His execution took place on the 20th of March, on Tower Hill; Seymour declaring loudly that he had been condemned without law or justice. Before laying his head on the block, he was overheard to tell an attendant of the Lieutenant of the Tower to "bid his man speed the thing he wot of." The servant was arrested immediately, and threatened till he confessed that his master had made some ink in the Tower by some means, and, plucking an aiglet from his dress, had, with its point, written a letter to each of the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, which he had placed between the leathers of a velvet shoe-sole. The shoe was opened, and the letters found, filled with the bitterest complaints against his brother and all who had conspired for his destruction. The servant, notwithstanding his confession, was executed. In the whole of this unrighteous business, scarcely any one shows to more disadvantage than the zealous reformer, and generally honest Hugh Latimer. He preached a sermon on the death of the admiral, which is, perhaps, unrivalled as a specimen of all uncharitableness. It may be supposed that the admiral had not received the recommendations of Latimer to confess himself guilty; for he left him with an ebullition of spleen which swallowed all commiseration for his fate. To the assumption that Seymour must have been innocent, or he would not have died so boldly, Latimer replied that that was a very "deceivable argument." "This I say," he added, "if they ask me what I think of his death, That he died very dangerously, irksomely, horribly." Latimer was lost in wonder at the ingenuity of Seymour in furnishing himself so cleverly with pen and ink. "I was a prisoner in the Tower myself," he cried, "and I could never invent to make ink so. What would he have done, if he had lived still, that invented this gear when he laid his head on the block at the end of his life?" He concluded a most vituperative harangue by declaring that Seymour "was a man farthest from the fear of God that ever I knew or heard of in England;" adding, that he had heard say that he believed not in the immortality of the soul; that when the good Queen Catherine Parr had prayers in her house both forenoon and afternoon, he would get away like a mole digging In the earth. "He shall be to me," he exclaimed, "Lot's wife as long as I live. He was a covetous man -an horrible covetous man: I would there were no mo in England. He was an ambitious man: I would there were no mo in England. He was a seditious man-a conteraner of the Common Prayer: I would there were no mo in England. He is gone: I would he had left none behind him." But he certainly had left a much more horrible and more covetous man in the Protector, whose work poor Latimer was thus doing; for Somerset not only slew his brother, but took possession of his estates. Seymour's only child, the infant daughter of Catherino Parr, not only lost her father's ample patrimony by his attainder, bat by an Act of Parliament entitled "An Act for disinheriting Mary Seymour, daughter and heir of the late Lord Sudley, Admiral of England, and of the late queen," fost also her mother's noble estates. A subsequent Act restored her to her rights, but only nominally, for her uncles held her property fast in their selfish gripe. Catherine's brother, Thomas Parr, Marquis of North 317 ampton, was as unnaturally cruel to his sister's orphan as Somerset himself. Sudley was granted to him on Seymour's attainder, and he not only held it fast, but maintained a heartless indifference to the fate of his niece, whose champion he ought to have been, having owed his fortune in the world to her mother's influence. This unhappy child, the daughter of Seymour and Catherine, was consigned, as Seymour wished, to the care of the Countess of Suffolk, but we find her writing the most urgent letters to Cecil, the secretary of Somerset, afterwards the famous minister of Elizabeth, complaining that she can obtain no allowance for her support, nor even her linen and plate, which were rigorously detained by Somerset and his heartless and revolting wife. The poor girl is stated by Lodge, but without giving any authority, to have died in her thirteenth year; but it has been satisfactorily shown by Miss Strickland that she lived and was married to Sir Edward Bushell, and has still descendants in the family of the Lawsons, of Herefordshire and Kent, a branch of the ancient family of the Lawsons of Yorkshire and Westmoreland, who still retain several heirlooms once the property of Catherine Parr. The Protector no sooner had put his brother out of his path into a bloody grave, than he was called upon to contend with a whole host of enemies. A variety of causes had reduced the common people to a condition of deep distress and discontent. The depreciation of the coinage by Henry VIII. had produced its certain consequence-the proportionate advance of the price of all