The Wars of the Roses - Alison Weir [94]
On 29 June the rebel army returned in high spirits, its ranks swelled by deserters from the royal army, and quickly occupied Blackheath before the Londoners guessed what was happening. Cade was now arrayed like a lord in a handsome helmet and a brigandine – an armour-plated jacket – studded with gilt nails. On his shoes he wore the purloined spurs of Sir Humphrey Stafford.
On that same day, in the chancel of Edington Church in Wiltshire, William Ayscough, Bishop of Salisbury, was preparing to celebrate mass. Ayscough, a close friend of Suffolk, had officiated at the marriage of the King and Queen, but was generally blamed for their lack of an heir because it was well known that, in his capacity as chaplain, he had urged the King to avoid marital intercourse as far as possible. Yet in other respects Ayscough was a worldly bishop, spending the minimum of time in his diocese and the maximum time at court, where preferment was more likely to be had, and where he was a prominent member of the court faction. He was notoriously acquisitive and therefore ‘evil beloved’ by the commons.
So evil beloved, in fact, was he that as Ayscough turned to the altar, his congregation rose in fury and dragged him out of the church to a nearby hill. Here, in a frenzy of violence, they hacked him to death. His murderers then stripped the corpse naked and tore his bloody shirt to pieces. Later, they ‘made boast of their wickedness’, and took away as many of the Bishop’s belongings as they could carry.
The murder was almost certainly the result of a whispering campaign by rebel agents sent to fan the flames of discontent among the people of the south-western counties. Judge Gascoigne was of the opinion that Ayscough was killed ‘because he was the confessor of Henry VI and did not remedy the defects around the King nor depart from the King because these were not remedied’. His murder was chilling evidence of the mood of the people, and the bishops of Lichfield and Norwich were also threatened with violence by angry mobs at this time.
On 1 July the rebel army reached the Surrey shore of the Thames and Cade, still calling himself John Mortimer, took up residence at the White Hart Inn in Southwark, which became his headquarters. At the same time the Essex rebels were grouping outside Aldgate. Many Londoners, poorer people as well as some aldermen and several wealthy merchants, some of whom had financed Cade, supported the rebels’ demands and were in favour of opening the city gates to them. The Lord Mayor hastily consulted his aldermen as to whether he should do so, and only one, Robert Home, demurred, which made him so unpopular that the mayor cast him into prison for his own safety.
In the late afternoon of the 2nd, the drawbridge at the far end of London Bridge was lowered and Jack Cade led a band of his followers through it, pausing to cut the ropes of the drawbridge with his sword as he passed. He came like a conqueror, wearing a gown of blue velvet beneath his brigandine, and sporting the helmet and gilded spurs of a knight, to which he had no entitlement. He carried a shield studded with gold nails and an unsheathed sword and his squire walked before him carrying a sword as if it were the King’s sword of State.
As he entered London Cade was presented with the keys of the city and many broke from the watching crowds and ran to join him. He then led his company along Cannon Street and so to the London Stone in Candlewick Street.* Tapping it lightly with his sword, he cried: ‘Now is Mortimer lord of this city!’ Later he dined with the civic authorities, having his meat carved by a gentleman, as a lord would. At night