159–60.  Ibid., 160. 113  Ibid., 162. 112

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Fabyan, an alderman, a member of the Drapers’ Company, and also a sheriff of London in 1493. Both chronicles present a highly detailed account of the Cade Rebellion, including the rebels’ encampment on Blackheath, Henry’s actions in the early stages of the revolt, the slaying of the Staffords, the petitions of the rebels, the battles in and around London, and the death of Cade. Unlike the majority of London chronicles, Fabyan’s New Chronicles does not have a Yorkist bias but rather a Lancastrian one. Similarly, parts of The Great Chronicle of London, including the section detailing with Cade’s Rebellion, are not overly critical of Henry VI. Rather, they shift the blame to Henry’s advisors and counselors as well as to the rebels themselves, who are depicted, for the most part, as rampaging fools who had a legitimate agenda for reform, but who nevertheless succumbed to the base-level desires of the “commons.” Instead of trying to understand the reasons behind the rebellion, the chroniclers of both The Great Chronicle and The New Chronicles succumb to the ideological strategy of rationalizing the behavior of the rebel force as well as the actions of the crown and its leaders. The Cade entry in The Great Chronicle of London begins immediately after to the death of Suffolk. The commons of Kent assembled “In Grete numbyr and chase to theym a Capytayn & named hym Jak Cade.”114 It is unclear in this entry whether the force assigned the name of Jack Cade to the captain after they chose him as a leader, or whether Cade adopted the name Jack Cade. The Great Chronicle of London does not include the reference to Cade as “Mortimer” or a cousin to the Duke of York. Once encamped in Blackheath, the chronicler informs us that the rebels were “In grete numbyr, how well they were but porely dekkid wyth harneys,” and so right from the beginning the chronicler seems to be rationalizing the inevitable defeat of the rebels due to their poor array of “harneys”—their clothes, body armor, weapons, and the gear strapped on their horses and carts (and possibly other farm animals) to be used in the ensuing fight.115 When Cade does don a piece of military armor, the outfit apparently worn by the slain Sir Humphrey Stafford, Cade is again marked as a disreputable person who has assumed a new identity and climbed the social ladder through uncouth acts, for the chronicler tells us that “soo of a knave was made a knygth.”116 While The Great Chronicle does not embody overt action-oriented strategies, nonetheless, the chronicler makes an early assessment that the rebel force had grounds for their protest (but not enough cause for a violent revolt), for the chronicle tells us the following information: That the Capytayn of kent was In a Just & Rigthfull Quarell, for the/ king was Rulid by fflateryng & ffals counsayll, as by the lord Saye then Tresourer of England, The Bysshopp of Salysbury, Thabbot of Glowcestyr, Danyell,

114

  Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 181.  Ibid., 181. Regarding the word “harneys,” see MED, harneis (n., sg. & pl.); it can also refer to utensils and provisions for traveling. 116   Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 182. 115

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Trevylyan & othyr, The which personys, except that they were Removid ffrom the kyng, they wold assyst the said Capytayn & take his part.117

The revolt was a complicated political situation, and the chronicler it seems is trying his best to remain impartial to all sides. What is evident from this passage, though, is that the advisers to the king were seen to be the largest factor in bringing about this rebellion, for the rebels were extremely furious about the counselors’ seemingly large (and by implications corrupt) role in the government. Consequently, Henry was aware that if he did not appease the rebels and imprison some of these men, then his advisors would be killed by the rebel force or taken in by the rebels to join (possibly by force) the insurgency against the crown. The writer discusses all of this in a delicate way, but what the chronicler makes abundantly clear is that the quarrel Cade had was “Just & Rightfull.” The chronicler’s identification of the oppositional ideological strategies of the rebels may be a way to unify the mercantile class of London. If Fabyan was the writer of this second part of the chronicle, then the inclusion of this passage can be seen as a means to acknowledge the long-held belief by most London citizens, including the merchant and guild members, that Cade and his force had legitimate concerns, and that their quarrel, in its early stages, was just and due. By addressing this commonly held belief in this rhetorical manner, the writer in effect unifies the belief that all Londoners— especially the ruling oligarchy—were duped and taken advantage of through Cade’s deceitfulness and his propensity for violence. This duplicitous nature of Cade and the trouble it caused to the London population is further underscored by the belief that Cade and his band “were comyn as the kyngys trewe subgectys, to Reffourm the comon weale of thys land.”118 The chronicler is again unifying the sentiment among Londoners that Cade had good intentions, but most of London’s citizens in the end were fooled. Soon after Cade and his force disperse without surrender, the chronicler’s stance toward the rebels changes, for he observes that “such mean personys shuld take upon theym the kyngys auctoryte,” and he then marks the followers of Cade as “hys complycys.”119 The association of the rebel force with illegal activities is understood as being a valid threat to the king’s legal and authentic legitimacy, and thus begins the process within the chronicle of ideological legitimation. Once the rebel force questions and challenges the “auctoryte” of Henry, the English government (in essence, the local government of London acting in the common good for its citizens and the crown) recognizes this challenge and decides that it is proper and prudent to mobilize its forces and ensure that the “auctoryte” of Henry is re-established. The re-establishment of Henry’s political power is actualized first through the issuing of the general pardon and finally through the death and public dismemberment of Cade. However, there remains one section of The Great 117

 Ibid., 182.  Ibid., 183. 119  Ibid., 183. 118

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Chronicle of London where the author steps back from the narrative and reflects upon what might have been; it is a moment of pure nostalgia and fantasy, and it is one in which the writer reveals, for a brief moment, a desire: that Cade would have checked his desires of robbery and plundering, and instead he should have focused on the opportunity at hand, namely spreading his and his band’s call for reform throughout other parts of England while Henry was holed up in Kenilworth in Warwickshire, roughly 100 miles from London. After the chronicler describes how Cade dines at Geerst’s house and then robs him, the chronicler records the deaths of Saye and Crowmer; he then reflects on what has just transpired: And when the Cytyzins sawe that he had Robbid phylyp malpas & Geerst those that were substanciall dowtid sore lyst aftirward he wold Robbe theym in lyke wyse they wythdrewe hertis and love from hym for if he hadde not fallyn to Robbery it is to deme he myght have goon ferre in the lande, ffor the kyng and alle the lordis were departid, except the lord Scalis that kept the towre.120

The chronicler’s style and the organization of the material is interesting, for he writes this passage in such a way so as to keep this sentiment a secret, to keep it buried within the much larger narrative of the battle in London. Nonetheless, this aside signals an oppositional ideological vein within the chronicler, and it is one that has come forth in his writing; quite possibly he was trying to keep it repressed. Clearly, this action-oriented strategy of the chronicler here signals the difficulty he (and others) had with reconciling the contradictory thoughts and the behaviors of the rebels. Fabyan’s account of the Cade Rebellion in his New Chronicles of England and France likewise presents a mixed view of Cade and his followers, their aims, and their actions. Again, these similarities between the authors’ views of the event could be due in large part to the commonly held belief that Fabyan wrote the second half of The Chronicle of London. Fabyan’s account is as lengthy and detailed as the account found in The Great Chronicle, and in many cases whole sentences are almost exactly the same. By reading both chroniclers’ accounts of the Cade Rebellion, it is evident from the nearly identical nature of the entry that both share a common author. The overall tone is similar, for Fabyan acknowledges the power of Cade and his ability to do good for the “poore commons” who “suffrid” at the hands of the king, yet who nonetheless carried out his actions so as “to begyle with the people.”121 The same unifying and action-oriented strategies that appear in The Great Chronicle are here as well. After dining at Geerst’s home and

120

 Ibid., 184.   Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fols. 408r and 409r. Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France., ed. Henry Ellis (London: Rivington, Payne, Wilkie [etc.], 1811), 622, 624. 121

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robbing him, Cade’s actions are “lyke an vncurteys gest.”122 After the plundering of London, Fabyan reflects on Cade’s squandered talents and abilities, and the chronicler speaks of them in a manner that suggests (in a way that is more logical and intuitive than those remarks found in The Great Chronicle of London) that Fabyan wanted Cade to succeed: For it was to be thought, if he had nat executyd that robory, he myght haue gone fferre, and brought his purpose to good effect, if he hadde entendyd wel; but it is to demeane and presuppose that the entent of hym was not good, wherfore it myght not come to any good conclucion.123

Once the rebellion is over, Fabyan writes how the king “sent his commyssions into Kent, and rode after hymself, and causid enquery to be made of this riot in Canterbury, where ffor the same viij men were iuged & put to deth, and in other good townys of Kent & Southsex, dyvers other were put in execucion ffor the same riott.”124 Once more, the legitimating strategies of Henry and his government are put into action as the rebels of the Cade Revolt and of other insurrections are quelled through force. Fabyan, like most of the London chronicles, did not flinch when the crown exercised its “auctoryte” though the use of physical punishment. The Middle English Prose Brut Tradition Both of these texts, An English Chronicle, 1377–1461 and the prose Brut chronicle that is British Library MS Additional 10099, contain extended passages of the Cade Rebellion. An English Chronicle presents what appears to be an eyewitness account of the events similar to the Bale and the Gregory chronicler, while the chronicler of British Library Add. 10099 (hereafter the prose Brut) almost uniformly depicts a negative image of Cade and his rebels. The writer of An English Chronicle is, like the chroniclers of Bale’s Chronicle, The Great Chronicle of London, and Fabyan in his New Chronicles of England and France, divided on assigning blame and espousing criticism for the actions of Cade and the effects of the rebellion on national politics. Like John Vale’s Book and the various historical and literary contents therein, An English Chronicle has been viewed as a text whose aim is, in parts, to further the Yorkist cause, especially Richard Duke of York and his political ambitions. 122

  Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 410r; Fabyan, New Chronicles, 624. 123   Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 410r –10v. The bottom of fol. 410r is stained, and the reading is difficult to make out; Fabyan, New Chronicles, 625. 124   Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 411r; Fabyan, New Chronicles, 625.

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The Cade material in Vale’s Book—particularly the inclusion of two of the rebels’ petitions—is seen by some scholars as an example of Richard’s intent to launch his rebellion, predominantly when the Cade petitions are circulated within the Yorkist factions at the time of Richard’s rebellion.125 William Marx argues convincingly that the chronicler of An English Chronicle used the Cade Rebellion as a means to “justify,” and one could add legitimize, the rebellion of the Duke of York. This is accomplished, Marx states, through the chronicler’s ability to show that Cade’s Revolt is “based on sound political principles and sound political analysis, and that it reflects the will of the commons as well as some of the lords,” yet Cade’s lack of political (and moral) principle in the battle of London reveal a “lack of leadership,” a quality the chronicler believes Richard Duke of York possesses.126 If this ideological construct of the recording of Cade’s Rebellion is so, and both Marx and Watts do make a solid case, then An English Chronicle may be the only quasiLondon chronicle whose ideological position regarding the Cade Rebellion is proYorkist. All other chronicles have either failed to make an explicit connection between Cade and Richard Duke of York, have been enmeshed (one might say distracted) by their own mercantile and civic interests, or have been sympathetic towards Henry and his political situation. The Yorkist argument at the time of the Dartford incident in February and March 1452 was that Henry was being controlled by his counselors; therefore, the nation was at risk, and Richard remained closely tied to the petitions put forward by Cade. This sentiment is first established in An English Chronicle in the Cade section, when the chronicler describes how Cade was a “sotell mon” and continues thusly: [Cade] and his company were gedred and assembled forto redresse and refourme þe wronges þat were done in þe reame, and to withstonde þe malice off theym þat were destroyers off þe comyn profette, and forto correcte and amende the defautez off thaym þat were the kyngez chief counseleres.127

Likewise, in 1452, Richard Duke of York, believing the Duke of Somerset was usurping Henry’s authority, sought to remove Somerset from power. Richard sent a letter to the king on February 3, discrediting Somerset. An encounter took place near Dartford, Kent, where 15,000 men of the king’s came to the field. Richard, whose force “came nat to hym as they had promysed,” surrendered to the king and was returned to London.128 This entry in An English Chronicle (the only entry for that year, the thirtieth year of Henry’s reign) describes the motives for this 125

 See Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 83–4; and Kekewich et al., John Vale’s Book,

7–17. 126   William Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377–1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34. Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2003), xcix–c. 127  Ibid., 68.2–6. 128  Ibid., 71.27.

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small rebellion as being similar to those of Cade’s: “The xxx yeere of Kyng Harry, aboute Shroftyde, þe Duke of Yorke, þe Erle of Deuenshire, and the Lorde Cobham, gadered a grete peple in destruccion of theire enemyes þat were aboute þe kyng.”129 That the Yorkists would want to appropriate Cade’s initial political activities and not his later aims (and one might argue behavior) is understandable. The chronicler of An English Chronicle states that once Cade was delivered the keys to the city, “he and his peple fell vnto robbory.”130 After the battle in London and the death of Cade, the chronicler records the following about the rebel leader: This capteyne in his tiranny slough mony men withoute eny iugemente, and wolde not suffer ham to be shriven. And his wodenes and tiranny indured fro Trinitie Sonday vnto Seynte Thomas eve of Caunturbury. And þus endud þe capteyn of myschieffe.131

If An English Chronicle is to be viewed as a text which seeks to legitimize the Yorkist claim to power, especially in the later sections of the chronicle, then the Cade material and the chronicler’s assessment of Cade’s aims and actions should be read as a rationalizing strategy for the Yorkist cause. Indeed, the language of Cade’s Revolt and its aims were in line with the people’s claims and were later to be embraced by Richard Duke of York. The actions of the Cade rebels were clearly out of line, and thus the chronicler rationalizes that any sort of political and social reformation was lost when the rebels lost sight of their political beliefs and became caught up in the lure or robbery and the thrill of plundering the well-to-do. While the prose Brut shares several textual similarities with An English Chronicle, the Cade episode that is present in the former chronicle bear little resemblance to the latter in terms of its acknowledgement of the initial good of Cade’s political aims. In truth, from the outset of the Cade episode, the prose Brut is overtly hostile toward the revolt and is overly concerned (in a manner which surpasses other London chronicles) with the shock and outcry in regards to the robberies. The chroniclers’ preoccupation with robbery, and in particular with the robberies of the wealthy London elite, can be traced to the mercantile interests of this and other London chronicles. William Caxton, himself a mercer, may have had a hand in the composition of British Library MS Add. 10099; therefore, the economic realities of the rebellion may have influenced Caxton’s own literary and historical contributions to the chronicle. The Cade Rebellion, as it is seen in the prose Brut, is an episode that seeks to unify the citizens of London against the internal forces of rebellion and to legitimize the power of the king. The revolt, as it is here recorded, was viewed as a direct threat to Henry:

129

 Ibid., 71.17–19.  Ibid., 69.1–2. 131  Ibid., 70.9–13. 130

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Þis yeere was A gret Assemblee & gadering togedre of þe comons of Kent in gret nombre, & made an Insurrexion, & rebelled Ageynst þe Kyng & his lawes, & ordeynd þame A capitayn called Iohn Cayd, An Irish man, which named him self Mortymer, Cosyn to þe Duke of Yorke.132

The fight against Cade is clearly being waged by people who the chronicler thinks are morally superior: the Staffords are both “valiaunt,” and Saye is described in sympathetic language, for Cade and his men execute him “er he might be half shryven.”133 Once Cade’s force begins the rampant pillaging of houses, the chronicler states that because of “þis robbyng þe peples hertes fill fro him, & euery thryfty man was A-forde forto be serued in like wise. for þer was many A man, in London þat Abbayted and wold fayn haue seen A comon robbery, which Almighty God for-bid!”134 Following this passage there is an aside by the chronicler reflecting on what might have been if Cade had not turned to violence. The passage is similar to those found in An English Chronicle, The Great Chronicle of London, and Fabyan’s New Chronicles of England and France; however, the passage from the prose Brut lacks the introspective tone of An English Chronicle and reads as if the chronicler had simply copied the sentence from another source: “for it is to suppose þat, if he had nat robbed, he might haue gone ferre er he had be with-stonde; ffor þe King & al the lordes of þe Reame of Englond wer departed, except the Lord Scaleȝ.”135 There is no dwelling on the death of Cade in the prose Brut; it states only that he was “slayn, & after beheded, & his hede sett on London Brigge. And þan Anone after, þe King come in-to Kent, & did his Iustices sitt at Canterbury, & enquire who wer Accessaries & chief cause of þis Insurreccion.”136 Eight men are then executed, and Henry then moves his forces into Sussex and the “West contre” to subdue any more uprisongs. Henry accomplishes this supression through the execution of certain leaders of local revolts. The political language that unified the Cade Revolt of 1450 and Richard Duke of York’s peaceful rebellion in 1452 in An English Chronicle is absent in the prose Brut. The chronicler of the Brut almost seems like he wants to distance himself and the actions of the Kentish rebels from the Yorkist faction, a faction which, as seen later in the prose Brut, is embraced by the chronicler.137 In his most recent study of the language of political and historical writings in medieval England, Politique, Paul Strohm comments that the fifteenth century was a period where people wrote of English’s statecraft in the English vernacular and 132  Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, os., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 517.4–8. 133  Ibid., 517.21, 518.24–5. 134  Ibid., 518.34–19.4. 135  Ibid., 519.4–7. 136  Ibid., 519.29–32. 137  For this see Brie, The Brut, 520–23.

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relied “crucially upon new language and revised linguistic deployments.”138 The innovative nature of these writers (and here Strohm focuses on the anonymous writer of the Yorkist The Historie of the Arrivall of King Edward IV, the De Casibus tradition, and Yorkist verses) is due in large part to the somewhat haphazard point of view of the audience. Strohm comments further: The audience of these texts is often an audience that has not yet quite solidified, and has, moreover, not yet made up its mind. Surprisingly often, writings on opposite sides of an issue will find themselves in competition for what is effectively the same audience. Moreover, texts on different sides of an issue will court acceptance or approval via the use of similar or even identical words, and will even exhibit considerable tactical similarity in their deployment.139

I would argue that the writers of the London chronicles had their own audience. While some chronicles were commissioned for an outside party, others wrote the chronicle entries solely for themselves. Thus, these chroniclers who wrote for themselves had their own belief system (even if it was not a fixed ideological mode) in mind as they wrote. As we have seen, the ideological strategies used to represent the Cade Rebellion are anything but homogeneous; some strategies appear to be in unison with others, while still some chronicles present a belief system that appears to be contrary to the status quo. The multiplicity of ideological representations and the ways in which the chroniclers represented their attitudes towards the revolt on the page is a touchtone I believe of the uncertainty of the times. Therefore, to expect a unified ideological strain of the Cade Revolt to be present throughout all of the London chronicles of the fifteenth (and also sixteenth) centuries would seem to go against the political climate of the Wars of the Roses, a period where opinions and sides changed at random. The strategies of Eagleton are simply that—strategies; they are not rules, and therefore they are not fixed. Instead, they are meant to uncover the political language and belief system of historical and literary texts. As such, in the majority of the London chronicles there does not exist an alpha ideology that drives the rhetoric, but rather a combination of ideological strategies the chroniclers use to record a violent and polarizing historical event. In the process of writing, the chroniclers attempt to understand the weight of it all.

138   Paul Strohm, Politique: Language of Statecraft Between Chaucer and Shakespeare (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 4. 139  Ibid., 11.

Chapter 2

“Men Calle Hyt in Kent the Harvyste of Hedys”: Figurative Language and Jack Cade’s Rebellion

One of the aims of this project is to explore the literary qualities of the fifteenthcentury London chronicles. In doing so, the artistic craftsmanship of the compiling and composing of the various entries is thus illuminated. As one reads the chronicles, it is clear that the individuals who composed the entries had an innate ability to record the events at hand while incorporating some unique, and some would say highly personal, literary elements into the narratives. Of these literary elements used by the various chroniclers, I wish to focus on three as they are represented in the various Cade episodes. The focus of this chapter will be the chroniclers’ use of alliteration, organic metaphors, and metonymy in the composition of the Cade entries. Specifically, I wish to argue that the chroniclers’ use of these formal, figurative elements creates a more realistic and authentic historical narrative. In fact, these literary techniques do not diminish the truthfulness of the historical record but rather illuminate the ways in which the Cade Rebellion was perceived and recorded. Just the same, the chroniclers’ uses of these literary devices have distinct political implications. When we examined the chroniclers’ accounts of the Cade Rebellion within the context of Hugh Rank’s “Intensify/Downplay” schema, a literary device used to examine political language, it was obvious that the writers of the chroniclers were imbuing their literary creations with a heightened degree of political discourse that, at times, could be viewed as propaganda. In this chapter I will examine the literary techniques that the chroniclers use. After a discussion of the nature of historical representation and the possible limits of figuration (that is, the theory that too much figurative language could diminish the truthfulness of an historical record), I will examine the chroniclers’ use of prose alliteration. What follows is a discussion of the presence of literary tropes in the chronicles, specifically organic metaphors and metonymy. Finally, I will put forth the idea that these literary devices are the by-products of the chroniclers working through the traumatic experience of the Cade Rebellion. I would like to begin with a brief disclaimer, or rather a forceful point regarding these two literary elements (that is, alliteration, and metaphorical language) that   Hugh Rank, “Learning about Public Persuasion: Rationale and a Schema,” in The New Languages: A Rhetorical Approach to the Mass Media and Popular Culture, ed., Thomas H. Ohlgren and Lynn M. Berk (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), 118–34.

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the chroniclers employ. These elements should not be seen as “literary flourishes” that are used somewhat haphazardly by the composers of the chronicles. These literary devices are not used as ornamentation and do not embellish the text with picturesque visions that are inconsequential to the greater narrative of the revolt. If anything, the opposite is the case. The compilers and composers of the chronicles use literary elements; some would call these figures tropes, but whatever their literary term they are used purposefully. The chroniclers use these devices and with decisive effects, for the techniques guide readers to interpret the Cade Rebellion in certain (and purposeful) ways. The criteria as to how one identifies and categorizes a trope have been, for some time, a point of disagreement among rhetoricians, cultural theorists, linguists, and literary scholars. A trope can best be defined as a figure of speech in which a turn or a change is initiated regarding the sense of the word or phrase. That is, a trope involves the use of the word in a sense other than literal. In this sense, plain alliteration should not be seen as a trope. However, if an alliterative phrase can be interpreted as one of the four base tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, or irony) then the alliterative phrase has a tropological core. As we will see, the phrase the “Commons of Kent” is a form of metonymy. Tropes add a great deal of animation to the historical narrative. It is still unclear to me how some could view these chronicles as dull. They are not filled with plodding narratives that lack the poetics of other forms and genres of medieval literature. Just the opposite is the case, particularly with the Cade material. The chroniclers are working through the historical event and are employing and demonstrating their literary skills. While several of the fifteenth-century chronicles of London exists in a single manuscript, many of the chronicles are just one of several items in a collection. These chronicles that share a space in a manuscript with works of fiction may have benefited from the close proximity to works of pure literature. Moreover, the reading habits of the wealthy Londoners who owned these manuscripts demonstrate a desire to collect works that are both practical and popular. For example, the common-place book British Library MS Egerton 1995, which contains (among other items) Gregory’s Chronicle, ways to interpret the weather, the poems “Erth upon Erthe” and “The Siege of Rouen,” and John Lydgate’s verses on the kings of England. Other commonplace books, such as those described in Chapter 1, also contain a mixture of popular and practical texts. The chronicles of London combine these two qualities. 

 Important studies on tropology include two early works by Roman Jakobson, whose study of aphasia influenced his research of metaphor and metonymy, “Linguistics and Poetics,” in Style and Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), 350–77; and with Morris Halle, Fundamentals of Language, 2nd ed. (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1971); Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), esp. 205–67; and Peter A. French and Howard K. Wettstein, ed., Figurative Language, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 25 (Boston and Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).

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The Limits of Figuration A decisive problem exists, some scholars would argue, to the chroniclers’ frequent use of poetic devices; that is, such an infusion of literary tropes would diminish the authenticity of the historical record. One really could argue that there is an inherent paradox of the chronicle form and its (some might argue hidden) desires to achieve a greater sense of narrativity, such as a medieval romance. If there is too much poetic language within a historical text, or even a text that strives to be historical, the text can be said to undergo a metaphysical transformation, from pure history to work of fiction. What complicates matters is that scholars and theorists have yet to come to a conclusion regarding what are the criteria that determine if a text has passed that seemingly imaginary boundary line that separates the historical realm from the literary. However, this “complication” really need not be seen as such, for it enables discussions, such as the one before us, to continue and thus extend the dialogue and discourse of historical representation into areas not yet fully examined. There are of course areas of history that defy figurative historical representation. For years the Holocaust has been an event on which scholars decided that certain limits of representation had to be placed. These limits for the representation of the Holocaust extend to traditional, book-length scholarly studies of the event; filmic interpretations of the Holocaust or individual narratives and stories that wish to re-tell the event at hand; musical interpretations of the Holocaust and its effect on the survivors, collaborators, and second and third-generation Europeans whose nations and families were complacent in the systematic genocide; and other works of higher art: paintings and sculptures, poetry and novels. Of course, Theodor Adorno began this debate by suggesting that any poetry, whether its subject is the Holocaust or not, after Auschwitz would be considered barbaric. What followed Adorno’s controversial statement (he later revised and clarified his remarks) has been a highly productive discourse on the nature of historical representation in regards to historical events that are beyond words. The Holocaust, with its inherently incongruous nature, appears to be the touchstone on the far limits of representation, but other historical events that are beyond comprehension and figuration, such as the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and Armenia, have been discussed as well. The African-American experience, the treatment of Native Americans and Aborigines, and the War in the Balkans have also been compared to the Holocaust, and therefore these historical events, and how they are represented, should also be treated in much the same way. Claude Lanzmann, the director of the epic documentary Shoah, had this to say about the representation of the Holocaust:

   Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1995), 361–5.

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The Holocaust is above all unique in that it erects a ring of fire around itself, a borderline that cannot be crossed because there is a certain ultimate degree of horror that cannot be transmitted. To claim it is possible to do so is to be guilty of the most serious transgression. Fiction is a transgression. I deeply believe that there are some things that cannot and should not be represented.

In this editorial, Lanzmann discusses how his film, Shoah, escapes the problems of representation by eliminating all archival footage and the use of actors. Whereas Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, a film Lanzmann refers to as a “kitsch melodrama,” furthers the problems of historical representation by using actors and a script and imagery that are highly romantic in parts. Lanzmann’s Shoah films the survivors, the perpetrators, the by-standards, and the locations in real time: there is no recreation. One of the issues at hand regarding the representation of any historical event, and one which Lanzmann does not address, interestingly enough given his profession, is the role of the human imagination and its responsibility and function in the production of an historical reality similar to that event under investigation in their subconscious or conscience mind. As humans we dream, we think to ourselves (or out loud) in a state often referred to as daydreaming, and oftentimes we use our imagination to create. Do we have power over our imagination? If we are fullyfunctioning humans, then the answer is unequivocally “no.” But do we have power over what we choose to do with our imagination? Here, the answer is “yes”; after all, we do have a conscious, the ability to reason, and perhaps even the foresight to see what we produce with our imagination may affect others. In truth, we cannot censor our imagination, for, as Berel Lang comments, “to imagine what could not be imagined would already be to exceed [the notion of self-censorship].” Lang is one such theorist who has decided that certain limits do need to be placed on the representation of an historical event, particularly the Holocaust. To be sure, the Cade Rebellion and the Holocaust are two radically different historical events. The rebellion lacks the systematic extermination of groups of people based on their ethnicity, religion, health, and sexual orientation. In the Cade Rebellion no “banality of evil” (to invoke Hannah Arendt’s phrase) exists, yet it does in the records and testimonies of the Holocaust. If anything, as we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, the violence that does occur is a product of the rebels’ response to the official policies of the local and national government. If there is a banality in the violence of the Cade revolt, it is when Cade is hunted down, quartered, 

 Claude Lanzmann, “Why Spielberg Has Distorted the Truth,” Manchester Guardian Weekly, April 3, 1994.   Berel Lang, “The Representation of Limits,” in Probing the Limits or Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution,” ed. Saul Friedlander (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), 300–317, 396–7, at 314.   Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report of the Banality of Evil, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 1977).

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and displayed for all to see—a punishment so commonplace and ordinary that few objected, Henry VI being a notable exception. Still, the Cade Rebellion is a historical event, and therefore how the chroniclers record it influences the ways in which the revolt is subsequently represented. As Lang further notes, the role of the historical chronicle cannot be understated when dealing with works of historical fiction: Where history figures in artistic representation, the details of historical chronicle have a role that would be absent or much reduced in representations where specific historical events have no part. To be sure, the line between what is and what is not historical fiction (in this instance what is referred to as Holocaust writing) will certainly remain unclear.

The role of the chronicle, therefore, is instrumental in contributing to an authentic history, especially a history such as the Holocaust. Lang, however, does not leave it at that, for he realizes that the chronicle is a form of historical writing that can have a tremendous effect on how other works of historical art are produced. If the chronicle is faulty, then the representation of the historical event on which it is based is an indirect misrepresentation of the historical moment. Is it possible, though, for figurative language to add a greater sense or realism and authenticity to an historical event? What if the text to which figuration is added is a chronicle? It is here that we must once again understand that there is no real easy answer. However, Lang does suggest that the Holocaust, with its “unusual force and unusual form,” its “denial of individuality and personhood in the act of genocide; the abstract bureaucracy that empowered the ‘Final Solution’ … constitute a subject that in its elements seems at odds with the insulation of figurative discourse and the individuation of character and motivation that literary ‘making’ tends to impose upon its subject.” However, for other histories, it appears that the limits placed on representation are not as pressing, or so Lang would say. What follows is a somewhat longish quote in which Lang describes the way in which figurative language, including the language of chroniclers, can be used to represent an historical event in more accurate, true terms: [T]he limits of historical representation—a fortiori for representation beyond the level of chronicle—apply also to historical fiction, with the added burden now of taking account of what is entailed in designedly figurative or tropic representation … Whatever else it does, figurative discourse and the elaboration of figurative space obtrudes the author’s voice and range of imaginative turns and decisions on the literary subject, irrespective of that subject’s character and irrespective    John Blacman, Henry the Sixth: A Reprint of John Blacman’s Memoir, ed. and trans. M. R. James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919), 39.   Lang, “The Representation of Limits,” 314–15.   Ibid., 316.

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of—indeed defying—the “facts” of that subject which might otherwise have spoken for themselves and which, at the very least, do not depend on the author’s voice for their existence. The claim is entailed in imaginative representation that the facts do not speak for themselves, that figurative condensation and displacement and the authorial presence these articulate will turn or supplement the historical subject (whatever it is) in a way that represents the subject more compellingly or effectively—and in the end more truly—than would be the case without them.10

It appears then that for Lang the use of figurative discourse within the realm of historical fiction increases the level of realism as well as the degree of authenticity of the historical even under question. Without this figuration, it seems, the facts of the historical record would not be enough to “speak for themselves.” Moreover, what Lang is suggesting appears to be the very real notion that authors, who do not use their imagination when writing historical fiction, may in turn be placing (consciously or not) their own limits on what are acceptable representations of the event. It cannot be stressed enough, however, that what Lang is referring to in this passage is the genre of historical fiction. The chronicle, by contrast, according to Lang, is something altogether different; one would perhaps say that Lang’s position towards the chronicle (that is, a pure chronicle) verges on the level of edification and sectarian wonderment: a sacred relic that is rare and unusual. According to Lang, only the most literal of chronicles can be said to be authentic in their representations of historical events.11 Hayden White too agrees with Lang’s position, echoing it thusly: Only the facts must be recounted because otherwise one lapses into figurative speech and stylization (aestheticism). And only a chronicle of the facts is warranted because otherwise one opens up oneself to the dangers of narrativization and the relativization of emplotment. Lang’s analysis of the limitations of any “literary” representation of the genocide and its moral inferiority to a sparse or denarrativized historical account is worth considering … because it raises the question of the limits of representation in the matter of the Holocaust in the most extreme terms.12

Lang forcefully states that “the chronicle is, stylistically, a point-zero in historiography; any disagreement about its assertions is in principle subject to

10

 Ibid., 316. The italics are Lang’s.  Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990; repr., Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 140–50. 12  Hayden White, Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 34. 11

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adjudication in the terms of the chronicle itself.”13 Therefore, a pure chronicle is, in Lang’s words, “extraterritorial, that is, noninterpretive,” a claim that some have disputed.14 Are we, though, dealing with a “pure” chronicle when we discuss the contents and composition of the body of work that makes up the London chronicles of the fifteenth century? The answer is an unequivocal “no”: the chronicles are so layered with figurative language that they do extend into narrativization and emplotment. The chronicle entries of the Cade Rebellion are imbued with literary language and tropic discourse, and at times the accounts very much read like a story, one that is complete with story-like elements. The key question, though, is not “do the chronicles have figurative language,” but rather “how does having such figurative language affect the representation of the Cade Rebellion?” To answer the latter question, we must first consider the nature of the event known as the Cade Rebellion in relation to the event that serves as the touchstone for historical representation: the Holocaust. Are the two comparable in terms of how one can represent the events, and what limits should (or should not) be placed on them? To reiterate Lanzmann’s perspective, the Holocaust is so unique that to re-create in fictive terms its unimaginable horrors would be the most egregious transgression. Hayden White poses this question regarding the uniqueness of the Holocaust: “[D]o Nazism and the Final Solution belong to a special class of events such that, unlike even the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Russian Revolution, or the Chinese Great Leap Forward, they must be viewed as manifesting only one story? … Does it set limits on the uses that can be made of them by writers of fiction or poetry?”15 The Jack Cade Rebellion was not a quiet and peaceful sit-in. Hundreds were killed and thousands injured; London was a disaster area, and the revolt brought virtually every aspect of the city to a standstill. The psychological effects the revolt had on the citizens of London must have been immense. At times, and this is due in large part to popular culture and in particular films, our impressions of life in the Middle Ages are such that violence was so commonplace the people were immune to its effects. That is, a riot, a witch burning, an expulsion and pogrom, a battle (such as Towton, or Calais, or any one of a number of battles fought during the Crusades), a public torture and execution on a scaffold, were all such common 13

 Berel Lang, Holocaust Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 59. 14  Ibid., 89. Most notably, Hans Kellner has argued that a chronicle is “the result of a pre-existing narrative; it is not the origin of such narrative.” See his essay: “‘Never Again’ Is Now,” History and Theory 33 (1994): 127–44 at 138. Lang counters this claim thusly: “If the narrative dependence of facts holds in general, then for any particular narrative and its derivative ‘facts’ an alternative ‘pre-existing’ narrative might produce other, very contradictory ‘facts.’ Narrative and interpretation first, in other words; facts, second,” in Holocaust Representation, 89–90. 15  Hayden White, Figural Realism, 28.

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facets of “everyday life in a medieval village” that they had very little effect on the internal emotions and behavior of the people. And so films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail treat the violence and death as comical and satirical (and therefore perhaps a commentary on our own attitudes towards violence in the later twentieth century), and in turn those “medieval” people in films who are witness to or victims of the violence (the “Bring out Your Dead” scene is a typical example) are viewed as passive, apathetic persons: the violence and death is a concern, but it is often not a major one. What the London chronicles do, though, is present an atmosphere where the violence, the confusion, and one might argue the incomprehensibility of the whole riot is put into perspective. The enormity of the riot, the effects it had on the people of London—and not just the chroniclers—are represented through and mediated by the language chosen to represent the event. The Jack Cade Rebellion is not the Holocaust, but it is an historical event that, at times, defies logic and explanation. The chroniclers of the rebellion, therefore, use certain literary devices—most notably alliteration, organic metaphors, and metonymy—to attempt to create a more realistic and authentic historical narrative. The London Chroniclers’ Use of Alliterative Prose Much of Medieval English literature is founded on the principles, organic complexities, and the sheer beauty of alliterative poetry. At some point in the mid-fourteenth century, a literary “revival” occurred whereupon English writers revisited and recalled the Anglo-Saxon corpus of long-lined verse. The literary products of this revival remain, in many ways (with the notable exceptions of Chaucer and Gower), the definitive symbol of Middle English poetry.16 The 16   The following studies, while clearly not exhaustive, have proved instrumental in the classification of the term “Alliterative Revival,” the body of literature and authors that makeup its corpus, and its literary, metrical, and historicist features: Thorlac Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977); Derek Pearsall, “The Origins of the Alliterative Revival,” in The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century, ed., Bernard S. Levy and Paul E. Szarmach (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), 1–24, and “The Alliterative Revival: Origins and Social Backgrounds,” in Middle English Alliterative Poetry and its Literary Background, ed. David Lawton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), 34– 53; A. C. Spearing, Readings in Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), esp. 134–245, and The ‘Gawain’-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); David A. Lawton, “Gaytryge’s Sermon, ‘Dictamen,’ and Middle English Alliterative Verse,” Modern Philology 76 (1979): 329–43; Ralph Hanna, “Defining Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” in The Endless Knot, ed., M. Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 43–64, and his “Alliterative Poetry,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed., David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; repr., 2005), 488–512; Hoyt N. Duggan, “Alliterative Patterning as a Basis for Emendation in Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 8 (1986): 73–105; Felicity Riddy, “The Alliterative Revival,” in The

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origins of the alliterative revival, of a mid-fourteenth-century literary revisiting of the Anglo-Saxon poetic corpus, is what Ralph Hanna calls “the ‘Old Historicist’ project whereby alliterative poetry was always conceived as the Other Chaucerian verse and the assertions of a provincial baronial self-consciousness opposed to central hegemony.”17 Hanna contends that this line of thinking “runs afoul of the poetry itself: rather than an expression of self-confidence, the poetry, if anything, conscientiously demolishes self-assertion.”18 With Chaucer (and also Gower) writing in London, the writings of the alliterative tradition—a writing community far-spread throughout England—seemed ready to compete with the “father” of English poetry for a form of “national, not regional, literature.”19 Indeed, the body of Middle English alliterative poetry is massive and, one could argue (and here I am thinking specifically of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, the works of the anonymous Pearl-poet, and Laȝamon’s Brut—Hanna, too, makes a strong case for this alliterative history of Britain as a work of the highest literary caliber), on the same level of literary sophistication as anything Chaucer had written.20 Of the History of Scottish Literature, Volume I: Origins to 1660, ed., R. D. S. Jack (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1988), 39-54; Erik Kooper, “Laȝamon and the Development of Early Middle English Alliterative Poetry,” in Loyal Letters: Studies on Medieval Alliterative Poetry and Prose, ed., L. A. J. R. Houen and A. A. MacDonald (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1994), 113–29, of particular interest here is Kooper’s examination of enjambment; and S. K. Brehe, “‘Rhythmical Alliteration’: Ælfric’s Prose and the Origins of Laȝamon’s Meter,” in The Text and Tradition of Laȝamon’s Brut, ed. Françoise Le Saux. Arthurian Studies 33 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), 65–87. Thomas Cable, The English Alliterative Tradition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), is a book that focuses primarily on the meter of alliterative verse and the theories surrounding it and not so much on the subject of alliterative literature; he wishes to place The Destruction of Troy outside the metrical boundaries of the alliterative revival. See also Christine Chism, Alliterative Revivals (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), for an engaging study of alliterative literature, particularly The Siege of Jerusalem. 17  Hanna, “Alliterative Poetry,” 508. 18  Ibid., 508. 19  Ibid., 509. Derek Pearsall argues that the origins of the alliterative revival lay “in a Southwest Midland monastic context,” in “The Origins of the Alliterative Revival,” 17. 20   There are, of course, notable exceptions to the arguably highly subjective nature of what constitutes good (or high) poetry versus everything else. The following quote, while trying to hide the scholar’s preference to Chaucer (and virtually everything after) to alliterative poetry, does not: “English verse is, however, a very ambiguous thing, for there are in fact two main kinds of stress metre in English: the very old (and recently revived) metre of strong stress with indeterminate or relatively indeterminate number of syllables between the stresses, and the other metre, of the great English art tradition (Chaucer to Tennyson, which is a syllable-stress metre, that is, a metre of counted syllables and of both major and minor stresses,” in W. K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe K. Beardsley, “The Concept of Metre: An Excercise in Abstraction,” PMLA 74 (1959): 585–98, at 592. J. A. Burrow notes that there existed a “great metrical divide in English poetry” that ran “clean through the middle of Ricardian poetry, and that “alliterative verse was regarded in the metropolis as

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40,000 or so lines of alliterative poetry from the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, the two main genre-types represented are that of romance and allegorical visions.21 There is no definitive reason as to why there was an alliterative revival (and why it ended), but Spearing’s remarks on one of the possible revivals of the tradition speak directly to the character of the authors of these alliterative verses: By the second half of the fourteenth century … there existed both the ambition to produce major literature in English and the possibility of fulfilling it—to create writing that would transcend the traditional use of the vernacular to provide instruction and entertainment, and would aim to go down to posterity and ever, as Chaucer hopes for his Troilus, to “kis the steppes where thow seest space/ Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace” (V 1791-2).22

Within the quote from Spearing there lies the sociological and literary construct of the English writers of alliterative verse: the current form of poetry was somehow inadequate to express the words and images that needed to be expressed. Somewhere, though, within the English language there was a poetic form that could help the writers achieve their goals of poesy. In a way, the writers of the alliterative revival were faced with a wheel that (for them) did not work; and so, instead of completely re-inventing the wheel, they chose (unconsciously or not) to revisit the older model and follow in its traditions. Inherent in alliterative verse (especially the poetry of the revival period) is its keen sense of the future of the word and of the work. That is, the alliterative lines tend to linger on in the mind of the reader or of someone listening to the verse. While many medievalists know by heart the opening 18 lines of Chaucer’s General Prologue, there are still a good number of other works—and here I am referring to alliterative works—where whole stanzas and passages come to mind and are remembered for their language, rhythm, and tone, such as the hunting scenes in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: At þe fyrst quethe of þe quest quaked þe wylde; Der drof in þe dale, doted for drede, Hiȝed to þe hyȝe, bot heterly þay were Restayed with þe stablye, þat stoudly ascryed. (1150–3)23

a provincial aberration,” in Ricardian Poetry: Chaucer, Gower, Langland and the GawainPoet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 3, 4. 21  Spearing, Readings in Medieval Poetry, 134. 22  Ibid., 134–35. Spearing’s Chaucer quote comes from The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson. 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). 23   Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed., J. R. R. Tolkein and E. V. Gordon. 2nd ed. Ed. and rev. Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967). All translations are my own.

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[At the first utterance of the baying of the hounds the wild creatures trembled. Deer dove in the dale, dazed by fear, sped to the high ground, but they were suddenly stopped by the ring of beaters, who shoutled loudly.]

or the opening lines of Piers Plowman: In a somur sesoun whan softe was þe sonne Y shope me into shroudes as y a shep were; In abite as an heremite, vnholy of werkes, Went forth in þe world wondres to here, And say many sellies and selkouthe thynges. (1–5)24 [In a summer season when the sun was soft I clothed myself in garments as if I were a sheep. In the habit of a hermit without holy works I went forth into the world to hear wonders and see many marvels and strange things.]

or, from a personal standpoint, this line from The Awntyrs off Arthure spoken by Guenevere’s mother (a ghost) to her daughter: I ban þe body me bare! (89)25 [I curse the body that bore me!]

There is a performative quality to most alliterative poetry; it calls to be read aloud, much more so than Gower’s Confessio Amantis or some of Chaucer’s tales. As Turville-Petre has commented, “There is nothing to prevent us from believing that authors [of alliterative poetry] themselves recited their poems to their audience, in the way that a manuscript illustration depicts Chaucer reading aloud Troilus and Criseyde to the court,” yet there is no firm evidence that alliterative poetry, such as The Wars of Alexander, were composed with the specific idea that it was to be read aloud.26 This performative quality of alliterative poetry, whether it was composed with the knowledge or expectation that it was to be read aloud, is connected to the essential ingredient of this particular form of verse: the pattern of the alliteration. Indeed, it is the specific pattering of the alliterative consonants and vowels that imbues the verse with its memorable character. It is, above all, a controlled pattern of alliteration; one that took great skill and thought. One of the less studied poems of the alliterative revival, and one that establishes a nice bridge between the alliterative verse of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, and of the 24

  William Langland, Piers Plowman: The C-Text, ed. Derek Pearsall (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1994). 25   The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn, An Edition Based on Bodleian Library MS. Douce 324, ed. Ralph Hanna III (Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974). 26   Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival, 37.

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alliterative prose of the fifteenth-century London chronicles, is The Destruction of Troy.27 Turville-Petre has commented that the poet was of the same “calibre” as the Gawain poet, for he was equally able in his “display of alliterative pyrotechnics.”28 The Destruction of Troy is, unlike Pearl or Peres the Ploughman’s Crede or the vast majority of poetry from the alliterative revival, a history. Turville-Petre here comments on the possible theoretical problem of writing a history in verse: The inherent danger in this sort of chronicle is that the result will be mere versified history … [a]s a poem [The Destruction of Troy] ought to have form and shape, some perceived pattern, but as a chronicle it must remain faithful to its source, recording events not because of their significance to a pattern but just because they took place.29

Turville-Petre’s thoughts are relevant, and I wish he had explored them to a much greater degree. What if the pattern used within a text contributed more to the reality of that history under investigation, versified or not? Moreover, would the end result of this controlled alliterative patterning produce a profound, meaningful statement as to the reality of the event, and not just a text whose summation would be mere versified history? It is here that I wish to turn to some specific examples from the London chronicles of the fifteenth century where the authors and compilers used a controlled and selective form of alliteration that borders on the poetical but is, nonetheless, contained within the prose narrative of the Jack Cade Rebellion. Each of the London chroniclers who recorded the rebellion did so in their own unique style. While it can be said that certain London chronicles shared similarities and even may in fact have been based on one another, it would be erroneous to say that two chronicles are identical, either in their entirety or for a particular year; we must remember that we are dealing with the human imagination and all of its intricacies. Therefore, I must take exception with Robert Flenley for making the following statement regarding the similarities between the description of the Cade Revolt in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough London 10 and MS Cotton Vitellius A. XVI: “[The chronicler of MS Gough London 10’s] account of the 27   The standard edition of the text remains: George A. Panton and David Donaldson, ed., The ‘Gest Hystoriale’ of the Destruction of Troy: An Alliterative Romance Translated from Guido de Colonna’s ‘Hystoria Troiana.’ EETS, o.s., 39 and 56, (London: N. Trübner, 1869–75). 28   Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival, 58. Turville-Petre here comments on the pattern of the alliteration used in The Destruction of Troy: “The rhythmic movement admits little variation; a half-line with a disyllabic interval between the stresses, (X)/XX/(X), is regularly used, often balanced in the second half-line by clashing stress, XX//,” in The Alliterative Revival, 58. Regarding this poem, Christine Chism says the following: “The Destruction of Troy poet holds with brisk monotony to the narrow beam of an atypically unvarying meter,” in Alliterative Revivals, 15. 29   Turville-Petre, The Alliterative Revival, 95.

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rising of 1450 is likewise identical with that in Vitellius, but is rather shorter, and he records the advent of printing in the very words used by Fabyan and Vitellius.”30 That fact that the description of the Cade Rebellion in Gough 10 is shorter than the account found in Vitellius should have been enough for Flenley to recognize that the two chronicles presented different versions of the revolt. Somewhere along the line information was deleted from or chosen not to be included in Gough 10; the Vitellius chronicler possibly had a more extensive knowledge of the revolt, or was more adept at expanding upon the base narrative. It must be made clear, though, that the two are not identical, far from it; this should have been obvious to Flenley right from the initial entry for the Cade Rebellion. As we see, the first sentence for the year 1450 in MS Gough London 10 (after of course the requisite naming of London mayor and sheriffs) is radically different than that of Cotton Vitellius A. XVI. First, here is Gough 10: This yere was the Bataill at the brigge. And this yere the moste parte of Normandy was lost. Also in feveryere the seid xxviij yere the parlement beganne at the blak freres and contynued till Ester after but they myght nat accord.31

And here are the first lines of the entry for 1450 as found in Vitellius A. XVI: In this yere was a parliament holden at Westmynster; and from thens aiourned to the blak freres, and after Cristemas to Westmynster ageyn. Duryng which parlyament the Duke of Suffolk was aresitid and put in to the Towre, and a grete wacche was made in the Cyte all the parliament tyme.32

The enormity of the first sentence of Gough 10 cannot be understated. The alliteration of “Bataill” and of “brigge” signals to the reader (and especially to the listener if this is read aloud) the significance of the event and the importance held by the chronicler towards the revolt. There is no need to mention that it is London Bridge which the chronicler is referring to—that would be a given; moreover, to do so would detract from the abruptness of the two initial “b”s—the aural power that they deliver in their close proximity to one another, thus signaling the prime nature of the event. This use of alliteration within the first sentence of Gough 10 30

 Ralph Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 79. Mary-Rose McLaren groups Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Gough 10 with the Harley Roll C 8 group, see The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing, With an Annotated Edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 113–15. 31  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 153. 32  Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905; repr., Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1977), 158.

