ork. The news of the French successes was at
once followed by an outbreak of national wrath. Political ballads
denounced Suffolk as the ape with his clog that had tied Talbot, the good
"dog" who was longing to grip the Frenchmen. When the Bishop of
Chichester, who had been sent to pay the sailors at Portsmouth, strove to
put off the men with less than their due, they fell on him and slew him.
Suffolk was impeached, and only saved from condemnation by submitting
himself to the king's mercy. He was sent into exile, but as he crossed the
sea he was intercepted by a ship of Kentishmen, beheaded, and his body
thrown on the sands at Dover.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Kent]

Kent was the centre of the national resentment. It was the great
manufacturing district of the day, seething with a busy population, and
especially concerned with the French contest through the piracy of the
Cinque Ports. Every house along its coast showed some spoil from the wars.
Here more than anywhere the loss of the great province whose cliffs could
be seen from its shores was felt as a crowning disgrace, and as we shall
see from the after complaints of its insurgents, political wrongs added
their fire to the national shame. Justice was ill administered; taxation
was unequal and extortionate. Redress for such evils would now naturally
have been sought from Parliament; but the weakness of the Crown gave the
great nobles power to rob the freeholders of their franchise and return
the knights of the shire. Nor could redress be looked for from the Court.
The murder of Suffolk was the act of Kentishmen, and Suffolk's friends
still held control over the royal councils. The one hope of reform lay in
arms; and in the summer of 1450, while the last of the Norman fortresses
were throwing open their gates, the discontent broke into open revolt. The
rising spread from Kent over Surrey and Sussex. Everywhere it was general
and organized--a military levy of the yeomen of the three shires. The
parishes sent their due contingent of armed men; we know that in many
hundreds the constables formally summoned their legal force to war. The
insurgents were joined by more than a hundred esquires and gentlemen; and
two great landholders of Sussex, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of
Lewes, openly favoured their cause. John Cade, a soldier of some
experience in the French wars, took at this crisis the significant name of
Mortimer and placed himself at their head. The army, now twe