purchasable articles. But with the rise of price in food and clothing, there had been no rise in the price of labour. The dissolution of the monasteries had thrown a vast number of people on the public without any resource. Besides the vast number of monks and nuns who, instead of affording alms, were now obliged to seek a subsistence of some kind, the hundreds of thousands who had received daily assistance at the doors of convents and monasteries were obliged to beg, work, or starve. But the new proprietors who had obtained the abbey and chantry lands, found wool so much in demand, that instead of cultivating the land, and thus at once employing the people and growing corn for them, they threw their fields out of tillage, and made great enclosures where their profitable flocks could range without even the necessity of a shepherd. The people thus driven to starvation were still more exasperated by the change in the religion of the country, in the destruction of their images, and the desecration of the shrines of their saints. Their whole public life had been changed by the change of their religion. Their oldest and most sacred associations were broken. Their pageants, their processions, their pilgrimages were all rudely swept away as superstitious rubbish; their gay holidays had become a gloomy blank. What their fathers and their pastors had taught them as peculiarly holy and essential to their spiritual well-being, their rulers had now pronounced to be damnable doctrines and the delusions of priestcraft; and whilst smarting under this abrupt privation of their bodily and spiritual support, they beheld the new lords of the ancient church lands greedily cutting off not only the old streams of benevolence, but the means of livelihood by labour, and showing not the slightest regard for their sufferings The priests, the monks, the remaining heads of the Papist party did not fail to point assiduously at all these things, and to fan the fires of the popular discontent. The timidity of the Protector roused the ferment to its climax by the very means which he resorted to in order to mitigate it. He ordered all the new enclosures to be thrown open by a certain day. The people rejoiced at this, believing that now they had the Government on their side. But they waited in vain to see the Protector's order obeyed. The Royal proclamation fully bore out the complaints of the populace. It declared that many villages, in which from one hundred to two hundred people had lived, were entirely destroyed; that one shepherd now dwelt where numerous industrious families dwelt before; and that the realm was wasted by turning arable land into pasture, and letting houses and families fall, decay, and lie waste. Hales, the commissioner, stated that the laws which had forbade any one to keep more than 2,000 sheep, and commanded the owners of church lands to keep household on the same, it was spread over the greater part of the kingdom. In Wiltshire, Sir William Herbert raised a body of troops and dispersed the insurgents, killing some, and executing others according to martial law. The same was done in other quarters by the resident gentry. The Protestor, alarmed, sent out commissioners into all parts to hear and decide all causes about enclosures, highways, and cottages. These commissioners were armed with great powers, the exercise of which produced as much dissatisfaction amongst the nobility and gentry as the enclosures had done amongst the people. The spirit of remonstrance entered into the very Council, and the Protector was checked in his proceedings: whereupon the people, not finding the redress they expected, again rose in rebellion. In Devonshire the religious phase of the movement appeared first, and rapidly assumed a very formidable air. The new liturgy was read for the first time in the church of Samford Courtenay, on Whit Sunday, and the next day the people compelled the clergyman to perform Old Somerset House, the Residence of the Protector during the Reign of Edward VI. being disobeyed, the numbers of the king's subjects had wonderfully diminished. But though the Government admitted all this, it took no measures to make its proclamation effective; the land-owners disregarded it, and the people, believing that they were only seconding the law, assembled in great numbers, chose their captains or leaders, broke down the enclosures, killed the deer in the parks, and began to spoil and waste, according to Holinshed, after the manner of an open rebellion. The day approached when the use of the old liturgy was to cease, and instead of the music, the spectacle, and all the imposing ceremonies of high mass, they would be called on to listen to a plain sermon. Goaded to desperation by these combined grievances, the people rose in almost every part of the country. According to King Edward's journal, the rising took place first in Wiltshire, whence it spread into Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Gloucestershire, Suffolk, Warwickshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Worcestershire, and Rutlandshire. Holinshed and Strype give different accounts of the first outbreak and progress of the insurrection through the country; but all agree that the ancient service. Having once resisted the law, the insurgents rapidly spread. Humphrey Arundel, the governor of St. Michael's Mount, took the lead, and a few days brought ten thousand men to his standard. A the other risings had been readily dispersed, the Gover ment were rather, dilatory at first in dealing with this but finding that it grew instead of terminated, Lari John Russell was dispatched with a small force against them, accompanied by three preachers, Gregory, Reynolds, and Coverdale, who were licensed to preach in such publ places as Lord Russell should appoint. What they hoped for by sending the reformed preachers is not very clear, as it was against this preaching that the rebellion partly directed itself; and Parker, who was sent for the li purpose to Norfolk, owed the preservation of histo the liberality of the mob. The rebels had sate down before Exeter when Russ came up with them; but conscious of the great inferiority of his force, and expecting no miracles from the eloquence of his preachers, he adopted the plan of the Duke of Norfolk in the late reign, and offered to negotiate. Up this, Arundel and his adherents drew up and presented fifteen articles, which went, indeed, to restore everything manded to break down all illegal enclosures. None of of the old faith and ritual that had been taken away. The Statute of the Six Articles was to be put in force, the mass to be in Latin, the sacrament to be again hung up and worshipped, all such as refused it homage to be treated as heretics, souls should be prayed for in purgatory, images again be set up, the Bible be called in, and Cardinal Pole to be one of the king's Council. Half of the church lands were to be restored to two of the chief abbeys in each county; in a word, Popery was to be fully restored and Protestantism abolished. In these articles the hand of the priest was more visible than that of the people; they were sent up to the Council, and Cranmer, at its command, replied to them, granting, of course, nothing. The insurgents then reduced their demands to eight, but with like success. A long reply was this time vouchsafed them in the king's name, and his father's letter to the men of Lincolnshire appears to have been the model on which it was composed. First, the little king was made to announce to them the burden of care that lay upon his juvenile shoulders on their behalf. "We are," he wrote, "your most natural sovereign lord and king, Edward VI., to rule you, to preserve you, to save you from all your outward enemies, to see our laws well ministered, every man to have his own, to suppress discontented people, to correct traitors, thieves, pirates, robbers, and such-like; yea, to keep our realms from other princes, from the malice of the Scots, of Frenchmen, of the Bishop of Rome." Yet the king repudiated the idea as extremely ridiculous that his youth made him incapable of settling the most abstruse questions. Though as a natural man, he told them, he had youth, and by God's sufferance should have age, yet as a king he had no difference of years. Having thus reasoned with them, he then assumed the menacing tone of his father. "And now we let you know that as you see our mercy abundantly, so, if ye provoke us further, we swear by the living God ye shall feel the power of the same God in our sword, which how mighty it is no subject knoweth ; how puissant it is, no private man can judge: how mortal no Englishman dare think." He concluded by threatening to come out against them in person, in all his Royal state and power, rather than not punish them. The rebels, seeing that no good came of the paper war, turned their force more actively against the city. They had no cannon to destroy the walls, so they burnt down one of the gates, and endeavoured to force an entrance there; but the citizens threw abundant fuel into the fire, and whilst it burnt, threw up fresh defences inside of the flames. Foiled in this attempt, they endeavoured to sap the walls; but the citizens discovered the mine and filled it with water. Still, however, they kept close siege on the town, and prevented the ingress of provisions, so that the inhabitants for a fortnight suffered the severest famine these produced the least effect. Lord Russell had sent to court Sir Peter Carew to urge the Protector and Council to expedite reinforcements; but the Protector and Rich charged Sir Peter with having been the original cause of the outbreak. The bold baronet resented this imputation so stoutly, and charged home the Protector in a style so unaccustomed in courts, with his own neglect, that men and money were