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also establishes a degree of importance to the event. Notice, too, that the Gough chronicler chooses not to alliterate the other main events for 1450: the loss of Normandy, the meeting of parliament, and a few lines later the arrest and death of Suffolk. Gough 10 is the only London Chronicle that begins in this manner, for all of the other London chronicles with an entry for 1450 begin with either the loss of Normandy, or the meeting of parliament at Westminster. To echo John Burrow’s remarks on variations in alliteration, a writer’s amplifications and alliterative parallelisms are controlled by a strong sense of relevance and structure, and the alliterative poet should employ “the old alliterative trick of variation only rarely, and then for special effect.”33 Therefore, to begin the entry for the year 1450 in such a highly controlled and inventive alliterative manner, the chronicler of Gough 10 succeeds in establishing a context for the event within the boundaries of the real. Moreover, Gough 10 appears to “associate,” to borrow Rank’s terminology, the Cade Revolt with the loss of Normandy, thus intensifying the belief that the two events were linked, and that one was the cause of the other. The only other London chronicle that places such an emphasis on the importance of Cade’s Rebellion by placing it immediately following the first event named in the entry for 1450 is Richard Arnold’s Chronicle. That particular entry for 1450, you recall, is brief; all that is recorded is the following text: This yere Normandy was lost; and Jak Cade rose in Kent, wyth moche peopell, and made a fray on London bredge.34

Nowhere in Vitellius A. XVI do we see this type of alliteration regarding the battle of London Bridge as a means of establishing the importance of the event and underscoring the reality of the fight. The closest the compiler of Vitellius A. XVI comes to using alliteration when describing the fight is when he records this: “And at last they brent the drawe brigge.”35 While there is a visual component to this alliteration, and it does provide a sense of heightened reality, it somehow lacks the initial shock generated upon reading the opening lines of Gough 10. During World War II there was the infamous Battle of the Bulge, so named for the extension of the German front lines. The Gough 10 chronicler was clear in his attitude towards the Cade Revolt: it was a battle, a war fought over London Bridge with multiple casualties. Like the later twentieth-century Battle of the Bulge, this battle from 1450 was described and named in such a manner that it would be imbedded within the reader’s mind.

33

  John A. Burrow, “Redundancy in Alliterative Verse: St. Erkenwald,” in Individuality and Achievement in Middle English Poetry, ed. O. S. Pickering (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 119–28 at 123, 124. 34  Francis Douce, ed., The Customs of London, Otherwise Called Arnold’s Chronicle (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payn, [etc.], 1811), xxxiv. 35  Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 161.

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While the alliterative phrase the “Bataill at the brigge” may be considered one of the more unique uses of the poetic device within the London chronicles, it is by no means the sole example. There remains a three-word alliterative phrase that is widely used throughout the London chroniclers’ recording of the Cade Rebellion, and it is one that carries with it certain political baggage and the rhetoric of class warfare. What I am referring to, of course, is the phrase the “Commons of Kent.” It is a phrase that virtually all of the London chronicles use to describe the mass of people who support Cade and his mission. The entries that do not contain the phrase the “Commons of Kent” (and its various spellings) are the following: in Richard Arnold’s Chronicle, whose entry for 1450 is above. Bale’s Chronicle, which contains arguably one of the most accurate and informative accounts of the rebellion does not contain the phrase “Commons of Kent”; instead, Bale uses such words and phrases as the “peple,” “a greet peple,” “ful rude peple,” and “all the comones of the citee.”36 The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London also does not have this exact phrase, but identifies Cade’s army as “gret multytude of pepulle.”37 One of the more interesting uses of this type of prose alliteration with the phrase “Commons of Kent” is seen in An English Chronicle, 1377–1461. While the compiler chooses not to use the phrase the “Commons of Kent,” he does call the group “Kentisshemenn,” “company,” and “peple.”38 In an interesting rhetorical move of alliterative parallelism, the chronicler of An English Chronicle, 1377–1461 does use the term “commons” twice in an opening summation of the effects Jack Cade and his rebellion had on the country; however, this time the definition of the initial “common” used is decidedly different than the second: [T]he commyn p[rofette] w[as] sore hurte and decresed so þat þe commyn peple, with sore taxes and sore talages and oþer oppressiones done be lordes and other, myght not live be thaire husbondry and han[d]werke, wherfor they grutchet sore agaynes thaym that hadde the gouernaunce of the londe.39

The initial “commyn” here refers to commūn(e adj., 3, as defined by the MED: “Shared by, or serving, the members of a community or organization; also, official, public (as opposed to private),” and 4. “Pertaining to, affecting, or open to, all the people of a community or class; public (as opposed to private); ~ profit, the common good.” The MED defines the noun commūnes thusly:

36

 Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 130, 132, 133.   Transcription from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Richard Howlett, ed., Monumenta Franciscana. Rolls Series 4 (London: Longman and Trübner, 1882), 2:19. 38   William Marx, ed. An English Chronicle 1377-1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2003), 67.37, 68.15, 19, 24, 30, 36; 68.2; 68.21. 39  Marx, An English Chronicle, 67.32–6. 37

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The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion 1a. (a) The common people (of a realm, county, city, etc.); the third estate of a body politic, consisting of the freemen (as distinct from the nobility and the clergy). 1b. (a) The inhabitants (of a city); the subjects (of a ruler); (b) people, rabble. 3. The common soldiers of an armed force.

It is such a loaded term, as seen in the above definitions. With the word “Common” and the alliterative context within the phrase the “Commons of Kent,” it is therefore possible to deconstruct the word and its association with the county, its history of revolt, and the leader of the current revolt, in a number of ways. What is obvious, though, is the utter contempt the chroniclers have towards the group who support Cade. The alliteration of the hard “c” heightens the brashness of the “rabble” and of their county. The most effective chroniclers, however, do not stop there with this particular use of alliteration. One of the most memorable alliterative lines describing the people of Kent and their involvement with Cade can be seen in the very brief entry found in Richard Hill’s Chronicle: [T]he Comens of Kent arrose with Jak Cade capten & entrid in to London & robbed Philip Malpas.40

In all, there are five alliterations within this sentence, a sentence that serves as the entire entry for the Cade Rebellion. While the final “k” in “Jak” may be elided with the initial “C” in “Cade”; nonetheless, it is a powerful sentence that seeks to encapsulate in as little space as possible what happened, who was involved, and what was the outcome. To get a sense of how the various chroniclers used the phrase the “Commons of Kent,” below are a series of extracts from the various Cade entries that contain the said phrase, and I have bolded and italicized the alliterations. From The Great Chronicle of London: It was not long afftyr or the Comons of kent assemblid them In Grete numbyr and chase to theym a Capytayn & namyd hym Jak Cade, and afftyr drewe theym toward the Cyte & soo unto Blak heth.41

From MS Gough London 10: 40   Transcribed from Oxford Baliol College MS 354, fol. 233r; Roman Dyboski, ed., Songs, Carols, and other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace-Book, EETS, e. s., 101 (London: Oxford University Press, 1908; repr., 1937), 145. Alliteration will be marked by bold type. 41   Transcribed from London Guildhall Library MS 3313, fol. 154v; A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicle of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr. Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), 181.

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And sone after the comons of kent arose with grete power and com doune to blak heth the xi day of Juyn and there enbaytaled them and picched them round about with stakis and dichis and there abode vii dayes.42

British Library Cotton Julius B. I contains the following line of extreme alliteration: Also the comens of Kent arose, and Jak Cade was their capitayn, callyng hymself Mortymer, by whome were ij knyghtes slayne at Sevenoke in Kent.43

From A Short English Chronicle we have this sentence; it is seven sentences into the 1450 entry and is the first description of the revolt: And than the comynes of Kent a rose and hade chosen hem a capteyne the whiche namyd hym sylfe John Mortymer, whose very trew name was John Cade.44

The chronicler of Gregory’s Chronicle is, as noted in Chapter 1, noted for his sense of humor. This is evident in a number of short, alliterative phrases. The chronicler names William Stafford, the slain squire, “one the mannylste man of alle thys realme of Engelond, whythe many moo othyr of mene persones at Sevenocke,” and that “many a man was motheryde and kylde in that conflycte” by Cade’s band, which he describes as “the multytude of ryff raff.”45 Gregory’s chronicler has this opening sentence on the people of Kent: Ande aftyr [the death of Suffolk] the comyns of Kent a rosse with certayne othyr schyrys, and they chesse hem a captayne, the whyche captayne compellyd alle the gentellys to a-rysse whythe hem.46

The prose Brut, British Library MS Add. 10099, contains this impressive rubric for the year 1450:

42  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 153. Note here the dual alliteration of the hard “c” [k] and of the “ch” [č] sound. 43   Transcribed from British Library Cotton Julius B. I, fol. 85v; N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrell, ed., A Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 (London: Longman, Rees, Orme [etc.], 1827; repr., Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers, 1995), 136. 44   James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth Century Chronicles. Camden Society, n.s., 28 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1880), 66. 45   James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), 191. 46  Ibid., 190.

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How this yere was thensurrexion in Kent of þe communes, of whome Iake Cade, On Irishman, was Capitayne.47

The prose Brut’s section on the Cade Revolt begins with this line: Þis yeere was A gret Assemblee & gadering togedre of þe comons of Kent in gret nombre, & made an Insurrexion, & rebelled Ageynst þe Kyng & his lawes, & ordeynd þame A capitayn called Iohn Cayd.48

That Cade is “associated” with Ireland, and therefore also the Duke of York who was in effect removed from London and sent to Ireland at the time, is something of interest. Right from the beginning of Henry VI’s reign there was a definite Irish “problem”: could English rule be established outside of Dublin?49 The Irish, much like the Kentish, were viewed as rebellious people who posed a serious threat to the stability of the crown. Moreover, there exists a high degree of “otherness” in the Irish as seen by English writers of the time: wild men and women who were not too far removed from their pagan, pre-Christian selves; in many ways this stereotype still persists.50 Several fifteenth-century London chronicles and regional annals are not written in English, but rather in Latin. Of these, two annals contain highly descriptive alliterative phrases describing Cade’s men. The Sherborne Annals describe Cade arriving at Blackheath “cum magna multitudine ribaldorum et rusticorum,” that is, “with a great multitude of vulgar and rural people.”51 The Gloucester Annals, however, do contain the phrase under examination, for the compiler calls Cade’s army “communitas de Kente.”52 The other London chronicles written in Latin do not refer to Cade’s band as the “commons,” but instead describe them in more

47

 Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o. s., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 516.23–4. 48  Ibid., 517.4–7. 49   R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981; repr., Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1998), 163. 50  For a summary of history between the English and Irish focusing on these stereotypes see Terence Dolan, “Writing in Ireland,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; repr., 2005), 208–28, esp. 208–9. 51  Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1962), 347. My translation. These annals, which span the years 1437–56, are found in British Library MS Harley 3906, fols. 108–11. Kingsford includes the annals as Appendix VII, 346–9. 52  Ibid., 356. The Gloucester Annals cover the years 1449–69, and are found in British Library MS Cotton Domitian A. IV, fols. 246–56. Kingsford published an edition of the Annals as Appendix X, English Historical Literature, 355–7.

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favorable terms, although they are still de-individualized and treated as a mass or a mob of people. For example, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson B 355 refers to the group as “homines de cantia.”53 John Benet’s Chronicle identifies them also as “homines de Cancia,” “hominum bellatorum,” as well as the somewhat neutral mass noun, “pupolo.”54 As the writing of English chronicles continues into the late-fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, there is no shortage of the type of alliteration we have seen here. Robert Fabyan completed his New Chronicles of England and France in 1504. As discussed in Chapter 1, the chronicle shares great similarities to The Great Chronicle of London, a text which many scholars believe Fabyan himself authored. As seen in the opening line for the section pertaining to the Cade Rebellion, the New Chronicles sentence is comparable to the above opening line from The Great Chronicle, although they are far from identical: And in the monyth of Iunij this yere, the commons of Kent assemblid theym in grete multytude, & chase to theym a capitayne, & namyed hym Mortymer, and cousyn to the Duke of Yorke, but of moste he was namyd Jak Cade.55

In this brief opening space, Fabyan is able to craft a decidedly compact biography of the rebel leader while utilizing the most alliterative forms of the hard “c” of any of the London chroniclers. Again, this “association” between Cade and the Duke of York is a rhetorical device used by the chroniclers to intensify the political situation against the rebels and York. That the Yorkists included a recycled manifesto of Cade’s Bills of Complaint with their own bills in 1460 may serve as a link between the association made by the London chroniclers between the duke and Cade.56 As Hugh Rank has observed, there are three common ways to intensify a political association, through “repetition, association, and composition.”57 I would argue that the alliteration of certain phrases within the chroniclers’ descriptions of the Cade Revolt constitutes an intensification of attitudes (social and political) by the writers towards the rebels. As Rank notes, the intensification through repetition is “an easy, simple and effective way to persuade. People are comfortable with the 53

 Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 105.   G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, ed., John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, in Camden Miscellany XXIV. Camden Fourth Series, vol. 9 (London: Royal Historical Society and University College London, 1972), 198, 199. 55   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 408r; Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Henry Ellis (London: Rivington, Payne, Wilkie [etc.], 1811), 622. 56  Margaret Lucille Kekewich et al., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book (Phoenix Mill: Allan Sutton for Richard III and Yorkist History Trust, 1995), 210–12; and Michael Hicks, Warwick the Kingmaker (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 193–6. 57  Rank, “Learning about Public Persuasion,” 121–6. 54

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known, the familiar.”58 The repetitive nature of the stock alliterative phrases such as “commons of Kent” is a political (and literary) device used by the chroniclers to intensify the rhetoric against the rebels. Inherent within alliterative poetry and prose is a sense of composition, that the writers planned the design and the variation within the alliterative lines rather than the words and sounds came to them willy-nilly. The relationship between the alliterative and non-alliterative words and phrases in the above examples from the London chronicles establishes a purposeful arrangement of ideas that are placed together “systematically.”59 The results of this London chroniclers’ alliterative prose technique are an intense association with the lower-class (or “commons”) of Kent with the uprising. This alliterative prose technique as a means of creating a more realistic and authentic account and record of a historic event appears to be the foundation for future forms of British prose writing. Part of its authenticity is drawn from the history of the alliterative movement. While there were several centuries in which no form of alliterative verse was being produced, it appears as though the use of alliterative prose in British writing has never really experienced a great lull.60 One great purveyor of the alliterative prose tradition was Edward Hall, who completed his chronicle around 1532.61 Hall’s description of the Cade Revolt is quite detailed and given to literary flourishes, particularly in the ways in which he describes Cade. He is at first described as a “yongman of a goodely stature, and a pregnaunt wit,” and after the deaths of Saye and Crowmer, Hall labels him a “cruell tyraunt.”62 In a study of Hall’s narrative technique, Matti Rissanen examines the chronicler’s 58

 Ibid., 122.  Ibid., 122. 60  See for example these studies on the presence and features of alliterative prose in English literature: Gordon Hall Gerould, “Abbot Ælfric’s Rhythmic Prose,” Modern Philology 22 (1925): 353–66; Sara deFord, “The Use and Function of Alliteration in the Melos Amoris of Richard Rolle,” Mystics Quarterly 12, no. 2 (1986): 59–66, esp. 60–61 where deFord describes her rule for alliteration in Role’s Melos Amoris; David A. Lawton, “The Middle English Alliterative Alexander A and C: Form and Style in Translation from Latin Prose,” Studia Neophilologica 53 (1981): 259–68; and Jiří Nosek, “Winston S. Churchill’s Use of Alliteration,” in Prague Linguistic Papers I, ed., Eva Hajičová, Miroslav Červenka, Oldřich Leška, and Petr Sgall (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins: 1995), 323–36. The Elizabethan prose of John Lyly also contains examples of alliteration, such as his Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578), and his play Endymion (1591). For a brief examination of Lyly’s use of alliteration, see Geoffrey N. Leech and Michael H. Short, Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to English Fictional Prose (New York and London: Longmans, 1981), 16–17. 61  For the life of Hall and the dating of his chronicle see A. F. Pollard, “Edward Hall’s Will and Chronicle,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 9 (1932): 171–7. The standard edition of Hall’s chronicle remains: Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, ed. Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payne [etc.], 1809; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965). 62  Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 220, 221. 59

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constant use of alliterative word pairs, concluding that it contributed to the “rhythmic movement in his narration.”63 Rissanen further examines Hall’s use of animated narration in which alliteration is used in conjunction with a series of isocolons (clauses of equal lengths) so as to quicken the rhythm of the passage.64 While Nosek’s article is a phonemic analysis of the function of alliteration (specifically he wishes to classify it as a “morpho-phonological” category), his overview of the history of the alliterative movement (beginning with Anglo-Saxon literature and ending with, and also concentrating on, Winston Churchill’s speeches) produces a very relevant idea: “Alliteration and other ‘formal’ devices are actually extensions to, or overlap between, the aesthetics of great literature and non-fiction.”65 We have arrived again at a critical juncture regarding the aesthetics of literature, and what separates the most literal of texts—the formal, bare-bones chronicle—from the most literary of art forms. That there exists alliteration used tropologically within the London chronicles should prove to some that these historical narratives go beyond the level of annals and move towards the realm of thoughtfully composed narrativist historiographies. Organic Metaphors and Metonymy The link that serves as a connection between the previous section of this chapter and the current section lies within the title of the chapter. As noted before, Gregory’s Chronicle is one of the more expressive examples of English historical writing in the fifteenth-century chronicle tradition, where humor, satire, and a rich tapestry of descriptive prose are used. The chronicler is certainly adept at capturing the feel of the moment and is not afraid to add his own barbed opinion of Cade and the rebels. Gregory’s chronicler can be said to employ such political propagandistic devices as name-calling: the rebels are “hyghe as pygysfete,” “ryffe raffe,” “halfe be-syde hyr wytte,” and Cade is called “symplle” on more than one occasion as well as a “fals traytoure.”66 The chronicler also sprinkled his text with glittering generalities: Scales, who is killed in the battle of London Bridge, is a “goode olde lorde,” William Stafford is, as you recall, “one of the mannylste man of alle thys realme of Engelond,” and Henry VI is “our soverayne lordys.”67 Once Cade is captured and executed, there is a period of over a year when riots and small insurrections continue, most notably in connection with York’s arrival in September. There were still a large number of Cade loyalists who were at large, and as Henry VI made his way through Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and Wiltshire from May to July 1451 63  Matti Rissanen, Studies in the Style and Narrative Technique of Edward Hall’s Chronicle (Helsinki: Société Néophiloogique, 1973), 28. 64  Ibid., 44–5. 65  Nosek, “Winston S. Churchill’s Use of Alliteration,” 334–5. 66   James Gairdner, ed., Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), 190, 191, 192, 194. 67  Ibid., 191, 193.

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the guilty were brought before the king, humiliated, pardoned, and then hanged. This entry from the summer of 1451 in Gregory’s Chronicle appears to be the last execution associated with the Cade Revolt: Ande at Rochester ix men were be-heddyd at the same tyme, and hyr heddys were sende unto London by the kyngys commaundement, and sette uppon London Brygge alle at one tyme; and xij heddys at a nothyr tyme were brought unto London at sette uppe undyr the same forme, as hys was commaundyd by the kyng. Men calle hyt in Kente the harvyste of hedys.68

Here I wish to focus on the alliterative phrase “the harvyste of hedys,” which also doubles as one of several organic metaphors that the London chroniclers employ when recording and writing the Cade Revolt. The power of the phrase lies within the alliteration as well as the realistic language used to describe the beheadings en masse. The grotesque realism of the metaphor can also be read as a commentary on the participants of the revolt. The chroniclers, including Gregory’s chronicler, had (by-and-large) dismissed the “commons” as a band of rabble from Kent. While it is obvious now that the supporters of Cade represented a cross-section of the middle and lower strata of English society, the chroniclers did not acknowledge this: they were most likely embarrassed that members of their own social group took part in the riots and either chose not to mention it (a classic case of omission of their own social group) or they repeated the association of the rebels with the lower-class Kentish peasants. The “harvesting of their heads” is most certainly a cynical and horrid image, but it is also a pointed jab at the lower-class “farmers” who rebelled. Now, with their heads removed (the grain separated from the chaff so to speak), the country can move on and plow over the metaphorical fields of Kent that grew the seeds of the rebellion. The literary technique of using organic metaphors, such as the one above, is evident in the chroniclers’ account of the Cade Revolt. In particular, both the head and the heart are the two most common organic agents used metaphorically to discuss the organization of the riot and the rioters and the splintering and implosion of the rebellion into a chaotic mess. To be sure, the majority of studies that examine organic metaphors focus almost solely on nineteenth-century American and British romantic writers.69 There are a number of crucial medieval 68

 Ibid., 197. For a discussion of this episode and of the events leading up to it, see Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI, 648–9. 69  See, for instance, the following articles: Merrill Lewis, “Organic Metaphor and Edenic Myth in George Bancroft’s History of the United States,” Journal of the History of Ideas 26 (1965): 587–92; Whitney Davis, “Decadence and the Organic Metaphor,” Representations 89 (2005): 131–49 in which Charles Darwin’s writings are examined in relation to Joris-Karl Huysman’s Against Nature; Thomas E. Boyle, “The Tenor in the Organic Metaphor: A View of American Romanticism,” Discourse 11, no. 2 (1968): 240–51; and Richard P. Adams, “Emerson and the Organic Metaphor,” PMLA 69 (1954): 117–30.

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studies, however, that do focus on the concept of organic metaphors in political discourse. Ernst Kantorowicz’s magisterial study, The King’s Two Bodies, remains the seminal work on the body of the king as a reflection of the state’s being.70 In an important essay, Suzanne Wemple argues that Claudius of Turin’s commentary of First Corinthians during the Carolingian period “posited the image of the state as the body of the emperor” in “opposition to the image of the church as the body of Christ.”71 Cary J. Nederman has examined organic metaphors on the work of Christine de Pizan. Nedermann writes: “Christine’s interpretation of the organism inclines to view the head as dependent upon the co-operation of the bodily parts and looks to homeostasis to co-ordinate the members. The head therefore occupies a secondary role in determining the substance of the common good and how it is to be attained: the head is more traffic cop than a physician.”72 In respect to the Cade Rebellion, the organic metaphors that surround the “head” and the “hearts” of individuals can be said to represent, respectively, the prudential foresight of the rebels and the emotions of the people of London. The Bale chronicler is one of the more adept writers of the Cade Rebellion in using the organic metaphor to heighten the level of realism. As Cade and his men prepare their Bills of Complaint and make their presence known, the emotions of the people of London were running high, and a favorable stance towards Cade was felt, for the rebel leader “gate the hertes of þe greet part of the comones of the land.”73 However, just as Cade breathed joy and positive emotions into the hearts of the Londoners, so too did he leave them emotionally wounded. In the prose Brut, it is written that after the beheadings of Saye and Crowmer and the start of the pillaging, “þe peples hertes fiłł fro him.”74 The Great Chronicle of London records a similar use of the organic metaphor:

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 Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). See also Ann W. Astell, “Holofernes’s Head: Tacen and Teaching in the Old English Judith,” Anglo-Saxon England 18 (1989): 117–33. Astell argues that the Assyrian general’s head and headship serve as an organic and allegorical metaphor for tyrannical rule. 71  Suzanne F. Wemple, “Claudius of Turin’s Organic Metaphor or the Carolingian Doctrine of Corporations,” Speculum 49 (1974): 222–37, at 224. 72   Cary J. Nederman, “The Living Body Politic: The Diversification of Organic Metaphors in Nicole Oresme and Christine de Pizan,” in Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed., Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 19–33 at 33. 73  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132. 74  Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o.s., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 518.34–519.1. This quote also contains an orientational metaphor, where good is “up” and bad is “down.”

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And when the Cytyzins sawe that he had Robbid phylyp malpas & Geerst those that were substanciall dowtid sore lyst aftirward he wold Robbe theym in lyke wyse they wythdrewe hertis and love from hym.75

Hall, in his Chronicle, writes as follows: [A]nd there [Cade and his men] loged at the white hart, prohibityng to all men, Murder, Rape, or Robbery: by whiche colour he allured to hym the hartes of the common people.76

The citizens’ emotional ties to Cade and the rebellion were dissipated once the robbing began. What causes this change in the hearts of the citizens of London is Cade’s inability to keep his word and the resulting breakdown of law and order. As Edward Hall notes in his Chronicle, Cade is the “head” of this rebellion, and if the “head” malfunctions, the remaining parts of the organism cease to function properly: The wise Mayre, and sage magistrates of the citie of London, perceyuyng themselfes, neither to be sure of goodes nor of lyfe well warranted, determined with feare to repel and expulse this mischieuous head, and hys vngracious company.77

It is a masterful use not only of an organic metaphor but also of glowing adulations and glittering generalities. For instance, the mayor of London is declared as “wise” and the magistrates (i. e., the ruling oligarchy of aldermen, sheriffs, and possibly guildsmen) are “sage”-like. As the head, Cade is (at the start of the revolt) prudential; he has foresight to know what will appease the Londoners and the ruling oligarchy. However, there is a real disconnect, and the function of the head (in both a physiological and practical sense) is disrupted. If we look to Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle, this malfunction of the head, that is, of Cade’s own head and thus his role as head of the revolt, occurs when all become intoxicated. The alcohol has an almost instantaneous effect on Cade, for it is after the successive drinking events that we begin to see Cade losing control of his greater organism: the thousands of people who make up the rebellion. As a metaphorical representation of the rebellious body politic, the disconnection that is seen between the head (Cade) and the rest of the body (the rebels) signals the beginning of the end of the rebellion. It is now only a matter of time that the Londoners begin to sense that the rebellion is faltering—its head is a drunken lout, or so say the chronicles—and that they might be able to defeat them and take back their city. As we turn to the use of metonymic language in the chronicles, it is 75

  Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 184.  Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 221. 77  Ibid., 221. 76

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evident that the chroniclers had a very real sense of tropic language and the power it held over the representation of images and events. I would first like to cite three of F. R. Ankersmit’s views of narrativist philosophy in history as they relate to the use of tropes in historical narratives: 5.2.1. A historical narrative is a historical narrative only insofar as the (metaphorical) meaning of the historical narrative in its totality transcends the (literal) meaning of the sum of its individual statements. Being a historical narrative, therefore, is a matter of degree… 5.2.3. The historian’s capacity to develop (metaphorical) narrative scope is the most formidable asset in his intellectual arsenal… 5.3. The best historical narrative is the most metaphorical historical narrative, the historical narrative with the largest scope. It is also the most “risky” or the most “courageous” historical narrative. In contrast, the nonnarativist has to prefer an unmeaning historical narrative without internal organization.78

Ankersmit is one theorist who does not differentiate between the four tropes, and so when he refers to “metaphor” we should consider the other three tropes as well: metonymy, synecdoche, and irony. As mentioned earlier, universal agreement as to what is or is not a metaphor does not exists. For example, Paul Ricoeur argues that a metaphor cannot be a substitution of terms (specifically, one term for another); this would pure metonymy.79 Lakoff and Johnson state that metaphor and metonymy are: … different kinds of processes. Metaphor is principally a way of conceiving of one thing in terms of another, and its primary function is understanding. Metonymy, on the other hand, has primarily a referential function, that is, it allows us to use one entity to stand for another. But metonymy is not merely a referential device. It also serves the function of providing understanding.80

Hayden White comments that in metonymy “phenomenon are implicitly apprehended as being relationships to one another in the modality of part-part

78

 F. R. Ankersmit, History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 41. 79   Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 77–80. 80   George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 36.

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relationships,” and that above all else this is an “extrinsic” relationship.81 White further comments thusly on the relationship between metonymy and synecdoche, two terms which at times have been mistakenly used interchangeably: Metonymy asserts a difference between phenomena construed in the manner of part-part relationships. The ‘part’ of experience which is apprehended as an ‘effect’ is related to that ‘part’ which is apprehended as ‘cause’ in the matter of a reduction. By the trope of synecdoche, however, it is possible to construe the two parts in the matter of integration within a whole that is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts and of which the parts are but microscopic replications.82

In Tropics of Discourse White argues that metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche “provides us with models of the direction that thought itself might take in its effort to provide meaning to areas of experience not already regarded as being cognitively secure by either common sense, tradition, or science.”83 The study of metonymy surely owes a great deal to Michel Foucault’s Order of Things, a study of eighteenth-century human sciences that, as White notes, are “epistemological projections of the trope of metonymy.”84 The metonymic phrase the “Commons of Kent” is one in which Lakoff and Johnson would classify as “Institution for People Responsible.” Such examples of this form of metonymy include: “Exxon has raised its prices again,” and “The Army wants to reinstitute the draft.”85 The institution to which the chroniclers are of course referring when they record the word “commons” is the Third Estate, that is, everyone else within Kent besides the nobility and the clergy. It is a pointed attack, a vitriolic use of language that could be construed as an insult. As seen in the definitions of “commons” described above, there are a host of socio-economic classes covered by the term. By 1450 the estate system was virtually undone: the mercantile guildsmen had virtually created their own estate and had established an oligarchy within London. Women were conceived by many to be an estate all their own. Just as significant was the disintegration of the knighthood class. The estates satire of Chaucer’s General Prologue was, in many ways, becoming a reality in fifteenth-century England.86 Those chroniclers who wrote of the “commons of Kent” used the metonymic 81

 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 35. 82  Ibid., 35. 83  Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 73. 84  Ibid., 73. 85  Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 38. 86  Here I am of course alluding to Jill Mann’s seminal study, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue of the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).

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device in such a manner so as to describe artfully and efficiently those involved in the revolt, and to voice their own opinions of the types of people who took part in the rampaging, robbery, and executions. As you recall, the participants in the Cade Revolt represent a virtual cross-section of working-class England. The term “the commons” can refer to farmers and laborers, but it can also refer to anyone who lives and works within a city. Thus, by using the term “commons,” the chroniclers were able to expand the narrative qualities of the chronicle; it freed them from having to list all of the occupations of those who joined Cade, and it helped establish their credibility as realistic writers of the revolt. While it may strike us as insensitive to call someone in 1450 a “commoner,” Cade and his force apparently had no problem with this. Perhaps they saw it as a badge of honor, of the underdog fighting the champion. In the three versions of the Bills of Complaint drawn-up by Cade and his command, each one references their force as “the commones,” “the comyns,” and lastly, “the trewe comyns.”87 In Version III of the Bills of Complaint the commons refer to themselves on three different occasions as “the trewe comyns.” It is a highly political move, one that underscores the factionalism of what constituted the splintering Third Estate. The chroniclers evidently had their idea about who the commoners were: the commons came from Kent. The Trauma of Cade’s Rebellion Medieval England was a time in which violence was commonplace. While the twentieth century may go down as the most violent century on record, the roughly 1000 years that constitute the European Middle Ages were no walk in the park. On a grand scale, there were invasions, crusades, purges, and wars. However, what sets apart the Middle Ages from other time periods in terms of the types of violent actions that occurred were the persistent and seemingly everyday instances of local violence: public executions, public displays of punishment, local riots and revolts, town-sanctioned pogroms, and the usual day-to-day incidents of robbery, burglary, murder, homicide, and rape.88 The Cade Rebellion was certainly a localized event. While the violence did spread over the borders of a few counties, it was mostly self-contained within the southeastern portion of the island. Of course, the worst of the violence happened in London. This is where we have records of mass pillaging and robbery, fire and arson, beheadings and desecration of corpses, and of course hand-to-hand combat and its repercussions. The majority of the London chronicles that record the Cade Rebellion are written from a highly personal perspective. As noted before, the language of the chroniclers is that of someone who witnessed the 87

 I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 186, 187, 189. 88  For a discussion on the difference between murder and homicide in medieval England, particularly in official documents, see John G. Bellamy, The Criminal Trial in Later Medieval England (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 57–69.

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action first-hand. As the chroniclers record their own historical record of the event, they also record their traumatic experiences. Some of the chroniclers’ literary techniques, therefore, may be seen as a way in which they deal with the traumatic experience of witnessing the chaotic and violent revolt. Trauma is of course difficult to define. Cathy Caruth, in her study Unclaimed Experience, provides us with what she calls a “general definition”: “[T]rauma describes an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the event occurs in the often delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucinations and other intrusive phenomena.”89 Sigmund Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle is the first study of the effects of trauma and how it is recorded. In it, Freud relates Tasso’s story of Tancred in which the hero mistakenly wounds his love, Clorinda, not once but twice.90 The story is of course a work of fiction, yet Caruth argues that Freud turns to literature to describe a traumatic experience because “literature, like psychoanalysis, is interested in the complex relation between knowing and not knowing.”91 That there is a delay present in Tancred’s realization as to whom he wounded is significant, for traumatic experiences are almost universally the result of the recuperation of a belated experience. The chroniclers of the Cade Rebellion were, in some cases, eyewitnesses to the event; however, they were not journalists. The chroniclers took time to evaluate and process the actions. Therefore, a natural delay in the writing of the entries allowed the writers to revisit their unclaimed experiences and to make them their own. In an important opening chapter to the theoretical dimensions of traumatic testimony, Shoshana Felman explores the historical, the clinical, and the poetical dimensions of trauma.92 Like Caruth and Freud, Felman examines elements of trauma narratives through literary examples. First, Felman sees Albert Camus’ The Plague and Fydor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground as two key works, for the former is a novel where the “essence of the testimony is historical,” and that its function is to “record events and to report the facts of a historical occurrence.”93 For Felman, the historical and the clinical converge in the writings of Camus, Dostoevsky, and Freud, where history and historical narratives have certain clinical dimensions. Felman reads Notes from the Underground as a “belated testimony to 89  Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 11. 90  Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey in collaboration with Anna Freud, with the assistance of Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson (London: Hogarth Press, 1955), 18: 4–35. 91  Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 3. 92  Shoshana Felman, “Education and Crisis, or the Vicissitudes of Teaching,” in Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History (New York and London: Routledge: 1992), 1–56. 93  Ibid., 8.

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trauma,” and that this re-telling of the event “encompasses, in fact, at once the history that lurks behind the clinical manifestations and the political oppression that signals mutely from behind the clinical ‘confession.’”94 At the time of the Cade Rebellion, the field of psychoanalysis was still centuries into the future. Medieval men and women did not have a clinician like Freud to turn to so as to tell their life testimonies. While the Church and its officers heard confessions, the testimonies of penitents were always placed inside the religious orthodoxy and doctrine of the Catholic Church. One of Freud’s revolutionary innovations was his ability to step into the position of the patient, thus creating the “revolutionized clinical dimension of the psychoanalytic dialogue, an unprecedented kind of dialogue in which the doctor’s testimony does not substitute itself for the patient’s testimony, but resonates with it.”95 While I do not want to suggest that the London chroniclers are acting like proto-psychologists, I do want to underscore the written dimensions of trauma narratives and note how the chroniclers distill the events of the Cade Rebellion. The chroniclers chronicle; that is, they record historical information. But the chroniclers are not simply annalists, for the fifteen-century London chronicles are not simply a date and a brief, literary description of an event. Instead, the chroniclers explore the political and social underpinnings of historical moments (here, the Cade Rebellion), and at times they create a narrative that is full of literary moments. While each record of the rebellion can be said to belong to each chronicler who records the revolt, the rebellion really belongs to all citizens who witness the event. Cade’s actions affected thousands of people, and their testimonies continued to be recorded by chroniclers well into the sixteenth century. Like a clinician, these chroniclers listened to the situations in which people found themselves and read the various accounts of the rebellion. Many of the chroniclers lived through the rebellion, and their writings resonate and resound the experiences of the king’s subjects who witnessed and took part in the revolt. Gregory’s Chronicle records events that are associated with the rebellion a year after Cade dies, and Hall’s Chronicle (with its metaphorical language) is completed around 1532. Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland, a chronicle that becomes one of Shakespeare’s major sources for his histories, was published first in 1577 and was reissued (with substantive additions) in 1587. By Holinshed’s time over a century and a half had passed since the Cade Rebellion, yet chroniclers, readers, and dramatists still felt compelled to revisit and rethink the event. The relationship between the fields of historiography and fiction is problematic. Both present readers with texts that establish (or attempt to establish) certain truth claims. After all, many novels aspire to heights of hyper-reality; their authors often are working within the parameters of reality so as to craft a narrative that is believable and unique. Many novels—Moby Dick and Beloved often come to 94

 Ibid., 12. Felman’s italics.  Ibid., 15. Felman’s italics.

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mind—are written in such a way that that, within the narrative, a semblance of truth exists and persists. Dominick LaCapra has stated that historical narratives in works of fiction often involve truth claims, but that these historical elements are mostly on a structural or general level.96 But how does one account for the poetics of historiography? Surely the literary motifs that historiographers use do not work on the general or structural level. By contrast, the alliterative lines and the metaphorical phrases that the chroniclers use are more analogous to the deeply figurative elements of literature. The moments in Cade’s Rebellion that the chronicles describe through the use of figurative and poetical devices do not summarize the rebellion in a general way, nor do they complement the structure of the event. Rather, these figurative devices reflect a more personal interaction between the chronicler and the event. Here, the chronicler steps away from the terse, formulaic chronicle style of writing and moves into the literary and fictive world of figurative language. In describing the loosening of poetic rules, Stéphan Mallarmé acknowledges some have done “violence to verse.”97 Doing away with the official French verse form of the classical Alexandrine form, Felman argues that Mallarmé’s decision to embrace the mode of free verse poetics becomes an “art of accident in that it is an art of rhythmical surprises, an art, precisely, of unsettling rhythmical, syntactic and semantic expectations.”98 This accident in verse, which Mallarmé describes as a “fundamental crisis,” has political and historical foundations: the French Revolution.99 The radicalism of the French Revolution infused itself into the literature of France. Felman renders Mallarmé’s literary movement thusly: The revolution in poetic form testifies, in other words, to political and cultural changes whose historical manifestation, and its revolutionary aspect, is now noticed accidentally—accidentally breaks into awareness—through an accident of verse … Mallarmé’s accident of verse in effect bears witness to far-reaching transformations in the rhythm of life and to momentous cultural, political, and historical processes of change.100

Just as Mallarmé’s radical poetics reflect the tumultuous years of the French Revolution and its after-effects, so to do the unusual poetics of the chroniclers of the Cade Rebellion reveal the traumatic cultural moment of that revolt. The chronicle style of writing is often described as monotonous and dry. As noted earlier, Brie’s opening remarks in his edition of the Middle English Prose Brut regarding the linguistic style of the text were a bit condescending. However, 96  Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 13. 97  Felman, “Education and Crisis,” 18. 98  Ibid., 19. Felman’s italics. 99  Ibid., 19–20. 100   Ibid., 20–21. Felman’s italics.

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as Mary-Rose McLaren has so enthusiastically stated, the style of the London chronicles is anything but staid: “For the modern reader the London chronicles are a minefield in which individual words and images, as well as entire passages, need to be examined with utmost care. It is true that nothing in a London chronicle is quite as it seems!”101 McLaren’s statement could be fodder for revisionist historians; nevertheless, her point is pertinent. The stylistic flow of the London chronicles is, more often than not, formulaic. However, the appearance of figurative elements jars the reader. If in Mallarmé we have the accident of verse, then in the London chronicles we perhaps have the accident of prose. The sudden infiltration of figurative language is at once innovative and disquieting. The chroniclers, like Tancred, are reliving their horrors. For the chroniclers, the testimony is relived through the repetition of the event as a written record. One of the hallmarks of a traumatic experience is the repetition that is associated with event. Witnesses to trauma often repeat their involvement (passive or active) in the incident, and oftentimes this reiteration takes the form of a written or verbal testimony. Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah is a film in which the testimonies of those who witness the horrors of the Holocaust, as well as those who cause them, are repeated to the documentarian and thereby to viewers. The film ends in a haunting image: a train (indeed, there are so many shots of trains in Shoah) is endlessly riding on its tacks, repeating the same course. In this final shot, Lanzmann says that it “shows a train trundling on interminably, and says the Holocaust has no end.”102 The survivors of the trauma relive their experiences, and often the repetition of the trauma produces unique, uncharacteristic outcomes. For the chroniclers, the repetition of the chronicling of the Cade Rebellion across their writings creates the unusual appearance of figurative language. Moreover, the repetition of the trauma creates a doubling of reiteration: the alliterative prose. Freud’s thoughts on the reiteration of a traumatic experience, which are first established in Moses and Monotheism, argue that before the testimony of the witness is set down he or she often has a period of latency, a time in which the effects of the trauma are not noticed.103 However, once the testimonies of the witnesses are brought forth, the belatedness of the historical memory is re-established. Cathy Caruth argues that this “oscillation” that occurs is between a “crisis of death” and a “crisis of life: between the story of the unbearable nature of an event and the story of the unbearable nature of its survival.”104 The fear of another violent rebellion after Cade’s was very much on the minds of Londoners and thus the chroniclers. The chroniclers, and their city, avoided death; however, the crisis of life continued. New rebellions (some small, while others regime-changing) occupy England’s history until the late seventeenth century. The chroniclers of Cade’s Rebellion use unique literary techniques to work through the violence of 101

 McLaren, London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 239.  Lanzmann, “Why Speildberg Has Distorted the Truth.” 103  Freud, Moses and Monotheism, in The Standard Edition, 23:66–72. 104  Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 7. Caruth’s italics. 102

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1450, and the alliterative moments are the most unnerving and unusual. While the alliterative phrases in the chronicles might not be “hallucinations,” they are, nevertheless, repetitive elements of an unusual prose nature. Readers of these figurative passages, therefore, take special note of their presence and relive the crises of death and of life of the chroniclers. As we have seen, the chroniclers’ use of figurative language in certain passages of the Cade Rebellion adds a great deal of literary merit to the corpus. And while this has only been an investigation into one moment of the chronicles’ long chronology and narration of histories, the figuration has not diminished the validity or authenticity of the event. If anything, the chroniclers’ use of alliteration, metaphor, and metonymy adds underscores the reality and truthfulness to the event. Their figuration highlights the centrality of the battle of London Bridge and the significance of the socio-economic group who support Cade and the revolution. It is also evident that Rank’s “Intensify/Downplay” schema is applicable in providing a lexicon for examining the rhetorical techniques of the chroniclers. As witnesses to Cade’s Rebellion, the chroniclers work through their traumatic experiences through the reiteration of the event in a style that reflects a traumatic testimony. While some theorists such as White and Ankersmit may question the historical validity of these chronicles, the chroniclers’ witnessing and reiteration of the violent rebellion explains the figural nature of their record. The following chapter is one in which Cade does not shy away from “intensifying” his own public persona and message. The attire Cade wears throughout his London procession has been the source of some consternation. As we will see, his attire (and his procession) is not random or haphazard; rather, it is purposeful and direct: Cade, in his procession and attire, is parodying the custom and the organizers of the Midsummer Watch.

Chapter 3

Jack Cade’s Carnivalesque Midsummer Celebration

If the goal of the Cade Rebellion was to promote political and social change through the presentation and dissemination of the groups’ ideological beliefs, then the hope for this reformation to be actualized failed in the violent battles in and around London, fighting that killed so many people. There is a scene within Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle that (as it is recorded and set down by the authors/compilers) paradoxically undermines Cade’s desired legitimacy. It is a procession scene that parodies and mocks a civic event, that of the London Midsummer Watch. In this scene, the ideological hopes of Cade are, I argue, forever changed. Within this procession scene is the power of the visual image, of the details codified by Cade’s clothing and his actions while wearing the attire. While Londoners may have identified Cade as a force of political and physical power—and as a person who commanded attention and respect from his followers and his enemies—Cade’s effectiveness as leader and initiator of his rebellion’s own action-oriented ideologies is diminished once he is adorned with a straw hat, a velvet sable gown, and a drawn sword as he and his company parade through Cheap and behead three men. Mary-Rose McLaren also believes that Cade saw the power in the visual dynamic of being seen, and the leader used this to his advantage, that is, to command and dispense acts of violence at will: “[Cade] established this power, according to the chronicler, firstly through visual representation and then maintained it through violence.” As the chroniclers record this grotesque and surreal scene, one that is entirely unique to Bale’s Chronicle and An English



 Ralph Flenley, ed. Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1911). As noted in the Introduction, for An English Chronicle I will primarily cite from William Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377–1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2003). However, I will also cite from John Silvester Davies’ edition of An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI. Camden Society, o.s., 64 (London: 1856; repr., New York and London: AMS Press, 1968), when the variances in the manuscripts used for each edition are relevant to the discussion.   Mary–Rose McLaren, The London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century: A Revolution in English Writing, With an Annotated Edition of Bradford, West Yorkshire Archives MS 32D86/42 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2002), 69.

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Chronicle, it is evident that Cade is playing with and manipulating the seasonal and ceremonial customs of medieval England: the games and festivities associated with Whitsuntide, and the practical and civic-minded event of the Midsummer Watch. Barbara Hanawalt, in a brief discussion of the Cade Rebellion, addresses the event, the leader’s entry into London, and his attire: “Anyone who imitated the mayor in his own town was sure to be ‘of ill repute.’” However, Hanawalt does not press Cade’s motivations for proceeding through London in the manner that he does. If Cade’s ideologies are concepts designed to be acted upon and realized, then the chroniclers who record this unique coronation and drunken mob scene, a scene that enacts and realizes Cade’s ideologies, reveal to readers the heightened carnivalesque atmosphere of Cade’s crowning and subsequent procession. In Cade’s drunken march through London, the rebel leader and his group mock the crown and local government, killing many and causing much destruction. If Bale’s Chronicle is said to have a Yorkist bias, there is virtually no partisan prejudice in the Cade material. When recording this particular moment at hand, the chronicler of Bale’s Chronicle, which I will examine first, appears to be more concerned about the violence in and around London and of the effects that this violence has on the country and the authority of the crown, regardless of who is king. I will also focus on the violent and carnivalesque episode of Cade entering London on July 3 and 4 as it is also represented in An English Chronicle. These two scenes are very similar, and I will offer a re-reading of this historical record as described in the two London chronicles in light of recent scholarship on civic pageants in medieval and early modern England. Cade’s procession through London, I will argue, is a violent parody of the civic custom of the Midsummer Watch.



 Barbara A. Hanawalt, ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control in Medieval England (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 14.   For two studies which examine the carnivalesque nature of Cade’s behavior in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, see Craig A. Bernthal, “Jack Cade’s Legal Carnival,” Studies in English Literature 42, no. 2 (2002): 259–74; and François Laroque, “The Jack Cade Scenes Reconsidered: Popular Rebellion, Utopia, or Carnival?” in Shakespeare and Cultural Traditions: The Selected Proceedings of the International Shakespeare Association World Congress, Tokyo, 1991, ed. Tetsuo Kishi, Roger Pringle, and Stanley Wells (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994), pp. 76–89. Wells states that the Cade scenes in 2 Henry VI “provide the audience with neither comic relief nor with a credible alternative to the theme of the disintegration of the kingdom. Instead they present us with a vision of the world upside down, which is also a distorted mirror of authority as the commons blindly reenact the brutalities of the aristocracy,” 86.

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The Carnivalesque When we examine the carnivalesque scene in Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle, we first need to consider two questions: What does it mean to act in a carnivalesque way, and how does one write in the carnivalesque tradition? Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque have their strengths and also their weaknesses. Bakhtin’s theories allow us to open a discourse into the social and political climates of the past, while at the same time allow one to observe how our world may reflect the very same situations that Bakhtin uncovers. However, Bakhtin’s theories are not without their problems. By examining Chris Humphrey and Umberto Eco’s theories of the carnivalesque, we will see how problematic some of Bakhtin’s notions are. One of the greatest strengths of Bakhtin’s theory is that it gives a critical voice to the lives of those individuals who were deemed to be of secondary importance to their cultural and literary communities. Thus, the culture of folk humor in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance is virtually ignored or dismissed as being inconsequential. Bakhtin distinguishes three distinct forms of this folk culture: ritual spectacles, comic verbal compositions, and various genres of billingsgate. This typological approach allows Bakhtin to examine the many manifestations of the carnivalesque in medieval and Renaissance life. A central tenet to Bakhtin’s theory is that the folk classes build a second world, and thus a second life exists outside of the official one. A clear relationship exists between the official events and the officialdom. In this second life, seen and experienced by the folk during carnival and marketplace festivals, the people “for a time entered the utopian realm of community, freedom, equality, and abundance.” The timing and temporality of carnival is a crucial element to this theory, for the folk classes anticipate a release from the official world at the same time each year. This last point, however, has been interpreted as a weakness in Bakhtin’s theory. A crucial element of this second world is the importance of parody and of the “turnabout.” As Bakhtin says, “the carnival is far distant from the negative and formal parody of modern times. Folk humor denies, but it revives and renews at the same time.” A key component of this inverted second world is laughter and its ties to grotesque realism and degradation; that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal or abstract. This degradation does not produce a nonexistence of the material; instead, it creates a new birth and a new conception of the object being degraded. Laughter is the key unifier of the people, and the parodies that are initiated during times of carnival are meant to bring those official rites and ceremonies to a lower level. In a more recent article on F. J. Child’s multi-volume collection of ballads, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Richard Firth   Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington, In.: Indiana University Press, 1984), 5.   Ibid., 9.   Ibid., 11.

