le
vessel, and ordered him on board. 'Welcome, traitor, as men say,' was
the captain's grim and not very respectful salutation. He was kept on
board, a prisoner, for eight-and-forty hours, and then a small boat
appeared rowing toward the ship. As this boat came nearer, it was seen
to have in it a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner in a black mask.
The duke was handed down into it, and there his head was cut off with six
strokes of the rusty sword. Then, the little boat rowed away to Dover
beach, where the body was cast out, and left until the duchess claimed
it. By whom, high in authority, this murder was committed, has never
appeared. No one was ever punished for it.

There now arose in Kent an Irishman, who gave himself the name of
Mortimer, but whose real name was JACK CADE. Jack, in imitation of Wat
Tyler, though he was a very different and inferior sort of man, addressed
the Kentish men upon their wrongs, occasioned by the bad government of
England, among so many battledores and such a poor shuttlecock; and the
Kentish men rose up to the number of twenty thousand. Their place of
assembly was Blackheath, where, headed by Jack, they put forth two
papers, which they called 'The Complaint of the Commons of Kent,' and
'The Requests of the Captain of the Great Assembly in Kent.' They then
retired to Sevenoaks. The royal army coming up with them here, they beat
it and killed their general. Then, Jack dressed himself in the dead
general's armour, and led his men to London.

Jack passed into the City from Southwark, over the bridge, and entered it
in triumph, giving the strictest orders to his men not to plunder. Having
made a show of his forces there, while the citizens looked on quietly, he
went back into Southwark in good order, and passed the night. Next day,
he came back again, having got hold in the meantime of Lord Say, an
unpopular nobleman. Says Jack to the Lord Mayor and judges: 'Will you be
so good as to make a tribunal in Guildhall, and try me this nobleman?'
The court being hastily made, he was found guilty, and Jack and his men
cut his head off on Cornhill. They also cut off the head of his son-in-
law, and then went back in good order to Southwark again.

But, although the citizens could bear the beheading of an unpopular lord,
they could not bear to have their houses pillaged. And it did so happen
that Jack, after dinner--perhaps he had drunk a little too much--began to
plunder the ho