still more perplexing, a division at one time | royal army, as if they had put to route a foreign broke out in the Protestant party, in conse- enemy in his own country; "for the whole counquence of a difference of opinion as to the mea- try was then put to the spoil, and every soldier sures to be adopted between two of their leaders, sought for his best profit." Gibbets were also John Courtenay and Barnard Duffield, which set up in various places, on which great numrose to great violence. Want of victuals also at bers of the ringleaders in the rebellion were length began to pinch them, so that while the hanged. Others, and especially Arundel, the citizens were reduced to loaves of bran and other chief captain, were carried to London, and there unsavoury trash, the prisoners in the jail were executed. It was reckoned that about 4000 in forced to feed upon horseflesh. All this while all perished, by the sword or by the hands of the Lord Russell had been prevented from taking executioner, of those engaged in this Devonshire any measures for the relief of the place by the insurrection. extraordinary neglect or procrastination of the government, which, full of the conceit of pulling down the rebels by manifestoes or sermons, would neither send him a reinforcement of men nor any other supplies. When he sent Sir Peter Carew to the court, that gallant person, who had acted with great promptitude and decision at the first breaking out of the revolt, and would probably have suppressed it at once if he had received any support from the government, was absurdly charged by Somerset with having been the sole occasion of it, the ready tongue of Rich, the chancellor, echoing his patron's accusation. Russell having long looked for the supplies in vain, "was daily more and more forsaken of such of the common people as at the first served and offered their service unto him. And having but a very small guard about him, he lived in more fear than he was feared." At last some money was obtained by certain merchants of Exeter, who happened to be in the camp, pledging their credit to those of Bristol, Lynn, Taunton, and other towns. By this time the rebels were actually on their march to attack the king's troops, which were now stationed at Honiton; but Russell, whose spirits were raised by the supply of money, on hearing of their advance, marched forth to oppose them, and the two armies met at Fennington bridge, where the rebels, in the end, sustained a complete overthrow. Shortly after, Lord Gray, with a troop of horse, and a band of 300 Italian infantry under Spinola, at last arrived from the capital, and, thus strengthened, Russell marched upon Exeter; and, after defeating the rebels in another engagement, effected his entrance into the famished city on the 6th of AuThe tanner, however, was more than a gust, and raised the siege, which had now lasted match for the gentleman at this sort of work: five weeks. Before this success was achieved, he without difficulty induced the same mob that however, a deplorable affair happened. Lord had torn down his fences to accompany him the Gray, espying a multitude assembled on a height, next morning to certain pasture grounds belongby whom he apprehended that he might be at- ing to Flowerdew, which were also surrounded tacked, ordered the prisoners he had already with hedges and ditches. Flowerdew tried to taken of whom the number was very consider- persuade them to withdraw, but he could not able to be all killed, which was done imme- rule or extinguish the flame so easily as he had diately, every man despatching those he had in blown it up. "Ket, being a man hardy and forward charge. The dispersion of the insurgents was 1 Ket, though a tanner, was wealthy, and the owner of several followed by the same conduct on the part of the manors in the county of Norfolk.-Strype, Eccles. Mem. ii. 281 "About the same time," continues the chronicler, "that this rebellion began in the west, the like disordered hurles were attempted in Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire; but they were speedily suppressed by the Lord Gray of Wilton." Elsewhere, also, both in the southern and eastern parts of the kingdom, similar attempts were made, and many disorders committed; but the only other quarter where the commotion rose to a serious height was in Norfolk. The Norfolk rebellion assumed a character altogether different from that of Devonshire, the complaints and demands of the people running, not at all, or very little, upon religion, but chiefly upon grievances affecting their worldly condition and points of temporal politics. They were first roused in the early part of the summer. by the rumours of what had been done by the commons of Kent in throwing down ditches and hedges, and opening inclosures. The first general rising of the people took place on the 6th of July, at Wymondham or Windham, about six miles from Norwich, on occasion of a public play, "which play had been accustomed yearly to be kept in that town, continuing for the space of one night and one day at the least." They began, in imitation of the Kentish men, by throwing down the ditches (or dikes) around inclosures; and, while they were thus employed, it is said that one John Flowerdew of Hetherset, gentleman, finding himself grieved with the casting down of some ditches, came unto some of the rebels, and gave to them forty pence to cast down the fences of an inclosure belonging to Robert Ket, alias Knight, a tanner of Wymondham, which they did." 66 threatening death to all who should not immediately accept the king's pardon, they bade him get him thence with a mischief; for they made no account of such manner of mercy. After this, every day swelled the number of Ket's followers. to any desperate attempt that should be taken | pardon, since they had done nothing but what in hand, was straight entered into such estimation belonged to the duty of true subjects. They even with the commons thus assembled together in forced their way into the city of Norwich, and rebellious wise, that his will was accomplished; carried off to their camp all the guns, artillery, and so those hedges and ditches belonging to the and ammunition they could find in it. When pasture grounds of Mr. Flowerdew were thrown the herald made another proclamation at the mardown and made plain. Hereupon was Ket cho-ket-place there, repeating the former offer, but sen to be their captain and ringleader, who, being resolved to set all on six and seven, willed them to be of good comfort, and to follow him in defence of their common liberty, being ready in the commonwealth's cause, to hazard both life and goods." By accessions from all parts of Nor-The herald's report convinced Somerset and the folk and Suffolk, the rioters, thus provided with a suitable leader, rapidly increased, till "there were assembled together into Ket's camp to the number of 16,000 ungracious unthrifts, who, by the advice of their captains, fortified themselves, and made provision of artillery, powder, and other habiliments, which they fetched out of ships, gentlemen's houses, and other places where any was to be found; and withal spoiled the country of all the cattle, riches, and coin on which they might lay hands."' As time passed and nothing was done to put them down, the congregated multitude of course grew more audacious, and proceeded to worse outrages. From spoiling the gentry of their goods, they proceeded to seize their persons, and to carry them off prisoners to their camp. "To conclude," says the chronicler, “they grew to such unmeasurable disorder, that they would not in many things obey neither their general captain, nor any of their governors, but ran headlong into all kind of mischief; and made such spoil of victuals which they brought out of the country adjoining unto their camp, that within few days they consumed (beside a great number of beeves) 20,000 muttons, also swans, geese, hens, capons, ducks, and other fowls, so many as they might lay hands upon. And, furthermore, they spared not to break into parks, and kill what deer they could." Meanwhile, the government stood by, and for the space of nearly a month allowed the insurrection to grow and prosper undisturbed. At last, on the 31st of July, a herald came from the council to the rebel camp, "and pronounced there, before all the multitude, with loud voice, a free pardon to all that would depart to their homes, and laying aside their armour, give over their traitorous begun enterprise." But the only effect of his offer seems to have been to draw off some of the better sort, who had only joined the mob from compulsion or fear, and who now saw some prospect of being protected by the government. Ket himself, and the great mass of his followers, kept their attitude of defiance, or at least of refusal to submit, declaring that they needed no 1 Holinghed. council that they would never put down the rebellion by proclamations; and then, at last, it was resolved to send against the Norfolk tanner a force of fifteen hundred horse under the Marquis of Northampton, together with "a small band of Italians (also mounted), under the leading of a captain named Malatesta." The marquis took up his quarters in the town of Norwich, which, in the first instance, he succeeded in clearing of the rebels; but the next day they forced their way back, drove out the king's troops, killing the Lord Sheffield and many other gentlemen, as well as taking many others prisoners; and finished their exploit by plundering and setting fire to the city. Northampton, with the remnant of his beaten force, made all haste to London. It was now seen by the council that the business must be set about in another fashion: an army of about 6000 men was in readiness to serve in the war in the north: and "hereupon that noble chieftain and valiant Earl of Warwick, lately before appointed to have gone against the Scots and Frenchmen into Scotland, was called back and commanded to take upon him the conduction of this army against the Norfolk rebels."* Warwick with some difficulty forced his way into Norwich; but the incessant attacks of the rebels, and in part also, as it should appear, his insufficient supplies of ammunition, had made his position almost desperate, when he was relieved by the arrival, on the 26th of August, of a reinforcement of 1400 lansquenets. The next day he marched out, and falling upon the enemy, who had descended from the hill, and were encamped in a valley called Dussingdale, he had the fortune to achieve an easy and decisive victory. The rebels, at the first charge of the king's horse, turned round and fled, Ket, their great captain, or king, as he called himself, being, according to the chronicler, one of the foremost, and galloping away as fast as his horse would bear him. The chief slaughter was in the pursuit, which was continued for three or four miles; the several clusters of 2 From a document which Strype has printed, Eccles. Mem. ii. 283, it appears that Somerset himself was, in the first instance. appointed to command the expedition against the rebels. the unresisting multitude, as they were succes-rection-the aversion to the innovations in relisively overtaken, were shorn down in heaps. It gion; and, indeed, upon this common ground a was reckoned that the number of dead bodies left considerable number of persons of the wealthier on the ground exceeded 3500. This bloody day or more educated classes, landed proprietors, and put an end to the rebellion. Ket, abandoning or Popish priests, met and joined the insurgent ladeserted by all his