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Green examines many of the ballads and discovers both the surprising lack of festive laughter and feasts and also of the use of grotesque images to support the dominant ideology. Green argues that this paradox can be accounted for if we take into account three things: First, we must “maintain that broadly comic ballads exists, or existed, but that Child deliberately excluded them from his collection”; second, that it would be possible to “argue that the folk humour characterized by Bakhtin was peculiar to the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance and that by the time that most of the Child Ballads were being collected it was no longer in vogue,” and lastly that “there is something in the ballad form itself that is inimical to the carnivalesque.”  One such strength of Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque is his concept of the human body, which is seen as the center of this grotesque parody. As Bakhtin has observed, this model of the human form is nothing new to European culture, for the ancient Greeks and Romans constructed similar images. The parts of the body are where the word comes into existence and the emphasis on the body are all mixed together in a dramatic performance. Umberto Eco’s essay “The Frames of Comic ‘Freedom’” examines several of Bakhtin’s weaknesses in regard to carnivalesque theory. First, Eco believes that carnival can “exist only as an authorized transgression (which in fact presents a blatant use of … happy double binding),” and that the twin edifices of comedy and carnival “represent paramount examples of law enforcement. They remind us of the existence of the rule.”10 Tantamount to Eco’s examination then is the notion that carnival gives the appearance of liberation and freedom to the folk classes, and that their anti-establishment rhetoric, visuals, and performance have been carefully monitored and controlled by those in positions of authority. A potential weakness of Bakhtin’s theory of the carnivalesque lies in his scholarly interest: the novel. Bakhtin ignores pageants and other dramatic presentations in medieval and Renaissance society. Bakhtin’s decision to focus solely on the novel has led Eco to comment that the upside-down world is represented only in manuscript marginalia, and that the upper classes depicted the folk as animals in comedic tradition. Eco further comments how the carnivalesque then allows the folk to “freely express themselves (in carnival) exactly as they were depicted by theater. Popular cultures are always determined by cultivated cultures.”11 Anthony Edwards, too, points out that even in Bakhtin’s model for his theories on the carnivalesque, Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, there is an inherent dilemma   Richard Firth Green, “F.J. Child and Mikhail Bakhtin,” in The Singer and the Scribe: European Ballad Traditions and European Ballad Cultures, ed., Philip E. Bennett and Richard Firth Green. Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft 75 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), 123–33 at 125.   Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 29–31. 10  Umberto Eco, “The Frames of Comic ‘Freedom.’” in Carnival!, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok, assisted by Marcia E. Erickson (Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 1–9, at 6. Italics are Eco’s. 11  Ibid., 7.

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regarding the various conceptualizations of conflict in the novel: popular tradition and oppressive culture, the king of France and the new nation-state against the Church of Rome, and the pope or the Holy Roman Emperor.12 So while Bakhtin sees carnival as an expression by the folk willfully subverting the status quo and the ruling hierarchies, Eco is quick to point out that the estates are the entities that are manipulating the folk, and they are the ones that continue to see the peasant class as animals who are there for amusement. And Eco is not alone in seeing inherent paradoxes in Bakhtin’s theory. Caryl Emerson has argued that some may see the practice of laughter in the present state of the world, which is ever reliant on satire and dark humor, as anything but liberating; instead, many people, she contends, would interpret this laughter as a marker of our bleak vision of living in a postmodern society.13 Bakhtin sees carnival as an expression by the folk who, in turn, willfully subvert the status quo and the ruling hierarchies. Of course, this can be a problematic interpretation, especially in light of who is manipulating whom and for what ends. As we will see, while there is no sanctioned Midsummer Watch in London in 1450, Jack Cade revels in the seasonal time. He manipulates the civic customs of the watch in order to parody the oligarchy, and he also acts as a de facto military/civic/royal leader who is bent on reclaiming certain rights that had been curbed by Henry VI’s government. Chris Humphrey, in his article “The World Upside-Down in Theory and as Practice,” believes that the “safety-valve” approach to misrule in carnival—that a temporary challenge to authority in fact reaffirms the status quo—is less helpful or accurate than it appears.14 For Humphrey, transgression does not always mean social or political confrontation. Moreover, Humphrey maintains that the traditional view of inversion, by Bakhtin and others, is far too narrow, for it places limits on the kinds of transgressions that may take place. Humphrey’s other major critique of the “safety-valve” approach is that “the absence of evidence for any social changes following on from such incidents [of carnival behavior] proves

12

 Anthony Edwards, “Historicizing the Popular Grotesque: Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World and Attic Old Comedy,” in Bakhtin and the Classics, ed. R. Bracht Branham (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 27–55. 13  Caryl Emerson, “Coming to Terms with Bakhtin’s Carnival: Ancient, Modern, sub Specie Aeternitatis,” also in Bakhtin and the Classics, ed. Branham, 5–26 at 9–13. See also Neil Cartlidge, “The Battle of Shrovetide: Carnival Against Lent as a Leitmotif in Late Medieval Culture,” Viator 35 (2004): 517–41. Cartlidge characterizes the use of Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theories as a concept which is “rapidly becoming one of the characteristic clichés of contemporary academic discourse,” 518. 14  Chris Humphrey, “The World Turned Upside-Down in Theory and as Practice: A New Approach to the Study of Medieval Misrule,” Medieval English Theater 21 (1999): 5– 20 at 6. See also Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival: Festive Misrule in Medieval England (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2001), for a similar examination of the theory of misrule and its application in 1443 Norwich and 1480 Coventry.

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that such attempts were dissipated through their expression.”15 Humphrey argues that examples of misrule must be placed into a much broader context of social and political dissent and upheaval, and by doing so we can better understand how successful a carnival atmosphere really was in inverting the status quo. Humphrey’s argument follows Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s notion of the carnivalesque, where carnival is seen as “a specific calendrical ritual” and also “a mobile set of symbolic practices, images and discourses that were employed throughout social revolts and conflicts before the nineteenth century.”16 There are several examples of the carnivalesque in medieval and early-modern English feasts and drama. One such illustration is that of the Feast of the Boy Bishop. On the Feasts of Saint Nicholas and the Holy Innocents (December 6 and 28, respectively), E. K. Chambers reports that the “deacons, the priests, the choir boys, held their respective revels, each body in turn claiming that pre-eminence in the divine services which the Feast of Fools was assigned to the sub-deacons.”17 But this feast is not out-right carnival by the folk, for it is carefully monitored by the local clergy and administrators, and at times reforms are made.18 This inversion of power during the Feast of the Boy Bishop had the air of misrule. However, the Reformation and its proclamation of July 22, 1541, attempt to end the feast, yet the event is observed well into the sixteenth century.19 The Season of the Rebellion The Cade Rebellion was an event that was working within the cultural landscape that was associated with the ritual year. The images and performative qualities of the Cade Rebellion that the chroniclers describe are closely similar to other forms of social protest that contain aspects of festive misrule. What has often been overlooked by many scholars when analyzing the Cade scene in Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle is its temporal location within the ritual year and also the connection between the inception of the Cade Revolt and some other form of carnival-like environment: either a town-sanctioned Whitsunday play, or another form of entertainment associated with Shrovetide and the time following Easter. The events of the revolt themselves must be placed within this context of the carnivalesque atmosphere of religious and secular summer celebrations. Ronald Hutton comments that three major revolts (the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450, and the Prayer Book Rising of 1459) all broke out 15

 Humphrey, “The World Turned Upside-Down in Theory and as Practice,” 14.   Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 15. 17  E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903), 2: 336–7. 18  Ibid., 2:354. 19  Ibid., 2:366–9. 16

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during the Whitsun holidays.20 Kett’s Rebellion of Norfolk in 1459 is said to have started as a result of Whitsun festivities and a play. The revolt began during the feast of the Translation of Saint Thomas Becket on July 7.21 The play that sparked the revolt is sometimes referred to as Wyndhamgame. The play was performed in Wyndonham (six miles from Norwich) on July 6–8 for the Translation of Thomas Becket. The leaders of the revolt conferred with the townspeople during the processions and interludes of the play and influenced many to begin and take part in the revolt. In Canterbury, the temporal location of the feast of the Translation of Saint Thomas is significant, for it begins on the Eve of the Translation, July 6, with a Midsummer Watch and Show. James Gairdner notes that in 1450, Whitsunday takes place on May 24.22 William Worcester, the loyal secretary to Sir John Fastolf, also puts the start of the Cade Rebellion in the time of Pentecost, for he records in his annals the following item: “Septima in Pentecoste incepit communis insurrectio in Kantia.”23 Worcester is known for the accuracy of his dates in his annals and his travel writings but also for his rudimentary Latin. George Kriehn notes that, regarding Worcester’s Latin, the annalist may have meant “septima die in Pentecoste” for May 30, the seventh day in Whitsuntide, or “spetimana in Pentecoste” which would refer to the week following Whitsunday, May 24–30.24

20  Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 89. 21  Frederic William Russell, Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk (London: Longman, 1859), 24–7; Stephen K. Land, Kett’s Rebellion: The Norfolk Rising of 1549 (Ipswich: The Boydell Press; Totowa: Rowan and Littlefield, 1977), 20–32. For other accounts of the Kett Rebellion see Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed., Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, 1807–1808; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965), 3:1028. For another account of the role the play had in the start of the rebellion see Francis Blomefield, An Essay Towards a Topographical County of Norfolk (London: William Miller, 1811) 3:220–63. The record presents a very detailed and concise chronology of the events, although at times the author’s bias (positive and negative) towards the various historical personages (such as John Paston) are amusing and may be seen as a marker of the author’s time. 22   James Gairdner, “Jack Cade’s Rebellion,” The Fortnightly Review 8, n.s., (1870): 442–55, at 449. 23   William Worcester, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France During the Reign of Henry the Sixth, King of England, ed., Joseph Stevenson. Rolls Series 22 (London: Longman, 1861–64), 2.2:765. For a description of Worcester’s career and works see K. B. McFarlane, “William Worcester: A Preliminary Survey,” in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 196–221; and Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 327–41. 24   George Kriehn, The English Rising in 1450 (Strasburg: Heitz, 1892), 125.

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Yet another historical record that places the revolt during this time is A Chronicle for 1445 to 1455.25 Regarding Cade’s Revolt, the chronicler writes that the it took place “circiter festum pentecost,” that is, “around about the Pentecost feast/festival.”26 The chronicler for British Library MS Cotton Julius B. I is explicit in his remarks regarding the calendrical time of the Cade Rebellion, stating that the fight on London Bridge on Monday takes place on the eve of Saint Thomas: And on the Sonday at nyght the lord Scalis and Mathewe Gough with theire mayny and with men of London wenten over the brigge to the Stulpes in Suthwerke and faught with the capitayne and his hoste al that nyght til on the Moneday ix of the clok and that was Seint Thomas even.27

The chronicler for Bale’s Chronicle, one of the chronicles that serves as the focus for this chapter, is also clear in aligning the riot with the feast: And the same night, which was the Eve of Seint Thomas the martyr, all the comens of the citee drewe to harneys.28

The social climate of the May games (with its sense of ritual and festivity, and of its sense of controlled disorder) was a critical marker of the Cade Rebellion’s inception. While the time of the year is not the sole reason why the rebellion took place, the climate of the Whitsun festivities certainly had an impact on the rebels’ activities. Seven years before the Cade Rebellion, Mervyn James reports how, in 1443, a Lent carnival at Norwich precipitated a revolt, and in the 1550s the staging of the play of Thomas the Apostle initiated a papist disturbance.29 More recently, Seth Lerer has examined the records of the town of Lydd, Kent. Among the town’s regulations on crime and punishment are descriptions of the city’s theatrical performances, including The May and The Interlude of

25

  A Chronicle for 1445 to 1455 is found in British Library MS Harley 3884. For an addition, see Charles L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913; repr., New York: Burt Franklin, 1962), 342–45 at 344. It is not a pure London chronicle, and McLaren does not include it in her otherwise extensive bibliography of chronicles. 26  Ibid., 344. 27   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Julius B. I, fol 86r; N. H. Nicolas and E. Tyrrell, ed., Chronicle of London, From 1089 to 1489 (London: Longman, Rees, Ornm, [etc], 1827; repr., Felinfach: Llanerch, 1995), 135. 28   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 207; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 133. 29  Mervyn James, “Ritual Drama and Social Body,” Past and Present 98 (1983): 3–29 at 29.

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Our Lord’s Passion.30 During one of the town’s performances in 1450, the city presents a porpoise, the food of aristocrats, to Jack Cade. After all, if the rebellion was a success, the city leaders hope that this gift to Cade would be fresh on his mind. Lerer describes the gift of the porpoise as “an elaborate display of political fealty” that has a performative quality as well as a material value associated with it: “The very parade of the oddity (whether it be a porpoise or a dromedary or a self-mutilating cutpurse) becomes a source of entertainment and expense. The commodification of these objects of intrigue, then, goes beyond the simple civic act of payment and separates the thing from paid for from its action.”31 In addition to the ceremonial festivities and plays of Lydd that occurred during the Cade Rebellion, there are also the festivities at Ightham Mote. Since 1315, a weekly fair was held at Ightham Mote, which is situated roughly seven miles east of Sevenoaks (the town where Cade and his army defeated Henry VI on June 18), and Richard Church describes how “this village played a pioneer part in the fomenting of Jack Cade’s Rebellion.”32 This climate of carnivalesque behavior that is associated with the Whitsuntide season and, as we will see, the Midsummer Watch, is one that Cade scholars have virtually either ignored or mentioned only in passing. As we examine several sections from various chronicles, civic records, and dramatic reports, it will become apparent how crucial the role of the civic ritual of the Midsummer Watch is in providing us with a better understanding of the goals of the revolt and of the participants’ desire to curtail violence and misrule while paradoxically encouraging an atmosphere of revelry. What Cade and his band hope to accomplish by rioting through the streets appears less clear. While the accounts in the various London chronicles of this drunken parade can easily be recognized as a representation of the carnivalesque, and we recall that the carnivalesque is a practice and an event that is fluid and ever changing in form and reason, then Cade’s participation in and leadership of his company in this scene of misrule is problematic, especially when placed alongside the Bakhtinian notion of carnival. Meg Twycross and Sara Carpenter, in

30  Seth Lerer, “‘Representyd now in yower syght’: The Culture of Spectatorship in Late-Fifteenth-Century England,” in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed., Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace. Medieval Cultures 9 (London and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 29–62. See also I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1991), 88, for a brief description of this gesture. Ann Astell observes how the presence of a real dolphin that swam down the Thames River at Yuletide 1391–92, as recorded by Thomas Walsingham, may have held an allegorical reference between the poet Arion and John Gower’s dedication of his Confessio Amantis to both Richard II and Henry Derby in the book’s prologue: see Ann W. Astell, Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 77–83. 31  Lerer, “‘Representyd now in yower sight,’” 49. 32  Richard Church, Kent (London: Robert Hale, 1948; repr., 1950), 245.

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a pioneering study of costume and dress in medieval and early modern England, state that the season of carnival provides people “a chance to have a good time, which would get rid of tensions, unleash fantasies, and generally provide a festive regeneration,” and that any beneficial product of carnival is, nonetheless, destroyed by the violent nature of the misrule.33 In Cade’s Rebellion there is no festive regeneration for the people murdered. If Cade’s actions were to be seen as liberating and positive, then what sort of government would England have if Cade’s proclamations were adopted? When we examine other interpretations of carnival, namely Eco’s and Humphrey’s, where carnival is an authorized form of societal control instituted by a government to further control the lower classes, then Cade’s behavior and actions are inherently paradoxical. First, this is not a safety-valve/stop-gap episode where the crown or even the local town officials are monitoring and sanctioning the misrule. On the morning of Monday, July 6, 1450, Cade and his men meet with the archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishop of Winchester in Southwark to discuss a truce. Cade apparently rejects this gesture, and he summarily ignores the general pardon that is issued on the following day.34 Throughout the revolt there continue to be signs that church officials, local magistrates, and Henry wants to quell the violence and to bring the revolt to a quick end. If the Cade Rebellion were an example of a true safety-valve form of controlled and monitored carnivalesque behavior, then someone holding legitimate power—an archbishop, the mayor of London, an alderman—would have initiated the revolt and closely monitored it. Instead, what we see in Bale’s Chronicle is that Cade is in complete control right from the start: he controls the safety switch. In fact, Cade is the person who has the power to decide when the misrule will start and when it will end. The examples of grotesque realism that are so often associated with carnival are present in many of the chronicles. Throughout the chronicles’ entries on the Cade Rebellion, there are many passages that describe the intense drunkenness, the multiple beheadings, and the placing of two of the decapitated heads of Saye and Crowmer on poles, which are then marched around the streets of London in a procession. These carnivalesque moments undermine any sense of positive momentum that the rebels had with Londoners, and they wipe out any degree of politically legitimacy that the revelers have had. Once the actions of the rebels turn violent, Cade, the individual who seemingly controls this violence, loses any amount of authorized control. Cade’s misrule is extreme, and his forms of social protest as well as his group’s carnivalesque behavior do not succeed in advancing any political and social grievance. Cade’s action-oriented strategies have failed. As noted in the first chapter, the chronicler of Bale’s Chronicle records that it would be surprising if the city officials (given the outlandish and unruly behavior of the mob) took any of Cade’s demands seriously once the rioting had begun. 33  Meg Twycross and Sara Carpenter, Masks and Masking in Early Tudor and Medieval England (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2002), 66. 34  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 97.

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The History of the London Midsummer Watch and Civic Processions What Cade is wearing in his procession scenes that are found in An English Chronicle and Bale’s Chronicle should not be viewed as too outlandish, either contemporary or medieval standards of attire. In actuality, what Cade is wearing appears to be very similar to the dress worn by mayors, aldermen, and London guild members during civic processions and watches. Moreover, Cade and his army are not only mocking or parodying these forms of dress, they are also disengaging and reversing the power and duties/responsibilities of these men toward their city. The most important of these duties, the watch, is outlined in the Liber Albus, whose contents were compiled by John Carpenter, the London town clerk, in 1419.35 The chapter in the Liber Albus that outlines the duties of the watch, “De Vigilla et Custodia Civitates,” specifies that each ward decides who shall act as night watchmen and how many watchmen there will be. These watchmen are to report to the aldermen, the mayor, and the warden. The watchmen swear an oath that they will keep their watch; moreover, if they do not duly keep their watch or if they shown signs of favoritism or corruption, they will be imprisoned.36 While this and other regulations of the watch focused on night watches, nonetheless, it was still the duty of the aldermen, wardens, sheriffs and the mayor to oversee security and safekeeping during all hours of the day. In 1297 and 1298, during the reign of Edward I, it was clearly stated what the regulations should be for the keeping of the streets, who should conduct the watch at the city gates, and what the general ordinance should be for the safe-keeping of the city.37 On the twenty-fifth year of King Edward I’s reign, the following ordinance is proclaimed: [N]o person shall be so daring as to be found walking through the streets after curfew rung at St. Martin’s le Grande; and that every one, under the penalty that is awarded thereto, shall come when he is summoned to the watch, as well at the City Gates as in the streets, armed and arrayed as he ought to be.38

35

 Henry Thomas Riley, ed., Munimenta Gildhallæ Londoniensis: Liber Albus, Liber Custumarum, et Liber Horn. Rolls Series 12 (London: Longmans, 1859–62), 1:xviii. 36  Ibid., 1:284–5. For a translation of this Anglo-Norman passage, see 3:102–3. 37   These regulations appear in Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London: Letter-Book B, 1275–1312 (London: John Edward Francis, 1900), xxxiii–xxxix, and 94. For a translation see Henry Thomas Riley, ed., Memorials of London and London Life in the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries (London: Longmans, 1868), 34–7. For a brief description of the duties of the mayor of London during the Watch see The Customs of London, Otherwise Called Arnold’s Chronicle; Containing, Among Divers Other Matters, The Original of the Celebrated Poem of The Nut-Brown Maid, ed. Francis Douce (London: F. C. Rivington, [etc.], 1811), 90. 38  Riley, Memorials of London, 34.

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Regarding the watch and ward of the gates of London, and how the watchmen were to be armed, the following is recorded: It was ordered that every bedel shall make summons by day in his own Ward, upon view of two good men, for setting watch at the Gated;—and that those so summoned shall come to the Gates in the day-time, and in the morning, at day-light, shall depart therefrom. And such persons are to be properly armed with two pieces; namely, with haketon and gambeson, or else with haketon and corset, or with haketon and plates. And if they neglect to come so armed, or make default in coming, the bedel shall forthwith hire another person, at the rate of twelve pence, in the place of him who makes such default; such sum to be levied on the morrow upon the person so making default.39

No firm date has been given to the date when the Midsummer Watch in London officially began, although watches began during the reign of Edward I and continued into the reign of Henry VIII. Most of what we know about the London Midsummer Watch comes from the writings of John Stow: This Midsommer Watch was thus accustomed yearely, time out of mind, vntill the yeare 1539. the 31. of Henry the 8. in which yeare on the eight of May, a great muster was made by the Cittizens, at the Miles end all in bright harnesse with coates of white silke, or cloath and chaines of gold, in three greate battailes, to the number of 15000. which passed through London to Westminster, and so through the Sanctuary, and round about the Parke of S. Iames, and returned home through Oldbourne. King Henry then considering the great charges of the Cittizens for the furniture of this vnusuall Muster, forbad the marching watch prouided for, at Midsommer for that yeare, which beeing once laide downe, was not raysed againe till the yeare 1548. the second of Edward the sixt, Sir Iohn Greshem then being Mayor, who caused the marching watch both on the Eue of the Sainte Iohn Baptist, and of S. Peter the Apostle, to be reuiued and set foorth, in as comely order as it has beene accustomed.40

As we will see below, the Cade Rebellion was not the only disturbance or “muster” the city of London and its people survived during May games and Midsummer 39

 Ibid., 35. Riley glosses a “haketon” as “a jacket of quilted leather, sometimes worn under the armour, and sometimes used as armour itself;” a “gambeson” as “an inner jacket, worn beneath the haketon, or other armour;” and a “corset” as a “corslet; a light cuirass.” See also MED, aketŏun n. (a) “A quilted or padded jacket worn under the armor for comfort and protection; also, a decorative garment worn over the armor;” and cūrās(se (n. sg. & pl.), “A piece of body-armor consisting of a coupled breastplate and backpiece, cuirass; ––usually pl.; paire of curas (ses, a cuirass.” 40   John Stow, Stow’s Survey of London, ed., C. L. Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1:103.

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watches. With these city regulations in mind, we can see how Cade thinks of himself as the head of the city watch. After all, by July 4, Cade is in control of London and is acting like the de facto mayor, alderman, warden and sheriff.41 He is the one who patrols the streets, controls the public, and establishes a hierarchical power structure, albeit a brief one. The inversion of power seen between the alderman and the rebels is manifested within the character/person of Cade. As we will see below, his body armor (the “paire of brygandires”) resembles the corset worn by men assigned to the watch. In a profound representation of carnivalesque behavior realized, Cade, an enemy of the state and a criminal, assumes the role of head watchman and warden of the most important city in England, and one of the most culturally and economically important cities of the medieval world. One would be hard pressed to find a modern-day parallel that equals such dramatic social and political ramifications. All of this behavior, however, is still very much connected with the ritual year, specifically the Whitsunday festivities and May games. Cade’s march through London, armored as if he were the head of the watch, may have a much more specific connection with the London Midsummer Watch. The London Midsummer Watch was a celebration of the feasts of Saint John the Baptist and Saints Peter and Paul (the 24th and 29th of June, respectively). During the London Midsummer Watch, there is a procession through the streets of London. The mayor and his two sheriffs, along with the twenty-four aldermen and the heads of the merchant guilds, organize and lead the procession.42 In pre-Christian Britain, the Midsummer celebration of dancing, bonfires and music was observed on June 21. In Kent, however, the Midsummer Watch and pageants (complete with torches) were celebrated on July 6. This temporal difference was a result of the proximity of the feast day to the Translation of Saint Thomas Becket, which was July 7.43 As you recall, Cade enters London twice in two days: Friday July 3 and Saturday July 4. On July 6 and 7, the general 41  Caroline M. Barron expands thusly on the duties of the ward alderman: “All civic regulations were put into operation via the ward (as opposed to the companies, which, however, from the late fifteenth century onwards became increasingly important agents of civic control) so the alderman was the man of all work. He was responsible for collecting taxes and levies on his ward and for keeping the relevant taxation lists; he presided on the wardmote; he was responsible for the strangers who were staying in his ward and he frequently acted as a witness and his seal was constantly used to authenticate deeds,” in London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People 1200–1500 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 140–41. 42  Sheila Lindenbaum, “Ceremony and Oligarchy: The London Midsummer Watch,” in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed., Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reason. Medieval Studies 6 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 1994), 171–88 at 171. 43   James M. Gibson, ed., Kent: Diocese of Canterbury. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto and Buffalo: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2002), 1:xciii–xciv.

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pardon is issued for those who took part in the rebellion, but fighting continues. The close proximity of the dates for the London Midsummer Watch and the Canterbury Midsummer Watch suggests that Cade may have in fact brought the Kent Midsummer Watch and its festivities to London. In London, Cade acts as the de facto leader of the watch, supervising and controlling the route and the activities. The festivities of the Midsummer Watch in London and throughout Kent were all relatively the same. Both contained elements of excess and celebration in the forms of dancing, setting bonfires, sharing of food and drink, and placing garlands on the doorposts of houses. London, however, seems to have had a need to ensure public safety and to protect those houses that belonged to important people. Thus, while Kent had bonfires in front of people’s homes to light the streets in order to see who was out at night, London had their civic officials maintain a visible and active patrol throughout the streets. Because London was known for its rough nightlife, the desire to safeguard its citizens and its property was of utmost importance. Regarding the ceremonial and political power of London’s oligarchy, Sheila Lindenbaum notes that of the events in the Midsummer Watch of 1521, there were five pageants in honor of the mayor and two in honor of the sheriffs. Lindenbaum comments that between 1450 and 1471, London was “practically in a continuous state of seige,” and that it was after 1450 “when the city repeatedly had to arm against invaiders, [that] the military aspects of ceremony came increasingly to the fore, particularly in the Midsummer Watch.”44 Moreover, later records have shown that from 1512 to 1558, the Midsummer Watch and the Lord Mayor’s Show (which was held on October 29) contained, at the very minimum, twentyeight different types of pageants, many of which were quite spectacular. Some processions depicted mythical recreations, such as Achilles or various types of wildmen, but most pageants were of religious personages, such as Saint Christopher accompanied by a hermit, or a pageant of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.45 Some of the other visually impressive pageants during the Midsummer Watch and Lord Mayor’s Show included, in 1521, Herod sitting at a table on stage with Herodias’ daughter, the tumbler, the executioner, and Saint John the Baptist in prison.46 In 1519, there is record of “the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket (played 44

 Sheila Lindenbaum, “London Texts and Literate Practice,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999; repr., 2005), 284–309 at 300, 301. More recently, Anne Lancashire, in her book London Civic Theatre: City Drama and Pageantry from Roman Times to 1558 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), has a small but crucial section on early records (1200–1410) of the Midsummer Watch, 50–52, and a significant chapter on the later records (1410–1558) of the Midsummer Watch. 45  Ian Lancashire, ed., Dramatic Texts and Records of Britain: A Chronological Topography to 1558. Studies in Early English Drama 1 (Toronto and Buffalo, University of Toronto Press, 1984), 188–90. 46  Ibid., 189.

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by Thomas Bakehowse?), with Tracy the knight (William de Tracy, played by Robert Johnson), the Crosier (played by Richard Stabyll), the Jewess (played by Richard Mathewe), with a pageant prison.”47 On April 22, 1513, the Mercers of London record the following: [T]here shalbe provided for my lorde the Mayre agaynst Mydsomer nygh[t] the noumber of vijcx men harnessed with brygandyns and other harnes, lyke as they were whan he was last Mayre, and with Mores, pykes, bowes, arrowes and gunnes, and all this to be done at the cost of the comen boxe.48

And on June 20 of that year, it was recorded that if any of the Mercers “happen to make defaute in their said attendaunce” in the watch on Midsummer and Saint Peter’s night, they were to pay “the Summe of vjs. viij d. for and to the behofe of the Comon boxe of the mercery.”49 There is a similar entry for the Mercers on June 9, 1514: “[T]he Mayre shall haue Gunnes, Mores, Pykes and bowes to the nomber of viijxx parsones agayns Midsomer nyght and seint Peters nyght with whyte Jakettes with the Conusuance of this Citie and alle this at the Costes of this felyshipp of the mercery oute of their comen boxe.”50 Mayoral pageants, also known as “ridings,” often took place during the Midsummer Watch, yet their history can be dated to the early thirteenth century. Matthew of Paris described the earliest of these ridings in 1236. At that time, Henry III and Eleanor of Provence were on their way to London from Canterbury. On their route, they were “met by the mayor, alderman, and principle citizens, three hundred and sixty in number, appareled in robes of embroidered silk, and riding on horseback; each of them carrying in their hands a gold or silver cup, in token of the privilege claimed by the city, or the mayor to officiate as chief butler to the kings coronation.”51 One of the most awesome sights to behold during important

47

 Ibid., 189.  Laetitia Lyell and Frank D. Watney, ed., Acts of Court of the Mercers’ Company, 1453–1527 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), 412. 49  Ibid., 413. 50  Ibid., 420. 51  Frederick W. Fairholt, ed. Lord Mayors’ Pageants, Part I: History of Lord Mayors’ Pageants. Percy Society 10 (London: T. Richards, 1847; repr., New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965), 3. For a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century poems and carols associated with the Lord Mayor’s Pageant, see Frederick W. Fairholt, ed., The Civic Garland: A Collection of Songs from London Pageants. Percy Society 19 (London: T. Richards, 1845; repr., New York and London: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965). The standard work on the Lord Mayor’s Show was, for several years, Jean Robertson and D. J. Gordon, ed., Collections III: A Calendar of Dramatic Records in the Books of the Livery Companies of London, 1485–1640. The Malone Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954); see also Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 171–84, for a re-assessment of that collection’s records. 48

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mayoral ridings would have been the presence of giants that stood watch over London. Frederick W. Fairholt has noted that giants kept watch and ward over London in times of royal visits. In 1415 Henry V entered London from Southwark, and “a male and female giant stood at the entrance of London Bridge; the male bearing an axe in his right hand, and in his left the keys of the City hanging to a staff, as if he had been the porter. In 1432, when Henry VI entered London the same way, ‘a mighty giant’ awaited him, as his champion, at the same place, with a drawn sword, and an inscription by his side, beginning—‘All those that be enemies to the King/ I shall clothe them confusion.’”52 As Matthew Davies has argued, by the late-fifteenth century these civic ceremonies had “become an important dimension of the lives of the livery companies, and the [Merchant] Taylors’ courts played an important role in co-coordinating the participation of the craft in events which ranged from mayoral processions to royal entries. From the mid 1450s, for instance, the election of the mayor on 13 October is followed by a water-borne procession to Westminster where he was presented to the King.”53 These ridings often were seen as a symbolic support for the crown and for the newly elected mayor, and if the mayor elected was a member of “your guild,” then that guild was expected to put on a spectacular pageant, as seen in the 1399 election of Thomas Knolls as mayor, a Grocer.54 In an interesting example of the Bakhtinian notion of the “turnabout,” which is both a term and an action that is often associated with carnivalesque moments, Fairholt has noted that there were “punning pageants.”55 In these punning pageants, satire and humor were directed at the mayor and the citizens. For example, when Henry VI entered London after his coronation, an intricate pageant was made to honor (and satirize) the major of London, John Wells, a Grocer: “Three wells which ran with wine, were exhibited at the conduit in Cheape, where ‘Virginis thre,’ Mercy, Grace, and Pity by name gave of the wine to all comers … These wells were surrounded by trees laden with oranges, almonds, lemons, dates, &c., and ‘this graciose paradise’ was an allusion to his trade as grocer.”56 The Merchant Taylors in 1568 created a pageant that punned and alluded to Mayor Thomas Roe’s name when one of the actors 52

 Frederick. W. Fairholt, Gog and Magog. The Giants in Guildhall; Their Real and Legendary History. With an Account of Other Civic Giants, at Home and Abroad (London: John Camden Hotten, 1859), 27–8. 53  Matthew Davies, ed., The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London: Court Minutes 1486–1493 (Stamford: Richard III and Yorkist History Trust and Paul Watkins, 2000), 41. 54   Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1955), 348. 55  Fairholt, Lord Mayors’ Pageants, 41. 56  Ibid., 7. Fairholt has here included some of John Lydgate’s remarks on this coronation and pageant. The poem is “The Entry of Henry the Sixth into London After His Coronation in France,” and can be found in James Orchard Halliwell, ed., A Selection of the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate (London: Percy Society, 1840), 1–27.

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said, “Behold the Roe, the swift in chace.”57 Of course, Cade’s humor, which is primarily directed at the ruling elite of London, is vicious and macabre. The behavior of Cade and his rebels as they proceed through London is decidedly confrontational. While there are humorous elements of Cade’s procession, these moments go beyond the simple literary pun. This intense divisiveness of Cade’s Rebellion was not exclusive to only insurrections. Records of Midsummer Watches, guild processions, mayoral ridings, and other ceremonial pageants have shown that these events had the ability to divide certain segments of the population who took part in these celebrations. This divisiveness of the Cade Rebellion is an important element, especially when we consider the rebels’ march through London and its connection to medieval ceremonial processions. As Benjamin McRee has argued, guild processions can be both passively and actively divisive, and the differences between members of the community are brought to the fore in elaborate pageants, for these areas of social divergence emphasize “not the wholeness of the community, but its division into separate, semiautonomous subgroups.”58 In his study, McRee focuses on one such guild procession, that of the Guild of Saint George, which takes place over two days: April 23, the feast day of Saint George, and then the following day. The Guild of Saint George’s procession becomes actively divisive during the 1430s and 1440s, when the garments worn by Saint George, his horse, and his attendants are very elaborate. For the person who played Saint George, the clothing would have consisted of a scarlet gown lined with green tartan and trimmed with fur, a suit of gilded armor (or an outfit made of tawny and crimson-purple velvet), and a ceremonial sword for him to slay the dragon. These expensive items of clothing were sometimes owned by the guild, a member of the guild, or another leader of the community.59 Mary Grace informs us that throughout the procession “St. George was supposed to keep in conflict with the dragon,” and that there were two who “henchmen attended the George. They wore jackets, jerkins, or doublets the colour and material of which varied from year to year. Yellow, crimson, or tawny kersey, sarcenet or satin was often used for the doublet, and red and white kersey for the hose. Red hats or bonnets were worn, and two crosses and two gold roses were worked on their jerkins.”60 During this procession in Norwich, poor men were “paid 57

 Ibid, 20.  Benjamin R. McRee, “Unity or Division? The Social Meaning of Guild Ceremony in Urban Communities,” in City and Spectacle in Medieval Europe, ed., Barbara A. Hanawalt and Kathryn L. Reason, Medieval Studies 6 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota, 1994), 189–207 at 195. 59  Ibid., 195–7. For another description of Saint George’s Day in Coventry, see Charles Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City: Coventry and the Urban Crisis of the Late Middle Ages (Cambridge, London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 172–3. 60  Mary Grace, ed., Records of the Gild of St. George in Norwich, 1389–1547: A Transcript with an Introduction. Norfolk Record Society 9 (London: Fakenham and Reading, Wyman & Sons, 1937), 17. 58

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2d. each to carry torches. Other illuminations, candles and tapers of various kinds were also carried, as was also wax to be offered at the Cathedral during the feast,” and after the procession of priests (each alderman—past and present—along with the sheriffs were required to send a priest to the procession) came “the mayor clad in the robes of his office, the city aldermen each clad in a scarlet gown and partly hood scarlet and white damask. All the commoners of the Gild had to attend clad in their livery consisting of gowns and hoods in red. In 1453, they were to have hoods in colour a sangwen medele and a red. In 1473, they were to be clad in long gowns red and white medley parted. In 1485, the brethren were ordered to have togas or gowns of mulberry colour. These remaining officials of the Gild were present clad in their special robes of office. The brethren rode on horseback.”61 As you see, these watches and processions were not cheap. The cost to furbish a watch and an elaborate procession cost guilds a good deal of money. A. H. Johnson has shown that while the Midsummer Watches of 1533 and 1535 were expensive, the Watch for 1541 “far exceeded those in expense,” for the mayor of London, Sir William Roche, was a Draper: besides the usual Giant of Saint Giles, four additional pageants were presented at a staggering cost of “£49 12s. 3.”62 The Wardens were (understandably so) not at all happy with the growing expense of the Midsummer Watch. However, the spending was certainly curtailed. For the 1476 Midsummer Watch, when the Draper Sir Ralph Joscelyne was mayor, “£5 15s. 10d” was spent.63 McRee notes that the velvet alone for the robe cost, in 1537, £7 7s, and that the entire bill in 1540 came to £11; the annual income of the guild was only £20.64 Both Jefferson’s Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books and Davies’ The Merchant Taylors’ Company of London further reveal the monetary expense at which the respected guilds were willing to undertake in taking part in these various civic occasions. As Jefferson shows, the cost for various processions for the Goldsmiths in 1377 (the Mayor’s procession, the King’s coronation, and the Saint Dunstan’s Day feast for their patron saint on May 19) was “£13 13s. 8 1/2 d.”65 As Anne Lancashire has shown, the earliest extant record (here Letter-Book H) of a London Watch during the Midsummer celebration that contains a “special decorative display” is in 1378.66 This record, which is in the form of a letter that 61

 Ibid., 17–18.  A. H. Johnson, The History of the Worshipful Company of the Drapers of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914–22), 2:69–70. 63  Ibid., 1:137. 64  McRee, “Unity or Division,” 196. 65  Lisa Jefferson, ed., Wardens’ Accounts and Court Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), 178–9. For other recorded mayoral processions in which the Goldsmiths took place between the years 1334 and 1446 see 196– 7, 222–3, 226–7, 442–5, 524–5, and 534–5. 66  Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 51. Riley, in Memorials of London and London Life, 419–20, presents a translation of the Latin and Norman French text of the 1378 record of the watch. Lancashire describes that the city’s Letter–Books record watches in 1379, 62

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was sent to every London alderman, commanded them to meet with the “good men of your Ward” who should be “well and sufficiently armed, arrayed in red and white, particoloured, over your armour, to keep the watch on the Eves of the Nativity of St. John, and of St. Peter and Paul.”67 Moreover, this document indicates a processional route with six main points of congregation for the twenty-three wards, and that each area of the city is to have a decorative marker. For instance, the wards of “Tower, Billyngesgate, Algate, and Lymstret” are to see a procession of armed men “with cressets, the lances white, powdered with red stars.”68 The second group of the wards of “Bridge, Candelwykstret, Dougate, [and] Walbroke” were to have “lances all red”; the third ward group of “Bisshopesgate, Langebourne, Cornhulle, [and] Bradstret” were to have “white lances, environed, that is to say, wreathed, with red”; the fourth group of the wards of “Farndone, Castle Baynard, [and] Aldrichesgate” were to have “black lances, powdered with white stars”; the fifth ward group of “Chepe, Crepulgate, Colmanstret [and] Bassyeshawe” were to have “lances all white”; and for the final ward group of “Bredstret, Queen Hythe, Vintry, and Cordewanerstret,” the list abruptly ends, noting that the group was to be armed “with lances — .”69 Indeed, the Letter-Books of London record some of the more important ordinances that relate to the London Midsummer Watch. In 1408, for example, Letter-Book I describes how the “armed watch” is to be kept on June 24 and 29 with the aim of policing London’s citizens and making sure that they do not cast “dung or rubbish into the streets or river.”70 In 1408, it is proclaimed that for the Midsummer Watch of that year no one is to “go armed about the City except knights and esquires, who may have one sword and no more carried behind them.”71 The orders for the 1410 Midsummer Watch suggest that the local officials were worried that the festivities would become wild and violent, for a proclamation is made “forbidding any vintner, taverner, brewer, hosteler, huckster, cook, or piebaker to keep his house open after 9 o’clock at night on Saturday the eve of SS. Peter and Paul [29 June] next ensuing; or to sell wine, ale, fish or flesh, boiled, 1384, 1385, 1386, and 1387, and that for the most part none record anything “visually special” other than the stipulation of red and white dress (1379, 1385, 1386) and the use of cressets (in 1379, 1385, and 1386). Lancashire notes that the records of the watch cease until 1400, and that there is most likely still a watch “but it is no longer being recorded in Letter Books (perhaps because it has become routine? – or because it is being recorded elsewhere?),” London Civic Theatre, 51. Nonetheless, there is still the agreement among scholars that the watch was a routine and highly important civic ceremony, and as the records indicate it was also a ritual. 67  Riley, Memorials of London and London Life, 419–20. 68  Ibid., 420. 69  Ibid., 420. 70  Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London: LetterBook I, 1400–1422 (London: John Edward Francis, 1900), 65. 71  Ibid., 72.

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roasted or in pasty, before 6 o’clock on the morning of Sunday next, under penalty prescribed.”72 The city leaders certainly had the right idea in banning (or at the very least attempting to ban) these practices. The food and drink available to Cade and his rebels certainly fueled their aggressions and kept them going. The London Midsummer Watch in the London Chronicles If there had been a Midsummer Watch in London in 1450, it would have been very difficult to organize. The practice of suspending the Midsummer Watch at a time of crisis is noted in other chronicle entries. For example, in 1545 the following entry is recorded in The Grey Friars Chronicle: “And this yere was no wache at Mydsomer for be-cause of the warres both in France and also in Scotland.”73 The entry for 1450 in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius XVI does state that there was a watch organized in London after the arrest of Suffolk. This watch appears to be a general one and not a “Great Watch” or the Midsummer Watch: In this yere was a parliament holden at Westmynster; and from thens aiourned to the blak freres, and after Cristemas to Westmynster ageyn. Duryng which parlyament the Duke of Suffolk was aresitid and and put in to the Towre, and grete wacche was made in the Cyte all the parliament tyme.74

It is clear that troops were needed elsewhere and not in the city for the watch and the celebration. Unfortunately, the vast majority of medieval records of London Midsummer Watches are lost, and so we are left to reconstruct those watches from later accounts, including records of early English drama and the antiquarian writings of John Stow.75 The fifteenth-century London chronicles for the most part fail to mention watches on or around Midsummer, and there is a great dearth in general regarding the chronicling of watches from 1400–1450. However, there are a few notable exceptions. As Lancashire first noted, for the year 1445 in Bale’s Chronicle there is a description of a watch.76 Although the Bale chronicler does not give as many details of the spectacular nature of the watch as compared to either 72  Ibid., 86. Similar proclamations in Letter-Book I are made for the years 1411–13 and 1421. 73  Richard Howlett, ed., Monumenta Franciscana. Rolls Series 4 (London: Longman and Trübner, 1882), 2:209. 74  Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905; repr., Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1977), 158. 75   Yet another caveat in the availability of dramatic records of medieval England is the absence of volumes in the Records of Early English Drama Series on London and the guilds. These volumes are in preparation, and when they arrive, it is assured that many scholars of drama, guilds, and town life will benefit. 76  Lancashire, London Civic Theatre, 155.

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Stow’s account or the 1378 record of the Midsummer Watch, the Bale chronicler places the Midsummer Watch within a highly ceremonial and visually spectacular context: Item the sonday morn folowyng she77 was crouned at Westminster and þe wer roiall justes made and upon Midsomer and Seint Petre even folowyng was made þe royallest wacche þat ever was seyn ther a fore and the King and the queen and þe lordes wer present the same evenes in the citee.78

The Chronicle of London from 1089 to 1483 is one source where the chroniclers often associate and connect historical events with the ritual year and civic events, such as the watch, that are seamlessly integrated into the calendrical year. In 1434, we are told that “aboughte Whitsondtyde, the lollardes of Prage were distroyd.”79 The Midsummer Eve entry in 1433 is the final entry for that year. This entry begins by stating how “the duke of Bedford regent of Frauce com to Caleys the Tuesday before Estre day” and ends, after the description of ninety soldiers of Calais being banished and four beheaded, with the note that “on Midsomer-even after com the regent [of France] and his lady to London, that faire citee.”80 After the entry on the Cade Rebellion, the chronicler’s historical recordings of watches and of Midsummer increase. The entry for 1458 records the following lines: In this yere Sandwich was robbid and dispoilid by Frensshemen. And this yere was a grete watch in London, and al the gates kepte every nyght, and ij aldermen watchyng: and withynne a while after the kyng and lordes were accorded, and went a procession in Paulis. And this yere was bisshop Pecock abiurid, and his bokes brent at Paulis.81

  Margaret of Anjou was crowned on May 30, 1445, at the age of fifteen.   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 194; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 120. 79  Nicolas and Tyrrell, ed., Chronicle of London, From 1089 to 1489, 120. 80  Ibid., 119–20. The four solders listed as those beheaded were “John Maddeley, John Lunday, Thomas Palmere, and Thomas Talbot.” 81  Ibid., 139. Other entries in the Chronicle of London that reference Midsummer or watches and thus reflect their importance to the chroniclers and the city’s history are 1459, where “about Midsomer, therles of March, Warwik and Salisbury, landed at Sandwich, gadred people in Kent, and went thurgh London to Northampton; and the kyng had taken a felde, and was slayne on his partie the duke of Bukyngham, therle of Shrowisbury, the lord Beaumont and the lord Egremond,” 141. In 1474 there was “a grete watche upon seint Petres nyght, the kyng beying in Chepe; and there fill affrey bitwixt men of his household and the constablis; wherefore the kynge was gretely displeasid with the cunstablis,” 145. And in 1480 there “was grete deth of people; wherfore the kynges courtes were not kepte at Westm’ frome Easter to Midsomer nor in the Guyld-hall from Easter to Midsomer,” 146. 77 78

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Likewise, in the Middle English prose Brut as well as The Great Chronicle of London the Midsummer season is used as a temporal reference point by the chroniclers; they describe the push by the English to stabilize their forces in France during Henry VI’s seventh year as king, 1428. For this year, the prose Brut contains the following entry: And in the same yere, at the ffeste of Mydsomyr, Sir Henry Beauford, Cardynałł and Bisshop of Wynchestir, went ouyr the see into Fraunce for the Kyngis nedis; and Sir John Radclif, knyght, went ouyr the se that same tyme, with a grete compeny of men of armis and archeris, to helpe and to strengthe John, the Duke of Bedford and Regent of Fraunce and of Normandie, and the Engelisshe pepułł that weren lefte there in the right of the Kynge of Engelond.82

The Great Chronicle of London records a similar entry: This yere aboute mydsomer the Cardynall sayled ovyr the see with a feire meyne waged forto have gone and werred upon the lollars in Prake. But a litil before the departyng of the Cardynall oute of Englond The Erle of Suthfolk the lorde Talbot and the lorde Scales and mony other lordes knyghtes and squyers were taken and slayne atte the siege of Orlyaunce.83

There appears to be a connection between these two chronicle entries, for both link the civic order established by the Midsummer Watch and festivals in London with the need to regain order in France. The chroniclers transmission of authorial order from one local to another may be accidental; however, the insight that many of the chroniclers had into the power structure of late medieval English society suggests otherwise. In late May 1478, there is record of another insurrection beginning in Cornwall where a blacksmith was chosen as “theyr hede Capitayn.”84 This rebellion soon spreads to Exeter where, before long, the rebels number some 15,000. Like Cade’s Rebellion, this insurrection also had a large battle at Blackheath (either on June 17 or 22) where 200 rebels and a few of the king’s men were killed.85 Interestingly, it is on June 29, “midsomyr day [that] the kyng wythin the said Towir made dyvers knygthis of which numbyr Richard haddon that othir shyreve of london was oon.”86 Henry VII apparently sees the Watch as a significant day to arm his citizens and increase the presence of troops within the city walls. The anti82

 Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o.s., 131, 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 436. 83  A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicle of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr., Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), 152. 84  Ibid., 275. 85  Ibid., 278, 444. 86  Ibid., 278.

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taxation insurrection of 1478 is quickly halted, its leaders “lord awdeley wylliam Flammok & Joseph michaell the Smyth” are beheaded, quartered, and their heads placed on London Bridge. Four of Flammok’s quarters are placed at the four gates of London, the blacksmith’s were sent to Cornwall, and the trunk of Audley is buried at the Black Friar’s monastery at Ludgate.87 The chronicler of The Great Chronicle of London is quick to connect this rebellion of 1478 with the rebellions of 1381 and 1450, commenting that the God knew of the rebels’ “Inward Intent wherffor of lyklihod they sped thereafftir, as Jak straw Jak Cade & othir Rebellis did beffore theym.”88 While the Midsummer Watch was a stabilizing force within the city walls (as seen in Henry VII’s decision to knight many men on Midsummer Day so as to quell the riot), Charles Phythian-Adams has argued the Midsummer Watch may have caused the pent-up aggression to overflow into the rural areas outside of the city.89 Phythian-Adams’s point holds water when we consider that the events that occurred in Blackheath on June 29, 1450, as they are recorded in The Great Chronicle of London. The chronicler makes specific note of the date and that it is a feast day, Saint Peter’s Day. However, the chronicler does not mention Midsummer or a Midsummer Watch. Nonetheless, civic sanctioned events that surround Midsummer and the excitable climate associated with the Midsummer celebration surely energize the atmosphere that envelops Cade’s rebels. As John Payn’s letter to John Paston shows, the air was volatile at Blackheath. On Saint Peter’s Day, Cade executes Parys, an under-captain, for disciplinary reasons; indeed, the rebels were getting out of hand.90 The London chronicle MS Gough 10 states that the events took place “the morn after seynt peter’s day,”91 while the more reliable Great Chronicle of London records the event as taking place on the feast day of Saint Peter and also provides the date: Jak Cade wyth his adherentys Cam to Blak heth upon Seynt Petyrs day or upon the xxix day of Junii, at which seson to thentent that he wold be ffamyd ffor a trw & good Justyser, he there byhedid a pety Capytayn namyd parys, but for what offence It is not shweid.92

87  Ibid., 278; S. B. Chrimes, Henry VII (London: Methuen, 1977; repr., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 90. 88   Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 278. 89   Phythian-Adams, Desolation of a City, 176. 90  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 90; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 154; Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 182. Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century: Part II. EETS, s.s., 21 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 313–15. For a discussion on Payn’s letter see the following chapter. 91  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 154. 92   Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 182.

