The Jack Cade Rebellion Of 1450

Jack Cade's Rebellion of 1450 was one of the most important popular uprisings to take place in England during the Middle Ages. It began as an orchestrated demonstration of political protest by the inhabitants of south-eastern England against the corruption, mismanagement, and oppression of Henry VI's government. This is the first full-length study of Cade's revolt to be published this century. Harvey charts the course of the rebellion and its associated troubles during the early 1450s, and explores the nature of the society which gave rise to these upheavals. She uncovers the identities of the rebels, explains their actions, assesses their relations with the magnates, and examines their achievements, illuminating the eventual collapse of Henry VI's reign into the War of the Roses.

The Jack Cade Rebellion of 1450 was an uprising of the commons of England—most of whom were from Kent, Norfolk, and Essex—that culminated in a battle on London Bridge. The rebel force, led by a mysterious man known as Jack Cade, protested King Henry VI’s ineffectiveness as a leader, the over-taxation of the working classes, the crown’s failed attempts to secure French territories, and the corrupt bureaucrats and church officials. This book collects, for the first time, primary documents related to the rebellion that have been translated into Present-Day English or glossed for ease of reading. The sources included in this book comprise the rebels’ petitions, entries from medieval and early modern chronicles, letters and formal correspondences, official government documents, and political poems of the fifteenth century. Students interested in urban history, popular rebellions, medieval and early modern studies, legal studies, criminal justice, Shakespeare, and artistic expressions of protest will find these primary sources invaluable.

Accounts of Jack Cade's 1450 Rebellion-an uprising of some 30,000 middle-class citizens, protesting Henry VI's policies, and resulting in hundreds of deaths as well as the leaders' execution-form the dominant entry in a group of quasi-historical documents referred to as the London chronicles of the Fifteenth Century. However, each chronicle is inherently different and highly subjective. In the first study of the primary documents related to the Cade Rebellion, Alexander L. Kaufman shows that the chroniclers produced multiple representations of the event rather than a single, unified narrative. Aided by contemporary theories of historiography and historical representation, Kaufman scrutinizes the differing representations and distinguishes the writers' objectiveness, their underrated literary skills, and their ideological positions on the rebellion and fifteenth-century politics. He demonstrates how the use of figurative language is related to writing about trauma, and how descriptions of Cade's procession through London are a violent parody of midsummer festivals. In an exploration of authenticity in the descriptions of Cade, Kaufman also examines the characterization and plot devices that push Cade towards the realm of myth, showing that representations of Cade are influenced by popular fifteenth-century stories of Robin Hood.

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