promised. Nothing, however, but the proclamations just mentioned arrived, and at length the rebels dispatched a force to dislodge Russell from his position at Honiton. To prevent this, he advanced to Fennington Bridge, where he encountered the rebel detachment and defeated it. Soon after Lørd Gray arrived with 300 German and Italian infantry, with which assistance he marched on Exeter, and again defeated the rebels. They rallied on Clifton Downs, and Lord Gray coming suddenly upon them and fearing they might overpower him, he ordered his men to dispatch all the prisoners they had in their hands, and a sanguinary slaughter took place. A third and last encounter at Bridgewater completed the reduction of the rising of the west. Once broken up, no mercy was shown to the rebels; and with them perished or suffered numbers of the innocent. The whole country was given up to slaughter and pillage. A body of 1,000 Welshmen, who were brought by Sir William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, did immense damage. Gibbets were erected, and the ringleaders were hanged upon them in various places. Arundel, the chief captain, and some others we taken to London and there executed. The provost of the western army, Sir Anthony Kingstone, made quite an amusement of hanging rebels, and did it with much pleasantry. Having dined with the Mayor of Bodmir, he asked him if he thought the gallows were stron enough. The mayor said he thought so. "Then," sai Sir Anthony, "go up and try;" and he hanged him by way of experiment. It was calculated that 4,000 mea perished in that part of the country in the field or by the executioner. In Oxfordshire the insurrection was put down by Lar Gray, who had 1,500 soldiers, including Italians, under Spinola. But the most formidable demonstration was made by the rebels in Norfolk. It commenced at Aldborough, and appeared at first too insignificant for notice. But the rumours of what had been done in Kent, where the new enclosures had been broken down, gradually itfected the people far and wide. They did not troali themselves about the religious questions, but they expressed a particular rancour against gentlemen, for th insatiable avarice and their grasping at all land, ther extortionate rents, and oppressions of the people. They declared that it was high time that not only the enclosure mania should be put a stop to, but abundance of other evils should be reformed. All this time Lord Russell lay at Honiton, not venturing to attack them, the Government sending him instead of troops only proclamations, by one of which a free On the 6th of July, at Wymondham, or Windham, a pardon was offered to all who would submit; by another, few miles from Norwich, on occasion of a public play the lands, goods, and chattels of the insurgents were which was annually performed there, the people, stirgiven to any who chose to take them; by a third, punish-lated by what had been done in Kent, began to thr ment of death by martial law was ordered for all taken in down the dykes, as they were called, or fences rust arms; and by a fourth, the commissioners were com- enclosures, and, according to Strype, one John Flower A.D. 1549.] KET'S REBELLION IN NORFOLK. dew, of Hetherset, gentleman, finding himself aggrieved by the casting down of some of his dykes, went aud offered the people forty pence to throw down the fences of an enclosure belonging to Robert Ket, or Knight, a tanner of Wymondham, which they did. There was probably some private feud betwixt these individuals, or Flowerdew might have had reason to believe that Ket had promoted the attack on his fences. Be that as it may, Ket was not, as it soon proved, a man to take such a proceeding patiently. Although a tanner by trade, he was a wealthy man, lord of three manors in the county, and he found no difficulty the next morning in inducing the same mob that had torn down his fences to accompany him to the grounds of Flowerdew, and repay the compliment by a further onslaught on his hedges and ditches. Flowerdew came out, and earnestly entreated them to go away and do him no mischief; but the choleric Ket incited them to proceed, and became so heated in the affair, that he declared himself the people's captain, and offered to lead them to settle these grievances not for the parish simply but for the kingdom. The news of such a leader flew far and wide, thousands flocked to his banner, and they marched into the neighbourhood of Norwich. 