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The execution of Parys, therefore, is a result of Cade taking a decisive interest in policing his own ranks. Much like the civic leaders of London who maintain order and, in a sense, have dispensed justice through a series of (sometimes public) punishments, Cade has taken the role of the leader of a civic watch. This event is so very much associated with the “season” of Midsummer and Saint Peter’s Day and of maintaining civic peace, yet Cade enacts his own form of intense public corporal punishment. In examining the Midsummer festivities of Western Europe, Sandra Billington has noted how many revolts in and around Midsummer were marked by a sense of focus and purpose one minute and then would diverge into a state of utter violence.93 Midsummer Watches Throughout England While the London chronicles do not overtly mention a Midsummer Watch in conjunction with Cade’s Rebellion, the records of Midsummer Watches and the expenses associated with them are plentiful, particularly when one considers the scarcity of surviving documents from the medieval and early modern periods. The Records of Early English Drama project has produced some important scholarship, for in several of their publications there are detailed records of the watches associated with the Diocese of Canterbury. In particular, those Midsummer Watches of the cities of Lydd and especially Canterbury are significant. Other counties throughout England during the late medieval and early modern period also have their own versions of a Midsummer Watch and Show. The records for Canterbury are quite extensive and date back to ca.970. Records for the Feast of the Translation of Saint Thomas Becket/The Midsummer Watch in Canterbury begin in 1368–69: Item histrionibus in festo translacionis beati Thome … xxiii s. iiij d.” [Likewise to entertainers on the feast of the Translation of St Thomas (Becket) 23s 4d.]94

The town of Lydd also participated in Midsummer Watch festivities in celebration of the feast of Saint Thomas. In 1453–54, 3 shillings and 4 pence were given to players of Hamstreet for performing their play on the day of the Translation, and

93  Sandra Billington, Midsummer: A Cultural Sub-Text from Chrétien de Troyes to Jean Michel. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 24–6, 44. Here, the specific revolt that Billington refers to is the 1587 uprising in Laon. 94   Gibson, Kent, 1:55; 3:1028.

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those same players were paid 11 pence for bread and drink.95 The previous year, the players of the duke of Exeter were paid 16 pence for their expenses.96 York was another city that performed a Midsummer Watch and Show. Judging from the surviving records, it was a sizable civic production that, in some ways, replaced the Corpus Christi celebration at the end of the sixteenth century. With the procession of armored soldiers and officials, York’s festival continued to provide the city with both an outlet to celebrate the Midsummer celebration and also a stage to demonstrate order and control.97 Robert Davies has commented that as the Corpus Christi pageants in York were discontinued, “other spectacles and diversions were provided for the entertainment of the citizens.”98 For example, in May 1581 the York council agrees that … everie alderman on Mydsomer even next shall furnishe three able men furnished in armor, and evrie one of the xxiiijths two able men furnished, to attend upon Mr. Sheriffes on Midsomer even next; and this ordynaunce to continue for ever if it be not altered.99

The amusements of Midsummer Eve in York appear to have acquired more ceremonial importance than those of any other festival in that particular year. Besides the show of the armor in the early part of the day, a play was occasionally performed. In this Midsummer play the machines of the crafts, now no longer required for their own pageants, were sometimes brought into use. Chester also appears to be a city where the Midsummer Watch and Show was a routine feature of medieval culture. However, Chester temporarily disbanded the festivities due to its propensity for inciting violence; they were revived again in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century.100 The city of Exeter records in 1413–14 in the Mayor’s Court Roll that there ought to be an annual pageant on the Tuesday in Whitsun week.101 The entry for 1413–14 includes an interesting anecdote as to the politics of running a pageant. In Exeter in 1413–14, the Skinners 95

 Ibid., 1:658; 3:1165.  Ibid., 1:658; 3:1165. 97  Alexandra F. Johnston and Margaret Rogerson, ed., York. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 1:xv. 98  Robert Davies, York Records of the Fifteenth Century (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1843; repr., Dursley: Gloucester Reprints, 1976), 273. 99  Ibid, 273–4. 100  Lawrence M. Clopper, ed., Chester. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1979), xxiv–xxv. One of the earliest surviving records for a Midsummer Show in Chester reports that for 1563–64 twenty-six shillings, eight pence “ be paid to mr. mayre at midsomer” for the procession, and seven shillings “paid to houghe gillome for daunsinge at midsomer,” 70. 101   John M. Wasson, ed., Devon. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 82, 86; translations on 357–8 and 360. 96

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were in charge of the Midsummer Watch pageant. Apparently, a John Benet, a Skinner, was one of the men in charge of the performances, and encouraged several sections and pageants not to perform the official speeches. By the end of the day, two pageants and sections of Skinners had not performed, which was an insult to the mayor who sanctioned the event. Benet then insulted the mayor and later “submitted himself humbly to court.”102 The record for 1416–17 likewise records the expenses paid for the pageant.103 The earliest record of a Midsummer Watch in Coventry is 1445, and while the specific aims and procedures of the watch are lacking, nonetheless, the various crafts to take part in the ceremony are named.104 Again, it must be stressed that for a person who is so connected with Kentish life and customs, Cade and his revolt is centered upon the betterment of his county. The ceremonial civic customs of Kent were certainly familiar to Cade, and it is likely that he would have adopted them in his own attempt to organize his own form of a watch on the city of London. If the Midsummer Watches of the late Middle Ages resemble those of the sixteenth century, then Cade’s procession through London bears a high degree of similitude with those civic pageants and processions which sought to maintain power relations within the city and protect those families owning homes filled with expensive items. And while there is no firm record of a Midsummer Watch taking place in 1450, in at least two versions of An English Chronicle there is mention of the holiday/ritual day of Midsummer, something about which Lancashire or other scholars have not yet commented. In Davis’ edition of An English Chronicle, based on Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, the following entry appears immediately prior to the section describing the Cade Revolt: And this same yer, in the feste of Saint Petir and Paul aftir Midsomer, that is to say, the Monday, the laste day of Juyn saue one, maister William Ascoghe bisshop of Salisbury was slayn of his owen parisshens and peple at Edyngdoun aftir that he hadde said masse, and was drawne fro the auter and lad vp to an hille ther beside, in his awbe, and his stole aboute his necke; and there thay slow him

102

  Wasson, Devon, 358.  An elephant was apparently a common giant for the Exeter Midsummer Watch, for one was broken and needed to be repaired for the Monday of Whitsun Week: “Item in expensis factis circa reparacionem & emendacionem de le [May & le] Olyfaunt & le May die lune in septima pentecostes vij s iiij d,” ibid., 99; translation on 375. Cambridge, too, had a history of a Midsummer Watch, although not as early or in as many records as recorded in towns and cities in Devon. In 1483 in Cambridge a lutanist was paid “ij d” and the lord protector’s entertainers were paid “xij d” for their services; see Alan H. Nelson, ed., Cambridge. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), 1:61–2; for a translation see 2:1087–8. In 1587 “xxx s” was given to the “quenes men at Midsomer” in Cambridge, 1: 318. 104  R. W. Ingram, ed., Coventry. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 16–17. 103

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horribly, thair fader and thair bisshoppe, and spoillid him vnto the nakid skyn, and rent his blody shirte in to pecis and baar thaym away with thaym, and made bost of thair wickidnesse: and the day befor his deth his chariot was robbed be men of the same cuntre of an huge god and tresour, to the value of x. M. marc., as thay saide that knewe it. Thise ij. bissoppis were wonder couetous men, and evil beloued among the comune peple, and holde suspect of many defautes, and were assentyng and willyng to the deth of the duke of Gloucestre, as it was said.105

Marx, who uses Aberystwyth National Library of Wales MS 21608 for the basis of his edition of An English Chronicle, records a similar entry: And also þis same yere in the feste off Seynt Petur on the Monday, the laste day off Iuyn save on, Maister William Ascogh, Bisshoppe of Salesbury, wasse slayn atte Edyngton in Wilshire.106

Marx’s edition of An English Chronicle, like Davies’ edition, also records for this entry that the “commyn peple” are responsible for this madness and killing. This third estate, which is the common people, is here viewed as the rabble of the crown. These “low-born people,” it seems, are responsible not only for the murder of Bishop Aiscough but also for the violence that occurs throughout the Cade Rebellion. The chroniclers of An English Chronicle make a conscious decision to place the murder of Bishop Aiscough before the Cade Revolt and thus within the season of the May games and specifically at the time of the Midsummer celebration and feast. Thus, the context of the Midsummer celebration is central to the period of violence that encapsulated London and Kent throughout late May, June, and early July 1450. Whether the chroniclers of An English Chronicle want to make explicit connections between the seemingly controlled festivities of the May games and the Midsummer celebration and of the riotous nature of Cade’s Rebellion and the murder of Aiscough is unclear. A reader of these entries in An English Chronicle would have likely already made that connection for him/ herself, for, as it has already been noted, people’s lives in medieval England were inherently tied to the ritual year. John Stow’s Record of the London Midsummer Watch John Stow’s somewhat nostalgic recollections of the late-medieval Midsummer Watch are full of vivid and visual details as to what the event may have looked like, who took part in it, and the processional route. Indeed, it is Stow’s description of the Midsummer Watch that many scholars turn to when seeking an accurate representation of the medieval celebration. The Midsummer Watch begins with 105

 Davies, An English Chronicle, 64.  Marx, An English Chronicle, 67.12–15.

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the placing of flowers and branches on “euery mans doore,” and those who have glass lamps light them all at once at night, so that all of London “made a goodly shew.”107 The watch, which passes through the “principal streets,” passed through Conduit by Paules gate, through west Cheape, by ye Stocks, through Cornhill, by Leaden hall to Algate, then backe downe Fenchurch streete, by Grasse church, aboute Grasse church Conduite, and vp Grasse church streete into Cornhill, and through | it into west Cheape againe, and so broke vp: the whole way ordered for marching watch, extendeth to 3200. Taylors yards of assize, for the furniture whereof with lights, there were appointed 700. Cressetes, 500. of them being found by the Companies, the other 200. by the Chamber of London: besides the which lightes euery Constable in London, in number more than 240. had his Cresset, the charge of euery Cresset was in light two shillinges foure pence, and euery Cresset had two men, one to beare or hold it, an other to beare a bag with light, and to serue it, so that poore men pertayning to the Cressets, taking wages, besides that euery one had a strawne hat, with a badge painted, and his breakfast in the morning, amounted in number to almost 2000. The marching watch contained in number about 2000. men, parte of them being olde Souldiers, of skill to be Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants, Corporals, &c. Wiflers, Drommers, and Fifes, Standard and Ensigne bearers, Sword players, Trumpeters on horsebacke, Demilaunces on great horses, Gunners with hand Guns, or halfe hakes, Archers in coates of white fustian signed on the breast and backe with the armes of the Cittie, their bowes bent in their handes, with sheafes of arrowes by their sides, Pike men in bright Corslets, Burganets, &c. Holbards, the like Bill men in Almaine Riuets, and Apernes of Mayle in great number, there were also diuerse Pageants, Morris dancers, Constables, the one halfe which was 120. on S. Iohns Eue, the other halfe on S. Peters Eue in bright harnesse, some ouergilt, and euery one a Iornet of Scarlet thereupon, and a chaine of golde, his Hench man following him, his Minstrals before him, and his Cresset light passing by him, the Waytes of the City, the Mayors Officers, for his guard before him, all in a Liuery of wolsted or Say108 Iacquets party109 coloured, the Mayor himselfe well mounted on horseback, the sword bearer before him in fayre Armour well mounted also, the Mayors footmen, & the like Torch bearers about him, Hench men twaine, vpon great stirring horses following him. The Sheriffes watches 107

 Stow, Survey of London, 1:101.  Stow glosses “say” as “serge,” Survey of London, 2:414. MED records sarğe, (n.) 1 “(a.) “Woolen cloth, serge; also, a piece of serge.” However, the OED records that saye, (n.) 1. a. is “A cloth of fine texture resembling serge; in the 16th c. sometimes partly of silk, subsequently entirely of wool,” while the MED states that sai(e, (n.) “(a) An esteemed variety of woolen cloth, perh[haps] rather heavy. 109   The term “party” here means a garment or object that is made up of various colors; see MED, pārtī(e adj., (a.) “Of flowers, cloth, garments, shields or coats of arms, etc.: of different colors, variegated, parti-colored; of colors: mixed; as noun: variegated cloth.” 108

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came one after the other in like order, but not so large in number as the Mayors, for where the Mayor had besides his Giant, three Pageants, each of the Sheriffes had besides their Giantes but two Pageants, ech their Morris Dance, and one Hench man their | Officers in Iacquets of Wolsted,110 or say party coloured, differing from the Mayors, and each from other, but hauing harnised men a great many, &c.111

In this lengthy but important passage from Stow, we are able to obtain a more complete picture of the process of the Midsummer Watch. Moreover, when we place Stow’s record of the Watch alongside the various other records of Midsummer Watches—such as those found in the Letter-Books, medieval chronicles, and early dramatic records—we sense the enormity of the event. The Midsummer Watch was an all-eclipsing event, one that was always on the verge of becoming a disturbance. Hence, the precautions that many officials took to control the hours of food and beverage consumption. Let us now turn to the two entries in Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle, 1377–1461 that describe Cade’s carnivalesque procession, a procession that mirrors the atmosphere and behavior of the London Midsummer Watch. The following passage in Bale’s Chronicle is Cade’s carnivalesque procession scene. The episode provides details regarding the leader and his band and how they robbed Phillip Malpas’ home. Malpas, who was a Draper and an alderman, was not well-liked. The robbing of his home is an event that is recorded in almost all of the London Chronicles.112 This event is one in which some chroniclers place a higher degree of importance, for it describes how the mob has continued to wreck havoc on the city and its citizens: Item on the morowe Saterday cam the Jugges at ix of þe clok unto the Guyldhall and þer wer diverse & many enquests charged for the kyng to enquer of extorcioners and oþer evill doers. And in the mean tyme a fore xi of the clok the seid capitaigne cam riding with his peple on foot from Suthwerk thurgh the citee

110   MED, worsted (n.) 1 “(a) Woolen cloth of some kind used for making clothing, furnishings, etc.” OED, worsted n. 2 “(a.) A woollen fabric or stuff made from well-twisted yarn spun of long-staple wool combed to lay the fibres parallel.” 111  Stow, Survey of London, 1: 102–3. 112  For a description of Philip Malpas, his unpopularity among Yorkists, and his place in the London Guildhall Records, see Gairdner, “Jack Cade’s Rebellion,” 450–54; and Kekewich et al., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England, 77–100. Both Malpas and Robern Horne (also a very unpopular alderman) were represented in the Jack Napes ballad, see the poem “For Jake Napes Sowle, Placebo, and Dirige,” in Political, Religious, and Love Poems. From the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lambeth ms. no. 306, and Other Sources, ed., Frederick J. Furnivall, EETS o.s., 15 (London: Trübner, 1866; rev. 1903; repr., London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1965), 6–11. See also Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 75–7, for a discussion of those people named in the poem.

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to Powles in a blewe gown of velvet with sables furred & a strawe hat upon his heed & a sewerd drawen in his hand & retorned a gen to London Brigg & into Suthwerk. And at iiij afternoon he & his peple can agein into Chepe and drank þer at a tavern called the Crown & retorned to the Mildende wer as þe peple of Essex lay and there beheded oon Crowmer & a noþer clept William Bailly and cam ageyn in hast into Chepe & thoo ij hedes bore afore him on high poles. And ate Standard in Chepe he hoved and thedir was the lord Say brought from the guyldhalle wher he was be diverse enquestes | endited of treson and atte same Standard the capitan ded doo the said lord Say beheded & dispoylled him of his aray & boond his legges with a roop to an hors & drewe his body on þe pavement þurgh a greet part of the citee.113

In this brief passage, Cade and his followers engage in carnivalesque behavior. In doing so, they severely damage any semblance of their fragile political legitimacy. Several elements of the carnivalesque can be noted in this episode: wide-spread drinking and drunken behavior; the procession through the streets as if a pageant were taking place; the inversion of royal authority with Cade wearing a blue velvet gown with sables and a straw crown; and the transgressive nature of the violence enacted upon the three citizens, in particular Lord Saye, a person of high governmental importance and a staunch Lancastrian.114 In The Great Chronicle of London, the chronicler, who is possibly Fabyan, describes a macabre, grotesque, and very humorous incident that follows the beheading of Saye and Crowmer: “and aftir they browgth the hedis of the lord Say and of Crowmer upon ij stakis or polis and in dyvers placis of the Cyte put theym to gidir cawsyng that oon to kysse that othir.”115 A similar scene is reported in Fabyan’s New Chronicles: “Whan they hadd thus byhedid these ij men, they took the hede of Croumer & pight it upon a pole, & soo entrid agayn the cite with the heddis of the lord Saye & of Croumer, and as they passid þe strete, ioynyd the polys to giiyder, and causid eythir dede mouth to kysse othir dyuerse & many tymys.”116As McLaren states, “[t]he chronicler seems to grasp both the carnival atmosphere and the irony of the

113

  Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, pages 206–7; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 133. 114  K. B. McFarlane states that James Fiennes was created Lord Saye and Sele in 1447, and that he was among several of the “new men” who gained wealth (some would argue illegally), in The Nobility of Later Medieval England: The Ford Lectures for 1953 and Related Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 182. James Fiennes became a court favorite of Henry VI by opposing, along with William de la Pole, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester’s claim to the throne. 115   Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 184. 116   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 410r; Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Henry Ellis (London: F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payne, Wilkie and Robinson, [etc.], 1811), 624.

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situation when he writes that Cade and his followers returns in the afternoon to drink and specifically names the Crown Tavern.”117 McLaren’s key question regarding this episode is where Cade found/stole the gown, and McLaren suggests that the gown was stolen from Philip Malpas’ home. In addition, she also posits, but then dismisses the possibility, that the straw hat “may have been used to portray pilgrimage” and concludes that it is unlikely that Malpas owned a gown of this quality.118 McLaren’s statement here should be rethought, for wealthy Londoners often purchased expensive clothing as a visual signifier of their wealth. Upon his death, Malpas left a substantial amount of money to charity: £1,800.119 Geoffrey Chaucer’s portrait of the Five Guildsmen in the General Prologue presents a tongue-in-cheek description of London’s nouveau riche. The Guildsmen’s gear is “fressh and newe” and well adorned; their knives, for example, are mounted in silver and not brass.120 As we will see in the next chapter, there are other candidates as to from whom Cade absconded the gown and attire. While the question of to whom the attire belongs is of particular importance to the history of the Cade Rebellion, and while I do believe that I have located at least one probable source for the owner of the attire, the real question though is why. Why would Cade parade through the streets dressed in a gown and a straw hat? And what did Cade hope to accomplish by doing so? The first question may be more easily answered than the second. The costume that Bale’s Chronicle records Cade wearing can be seen, as McLaren argues, as an instrument to mock and ridicule the king, Henry VI. The straw hat/crown can be interpreted ad Cade’s visual commentary on Henry’s character and rule. Indeed, Henry, a “straw man,” was frequently castigated for his many political failures, particularly England’s recent losses in France, and his own malleable personality that was often easily bent in matters where the wishes of his inner circle were prominent. McLaren views the straw hat and procession as a parody by Cade of the king’s procession through London at times of celebration, and she also posits,

117  McLaren, London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 68. Also killed in this episode but not named in Bale’s Chronicle is Richard Hawarden, “a common thief and murderer who had lived for a long while in the shelter of the sanctuary of St. Martin le Grand,” in Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 93. For reports of Hawarden’s death see G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, ed., John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, in Camden Miscellany 24. Camden Fourth Series, Vol. 9 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1972), 153–233 at 201; and James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Camden Society, 1876), 55–239 at 193, where Hawarden is referred to as a “strong theff.” 118  McLaren, London Chronicles of the Fifteenth Century, 68. 119  Sylvia L. Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948; repr., 1962), 178. 120  Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Boston, Houghton Mifflin), I:361–78.

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but then dismisses the possibility, that the straw hat may be used to portray a pilgrimage.121 The mixing of the two forms of clothing—the straw hat and the gown— can also signify the social split within medieval England: the nobility and the working class. If Cade sees himself both as a champion of those who are repressed by Henry’s policies, and also as a new type of lord (one who comes from the people, and who listens to and fights for their demands), then the drawn sword may represent Cade’s willingness to fight for the grievances that he and his band brought forth. Roland Barthes has commented on the significance of one’s clothing: “As for the human body, Hegel has already suggested that it was in a relation of signification with clothing; as pure sentience, the body cannot signify; clothing guarantees the passage from sentence to meaning; it is, we might say, the signifier par excellence.”122 With these words in mind, Cade’s exterior becomes the very marker of his inner self, and one might say that his choice of clothing becomes the perfect—and most accurate and frank—signifier. The fashion of wearing dark furs began in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, but furs were rarely worn without some other fabric such as silk or wool.123 While the chronicler in Bale’s Chronicle does not mention any other clothing that Cade wears (such as a shirt or trousers), the juxtaposition of the gown, the drawn sword, and the straw hat create what Barthes has termed a “signifying matrix.”124 As we turn our attention to another illustration of the Cade Revolt in the London chronicles, we will perhaps get a more complete understanding of why Cade and his army behave in the manner they do. As with several of the London chronicles that record a lengthy passage on the revolt, we will note that many of the same people involved are again mentioned, and that the specific acts of violence that Cade and his band are responsible for in Bale’s Chronicle are repeated in An English Chronicle. Like Bale’s Chronicle, An English Chronicle, 1377–1461 (itself a London chronicle continuation of the prose Brut) contains a vivid record of Cade’s Rebellion and what he wore. Cade’s procession through London is viewed and recorded by an anonymous chronicler. As with most forms of written history, there is usually more than one version or record of the event being recorded. Many times, these multiple variances of the historical record add doubt and uncertainty as to the legitimacy of the event being recorded, but the reverse is also possible. That is, with each different written variance, a more complete picture of what transpired can be gleaned. When interpreting the multiple versions of the Cade Revolt in the London chronicles, and specifically the carnivalesque episode where Cade and his men march through London, a clearer understanding of Cade’s motivations 121

 Ibid., 68.  Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. Matthew Ward and Richard Howard (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1983; repr., 1990), 258. 123  Françoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane, Dress in the Middle Ages, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 73. 124  Barthes, The Fashion System, 59–86. 122

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is possible. If we were to only examine the Cade Revolt through the eyewitness record of the Bale chronicler, we would be privy to only one set of historical writings. In doing so, we as readers would be limited in scope and in depth from the observations of other chroniclers’ representations and recordings of the revolt. By focusing on just the one London chronicle, we are left with one version of what may have transpired in the streets of London during the revolt. By placing the Cade episode in An English Chronicle alongside that same episode as it is recorded in Bale’s Chronicle, we allow ourselves a more “complete” illustration of the revolt to dissect. When we place these two accounts next to one another, we obtain a greater understanding of Cade’s reasons for parading through London in the manner that he does. In addition, we also see how the chronicler on An English Chronicle places the Cade Revolt within the context of fifteenth-century English politics and modes of ideologies. If we return for a moment to the Bale chronicle, we recall that as Cade parades through London on Saturday, July 4, he is dressed in a blue gown made of velvet with sable adorning on it, a straw hat on his head, and a drawn sword in his hand. After drinking at the Crown, William Crowmer and William Bailly are beheaded, and James Fiennes, first Lord Saye, is arrested and beheaded as well. The previous day, the house of former sheriff and current alderman Philip Malpas was “dispoyled.”125 The people who are involved in this scene are particularly important. It has already been mentioned that Philip Malpas was not held in any high regard by the rebels, but neither were Lord Saye and William Crowmer. Crowmer was the son of William Crowmer, a draper and alderman (1403–34). Crowmer, the junior, was twice the sheriff of Kent, including the year 1450, and was married to Elizabeth Fiennes, the daughter of James Fiennes, Lord Saye.126 To say that Cade had a vendetta against certain public figures would be an understatement. Even prior to the Cade Rebellion, these men and their policies had been the source of much distress and anger. Now Cade, it appeared, was to have his comeuppance in the form of murder, mockery, and revelry. Interestingly, Lord Saye and his family were very much directly associated with some of the very theatrical and performative qualities one often associated with revelry, rioting, and revolts. James Fiennes was one of the more involved patrons of touring theatrical companies in Kent. And, as recent documents have shown, Fiennes’ company of performers and minstrels were active from 1446 to 1449 in the cities of Eastry, Dover, Hythe, New Romney, and in particular Lydd.127 125

 Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132–33.  For a brief account of William Crowmer, father and son, see Thrupp, The Merchant Class of Medieval London, 336; and Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 93, who describes Crowmer, the son, as a “figure of public odium among the men of Kent.” William Crowmer, senior, was elected twice as an alderman to Parliament: 1417 and 1421. See also Alfred B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London (London: Eden Fisher, 1913), 1:270–71 and 2:2, 8. 127  For a description of the Saye and Sele company, their performers and minstrels, and the entries for the respected cities of performance, see Gibson, Kent, 3:1476–7. For 126

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The carnivalesque behavior of Cade and his followers (as it is reported in An English Chronicle as well as in Bale’s Chronicle) presents the possibility that Cade and his people are purposefully mocking the civic duties and public rituals of the local London government, namely the stately and highly ceremonial processions of the guilds and the aldermen associated with the London Midsummer Watch. Harvey, it appears, may be too quick in describing Cade’s “regalia” as he marches through London as “improvised,” yet the scholar is correct in stating that Cade, with a drawn sworn in one hand and another sword before him, appears like “an aristocrat.”128 As we examine the description of this day in An English Chronicle, there appears to be nothing “improvised” about the choice of clothing to be worn by Cade, nor of his actions. While he may be drunk, Cade appears like a person with an agenda. The following passage is from An English Chronicle, and it describes Cade in a more stylized form of dress: And the capteyn rode aboute in the cite beryng a naked swerde in his honde, werynge kilte spores, and a gilte sailet, havynge on hym a paire of brygandires, and a govne of blewe veluet, and hadde a swerde broughte befor hym pretendyng the state of a lorde, and yet wasse he noȝt but a lurdeyne.129

Cade’s dress, or his costume if you will, consists of gilded spurs (usually worn by knights),130 a light helmet (“sailet”) that was also gilded, light body armor covering his front and back (i.e., a corslet), a gown of blue velvet (also mentioned in Bale’s Chronicle), and two swords: a drawn sword in his hand, and another that is borne before him as if he were a high-ranking official. Unlike the Bale chronicler, the chronicler of An English Chronicle has not even the slightest amount of admiration for Cade’s actions, for he calls the leader a “lurdeyne,” a name for a person which can mean anything from a “criminal” to one who is of low-born descent.131 The chronicler also makes the distinction, unlike the Bale chronicler, that Cade is pretending to be someone of authority, possibly a lord. The items that Cade makes use of to dress himself, as well as his inner demeanor, accentuate this outer display of false aristocracy. the years 1449–50, for example, in New Romney, Kent, the following record exists in the Chamberlains’ Accounts: “Item datos minestrall’ domini archiepiscopi & minesrall’ domini de Saye cum vino eis dato … vij s. vj d,” 2:735. Translation: “Likewise (they account for) 7s 6d given to the lord archbishop’s minstrel/s and Lord Sayle’s minstrel/s with wine given to them,” 3:1181. 128  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 93. 129  Marx, An English Chronicle, 69.4–7. 130   MED, spōre (n.(2)), 1. c. “spurs as a badge of knighthood; gilt spores, gilded spurs.” 131   MED, lurdaun n. (a.) “An evildoer, wicked person, criminal; (b) as a term of abuse: good-for-nothing, rascal; (c) a spiritless person, lazy person; coward; (d) a low-born person, an ill-mannered person, an ugly person, a fool; (e) an unfortunate wretch.”

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At Saint Magnus’s church and also at the Leadenhall, Cade pronounces that “no man in his host upon peyne of dethe dispoyled no man in london.”132 Nevertheless, Cade and his army rob and kill. Of interest is the route that they choose to take as they march through London on July 3. It appears as if Cade and his rebels have a set course and a planned route. First, they move across London Bridge, cutting the ropes. They then proceed to Saint Magnus and the Leadenhall. Next, they move onto Lime Street where they rob the house of Philip Malpas. The group then leaves the city for the night via London Bridge. The rebels then re-enter London on the morning of July 4. That Saturday morning, the “procession” commences at London Bridge with a drunken march though the city. The rebels then move into the Guildhall, where Lord Saye has been taken from his cell in the Tower. While Saye is in the Guildhall, a costumed Cade and a group march from Southwark to Saint Paul’s before returning to Southwark.133 Cade and his rebels then go to the Standard in Cheap to drink; they then proceed into the Fleet prison, where Sheriff Crowmer is taken. The group then moves outside of the city walls at Mile End where Crowmer is beheaded. Then, they go back to the Standard in Cheap. Saye is brought here from the Guildhall, where he is beheaded and dragged naked through the streets. After this, the group then heads off to Mile End, and Cade returns to Southwark for the evening. It was a busy two days in London. All the while, Cade is reportedly outfitted in a costume that resembles what an alderman or a mayor would wear during a Midsummer Watch or other Guildhall or civic processions. The procession route Cade takes through London mimics, and in many ways parodies, the civic route that the London officials establish and follow for the medieval Midsummer Watch. Lawrence Manley has described how certain landmarks throughout London play a key role in the development of what he terms the “central civic axis” of the ceremonial pageants.134 On major religious feast days, the mayors, sheriffs, aldermen, and their liveries “processed to evening services at St. Paul’s from the Hospital and Chapel of St. Thomas de Acon,” while precoronation entrants to the city begin at the top of Gracechurch Street at the corner of Leadenhall and go from the Conduit or Tunne in Cornhille to the Little Conduit at the gate of Paul’s Churchyard where “a basic syntax of pageant stations was clearly laid out around the same invariant landmarks, the cisterns—the Conduit in Cornhill, the Great Conduit at the head of Cheapside, the Little Conduit at Paul’s Gate—and the standards—the Standard and the Cross at Cheapside.”135 Cade’s processional route through London in early July resembles in many ways the civic 132

 Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 155.  Lord Saye was placed in the tower at the orders of Henry VI. Saye, along with other retainers, it appears were placed in the Tower by Henry so as to keep them alive. See R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981; repr., Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1998), 613. 134  Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 237. 135  Ibid., 225. 133

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and ceremonial processional routes of the Midsummer Watch, as described by John Stow and also scholars such as Manley and Berlin.136 In fact, Cade’s actions in London during the Whitsun holiday and his procession route have very little to do with the highly religious character of the season. Cade’s procession is, like the Midsummer Watch and its festivities, highly secular. Like the London chronicles that record civic events, Cade Rebellion and the rebels’ march through London are more attuned to issues of government (local especially), finance, and matters of the crown.137 If we examine the chronicle accounts of Cade’s march through London, we can note some more parallels to the Midsummer Watch. First and foremost is the item of the straw hat. As you recall, in the Bale Chronicle, Cade has on his head a straw hat as he marches through London. In Stow’s writings, we learn that all of those men whose duty and job it is to light the cressets at the start of the Midsummer Watch wear straw hats.138 As Stow notes, there are some 2,000 of these men whose job it is to light the cressets, thus signaling the beginning of the watch. Hats are one of the many items of clothing that were regulated in medieval London. In 1311, at the request of the hatters and of those who bought and sold hats within London, there was to be greater vigilance after the feast of Easter on the identification of “false hats.” Specifically, these “false hats” are hats that are of poor workmanship and/or made of a mixture of materials. Forty of these “false hats” are identified when their owners are brought into the Guildhall on August 10, 1311. Just to make sure that the owners and makers of these “false hats” get the message, the hats are seized and burned in the street in Cheap.139 The Articles of the Hatters of London were formalized in 1347, and the articles clearly state who shall sell hats, what types of hats can and cannot be sold, and what the punishments are for those who did not comply with the regulations. The Articles of the Hatters describes how “foreign folks of diverse Counties” are not allowed to sell their hats in retail but only “in gross.”140 Thus, the hat worn by Cade is a marker of difference. If straw hats were to be used only during prescribed events, such as the Midsummer Watch, and were to be worn by those men chosen to perform the task of lighting the cressets, then Cade would have been in breach of the law. Cade, in wearing the straw hat, is the signal that the watch has begun; after all, he is the one who is in command, and he 136  For a visual circuit of the Midsummer Watch in London see Michael Berlin, “Civic Ceremony in Early Modern Europe.” Urban History Yearbook 13 (1986): 17–27 at 22. 137  Ibid., 21, and here Berlin further comments on the “changing geography of civic ceremonies” in London, and that they may have been “related to attitudes towards civic buildings and the organization of social spaces in general.” 138  For a study of the guild and fraternal organizations’ lighting of London for ceremonial and religious occasions, see Barbara A. Hanawalt, “Keepers of the Lights: Late Medieval English Parish Gilds,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14, no. 1 (1984): 21–37. 139  Riley, Memorials of London, 90–91. 140  Ibid., 239–40.

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is the one who has established (quite firmly) who is in charge. And now, dressed as both the one who calls the Midsummer Watch to order and the one who leads it, Cade’s attire begins to take on greater symbolic and civic meaning. If Cade is wearing the straw hat of the cresset lighters, then he is aligning himself in a very real way with those people of London who desperately need this one-off job. In an organic sense, his mind and his thoughts are with those people who have suffered in recent times: those who do not have a steady income, those who are suffering under Henry VI’s policies, and those whose rights are affected by local officials. With the burning of London Bridge, one of the main arteries in and out of London and thus a major economic landmark that helps keep the city alive, Cade has, in a metaphorical and thus highly symbolic way, ignited his own cresset. Instead of a few thousand small flickers of light, there is one large fireball that all of London can see. It is a highly powerful political statement, and it is one in which Cade’s enemies and his supporters would connect with the rebel leader. Cade is also riding through London on a horse, wearing gilded spurs and a gilded helmet. He has a sword in one hand, a sword bearer walking before him, and is clothed in blue sable with body armor underneath. This attire is very similar to the clothing worn by the upper ranks of London society who were participating in and supervising the Midsummer Watch, attire that was discussed in some detail in the earlier part of this chapter. Stow makes specific mention of the mayor riding through the streets on horseback while a sword bearer was traveling in front of him, and Cade repeats this image and action. Caroline Barron uses the term “lynchpin” to describe the ward alderman’s position in London’s civic government. In a sense, Cade effectively underscores the ceremonial and political importance of the ward alderman and his civic responsibilities in adopting and subverting the actions and the visual signs of the ward alderman and his deputy aldermen. The clothing Cade wears has significance beyond its association with the rituals of the Midsummer Watch. The image of a rebel acting as a policeman, robber, and murderer is powerful, exciting, and disconcerting: Cade is the ultimate anti-hero and real urban outlaw. The mercantile and middle class’ initial support of Cade’s rebellion was significant. Yet these powerful members of the London oligarchy were quick to run away from Cade and his aims once the situation in London became too dangerous and costly. Naturally, Cade and his men felt abandoned and betrayed by those citizens who had originally supported the rebellion. Cade’s dress is seen not only as a parody of the Midsummer Watch and of the bureaucratic leaders who organized it, but it also represents the much larger social context of the ceremonial traditions of Guildhall ridings associated with mayoral pageants and royal processions. The Midsummer Watch and other ceremonial processions were major civic events for London and its citizens (as well as for other cities in England) from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In the week prior to Cade entering London and setting fire to London Bridge, Henry VI decides to leave (some would say flee) London. On June 25, the king

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travels to Kenilworth in Warwickshire, 100 miles from London.141 The city had to rely on its own citizens and local government to protect London’s population. Consequently, the king abandoned his city, the symbolic and economic capital of England—and thus a vigilant watch would have been called for. By moving his forces into London in and around London’s and Kent’s Midsummer Watches, Cade usurps the power of the regional authority and institutes his own form of surveillance and control. When we examine the Bale Chronicle and An English Chronicle’s accounts of Cade’s procession through London, it becomes quite clear that his attire and his actions are both working within a set of dialectical oppositions: the poor and the wealthy people of England, as observed in Cade’s straw hat and the aristocratic armament; the free and the controlled, as viewed in the seemingly unrestricted mayhem of the riot and the organized bureaucracy of the Midsummer Watch and related pageants (which, paradoxically, Cade adopts); and safety and being in harm’s way, as seen in the Midsummer Watch’s aim to bring a sense of security to London. Cade, in assuming the position of leader of the Midsummer Watch, has created an environment where no one is safe, especially those who have much to lose. Jack Cade’s decision to dress himself in such an outfit and to identify himself as the leader of a popular rebellion may even further underscore this sense of the Cade Rebellion’s polarity, both internal and external. In the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, it is recorded that at least 500 Scarborough rebels in June of that year swore a mutual oath of self-support and adopted a common livery: a white hood with a red liripipe or tail.142 Cade chooses the opposite path. Instead of unifying his band under a common mode of attire (or have them all wear a straw hat), he goes out of his way to appear different from everyone else. Whether this conduct is egotism, bravado, or megalomaniac behavior, we are unsure. While the sight of Cade in this attire may serve to ignite his army, the dress also acts as a lightning rod of antiCade sentiment. After all, witnessing Jack Cade parody a fellow alderman, guild member, or gentleman who may have taken an active (and very serious) role in the Midsummer Watch could have caused more open hostility in London, and the rebellion may have grown even more brutal as a result of this mock procession.

141

 Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 86; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132–3.  R. B. Dobson, “The Risings in York, Beverly and Scarborough, 1380–1381,” in The English Rising of 1381, ed., Rodney H. Hilton and Trevor Aston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 112–42 at 136. 142

Chapter 4

John Payn and the Case of the Purloined Apparel

As seen in the previous chapter, one’s attire in the Middle Ages (and indeed in most ages) held symbolic and real value. What a person wore in medieval England was almost uniformly interpreted as an external representation of that individual’s social class. Chaucer’s portraits of the pilgrims in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales are perhaps the best-known examples of a poet describing the various modes of dress and costume that the pilgrims wear. Nevertheless, Chaucer is not without his own biases regarding his creation of the literary illustrations of the pilgrims. The portraits should not be read or interpreted as being universal descriptions; rather, these descriptions are Chaucer’s own metaphorical representations of the various classes and occupations in late fourteenth-century England. This complexity of the pilgrims’ attire (and how one could interpret one’s own outer and inner selves) is made all the more multifaceted when we examine Chaucer’s descriptions of the pilgrims within the context of the Ellesmere manuscript, Huntington Library MS EL 26 C9. The twenty-three equestrian portraits of the pilgrims, which are thought to be the work of three artists, add yet more layers of authorship, authority, and interpretation to the pilgrims’ textual and visual representations. Just as Chaucer’s portraits of the pilgrims are open to interpretation, so too are the chronicles’ portraits of the people who take part in the Cade Rebellion. The aim of this chapter is to bring into the foreground the person of John Payn, his role in the revolt, and the significance of his absence from the London chronicles’ record of the 1450 Rebellion. I will argue that Cade’s attire that he wore as a parody of the Midsummer Watch was most likely stolen from a John Payn (or Payne), one of Sir John Fastolf’s servants. The chroniclers’ possible misidentification of Cade’s clothing as belonging to Sir Humphrey Stafford reveals another layer of historical reality and social commentary. One of the central texts for this chapter is John Payn’s letter to John Paston I, friend of Fastolf and one of ten executors to Fastolf’s will. This letter, Paston Letter 692, details Payn’s involvement with the rebels and describes his goods that were stolen. Payn’s letter, however, is written fifteen years after the 1450 Rebellion. While this time lag is substantial, Payn’s lucid memory of his encounter with the rebels is impressive, for he provides a detailed inventory of what goods the rebels pilfer. Payn’s motivation to write to Paston is clear: he wants to be reimbursed for his losses. Why Payn waits fifteen years to write—and why the chroniclers perhaps misidentify Sir Humphry as the owner of the regalia that Cade wears—are two complex issues, and the majority of this chapter will be spent providing some possible answers.

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John Payn and the Staffords In the case of Jack Cade, the attire that he wears through the streets of London as a parody of the Midsummer Watch is almost certainly stolen. For a person such as Cade to actually own clothing and attire such as the kind that he wears as he marches through London is highly unlikely. In the previous chapter, I noted how Mary-Rose McLaren thought that it was doubtful that Cade would steal the clothing from Philip Malpas. The alderman, McLaren felt, did not have the money for such an elaborate and expensive array of clothing and armor. Also, when we examine the goods stolen from Malpas’ house, none of the property taken from Malpas corresponds with Cade’s attire. I. M. W. Harvey contends that this “improvised regalia” that Cade wore was “stripped from one of the slain Staffords,” and cites their deaths in Bale’s Chronicle and in An English Chronicle. However, neither the Bale Chronicle nor An English Chronicle reports either of the two Staffords wearing armor or clothing such as the kind Cade was later seen wearing as he marched through London. And yet Raphael Holinshed, in his 1587 work the Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, records that “Iacke Cade vpon victorie against the Staffords apparelled himselfe in sir Humphries brigandine set full of guilt nailes, and so in some glorie returned againe London.” Interestingly, while James Gairdner agrees with Holinshed’s general account, the scholar does not acknowledge that this was in fact the attire that Cade wore as the leader paraded through London. While Flenley had not yet edited Bale’s Chronicle at the time that Gairdner wrote his article, it is unclear why Gairdner did not examine the similar portrait of Cade in John Silvester Davies’ edition of 

 For the catalogue of property taken from Malpas’ home as recorded in Gregory’s Chronicle, see James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), 192. For a complete listing of the items recovered from Cade after his death that were stolen, see Francis Palgrave, ed., The Antient Kalendars and Inventories of the Treasure of His Majesty’s Exchequer (London: G. Eyre and A. Spottiswoode 1836), 2:217–20. This full list includes many household items such as silver candlesticks, fine clothing, and dozens of items of fine flatware; apparently, the sum of “cxiii li ix s iii d” of Malpas’ money was recovered, 220.   I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 93 and n. 110.   For another account of the slaying of William Stafford, a squire, and Sir Humphrey Stafford see the edition of Bodleian Library MS Gough London 10 in Ralph Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 153–4.   Raphael Holinshed, Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, ed., Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, 1807–1808; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965), 3:224.    James Gairdner, “Jack Cade’s Rebellion,” The Fortnightly Review 8, n.s., (1870): 442–55 at 449.

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An English Chronicle, first published in 1856. Holinshed was most likely basing his version of the Staffords’ murder and on Robert Fabyan’s record of the incident, as it is printed in his New Chronicles of England and France. Fabyan writes the following regarding the Staffords’ death: And so soon as Jak Cade hadd thus ouyr comyn the Staffordes, he anoon apparayllid hym with the knygthis apparayll, and diddd on hym his brigandirs sett with gilt nayll, and his salet & gilt sporis.

There is also a similar entry in the second part of The Great Chronicle of London. The second part, covering the years 1439–1512, is thought to have been authored by Fabyan: And then to avaunce his pride he dyd upon hym the Breganders of the fforesaid sir umffrey, of velvet Garnysshid wt gilt nayle and his Salett & Gylt sporis, and soo of a knave was made a knygth, whereafftyr he then wt hys pepyll drewe agayn toward london.

Moreover, there is an entry similar to that of Fabyan’s New Chronicles and The Great Chronicle, and it is found in the prose Brut manuscript British Library Additional MS 10099. Regarding the Staffords and their attire, the following entry is recorded: Then, after þat þe Capytan had þis victory vpon þise Staffordes, Anone he toke Sir Humfrey Salett, & his brigantines smytten ful of gylted nayles, & also his gilted sporres, & Araied him like A lorde & a Capitayn, & resorted with al his meyney, & also mo þan he had tofore, to þe Blak-Heth.

And again, a similar entry is present in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. XVI: Cade “toke the Salet and the briganders of sir humfreis set full of gilt nailles, and also his gilt sporys, and arayed hym like a lorde.”10 The question of from whence the complete attire Cade wore originated most definitely points to the   Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Henry Ellis (London: Rivington, Payne, Wilkie [etc.], 1811), 622–5.    Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Nero C. XI, fol. 408r; Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, 623.   A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicle of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr., Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), 182.   Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o.s., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 518.7–10. 10  Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905; repr., Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1977), 159–60.

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rebels’ most frequent pastime, and the action which Cade, while he proclaims it punishable by death, frequently took part in: robbery. I contend that some of these items that Cade wears, apart from the straw hat and the gown made of blue sable, could very well have been stolen from Sir Humphrey Stafford. However, the remainder of Cade’s attire could have also been stolen from John Payn. Payn’s encounter with Cade almost immediately precedes the leader’s procession through London, and it is reasonable to assume that Cade and his leaders could have worn the attire (as a marker of power and victory) of several men of power whom they captured or killed, such as Humphrey the knight or even Payn. As discussed in Chapter 1, many of the London chronicles had an agenda that they pushed. The chroniclers thus have entries that express the biases of their authors and also the biases of those who read these London chronicles. The slaying of the Staffords became a significant moment in the Cade Rebellion. The Staffords were generally regarded as upright subjects to the king, and their deaths were mourned. Cade now becomes a man to be reckoned with. For if he (and his army) can kill two well-armed and seasoned fighters—as well as take the lives of a fair number of royal soldiers—then Cade and his mission cannot be dismissed as a minor uprising. The chroniclers took the killing of the Humphrey brothers as a serious matter and ran with the story. Cade was certainly aware of the severity of this crime. The death of the Staffords, he realized, would not go unanswered. And perhaps this is what Cade really wanted: a reaction. Cade’s Rebellion was a series of big moments that held significant weight and societal symbolism. The rebel victory at Tonbridge, Buckingham’s estate near Sevenoaks, was where the rebels drew first blood. If Cade could kill the Staffords and then parade around in Humphrey’s attire, then others might take his rebellion seriously. R. A. Griffiths comments that this ambush “gave heart to Cade’s men and precipitated a crisis of morale and discipline among the royal and magnate retainers.”11 Perhaps this is exactly what Cade wanted: a showy, violent, and shocking beginning to the revolt. Outside of the Norfolk circle of friends and acquaintances who orbited around the Pastons, it is unclear just what kind of relations John Payn had with London and its citizens. Certainly Payn was not a national figure, but Sir Humphrey Stafford and William Stafford were. And the reports in the chronicles of Cade wearing Humphrey’s accoutrements certainly make for a more interesting read. After all, many of the writers of the chronicles were quick to intensify the anti-Cade rhetoric and to latch on to any piece of information that would support the ideologies of their reading audience. Cade was a very clever person, particularly early on in his revolution. The rebels’ Bills of Complaint are in many cases a perfect example of the ability of the insurgency to manipulate information so as to fit the aims of the rebellion. I do agree that it is possible that Cade’s attire is that of Sir Humphrey Stafford. However, when we understand that Cade’s Rebellion was a movement built on the twisting and manipulation of information, we can see the 11   R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981; repr., Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1998), 623–4.

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possibility that Cade altered—planted one might say—the story of him wearing Humphrey’s clothing. The morale of Cade’s retinue would not have reached as high as it did if he announced (or it was reported by a third party) that the attire that Cade wore through London belonged to an esquire from Norfolk. Stealing someone’s attire, particularly the clothing of someone who belongs to the Third Estate, and wearing it is a less effective means of troop motivation than killing a nobleman and donning his uniform. John Payn and the Paston Circle John Payn, Sir John Fastolf, Jack Cade, and the events surrounding Cade’s Rebellion all have a very real connection to one of the most important latemedieval English families: the Pastons. As their correspondences demonstrate, the life of a rising middle-class family in the fifteenth century was tumultuous and replete with factional disruptions. Both John Paston and Sir John Fastolf, along with the duke of Norfolk, represent a collection of what Christine Carpenter calls “socially climbing” individuals and “interlopers” who are the “principle victims and opponents of the duke of Suffolk’s circle.”12 The Pastons, and especially John Paston, are sympathetic to the demands and grievances Cade puts forward. Carpenter describes Suffolk’s policies in East Anglia from about 1448 on as having a “complete stranglehold on the region.”13 Moreover, the letters of the Pastons give readers “the most graphic account of what it felt like to be on the wrong side in a region where the friends of Suffolk were all-powerful.”14 Indeed, Robert Hungerford, Lord Moleyns, an ally of Suffolk, attempts to seize the Paston estate of Gresham with the full support of the government, and several of Fastolf’s properties come under attack, apparently by Suffolk’s men.15 Fastolf, a war hero during the later phases of the Hundred Years’ War, nonetheless, earns a reputation as being somewhat of a coward. Fastolf is often characterized as an incompetent soldier in later battles, most notably Joan of Arc’s defeat of the English at Patay in 1429. Fastolf, being a neighbor of John Paston, is featured very frequently in the Paston letters, and John Paston I served as executer of the knight’s estate after his death in 1459. But of course, political and social relations amongst the English gentry were never staid. Fastolf’s death and the subsequent re-writing of his will were just one of a series of scandals that shaped the Pastons. When we examine Payn’s letter to John Paston, it is important to remember that the Paston family was a social and familial network of people who were very much concerned with their 12  Christine Carpenter, The Wars of the Roses: Politics and the Constitution in England, c. 1437–1509 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 111. 13  Ibid., 111. 14  Ibid., 110. 15  Ibid., 111.

