nty thousand
men strong, marched in the beginning of June on Blackheath. On the advance
of the king with an equal force however they determined to lay their
complaint before the royal Council and withdraw to their homes. The
"Complaint of the Commons of Kent" is of high value in the light which it
throws on the condition of the people. Not one of the demands touches on
religious reform. The question of villeinage and serfage finds no place in
it. In the seventy years which had intervened since the last peasant
rising, villeinage had died naturally away before the progress of social
change. The Statutes of Apparel, which from this time encumber the
Statute-book, show in their anxiety to curtail the dress of the labourer
and the farmer the progress of these classes in comfort and wealth; and
from the language of the statutes themselves it is plain that as wages
rose both farmer and labourer went on clothing themselves better in spite
of sumptuary provisions. With the exception of a demand for the repeal of
the Statute of Labourers, the programme of the Commons was not social but
political. The "Complaint" calls for administrative and economical
reforms; it denounces the exclusion of the Duke of York and other nobles
from the royal councils; it calls for a change of ministry, a more careful
expenditure of the royal revenue, and for the restoration of freedom of
election which had been broken in upon by the interference both of the
Crown and the great landowners.

[Sidenote: Suppression of the revolt]

The Council refused to receive the "Complaint," and a body of troops under
Sir Humphrey Stafford fell on the Kentishmen as they reached Sevenoaks.
This attack however was roughly beaten off, and Cade's host turned back to
encounter the royal army. But the royal army itself was already calling
for justice on the traitors who misled the king; and at the approach of
the Kentishmen it broke up in disorder. Its dispersion was followed by
Henry's flight to Kenilworth and the entry of the Kentishmen into London,
where the execution of Lord Say, the most unpopular of the royal
ministers, broke the obstinacy of his colleagues. For three days the
peasants entered the city freely, retiring at nightfall to their camp
across the river: but on the fifth of July the men of London, goaded by
the outrages of the rabble whom their presence roused to plunder, closed
the bridge against them, and beat back an attack with great slaughter. The
K