late followers and subjects, bourers, and became their counsellors and leaders. was the next day found concealed in a barn, and That with all these advantages the attempt should forthwith brought to Norwich. The executions have nevertheless so signally failed-been, not were not numerous; nine of the ringleaders were without some trouble, indeed, but yet so speedily hanged upon the nine branches of the "Oak of and so completely put down-affords an impressive Reformation;" a few others were drawn, hanged, lesson of the hopelessness, in almost any circumand quartered, and their heads and limbs set up stances, of a contest of force waged by the class in different parts of the kingdom; and Ket him- whose only strength is its numbers against the self and his brother William, after being carried classes wielding the property, the intelligence, to London and consigned to the Tower, where and the established authority of a country. they were arraigned and found guilty of treason, were sent back to Norfolk, and there hung in chains the one on the top of Norwich Castle, the other on Windham steeple. In the north also, as well as in the east and the west, the same spirit of insurrection broke out among the people, but their rising was checked before it became general by the apprehension of their leaders, and by the discouraging failure of the similar attempts made in other quarters of the kingdom; for the Yorkshire men were somewhat later in stirring than their countrymen in Devonshire and Norfolk. In Yorkshire the spirit of attachment to the old religion, which animated the people of Devon and Cornwall, seems to have been combined with the same levelling notions that formed the principal incentive to the rebellion in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Yorkshire insurgents had assembled in force to the number of above 3000 men, and had committed some murders and other grievous outrages, before they were put down and dispersed. All this time the war had continued to be carried on in Scotland, though with little activity on either side, and no very important results; for the English government was too much occupied with the disturbed state of affairs at home to be able to strike any great blow; and, on the other hand, a considerable falling off had taken place in the cordiality of the Scots and their French allies, as well as in the interest which the French king had in pushing operations with any extraordinary vigour. Henry had attained his main object for the present by getting the infant queen into his hands; and, at the same time, her departure could hardly fail in some degree to open the eyes of her subjects to considerations to which the impetuosity of their feelings had till now blinded them, and to awaken some reflections not of a kind to put them in very good humour, either with their insinuating and dexterous allies or with themselves. Both the nation and the government now began to complain loudly of the insolence of D'Esse and his soldiers; nor did their mutual dislike vent itself merely in words. A short time before the French commander's last A revolt of the labouring against the wealthier classes was probably never attempted in any country in circumstances apparently more favour-unsuccessful attempt upon Haddington, a most able for its success than those which the present state of England presented. The king was a minor, and the government a singularly weak one; the country was entangled in a foreign war, as well as torn by internal factions; economical difficulties added to the embarrassment of new and imperfectly settled institutions; all things on the side of authority, in short, were unusually exposed and enervated: on the other side there was all the strength, if not of real grievances, of what was the same thing, deep-seated feelings of dissatisfaction and resentment, and, if not of actual combination, at least of simultaneous action, and of a diffusion of the insurrectionary spirit which, in respect of the mass of the commonalty, might be called national or universal. There was also much sympathy on the part of a large portion of the rest of the nation with one of the principal sustaining elements of the insur serious fray had happened between some of his men and the citizens of Edinburgh, in which the provost, or chief magistrate, and his son, and a considerable number more of the inhabitants, men, women, and children, were killed in the streets by the foreigners.' Towards the end of the year 1548 some English ships arrived in the Forth, and took and fortified the small isle of Inchkeith, but it was gallantly attacked and recovered by the French, after they had held it only sixteen days. The English were also driven out of Jedburgh; the castles of Hume and Fernihurst were retaken; and the French made an inroad across the Borders, from which they returned with 300 prisoners and a great quantity of booty. These successes, however, did not make D'Esse more popular with the Scots. According to Burnet, "the queen-mother and the governor had made great 1 Burnet. complaints of him at the court of France, that he | raised a mass of dissatisfaction. His manage put the nation to vast charge to little purpose, so that he was more uneasy to his friends than his enemies; and his last disorder at Edinburgh had, on the one hand, so raised the insolence of the French soldiers, and, on the other hand, so alienated and inflamed the people, that unless another were sent to command, who should govern more mildly, there might be great danger of a defection of the whole kingdom." In consequence, D'Esse was recalled, and the command of the French forces in Scotland given to Marshal Termes.' In the course of the present year (1549) the Scots recovered, by force of arms, both Fast Castle, in the