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relatively new standing in the wealthy landed class. The Pastons sought to protect their wealth at all costs, and the men of the family were not averse to breaking a few laws from time to time in order to turn a profit and to keep ahead of the other gentry families. According to John Barber and Colin Richmond, John Paston apparently re-wrote Fastolf’s will two days before he died on November 5, 1459. For Paston’s assistance in helping Fastolf establish a college of priests at Caister, Paston inherited all of Fastolf’s lands.16 Sir Thomas Howes, one of Fastolf’s executors, describes having seen Paston forge the will.17 Payn’s letter to John Paston I, number 692, is a petition to Paston requesting payment for “grete losses and hurtes þat your pouer peticioner haeth.”18 Payn’s letter begins with an opening paragraph that is abounding in complementary expressions. Payn exalts Paston as his “ryght enterly bylouyd maister” and is “euermore desyryng to here of your worshipfull state, prosperité, and welfare.”19 From the outset of the letter, Payn is obviously trying to be as respectful as he can to Paston. And Payn was right to be cautious and respectful to his former employer’s loyal friend: by 1465 things were beginning to turn sour for the Paston family. Paston was increasingly occupied with legal matters surrounding Fastolf’s will; John Paston II was knighted, yet he was accused of various crimes in Suffolk; there were numerous internal family squabbles; and John de la Pole, the duke of Suffolk (and the son of William de la Pole, who was murdered in 1450), began to challenge the Paston’s rights to several estates, including Drayton and Hellesdon. And if all of this nastiness was not enough for Paston, the Wars of the Roses also had a significant impact on the family. By 1465, Edward IV was in command, and many of the Pastons’ rivals were loyal to the Yorkist White Rose. To say that Payn was trying to sweet talk Paston would be an understatement. Payn realized that the powerful Norfolk landholder was in the middle of difficult times, and that worse times were on the horizon.

16  Richard Barber, The Pastons: A Family in the Wars of the Roses (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1993), 74–5; Colin Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Fastolf’s Will (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 53–106. 17  Barber, The Pastons, 142–4. 18  Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century: Part II. EETS, s.s., 21 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 313.7. Barber, The Pastons, also has an edition of this letter, 47–50. There is one other Paston letter that refers directly to the Cade Rebellion: number 471, dated January 3, 1451, from William Wayte to John Paston; see Paston Letters Part II, 60–62, especially 60.1–15 for the brief reference to Cade. For other summaries of Payn’s encounter with the rebel force see Griffiths, Henry VI, 635; G. Kriehn, The English Rising in 1450 (Strasburg: Heitz, 1892), 35–7; Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 87–8; and Helen E. Mauer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2003), 72–4. 19  Davis, The Paston Letters Part II, 313.1, 2–4.

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John Payn and the 1450 Rebellion As a servant to Fastolf, Payn is sent by his employer to Blackheath to see what Cade and his men are up to and to determine if they are a danger to Fastolf and his property. In the course of doing so, Payn describes the specifics of how he was brought before Cade and his army: And þan I was sworen to the Capteyn and to the comens þat I shulde go to Southewerk and aray me in the best wyse þat I covde, and come a-geyn to hem to helpe hem.20

The rebel leader accuses Payn of spying on him and his men. Payn is then told that his master, Sir John Fastolf, “had furnysshyd his plase with the olde sawdyors of Normaundy and abyllymentes of werre to distroy the comens of Kent.”21 Because Payn is captured and suspected of spying, he reports to Paston that Cade “seyd playnly þat I shulde lese my hede.”22 As G. Kriehn points out, there are several details regarding Payn’s letter that are problematic, and he questions the author’s truthfulness and overall character.23 The first of these details is the date the letter was composed: 1465. Payn tells John Paston that is has been “xv yere passed” since “the comens of Kent come to the Blak Heth.”24 The lag time from when the rebellion took place to when Payn composes the letter is a problem, especially when one considers the possibility that Payn’s memory and recollection of the minutiae of what was stolen from him and his master may be faulty. However, when we read Payn’s letter, the details of what was lost and what took place within the rebel camp are so very specific that it is difficult to dismiss his statements outright. After Cade swears Payn to service, and Payn (apparently for fear of death) consents, Payn is given “th’articles” and brings them to his boss. These articles are the Rebels’ Bills of Complaint (the second of three versions that exist) and could be Magdalen College, Oxford, MS 306.25 Payn is then ordered to go to Southwark, and he is ordered to array himself so as to fight with the commons in the battle of London Bridge. This undertaking costs Payn 27 shillings.26 Payn also tells Paston that he fights at the battle of London, apparently at the orders of Cade and his leaders. At the battle, Payn is “woundyt and hurte

20

 Davis, Paston Letters Part II, 314.40–42.  Ibid., 314.31–3. MED records abil(l)ement (n.) 1. (a) “A piece of equipment; a tool, an instrument, a weapon, a piece of armor, etc.; ––usually pl.” 22  Ibid., 414.33–4. 23  Kriehn, The English Rising in 1450, 36. 24  Davis, The Paston Letters Part II, 313.8. 25  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 188–90. 26  Davis, The Paston Letters Part II, 314.43. 21

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nerehand to deth” and fights for “vj ovres.”27 For someone who was ordered to fight or else face execution, Payn certainly fought bravely. If we consider the effects that trauma has on a person, it is reasonable to consider Payn’s delay in writing to Paston as a symptom of working through a violent experience. As discussed first in Chapter 2, one of the key elements associated with trauma is a period of latency. Here, the traumatic experience lies dormant. For months or years, the witness to a traumatic event will have no memory of it, and it is only through the repetition of the event (through dreams, verbal and written testimony) that the witness will re-experience the trauma and work through it. The period of fifteen years, therefore, may be Payn’s own period of latency. By examining the content of his letter, it does not appear that Payn had written to Paston earlier; this letter implies that this is Payn’s first correspondence with Paston on this particular matter. Payn was violently robbed, the lives of his family were threatened, and he himself was taken into Cade’s tent and “j ax and j blok was brought forth to haue smetyn of [his] hede.”28 The matter-of-fact way in which Pay describes the items stolen from him is different in style than the rest of the letter, for this section wherein he describes the items section reads like a chronicle; it even begins with the word “Item,” the word that initiates many chronicle entries.29 This break in his style of composition could signal Payn’s own representation of the historical trauma, for just as Mallarmé manifested his trauma through an “accident of verse,” the stylistic change in Payn’s testimony suggests that he himself has exhibited the effects of trauma through his writing.30 In this inventory of items taken, Payn describes a highly interesting collection of attire that Cade and his men steal: And nought with-stondyng the Capteyn þat same tyme lete take me atte Whyte Harte in Suthewerk, and þer comaundyt Lovelase31 to dispoyle me ovte of myn aray, and so he dyd; and þer he toke a fyn govne of musterdevyllres32 furryd with fyn beuers and j peyre of bregandyrns keuert with blew fellewet and gylt nayle, with legharneyse, the vallew of the govn and the bregardyns viij li.

27

 Ibid., 315.65–7.  Ibid., 314.35–6. 29  Ibid., 314.56. 30  See Chapter 2 for a more detailed discussion of trauma in the Cade Rebellion. 31   This could possibly be the same Lovelace who later fought at the second battle of Saint Albans in 1461 and is there identified as the captain of the Kentish men. See William Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377–1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2003), 98. 32   MED, muster–de–vilers (n.), “(a) A kind of woolen cloth, originally from Montivilliers in Normandy, usually of a mixed gray color.” 28

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Item, the Capteyn sent certeyn of his meyny to my chamber in your rentes, and þer breke vp my chest and toke a-wey j obligacion of myn þat was due vnto me of xxxvj li. by a prest of Povles, and j nother obligacion of j knyght of x li., and my purse with v rynges of golde and xvij s. vj d. of golde and syluur, and j harneyse complete of the touche of Milleyn,33 and j govne of fyn perse blewe furryd with marterns,34 and ij govnes, one furred with bogey35 and j nother lyned with fryse;36 and þer wolde haue smetyn of myn hede whan þat they had dyspoyled me atte White Harte.37

The battle on London Bridge ends on the morning of July 6, and Cade and his men have pillaged London for over two days, killing hundreds. On Friday and Saturday we have, as recorded in Bale’s Chronicle and in An English Chronicle, Cade parading through London and possibly parodying the Midsummer Watch. Cade is wearing clothing and attire that is associated with high-ranking civic officials (and also lay laborers who would be wearing the straw hat). There are notable similarities between what Cade wears through London and what is apparently stolen from Payn. An English Chronicle records Cade riding about with a drawn sword in one hand and another sword carried before him by another person as if Cade were an individual of high importance. Cade is also wearing gilded spurs, a gilded helmet, body armor (“a paire of brygandires”) and a gown of blue velvet.38 Bale’s Chronicle records Cade parading through London in a blue gown of velvet with “sables furred,” a straw hat on his head, and a drawn sword in his hand. These accounts most certainly relate to one another and to the material stolen from Payn prior to the assault on London.39 That both chronicles here record similar, but not identical, items that Cade wears can be best explained in two ways. First, the chronicler records only what was obvious or interesting to him: the Bale chronicler thinks it is common for a soldier to wear body armor, and thus sees no need to record it. Second, both accounts record the same event but at varying times during the two days. Given that Cade moved around London quite feverishly and was involved in many violent battles, it would be quite common for an item or items to be lost along the way—the straw hat in particular. Third, the chroniclers are identifying the same item of clothing using different terminologies: the gown of blue velvet of An English Chronicle 33

 Ibid., Milan (n.), “(b) habergeoun (viser) of ~, a coat of mail (visor) made in Milan or made of Milan steel; of ~ touche, of the touche of ~, of Milanese make or quality; stamped with the official stamp of Milan.” Obviously, an expensive garment. 34  Ibid., martrin (n.), 1. “(a) The European marten (a member of the genus Martes); (b) the European polecat (Mustela putorius).” A British polecat resembles a ferret. 35  Ibid., bŏuğē (n.) 2. “(a) Sheepskin (as distinct from lambskin).” 36  Ibid., frise (n.) 2. “(a) A kind of coarse woolen cloth with a thick nap on one side.” 37  Davis, The Paston Letters Part II, 314.50–15.63. 38  Marx, An English Chronicle, 69. 39  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 133.

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and the gown of blue velvet furred with sables are most likely one and the same. Moreover, the chronicler of An English Chronicler may see Cade wearing a straw hat, but as a result of a number of possible variables (visual confusion between two similar but different items, the distance between the viewer and the object is too great, or the account is passed down through an intermediary), the chronicler may have recorded it as a gilded—a yellow—hat/helmet. That the word “sailet” is used in An English Chronicle is interesting: a sailet is a light helmet, and in a combat situation a straw hat could be viewed as such. All that Cade wore in this episode, save the straw hat, was apparently in the possession of Payn, and this includes the gown of velvet with furred sables. Payn had in his possession a “govne of fyn perse blewe furryd with marterns.”40 The MED also records martrin, n. 2. (c): “~ sable, the fur of the European sable (Mustela zibellina).” In the Middle English language and also the culture of medieval England, the fur of a polecat and a sable were interchangeable terms and to some degree synonymous. What Payn refers to as blue velvet gown furred with “marterns,” the Bale chronicles identifies as a blue velvet gown being furred with “sables.” While a sable is generally black in color and a polecat has black and dark-brown fur, to the naked eye in a chaotic environment dark brown or black could look identical. This catalogue of items that the rebels steal from Payn all relates in an exceptional way to the validity of the historical record and of the ability of people to accurately record what they see. Both Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle provide detailed insight into the fifteenth century, particularly the Cade Rebellion; both are often the touchstones scholars use for creating a chronology of events and dates associated with the revolt. When there is a discrepancy within the historical record regarding the authenticity or identity of an author of an historical record, then what the reader of the record is examining may be (passive or intentional) narratival mythmaking, or it may be the repository of an excitable or misinformed narrator’s misinformation. This last statement may hold some degree of importance when we (re)consider Payn’s letter, his motivation for writing it, and which Payn he is. Let us start with the latter, Payn’s identity. Multiple Payns In the general pardon issued on July 6 and 7 there is a record of a John Payn. On the July 7 pardon, there is recorded “John Payne, ‘gentlilman’” from Mereworth, Kent.41 However, another John Payn received pardon on November 2, 1451, for

40

 Davis, The Paston Letters Part II, 315.61.   CPR, Henry VI. Vol. 5, 1446–52 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1909), 369. B. Brogden Orridge Illustrations of Jack Cade’s Rebellion (London: John Camden Hotton, 1869), 27, notes that Payn and another gentleman Robert Chamberleyn, were from Mereworth. 41

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his offences from last July 7 until last June 10.42 Helen Maurer argues it is unlikely that the first John Payn who received a pardon on July 7 is our man who wrote the letter to John Paston, for she states that the “battle on the bridge ended on the morning of the sixth, and J. Payn’s story of what happened to him thereafter cannot be made to fit.”43 Both Harvey and Maurer affirm that the Payn of the Paston letter was John Payn of Peckham, and Mauer notes a “yeoman and a smith from Peckham, Kent,” one who is indicted three times in June 1451 for treasonous acts.44 There is also the real possibility that the two Payns pardoned in the Calendar of Patent Rolls were the same individual. A somewhat tenuous scenario is that the Payn who lived at Mereworth may have been absent from the pardon, moved to Peckham over the course of the year, and then received his pardon on November 2, 1451, his new residence being reflected on the new pardon. However, Maurer’s line of argumentation in deciding which Payn wrote the letter is not completely solid. Maurer herself admits that later in life the Payn who wrote the letter to John Paston became an avid storyteller. That the timeline regarding the battle of London Bridge, the dates that the pardons are issued, and the fifteen-year gap in time between Payn’s participation in the Cade Rebellion and the date of his letter do not correlate should not be seen as a reason for dismissing one Payn over the other. Reason being, just because one was named in the general pardon does not mean that he needed to appear before the king’s bench when the pardon was being issued. Cade himself is a prime example of this incident. That Payn does not mention the July 7 pardon or the other pardons in his letter to John Paston should not determine his probable identity. So I am unsure what Maurer means when she says that “J. Payn’s story of what happened to him thereafter [the battle and the pardon] cannot be made to fit.” Either Payn is telling the truth regarding the events after the battle—his house is robbed and his wife and children are almost hanged, he is imprisoned and brought before the queen to describe his employer’s (Sir John Fastolf’s) treasonous acts, and is eventually pardoned thanks to his wife and his cousin who is a “yomen of þe Crovne”—or he is creating one large lie so as to receive capital from John Paston.45 The list of what was stolen from Payn is so precise and so ordered. There is a matter-of-fact quality to Payn’s account of his actions in the Cade Rebellion, for it 42

  CPR, Henry VI: 1446–52, 497.  Mauer, Margaret of Anjou, 72. 44   CPR, Henry VI: 1446–52, 497; Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, 73; Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 113. For these three different indictments, see Roger Virgoe, “Some Ancient Indictments in the King’s Bench Referring to Kent, 1450–1452,” in Documents Illustrative of Medieval Kentish Society, ed. F. R. H. Du Boulay. Kent Archaeological Society 18 (Ashford: Headly Brothers, 1964), 214–65 at 250–52. As Maurer notes, 73 n. 31, a “John Payn” served as a juror for some of these indictments. 45  In her biography of John Fastolf, Jessie Crosland refers to John Payn as Fastolf’s “servant.” See Sir John Fastolfe: A Medieval “Man of Property” (London: Peter Owen, 1970), 58. For an examination of Fastolf’s death and issues regarding his will, see 62–4. 43

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reads like an entry in a highly literal chronicle or like entries in annals. In contrast, the majority of Payn’s letter contains a higher degree of truthfulness than the figurative and somewhat melodramatic account of his life after the Cade Revolt, which comprises the final paragraph of the letter. In his masterful study of the nature of memory, History, Memory, Forgetting, Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between those memories that come to us naturally and those that are actively sought out; that is, those memories that require a “simple evocation” and those that necessitate an “effort to recall.”46 Since we do not have Payn’s own words to describe why he chose to write to Paston—and why he waited fifteen years to do so—it would be problematic to interpret his letter as an example of placing onto paper either an evocative memory or one that we would call a recollection. Regarding the latter form, David Pellauer says that, according to Ricoeur, it “depends on a specific capacity to remember, one of the constitutive capacities of the capable human being, one that we must add to those of being able to speak, to narrate, and to understand narratives.”47 Payn’s letter is a recollection of the past, and the diction and style of the portion of the letter where he lists the goods taken from him does not appear to be the work of someone who is retrieving a lost memory. A memory that is lost and remembered was forgotten. For Ricoeur, those memories that are forgotten and are subsequently remembered are “blocked,” “manipulated,” or “obligated,” and all three are designated as abuses of memory.48 While some might see Payn’s letter as the work of a pathological liar (and thus a manipulator of memory), the precise nature of the document’s language says otherwise. Is this a Christmas wish list? Hardly. In a certain sense, the list of items stolen reads like a list of items in a person’s will. Quite possibly Payn had a will drawn prior to the Cade Rebellion, and these items were included in the document. There is also the possibility that these items are not stolen by Cade’s men but rather given to Cade by Payn. If Payn were sympathetic to the revolt and its causes, or if he were perhaps an active and willing participant, then it would seem plausible that he would give this attire to Cade. That Payn needed to recoup his monies after Fastolf’s death would not be unheard of. Fastolf, in his death, left much of his personal affairs in disarray. William Worcester, Fastolf’s secretary, spent some twenty years after his employer’s death trying to see to Fastolf’s wishes. Worcester even went to trial on several occasions on matters of monies and property that Fastolf owed to people. While Fastolf died in 1459, Worcester engaged in his employer’s affairs until 1478. Worcester died in 1482, and it is very conceivable that Payn could have waited fifteen years to regain his property and monies lost, especially if Worcester is unreceptive to Payn or threatens suit, or if

46   Paul Ricoeur, History, Memory, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 19. 47  David Pellauer, Ricoeur: A Guide for the Perplexed (London and New York: Continuum, 2007), 111. 48  Ricoeur, History, Memory, Forgetting, 68–92.

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Payn is imprisoned (as he says in his letter).49 Worcester was having such a poor time in dealing with Paston that Payn’s letter may be his last resort: Payn waited patiently to get a monetary settlement for his losses and services, and now he is writing in a time of need. This connection between Sir John Fastolf, John Payn, and William Worcester is one that neither Maurer nor Harvey investigates further. One of Worcester’s better-known works is his commonplace book of travel writings, proverbs, brief historical remarks, and scientific observations: the Itinerary.50 From 1477 to 1480, Worcester embarks on four journeys throughout the southern part of England and Norfolk. The longest of these journeys is from August 18 to October 8, 1478.51 While at Caister Fastolf in Norwich in 1479/80, Worcester makes the following historical note for the year 1472: Die .12. Nouembris in elemosina pro sepultura Margarete vxoris Johannis Payn armigeri de Bermondseystreet.52

Harvey defines “armigeri” as an “esquire.”53 This rank is more close to that of John Payn’s status as a “gentlilman” on the July 7 general pardon than of the other John Payn’s titles: “‘yoman,’ alias late of Estpekham, co. Kent, ‘smith’,” as recorded on November 2, 1451.54 In Worcester’s entry we also are told of Payn’s wife’s name, Margaret (an extremely common name), and of her death. Her name does not appear in any of the Patent Rolls, but we are told in the Paston letter that Payn is indeed married. According to Worcester’s entry, this John Payn, esquire, lived on Bermondsey Street in London. This location does not correlate with either the Payn who authored the Paston letter, or the John Payn from Mereworth listed on the July 7 general pardon, or even the John Payn from Peckham who was pardoned on November 2, 1451. It is possible that either the Mereworth or the Peckham Payn moved to London by 1472 where his wife Margaret died. Worcester does not say, however, whether Payn dies before his wife, but it is assumed that he is still living.

49  Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England ii: c. 1307 to the Early Sixteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 328; K. B. McFarlane, “William Worcester: A Preliminary Survey,” in Studies Presented to Sir Hilary Jenkinson, ed. J. Conway Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 196–221 at 201–3. 50   The Itinerary exists in a bound book, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 210. All references to the Itinerary are from William Worcestre, Itineraries, ed. and trans. John H. Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969). 51  For a summary of this and other journeys see Gransden, English Historical Literature ii, 331–2. 52   Worcestre, Itineraries, 254. 53  Ibid., 255. 54   CPR, Henry VI: 1446–52, 497.

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To be sure, I am not as prepared as is Mauer to argue definitively for one Payn over another as the writer of the Paston letter and thus claim which Payn was owner of the clothing that Cade wore through London. The Payn from Pecham was pardoned for his involvement in the Cade Revolt over a year after the rebellion, and this passage of time may account for the Payn of the Paston letter being imprisoned by the queen and jailed, apparently for some time, before the king pardons him. Still, the title of esquire, as seen in Worcester’s Itineries, does not match either the title of a “gentilman” or of “yeoman” or “smith.” Still, these titles are very similar and should not be viewed as the deciding criteria for Payn’s identification. Sometime in the mid-fifteenth century, these societal ranks become conflated, so that an esquire and a yeoman could perform the same services, hold the same responsibilities, and maintain similar social status. When we examine the MED and the definitions for “squire,” “gentleman,” and “yeomen,” we can note certain similarities between these modes of social classification: Squire (n.): 1. (a) An aspirant to knighthood in the feudal military system; an esquire or a personal servant attendant upon a knight; a soldier below the rank of knight; also fig.; also, a person holding an analogous rank in classical society. 2. (a): A member of the landowning class next below the rank of knight; the son of a knight; also, a young man of gentle birth. 3. (a) A household attendant or servant; a retainer, follower; a page; also, a messenger; (b) an officer of the English royal household attendant on the king. ğentīl-man (n.), 1a. (a) A man of noble or gentle birth, one of the gentry. 1b. (b) A nobleman in attendance upon a king, lord, or bishop. 2. A member of the nobility whose behavior conforms to the ideals of chivalry and Christianity, a gentleman. yēman (n.) 1. (a) A free-born male attendant in a royal or noble household holding a rank above that of groom and page but below that of squire, a household official; an attendant or assistant to someone of higher rank, a retainer; gentil-man (b) a subordinate officer in a specific department of a royal or noble household, ranking below a sergeant and above a groom; also, as a prefix to the titles of various officers of the household. (c) a subordinate military officer; an assistant to a master gunner; an officer in charge of cannon for a town. (d) a hired laborer; also, a member of a ship’s crew, seaman. (e) as a term of disparagement: an underling, inferior; in direct address: fellow.

In Chaucer’s England a yeoman was “either a freeholder of some substance or a household official of some status.”55 In the Knight’s Tale, Jill Mann notes that in “military terms, yeomen were foot soldiers” who “ranked below the mounted

55

  J. C. Holt, Robin Hood, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson: 1989), 120.

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knights and squires.”56 By the fifteenth century, a yeoman is a term that has a great number of possible meanings. In regards to the apparel stolen from John Payn, it is very reasonable to assume that by 1450 an esquire (or gentleman) and a yeoman could possess the same type of attire. In Edward IV’s Black Book—the household book that describes the duties and responsibilities of virtually all of Edward’s servants and attendants—the squires of the household, the yeoman of the crown, and the yeoman of the chamber all wore similar attire.57 Therefore, all of these types of clothing could match the sort of clothing seized from Payn’s possession. The yeoman of the crown, in particular, would be expected to be both household (one could say domestic servants) but also the best archers and soldiers in case the household came under attack. Regarding the yeoman of the crown, Edward IV had at least twenty-four, and they were to be “bold men, chosen and tryed out of euery lordes house in Ynglond for theyre cunyng and vertew.”58 These yeomen of the crown had various duties, from a “yeoman of the robes” to a yeoman of “the warderobe of beddes.” The yeoman of the crown “toke xs. for his gowne and iiis. viijd. for his hosen and shoone … Also hit accordith that they be chosen men of manhoode, shotyng, and specially of vertuose condition.” When they were performing the nightly watch, they “shuld be gurde with theyr swerdes or with other wepyns redy and harneys about them.”59 Edward IV had at least four yeoman of the chamber, and their duties were to “make beddes, to bere or hold torches, to sett bourdes, to apparayle all chambres … to wache the king by course; to go messagez.”60 There were at least forty squires of the household. These squires were arrayed in much the same manner as the yeoman and were instructed to “were the kinges lyuerey custumably, for the more glory and in worshippe this honorable houshold.”61 In the general pardon issued to the rebels, it is clearly written what each person’s social rank is, and there is a clear differentiation between yeomen and gentlemen. But it appears that this notation is an arbitrary identification of social rank. Indeed, while one person may considers himself a gentleman, another person holding 56

  Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, ed. Jill Mann (London and New York: Penguin, 2005), 803 n. 101. 57  A. R. Meyers, ed., The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 111–17. 58  Ibid., 116. 59  Ibid., 116. For illustration of a yeoman of the crown during the reign of Edward IV, see A. J. Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), Plate 2: The yeoman is wearing full light body armor (save the helmet), and is holding a sheathed sword; and see 29–56 for a thorough contextual analysis of the yeoman in the fifteenth century and in the early Robin Hood and medieval outlaw ballads. In the image of the yeoman that Pollard has chosen, the yeoman is wearing full light body armor (save the helmet), and is holding a sheathed sword. 60  Meyers, The Household of Edward IV, 117. 61  Ibid., 128.

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the same duties and responsibilities and maintaining the same social status may identify himself (or an outside party may classify him) as a yeoman. Still, as A. J. Pollard observes, the privileged “were anxious to draw a clear distinction between a gentleman and a yeoman, even though in practice, at the margins, it was sometimes difficult to discern.”62 There is also the connection between Payn the esquire (as seen in Itineries), William Worcester, and, by association, Sir John Fastolf. After examining several wills from the Public Record Office, I conclude that there are several John Payns who fit into the time frame and location of the Payn who wrote the Paston letter and of the two Payns pardoned. John Payn, Grocer of Saint Botolph Bishopsgate, City of London, died on May 20, 1466.63 And while the London location is promising, this is most certainly not our man. John Payn, an influential member of the Grocer’s Guild, is associated primarily with the workings of his guild, and there are no references to any interactions with Fastolf and no involvement with the Cade Rebellion.64 Pamela Nightingale describes Payn’s election of mayor of Southampton, and she notes that he was one of several guild members to insist upon regulations barring foreigners (Italians mainly) from selling their goods.65 An examination of the wills of other John Payns likewise has proven fruitless in possibly identifying which Payn composed the letter, and who was pardoned on July 6, 1450, and then pardoned again over a year later on November 2, 1451. It is possible that the individual who wrote the letter to John Paston in 1465 assumed the identity of the real John Payn who had worked for Fastolf and whom Worcester knew. Why someone using an alias of a John Payn, a person who had worked for Fastolf, concocted such an elaborate (yet detailed) description of his capture by Cade, including an account of the exact items stolen, and his and his family’s treatment thereafter the battle on London Bridge, is unclear. The National Archives does have the will of a John Hoxton otherwise, called John Payn or Payne of Saint Mary Reading, Berkshire.66 Evidently, this Payn often went by an alias (criminal

62

  Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood, 36.  Kew, NA, PROB 11/5. The will of John Payn, grocer of London, has been edited, see Reginald R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, A.D. 1258–A.D. 1688 (London: John C. Francis, 1889–90), 2:558–9. 64   Pamela Nightingale, A Medieval Mercantile Community: The Grocers’ Company and the Politics and Trade of London, 1000–1485 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 510–11, 531–2. This Payn also purchased membership in the London Grocers’ Company in 1441, 450. 65  Ibid., 531. 66  Kew, NA, PROB 11/20. Other wills of a John Payn that were examined but did not provide any insight into either the writer of the Paston letter or who the two pardons were: the Will of John Payn of Sudbury, Suffolk, January 20, 1491, Kew, NA, PROB 11/8; the Will of John Payn or Payne of Grinstead, Sussex, October 9, 1508, Kew, NA, PROB 11/16; the Will of John Payn, Mercer of Boston, Lincolnshire, August 27, 1504, Kew, NA, PROB 11/14; and the Will of John Payn or Payne, Draper of Worcester, Worcestershire, 63

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or otherwise, it is unclear by viewing the will). Again, this will does not help the case of identification. It can be assumed that the John Payn who wrote the letter to John Paston was in some form of financial distress; he had waited some fifteen years to collect his property, and fifteen years after the Cade Rebellion money (and the lack thereof) may have been an issue. There does exist in the National Archives a listing of a John Payn who was a gentleman, late of Helhoughton, Norfolk, and who was in debt and held no land or goods, with an entry date of 1469–70.67 Helhoughton is roughly twenty miles East-North-East of Norwich and can be a logical residence of a John Payn who was once associated with the Fastolf family in Caister. Interestingly enough, where one may have thought to find some information regarding the Payn-Paston-Worcester-Cade connection, and here I am referring to Colin Richmond’s magisterial three-volume study of the Paston family, there is nothing except a brief description of a John Payn, the husband of a daughter of a local Suffolk landowner, William Hethersett. This John Payn was an escheator of Norfolk on two occasions and an esquire to Richard II after 1399, and this Payn died in 1402.68 If the Payn letter is “just” a case of creative imagination, which seems unlikely, the perpetrator was certainly a master of his craft. It should be noted, too, that there remains no record of John Paston responding to the letter or placing aside funds or goods to be sent to John Payn. Two recent studies of the Pastons, one by Roger Virgoe and the other by Frances and Joseph Gies, describe the Cade Rebellion and of Payn’s involvement, but neither study connects Payn’s letter and its contents with Cade’s attire as he advances though London—Gies and Gies even go as far as quoting the section from the Davies’ Chronicle, which describes Cade’s choice of clothing, but do not make the connection with Payn’s letter.69 The events presented in the London Chronicles and within the Paston letter that describe the Cade Revolt in London as well as his ceremonial procession through the streets where he embraces the Canterbury, Kent, and London custom of the Midsummer Watch exemplify the multiplicity of readings one may derive November 22, 1503, Kew, NA, PROB 11/13. There is also a John Payne that departed from London who “Scribled at þe Castell of Taunton in Somerset” a letter to his employer Sir William Stoner (d. 1491) of the Stoner Letters dated May 15, and most likely in the year 1482 regarding messages he was to pass along at the request of his master. See Christine Carpenter, ed., Kingsford’s Stoner Letters and Papers 1290–1483 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 403. 67  Kew, NA, C 131/242/2. See also Martha Carlin, ed., London and Southwark Inventories 1316–1650: A Handlist of Extents for Debts (London: University of London, 1997), 16 no. 470 for the entry on this John Payn. 68  Colin Richmond, The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: The First Phase (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 72. 69  Roger Virgoe, ed., Private Life in the Fifteenth Century: Illustrated Letters of the Paston Family (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), 59–60; Frances Gies and Joseph Gies, A Medieval Family: The Pastons of Fifteenth-Century England (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998), 84–8.

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from the town chronicles. To be sure, there remains a great deal of uniformity among Bale’s Chronicle, An English Chronicle, and John Payn’s letter to John Paston: all three texts record the chaotic scene of Cade in and outside London, particularly the highly ceremonial and carnivalesque nature of Cade’s attire and his and his band’s riotous actions. We may never know which John Payn wrote the letter to John Paston, but the events described therein more than likely identify the author of the letter as the owner of the attire Cade wears in his procession through London. Cade’s procession in Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle, with its parody of the civic ritual of the Midsummer Watch and also of those people whose duty it is to protect Londoners from harm, presents another historical layer of the Cade Revolt. Jack Cade, his followers, and their ideologies at the start of the revolt embraces the “middle class” people and their values. Once the revolt turns too violent, those merchants and gentries who believe in Cade abandon their allegiances, thus possibly leaving Cade and his remaining (though sizable force) embittered. The ensuing outburst of “liberating” mayhem and violence fits within the context of the Whitsunday festivities of the Midsummer Watches on England, and like other popular rebellions that precede and follow Cade’s Revolt, the calendrical year and the importance of the carnivalesque festivities associated with this highly ritualistic time needs to be accounted for as one of the causes of the 1450 insurrection. The violent nature of the revolt and of its leader is just one of the numerous characteristics recorded by the chroniclers. As we have seen, the chroniclers are highly selective individuals who choose their words and descriptions carefully. The following chapter will be an examination of the character of Cade and how, through the chroniclers’ skillful emplotment and characterization techniques, the rebel leader may be traveling down the literary road towards myth and not pure history.

Chapter 5

The Characterization of Jack Cade

I begin this chapter with an anecdote, one that holds particular relevance to the thesis of this chapter, and one that will emphasize the importance that contemporary historiography as well as its theories of historical representation have within the field of historical literature. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a course called “Medieval Outlaws.” The course was sequenced in such a manner that the students and I read outlaw narratives, beginning with some of the earliest tales and ending with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Robin Hood ballads. It was a lower-level English course, and so for many students this was their first experience taking a literature course, let alone a course on a medieval topic. The first class period introduced the students to the syllabus; the text books; and the important literary, cultural, and historical themes and issues we would be encountering and investigating while reading “the stories.” I remember that I actually did say “stories,” and I received a few cock-eyed looks from a handful of students when I stated this. After class, one of those puzzled-looking students came to me and asked me why would I use the word “stories,” because, after all, people like Robin Hood and Billy the Kid (both outlaws he told me, and he was right at that) existed. I realized that I was possibly in for a long semester with this student, but after talking with him for a few minutes outside of class, and imploring him to read our first narrative closely, I completely understood where he (and scores of other people) were and are coming from, for many whole-heartedly believe that Robin Hood is real. In this respect, it was fortunate that our first narrative was The Deeds of Hereward, an outlaw story whose titular hero was a very real person and (like Jack Cade) led a very real and unsuccessful rebellion against a foe. Since Hereward was recorded in both The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and The Domesday Book, I brought in photocopies of the entries, which named Hereward and provided his brief description, as well as overheads of images from folios of both records. As the students saw, there was not much in the records that told of Hereward’s history. This particular Domesday record was nothing more than an 

 For the historical accounts of Hereward see Charles Plummer and John Earle, ed., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 1: 205; Dorothy Whitelock, ed. and trans., The Anglo–Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode: 1965), 154; Cyril Hart, The Danelaw (London: Hambledon Press, 1992), 625–48; and John Hayward, “Hereward the Outlaw,” Journal of Medieval History 14 (1988): 293–304. For Hereward’s appearances in the Domesday Book, see Philip Morgan and Caroline Thorn, ed., Domesday Book: Lincolnshire. Domesday Book, A Survey of the Counties of England, vol. 31 in 2 parts (Phillimore: Chichester, 1986), 8.34, 42.9, CK.4,

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inventory of land, cattle, and people. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said very little about Hereward, other than that he and his men who tried to defend Ely from William the Conqueror in 1070 were outlaws, and that Hereward, who chose not to surrender, was valiant. After 1070, we learn nothing more about Hereward. How then, I asked my students, did we go from a few sentences in a ledger and a brief entry in a chronicle to a full-blown story, complete with fairy-tale and adventure elements? And (and this was the tough question) what should we believe and why? The final question was one we grappled with throughout the semester, especially when we read about real-life outlaws such as William Wallace or Eustace the Monk. A passage that I routinely returned to so as to focus my students’ thoughts on the issues of historical representation—and on deciding what was real, what was not real, and how writers could blur the lines of historical reality—was the opening “Prefatory Letter” from Hereward. The letter is addressed to Hervey, the first bishop of Ely, who perhaps commissioned the work, and it contains the following information: When some among us wanted to know about the deeds of the great Englishman Hereward and his famous men … your brethren eked out our sparse information by inquiring whether anyone had left anything in writing about such a man in the place where he used to live … I leave this raw material, written in a rough style, to your care and to the efforts of some trained person, to be arranged and set out in a less ornate and complex manner. For I have been unable to decipher nothing further than this, always hoping for more but still finding nothing in full … Listen carefully to this account of so great a man who, trusting in himself rather than rampart or garrison, alone with his men waged war against kings and kingdoms, and fought against princes and tyrants, some of whom he conquered. Concerning these matters, beginning with his parents, everything has been arranged in due order, so that what is clearly set down here may be easily remembered.

It is a powerful letter; its final sentence can be interpreted as a microcosm of the field of historiography and of two great human phenomena: writing and memory. When I first read the “Prefatory Letter,” I suddenly saw texts (particularly historical or quasi-historical texts such as Hereward) in a different light. Those texts were not fixed; rather, they were open to interpretation and could—and in some cases, like Hereward should—be viewed and read as works of literature. Moreover, the text of Hereward was constructed from what appeared to be a collective memory.

CK.48; and Ann Williams and G. H. Martin, ed., Domesday Book: A Complete Translation (London and New York: Penguin, 2003), 901, 943, 962, 964.   Michael Swanton, trans., The Deeds of Hereward, in Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, rev. and exp., ed. Thomas H. Ohlgren (West Lafayette: Parlor Press, 2005), 28–99 at 39–40.

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The story was arranged and composed in such a manner so that it would be “easily remembered” though not necessarily factually correct. Upon reading the various entries within the fifteenth-century London chronicles of the Jack Cade Rebellion, I realized that we (and here I mean anyone who reads these medieval chronicle accounts of life in London) were quite possibly on the verge of something dangerous, for what was real and what could be construed as a fictionalizing of the Cade entries were becoming increasingly similar the more one read. What appeared was almost a blending of the two spheres of fact and fiction, particularly the aspects of Cade the person and Cade’s persona. Moreover, as one read the accounts of the Rebellion as a corpus, the other individuals who are named within the account began to morph into a collection of quasi-historical persons/ personages. In the chronicles of London this fictionalizing or mythologizing of Cade is the result of two literary modes playing-off one another: characterization and emplotment. Often, these two devices are seen as independent from one another. Hayden White recognizes that of the four original modes of emplotment (romantic, tragic, comic, and satirical), each one contains a protagonist who is within the story acting as an archetypal figure. In other words, the emplotment of a story is contingent upon the character who serves as the narrative’s main protagonist. In   Haden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 7–11. For other discussions of the role of emplotment in historiography, see: Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 66–7; Hans Kellner, Language and Historical Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 304–10; Elizabeth A. Clark, History, Theory, Text: Historians and the Linguistic Turn (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2004), 86–105; and Mary Fulbrook, Historical Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 66–72. Paul Ricoeur’s three-volume study remains a seminal investigation of narrative theory, see: Time and Narrative: Volume I, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), esp. 31–51; and Time and Narrative: Volume II, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), esp. 7–28. For a fine overview of Ricoeur’s own theories of emplotment and time, see Paul Ricoeur, “Life in Quest of Narrative,” in On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, ed. David Wood (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), 20–33. The development of a plot structure is a key factor in establishing what Mikhail Bakhtin calls a “chronotope,” the “intrinsic connectedness of temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in literature,” in Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 84. Hayden White provides this cogent summary of the chronotope and its roles: “[The chronotope is] a socially constructed domain of the natural world that defines the horizon of possible events, actions, agents, agencies, social roles, and so forth of all imaginative fictions – and all real ones, too. A dominant plot type determines the classes of things perceivable, the modes of their relationships, the periodicities of their development, and the possible meaning they can reveal. Every generic plot type presupposes a chronotope, and every chronotope presupposes a limited number of the kinds of story that can be told about

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some instances, the characterization will drive the emplotment, and in other texts the emplotment will shape the character. What I wish to explore in this chapter is an analysis of some of the more figurative and literary aspects of the Cade Rebellion as they are recorded in the fifteenth-century London chronicles. Specifically, I will focus on the characterization of Cade and the emplotment of the rebellion in various fifteenth-century London chronicles. As one reads these accounts of the Cade Rebellion, the characterization of Cade and others, coupled with the plot devices employed by the chroniclers, creates a potentially perilous historical situation: a real event and its players are verging towards the realm of myth. The Characterization of Jack Cade One of the greatest points of interest regarding the Cade Rebellion of 1450 is the person known as Jack Cade. Jack Cade, the man, also represents a serious problem when negotiating between the dialectic of fact and fiction. As you recall from previous chapters, we have no firm knowledge regarding Jack Cade’s true identity, or even if “Jack Cade” was his real name. If there is anyone to blame regarding this swerve towards the fictional and mythological realms of history, a good place to start would be with the person historians call Jack Cade. Within the London chronicles and other contemporary historical documents, Cade declares himself to be the following individuals: the cousin to the Duke of York; at times a person named “John Mortimer,” which is what the crown believed his name to be; John Amendale was another name, or alias, identified with Cade; also John Aylemere, a physician, who was married to a squire’s daughter in Tandridge, Surrey; a practitioner of necromancy who, while under the patronage of Sir Thomas Dacre of Surrey in 1449, summoned the Devil, and also murdered a pregnant woman, thus having to flee the country; and, appropriately enough for the times, an expartisan of the French. One would hate to blame Cade for initiating this series of narratives about his life and pedigree that the chroniclers continued to describe, but he was evidently a man of many faces. One persona was not enough for Cade; he had to conceal his true identity under several. And this was most likely part of the game, if you will, for Cade; he appeared larger than life, a figure of extraordinary abilities and able to carry out a seemingly infinite number of possibilities. That is until he was captured and executed. Before deciding if the collection of chronicle writings that describe Cade and his rebellion produced a series of narratives that possibly portray Cade as a fictional character—and thus a character who has his origins within the fictionalized world of myth—there needs to be a discussion of the literariness of “character” and events happening within its horizon,” in Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 183.   I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 78–9.

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“characterization.” The former can refer to a state of being, something that Paul Ricoeur sees as a universal constant within each individual. The latter points to an exteriorization of the person; that is, how others interpret that individual’s character. Characterization is often a term that is set aside for literary discourse; it lends itself to figuration, and it implies a degree of fictionality to the referent. Harmon and Holman define “characterization” as the “creation of imaginary persons so that they seem lifelike.” As we have seen above, the person of Cade appeared to many historians to be fluid. It is possible to see Cade through the eyes of the London chroniclers as someone who is already a fictionalized being. His past histories, his aliases, his relations with other families and nationalities, all suggest that even before the revolt took place (and subsequently recorded) the chroniclers were dealing with someone who could have stepped out of a popular romance. Cade antebellum is straight out of The Decameron or the General Prologue. His history, though varied, is filled with details just unusual enough to be believed. Once the revolt takes place, the level and degree of Cade’s characterization only increases. Ricoeur would call Cade a “quasi-character.” However, as we see with his remarks, even this notion of what constitutes an authentic history is highly problematic. Ricoeur comments thusly: History, in my opinion, remains historical to the extent that all of its objects refer back to first-order entities—peoples, nations, civilizations—that bear the indelible mark of concrete agents’ participatory belonging to the sphere of praxis and narrative. These first-order entities serve as the transitional object between all the artifacts produced by history and the characters of a possible narrative. They constitute quasi-characters, capable of guiding the intentional reference back from the level of the science of history to the level of narrative, and, though this, the agents of real action.

The problem with Cade the individual is that there is no single illustration of a person to point to. For one to argue that “this person is/was Cade” becomes increasingly problematic when we see the differences within his character that begin to emerge. Cade the person did exist, but what his character was, to again borrow Ricoeur’s concept, remains clouded in inconsistencies of narratival storytelling, ideological motivations of characterization, and the possible embellishment and/or fabrication of historical facts. Lest we assume that the chroniclers may be the ones responsible for these possible alterations in the truth, we must realize that Cade himself may have had a hand in his own myth making. In the epistemological sense, only Cade knew to some extent what his own character was, and unfortunately we do not    Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Chicago: Regnery, 1965), 93–105.    William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman. A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 89.   Ricoeur, Time and Narrative: Volume I, 181.

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have any record (such as a diary) that would reveal to us how he saw himself. All we have are second-hand accounts of the person that refer back to a multiplicity of characters, yet all or none of these portraits may accurately describe Cade. So did the chroniclers create this quasi-character of Cade, or were they merely reporting the facts as it fit them? The latter does not seem to be one-hundredpercent possible, for the chroniclers each have their own ideological suppositions and commitments to which they adhere. As one continues to read Harmon and Holman’s definition of “characterization,” it is obvious that an author can create imaginary persons, that is, fictionalized persons, out of once real individuals. According to Harmon and Holman, there are three fundamental methods of “characterization”: 1. the explicit presentation by the author of the character though direct exposition, either in an introductory block or more piecemeal throughout the work, illustrated by action; 2. the presentation of the character in action, with little or no explicit comment by the author, in the expectation that the reader can deduce the attributes of the actor from the actions; and 3. the representation from within a character, without comment by the author, of the impact of actions and emotions on the character’s inner self. Of the above three methods, all but the last occur in the London chronicles that refer to Cade. We are never privy to Cade’s inner thoughts, and if we were they would have been filtered through the chroniclers and their subjective views towards the leader of the rebellion. We are, therefore, left with the above two methods if we seek to determine how the chroniclers characterized Cade. It is here that I hesitate to bring in such terms from new criticism such as “flat” characters or “round” characters, because to do so would only diminish the writing abilities of the various chroniclers and also introduce characterization to a historical account. What must be understood, and thus what is crucial in analyzing Cade’s character, is to recognize his hidden complexity. In effect, in this project we are dealing with a dozen or so various accounts of the Cade Rebellion, and we thus have a dozen or so different characterizations of Cade. Of course, there will be some overlapping qualities of his characterization from chronicle to chronicle. As we will see, the variety and difference bound within each chronicle’s episode creates yet another layer of characterization of the figure of Jack Cade. Again, what is crucial to understand is that within the characterization of Cade is the potential of fictionality, of traversing the boundary from the historical to the fictional. While it could be argued that this process began the minute a chronicler began composing and compiling the histories contained within each chronicle, I would underscore   Harmon and Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 89. For a study of characterization based on the tenets of new criticism, see W. J. Harvey, Character and the Novel (London: Chatto and Windus, 1965), esp. 11–29.

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the uniqueness of Cade. Cade is operating already in a kind of liminal space; it is clear that he does not really belong to any one particular topographic area, family, social group, or perhaps even nationality. Even before the chroniclers begin their writing, there is a sense that they have heard of him before. Cade is fluid, and there exists almost immediately an aura or character about him that one could classify as “unreal.” To borrow David Lawton’s description of Piers Plowman, Cade can be understood as a character who is “indeterminate, flexible, and dynamic.” As discussed in Chapter 1, some of the briefest accounts of the Cade Rebellion in the London chronicles appear at first to be the most straightforward, the least ambiguous, and some might say the most objective. And while the majority of the chroniclers’ writings of the revolt are monologic in nature, (that is, we are privy only to the voice of the chronicler) this does not mean that there exists a single, unified characterization of Cade, particularly in these briefest of accounts. One of the shortest accounts of the revolt can be found in one of the more condensed London chronicles; that is, the chronicle called the Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, found within John Vale’s Common-Place Book.10 The rubric for the chronicle, which can be considered an introductory expository piece by the author that may have a bearing on the characterization of an individual, says this: “The coronacion of king Henry the vjte in Fraunce at Paris notid entrid and croniculed per me .J.V. as folowith.”11 While this rubric has no influence on the characterization of Cade and the emplotment of the rebellion, other rubrics, as we will see, do. The brief entry in the Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71 for the Cade Rebellion is recorded thusly: And also the iijde day of July in the same yere amischevous rebaude and an insurreccioner, called Jakke Cade of Kente, gretly destourbed the seid king in so moche he with his power cam into London withoute resistence and there did do be hede the lorde Say and Crowmer and after robbed and dispoiled the place of   David Lawton, “The Subject of Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 1–30, at 1. This is an important essay, both in terms of its contribution to Langland studies but also to the field of literary studies in general where the analysis of characterization had remained unchanged for a number of years. Lawton, for the most part, leaves behind the school of new criticism and deconstructs the character of Piers using Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts of “monologic,” “dialogic,” and “heteroglossia” so as to present various “subjects” of Piers Plowman (the text and the character). Lawton examines the “Subject as Voice(s),” the “Subject as Open Persona,” the “Subject as Actant,” the “Subject as Discourse,” the “Subject as Proxy,” and “A Marginal Subject.” Lawton concludes that “it is by looking at the contextualization of real and contradictory discourses of power, not at literary characterization, that we will learn more about, and from, the subject of Piers Plowman,” 28. 10  Margaret Lucille Kekewich and others, ed., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book (Phoenix Mill, Eng.: Alan Sutton for the Richard III & Yorkist History Trust, 1995), 178–81. 11  Ibid., 178.

