The rising spread from Kent over Surrey and Sussex.

Everywhere it was general and organized--a military levy of the yeomen of the three shires.

The parishes sent their due contingent of armed men; we know that in many hundreds the constables formally summoned their legal force to war.

The insurgents were joined by more than a hundred esquires and gentlemen; and two great landholders of Sussex, the Abbot of Battle and the Prior of Lewes, openly favoured their cause.

John Cade, a soldier of some experience in the French wars, took at this crisis the significant name of Mortimer and placed himself at their head.