south, and the more important fortress of Broughty Castle, in the north. Haddington was once more plentifully supplied with provisions by the Earl of Rutland, newly appointed one of the wardens of the marches in the room of Lord Gray; but it was, notwithstanding, eventually found necessary to evacuate that town. Before this war against England had been declared by the French king, he had already led an army into the Bou- | lognois, and with little difficulty made himself master of the forts of Selaques, Ambleteuse, Newcastle, Blackness, and others there. He afterwards sat down before Boulogne; and though the breaking out of the plague in the camp slackened their operations, and the coming on of winter finally induced them to raise the siege, the French succeeded in completely shutting up the English within the town; and as they had in their hands all the neighbouring forts, there could be little doubt that the place would fall as soon as the season should permit it to be reinvested. For some time past, since the scheme of the Scottish marriage was become impracticable, the protector had been desirous to make peace both with Scotland and France, and he was now willing to agree to surrender Boulogne to Henry for a sum of money, in order to facilitate that arrangement. It is probable that the last-mentioned measure, however really wise and prudent, would not have had the national voice in its favour; at any rate, Somerset, in this instance, yielded to the representations of the council, who unanimously remonstrated against the proposal as fraught with the deepest dishonour, their consciousness of having the popular feeling on their side having apparently emboldened them to assume a more spirited tone than usual. The storm was now fast gathering around the head of the protector which was to throw him to the ground. The series of military losses and unsuccessful operations in Scotland and France Brantôme says that D'Esse requested leave of the king to return home, in consequence of a severe jaundice he had caught ment of public affairs, indeed, in everything ex- of the multitude, whose voices he had always | nation was excited by many arbitrary exertions shown himself so anxious to secure. Even his of power, in violation both of public and of pridarling popularity must have suffered no little vate rights, to which he did not hesitate to resort diminution by the state to which the affairs of in rearing this superb monument of his greatness. the kingdom had been brought by his adminis- Besides compelling three bishops to surrender to tration both at home and abroad. Then his as him their episcopal mansions, he had removed sumption and rapacity were every day becoming altogether a parish church which stood in the more inordinate and glaring, and had now reached way of his plans, and had not only pulled down a height that shocked the public sense of decency many other religious buildings in the neighbouras well as of justice. Burnet admits that "many hood for the sake of their materials, but had, bishops and cathedrals had resigned many manors with barbarous recklessness, defaced and broken to him for obtaining his favour." He had got a to pieces the ancient monuments they contained, patent, it seems, authorizing him to take posses- and even irreverently removed and scattered the sion of such church lands, on pretence of reward- bones of the dead. It was impossible that such ing him for his services in the Scottish war-in proceedings should not expose the protector's Prowhich patent, by the by, drawn up of course by testantism to the imputation of being at least as his own directions, the vain man had caused him- profitable as it was conscientious. self to be styled "Duke of Somerset by the grace of God," as if he had been a sovereign prince. It was also said, Burnet tells us, that many of the chantry lands had been sold to his friends at easy rates, for which it was concluded he had great presents. But the most obtrusive exhibition he made at once of his vanity and of his grasping and unscrupulous practice of appropriation, was in the erection of a new palace for himself in London-the same that has bequeathed his name to the present Somerset House, in the Strand, During all the month of September (1549) there were great heats in the council; the enemies of the protector now no longer shrunk from speaking out, and avowing their determination to strip him of his exorbitant power. By the beginning of October the quarrel had arisen almost to a contest of arms. "The council," says the graphic account given by the king in his journal, "about nineteen of them, were gathered in London, thinking to meet with the lord-protector, and to make him amend some of his dis orders. He, fearing his state, caused the secretary, in my name, to be sent (from Hampton Court, where Edward then was, along with Somerset, Cranmer, and Paget) to the lords (of the council in London), to know from what cause they gathered their powers together; and if they meant to talk with him, that they should come in a peaceable manner. The next morning, being the 6th of October, and Saturday, he commanded the armour to be brought down out of the armoury of Hampton Court -about 500 harnesses, to arm both his and my men, with all the gates of the house to be rampired, people to be raised: people came abundantly to the house." While the protector was making these preparations at Hampton Court, Warwick and the other lords of the council were assembled at Ely Place, in London, from which they despatched orders for the attendance of the lieutenant of the Tower, and of the lord-mayor and aldermen, all of whom appeared and consented to submit to their orders. They also wrote to the nobility and gentry in SOMERSET PLACE, from the River.-From a print by Hollar. 111 |