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Philip Malpas, the whiche was amerchente of the same cite of grete substaunce and worship.12

In one sentence, Vale establishes a characterization of Cade, and he does so in two ways. First, the exposition of Cade is one in which his personality and his actions are described in larger than life terms. And secondly, Cade and his character are contrasted with another person and their character—Phillip Malpas, one of the targets of the rebellion after it turned into a riot. Vale first describes Cade as “amischevous rebaude and an insurreccioner,” and so right from the start we are to see him as a person who wishes to start a revolution and in the process enjoy doing so. One can notice an air of playfulness and trickery here—the carnivalesque aspect of the revolt is present, and at its center is Cade. And so with this short phrase, Cade appears to be anything but a one-dimensional character; rather, he is a person who really seems to enjoy the revolt, although we are not told why. This is also one of the chronicles in which the phrase the “commons of Kent” is not present. Elsewhere, Cade and the “commons of Kent” were seen as the individuals responsible for the revolt. Here, in Vale’s chronicle, Cade is doing all of the action. It is almost as if Cade is some all-powerful individual or creature: he is never identified as a man or a person in this entry, and so his characterization can be read as a force to be reckoned with—Achilles, The Green Knight, Loki, Grendel. We do not hear Cade speak; we only read about his actions and his abilities. A significant word in this entry is “power.” Cade enters London “with his power” and does not encounter any resistance. The MED has the following entries for pŏuēr(e, noun: 1.a. The ability of a person, an animal, a soul, an angel, a spirit, etc. 2. Financial resources, wealth, ability to pay. 3. Of men or animals: physical strength, energy, vigor; might or prowess in battle. 6.b. Mastery of a person or people, lordship, dominion; authority. 7.a. Legal power or authority; esp. authority delegated or conferred upon someone; authorization; a legal power; the authority to hear confession and give absolution. 9.a. A military force, an army.13

12

 Ibid., 178.   MED, pŏuēr(e, (n).

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While it is unclear whether Vale meant that Cade entered into London with his army, or that Cade’s own power (his ability, his stature, his charisma, perhaps) entered London and established the rebellion, what is clear is the unvoiced opinion of the Londoners who, at first, welcome him. Hidden in Vale’s voice, therefore, is the voice of the people of London who were supportive of Cade and who saw in his character a quality worthy to embrace. This goodly nature towards Cade of course changes once the first citizens are executed. Cade’s character is juxtaposed to Malpas’, for the latter is written about in economic and religious terms as a man of “grete substaunce and worship.” By this time in the revolt Cade (the person, and his agenda) is seen as lacking substance; his vows of not robbing and pillaging the city have been forgotten, and he has personally plundered Malpas’ and Geerst’s homes. He has emptied the prisons; he has beheaded several men, thus robbing them of their substance; and most significantly, he has left behind the goals and main points of the rebels’ Bills of Complaint. The characterization of Cade in this chronicle is very unique, for in such a compact space the author/compiler, John Vale, manages to construct a characterization of Cade that is transformational, showing the change of a mysterious and charismatic leader of a popular revolt into a destroyer of London.14 If we turn to another brief entry, found in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, we will notice certain similarities between this piece and the previous one regarding Cade’s characterization but also some noticeable differences. Unlike the Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, the entire entry in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London provides no adjectives describing Cade’s personality, his background, or his behavior. Instead, readers are left to infer and interpret for themselves the chronicler’s characterization of Cade. One possible analysis is that the chronicler sees Cade as a disingenuous character, and one who is not up to the fight, and thereby portrays him as such. In this chronicle the first item that we are told about Cade is that he “made hym selfe a captayne.”15 While other chronicles describe the “felaweship” of Cade and his band, this chronicle purports to describe Cade as someone who is out for himself—possibly an egomaniac who wants glory. Next, the chronicle describes Cade’s encounter with the king and his troops and how “Jake Cade flede & removyd fro thens toward Tunbryche, Maydstone, & Sevenoke.”16 That narrative here describes a succession of retreats by Cade and his force. However, the chronicler does not state that Cade “retreated” or “sought a better position”; instead, Cade “flees,” and not just once, but to three different places in succession. It is a humiliating description, and it is coupled with the fact that Cade was to face off against Henry VI, a symbol of ineffectual leadership both 14

 It is interesting to note that Vale did not write about Cade’s capture and execution.   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Richard Howlett, ed., Monumenta Franciscana. Rolls Series 4 (London: Longman and Trübner, 1882), 2:173. 16   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Howlett, Monumenta Franciscana, 2:173. 15

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on the throne and in the heat of battle. But perhaps the most unusual characterization found in this or any of the other chronicles is that of Philip Malpas. Malpas was one of the wealthier London merchants, a Draper, and an alderman from 1448–50. The despoiling of Malpas’ home is recorded in a number of the London chronicles; however, his character is virtually left open. He was known to be a stingy person, and most in the London community felt that his personality tended toward the selfimportant. His characterization in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, though, is something of an anomaly in that he is presented here as the sole person who is trying to keep order within London and keep Cade and his forces outside of the city, for we are told that “Malpas of London drewe the cheynne of London Brygge.”17 It is a feat of near heroic stature: the lone alderman trying to keep the rebel forces outside of the city of London. Whether this actually action happened or not is uncertain; it is only recorded in this chronicle. Malpas’ act does establish a polarization of the characters. While he is seen as the single individual trying to save the city from the rioters, Cade is characterized as the rampaging leader of a now violent and crazed mob where, because of him, “sarteyne aldermen of London was ther slayne. And the prisoners of the Kyngs Bench & Marchelsay delyveryd owte by Jake Cades commandment.”18 The final sentence of the entry for 1450 in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London is a blunt summation of the reality of Cade’s actions and of his character: “And afterward he was slayne in Kent.”19 The voice of the chronicler is quite plain here, for this final summation of Cade and of his rebellion serves almost like his epitaph. The chronicler of The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London certainly saw nothing favorable within Cade’s character and his action; rather, it is Malpas who comes across in the most favorable light, as well as his fellow aldermen who were slain. Indeed, these aldermen who are killed—with almost no exposition to their character given by the chronicler—are viewed in highly sympathetic terms; they are framed within the narrative as being almost innocent bystanders who are, in the end, martyrs for the survival of London. The Cade entry found within the Middle English prose Brut, British Library MS Additional 10099, is one of the chronicles in which the reader, through the chronicler, begins to get a sense of Cade’s inner thoughts and possibly his motivations for his actions. This entry is also unique in that it begins with a rubric, something most other London chronicles lack. This rubric can be read as an overview of the entry and as an introductory exposition on the leader of the rebellion and his character: “How this yere was thensurrection in Kent of þe

17

  Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Howlett, Monumenta Franciscana, 2:173. 18   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Howlett, Monumenta Franciscana, 2:173. 19   Transcribed from British Library MS Cotton Vitellius F. XII, fol. 345v; Howlett, Monumenta Franciscana, 2:173.

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communes, of whome Iake Cade, On Irishman, was Capitayn. Ca. cclv.”20 This rubric characterizes Cade as the leader of the insurrection, and, as the chronicle continues, it is clear that in this chronicle Cade was chosen by the people and not self-elected, as was suggested in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London. Specifically, the commons, in the prose Brut, gather together in Kent in great number, start their own “Insurrexion, & rebelled Ageynst þe Kyng & his lawes, & ordeyned þame A capitayn called Iohn Cayd, An Irish man, which named hym self Mortymer, Cosyn to þe Duke of Yorke.”21 It is one of the longer and more detailed of the entries, and I wish to focus specifically on Cade’s inner thoughts as they are recorded in this chronicle, through what can be described as a thirdperson limited omniscient narrator. It occurs only once within the chronicle, but its effect on the characterization of Cade is substantial. The passage I am referring to is parallel to the passage in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London in which Cade and his men see the king and his men approaching and decide to “flee,” and the suggestion here is that they flee like cowards. In the prose Brut, though, the passage is recorded as follows: And when þe Capitayne of Kent vnderstode þe commyng of þe King with so gret a puysaunce, he with-drew him with his peple to Seuenoke, A litel village.22

Several significant differences exist between this entry and the previous one. Most notably, the narrator of the chronicle has the ability to see into the internal workings of Cade’s mind. Instead of being characterized as a thoughtless leader of a riot, Cade is here presented as someone who appears very rational about the situation at hand. Henry VI came with such as great “puysaunce,” that is, a force of soldiers or an army, and Cade realized that he had to make a tactical retreat.23 Of course, it is at Sevenoaks and Blackheath that Henry begins to hear rumors that some of his men wish to desert him and fight for Cade so as to “Assist and help” the rebel leader.24 Rather than characterize Cade as a destructive force, this chronicle, at least in the early passages, establishes Cade as a thoughtful commander, one who is elected out of (what appears to be) popular support from the people of Kent and who began to draw loyal Lancastrians to the cause.25 20  Friedrich W. D. Brie, ed., The Brut or The Chronicles of England. EETS, o.s., 131 and 136 (London: Kegan Paul and Oxford University Press, 1906, 1908; repr., Woodbridge and Rochester: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), 516.32–4. 21  Ibid., 517.5–8. 22  Ibid., 517.15–17. 23   MED, puissaunce (n.) 2. 24  Brie, The Brut, 517.28–9. 25   The prose Brut records the following people who were thought to have jumped to Cade’s side or who gave some inkling to Henry’s forces that they might desert the king: “Lorde Say, Tresourer of England, the Bisshope of Salesbury, þe Baron of Dudley, þabbot of Gloucestre, Danyel, & Trevillian, & many mo,” in Brie, The Brut, 517.31–3. This list of

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While Philip Malpas is characterized in honorific terms in The Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, the only two individuals who are described in truly heroic terms are the two Staffords, “Sir Vmfrey Stafford, knight, & William Stafford, squyer, two valiaunt Captanes.”26 It is a distinction of character that is not bestowed upon Henry, the aldermen of London, or any of the other solders who fought with or against Cade. Why the Staffords are described as “valiant” is unclear. The two brothers might have died valiantly; that is, they put up a good fight against Cade, knowing that the rebel leader was the better warrior. Thus, the term could be seen as a marker of both the Staffords’ will and also of the degree of Cade’s fighting ability. While other entries at times focus on Cade’s willy-nilly destruction of London, this entry appears to suggest that Cade was a person who had a good deal of experience fighting as well as organizing troops; that is, a worthy adversary. As we will see in the next section, any sense that Cade is a heroic type is undermined (one could argue that he himself undermines any notion that he could be a hero) when the rebel leader decapitates Saye and proceeds to pillage the city. The prose Brut account of the rebellion is also unique in its formulation of Cade’s character in that it records apparent dialogue with Cade. Again, while Cade’s voice is filtered through the presence of the chronicler, we are witness to another voice, and an important one at that: And þe third day of Iuly he come & entred into London with al his peple, & did make A cry þer in þe Kinges name & in his name, þat no man shold robb ne take no mannes gode bot if he payd for it; & come ridyng thrugh þe Cite in gret pride, & smote his swerde vpon London stone in Canwykstrete.27

It is an oath that, as acknowledged before, Cade breaks almost immediately. The oath, as stated here in the prose Brut, seems to unite Cade’s position with that of Henry’s. This speech appears to support the Bills of Complaint issued by Cade and his supporters, a grievance that placed fault not so much in Henry but rather in his court and especially in his personal friends who were taking advantage of their king. In this regard, Cade is characterized as one who still wishes to work with Henry VI and his policies. Moreover, Cade seems to be insinuating that if Henry possible traitors is repeated in the following two chronicles: Cotton Vitellius A. XVI, see Charles Lethbridge Kingsford, ed., Chronicles of London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1905; repr., Dursley: Alan Sutton, 1977), 159; and A Short English Chronicle, in James Gairdner, ed., Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles. Camden Society, n.s., 28 (Westminster: J. B. Nichols and Sons, 1880), 67. Ironically, Saye is one of the first to be tried and executed by Cade and his tribunal. 26  Brie, The Brut, 517.20–21. 27  Brie, The Brut, 518.14–18. For another description of Cade striking the great stone of London see, G. L. Harriss and M. A. Harriss, ed., John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, in Camden Miscellany XXIV. Camden Fourth Series, vol. 9 (London: Royal Historical Society and University College London, 1972), 201.

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were in London, he would look favorably upon the rebel leader’s promise not to rob the citizens of London. It is a canny political move, and it is one that apparently won the support of many a Londoner who did not object to Lord Saye being placed under arrest. That Cade rides through London in “gret pride” may be a sign of his (very soon) undoing. As a cardinal sin, pride here serves as a representation of Cade’s inner self. As guilty of this sin, Cade should have repented and asked for penance through confession. Cade, of course, does no such thing and instead strikes the Great Stone of London, symbolically signaling to all who witnessed it that he was now in command. This tangible symbol of the power of London, the so-called Great Stone of London, or simply London Stone, is yet another mythical object that influences our perception of Cade. In truth, it is Cade who is the great manipulator of public perception. The cultural artifact known as London Stone is such a perfect cultural artifact to use to shape the public’s sense of power and authority. The fullest account we have of the London Stone comes from John Stow. As we see, its origins are cloudy, but the stone, which was originally found in Walbrooke Ward, held a degree of importance in the civic governing of the city: On the south side of this high streete, neare vnto the channell is pitched vpright a great stone called London stone, fixed in the ground verie deepe, fastned with bars of iron, and otherwise so strongly set, that if Cartes do run against it through negligence, the wheeles be broken, and the stone it selfe vnshaken. The cause why this stone was there set, the time when, or other memorie hereof, is none, but that the same hath long continued there is manifest, namely since (or rather before) the conquest: for in the ende of a faire written Gospell booke giuen to Christes Church in Canterburie, by Ethelstane king of the west Saxons, I find noted of landes or rents in London belonging to the sayd Church, whereof one parcell is described to lie neare unto London stone. Of later time we read that in the yeare of Christ 1135. the first of king Stephen, a fire which began in the house of Ailward, near vnto London stone consumed all East to Aldgate, in the which fire the Priorie of the holy Trinitie was burnt, and West to S. Erkenwalds shrine in Paules Church: and these be the eldest notes that I reade thereof. Some haue said this stone to be set, as a marke in the middle of the Citie within the walles: but in truth it standeth farre nearer vnto the riuer of Thames, then to the wall of the Citie: some others haue said the same to be set for the tendering and making of payment by debtors to their creditors, at their appoynted dayes and times, till of later time, payments were more vsually made at the Font in Poules Church, and now most commonly at the Royall Exchange: some againe haue imagined the same to bee set vp by one Iohn or Thomas Londonstone dwelling there agaynst, but more likely it is, that such men haue taken the name

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of the stone, then the stone of them, as id Iohn at Noke, Thomas at Stile, William at Wall, or at Well, &c.28

The London Stone was therefore a civic meeting place, where fees were paid and proclamations made. The Stone also served as a symbolic instrument of dispensing power: whoever hit (or tapped) the stone—with a sword or a document—was signaling to all who were present that they were now in the public spotlight. Cade, by striking his sword against the stone, was symbolically appropriating the custom of naming the mayor of London. As Stow mentions, the first mayor of London in 1188 took the name of the stone apparently after being sworn in and tapping the object in the traditional manner: “Eodem anno factus est Henricus filius Eylwini de Londene-stane, Maior Londoniarum; qui fuit primus Maior in Civitate, et duravit Maiorem usque ad finem vite sue, scilicet fere per viginti quinque annos.”29 Cade’s striking the London Stone can be read as a means of legitimizing his power, but it can also be read as a means of legitimizing the power of his supposed cousin, the Duke of York: the striking of the London Stone could be an invitation to the duke to enter the city as a rightful civic and monarchical leader. Moreover, Cade’s striking the London Stone may also be a symbol and a vestige of the imagined, yet politically and culturally important, Arthurian kingdom. An inherently pagan aura surrounds the stone, and it indeed resembles the stone in Malory’s Morte Darthur that holds the sword Excalibur. John Reinhard argues that the sword and the stone have a geasa on them, meaning that they will only work for an individual who is deemed a hero, and one who will succeed.30 The sword in the stone has its origins in Robert de Boron’s Merlin romance. For de Boron, the sword and stone have special significance, where the sword symbolized justice and the stone Christ.31 In de Boron’s romance, the sword appears on Christmas Eve, set in an anvil on a stone, and the inscription on the sword states that whoever draws the sword from

28

  John Stow, Stow’s Survey of London, ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), 1:224–5. 29   Liber de Antiquis Legibus, ed. Thomas Stapleton. Camden Society, o.s., 34 (London, 1846; repr., New York and London: AMS Press, 1968), 1. Translation: “In the same year [i.e., 1188] Henry Fitz-Eylwin of Londonstane was appointed mayor of London; who was the first mayor of the city, and who continued to be mayor up until the end of his life, that is to say, about twenty-five years.” 30   John Revell Reinhard, The Survival of Geis in Medieval Romance (Halle: Niemeyer, 1933), 67. 31  Rosemary Morris, The Character of King Arthur in Medieval Literature. Arthurian Studies 4 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982), 41–3. Norris J. Lacy, in his entry for “Sword in the Stone,” comments that “the test of the Sword in the Stone” also serves to reveal Galahad as the preordained Grail Knight. Malory, for example, tells us how Merlin inserted Balin’s sword into a marble stone, where it remained until Galahad was able to remove it,” in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York and London: Garland, 1996), 437–8 at 438.

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the stone will become king by Jesus Christ’s choice.32 In Malory’s Morte, Arthur immediately has the support of the people once he has drawn the sword.33 Cade could therefore be mining the English mythologized past so as to establish himself as a quasi-Arthurian hero (or anti-hero) and thereby present to the Londoners an air of credibility and a lineage to Arthur and thus to Brutus, the founder of London. As discussed in Chapter 1, one of the more varied chronicles in terms of its language is Gregory’s Chronicle, a chronicle in which the attitude and, one could say the personality, of the chronicler shines through. To be sure, the chronicler of Gregory’s Chronicle does not hold back in his sharp criticisms of Cade and his rebellion. In terms of Cade’s characterization, he is referred to as the “sympylle captayn,” “that sory and sympylle and rebellys captayn,” and the “fals traytoure the Captayne of Kentte.”34 Cade’s band does not receive any pleasantries either, for they are labeled, as you recall from Chapter 1, a “mysavysyed feleschyppe,” “traytours,” “ryffe raffe,” and a “sympylle and rude mayne.”35 These adjectives do serve as a means to establish a set of ideological beliefs, and they also establish a dominant ideology through the description of Henry as “oure soverayne lorde,” and “our soverayne lordys the king.”36 However, these descriptions seem to complicate manners in terms of Cade’s characterization. Were Cade and his group really “simple?” Again, as noted in Chapter 1 there are numerous definitions to the term “simple,” and just what exactly the chronicler meant here cannot be said with any certainty. For simple, adj., we have the following possible definitions, all of which seem appropriate: 3.a. Lowly, common; impoverished, destitute. 3.b. Lowest in rank among a group; lacking any additional honors, titles, or authority. 4.a. Inadequate, insufficient; weak, feeble; mere; also, insufficient in number, few. 4.b. Sad, downcast; mournful, sorrowful. 5. Ignorant, uneducated; unsophisticated; simple-minded, foolish; also, unintelligent, lacking reason. 6.d.(a) Lacking additional legal stipulations, unlimited; not accompanied by any legal formalities.37 32

 Robert de Boron, Merlin, in Merlin and the Grail: Joseph of Arimathea, Merlin, Perceval: The Trilogy of Arthurian Romances Attributed to Robert de Boron, trans. Nigel Bryant. Arthurian Studies 48 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), 45–114 at 107–10. 33   Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P. J. C. Field, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 1:15–19. 34   James Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), 192, 194. 35  Ibid., 190, 191, 192. 36  Ibid., 190, 191. 37   MED, simple, (adj.).

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The word is so powerful in that it holds so much possible meaning. And while Cade’s force was never written as being “sad’ or “downcast,” it is possible that this was how Gregory’s chronicler saw them and wished to characterize them. The commons and Cade are characterized as the opposition, the enemy, and a feeble and lawless one at that. In contrast to Cade and his force is Henry VI, the sovereign lord, and the two Stafford brothers: William, the squire, is called in Gregory’s Chronicle “one the mannylste man of alle thys realme of Engelonde.”38 Nothing positive is mentioned in Gregory’s Chronicle of Cade’s abilities; in relation to the status quo, he and his forces are in fact characterized in dialectical terms. The majority of the London chronicles in the latter stages of the event characterize Cade as a person who has lost control of his forces and of his own sense of selfcontrol. A Short English Chronicle and The Great Chronicle of London are two sources that characterize Cade at his most disturbed and sadistic level. A Short English Chronicle describes how Cade single handedly drew Lord Saye: … thorowe London, and over London brige, and to Seint Thomas Watring, and ther he was hanged and quartered, and his hede and Crowmers hede and a noþer manes hede were sett on London brige. And after that he smote of ij oþer menes hedis in Sowthewerke.39

It is a brutal scene that depicts the determination of Cade to punish those he deemed guilty of societal transgressions. It is also a rather understated piece of violence, for we do not get inside Cade’s inner thoughts as we did in the prose Brut, and therefore there exists a good deal of detachment felt between Cade and the violent drawing, quartering, and beheading of Saye, Crowmer, and several unnamed others. In The Great Chronicle of London, Saye and Crowmer, as you recall, are not only beheaded, but their heads are also placed on pikes and arranged so that one would kiss the other.40 This characterization of Cade can best be interpreted as one who is social deviant; that is, as one who wishes to hold the powers of the ruling government and push his dominance to the farthest levels of socially accepted behavior. By far the two chronicles that present Cade in the most interesting light are Bale’s Chronicle and An English Chronicle From 1377 to 1461. Bale’s Chronicle begins in a tone very similar to that of the prose Brut in that Cade and his troop

38

  Gairdner, Historical Collections, 191.   Gairdner, Three Fifteenth-Century Chronicles, 67–8. 40  A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley, ed., The Great Chronicle of London (London: George Jones at the Sign of the Dolphin, 1938; repr., Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983), 184. While The Great Chronicle of London is not as explicit in naming Cade as the one who beheads Saye, Crowmer, and the others and then mutilates and engages in questionable behavior with the corpses, it is suggested that he is the one who takes part in the majority of the actions. 39

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were encamped on Blackheath “for the kings right.”41 Again, the characterization here of Cade is one of a Henrician sympathizer, a person who acknowledges the power and sovereignty of the king and wishes to work with him against his backbiters. The Bale chronicler has, at first, a positive outlook on Cade and his aims; even his force is described as being “mervelously stakes all þe ffeeld,” which is a far cry from the attitude of Gregory’s chronicler’s attitude towards the commons.42 In the opening section of Bale’s Chronicle, Cade is portrayed as a negotiator; he has his “peticioners” with him (the commons) and all they want is to have their grievances fulfilled in the parliament.43 Cade apparently made a good deal of sense to the King’s lords who were sent to Blackheath, for the chronicler records that the lords thought that “all things shuld be redressed.”44 What happens next is interesting and fully unique to the Bale Chronicler. Typical of diplomacy, the lines of communication between Cade, Henry VI, and the king’s lords were cut. Henry never sent word back to Cade as to what his decision was. The two leaders do not engage in further talks, and therefore Parliament does not hear Cade’s Bills of Complaint. Cade, acting a bit brash upon hearing no news, decides to arm his forces against the king. As a result of this failed diplomacy, Cade organizes his troops to engage headfirst into military maneuvers. This is a detail the other chronicles do not record, and it shows an uncommon side of Cade, that of a commander who wanted a diplomatic response to the Bills of Complaint, not a militaristic campaign. Although Cade “gate the hertes of þe greet part of the comons of the land,” the Bale chronicler is quick to describe Cade’s force as a collection of “full rude peple” once they and their command enter London and take over the “Innes & places.”45 From here on out in Bale’s Chronicle and also 41

  Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 203; Ralph Flenley, ed., Six Town Chronicles of England: Edited from Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, The Library of St. John’s College Oxford, The Library of Trinity College Dublin, and The Library of the Marquis of Bath at Longeat (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 129. 42   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 203; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 130. 43   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 203; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 130. 44   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 203; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 130. 45   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 205; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 132. There is a similar episode several years before the Cade Revolt in which diplomacy worked and quelled a possible riot and insurrection that may have lead to the overthrow of Henry VI. In the fourth year of Henry’s reign in 1426 (the king was all of four years old) there “aros a grete debate betwene Sir vmfrey, the Duke of Gloucestre, and Sir Henry Beauford, Bisshop of Wynchestir; and thus Henry bare tho heuy herte ayens the pepułł of the Cite of London; and þis debate bygan on þe day of þe Meyris tidinge of London;” whereupon the Bishop of Winchester gathered a large group of men with arms and bows to block London Bridge. The next morning the city and its citizens were fully armed, their houses shut, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir Henry Chichele, Bishop

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in An English Chronicle, Cade is characterized as a drunken lord of misrule. He dons the ceremonial sword and garments of an alderman, places the straw hat of a cresset lighter on his head, and marches though London while a soldier marches in front bearing a naked sword.46 These two chronicles are unique in that they place the ensuing violence and the characterization of Cade within the context of the drunken Midsummer Watch festivities. Both Bale and An English Chronicle report how Cade drags Saye’s body though the streets of London, and it is the latter chronicle that describes how Saye’s head was “born upon ij longe shaftes vnto Londoun Brigge and þere sette opon.”47 In the aftermath of the battle, virtually all of the chronicles characterize Cade as a person who deserved his punishment. He is hunted down, mortally wounded by Alexander Iden, his captor, and then his lifeless body drawn and quartered. Only Bale’s chronicler records the righting of wrongs, however. The narrative does not concern Cade’s fate; instead, it describes how many soldiers who were “dryven out of Normandy” gathered at the Grey Friars Church where Lord Saye was “worthely buried & his heed leyd by him and his armes set on the pelours aboute drewe & pulled down the same armes & them reversed.”48 Apparently, Cade’s punishment was just. What we have seen can best be described as the many faces of Jack Cade, and even that may not be his real name.49 As we have seen in this chapter, and indeed throughout past chapters, Cade’s actions and in some cases his thoughts and speech, shape the characterization of the rebel leader. Regarding Cade, there are more external actions and far less internal thoughts available, and this is due in large part to the scant material available to fill-in the missing pieces of his personal of Bath, Sir John Stafford, along with the Prince of Portugal, who was in London at the time, “went betwene hem and the Cite, and all was cesid and set in reste by none; blessid be God!” in Brie, The Brut, 432.15–34. In this situation a violent clash was averted due to diplomacy. 46  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 133; William Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377– 1461: A New Edition, Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608, and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Lyell 34, Medieval Chronicles 3 (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2003), 68.35–9.7. 47  Marx, An English Chronicle, 69.21–4. 48   Transcribed from Trinity College Dublin MS 509, page 208; Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 134. Stow records how Saye’s monument as well as his wife’s monument were one of the many “defaced” monuments at the Grey Friars Church, in Stow, Survey of London, 1:320. Also defaced was the monument of “Thomas Malory, knight,” who died in “1470,” 321. This is Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, the author of the Morte D’Arthur, see P. J. C. Fields, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory. Arthurian Studies 29 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), 33. 49  One of the reasons it was believed that Cade refused to accept the general pardon hinged upon the fact that “Jack Cade” was the name on the document, and so this being an alias of his the pardon meant nothing and the king’s authorities could have executed Cade whether he signed it or not. See I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 78, 97–100.

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background and his psychological construction. The abundance of material that describes Cade’s external behavior may help shape him into a more fictionalized character. When we place Cade within the narratives of the rebellion it is clear that the two literary modes of characterization and emplotment are working with each other to create a unified text that verges upon the realm of myth. The Cade Rebellion as it is recorded in the fifteenth-century London chronicles is emplotted throughout the corpus in a dominant mode, and it is this plot structure that enhances the fictionality of the event and particularly the figure of Jack Cade. The Emplotment of the Rebellion and the “Myth” of Cade As stated in the Introduction, Hayden White’s study of nineteenth-century historical writing led to a re-thinking of the objective nature of historical knowledge. In his book Metahistory, White suggests that historical discourse is a form of fiction writing that can be classified and studied on the basis of its structure and its language, and to uncover this structure would be to understand “the deep structure of the historical imagination.”50 To White, modern history texts are anything but objective and accurate representations of the past. Historians and philosophers, White believes, operate under vague assumptions in arranging, selecting, and interpreting events. Historians are thus writers who combine numerous brief stories into the “completed story” and in the process use various plot techniques. White identifies four main modes of emplotment that govern historical writing. In the mode of romance, we have the drama of the triumph of good over evil, virtue over vice, light over dark, and of the ultimate transcendence of man over the world. By contrast is the mode of the tragic, where we are witness to no festive occasions. In a tragedy, the individual is enmeshed in a struggle that ultimately results in the resignation of people to the conditions under which they must labor in the world. In the comic mode of emplotment, hope is held out for the temporary triumph of the individual over their world. Comic history uses festive occasions to punctuate the dramatic accounts of change and transformation. And lastly we have the mode of satire, where a person is a captive of the world rather than its master, and the human consciousness is shown to be inadequate in overcoming the dark force of death.51 White’s categories are classical and formalist in nature. Their obvious rigidity has come under question at times, and even White himself seems 50

  White, Metahistory, ix.   This is a summary of the four main plot points White presents in Metahistory, 7–11. For a discussion of White’s modes of emplotment and narrative in Middle English historiography, see Robert A. Albano, Middle English Historiography. American University Studies Series IV, English Language and Literature 168 (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 15– 20; Laura D. Barefield, Gender and History in Medieval English Romance and Chronicle. Studies in the Humanities: Literature-Politics-Society 63 (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 4–6; Sarah Foot, “Finding the Meaning of Form: Narrative in Annals and Chronicles,” in 51

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to amend his fixed modes. Other plot types White suggests but does not define include the pastoral, the epic, the farcical, and the tragic-comedic.52 As White comments here, the relationship between emplotment, narrative, and history is one with which we as Westerners are accustomed, but it is also one in which there is an inherent danger of the destruction of the real: The relationship between historiography and literature is, of course, as tenuous and difficult to define as that between historiography and science. In part, no doubt, this is because historiography in the West arises against the background of a distinctly literary (or rather “fictional”) discourse which itself took shape against the even more archaic discourse of myth. In its origins, historical discourse differentiates itself from literary discourse by virtue of its subject matter (“real” rather than “imaginary” events) rather than its form. But form here is ambiguous, for it refers not only to the manifest appearance of historical discourse (their appearance of stories) but also to the systems of meaning production (the modes of emplotment) that historiography shared with literature and myth.53

Is the chroniclers’ description of the Cade Revolt an example of what White describes as a “form” of historical discourse? It certainly was a “real” event, but did the revolt happen exactly as the chroniclers say that it did? Was any of it “imagined?” When historians plot an historical narrative they risk the dangers of producing a narrative that appears to be fiction or producing a misrepresentation of the historical event. As we read the Cade entries (and indeed other entries) in the London chronicles, we see their indebtedness (intentional or accidental) to the Arthurian romances, particularly to the chronicle style of Arthurian texts such as Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur. P. J. C. Field comments that Malory is “very impure literature indeed,” and that of all the great English writers he “shows the least interest in words for their own sake … But Malory is not writing an ordinary romance. He is putting romance material into chronicle form.”54 That Malory utilizes the form and stylistics of chronicles, and in particular the chronicles of London, has been the focus of some of Raluca Radulescu’s work, where the prose Brut and its gentry context (and a later mercantile audience) in several of its manuscripts as well as John Hardyng’s Chronicle have appeared to

Writing Medieval History, ed. Nancy Partner (New York: Hodder Arnold, 2005), 88–108, esp. 90–92. 52   White, Figural Realism, 28–30; Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 44. 53   White, The Content of the Form, 44. 54   P. J. C. Field, Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Malory’s Prose Style (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1971), 36, 37.

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influence Thomas Malory’s work.55 Radulescu also notes that Malory’s stylization of violence can be traced to fifteenth-century historical writings, and she begins one of her essays with an excerpt from John Benet’s Chronicle that describes the episode in the Cade Rebellion where Lord Saye is drawn and quartered, and his head is stuck on a pole.56 So far, recent scholarship suggests that the influence is one directional: the chronicles and the political situation of fifteenth-century England influenced Malory’s choice of language, his descriptions of violence and knighthood, and his allegorical depiction of royalty and government. Could, however, the reverse be true? Could the romance tradition—and here I am thinking of Malory’s Morte Darthur (ca. 1469/70), but also of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and Troilus and Criseyde, the alliterative Morte Darthur, the extensive prose Brut tradition and corpus, as well as countless other romances that circulated in and around London that told of the Matter of France or the Matter of Rome—have influenced the writing of the London chronicles? Certain manuscripts containing London chronicles also contain literary texts that may have influenced the composition of the histories: John Vale’s Book, which contains the Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, also contains John Lydgate’s prose narrative on governments, The Serpent of Division;57 Bodleian Library MS Egerton 1995, known today as the edited collection The Historical Collections of a London Citizen, contains two lengthy poems, The Seven Sages of Rome and “The Siege of Rouen,” Lydgate’s “Verses on the Kings of England,” as well as Gregory’s Chronicle;58 and most notably British Library MS Additional 10099, which belongs to the “Common Version” of the Middle English prose Brut.59 Malory’s skills as a writer of romance and a purveyor of the chronicle style are far superior to those skills of the chroniclers of London. However, when one views the succession of Cade episodes produced by the chroniclers, one could argue that the writers are, at times, attempting to

55

 Raluca L. Radulescu, The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur. Arthurian Studies 55 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 54–70. For a study of Vale’s Book and its political similarities with that of Malory and his work see Radulescu’s “John Vale’s Book and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur: A Political Agenda,” Arthuriana 9.4 (1999): 69–80. 56  Raluca L. Radulescu, “‘Oute of mesure’: Violence and Knighthood in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” in K. S. Whetter and Raluca L. Radulescu, ed., Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes. Arthurian Studies 60 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 119–31 at 119. 57  Kekewich et al., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England, 253. Vale and Lydgate were both from Suffolk. 58   Gairdner, Historical Collections, i–ii. Gairdner includes Lydgate’s poems as well as the Siege of Rouen” but not “The Seven Sages of Rome” in his edition. 59  Lister M. Matheson, The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 180 (Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1998), 159–61.

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attain a higher degree of literary discourse not commonly seen in town chronicle and annal writing. With one possible exception, the Cade Revolt of 1450 can be read as an emplotted romance (to echo Hayden White’s terminology and definition).60 I wish to bring into the fold the final remarks of the “Prefatory Letter” that open The Deeds of Hereward, itself a romance: “everything has been arranged in due order, so that what is clearly set down here may be easily remembered.” At the close of the Cade Rebellion in the London chronicles, virtually all speak of Cade’s capture, his death, and express a sense that things have, more or less, returned to normal. The subsequent entry within each chronicle signals the start of a new event (with its own emplotment), and therefore the closure of the Cade Revolt. Certain chronicles contain individuals who could be read as “heroes” who took part in the fight against Cade—and here I am thinking of the Stafford brothers, but also Matthew Gough who, in several chronicles, is called a “noble warrior.” Gough is singled out, and in his death he becomes something of a martyr to those citizens whom he helped protect. Bale’s Chronicle and MS Gough 10 both describe Gough, respectively, as a “noble werreour,” “noble werreoure.”61 Robert Fabyan describes Gough as a “gentylman.”62 Edward Hall gives the most detailed description of Gough. After Malpas’ house is looted, Hall describes Gough as follows:

60

  The one possible exception could be Cotton Vitellius A. XVI, for it is the only London chronicle which appears to connect the Duke of York’s arrival from Ireland with that of Cade’s execution. While the other chronicles either end the year’s entry with Cade’s death or continue on with a series of other events that occurred during the remainder of the year, Vitellius A. XVI concludes the entry for 1450 with the death of Cade and then this sentence: “And the same yere al litel before Mighelmas the Duke of York come owte of Ireland,” in Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 162. As you recall from Chapter 1, Richard Duke of York returned to Wales from Ireland in September 1450 and sought to remove from power Edmund Beauford, the Duke of Somerset. York, with a substantial force, was arrested on 2 March on Blackheath and on 10 March swore an oath that he would not oppose the king anymore. The chronicler could be making an ironic (or even satirical) assessment of the events that surround the Cade Rebellion and the (near) York Rebellion that followed. Perhaps the chronicler was cynical in that he saw the cyclic nature of the rebellions and their damaging effects on the country and, most significantly, the fact that they never advanced the goals of the rebellion. 61  Flenley, Six Town Chronicles, 134; MS Gough London 10 calls him a “noble werreoure,” ibid., 156; Cotton Vitellius A. XVI describes him as “a Capitayne of Normandy,” in Kingsford, Chronicles of London, 161; the prose Brut describes him as “A Capitayn of Normandie,” in Brie, The Brut, 519.12; he is also named “A Capitayne of Normandy,” in Thomas and Thornley, The Great Chronicle of London, 184; An English Chronicle describes him as “a squire of Wales,” in Marx, An English Chronicle, 69.33. 62  Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. Henry Ellis (London: Rivington, Payne, Wilkie [etc.], 1811), 625.

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Mathew Gough, the often named capitayne in Normandy (as you haue harde before) they purposed to make them pryuye both of their entent and enterprise … Mathew Gough, more experte in marcial feates, thenthe other cheuetaynes of the citie, perceiuyng the Kentishmen better to stande to their taclyng, then his imaginacion expected, aduised his cōpany no further to procede, toward Southwarke, till the day appered … Mathew Gough, a man of great wit, much experience in feates of chiualrie, beyōd the sea (as before ye haue hearde). But it is often sense that he, whiche many tymes hath vanqueshed his enemies in straūg countreys, and returned agayn as a conqueror, hath of his awne nacion afterward been shamfully murdered, and brought to confusion.63

If Hereward is considered to be a historical footnote, yet we have an extended literary outlaw narrative that describes his actions, we must then wonder why Gough and his story, who is by all means a hero of high stature, has not for the most part lived outside of the boundaries of these Cade entries. We do, however, have an artifact of Gough’s death. As William Marx points out, a four-line epitaph on Matthew Gough was written on folio 181v of Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS 21608: Anglia dat luctum, miratur Francia casum Mortis Matheu Gogh, Cambria clamitat ogh. De tibi Kent semper prodictrici tua cauda Scandala dat regno plus tua prodicio.64 [England gives mourning; France marvels at the misfortune Of the death of Matthew Gough; Wales cries out “Oh!” From you Kent always forestalled your tail; Your betrayal gives more discredit to the kingdom.]

Cade and the Kentish rebels essentially robbed Wales of one of their national heroes. Moreover, the entire kingdom appears to be complicit in Gough’s death. Ironically, it was Gough’s military maneuvers in the French wars that helped to solidify England’s occupying presence on the French coast and to provide a sense of security for the eastern English counties along the English Channel. This short, four-line epitaph presents a striking characterization of the heroics of Gough, framing his death in nationalistic language that verges on propaganda. While Gough’s death is a cause for collective mourning, Cade’s is greeted with a sense of detached elation and expectedness. Even some of the sparsest descriptions of the Cade Rebellion, such as The Chronicle of the Grey Friar of London or the Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, 63

 Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, ed., Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payne, [etc.], 1809; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965), 221–2. For Hall’s description of Gough’s courageous feats in the battle of Caen see the entry on 216. 64  Marx, ed., An English Chronicle 1377–1461, xvii–xviii. I would like to thank Molly Martin for her assistance with this tricky translation.

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have a plot structure that can, in its most elementary form, be described in the model of Freytag’s Pyramid. The “inciting moment” can best be described as the death of Suffolk and the “exposition” as the mobilization of the commons, the election of Cade, and the drafting of the Bills of Complaint. The “complication” in the Cade Revolt is the moment in the narrative when Henry refuses to hear the Bills of Complaint, and Cade and his company begin their encampments in Blackheath and Sevenoaks. The “climax” of the narrative is the trial, execution, and disfiguring of Lord Say and Crowmer, the former sheriff of Kent. After this moment Londoners lose all faith in Cade and his aims. The “reversal” is now obvious: Cade, once championed by the people, is now the enemy as he loots London and initiates the fight on London Bridge in which hundreds are killed and wounded. And finally we have the “dénouement,” the “falling action,” in which Cade is hunted, killed, executed, and London returned to its pre-war normalcy. Did the chroniclers of the revolt see the events in terms of a larger plot structure, or is this just how the series of events unfolded? The dramatic exposition of the historical narrative of the Cade rebellion is remarkable, especially when one reads the various accounts in succession. The result is a historic event that contains literary elements in the form of emplotment and characterization, which, in some cases, may lead down the slippery slope of figuration and mythology. Victor Turner defines “myth” as the following: “Myths treat of origins but derive from transitions.”65 Myths, therefore, exist in a liminal state. F. R. Ankersmit comments that the story of myth is the story “of a move from one phase to another—which is the nature of all stories about transitions—is now dramatized into a story of the birth of time itself.”66 Ankersmit continues in his discussion of the importance of time and temporality of myths, stating that “the mythical past is necessarily a past that has left no traces in our contemporary reality, hence a past that we have ‘wholly forgotten about’ and that is ‘dissociated’ from our present historical world.”67 While the mythical past may be gone forever, it has left its mark upon cultures and their collective unconscious minds. England in 1450 is completely “dissociated” from the temporal space of the Arthurian canon; nonetheless, the body of literature that represents that particular “myth” influenced the historiography of the nation, its founding, its sense of nationalism, and its 65

  Victor Turner, “Myth and Symbol,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David L. Sills (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 9:576. 66  F. R. Ankersmit, The Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005). Ankersmit continues thusly: “So when myths are liminal phenomena, they most typically focus on the boundary separating time from what preceded time. They are no less stories of loss, for they tell us about a quasi-natural paradisiacal past that has been taken away from us with the birth of time. And it would be hard to exaggerate the magnitude of the loss: From a world of perfection and stability we stumbled into the world of history, hence of imperfection and of inevitable decay, or mortality, of death, and of the futility of all human effort,” 364. 67  Ibid., 364.

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dominance in the global world beginning in the sixteenth century and lasting well through Victorian England. Of course, there exists the inherent danger that some might view these myths of King Arthur as pure history. The danger, some would say, is where does it all end. In other words, what would stop the inevitable cloud of historical revisionism from being lowered? Joseph Mali has coined the term “mythistory,” that is, “a story that has passed into and become history. The critical task of this historiography, or mythistory, is to reappraise these stories as inevitable, and ultimately valuable, histories of personal and communal identity.”68 The Cade Rebellion has not yet approached the realm of myth; however, Cade the person/a has begun the gradual movement towards a mythological entity, just as the leaders of The Peasants’ Revolt before him, it seemed, were being removed from their real temporal space and placed into a particular time that called for their mythologies.

68   Joseph Mali, Mythistory: The Making of a Modern Historiography (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xii.

Chapter 6

Jack Cade and the Specter of Robin Hood

One of the most important, long-lasting medieval myths is the figure of Robin Hood. He is the outlaw who fights for the common good of the people, or so popular culture wants us to believe. Robin Hood and Jack Cade are two figures of mythological proportions, yet one most certainly lived and breathed while the other is an amalgamation of real and imagined people. However, when we examine the records of the Cade Rebellion and place them within the context of the Robin Hood tradition, what becomes clear is that both histories are influencing one another. The history of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws, which in and of themselves have their own central narrative, plays a significant role in the development of the Cade Rebellion and even influences the activities of the rebels. Conversely, it can also be argued that the Cade Rebellion influenced the Robin Hood canon of late-medieval England—specifically the texts of Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin Hood and the Potter, and A Gest of Robyn Hode—in noteworthy means. The authors of the Robin Hood texts were most certainly aware of the Cade Rebellion. The early poems of Robin Hood, therefore, begin to take on certain literary and historical characteristics that mirror the events of the 1450 Rebellion. Thus, the fictitious world of Robin Hood, which is always grounded in a heightened socio-economic context, is converging with the historical event of the Cade Rebellion. While not a pure London chronicle, Edward Hall’s Chronicle does belong to the late-medieval corpus of historical writing. It contains a lengthy account of the Cade Rebellion, but the chronicle is mainly known for its descriptions of the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Where does a chronicle (that is, a narrative history) end and a myth begin? In the seventh year of the reign of Henry VIII (1515), Henry and his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and several lords and ladies go shooting and hunting. They suddenly come across: a cōpany of tall yomen, clothed all in grene with grene whodes & bowed & arrowes, to the nūber of .ii.C. Then one of them, which called him selfe Robyn hood, came to the kyng, desyring him to se his men shoote, & the kyng was cōtent.



 Edward Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, ed., Henry Ellis (London: J. Johnson, F. C. and J. Rivington, T. Payne, [etc.], 1809; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1965), 582. For a study of this episode see Victor I. Scherb, “‘I’de Have a Shooting’: Catherine of Aragon’s Receptions of Robin Hood,”Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama 42 (2003): 123–46.

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The 200 shooters shot so much and so fast for the king’s amusement that it gave the king “solace.” Robin reveals to Henry that the 200 archers are the king’s soldiers, but Robin invites Henry and the queen to go into the “grene wood, & to se how the outlawes lyue.” Henry and Catherine enter into the bower where they dine with Robin and his band of men on “venyson and wyne,” and after the meal the two groups say farewell to one another. It is an unusual moment to say the least. Hall does not step into the narrative to say that this was all a game or the after-effects of a Shrovetide performance, or that the whole matter was a practical joke. In reality, this Robin Hood episode was a play that was performed for the king at Shooter’s Hill, Kent, on his way to Greenwich. This very festive pageant is the earliest recorded Robin Hood play in Kent. That Hall says nothing regarding the authenticity of Robin Hood signals a temporal transition. Robin Hood, a mythical figure of a pre-temporal existence, is now a real person (with a real band of outlaws), living in a contemporary historical narrative. Roland Barthes says that “myth is a language,” and once we uncover the deeper structure of his historical narrative we are presented with literary elements—in particular characterization and emplotment—which, when fused together, can form the basis of a mythological text. The Early Robin Hood Chronicle Tradition Robin Hood is certainly the most celebrated of the medieval outlaws. He is able to transcend boundaries, whereas his other medieval outlaw counterparts—William Wallace, Hereward, Eustache the Monk, Fouke Fitz Waryn, Owain Glyndwr—are decidedly fixed within their own national, ethnic, and class paradigms. The origins of Robin Hood, much like the origins of Cade, are to be located within the tradition of medieval chronicle and historical writings. Robin Hood emerged and grew into a national symbol of both resistance and of unity from these brief “footnotes” in written history. The earliest historical occurrence of the name Robin Hood dates from the year 1226 where, in the York assize records, a fugitive by the name of “Robert Hod” has his goods seized because he owes money to Saint Peter’s. Indeed, Robin Hood activity in the thirteenth century is bustling. Over the next 400 years, Robin Hood becomes a name associated with fugitive criminal activity: murders, insurrections, robberies, and larceny. One of the earliest chronicle



 Hall, Hall’s Chronicle, 582.  Ibid., 582.   Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: The Noonday Press, 1972), 11.   Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren, ed., “The Chronicler’s Robin Hood,” in Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1997), 21. 

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accounts of Robin Hood, from Andrew of Wyntoun’s Orygynale Chronicle (c. 1420), is an entry that places Robin Hood and Little John in the year 1283: Litil Iohun and Robert Hude Waythmen war commendit gud; Forrest outlaws; praised In Ingilwode and Bernnysdaile Thai oyssit al this tyme thar trawale. Practiced; labor

Even in the 1440s the belief, held here by Wyntoun but also by other chroniclers such as Walter Bower, existed that Robin Hood was real. Robin is apparently alive and well in 1283, yet somehow the outlaw continues to survive and make appearances throughout England’s later Middle Ages. Walter Bower’s Continuation of John of Fordun’s Scotichronicon (c. 1440) includes an entry for the year 1266 where Robin is now a “famous murderer,” and the “foolish populace” delight in celebrating the outlaw and his band’s activities through song, comedies, and dramatic performances. This Robin Hood, however, is markedly different from the figure found both in Wyntoun’s record and also from the brief historical accounts that provide a context for the outlaw’s activity but not really a description of character. While Bower’s label of “murderer” is decidedly more severe than Wyntoun’s description of Robin as an outlaw, it is also more elaborate: we now have a narrative associated with Robin and a code of conduct. Robin, according to Bower, is a devout Catholic. When he hears Mass, Robin has “no wish on any account to interrupt the service.” However, the “viscount” (the sheriff) does interrupt Robin while he prays. Robin finishes his Mass, defeats the sheriff, and returns to church where he “singled out the servants of the church and the Masses to be held in greater respect, bearing in mind what is commonly said: ‘God harkens to him who hears Mass frequently.’” This fourteenth-century account of Robin places him within an ethical paradox, and it is one that continues up to present day representations of the greenwood outlaw. Robin is a vicious murderer, yet he is also extremely religious. In the figure of Robin Rood there exists a strong moral center, one that is grounded in orthodox Christianity and the Golden Rule. However, while Robin is often compelled to uphold the doctrines of his religion and seek solace and redemption through his prayers to the Virgin Mary, he is also forced—by forces that are outer and also inner—to circumvent his religious foundation and its ethical framework so as to triumph in his battles. While Robin Hood’s origin dates back to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, his popularity starts to explode during the later Middle Ages. As seen 

 Ibid., 24.  For a thorough summary of the various candidates for the “real” Robin Hood, Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 193–8.   Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 26.   Ibid., 26. 

