POLITICAL HISTORY 



border to prevent provisions being thrown into the town, and after its 

 capitulation Fairfax made a triumphal procession through the county feted 

 everywhere. This rising was fatal to the delinquents. 1 Sixteen thousand 

 pounds was demanded from the county as a contribution towards its expense, 

 and Bacon was sent down to see about sequestering the estates of the 

 delinquents in order to pay the county forces. 



On Cromwell's assuming the title of Lord Protector the old cavalier 

 enemy began to stir. But, as Colonel John Fothergill of Sudbury wrote on 

 14 March, 1654, 'the Lord hath hitherto delivered [us] so he will own us 

 still by discovering all their wicked plots and preventing all their hellish 

 intentions.' The county was searched by him and he could only discover two 

 suspected persons, though he had scoured all High Suffolk with his troop,* 

 Colonel Rolleston of Peterborough, who had been with the king all through 

 the war, and Captain Partredge of Barham Hall. The people however were 

 reputed by the extreme Puritans as embittered and malignant, though the 

 petition of 28 January, 1660, from the gentlemen, ministers, freeholders, and 

 seamen of the county, to General Monk hardly bears this out : 



It is tedious, they said, to see Government reeling from one hand to another ; it 

 is in your power to fix it. Cast your eyes on a nation impoverished, bleeding under an 

 intestine sword. Let its miseries and ruins implore your assistance. The only redress is in 

 a full and free Parliament. 



Another was sent to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, promis- 

 ing to follow their lead, to let this ' cheerful suffrage of ours be annexed as a 

 label to your honourable intendment.' Writs were issued to fill up county 

 vacancies in the house, and royalists and presbyterians were returned. On 

 29 May, 1660, Charles II landed at Dover. 



Puritan Suffolk, however, was restless under cavalier government, and 

 while the Tollemaches, the Cornwallises, and the Jermyns were petitioning for 

 favours and the loyal clergy detailing their sufferings, the republican party 

 was neither weak nor silent. Captain Thomas Elliott* of Aldeburgh, of the 

 Commonwealth Fleet, who had plundered the king's royalist subjects to the 

 extent of 12,000, vindicated his principles on the king's proclamation day 

 by hanging up a picture of his frigate, and arranging round it the prizes he 

 had taken. On the other hand obsequious Bury asked for a renewal of its 

 charter, for it humbly said that certain things had been done in the late 

 troubles which were not justifiable under their former patents. The dis- 

 affected were so many that the infamous Edward Potter, 4 spy by trade, who 

 endured many ills in his passion for truth, allowing himself to be arrested 

 and beaten by the king's officers rather than reveal his identity, was sent 

 among them. He reported the Quakers, the men of peace, to be doing 

 much harm and to have the best horses in the county. He promised to 

 enter into any plot and to help it forward to a certain moment, when he 

 would reveal everything to the government. The government reorganized 

 the militia for police purposes, for the republican party was too numerous to 

 be sent to gaol. The greatest safeguard against plots lay in the division 

 of parties. On one occasion, possibly in 1663, 200 horsemen rose in 

 Suffolk, but finding the plotters not of their own party they retired quietly. 



1 Commons Journ. 27 July, I Sept. 1648. * Clarendon MSS. Ixiii, 103, 3 Aug. 1659. 



'Cat. ofS.P. Dom. 1661-2, p. 177. 'Ibid. 154. 



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