Internal difficulties sufficed to absorb the efforts of the faithful servants of the King of England. The Parliament had at length risen against the Duke of Suffolk; he had been conducted to the tower, protesting his innocence. The accusations produced against him were confused, ill-founded, and frivolous; the graver subjects of distrust had scarcely been touched upon. The duke threw himself upon his knees before the king, refused to shield himself with his privilege by demanding the judgment of his peers, and consigned himself to the justice of his master, who wished to save him. He was simply banished from England for five years: the Parliament accepted this compromise, not without a protest on the part of the lords in favour of the rights of their order.
The anger of the population of London was not so easy to disarm as the vengeance of the Parliament. Suffolk had difficulty in retiring safe and sound to his estate; he had gathered around him friends and partisans, swearing before them that he was innocent, when he embarked for the Continent on the 1st of May, 1430. He was sailing about on the morrow between Dover and Calais, when a large war-ship, the _Nicholas-de-la-Tour_, hailed his little vessel. The duke was summoned on board the ship. "You are here, traitor," said the captain, as he placed his foot upon the deck, and Suffolk was immediately placed under arrest. Two days elapsed; the duke had asked for a confessor; a little bark came up with the _Nicholas_; she bore an executioner with an axe. Suffolk was led upon deck and beheaded. { 70} None inquired whence had come the warrant; but the importance of the ships entrusted to arrest the banished man at sea, caused a supposition that the greatest personages of the kingdom had not remained strangers to the execution. The people were satisfied, their vengeance was consummated. New events now absorbed all minds.
Numerous insurrections had during a short time past broken out in different parts of England. An adventurer, Jack Cade, an Irishman by origin, who had for a long while served in the English armies in France, placed himself at the head of the insurgents. He had assumed the name of Mortimer, and represented himself a relative of the Duke of York, who then commanded in Ireland. Thirty thousand men soon found themselves assembled around Cade, nearly all from the county of Kent. It was said that the queen wished to avenge herself for the death of her favourite, whose decapitated body had been brought by the waves to the coast of Dover. Cade brought his forces to Blackheath, as Wat Tyler had formerly done, and the "complaints of the commons of Kent," were dispatched to the king at London. Amongst the number of the demands of the insurgents, they begged Henry VI. to recall to his side his blood relatives, the Dukes of York, Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk, in order to punish the traitors who had caused the death of the Duke of Gloucester, the holy father in God, Cardinal Beaufort, and lost the dominions of Maine, Anjou, and Normandy. The reply of the court was the dispatch of an army against the rebels; but the first detachment was defeated: the soldiers murmured, saying that they did not like to fight against their countrymen, who claimed the liberties of the nation. { 71} Concessions were attempted: but the forces of Cade swelled every day, and on the 3rd of July he entered London. Lord Say, one of the most unpopular ministers, was dragged from the tower, where he had been sent by the court in the hope of satisfying the insurgents; and, notwithstanding his protestations, he was executed after a mock trial. Some houses were pillaged, and on the morrow, when the rebels wished to re-enter into London, after having been encamped at Blackheath, the citizens defended the bridge. Cade was compelled to retreat. He was amused by vain concessions and the promise of an amnesty but was soon afterwards pursued and killed; and his head was planted upon London Bridge. The insurrection was stifled; but the name of the Duke of York had been put forward; it circulated from mouth to mouth, and many people began to ask whether the rights to the throne which he held through Anne Mortimer, his mother, did not supersede those of King Henry VI. Prince Richard, son of the Earl of Cambridge, had succeeded to the title of Duke of York, at the death of his paternal uncle; the successes which he had obtained in his government of Ireland had increased his popularity.