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in the profusion of cultural moments and works of literature that allude to and depict Robin Hood, all evidence points to the fifteenth century as the time where the greatest amount of Robin Hood “activity” took place. Within this time period, we are able to note insurrections, aliases, dramatic performances, and poetry that connect the literary figure of Robin Hood with historical events. In 1441, a group of laborers and yeoman armed themselves with “jacks, swords, staves, and cudgels,” camped along the road in South Acre, began to ambush travelers, and threatened to murder Sir Roger Harsyk. The group sang a song: “We arn Robynhodesmen war war war.”10 The Cade Rebellion, a popular revolt that was organized by the king’s subjects who felt that Henry VI’s policies were not working and men were taking advantage of him and the nation, begins with a nod to Robin Hood. The figure of the good outlaw is thus explicitly linked with the Rebellion and its aims; conversely, the Robin Hood literature that is produced after 1450 is itself colored by both the events that surround the rebellion and also its charismatic leader. In the last week of January 1450, a small yet volatile rebellion (around 200 individuals) erupted along the English Channel coast in Kent. Led by Thomas Cheyne, a laborer from Newington by Southwark, the revolt was a precursor to the events only a few months away in May. Cheyne’s failed rebellion was not nearly as well-organized or motivated as Cade’s, yet the organizing principles of the January force and their aims were entirely similar to the Captain of Kent’s endeavor. The leaders of Cheyne’s revolt disguised their identities with inventive, comical, and appropriate aliases. National Archives document KB 27/755, rex side, m. 4, provides an overview of Cheyne’s revolt, including the aliases that the rebels use: Further for Hilary Term The king and others greeting. On Friday next after the feast of the Blessed Mary in the 28th year of the reign of the present King at Greenwich in the presence of James Earl of Wiltshire, John Talbot Kt, William Yelverton, John Blakeway and Thomas Graswold by virtue of a commission of the said lord King then directed to them by the oaths of 12 jurors then presented that Thomas Cheyne formerly of Newenton in the county of Surrey yeoman who fled his hermitage in the parish of Blawberd and Nicholas Wokeden formerly of Maxfeld in the county of Chester yeoman and many others traitors unknown renounced the blessed lordship of Henry the Sixth King of England after the conquest on the 24th day of January in the year aforesaid at Estre in the county of Kent and with others in diverse places concealed and hidden in woods, they conspired plotted and between them decided to decapitate and kill the various two lords and chiefs of the Great Council of the Lord King because, in the promise of peace and fearing the power and force of the said king was without courage, and in detriment of 10   Philippa C. Maddern, Violence and Social Order: East Anglia, 1422–1444 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 108–9.

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the community of the realm of England, from all of them with assent being at Estre aforesaid on the 24th day of January the said Thomas Cheyne and Nicholas Wokeden and others of the said traitors unknown were congregated and talked and the traitors together assented and began to move and excite a great part of the community of the realm aforesaid especially of the counties of Kent, Essex, Hertfordshire, Surrey and Sussex and the city of London and joined them in common and with the assent of the same to insurgency together, raising war of which the said Thomas Cheyne and Nicholas Wokeden and others of the said traitors unknown in the said kingdom against the Lord King’s peace if the said King those traitors in his punishment in these parts he would wish to impede and from the said traitors then and therefore those traitors constituted and made diverse their diverse captains of war in those parts with diverse names namely the said Thomas Cheyne first, King of the Fairies second, Queen of the Fairies third, Jenessay fourth, Haveybynne fifth, Robyn Hode sixth and a certain Robert canon of the house of St Stephen in Rome seventh and that they as the said captains constituted with great multitude of followers from the community and assent of the said Thomas Cheyne and Nicholas Wokeden and others of the said traitors unknown from places in the said county of Kent with haste congregated and the said two lords and chiefs against those traitors with the said King close by in the debt of his allegiance they were killed and decapitated.11

That “Robyn Hode” is used as an alias is significant, for it brings the legendary outlaw out of the literary milieu and into the historical record, which is where the figure of Robin Hood was first recorded in 1226 in that York assize record. By 1450, the figure of Robin Hood is now placed squarely within the context of Cade’s Rebellion. The rebels are most certainly aware of the outlaw’s history and his narratives. Most intriguing, though, are the activities of the Cade rebels and how their actions mirror the behavior of Robin Hood and his band. By 1450, the Robin Hood corpus would have possibly included two of the earliest poems, Robin Hood and the Monk (c. 1465), and Robin Hood and the Potter (c. 1468).12 Since both of these texts are copies of earlier works, we can presume that these texts may have been circulating before the start of Cade’s Rebellion.

11  Kew, NA, KB 27 / 755, Rex side, m.4. I would like to thank Thomas Ohlgren for bringing this record to my attention and Nick Barratt for transcribing it. 12  For the dating of these two poems, see Thomas H. Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 1465–1560: Texts, Contexts, and Ideology (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2007), 39–40 and 74–5. Robin Hood and the Monk can be found in Cambridge University Library MS Ff. 5.48, fols. 128v–35v and is the last of twenty-eight items in the manuscript. Robin Hood and the Potter can be found in Cambridge University Library MS Ee.4.35, fols. 14v–19r and is the tenth of eighteen items in the manuscript.

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Jack Cade, Robin Hood, and Piers Plowman As Bower begrudgingly admits in his chronicler’s account, Robin Hood is extremely popular. The masses, the commons, the people, the folk, they all appear to adore Robin Hood. They sing his praises, swap stories recounting his adventures, and attend celebrations where he and his character are the focus of entertainment. As we will see, by 1450 there is an established corpus of texts that include Robin Hood as a main character, name him and his activities, and allude to his outlaw ideologies. The first appearance of Robin Hood in literature is in the B-Text of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, a hugely popular piece of literature in its own right, written in the 1370s. Through the vision of the dreamer Will, Langland satirizes the England of his day, and his chief target is corruption in the government and the church. In Passus V, Will encounters the Seven Deadly Sins. Langland’s allegorical representation of Sloth is that of a priest who does not know his “Lord’s Prayer,” but who nonetheless knows, by hearing it seems, popular verses about Robin Hood: I kan noght parfitly my Paternoster as the preest syngeth,

do not know properly But I kan rymes of Robyn Hood and Randolf Erl of Chestre, about Ac neither of Oure Lord ne of Oure Lady the leeste that evere was maked.13 composed

As Stephen Knight has observed, there is nothing inherently bad about these rhymes of Robin Hood and Randolf, the latter character is one whom we know very little.14 These rhymes were most certainly popular stores that circulated throughout England. However, that the priest knows these popular tales by heart and not know the literature of the church is extremely unnerving (to Langland and thus to his audience). And Knight is quick to point out the long-held conviction, which was argued most vehemently by Bishop Hugh Latimer in the mid-sixteenth century, that many people in late-medieval and Early Modern England held to be true: the Robin Hood tales—which were circulated through popular events, such as May games, Whitsun festivities, ridings, and guildhall ceremonies—incited anti-social behavior.15 Latimer’s derision of Robin Hood may in part be a byproduct of the dominant practice during the English Reformation of condemning 13   William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the BText Based on the Trinity College Cambridge MS B. 15. 17, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (London: Dent, 1995), Passus V, lines 395–7. 14  Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, 3–4. 15  Ibid, 4. Dean A. Hoffman suggests that A Gest of Robyn Hode was performed at a Guildhall feast, and he notes how the structure of the poem might mirror the structure of a Guildhall banquet. See: Dean A. Hoffman, “‘I wyll be thy true servaunte / And trewely serve thee’: Guildhall Minstrelsy in the Gest of Robyn Hode,” The Drama Review 49, no. 2 (2005): 119–34.

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anything associated with Catholicism. One of Robin Hood’s rituals is that he attends Mass and prays, specifically to the Virgin Mary. Many Robin Hood plays were held during celebrations that marked the festival and ritual year, some of which were organized sponsored by local parishes and governments. The earliest recorded Robin Hood play was held in Exeter in 1427, where the mayor was the guest of honor.16 Indeed, in the fifteenth century the South and Southeast were the principal areas where Robin Hood plays were performed; by contrast, there are no records of Robin Hood plays in London and the North until the sixteenth century. Initially a southern phenomena, these Robin Hood plays and games took place during the Whitsun and May Day festivities. The two plays Robin Hood and the Friar and Robin Hood and the Potter are appended to William Copland’s edition of A Mery Geste of Robyn Hoode and Hys Lyfe (c. 1560), and in Copland’s introductory remarks he states that the plays are “verye proper to be played in Maye Games.”17 The play Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham (c. 1470) is the earliest known Robin Hood play. At twenty-one lines, the play is thought to be the same dramatic performance that John Paston II refers to in one of his letters, dated April 16, 1473. In the letter, Paston complains that his horse-keeper has left him, and that his servant, W. Wood, was to “pleye Seynt Jorge and Robynhod and the shryff off Notyngham, and now when I wolde haue good horse he is goon in-to Bernysdale, and I wyth-owt a kepere.”18 This reference to Barnesdale is no doubt a tongue-in-cheek reference to Wood’s playing of Robin Hood; in fact, perhaps he enjoyed playing the role a little too much. The lawlessness that was associated with Robin Hood, his plays, and the festivities that surrounded the Whitsun activities apparently showed itself in Kent. In 1528 an order was issued, banning any “maner of stage pley Robyn hoodes pley wacches or wakes yeveales or other such lyke playes wherby that eny grete assemble of the kynges people shuld be made & caused to be arreysed.”19 Not only was it wrong to play a Robin Hood performance, it was also against the law to partake in the traditional Midsummer Watch and Wake. As noted in an earlier chapter, Cade and his legion subverted and abused the customs of the Midsummer Watch. Now, seventy-five years later, the Watch and Robin Hood games are effectively illegal. If a Robin Hood play were performed in Kent in the mid-fifteenth century or earlier, it would have resembled Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham.

16

 Ronald Hutton, The Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year, 1400–1700 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 60. 17  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 281. 18  Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century: Part I. EETS, s.s., 20 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 461.28–30. 19   James M. Gibson, ed., Kent: Diocese of Canterbury. Records of Early English Drama (Toronto and Buffalo: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 2002), 2:427.

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The play is in two scenes and contains no stage directions.20 In the first scene, the sheriff enlists the help of a knight to help capture Robin. The outlaw and the knight compete in archery and wrestling. While Robin wins the shooting contest, the knight is able to throw Robin to the ground. Robin blows his horn to summon his men. Before Robin’s band arrives, the outlaw and the knight fight with swords. Robin decapitates the knight, dons his clothing, and placed the head in his hood. The second scene involves the meeting between Robin and the sheriff. The scene starts with Robin in prison, and some of his outlaws come to rescue him. As they approach the prison, the outlaws see Friar Tuck fighting the sheriff single-handedly. All of the outlaws are captured, and the gates are opened to let the new prisoners in and to let Robin out so as to be hanged. The dialogue ends with the sheriff giving these orders: “Opyn the gatis faste anon, / And late theis thevys ynne gon.”21 It is presumed that once the gates are opened, Robin and his band fight the sheriff and escape. Both halves of this play end in the dissolution of civil order. David Mills states that the character of Robin Hood is one that accentuates “anarchy rather than justice,” and this brief play is a perfect illustration of Mills’ words.22 This early figure of Robin Hood, who is more violent and also more attuned to the world of the greenwood than his gentrified self of the sixteenth century, resembles the anarchic behavior of the Kentish rebels. Both Robin Hood and Cade’s men quickly turn aggressive and bloodthirsty, and both subvert and kill representatives of the king’s authority. Another figure who is connected to Robin Hood, Jack Cade, and the literary and political context of late-medieval England is Robert the Robber/Hob the Robber. All three figures were involved with illegal activities, most notably thievery. Moreover, all three are figures whose characters are blends of legend, myth, and historical fact. Also, their origins are to be found within historical records of crimes committed. L. D. V. Owen describes the York assize record of 1226 in which Robert Hood is named as a fugitive, and he notes that in the margin the name “Hobbehod” is written.23 While the entry in the assize record is early, the marginal note may be an allusion to both William Langland’s penitent Robert the Robber/Hobbe the Robber and also to the figure who appears in the “John Ball Letters” of the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt.24 In Langland’s work, Robert the Robber appears is Passus Five, where the character repents through the confessions of the Seven Deadly Sins. In the B-Text, Robert is placed alongside Sloth: 20

 Stephen Knight, Robin Hood: A Mythic Biography, also suggests that these could actually be two separate plays, at 10–11. 21  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 277. 22  David Mills, “Drama and Folk-Ritual,” in The Revels History of Drama in English, Volume I: Medieval Drama, ed. Lois Potter (London: Methuen, 1983), 122–51 at 133. 23  L. D. V. Owen, “Robin Hood in the Light of Research,” Times Trade and Engineering Supplement 39, part 864 (1936): xxix. 24  For the most accurate edition of this letter, see Kenneth Sisam, ed., Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921), 160–61.

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Roberd the robbere on Reddite loked, “Give back” (C) And for ther was noght wher[with], he wepte swithe soore. And yet the synfulle sherewe seide to hymselfe: “Crist, that on Calvarie upon the cros deidest Tho Dysmas my brother bisoughte thee of grace, At that time; begged And haddest mercy on that man for Memento sake, you had So rewe on this Rober[d] that Reddere ne have, pity; means to restore (C) Ne nevere wene to wynne with craft that I knowe; expect; earn; skill But for thi muchel mercy mitigacion I biseche: great; compassion Damne me noght at Domesday for that I dide so ille!25 Damn

Within this passage, Robert the Robber understands that he is unable to fully repay all that he has stolen. Yet when he remembers the thief whom Christ pardons, Robert is quick to comprehend the possibility of mercy through prayer. As Margaret Goldsmith has noted, characters such as Robert the Robber are used to illustrate how the doctrine of restitution is brought in to reinforce the theme of Justice, all the while the absolute mercy of God is exemplified.26 In addition to the connection that exists between Robin Hood and the character of Robert the Robber, another figure who is named in the above passage is associated with the early Robin Hood poem, Robin Hood and the Monk: Dismas, Robert the Robber’s brother and his alter-ego. In the apocryphal text The Gospel of Nicodemus, Dismas is the name that is given to the “good thief” of Luke 23:32–43.27 The manuscript that contains Robin Hood and the Monk, Cambridge University Library MS Ff. 5.48, includes a Latin charm against thieves, Contra ffures et latrones.28 The charm begins with four lines of verse followed by ten lines of prose. The text describes three bodies hanging on a tree: the two thieves Dismas and Gesmas, and Christ is between them. In the quatrain, Dismas reaches heaven while Gesman decends into hell. The ten lines of prose that follow describe Christ’s ability to help those who have encountered thieves.29 As Thomas Ohlgren has shown, the secular priest Gilbert Pilkington compiled and wrote the clerical miscellany Cambridge University Library MS Ff. 5.48 for his “personal and professional uses,” and that “many of the texts copied into his clerical miscellany could have been mined for 25  Schmidt, Piers Plowman, Passus V, lines 462–71. In the C-Text, Robert is placed alongside Coveitise in Passus VI. 26  Margaret E. Goldsmith, The Figure of Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman Studies 2 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981), 30. 27  Langland also borrows from the Harrowing of Hell in Passus XVIII of the B-Text and XX of the C-Text. 28  Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 31–2 and 215 n. 15. 29  An edition of this charm has not yet been published. Jack R. Baker is currently working on an edition and translation of this text, “A Latin Charm against Thieves in Cambridge, University Library MS Ff. 5.48, fol. 10v” (working paper, 2008). I would like to thank Jack for letting me see an early version of his study.

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sermon exempla to illustrate various pastoral and catechistical themes.”30 The theme of robbery and its spiritual and societal implications unites the texts of Robin Hood and the Monk and the Latin charm Contra ffures et latrones. Moreover, the character of Dismas acts as one more bridge between the Robin Hood tradition and the B and C-Texts of Piers Plowman. Seen through these texts, robbery was not only a threat to the economic and social stability of England, it was also (if one did not repent) a pathway to eternal ruin. Robin Hood and the Literature of the Peasants’ Revolt and of Cade’s Rebellion The literature of the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381 and of the Cade Rebellion of 1450 unifies both sets of rebels in their shared love of “trewth” and in their hatred of “traytors.”31 John Ball, one of the leaders of the Peasants’ Revolt and a writer of much of their literature, was freed from prison by the rebels and gave a sermon in Blackheath (a rebel stronghold in 1381 and 1450) to some two-hundred thousand individuals. His sermon began thusly: Whan Adam dalf, and Eve span, dug; spun Wo was thanne a gentilman?32

In the sermon that follows this couplet, Ball glosses and interprets the proverb as a call to equality and egalitarianism among all men and women, and that the years of servitude was an abomination of God’s intent. Yet for all of Ball’s insistency upon a new social order based on equal rights, the preacher’s actions demonstrated a real double standard as well as a blatant degree of hypocrisy. After all, in one of Ball’s early letters to the “Peasants of Essex,” the preacher commands that the commons “biddeþ Peres Plouȝman go to his werk, and chastise wel Hobbe þe Robbere.”33 Piers Plowman and Hob/Robert the Robber are, for Ball and much of his audience, at opposite ends of the moral spectrum. Piers continues to be a figure who elicits images of salvation through hard, honest work; by contrast, Hob/Robert’s criminal enterprise does nothing for the social or moral betterment of England’s Third Estate (or Second, or First for that matter). However, when the Peasants’ Revolt is well underway, it is evident that the leaders, specifically Wat Tyler, are keen on acting more like Hob and less like Piers. Indeed, when Richard II and his esquires confront Wat Tyler, one of the king’s men declares the

30

 Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 67.  R. B. Dobson, The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1983),

31

380. 32

 Ibid., 374.  Sisam, Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, 160–61.

33

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rebel leader to be “the greatest thief in the country.”34 Thus, the Peasants’ Revolt becomes associated with one of the literary and historical figures who circulated in an environment of criminal activity. Ironically, the leaders of the revolt sought to distance themselves from such a figure. However, in the end, the lure of a criminal life was perhaps too much for many to suppress. After all, the life of a criminal is, in many ways, a life of freedom. Perhaps the freedom of living such a reckless way of life satiated (for a brief and fleeting moment) the freedom from the ruling classes that these and other rebels sought. One of the more striking similarities between the Robin Hood tradition and the Cade Rebellion is the presence of the greenwood and its themes. The Cade Rebellion begins in the week of May 24 and effectively ends on July 17, when Cade’s quarters are dispensed. The seasonal space of the Cade Rebellion within the early summer months calls to mind the natural world of Robin Hood. The opening lines of Robin Hood and the Monk evocatively place the reader into the lush, green world of the outlaws: In somer, when the shawes be sheyne, And leves be large and long, Hit is full mery in feyre foreste To here the foulys song, To se the dere draw to the dale, And leve the hilles hee, And shadow hem in the leves grene, Under the grene wode tre.35

woods are bright air hear; birds’ dear high shelter themselves

The medieval Robin Hood is mindful of the natural world and seeks to protect it, for the forest offers him and his band refuge, sustenance, cover, and a strategic base of operation. Within the forest, Robin is safe. Thomas Ohlgren nicely summarizes the dichotomy between life within the forest and life outside of its sphere: The forest encapsulates the virtues of an ideal realm: loyalty, fidelity, honor, chivalry, brotherhood, solidarity, magnanimity, hospitality, ceremony, and courage. Opposed to the forest are the engrossing negative values of the dominant social, political, and economic powers—the court, church, and town, so marked by statutory law, cash-nexus, oppression, and corruption.36

This ideal existence of life within the boundaries of the forest, which Robin and his force attempt to maintain, is one that Cade and his company too seek to solidify 34   The Anonimalle Chronicle, 1333 to 1381, ed., V. H. Galbraith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1927), 148–9. 35  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 37. 36   Thomas H. Ohlgren, ed., Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation, rev. and exp. (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2005), 360.

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through their rebellion. Cade and his force were remarkably efficient in getting things done; however, they often failed (and failed miserably) at that moment when the majority of citizens were just about to lend their undying support. But within the boundaries of the forest, Cade and his company are efficient and dangerous. As noted in earlier chapters, the rebel victory at Sevenoaks on June 18 was a decisive moment in the rebellion, for it convinced the king to retreat to Kenilworth Castle. The rural area in and around Sevenoaks, known as the Weald, is difficult terrain and a perfect setting for a guerrilla campaign. The topography of the Weald is a mixture of ravines, marshes, dense forests, and thickets with brambles and natural cover. The thorny nature of the Weald also matches the personalities of its inhabitants. The people who have continued to live in this area of England have always been known for their individualism, toughness, and refusal to sit back and be improperly governed. One could say that just as the physical landscape of the Weald changed over the centuries and grew into a complex and distinctive ecosystem, the character of those who lived within the Weald evolved into the independent figures present during the Cade Rebellion. Peter Fleming has observed that the physical peculiarities of the Weald and the Downland areas of Kent created distinctive gentry and modest communities.37 Kent, being a peninsula, was and remains an “a-typical” English county that maintains a degree of localism. A. M. Everitt describes Kent and its people thusly: Contrary to what has been supposed, the gentry of Kent were not in general of mercantile or legal extraction. They were, in fact, unusually deeply-rooted in their native soil, temperamentally conservative, and excessively inbred. The county developed, in consequence, an individuality of its own in marked contrast to that of its sister-counties and London.38

The uniqueness of the people of the Weald parallels the (initially) focused behavior of the rebels. Those rebels who fought were not local criminals; rather, they were highly disciplined and, at Sevenoaks, hyper-organized. These characteristics underscore the military background of the rebels. However, of the roughly 3,327 individuals named (with some duplication) on the general pardon, it is difficult to determine a unified grievance.39 When we examine the aims of the rebellion, specifically the various Bills of Complaint that the rebels drafted, the parallels between Robin Hood’s ideology and the ideology of the rebellion are very similar. Let us look at three of the rebels’ complaints:

37

  Peter W. Fleming, “The Character and Private Concerns of the Gentry of Kent, 1422–1509” (PhD diss., University of Wales, 1985), 148–54. 38  A. M. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion of 1640–1660 (Bristol: Leicester University Press, 1966), 14. 39  Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981; rev. and repr., 2001), 233, n. 43.

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The compleyntys & causes of the assemble on blake hethe Fyrst hit is opynly noysyd that Kent shuld be dystroyd with a ryall power & made a wylde fforest for the dethe of the duke of Suffolk of wyche the commones there was nevyr dede doer. Item the Sherevys & undirsherevys let to ferme here offices & baylywykys takyng gret sevrete therefore the wyche causith extorcons to be done to the peple. Item, they aske gentille mennys landys and godis in Kent, and calle us risers and treyturs and the kynges enymys, but we schalle be ffounde his trew lege mene and his best freendus with the helpe of Jesu, to whome we crye dayly and nyztly, with mony thousand moe, that God of his ryztwysnesse schall take vengaunse on the ffalse treytours of hys ryalle realme that have brouzt vs in this myschieff and myserie.40

Here we can note several items of importance. First, Cade and his supporters are using rumor to their advantage. This first complaint is an excellent example of the rebels’ ability to control and manipulate information to their own advantage. In reality, the rebel leaders were highly adept at “selling” the rebellion and were not the illiterate and unfocused rabble that so many chroniclers described. The link between the death of Suffolk and the start of the 1450 Rebellion is a running theme in the literature of the revolt, yet the author(s) of this entry make it clear that the rebels were never a “dede doer,” an accessory to the crime. Nonetheless, the leaders of the rebellion are quick to spread a rumor that, because of their purported involvement in Suffolk’s death, Kent will be made into a wild forest. Perhaps the Kentish rebels had real reason to worry about this outcome, for the process of deforestation and commercialization of the land had already led to irreversible side effects, most notably a sharp decline in the numbers of red deer.41 The forests of Kent belonged to the people of Kent, or so they felt. Within these forests, the people of Kent found food and cover; indeed, the topography of Weald assisted the people in maintaining a degree of isolation that they saw as socially and economically beneficial. Like Cade and his rebels, Robin Hood and his retinue are most at home in the forest. Robin Hood and the Potter is the second-oldest surviving Robin Hood poem. In the poem, Robin Hood, who is identified as a “god yeman,” engages in combat with the Sheriff of Nottingham (including an archery competition) and soundly defeats him.42 The sheriff here is a person associated with the lesser nobility, and within the forest he is no match for Robin and his band. Elsewhere, in A Gest of Robin Hode (c. 1495), Robin and his band establish their base of 40  I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 186–9. 41  A. J. Pollard, Imagining Robin Hood: The Late-Medieval Stories in Historical Context (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 60. 42  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 57–79, at 62, line 13.

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operation in the forests of Barnesdale in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Here, in the poem’s first fytte, the outlaws ambush a knight, Sir Richard at the Lee. After enquiring about the knight’s distressed countenance and battered gear, Robin agrees to loan the knight £400 so that he may reclaim his estate from the abbot of Saint Mary’s Abbey in York.43 The early Robin Hood poems are concerned with the criminal actions of the lesser nobility and the church. Robin and his men at times engage in mercantile activities, such as the selling of pots in Robin Hood and the Potter, and the measuring and selling of cloth to the king in A Gest of Robyn Hode. Stephen Knight and Thomas Ohlgren see the action of Robin in Robin Hood and the Potter as a parody of mercantile practices; however, Ohlgren later re-interprets Robin’s selling of pots at cut-rate prices as an example of “premeditated merchant craftiness.”44 However, when Robin and his men enter a town and leave behind the greenwood, they enter into a space of corruption and deceit. Robin succeeds in luring the sheriff into the forest of Nottingham, and the villain is robbed and humiliated: The screffe had lever nar a hundred ponde rather than He had never seen Roben Hode. “Had I west that befforen, At Notynggam when we were, Thow scholde not com yn feyre forest Of all thes thowsande eyre.”45

Had I known that before

years

The refuge of the greenwood provides Robin and his crew a perfect locale for dishonoring the local, lower-level nobility. Cade’s encampments outside of London provide the leader and his crew with a perfect cover against Henry’s soldiers. Moreover, this greenwood that shelters the rebels and provides a space for the unification of their political aims certainly has a strong psychological impact on the oppositional forces. Just as the Sheriff of Nottingham and the other local official who sought to reign in Robin Hood feared entering into the forest, so too did Henry’s soldiers. Cade’s capture, it is important to note, is within the (apparently) safe confines of the Weald in Sussex. Indeed, the rebel is on the run westward when Iden captures him.46 In A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin Hood’s “death” occurs in the supposedly safe confines of the priory at Kirklees. For her love of a knight,

43

 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 80–168, at 90–100.  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 58; Ohlgren, Robin Hood: The Early Poems, 86. 45  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 71, lines 270–75. 46   Gairdner, James, ed., Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century. Camden Society, n.s., 17 (Westminster: Nichols and Sons, 1876), 194. 44

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Sir Roger of Donkesly, the prioress bleeds Robin to death.47 Thus, the twin evils of the church and the nobility conspire to end the life of the celebrated outlaw. These two towering edifices of English medieval society were the targets of much of the rebellion’s hostile energies. As seen in the second rebel complaint above, the nobility (particularly the lower-nobility) were not to be trusted. Church officials were also the target of much derision and violence: William Aiscough, the bishop of Salisbury, was killed at Edington in Wiltshire on June 29, 1450.48 On Saturday July 4, the rebels unleashed their anger upon the bishop’s palace and looted it, and much of his property (including the church’s charters, registers, court rolls, and the bishop’s personal communications) was seized and destroyed in a nearby field. Violence against other ecclesiastical houses was reported in Devizes, Sherborne, Crawley, and Hyde. By August of 1450, well after Cade’s death, the epicenter of the rebellion had spread from the South-East to the South.49 Much like Robin Hood, Cade’s real troubles begin when he and his company forsake the safe confines of the forest for the temptations of the city. While in London and high on adrenaline and a lot of alcohol, Cade and his men rob and pillage wealthy citizens such as Phillip Malpas (the Draper and alderman) and the homes of ordinary citizens. However, On Friday, July 3, the Eve of the Translation of Saint Edward, at Saint Magnus church, Cade proclaims that anyone who robs within the city will be executed. This contradiction of speech and action calls to mind Robin’s discourse with Little John from A Gest of Robyn Hode on whom to fight and whom to spare: “Maistar,” than sayde Lytil Johnn, “And we our borde shal sprede, Tell us wheder that we shal go, And what life that we shall lede.   “Where we shall take, where we shall leve, Where we shall abide behynde; Where we shall robbe, where we shal reve, Where we shall bete and bynde.”   “Therof no force,” than sayde Robyn; “We shall do well inowe; But loke ye do no husbonde harme, That tilleth with his ploughe.

If, table where

despoil beat and tie up no matter enough small farmer

47  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 147–8. For another version of Robin Hood’s death, see The Death of Robin Hood, in Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 592–601. 48  Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion, 86. 49  Ibid., 125–8.

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“No more ye shall no gode yeman That walketh by grene wode shawe, Ne no knyght ne no squyer That wol be a gode felawe. “These bisshoppes and these archebishoppes, Ye shall them bete and bynde; The hye sherif of Notyingham, Hym holde ye in your mynde.”50

thicket fellow

high

These strong anti-clerical and anti-nobility sentiments that run throughout the Robin Hood poems are most assuredly seen in the Cade Rebellion. The ideologies of the fictional outlaws and of the Cade rebels are notably similar. For Robin, the yeomen of the greenwood are to be off-limits, as are all knights or squires who are of a fair disposition. However, Robin’s words imply that any members of the nobility (high or low) who are not right in his eyes are fair game. The true enemies of Robin are the archbishops, the bishops, and the law, the latter represented by the High Sheriff of Nottingham. The one person who is absent in Robin’s decree is the king. Robin is a loyal subject to his king, and as the narrative of A Gest of Robyn Hode progresses, we witness the outlaw enter into the service of the king. The king, who is in disguise, meets Robin, engages in an archery contest of pluck buffet, and defeats the outlaw. Beholding the face of “our comely king,” Robin desires to serve his lord and wants to bring 143 of his men to the king’s court. No animosity or hatred exists between Robin and his king; indeed, the two men have an affinity towards one another. The king welcomes Robin into his court, and in turn Robin sells the king a green livery, which he dons, in place of his religious black. This scene, in Fytte 8 of A Gest of Robyn Hode, is highly subversive, for it suggests that the king accepts Robin’s ideology and favors him instead of the sheriff and his policies. However, after fifteen months in the king’s court, Robin manages to spend £100 and decides to leave the king’s court. As he leaves, readers are aware that perhaps Robin regrets how he wasted his time and energies with the king. Moreover, nowhere do we see Robin attacking the policies of his king; in fact, the recognition scene between Robin and the king reads like reunion between two long-lost brothers. While in the service of the king, Robin and his men enter into the city center of Nottingham. Seeing “nothynge but mantels of grene,” the townspeople (yeoman, knaves, old wives who can barely walk) begin to flee.51 Yet, once the town sees the king alongside Robin, they are relieved and decide to join the men in green in a festive meal. When placed alongside the third complaint of the rebels that is stated above, the relationship between Robin and his king and the rapport between the rebels and Henry is remarkably similar. The rebels, in this complaint, attempt to convince Henry that he will find these rebels to be, with the help of Jesus, his “trew lege 50

 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 91, lines 41–60.  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 114, line 1707.

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mene and his best freendus.” Together, the rebels and Henry, it is suggested, will defeat the traitors of the kingdom. Moreover, the rebels suggest that these backbiters are not true believers in the church and are, in many ways, false Christians. This rhetoric runs throughout the Robin Hood canon, and there are several notable passages that illustrate the corruption of the nobility as well as the artificial Christianity that so many laymen and clergy practice. In Robin Hood and the Monk, Robin takes sanctuary in Saint Mary’s church in Nottingham. Robin is hearing Mass, yet the monk violates the ancient privilege of sanctuary and gives away Robin’s whereabouts to the sheriff. Like the monk, the sheriff has no problem breaching the law, nor does he mind disturbing Robin during Mass, one of the most holy of rituals.52 In contrast to the lower nobility and the clergy who work outside of their religion and do not attempt to uphold God’s Law (and thus the law of the king), Robin and his band are devoted to their religion, especially the Virgin Mary. In Robin Hood and the Monk, we are repeatedly told how Robin prayed and “served Oure Lady many a day.”53 The opening fytte of A Gest of Robin Hode provides a broader portrait of Robin’s devotion, for we are told that he worships the Father and the Holy Ghost, but that he loves “Our dere Lady” the most of all.54 Of course, Robin Hood and his band of outlaws do not always practice the teachings of Jesus, such as those found in the “Sermon on the Mount,” and neither do the rebels of 1450. While there is an initial command against the use of unnecessary force, the moral foundation of the rebels quickly washes away. One could interpret this behavior of the rebels as blatant hypocrisy, yet such a model for this action exists. The Peasants’ Rebellion saw its share of the reversal of the aim and conduct of the participants, where the actions of the rebels soon mirrored the violence that they were seeking to abjure. The model for criminal behavior, Robin Hood and his band of outlaws, is yet another ingredient for the behavior of the 1450 rebels. With Robin Hood, the Cade rebels had a go-to source for the organization of their host, their attitude and ideology, and their behavior. As discussed elsewhere, Cade’s band is a highly organized company, comprised of many soldiers of the king’s command. Jack Cade himself appears to be someone with military experience. Kent already had a fortified militia with local leaders, the constables of the hundred. This organization of the rebels in Kent is one that Montgomery Bohna describes as “communal in nature, rather than royal.”55 Bohna is most certainly accurate in his assessment of the rebels’ fealty. Within the common bond of revolution, the rebels are initially highly organized, for a chain of command is established early on in the revolt. Those individuals who break with the rules of the command, such as Parys, are “dealt with.” One must also view this chain of command within the rebel force and 52

 Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 39–40.  Ibid., 41, line 133. 54  Ibid., 91, lines 33–6. 55  Montgomery Bohna, “Armed Force and Civic Legitimacy in Jack Cade’s Revolt, 1450,” English Historical Review 118 (2003): 563–82 at 576. 53

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also in Robin Hood’s crew as paradoxical. Robin Hood and his outlaws appear to be an egalitarian outfit, where all members of the band are treated equally. However, Robin is clearly the leader of the crew, and Little John is his second-in-command (and sometimes referred to as Robin’s First Lieutenant). This hierarchy does create a fair amount of tension between the two outlaws, and in both Robin Hood and the Monk and A Gest of Robyn Hode, Robin reminds his lieutenant who is the master and who needs to follow orders.56 Clearly, there exists a disparity between the theoretical motivations behind rebellious activity and the practical organization of the band and the implementation of the group’s aims. Like Robin Hood’s men, so many of Cade’s fighters have a military background. Thus, when we place the activities of both groups within the context of medieval warfare—and here I am thinking in particular about the laws and regulations of a medieval siege—their conduct is similar and, many would argue, justified. As Elizabeth Porter points out, if a town resisted a siege and were taken by assault, then the inhabitants of the town (as well as the town itself) were at the mercy of their attackers.57 Christine de Pizan, in her Livre des faits d’armes et de chevallerie, states that only certain types of civilians were entitled to protection once the attacking force entered the town: priests, students, madmen, and little children.58 But even these individuals were certainly victims of collateral damage. London was a city under siege, and certainly Cade’s mindset was attuned to this reality: the city was his and at his disposal. As seen in their code of conduct, Robin Hood and his band also do not seem to mind attacking those townspeople who the outlaws believe are enemies. One begins to lose count of the number of porters whom Robin Hood flippantly slays. Many view Robin Hood as a “good” outlaw, and this viewpoint is certainly the result of viewing one too many Hollywood films. In reality, Robin and his outlaws could be very nasty. In Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, which exists in a single manuscript that dates to the mid-seventeenth century (although the story may date from the fifteenth century), Robin ritualistically kills his nemesis, Sir Guy. Robin decapitates Guy, takes his “head by the hayre,” and places it “on his bowes end.”59 It gets worse. Robin then takes an “Irish kniffe,” which is good for carving and skinning animals, and “nick[s] Sir Guy in the face, / That hee was never on a woman borne / Cold tell who Sir Guye was.”60 Robin then exchanges clothing with Guy, clothing himself in the 56  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 38–9, lines 51–62; 116, lines 836–44. 57  Elizabeth Porter, “Chaucer’s Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Medieval Laws of War: A Reconsideration,” Nottingham Medieval Studies 27 (1983): 56–78 at 62–6. 58  Françoise Le Saux, “War and Knighthood in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de faits d’armes et de chevallerie,” in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfarre, ed., Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), 93–105 at 102. 59  Knight and Ohlgren, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, 178, lines 163–4. 60  Ibid., 178, lines 167–70.

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dead man’s (now particularly gory) horse-hide. The outlaw narrative Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley is also a late composition (midsixteenth century), but the three titular outlaws are named in a 1432 Parliament Roll for Wiltshire, a southern county.61 This outlaw tale is very much concerned with the dangers of the town and also the danger that families of outlaws face once their fathers and husbands are captured. While the death of Guy is grizzly and a little perverse, the violence at the end of Adam Bell is epic in its scale. The outlaws kill three hundred men: Fyrst the justice and the sheryfe, And the mayre of Caerlel towne; Of all the constables and catchipolles Alyve were left not one. The baylyves and the bedyls both, And the sergeauntes of the law, And forty fosters of the fe These outlaws had y-slaw …62

officers of the sheriff bailiffs and beadles forresters of the estate slain

The retribution that these outlaws dole out is telling. The local officials bear the brunt of the aggression, and the city is left with no central governing and policing authority. Also, there appears to be no standing court in the town. Once Cade enters London, he and his band replace the city’s institutional mainstay of the court with their own and proceed to hold trials. Cade’s force, and even the leader himself, all appear to take the rebellion very personally. The actions of Henry and his supporters are an affront to the rebels. Little is said of the families of the rebels; although, the rebellion certainly affects them. Many of Kent’s heads of households are captured, imprisoned, and executed. Adam Bell is a narrative that illustrates how outlawry and rebellion can impact a family, for William of Cloudesley’s separation from his family (he has a wife, Alice, and three children) places undue stress on the family unit. In the medieval tradition Robin never marries; nonetheless, the author of Adam Bell sympathizes with the familial hardship in which rebels and outlaws often find themselves. Such adversity was certainly present among the families of the rebels who took part in rebellions such as Cade’s. Two characters from medieval literature frame this chapter: one is real and the other is fictitious. As we saw in the previous chapter, the word “character” is a loaded term, particularly when it is referring to a real, actualized person. Robin Hood is a character who has appeared in a multitude of earlier historical sources, so does this mean that we should accept Robin Hood as an actualized individual? Cade and his rebellion could very well be occupying their own place within the mythical realm of narrative historiography. However, once we start to question the validity of the historical record of the Cade Rebellion and see it and its players as 61

 Ibid., 235.  Ibid., 259, lines 556–63.

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mythological or even quasi-mythological individuals, we are on a dangerous path towards revisionism. Roland Barthes stated that the “mythologist is not even in a Moses-like situation: he cannot see the Promised Land.”63 Perhaps Cade and his company were too enamored with Robin Hood and his mythology to comprehend the ramifications of their revolt. Robin Hood’s legendary status and his aura intoxicated many rebels and revelers in the Middle Ages who saw themselves as followers of the outlaw’s ideology. As quickly as the Cade Rebellion began, the revolt quickly broke down and imploded. The chroniclers of the rebellion interpreted the rebellion as a narrative, complete with heroes and villains. While this deliberate implementation of emplotment and characterization over the historical facts of the rebellion may mark the beginning of the event’s fictionalization, the players of the rebellion were themselves participants in this blending of reality and fantasy. After all, once the rebellion is ended with Cade’s death, more riots and smaller rebellions occur throughout Kent and Sussex in 1451–52. Cade’s name becomes a catchword in many of these uprisings, and his legendary and mythological status, like Robin Hood’s, unifies the “common” people.

63

 Barthes, Mythologies, 157.

Conclusion

The Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450 remains a highly politicized event within the context of medieval English society. That the event was recorded many times over, and that it had a multiplicity of eyewitness record accounts, underscored the centrality of the revolt to the London and English writing communities. But why has the revolt and its chroniclers received such limited treatment from historians, literary scholars, political scientists, cultural theorists, and even cultural anthropologists over all these many years? One could argue that this avoidance is the end result of the event’s association with fifteenth-century studies. That century and its literary output are often associated with texts that many downplay, to borrow Rank’s term, as examples of long-winded verse and prose. Worse still is the oftenrepeated moniker of “Chaucerian imitators,” which is unfairly assigned to writers of this period such as John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve. While Hoccleve and Lydgate are at times a bit wordy, it is unreasonable to cast generalities over these authors’ entire literary output. However, the last two decades has seen an explosion of scholarly studies on fifteenth-century history and literature. Perhaps the tide is now turning, and just maybe the “day of the chronicle” is at hand. Right now we are in a scholarly period that is re-examining that century’s great literary authors and their texts. While we can be sure that Malory and his Morte Darthur will remain the cornerstone of fifteenth-century literary research and scholarship, a scholarly re-emergence in the works of authors such as Lydgate, Hoccleve, Dunbar, Douglas, Lindsay, and Henryson has taken place. The fifteenth century is no longer a century that, for some, “thankfully” happened to have Malory, for everything else was supposedly of a substandard quality. As one of the most important collectives of literary historical documents of the fifteenth century, the chronicles of London belong within the canon of great pieces of English historiography—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, the Brut tradition, the Polychronicon tradition, Thomas Walsingham’s Chronica Maiora, and Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles. The chroniclers of London demonstrate an innate ability to record daily life in London and throughout the realm. The English chronicles of fifteenth-century London remain a politically charged body of quasi-historical literature. The chronicles are a loose canon of fragmented narratives where life and government are represented in vivid prose. The Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450 was an event that brought the capital of England to within a few days of total conflagration. If the rebellion had not been halted, its seeds may have spread more quickly and taken hold in other areas of the country. The chronicles of London and the Jack Cade Rebellion go hand-in-hand. It is from

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the various chronicles of London where historians, past and present, retrieve the majority of the rebellion’s events and synthesize it with other historical sources— parliamentary rolls, court records, letters—so as to formulate a grand narrative and attempt to describe to readers what “really happened” during the early summer months of 1450. Medievalists in the fields of literature and history who have studied the Jack Cade Rebellion have taken its representations within the London chronicles, for the most part, as historical fact. True, scholars have pointed out inconsistencies with dates or with a chronicler’s identification of an individual, but by and large there has been a high degree of hesitation among scholars to scrutinize the various representations of the Cade Rebellion. In this study, which began several years ago, I explored certain elements of the chronicles from which others have shied away: the literariness of the entries and the problematic nature of historical representation. Terry Eagleton’s work on ideology has provided a set of definitions that has been used to examine the various modes of ideology present in the London chronicles’ representations of Cade’s Rebellion. Ideologies are never fixed; indeed, they are mutable, fluctuating, and at times highly unpredictable. The uproarious nature of Cade’s Rebellion affected the chroniclers in different ways. Some of the chroniclers were sympathetic to the rebels’ cause, while others lambasted the insurgents from Kent and downplayed their importance and possible success. The chroniclers’ ideological strategies were both direct and oblique; after all, these were uncertain times. The chroniclers who wrote their observations contemporaneous to the event sometimes worked through their ideological position as they chronicled. Other chroniclers, however, seemed to have a very explicit relationship with the power structure of the rebellion and Cade’s aims and recorded their dismissal of the rebels with much gusto and derisive language. Another endeavor of this project was to explore the language of the chronicles and the literary merits of their compilers. By the fifteenth century, the English language was fast becoming a cultural force. In the Prologue to his Treatise on the Astrolabe (itself a work of prose fiction that also sought to instruct and disseminate factual information), Chaucer himself discussed the importance of the English language and its cultural significance. In the Prologue to his Treatise, Chaucer describes the nature of translation and of the significance of learning and reading English. Chaucer addressed this work to Lewis, his ten-year-old son, but he insists that it is meant to be read and appreciated by “every discret persone.” Thus, the transition from crafting a Latin text, which has a Latin-reading audience, to a text that celebrates its Englishness is a marked one. John Trevisa made a similar move when he translated Ranulph Higden’s Polychronicon, and Trevisa too began his translation with a prefatory note that served to reconfigure his readers’ mental requirements in their approaches to reading in a new authoritative language: English. As V. H. Galbraith has pointed out, it was not until the reign of Henry V that   Larry D. Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 663, line 107.

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royal dispatches from France to London were “deliberately written in English.” Of the main fifteenth-century London chronicles used in this project, all but one (John Benet’s Chronicle) were written in English. By the fifteenth century, the English town historian had, by-and-large, relegated their writing of Latin to a few disparate religious texts and the occasional Latin phrase. The cultural movement from the first Latin London chronicle, the 1274 Liber de Antiquis Legibus ascribed to the London alderman Arnold Fitz Thedmar, to the corpus of fifteenth-century vernacular London chronicles is a notable and significant shift in deciding which language to use and thus which language should represent English history and culture. In several chapters I have attempted to document the craft of the chroniclers while at the same time exploring the slipperiness of a language that attempts to describe a factual event in objective terms. Of course, the medieval chroniclers did not appear to be concerned with questions of historical representation. Many scholars argue that the relativity of historical representation was a by-product—a symptom—of the horrors of the Holocaust. While the Cade Rebellion could never approach the incalculable incongruity of the Holocaust, the 1450 Rebellion was a traumatic moment for Londoners and one filled with death, warfare, and suffering. The metanarratives that post-date the London chroniclers’ record of the rebellion act as a totalizing force and obscure the literary and historical details that one finds within each self-contained and localized fifteenth-century account. John Payn’s letter, while not a London chronicle, is the perfect example of a unique, first-hand account of the Cade Rebellion that provides details of the event that lay outside the boundaries of many of the rebellion’s grand-narratives. Like Gabrielle Spiegel, I too am concerned with positivist notions of empirical truth and referentiality and how to act as a critic to the literary qualities of the chronicle. For Spiegel found herself within a liminal morass: it was difficult (and at times highly contradictory) to embrace the modes of post-structural and postmodern theories of representation and engage the truth of the historical texts. Spiegel’s “way out” was an essay that explores and reviews the “linguistic turn” while also establishing the need to engage the historian’s call for the preservation of the social world that gave birth to historiographical texts. The multiplicity of medieval voices, texts, and cultural moments that permeate the Cade Rebellion require historians and literary critics to work within the social strata of latemedieval England’s historiographers. The chroniclers are very much aware of the cultural and historical significance of the rebellion, and their entries likewise denote the cultural moments and texts that influence and shape the rebellion. These London chroniclers are medieval historians, and thus they are concerned with those events that are worthy of memory. The Cade Rebellion certainly affected    V. H. Galbraith, “Nationality and Language in Medieval England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th ser., 23 (1941): 113–28 at 125.    Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990): 59–86.

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the London chroniclers, and it was an event that rivaled many national events— such as battles of the Wars of the Roses—for literary and historical importance. The chroniclers’ writings attest to the regionalism of the Cade Rebellion; however, their entries implicitly support the belief that the rebellion had national consequences. While it is impossible to return to the pure historical moment of the Cade Rebellion (just as it is impossible to return to any historical moment that lacks reinterpretation), the fifteenth-century writings of chroniclers, historians, and other agents of literary history are the texts that present the most unique and distinctive portraits of the revolt. To understand the nature of Cade’s Rebellion, one must first took to these writings and their authors’ ideological, literary, and sociological motivations for composing and compiling their texts.

Appendix

The Chronology of Jack Cade’s Rebellion

As a point of reference for the preceding chapters, a concise record of what happened during the Cade Rebellion is needed. Below is a description, in the most objective terms, of the chronology of the events of the Cade Rebellion of 1450. This reconstruction should be viewed as such, and the dates and facts are culled from the various chronicles and historical sources. This appendix is a chronology of the rebellion and can serve as a quick reference point.

In the last week of January, 1450, a group of 200 men, led by Thomas Cheyne, initiate a volatile rebellion along the Kent coastline; it fails. Beginning the week of May 24, a group of rebels amass in southwest Kent. Whitsunday in 1450 falls on May 24. The force is upset over a series of political mishaps that they attribute to the Duke of Suffolk, William de le Pole. Suffolk, blamed for losses in France, is seen as just one of Henry VI’s many acquaintances who took advantage of his personal friendship with the king. Many believe Suffolk is the architect of the January 9, 1450, murder of his associate Adam Moleyns, the Bishop of Chichester. Suffolk is arrested, placed in the Tower, and pardoned by Henry VI. For his own protection, the king sends Suffolk into exile. Suffolk, with three or four ships, leaves for the Duke of Burgundy’s lands in the Low Countries. One of Suffolk’s ships is sent ahead to Calais so as to verify his good welcome; however, its crew apparently betrays the Duke’s whereabouts to another ship, The Nicholas of the Tower. The Nicholas and their crew stop Suffolk, bring him onboard, and place him on trial. On May 2, a sailor from Bosham, Sussex, beheads Suffolk on a small boat. Suffolk’s body is found on Dover Beach, and his head is mounted on a stake. Even before Suffolk’s death, there are small risings in Kent and Surrey. By the first week in June, rebels are organizing themselves in Ashford, Appledore, and Calehill. While at Calehill, a leader is chosen, or a person assumed 

 Alun Munslow has commented that “narrative as the medium for historical reconstruction, although it is not an adequate form of explanation, is not an obstacle to the enterprise,” in Deconstructing History (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 56. This chronology is drawn from the most recent studies of the rebellion: R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (London: Benn, 1981; repr. Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 1998), 610–65; Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (London: Eyre and Methuen, 1981; repr. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 230–40; I. M. W. Harvey, Jack Cade’s Rebellion of 1450 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 73–130. The principle chronicle sources for this chronology are those that are described in the Introduction.

