Jack Cade

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When Jack Cade led his followers into the City on sterner business he struck the stone with his sword, saying "Now is Mortimer lord of this City." The incident, which comes into the second part of King Henry VI., has been accepted as true history, and certain historians have warned us against presuming that Cade's action was mere nonsense.

They insist that it had a definite meaning; that it impressed the people. But why? The question has been discussed again and again; among others by the late Sir Laurence Gomme. He agrees that Holinshed (from whom Shakespeare or his collaborator in the play took the incident) recognized the presence of a meaning.

This meaning arose from a municipal custom. Mayors, on Mayor's Day, would strike the stone with a stick as a way of proclaiming their authority. Moreover, Sir Laurence Gomme acquiesced in the theory that a veneration attached to London Stone which, beginning with the citizens of Roman London, was accepted by the Anglo-Saxons and handed on.