POLITICAL HISTORY 



The county was over-run with returned soldiers and sailors whose pay 

 was in arrears. 1 The coast was riddled by pirates, subjects of the queen who, 

 forgetting the fear of God Almighty and the duty of good subjects, had been 

 robbing and spoiling honest merchants on the coasts and seas. Foreign wars 

 had deranged the cloth trade. Mary queen of Scots, a captive in England, 

 had become the hope of English Catholics and already the duke of Norfolk 

 was intriguing for her release. Add to this the growing number of enclosures, 

 royal and private parks becoming daily more spacious and encroaching on the 

 arable and pasture land, with the attendant game laws. It was rumoured 

 that the Protestants had risen to massacre the Catholics, 2 a strange thing, as 

 the Spanish ambassador writes, for in Suffolk they have it all their own way. 

 The arrest of the duke of Norfolk however turned the rising into a social one 

 and the Protestant county prepared to go to London to liberate forcibly their 

 Papist duke. Rigorous measures were used, but the clothiers continued 

 disturbed and incensed. All their enterprises were lost, says the Spanish 

 ambassador, by bad guidance, 3 ' although they are undertaken with impetus, 

 they are not carried through with constancy.' Papists, Puritans and Ana- 

 baptists, all extremists were alike subjected to persecution. Certain families, 4 

 such as the Sulyards, the Rookwoods, the Drurys of Losell, and the Forsters, 

 were staunch for their faith and suffered imprisonment, fine, and exile without 

 a murmur. In February, 1 578-9, 5 the good divines of Ipswich and Bury 

 attempted the conversion of Michael Hare, Roger Martin of Melford, Henry 

 Drury, and John Daniel, who all preferred prison. In the autumn of the 

 same year they laboured with equally vain results, for Edward Sulyard of 

 Wetherden, Thomas Sulyard of Grundisburgh, Edmund Bedingfield, Henry 

 Everard, and William Hare refused liberty on their terms. 6 The year 1582 

 saw the beginning of the Jesuit mission to England. Losell was a well- 

 known harbour for the priests, who evaded the vigilance of the coastguard. 

 They taught the children of the recusants and, inspiring them with a 

 magnificent spirit of self-abnegation, persuaded many to become lay members 

 of the order. The political danger was increased by the mission, for the 

 Catholic forces in England were becoming organized just about the time 

 when the Spanish invasion seemed most probable. Now began the prepara- 

 tions to repel the Spaniards. Spanish spies of a sanguine temperament reported 

 Suffolk impracticable for a landing, but though full of heretics there were still 

 Catholic gentlemen who could raise 2,000 men. The coast defences at Aide- 

 burgh, Dunwich, Southwold, and Lowestoft were put in order by Robert Day, 

 an engineer. 7 The inhabitants were to pay for the work, and those that would 

 not be persuaded, to suffer. Many Suffolk merchants furnished ships out of 

 their private means, and Ipswich and the other ports were called upon to pro- 

 vide four ships and a pinnace. 8 The necessity of mobility in the forces for land 

 defence caused a new muster rating to be issued. All those who had estates 



1 Acts of the Privy Council (New Ser.), I 558-70, pp. 278 et seq. 

 1 Cat. S. P. Spanish, 1568-79, No. 123. 3 Ibid. 



4 Records of the English Province, S. /. ser. ii, iii, iv, passim. 

 6 Acts of the Privy Council (New. Ser.), I 578-80, p. 47. 



6 Framlingham Castle was considered a fit place for the custody of recusants. Ibid. 1580-1, p. 82. 



7 Act of the Privy Council (New Ser.), 1 586-7, pp. 1 14 et seq. 



8 Ibid. 1588, p. 10. Ipswich and Harwich were called upon for two ships and one pinnace, of the cost of 

 which Harwich eventually bore a sixth part, Aldeburgh, Orford, and Dunwich for one ship and Lowestoft 

 and Yarmouth one ship and one pinnace. 



2 185 24 



