Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/610

596 Maine and Anjou, that was not simply his act, but that of the whole council. He spread the majority of the charges in this manner over the whole ministry; the rest he denied, and appealed to the peers around him for their knowledge of the fact that, so far from marrying his son to a daughter of Somerset, he was affianced to a daughter of Warwick.

Whatever was the amount of Suffolk's guilt, the people were resolved to listen to one penalty alone, that of his death; and to prevent him falling under the judgment of Parliament, the king, or rather the queen, acting in his name, adopted a bold and startling expedient. He announced to him, through the lord chancellor, that, as he had not claimed to be tried by his peers, the king would exercise his prerogative, and holding him neither guilty nor innocent of the treasons with which he had been charged, would and did banish him from the kingdom for five years, on the second impeachment, for waste of the revenues. The House of Lords, astonished, at this invasion of their prerogative to try those of their own body, immediately protested that this act of the king should form no precedent in bar of their privileges hereafter. With this the peers contented themselves in their corporate capacity, as some historians have suggested, from a secret compromise between the two parties.

But the ferment out of doors was terrible. The people looked upon the whole as a trick of the court to screen the favourite, and defraud them of the satisfaction of witnessing his just punishment. There was a buzz of indignation from one end of the kingdom to the other. The most inflammatory placards were stuck on the doors of the churches, and the death of the duke was openly sworn. Two thousand people were assembled in St. Giles's to seize him on his discharge; but the intended victim escaped, for that time, the vengeance of the mob falling on his retainers. He got down to his estates in Suffolk, and after assembling the knights and squires of his neighbourhood, and before them swearing on the sacrament that he was innocent of the crimes laid to his charge, and writing a letter to his son which Lingard, the historian, says it is difficult to read without being convinced of his truthfulness, he embarked at Ipswich in a small vessel for Calais. But his enemies had resolved that he should not thus escape them. The Nicholas of the Tower, one of the largest ships of the navy, bore down upon him on his passage, and ordered him to come on board. He was received by the captain as he stepped on deck with the ominous salutation, "Welcome, traitor!" Two nights he was kept on board this vessel, while his capture was announced on shore, and further instructions awaited. It was clear, from a ship of the navy being used, that persons of no common influence were arrayed against him; and after a mock trial by the sailors, he was conducted to near Dover, where a small boat camp alongside with a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner. The duke was lowered into the boat, and there beheaded in a bungling and barbarous manner. His remains were laid on the sands near Dover, and there guarded by the sheriff of Kent, till the king commanded them to be delivered to his widow, who was no other than the granddaughter of Chaucer, the poet. She deposited the body in the collegiate church' of Wingfield, in Suffolk.  CHAPTER LXXIII.

extraordinary death of Suffolk excited the utmost consternation at court. The king and queen were plunged into the deepest grief. They saw that a powerful party was engaged in thus defeating their attempt to rescue Suffolk from his enemies by a slight term of exile; and they strongly suspected that the Duke of York, though personally absent in his Government of Ireland, was at the bottom of it. It was more than suspected that he entertained serious designs of profiting by the feebleness and unpopularity of the Government to assert his claims to the crown. This ought to have made the king and queen especially circumspect, but, on the contrary, the king announced his resolve to punish the people of Kent for the murder of Suffolk, which had been perpetrated on their coast. The queen was furious in her vows of vengeance. These unwise demonstrations incurred the anger of the people, and especially irritated the inhabitants of Kent. To add to the popular discontent, Somerset, who had lost by his imbecility the French territories, was made minister in the place of Suffolk, and invested with all the favour of the court. The people in several counties threatened to rise and reform the Government; and the opportunity was seized by a bold adventurer of the name of John Cade, an Irishman, to attempt a revolution. He selected Kent as the quarter more pre-eminently in a state of excitement against the court, and proclaiming himself to be John Mortimer, of the royal line of Mortimer, and cousin to the Duke of York, he gave himself out to be the son of Sir John Mortimer, who, on a charge of high treason, had been executed in the beginning of this reign, without any trial or evidence. The lenity which Henry V. had always shown to the Mortimers, dangerous as was their position near the throne, having un-questionably a superior title to his own, had not been imitated by Bedford and Gloucester, the infant king's uncles, and their neglect of the forms of a regular trial had only strengthened the opinions of the people as to the Mortimer rights. No sooner, therefore, did this adventurer assume this popular name, than the people, burning with the anger of the hour against the present unlucky dynasty, flocked, to the amount of 20,000, to his standard, and advanced to Blackheath. Emissaries were sent into London to stir up the people there, and induce thorn to open their gates and join the movement. As the Government, taken by surprise, was destitute of the necessary troops on the spot to repel so formidable a body of insurgents, it put on the same air of moderation which Richard II. had done in Tyler's rebellion, and many messages passed between the king and the pretended Mortimer, or, as he also called himself, John Amend-all.

In reply to the king's inquiry as to the cause of this assembly. Cade sent in "The Complaints of the Commons of Kent, and the Causes of the Assembly on Blackheath." These documents were most ably and artfully drawn. 