*] No inquiry was made
after the actors and accomplices in this atrocious deed of violence.

* Cotton, p. 643.

** Hall, fol. 158. Hist. Croyland, Contin. p. 525. Stowe, p.
388. Grafton, p. 610.

The duke of Somerset succeeded to Suffolk's power in the ministry, and
credit with the queen; and as he was the person under whose government
the French provinces had been lost, the public, who always judge by the
event, soon made him equally the object of their animosity and hatred.
The duke of York was absent in Ireland during all these transactions
and however it might be suspected that his partisans had excited and
supported the prosecution against Suffolk, no immediate ground of
complaint could, on that account, lie against him. But there happened,
soon after, an incident which roused the jealousy of the court, and
discovered to them the extreme danger to which they were exposed from
the pretensions of that popular prince.

The humors of the people, set afloat by the parliamentary impeachment,
and by the fall of so great a favorite as Suffolk, broke out in various
commotions, which were soon suppressed, but there arose one in Kent
which was attended with more dangerous consequences. A man of low
condition, one John Cade, a native of Ireland, who had been obliged
to fly into France for crimes, observed, on his return to England,
the discontents of the people; and he laid on them the foundation of
projects which were at first crowned with surprising success. He took
the name of John Mortimer; intending, as is supposed, to pass himself
for a son of that Sir John Mortimer who had been sentenced to death by
parliament, and executed, in the beginning of this reign, without any
trial or evidence, merely upon an indictment of high treason given in
against him.[*] On the first mention of that popular name, the common
people of Kent, to the number of twenty thousand, flocked to Cade's
standard; and he excited their zeal by publishing complaints against the
numerous abuses in government, and demanding a redress of grievances.
The court, not yet fully sensible of the danger, sent a small force
against the rioters, under the command of Sir Humphrey Stafford, who was
defeated and slain in an action near Sevenoke;[**] and Cade, advancing
with his followers towards London, encamped on Blackheath.

* Stowe, p. 364. Cotton, p. 564. This author admires that
such a piece of injustice should have been committed in