[383] News which was sent from Rome unto the Cardinal Bishop of Seville: Rolls House MS.
[384] “There is much secret communication among the king’s subjects, and many of them in the shires of Cornwall and Devonshire be in great fear and mistrust what the King’s Highness and his council should mean, to give in commandment to the parsons and vicars of every parish, that they should make a book wherein is to be specified the names of as many as be wedded and buried and christened. Their mistrust is, that some charges more than hath been in times past shall grow to them by this occasion of registering.”—Sir Piers Edgecombe to Cromwell: State Papers, Vol. I. p. 612.
[385] “George Lascelles shewed me that a priest, which late was one of the friars at Bristol, informed him that harness would yet be occupied, for he did know more than the king’s council. For at the last council whereat the Emperor, the French king, and the Bishop of Rome met, they made the King of Scots, by their counsel, Defensor fidei, and that the Emperor raised a great army, saying it was to invade the Great Turk, which the said Emperor meaned by our sovereign lord.”—John Babington to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. III.
[386] Renewed agitation among the people. I attach specimens from time to time of the “informations” of which the Record Office contains so many. They serve to keep the temper of the country before the mind. The king had lately fallen from his horse and broken one of his ribs. A farmer of Walden was accused of having wished that he had broken his neck, and “had said further that he had a bow and two sheaves of arrows, and he would shoot them all before the king’s laws should go forward.” An old woman at Aylesham, leaning over a shop-window, was heard muttering a chant, that “there would be no good world till it fell together by the ears, for with clubs and clouted shoon should the deed be done.” Sir Thomas Arundel wrote from Cornwall, that “a very aged man” had been brought before him with the reputation of a prophet, who had said that “the priests should rise against the king, and make a field; and the priests should rule the realm three days and three nights, and then the white falcon should come out of the north-west, and kill almost all the priests, and they that should escape should be fain to hide their crowns with the filth of beasts, because they would not be taken for priests.”—“A groom of Sir William Paget’s was dressing his master’s horse one night in the stable in the White Horse in Cambridge,” when the ostler came in and began “to enter into communication with him.” “The ostler said there is no Pope, but a Bishop of Rome. And the groom said he knew well there was a Pope, and the ostler, moreover, and whosoever held of his part, were strong heretics. Then the ostler answered that the King’s Grace held of his part; and the groom said that he was one heretic, and the king was another; and said, moreover, that this business had never been if the king had not married Anne Boleyn. And therewith they multiplied words, and waxed so hot, that the one called the other knave, and so fell together by the ears, and the groom broke the ostler’s head with a faggot stick.”—Miscellaneous Depositions: MSS. State Paper Office, and Rolls House.
[387] Her blood was thought even purer than Lord Exeter’s. A cloud of doubtful illegitimacy darkened all the children of Edward IV.
[388] “At my lord marquis being in Exeter at the time of the rebellion he took direction that all commissions for the second subsidy should stay the levy thereof for a time.”—Sir Piers Edgecombe to Cromwell: MS. State Paper Office, second series, Vol. X.
[389] “‘The marquis was the man that should help and do them good’ (men said). See the experience, how all those do prevail that were towards the marquis. Neither assizes, nisi prius, nor bill of indictment put up against them could take effect; and, of the contrary part, how it prevailed for them.”—Sir Thomas Willoughby to Cromwell: MS. Cotton. Titus, B 1, 386.
[390] Depositions relating to Lord Delaware: Rolls House MS. first series, 426.
[391] Depositions taken before Sir Henry Capel: Ibid. 1286.
[392] “A man named Howett, one of Exeter’s dependents, was heard to say, if the lord marquis had been put to the Tower, at the commandment of the lord privy seal, he should have been fetched out again, though the lord privy seal had said nay to it, and the best in the realm besides; and he the said Howett and his company were fully agreed to have had him out before they had come away.”—Rolls House MS. first series, 1286.