three former had taken a leading part in
bringing about the agreement of 6 July 1450 that had preceded the
dispersal of Cade’s followers.1 Probably they had
promised that the complaints so bitterly made against the local
officials in Kent should be investigated: in contrast to 1381
these promises were kept.
The documents in the file are in the form of neatly
drawn up rolls and do not include any of the original bills and
other papers save the letters patent appointing the commission.
They contain presentments made by jurors from the various hundreds
of Kent and from the body of the county. They consist almost
entirely of allegations of extortion, forcible disseisin and other
offences, against gentlemen and officials, petty and exalted, from
the late Lord Say and recent sheriffs down to minor bailiffs and
their servants. The jurors clearly saw in this commission an
opportunity for redress against the many royal and seigneurial
officials whose corruption and oppression had reached new heights
in the previous years. Another group of indictments charges such
men as Lords Dudley and Rivers, Sir Thomas Stanley and Thomas
Danyell for acts committed from 18 to 20 June 1450 when they were
in command of the forces pursuing Cade’s rebels into Kent.
Although proceedings appear to have continued
seriously into the autumn and the last venire facias was
for 17 December, by that date the position of the Duke of
York |
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and the "reforming party" was
weakening and it is unlikely that anything further was done then
or later. A number of those accused appear to have made fine for
their offences, many were found "not guilty" of at least
some of the charges, but the result of most cases is not known. It
is unlikely that anything very serious happened to those indicted,
but the accusations do throw considerable light on conditions in
Kent in the decade preceding Cade’s rising.2
(iii) K.B.9, file 47. This file
contains indictments taken at Tonbridge from 26 June to 1 July
1451 before justices acting under a commission of oyer and
terminer issued on 27 January 1451 to try all manner
1 Collections of
a London Citizen, ed. J. Gairdner (Camden Soc., New Series 17,
1876), p. 193.
2 According
to a 15th century manuscript used by John Stow and now British
Museum MS. Cotton Roll, ii, 23 (printed in part by C. L.
Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth
Century, pp. 358-68) thirty-two of the chief supporters of the
Duke of Suffolk’s regime, including Dudley, Rivers, Stanley and
Danyell, were indicted before the two archbishops and the Duke of
Buckingharn at Rochester on the feast of the Assumption (15
August) and the feast of St. Laurence (10 August). The date cannot
be correct, for on 19 August James Gresham wrote to John Paston
that "this same Moneday (17 August) goth my Lord Chauncellor
[Kemp] and my Lord of Buckingham into Kent to sitte upon an oier
and determiner at Rochester" (Paston Letters. ed. J.
Gairdner, 1872, i, p. 137). But it is quite likely that such
indictments were made, though no record of them now survives. |