321 mounted into it, as we may suppose, with some convenient standing-place betwixt its first branches, and whence they could be seen and heard by the multitude. Into the tree mounted frequently Master Aldrich, the Mayor of Norwich, and others, who would use all possible persuasions to the insurgents to desist from their spoliations and disorderly courses. Clergymen of both persuasions preached to them from the oak, and Matthew Parkerafterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, one day ascended it, and addressed them in the plainest possible terms on the folly of their attempt, and the ruin it was certain to bring upon them. He carried his plain speaking so far, that there arose loud murmurs and a clashing of arms around him, and he began to think that they meant to kill him. But not a man touched him, and the next day in St. Clement's Church, Norwich, he repeated his serious admonitions, there being many of the rebels present; but though they made signs of great dissatisfaction, no one interrupted him. He had been sent by the Government, and having discharged his commission, he got away in safety. country round, plundering and destroying. They are said to have drawn off 20,000 sheep, besides a proportionate number of cattle; killed and borne away multitudes of swans, geese, hens, capons, ducks, &c.; with all kinds of garden-stuff and provisions that they could lay hands on. These they brought into their camp and consumed in the grossest riot and waste. They broke down the fences of fields and parks, slew the deer, felled the woods and groves, and had such abundance that they sold fat wethers at a groat a-piece. Perhaps the reported moderation of Ket and his coadjutors led the Government to expect that the mob would "There were," says Holinshed, "assembled together in a while disperse without further mischief, for for nearly in Ket's camp to the number of 16,000 ungracious una month they permitted this to go on. The consequence thriffs, who, by the advice of their captains, fortified was, that the mob grew so lawless, that neither Ket nor themselves, and made provisions of artillery, powder, and his subordinate captains could any longer restrain the other abiliments, which they fetched out of shops, gentle-disorders of their followers. They ranged over the whole men'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. But because many, as in such case is ever seen, did provide for themselves, and hid that which they got, laying it up for their own store, and brought it not forth to further the common cause, Ket and the other governors, for so they would be called, thought to provide a remedy, and by common consent it was decreed that a place should be appointed where judgment might be exercised, as in a judicial hall. Whereupon they found out a great old oak, where the said Ket and the other governors or deputies might sit and place themselves, to hear and determine such quarrelling matters as came in question; afore whom sometimes would assemble a great number of the rebels, and exhibit complaints of such disorders as now and then were practised among them; and there they would take order for the redressing of such wrongs and injuries as were appointed; so that such greedy vagabonds as were ready to spoil more than seemed to stand with the pleasure of the said governors, and further than their commissions could bear, were committed to prison. This oak they named the Tree of Reformation." Under this tree, which stood on Moushill, near Norwich, Ket erected his throne, and established courts of chancery, king's bench, and common pleas, as in Westminster Hall; and, with a liberality which shamed not only the Government of that but of most succeeding times, he allowed not only the orators of his own but of the opposite party to harangue them from this tree. Ket, it is clear, was a man far beyond his times, and one who was sincerely seeking the reform of abuses, and not destruction of the constituted Government. The tree was vod as a rostrum, and all who had anything to say At length on the 31st of July, a Royal herald appeared in the camp, "and, standing before the Tree of Reformation, apparelled in his coat-of-arms, pronounced there, before all the multitude, with loud voice, a free pardon to all that would depart to their houses, and, laying aside their armour, give over their traitorous enterprise." Some of the insurgents, who were already weary of the affair, and only wanted a good excuse for drawing off safely, took the offered pardon and disappeared; but Ket and the chief part of the people kept their ground, saying they wanted no pardon, for they had done, nothing but what was incumbent on true subjects. Expecting that now some attack would soon be made upon them, they marched into Norwich to seize on all the artillery and ammunition they could, and carry it to their camp. The herald made another proclamation to them in the market place, repeating the offer of pardon, but threatening death to all who did not immediately accept it. They bade him begone, for they wanted no such manner of mercy. From that day the number of Ket's followers grew again rapidly, for he seemed above the Government; and the herald returning to town, dissipated at Court any hope of the rebels dispersing of themselves. A troop of 1,500 horse, under the Marquis of Northampton, accompanied by a small force of mounted Italians, under |