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the position of leader: Jack Cade. Often referred to as “captain,” he is also known as John Mortimer, a cousin to Richard Duke of York, and also as John Amendale. Henry VI, holding parliament at Leicester, is now aware of the situation. On June 6, the king orders the Duke of Buckingham and the Earls of Oxford, Devon, and Arundel to stop any rebellion and arrest all involved. Another royal order is issued on June 10 to Lords Scales, Rivers, Dudley, and Lovel, and to Viscount Beaumont to assist the previous commission. By June 11 or 12, the rebels are in Blackheath. The king’s forces increase in size and now include the Archbishops of York and Canterbury, and the Dukes of Exeter and Norfolk. On June 13, Henry stays at Saint John’s Priory in Clerkenwell. On June 15, messengers are sent to disperse the rebels, and the Earl of Northumberland and Lords Scales and Lisle travel to Blackheath and observe the size of the rebel force. Henry decides against confronting the rebel force, and Archbishop Stafford of Kent, Cardinal Kemp (who is also of Kentish birth), Buckingham, William Waynflete the Bishop of Winchester, and Beaumont the Constable of England are sent to offer a truce and a pardon for all the rebels. Those discussions take place on June 15 or 16. In the morning of June 18, Henry, with a heavily armed force of between 10,000 and 46,000, arrives at Blackheath, but the rebel force is gone. A force of around 400 of the king’s men venture further into Kent and are ambushed. Sir Humphrey Stafford and his brother William, along with several of their men, are killed near Sevenoaks. From June 18–20, around 2,000 of the king’s men, including Lords Dudley and Rivers, Sir Thomas Stanley, and Thomas Daniel go after the retreating rebels. There are now reports of widespread desertion among the king’s men, and by June 19 many of the king’s soldiers threaten to join Cade unless the king arrests several of his retainers. Looting is reported in London, and Lord Saye is arrested and placed in the Tower. On June 20, Henry arrives in London to give protection to Saye. However, the Duke of Exeter refuses to release him. Robert Poynings, an esquire from Sussex, is charged with rounding up recently returned English soldiers who had fought in France but were now robbing and pillaging at Edenbridge. Poynings deserts the king, and by June 22 or 23 he joins Cade and becomes a high-ranking officer and the leader’s sword bearer. On the morning of June 23, Henry and several loyal retainers leave London to go to Kenilworth. June 24 is the feast of Saint John the Baptist. On June 29, the rebels return to Blackheath. June 29 is also the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul and thus the date of that year’s London Midsummer Watch. While encamped at Blackheath, Cade executes a captain of his, Parys, reportedly for excessive rioting. Sir John Fastolf instructs his servant, John Payn, to visit the rebel camp to see if the rebels are a threat to his property. Cade’s men capture Payn, declared him a traitor, and rob him. Payn’s life is saved only when he joins the rebel force; he would later fight at London Bridge. By now the petitions of the rebels are circulating. Cade visits Lydd during this time, and the city officials present him with a porpoise as a gift. By July 1 or 2, the rebels are in Southwark, and Henry is by now safe in his castle at Kenilworth. Thomas Chalton, the mayor of London, denies the rebel force entrance to the city.

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On Friday, July 3, Cade and his band enter London, and they are now joined with a force from Essex. On July 3 and 4, a commission of oyer and terminer, under Cade’s authority, is held at the Guildhall; here, some ministers and retainers of the king are tried. At 5 p.m. on July 3, Cade re-enters London, and the ropes to London Bridge are cut. Friday, July 3, is the Eve of the Translation of Saint Edward. At Saint Magnus Church, Cade proclaims that anyone who robs within the city will be executed. Many of the rebels are now intoxicated. The rebels rob the house of Philip Malpas, Draper and alderman. Cade leaves London for the night, but he returns the following morning, Saturday, July 4, to the Guildhall where Lord Scales and Charlton are presiding. Here, Thomas Kent (clerk to the Council and Under Constable of England), Edward Grimson (Treasurer of the Chamber and Keeper of the King’s Jewels), John Say, John Trevilian, and Thomas Daniel (all three courtiers) are indicted. Cade, in the attire stolen from the Staffords or John Payn, parades through London, stops at Saint Paul’s, and returns to Southwark. Lord Saye is removed from the Tower and brought to the Guildhall for a trial before Cade’s men and not before his peers as he had requested. William Crowmer, the sheriff of Kent and Saye’s son-in-law, is removed from Fleet prison. Both Saye and Crowmer are paraded through the streets of London. In the afternoon, Cade rides though London again and stops in Cheap to drink. Saye is half-shriven before he is beheaded at Cheapside; Crowmer and William Bailly are beheaded at Mile End. The heads of Saye and Crowmer are placed on poles and are made to kiss one another. Cade, on his horse, drags Saye’s body though the streets of London. The rebels also execute the thief and murderer Hawarden. Even more looting occurs in London. Cade dines at the house of John Geerst, a citizen and gentleman of London, and after their meal the rebel leader robs him and plunders his house. A mob, which is led by Lawrence Stockwood, plunders the house of John Judde, a London Salter whom Cade made an alderman. Judde’s wife pays the rebel force a bribe and they move on. Stockwood, along with Simon Shipton, John Billyngton, John Frenssh, and Henry Capron are identified as Cade’s main lieutenants during the London raids. Alderman Robert Horne also bribes the rebel force to avoid robbery. Thomas Mayn of Colchester, a servant of John Hampton, a royal official, is captured and taken to Southwark where, on Sunday, July 5, Cade orders his execution. On the evening of Sunday, July 5, on receiving news that the citizens of London may assault their camp in Southwark, Cade frees the prisoners of Marshalsea in Southwark, and he re-enters London. A battle on London Bridge lasts from around 10 p.m. until 8 or 9 a.m. the following morning. The rebel force could not cross the bridge. Sheriff Hulyn bolts the gateway at the bridge’s entrance, and Malpas reportedly draws the chains. After the battle, several hundred are dead, including the alderman and Goldsmith John Sutton, Matthew Gough (a squire and soldier from Wales), and Roger Heysant (a Draper). By the morning of July 6, both sides agree to a short truce. However, in Blackmore, Essex, more rebels arm themselves to aid Cade. In parts of Suffolk, a sizable number of people gather together to assist the rebel leader. On June 6 and 7 in Saint Margaret’s Church, Southwark,

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the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishop of Winchester meet with Cade. On July 7 a general pardon is issued to Cade and his force without repayment. July 7 is also the Feast of the Translation of Saint Thomas Becket. The pardon covers all acts committed before July 8. Cade’s pardon, apparently initiated by Queen Margaret, is enrolled on July 6, and he is identified in the pardon as John Mortimer. Once it is learned that “Mortimer” is an alias, this pardon is declared invalid. Realizing that the pardon is illegitimate, Cade leaves Southwark on July 9 and attacks Queensborough Castle, but the attack fails. On July 10 the exchequer issues a writ stating that Cade is a traitor. The crown issues 1,000 marks as a reward for his head, 500 marks for a head of one of Cade’s chief officers, and 10 marks for any of his followers. On July 12, Alexander Iden, the new sheriff of Kent after Crowmer’s execution, catches Cade in Heathfield, Sussex, injuring the leader. En route to London, Cade dies of his injuries. The wife of the innkeeper of the White Hart positively identifies Cade’s body. Also on July 12, at the request of the treasury, William Appultrefeld and Robert Shamell arrive in Rochester (followed by Sir Thomas Tyrell and Richard Waller) to collect and return Cade’s booty. A few days later, Cade is beheaded at Newgate, and his head is placed atop London Bridge. His body is dragged across the bridge from Southwark, through London, and then to Newgate, where it is quartered. On July 17, the mayor and sheriffs of Norwich receive a quarter of Cade’s body, and the remaining three quarters are sent to Blackheath, Salisbury, and Gloucester. Iden collects his 1,000 marks from the sale of the goods collected. The citizens who were robbed had to see the exchequer for the opportunity to buy back their goods at a reduced cost.

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Index

Adam Bell, Clim of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley, 193 Adams, Richard P., 82 n. 69 Adorno, Theodor W., 63 Adys, Miles, 14 Aiscough, William, bishop of Salisbury (1438–50), 52–3, 118–19, 159–60 n. 25, 189 Albano, Robert, 6, 167 n. 51 American Civil War, 67 Andrew of Wyntoun, Orygynale Chronicle, 177 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, The, 149, 195 Ankersmit, F. R., 8–9, 85, 92, 172 and n. 66 Anominale Chronicle, 184–5 n. 34 Appledore, Kent, 199 Appultrefeld, William, 202 archiving, 31–3 Arendt, Hannah, 64 Arnold, Richard Arnold’s Chronicle, 4, 13, 30, 37–9, 41, 48–50, 74–5, 103 n. 37 Customs of London, 22 n. 11 Articles of the Hatters, 128 Ashford, Kent, 199 Astell, Ann W., 83 n. 70, 101 n. 30 Aston, Trevor, 19 n. 2, 130 n. 142 Athelstan, 161 Awntyrs off Arthure, The, 71 Bailly, William, of Colchester, 49, 122, 125 Baker, Jack R., 183 n. 29 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 10, 95–7, 101, 108, 151 n. 3, 155 n. 9; see also carnivalesque Bale, Robert, 11 Robert Bale’s Chronicle, 9, 11, 16, 21–4, 29–31, 44–7, 56, 75, 83–4, 93–5, 98, 100, 102–3, 112, 121,

123–6, 128, 130, 132, 139–40, 148, 164–6, 170 Ball, John, 184 Barber, Richard, 136 nn. 16–18 Barefield, Laura D., 167–8 n. 51 Barnesdale, Yorkshire, 181 Barratt, Nick, 179 n. 11 Barron, Caroline M., 105 n. 41, 129 Barthes, Roland, 33, 124, 176, 194 Battle of the Bulge (1944–45), 74 Beardsley, Monroe K., 69–70 n. 20 Beaufort, Edmund, second duke of Somerset (1448–55), 57, 170 n. 60 Beaufort, Henry, bishop of Winchester (1404–47) and Cardinal (1417–47), 114, 165–6 n. 45 Beaumont, John, Viscount (1440–60), 113 n. 81, 200 Beaven, Alfred B., 125 n. 126 Beckingham, Thomas, bishop of Bath and Wells (1443–65), 165–6 n. 45 Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, 195 Bedford, John, duke of (d. 1435), 113 Bellamy, John G., 87 n. 88 Benet, John John Benet’s Chronicle for the Years 1400 to 1462, 15–16, 30, 45–8, 79 Benet, John, Skinner, 118 Bennett, Philip E., 96 n. 8 Benson, Larry D., 123 n. 120, 196 n. 1 Berk, Lynn M., 9–10 n. 27, 24 n. 21, 61 n. 1 Berlin, Michael, 128 n. 136 Bernthal, Craig A., 94 n. 4 Billington, Sandra, 116 Billy the Kid, 149 Blackheath, Kent, 26–7 n. 31, 41, 44, 46, 51, 53, 76–8, 114–15, 133, 137, 159, 165, 170 n. 60, 172, 184, 187, 200

222

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Blackmore, Essex, 201 Blacman, John, 65 n. 7 Blomfield, Francis, 99 n. 21 Bohna, Montgomery, 191–2 Boleyn, Ann, coronation of, 40 Boulers, Reginald, abbot of Gloucester, 159–60 n. 25 Bower, Walter, 177, 180 Boyle, Thomas E., 82 n. 69 Branham, R. Bracht, 97 nn. 12–13 Brehe, S. K., 68–9 n. 16 Brewer, Derek, 68 n. 16, 69 n. 19, 71 n. 24 Brie, Frederich W. D., 2, 3 n. 4, 59 n. 132, 78 n. 47, 83 n. 74, 90, 114 n. 82, 133 n. 9 Bruce, John, 3–4 n. 6 Burrow, John A., 69–70 n. 20, 74 Cable, Thomas, 68–9 n. 16 Cade, Jack attire 16, 92–4, 123–6, 129–30, 132–5, 139, 147–8, 201 Bills of Complaint, 79, 83, 87, 134, 137, 157, 160, 165, 172, 186–7 chronology of rebellion, 199–202 death, 22–3, 44–7, 52–4, 58–9, 170, 189, 194, 202 pardon, 19–20, 47, 54, 102, 105–6, 140–46, 166 n. 49, 186, 201–2 past career, 43–4, 199–200 procession thorough London, 93–130, 200–201 Calais, 119, 199 battle and siege of, 67, 113 Calehill, Kent, 199 Canterbury, Kent, 56, 99, 106, 107, 116, 147 Carlin, Martha, 147 n. 67 carnivalesque, 10, 16, 26, 29–30, 93–102, 105, 108, 121–6, 148, 156 Carpenter, Christine, 3, 19 n. 1, 135, 146–7 n. 66 Carpenter, John, 103; see also Liber Albus Carpenter, Sara, 101–2 Carruthers, Mary, 17 Cartlidge, Neil, 97 n. 13. Caruth, Cathy, 89, 91 Caxton, William, 58 Chronicles of England, 15

Červenka, Miroslav, 80 n. 60 Chalton, Thomas, mayor of London, 38, 48, 84, 200 Chambers, E. K., 98 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 68–9 Canterbury Tales, 71 Ellesmere manuscript, 131 General Prologue, 70, 86, 123, 131 Knight’s Tale, 144–5, 169 Treatise on the Astrolabe, 196 Troilus and Criseyde, 32, 70–71, 169 characterization, 17, 148–76, 194 Cheyne, John, knight, 20 Cheyne, Thomas, 178–9, 199 Chichele, Sir Henry, archbishop of Canterbury (1414–43), 165–6 n. 45 Chinese Great Leap Forward, 67 Christ’s Church, Canterbury, 161 chronicles of London literary features, 61–92 origins, 11 organization, 11; see also ideology Chronicle of London From 1089 to 1483, A, 14, 50–51, 77 n. 43, 100 n. 27, 113 Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, 13–14 and n.40, 36, 47–50, 75, 112, 157–60, 166, 171 Church, Richard, 101 Church, Roger, 25 Clark, Elizabeth A., 151 n. 3 Clark, Linda, 26–7 n. 31 Clopper, Lawrence M., 117 n. 100 Clorinda, 88 Cobham, Edward Brooke, Lord (d. 1464), 58 Colyn, John, 11 n. 30 “Commons of Kent, the,” see Jack Cade Rebellion Contra ffures et latrones, 183 Copland, William, 181 Cooks: Sir Thomas II, 14, 35–7, Thomas I, Draper, 35 Corpus Christi (celebrations), 19 n. 2, 117 Coventry, 97 n. 14, 109 n. 59, 118 Crawley, Sussex, 189 Crosland, Jessie, 141 n. 45 Crowmer, William, sheriff of Kent (1444– 45 and 1449–50), 23, 34, 49, 51,

Index 55, 80, 83, 102, 122, 125, 127, 155, 164, 173, 201–2 Crusades, 67, 87 Dacre, Sir Thomas, 152 Daniel, Thomas, 159–60 n. 25, 200–201 Dartford, Kent, 57 Darwin, Charles, 82 n. 69 Davies, J. Conway, 99 n. 23 Davies, J. S., Davies’ or Davie’s Chronicle, 15, 93 n. 1, 119, 132–3 Davies, Matthew, 108, 110 Davies, Robert, 117 Davis, Norman, 115 n. 90, 136–7 nn. 18–22 Davis, Whitney, 82 n. 69 Derrida, Jacques, 6, 32 de Boron, Robert, Merlin, 162–3 De Casibus tradition, 60, 72 deFord, Sara, 80 n. 60 de Pizan, Christine, 192 Destruction of Troy, The, 16 Devizes, Sherborne, 189 Devon, Thomas de Courtenay, earl of (d. 1458), 58, 200 Dismas, 183 Dobson, R. B., 19 n. 2, 26 n. 31, 130 n. 142, 184 n. 31 Dockray, Keith, 45–6 nn. 93–4 Dolan, Terence, 78 n. 50 Domesday Book, The, 149–50 Donaldson, David., 72 n. 27 Douce, Francis, 38 n. 64, 74 n. 34, 103 n. 37 Douglas, Gavin, 195 Drapers’ Company, 35, 39, 43, 53, 110 Du Boulay, F. R. H., 141 n. 44 Duby, Georges, 20 n. 3 Dudley, John Sutton, Lord (1434–87), 159–60 n. 25, 200 Duggan, Hoyt N., 68 n. 16 Dunbar, William, 195; “A Treatise of London” (attributed), 40 Dyboski, Roman, 13 n. 39, 38 n. 63, 40 and nn. 69–74, 76 n. 40 Eagleton, Terry, 9–10, 16, 21, 24 and n. 22, 26 and n. 30, 33–4, 37, 45, 47, 60, 196

223

Earl, John, 149 n. 1 Eastry, Kent, 125 Eco, Umberto, 95–6 Edington, Wiltshire, 118–19, 189 Edward I, 104 Edward IV, 3, 12–13, 20, 35–7, 60, 136 Black Book of, 145 Edward VI, 104 Edwards, Anthony, 96–7 Eleanor of Provence, 107 Ellis, Henry, 79 n. 55, 80 n. 61, 122 n. 116, 133 n. 6, 155 n. 21, 170–71 nn. 62–3, 175 n. 1 Ely, Cambridgeshire, 150 Emerson, Caryl, 97 emplotment, 7, 9, 17, 23, 66–7, 148, 151–2, 155, 167–76, 194 English Chronicle 1377–1461, An, 15–16, 56–9, 75, 84, 93–5, 98, 103, 118–21, 124–6, 130, 132–3, 138 n. 31, 139–40, 148, 164, 166, 170 n. 61, 171 n. 64 Erickson, Marcia E., 96 n. 10 “Erth upon Erthe,” 41, 62 Essex, county of, 19, 23, 44, 47–8, 122, 179, 184, 201 Eustace the Monk, 150, 176 Excalibur, 162 Fabyan, Robert, 12, 122 New Chronicles of England and France, 52–6, 59, 73, 79, 133, 170 Fairholt, Frederick W., 107 n. 51, 108 Fastolf, Sir John, 3, 99, 131, 135–7, 141–3, 146–7, 200 Feast of Fools, 98 Feast of St Nicholas, 98 Feast of the Boy Bishop, 98 Feast of the Holy Innocents, 98 Felman, Shoshana, 88–90 Fernando, Prince of Portugal, 165–6 n. 45 Field, P. J. C., 163 n. 34, 166 n. 48, 168 Fiennes, Elizabeth, 125 Fish, Stanley, 33 Fitz Eylwin, Henry, mayor of London, 162 Fitz Thedmar, Arnold, 11 Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 11, 162 n. 29, 197

224

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Fitz Waryn, Fouke, 176 Fleming, Peter W., 186 Flenley, Robert, 12 n. 33, 22, 29, 72–3, 93 n. 1, 132, 165 n. 41 Foot, Sara, 167–8 n. 51 Foucault, Michel, 25, 33, 86 French, Peter A., 62 n. 2 French Revolution, 67, 90 French, Roger, Sir, 49 Freud, Sigmund, 32–3 Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 88–9 Moses and Monotheism, 89 Friedlander, Saul, 64 n. 5 Frost, Ulrich, 11 n. 30 Frowyk, Sir Thomas, 10–11 and n. 28 Fulbrook, Mary, 151 n. 3 Furnivall, Frederick J., 121 n. 112 Gairdner, James, 13 nn. 36–7, 19 n. 2, 41 n. 75, 43, 44 n. 85, 77 nn. 84–5, 81 n. 66, 99, 123 n. 117, 132, 163 n. 34, 189 n. 46 Galbraith, V. H., 184–5 n. 34, 196–7 Geerst, house of, 55–6, 84, 157 genocides, 63 Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britaniae, 195 Gerould, Gordon Hall, 80 n. 60 Gesmas, 183 Gest of Robyn Hode, A, 175, 180 n. 15, 181, 188–92 Gibson, James M., 105 n. 43, 116 n. 94, 125–6 n. 127, 181 n. 19 Gies, Frances, 147 Gies, Joseph, 147 Gloucester Annals, The, 78 Gloucester, Humphrey, duke of (d. 1447), 24, 34, 119, 122 n. 114, 165–6 n. 45 Glyndwr, Owain, 176 Goldsmith, Margaret E., 183 Gordon, D. J., 107 n. 51 Gospel of Nicodemus, The, 183 Gough, Matthew, 44, 47, 100, 170–71, 201 Gower, John, 28, 68 Confessio Amantis, 71, 101 n. 30 Grace, Mary, 109–10

Gransden, Antonia, 4–5, 10, 20, 22, 45 n. 93, 99 n. 23, 143 n. 49 and 51 Great Chronicle of London, The, 12, 36 n. 59, 52–7, 59, 76, 79, 83–4, 114–15, 122, 133, 164, 170 n. 61 Green, Karen, 83 n. 72 Green Knight, the, 156 Green, Richard Firth, 95–6 greenwood, 177, 182, 185, 188–90 Gregory, William, 12 Gregory’s Chronicle, 12–13, 16, 30, 41–3, 47, 62, 77, 81–2, 89, 132 n. 1, 163–5, 169 Gresham, Sir John, mayor of London, 104 Griffiths, R. A., 1 n. 1, 78 n. 49, 78 n. 49, 82 n. 68, 127 n. 133, 134, 136 n. 18, 199 n. 1 Grimson, Edward, treasurer of the chamber, 200 Grocers’ Company, 41, 146 n. 64 Grummitt, David, 26–7 n. 31 Guild of St George, 109–10 Haddon, Sir Richard, sheriff, alderman, and mayor of London, 114 Hajičová, Eva, 80 n. 60 Hall, Edward, 12 Hall’s Chronicle, 80, 170–71, 175–6 Hallam, Elizabeth, 45–6 nn. 93–4 Halle, Morris, 62 n. 2 Hampshire, county of, 81 Hampton, John, acting constable of Colchester castle, 201 Hanawalt, Barbara A., 94, 101 n. 30, 105 n. 42, 109 n. 58, 128 n. 138, Hanna, Ralph, III, 68 n. 16, 69, 71 n. 25 Harmon, William, 153–4 Harriss, G. L., 16 n. 48, 45, 46 nn. 94–8, 79 n. 54, 123 n. 117, 160 n. 27 Harriss, M. A., 16 n. 48, 45, 46 nn. 94–8, 79 n. 54, 123 n. 117, 160 n. 27 Harsyk, Sir Roger, 178 Hart, Cyril, 149 n. 1 Harvey, I. M. W., 1 n. 1, 27 n. 31, 30, 57 n. 125, 87 n. 87, 101 n. 30, 121 n. 112, 123 n. 117, 125 n. 126, 126,

Index 132, 136 n. 18, 141, 143, 152 n. 4, 166 n. 49, 187 n. 40, 199 n. 1 Harvey, John H., 143 n. 50 Harvey, W. J., 154 n. 8 Hawarden, (Richard?), thief and murdered, 42, 49, 51, 123 n. 117, 200 Hawkins, John, 36 Hayward, John, 149 n. 1 Heathfield, Sussex, 202 Henry III, 107 Henry V, 108 Henry VI, 3, 12, 14, 20, 23–9, 33–5, 38, 42–6, 53, 56–9, 65, 78, 81, 97, 101, 108, 114, 122 n. 114, 123, 127 n. 133, 129, 157, 159–60, 164–5, 178, 199–200 Henry VII, 12, 19 n. 1, 40, 114–15, 175 Henry VIII, 13, 104, 175–6 Henryson, Robert, 195 Hereward, 149–50, 170–71, 176 Hertfordshire, county of, 179 Heysant, Roger, Draper, 201 Higden, Ranulph, 15, 196; see also Polychronicon tradition Hill, Richard, 4, 32, 39 Richard Hill’s Chronicle, 13, 38–41, 48–50, 76 Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, 30, 37 Hills, W. P., 13 n. 39 Hilton, Rodney H., 19 n. 2, 130 n. 142 historical representation, 1–2, 7–9, 23, 35, 61–7, 149–51, 196–7 Historie of the Arrivall of King Edward IV, The, 3–4 n. 6, 60 historiography, 1–2, 6–8, 32, 66, 81, 89–90, 149–51, 167 n. 51, 168, 172–3, 194–5 Hoccleve, Thomas, 195 Hoffman, Dean A., 180 n. 15 Holand, Henry, third duke of Exeter (d. 1475), 116–17, 200 Holinshed, Raphael, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 89, 99 n. 21, 132–3, 195 Holman, C. Hugh, 153–4 Holocaust, 32, 63–8, 91, 197 Holt, J. C., 144 n. 55

225

Horne, Robert, London alderman, 29–30, 48, 121, 201 Houen, L. A. J. R., 68–9 n. 16 Howlett, Richard, 13–14 n. 40, 49 n. 104, 75 n. 37, 112 n. 73, 157–8 nn. 15–19 Hoxton, John, alias John Payn, of St Mary Reading, Berkshire, 146–7 Humphrey, Chris, 95, 97–8, 102 Hundred Years’ War, 1, 135 Hutton, Ronald, 98–9, 181 n. 16 Huysman, Joris-Karl, 82 n. 69 Hyde, Cheshire, 189 Hythe, Kent, 125 Iden, Alexander, 166, 189, 202 ideology, chroniclers’ use of, 19–60 definitions of, 8–10 Lancastrian, 50, 53, 122, 159; Yorkist, 15, 20, 29–30, 50, 53, 56–60, 79, 94 Ightham Mote, Kent, 101 Interlude of Our Lord’s Passion, The, 100–101 Ive, William, 12 Jack Cade Rebellion, the: Bills of Complaint, 26–8 chronology of events calendrical time “Commons of Kent,” 38–9, 43, 62, 75–80, 86–7, 156 “Jack Napes Sowle, Placebo, and Dirige, For,” 121 n. 112 Jack, R. D. S., 68–9 n. 16 Jakobson, Roman, 62 n. 2 James IV, king of Scotland, 40 wife, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII, 40 James, M. R., 65 n. 7 James, Mervyn, 100 Jefferson, Lisa, 110 Joan of Arc, 135 Johnson, A. H., 36 n. 57, 110 Johnson, Mark, 85–6 Johnson, Alexandra F., 117 n. 97 Joscelyne, Sir Ralph, Draper and mayor of London, 110 Judde, John, Salter, 201

226

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Justice, Steven, 19 n. 2 Kantorowicz, Ernst H., 83 Kekewich, Margaret Lucille, 1 n. 1, 30 n. 41, 34 n. 50 and 51, 35 n. 55, 57 n. 125, 79 n. 56, 121 n. 112, 155 n. 10 Kellner, Hans, 62 n. 2, 67 n. 14, 151 n. 3 Kemp, John, Cardinal, archbishop of York (1425–52), 46, 102, 200 Kenilworth, Warwickshire, 55, 130, 186, 200 Kennedy, Edward, 2, 10, 20 Kent, county of, 19, 23, 27, 38, 45, 47, 49, 51–2, 59, 74, 76–8, 81–2, 86–7, 105–6, 113 n. 81, 118–19, 125, 130, 158–9, 171, 176, 178–9, 181, 186–7, 191, 194, 196, 199–200 Kent, Thomas, clerk to the Council, 200 Killingworth, England, 45 Kingsford, Charles L., 4–5, 10, 13–15, 29, 51 n. 110, 73 n. 32, 78 n. 51 and 52, 100 n. 25, 104 n. 40, 112 n. 74, 133 n. 10, 159–60 n. 25, 162 n. 28 Kirklees Priory, 189 Kishi, Tetso, 94 n. 4 Knight, Stephen, 176 n. 5, 177 n. 7, 180, 188 Knolls, Thomas, Grocer and mayor of London, 108 Kooper, Erik, 68–9 n. 16 Kriehn, G, 1 n. 1, 99, 136 n. 18, 137 LaCapra, Dominick, 8, 17, 90 Lacy, Norris J., 162 n. 31 Lakoff, George, 85–6 Lancashire, Anne, 106 n. 44, 110–12, 118 Lancashire, Ian, 106 n. 45 Land, Stephen K., 99 n. 21 Lang, Berel, 21, 64–7 Langland, William, Piers Plowman, 69, 71, 155, 180–84 Lanzmann, Clause, 63–4, 76, 91 Shoah, 63–4, 91 Laplanche, J., 33 Laroque, François, 94 n. 4 Latimer, Hugh, bishop of Worcester, 180 Laub, Dori, 88 n. 92

Lawton, David A., 68 n. 16, 80 n. 60, 155 Laȝamon, Brut, 69 Le Briton, Hervey, bishop of Ely (d. 1131), 150 Leech, Geoffrey N., 80 n. 60 Lerer, Seth, 100–101 Le Saux, Françoise, 68–9 n. 16, 192 n. 58 Leška, Oldřich, 80 n. 60 Letter-Books, 103 n. 37, 110–12, 121 Levy, Bernard, 68 n. 16 Lewis, Merrill, 82 n. 69 Liber Albus, 103 Lindenbaum, Sheila, 105 n. 42, 106 Lisle, John Talbot, Lord (d. 1453), 200 Little John, 177, 189, 192 London, 1–3, 16, 35, 37, 40–42, 44, 48, 56–7, 67, 78, 82–4, 87, 104, 107, 133, 164–5 Aldgate, 120, 161 Bermondsey Street, 143 Bread Street Compter prison, 36 Chapel of St Thomas de Acon, 127 Cheap, 29, 93, 108, 120, 127–8, 201 Conduit, 108, 120, 127 Cornhille, 120, 127 Crown, tavern, 122 Fleet prison, 127, 201 Gracechurch Street, 120, 127 Great Conduit, 127 Grey Friars Church; 166 n. 48 Guildhall, 113 n. 81, 121, 127–9, 180, 201 High Street, 161 Hospital, 127 Kings Bench prison, 36, 44–5, 49, 158 Leadenhall, 127 Lime Street 127 Little Conduit, 127 London Bridge, 23, 25, 35–6, 38, 45, 47, 49, 51–2, 59, 73–4, 81–2, 92, 100, 108, 115, 120, 122, 127, 129, 137–9, 141, 146, 164, 172, 179, 181, 197, 200–201 Marshalsea prison, 49, 158, 201 Mile End, 44, 49, 104, 127, 201 Newgate, 44–5, 47–8, 202 Oldbourn Hill, 104 Royal Exchange, 161

Index St James, 104 St Magnus 44, 127, 189, 201 St Margaret’s Church 201 St Martin’s, 103 St Paul’s, 113, 122, 127, 161, 201 St Paul’s Gate, 120 St Thomas Watering, 164 Southwark, 36, 44–7, 108, 121, 127, 137, 164, 171, 178, 201–2 Standard in Cheap, the, 46, 49, 122, 127 Standard at the Cross, the, 127 Tower of London, 40, 112, 114, 127, 199–201 Tunne, 127 wards of, 111 Westminster, 40, 73–4, 104, 108, 112–13 White Hart, the, 49, 84, 138–9, 202 London Stone, 46, 52, 161–3 Lord Mayor’s Banquet, 40 Lord Mayor’s Show, 106–7 and n. 51 Lovel, William, Lord (d. 1454), 200 Lovelace, soldier of Cade’s, 138 Lydd, Kent, 100–101, 116–17, 125 Lydgate, John, 62, 108 n. 56, 159 n. 57, 195 “Entry of Henry the Sixth into London After His Coronation in France, The,” 108 n. 56 Serpent of Division, 169 “Verses on the Kings of England,” 169 Lyell, Laetitia, 107 n. 48 Lyly, John, Anatomy of Wit, The and Endymion, 80 n. 60 Lyndsay, David, 195 MacDonald, A. A., 68–9 n. 16 McFarlane, K. B., 99 n. 23, 122 n. 114, 143 n. 49 McLaren, Mary-Rose, 5, 10–11 and n. 28 and 29, 12, 17, 21, 23–4, 29, 43, 50, 73 n. 30, 91, 93, 10 n. 25, 122–3, 132 McRee, Benjamin R., 109–10 Maddern, Philippa C., 178 n. 10 Maidstone, Kent, 48, 157

227

Mallarmé, Stéphan, 90–91, 138 Malory, Sir Thomas, 166 n. 48 Morte Darthur, 162–3, 195 Malpas, Elizabeth, daughter of Philip, 36 Malpas, Juliana, wife of Philip, 36 Malpas, Philip, London alderman and Draper, 29–30, 34–9, 43–4, 49, 55, 76, 84, 121, 123, 125, 127, 201 Mann, Jill, 86 n. 86, 144–5 Mannheim, Karl, 8 Manuscripts BL Additional 10099; see also Middle English prose Brut, 15, 56, 58, 77–8, 133, 158–9, 169 BL Cotton II 23, 26–7 n. 31 BL Cotton Julius B. I; see also Chronicle of London From 1189–1483, A, 10, 39, 50–51 and nn. 106–9, 77 n. 43, 100 n. 27 BL Cotton Julius B. II, 10 BL Cotton Nero C. XI, 12, 55–6 nn. 121–4, 79 n. 55, 122 n. 116, 133 n. 7 BL Cotton Roll IV 50, 26 n. 31; BL Cotton Vitellius A. XVI, 14, 22, 51, 73–4, 112, 133, 159–60 n. 25, 170 nn. 60–61 BL Cotton Vitellius F. XII; see also Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London, 13, 48–9 and n. 104 BL Egerton 1995; see also Gregory, William, Gregory’s Chronicle, 12, 30, 41, 43 n. 83, 62, 169 BL Harley 545, 26–7 n. 31 BL Harley 565; see also A Chronicle of London, 1189–1483, 14 BL Harley 2252, 11 n. 30 BL Harley Roll C 8, 11 n. 30, 43 n. 84, 73 n. 30; Dublin, Trinity College 509; see also Bale, Robert, Bale’s Chronicle, 11, 21, 22–3 nn. 13–14, 24 n. 20, 25 nn. 23 and 25, 100 n. 28, 113 n. 78, 122 n. 13, 165–6 nn. 41–5 and 48 Kew, NA C 131/242/2, 147 n. 67 Kew, NA KB 27/755, 178 Kew, NA PROB 11/5, 146 n. 63 Kew, NA PROB 11/8, 146–7 n. 66

228

The Historical Literature of the Jack Cade Rebellion

Kew, NA PROB 11/13, 146–7 n. 66 Kew, NA, PROB 11/14, 146–7 n. 66 Kew, NA, PROB 11/16, 146 n. 66 Kew, NA, PROB 11/20, 146–7 n. 66 London, College of Arms, Arundel 19(1), 11 n.30 London, Guildhall Library 3313; see also The Great Chronicle of London, 12, 76 n. 41 London, Lambeth Palace 306, 13, 27, 43 and n. 84 Oxford, Balliol College 354; see also Hill, Richard, Richard Hill’s Chronicle, 13, 38 n. 63, 76 n. 40 Oxford, Bodleian Eng. Hist. C 272, 26–7 n. 31 Oxford, Bodleian Gough 10, 13–14, 30, 43–5, 73–4, 115, 170 Oxford, Bodleian Rawlinson B 355, 79 Oxford, Bodleian Rawlinson B 359, 11 n. 30 Oxford, Magdalen College 306, 26–7 n. 31, 137 Maine, Perrine, 124 n. 123 Mali, Joseph, 173 Manley, Lawrence, 127 Margaret of Anjou, 113 n. 77, 202 Markham, Sir John, chief justice, 36 Martin, G. H., 149–50 n.1 Marvin, Julia, 2 n. 2 Marx, William, 15–16, 57, 75 n. 38, 93 n. 1, 119, 138 n. 31, 166 n. 46, 170 n. 61, 171 Matheson, Lister M., 2 n. 2, 10, 15, 16 n. 48, 169 n. 59 Matthew of Paris, 107 Mauer, Helen E., 136 n. 18, 141, 144 May, The, 100–101 Mayn, Thomas, of Colchester, 23, 201 mercantilism, 1–2, 4, 15, 30, 37, 39–40, 49, 54, 57–8, 86, 129, 168, 186, 188 Mercers’ Company, 107 Merchant Taylors’ Company, 108, 110 Mews, Constant J., 83 n. 72 Meyers, A. R., 145 nn. 57–61 Middle English prose Brut, 2–3, 10, 14–16, 20–21, 56–9, 77–8, 83, 90, 114,

124, 133, 158–60, 164, 166 n. 45, 168–9, 170 n. 61, 195 Midsummer Watches and celebrations Cambridge, 118 n. 103; Chester, 117 Coventry, 118 Exeter, 117–18 Kent, 105–6, 116, 118, 130, 147 Laon, 116 n. 93 London, 16, 19 n. 2, 37, 92–4, 97–101, 104–15, 118–21, 126–32, 139, 147–8, 166, 181, 200 Lydd, 116–17 Norwich, 109 York, 117; see also John Stow Mills, David, 182 Moleyns, Adam, bishop of Chichester (1445–50), 20, 199 Morgan, Philip, 149–50 n. 1 Morleyns, Robert Hungerford, Lord (d. 1463), 135 Morris, Rosemary, 162 n. 31 Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 68 Munslow, Alan, 6, 199 n. 1 natural law, 52 Nederman, Cary J., 83 Neville, Anne, 10 n. 28 New Romney, Kent, 125–6 and n. 127 Nicholas of the Tower, The, 50, 199 Nichols, John Gough, 13–14 n. 40 Nichols, N. H., 14 n. 42, 39 n. 65, 50–51 nn. 106–9, 77 n. 43, 100 n. 27 Nightingale, Pamela, 146 Normandy, 11 n. 29, 20, 38, 43 n. 84, 48–50, 73–4, 138 n. 32, 166, 171 Norwich, Norfolk, 97 n. 14, 99–100, 109, 143, 202 Nosek, Jiří, 80 n. 60 Ohlgren, Thomas H., 9–10 n. 27, 24 n. 21, 61 n. 1, 150 n. 2, 176 n. 5, 177 n. 8, 179 nn. 11–12, 183, 185, 188 oligarchy, 3, 16, 35, 37, 39, 41, 45, 54, 85, 86, 97, 106, 129 Orleans, Siege of, 114 Orridge, B. Brogden, 20, 36 n. 60, 140 n. 41 Owen, L. D., V., 182

Index Palgrave, Francis, 132 n. 1 Panton, George A., 72 n. 27 Parker, David R., 13 n. 39, 39–40, 41 n. 75 Parys, captain of Cade, 115–16, 192, 200 Pastons acquaintances of, 134–5, 147 Gresham, estate, 135 John I, 16, 99, 115, 131, 135–8, 141–3, 146–8, 181 John II, 136, 181 Payn, John, Grocer, London, 146 and n. 63 Payn, John, of Peckham, Kent, 16–17, 26–7 n. 31, 115, 131–48 Margaret, wife of, 143 Payn, John (alias), of St Mary Reading, Berkshire, see Hoxton, John Payn, John, of Boston, Lincolnshire, Mercer, 146–7 n. 66 Payn, John, of Grinstead, Sussex, 146–7 n. 66 Payn, John, of Helhoughton, Norfolk, 147 and n. 67 Payn, John, of Sudbury, Suffolk, 146–7 n. 66 Payn, John, of Worcester, Worcestershire, Draper, 146–7 n. 66 Payne, John, of Mereworth, Kent, 140 Pearl, 72 Peasants’ Rebellion, 19, 98, 130, 173, 182, 184–5, 191 Pellauer, David, 142 Pentecost (celebrations), 19 n. 2, 100, 118 n. 103 Peres the Ploughman’s Crede, 72 Phythian-Adams, Charles, 109 n. 59, 115 Pilkington, Gilbert, 183 Piponnier, Françoise, 124 n. 123 Plummer, Sir John (Grocer), 36 Plummer, Charles, 149 n. 1 Pollard, A. F., 145 n. 59, 146, 187 n. 41 Pollard, A. J., 80 n. 60 Polychronicon tradition, 14–16, 195 Pontalis, J. B., 33 Porter, Elizabeth, 192 Potter, Lois, 182 n. 22 Poynings, Robert (d. 1460), 200 Prayer Book Rising, 98

229

Pringle, Roger, 94 n. 4 Rabelais, François, Gargantua and Pantagruel, 96–7 Radcliffe, Sir John, 114 Radulescu, Raluca, 168–9 Rank, Hugh, 9–10, 24, 61, 74, 79, 92, 195 Reason, Kathryn L., 105 n. 42, 109 n. 58 Reinhard, John Revell, 162 Richard I, 10 Richard II, 101, 147, 184 Richard III, 10 n. 28, 12 Richmond, Colin, 136, 147 Ricoeur, Paul, 85, 142, 151 n. 3, 153 Riddy, Felicity, 68–9 n. 16 Riley, Henry Thomas, 103 nn. 35 and 37, 104 n. 39, 110–11 nn. 66–9 Rissanen, Matti, 80–81 Rivers, Richard Woodville, Lord (1448– 66), 200 Robertson, Jean, 107 n. 51 Robert the Robber/Hobbe the Robber, 182–4 Robin Hood, 17, 145 n. 59, 149, 175–6 as alias, 26, 178–9 chronicle entries of, 176–9 relation to Cade Rebellion, 175–94 Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne, 192 Robin Hood and the Monk, 175, 179, 183–5, 191–2 Robin Hood and the Potter, 175, 179, 181, 187–8 Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, 181–2 Roche, Sir William, Draper and mayor of London, 110 Rochester, Kent, 82, 202 Roe, Thomas, mayor of London, 108 Rogerson, Margaret, 117 n. 97 Ross, Charles, 35 Russell, Frederic William, 99 n. 21 Russian Revolution, 67 St Dunstan, feast of, 110 St Edward, Translation of, 189, 201 St George, feast of, 109–10 St John the Baptist, the Eve of, 104, 111 St Mary’s, Nottingham, 191

230

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St Peter and St Paul, the Eve and Celebrations of, 104–7, 111, 113, 115, 118–21, 200 St Peter’s Cathedral, York, 176 St Thomas Becket, Translation of, 99–100, 105, 116–17, 202 Sandwich, Kent, 113 Saunders, Corinne, 192 n. 58 Saye and Sele, James Fiennes, Lord (1447–50), 11 n. 29, 23, 34, 44, 46, 51, 53, 55, 59, 80, 83, 102, 122, 125–7, 155, 159 n. 25, 160–61, 164, 166, 169, 200–201 Scales, Thomas, Lord, 42, 44, 55, 59, 81, 100, 114, 200 Schmidt, A. V. C., 180 n. 13, 183 n. 25 Sebeok, Thomas A., 62 n. 2, 96 n. 10 Seliger, Mark, 26 n. 30 Sevenoaks, Kent, 48, 50, 77, 101, 134, 157, 159, 172, 186, 200 Seven Sages of Rome, 41, 169 Sgall, Petr, 80 n. 60 Shaa, Sir John, mayor, alderman, Goldsmith, 40 Shakespeare, William, 21, 89 Henry VI, 94 n. 4 Shamell, Robert, 202 Sharpe, Reginald R., 103 n. 37, 111, nn. 70–71, 146 n. 63 Sherborne Annals, The, 78 Sherborne, Dorset, 189 Sheriff of Nottingham, 177, 182, 187–91 Shooter’s Hill, Kent, 176 Short English Chronicle, 13–14, 30, 43–5, 77, 159–60 n. 25, 164 Short, Michael H., 80 n. 60 Siege of Jerusalem, The, 68 n. 16 “Siege of Rouen, The” 41, 62, 169 Sills, David L., 172 n. 65 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 70–71 Sir Richard at the Lee, 188 Sisam, Kenneth, 182 n. 24, 184 n. 33 Skinners’ Company, 117–18 South Acre, Norfolk, 178 Spearing, A. C., 68 n. 16, 70 Spiegel, Gabrielle M., 6, 197 Spielberg, Steven, Schindler’s List, 64

Stafford, Sir Humphrey, 42, 44, 48, 50–53, 59, 131, 132–4, 160, 164, 170, 200, 201 Stafford, John, archbishop of Canterbury (1443–52), 165–6 n. 45, 200 Stafford, William, 42, 44, 48, 50–53, 59, 77, 81, 132–4, 160, 164, 170, 200, 201 Stallybrass, Peter, 98 Stanley, Sir Thomas, Lord (1455–59), 200 Stapleton, Thomas, 11 Stephen I, 161 Stevenson, Joseph, 99 n. 23 Stockwood, Lawrence, 201 Stoner, Sir William, 146–7 n. 66 Storey, R. L., 1 n. 1 Stow, John, 12 Annals or a Generall Chronicle of England, 26 n. 31 Chronicles of England, 26–7 n. 31 Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, 31 Survey of London, 104, 112, 119–21, 128, 161–2, 166 n. 48 Strohm, Paul, 32–3, 59–60 Suffolk, William de la Pole, duke of (1448–50), 20, 23–4, 38, 43 n. 84, 50, 53, 73–4, 77, 112, 135–6, 172, 187, 199 Surrey, county of, 178–9, 199 Sussex, county of, 51, 59, 81, 179, 199, 194 Sutton, Anne F., 10–11 n. 28, 34 n. 51, 35 n. 56 Sutton, John, Goldsmith and alderman of London, 44, 51, 201 Swanton, Michael, 150 n. 2 Szarmach, Paul E., 68 n. 16 Tancred, 88 Tasso, 88 Tavormina, M. Teresa, 68 n. 16 Thomas, A. H., 12, 36 n. 59, 76 n. 41, 114 n. 83, 133 n. 8, 164 n. 40, 170 n. 61 Thomas, Neil, 192 n. 58 Thorn, Caroline, 149–50 n. 1 Thornley, I. D., 12, 36 n. 59, 76 n. 41, 114 n. 83, 133 n. 8, 164 n. 40, 170 n. 61

Index Thrupp, Sylvia L., 35 n. 56, 123 n. 119, 125 n. 126 Tonbridge, Kent, 46, 134, 157 Towton, battle of (1461), 67 Trevilian, John, 159–60 n. 25, 200 Trevisa, John, 15, 196 Turner, Victor, 172 Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 68 n. 16, 71–2 and n. 28 Twycross, Meg, 101–2 Tyler, Wat, 184 Tyrell, Sir Thomas, 202 Tyrrell, E., 14 n. 42, 39 n. 65, 50–51 nn. 106–9, 77 n. 43, 100 n. 27 Vale, John, 14 Commonplace Book; 30–33 employee of Sir Thomas Cook, 14, 35–6 A Short Chronicle of Events, 1431–71, 31, 33–4, 37 Vinaver, Eugène, 163 n. 33 Virgin Mary, 177, 181 pageant for the Ascension of, 106 Seven Joys of, 12 Virgoe, Roger, 141 n. 44, 147 Visser-Fuchs, Livia, 10–11 n. 28, 34 n. 51, 35 n. 56 Voloshinov, V. N., 48 Wallace, David, 68 n. 16, 78 n. 50, 101 n. 30, 106 n. 54 Wallace, William, 150, 176 Waller, Richard, 202 Walsingham, Thomas, Chronica Maiora, 195 Warkworth, John, 15 Wars of Alexander, The, 71, 80 n. 60 Wars of the Roses, 1, 3, 19, 22, 31, 60, 136, 198

231

Watney, Frank D., 107 n. 48 Watts, John L., 1 n. 1, 31 n. 42, 34 n. 50, 35 n. 55, 57 Waynflete, William, bishop of Winchester (1447–86), 102, 165–6 n. 45, 200 Wayte, William, 136 n. 18 Weald, the, 186–8 Wells, John, Grocer and mayor of London, 108 Wells, Stanley, 94 n. 4 Wemple, Suzanne F., 83 n. 71 Wettstein, Howard K., 62 n. 2 Whetter, K. S., 169 n. 56 White, Allon, 98 White, Hayden, 7–10, 17, 66–7, 85–6, 92, 151, 167–8, 170 Whitsun, 10, 16, 94, 98–101, 105, 117, 118 n. 103, 113, 128, 148, 180–81, 199 Whittingham, Sir Robert, 36 William I, 150 Williams, Ann, 149–50, n. 1 Wimsatt, W. K. Jr., 69–70 n. 20 Wiltshire, county of, 47, 81 Wolffe, Bertram, 23, 24 n. 18, 34, 186 n. 39, 199 n. 1 Worcester, William, 99, 142–3, 146–7 Itinerary, 143–4 Wriothesley, Charles, 10; Wriothesley’s Chronicle, 10 n. 28 Wydeville, Elizabeth, queen of Edward IV, 35 Wyndhamgame, 99 Wyndonham, Norfolk, 99 Yeager, R. F., 68 n. 16 York, Richard, duke of (1425–60), 3, 19, 35 n. 55, 51, 53, 56, 57–9, 78–9, 152, 159, 162, 170 n. 60, 200