A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



annuity of /'200 to be paid quarterly, and a discharge from all liability for 

 dilapidations and waste in his diocese. 



It is not surprising that insurrections broke out in the county early in 

 1537, and the depositions of a considerable number of witnesses, which have 

 been preserved, show that as well as the principal conspiracy at Walsingham, 

 there were other towns in the country which would have been ready to follow 

 the example of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, but for the vigilance of the dukes 

 of Norfolk and Suffolk and their emissaries. Churchwardens' accounts prove 

 that a mediaeval parish was a kind of free republic, in which the church- 

 wardens were answerable to the parishioners not only for the parish plate and 

 money in the church chest, but often for considerable property in land and 

 cattle. The evidence as to the Norfolk conspiracies testifies that they were 

 the result of the threatened attack upon this parochial property as well as of 

 the gradual destruction of the religious houses, and that the parishioners regarded 

 the confiscations as a plundering of the poor for the benefit of the rich, as 

 indeed to a large extent they were. The risings were undertaken chiefly by 

 men of the peasant class and by innkeepers whose trade was bound to suffer 

 severely by the suppression of pilgrimages to the numerous shrines of Norfolk,' 

 while certain of the clergy were more or less actively involved. 



The confessions of John Locke, John Brown, Hugh Wilkinson, and John 

 Tumour of Old Buckenham,^ show that Hugh Wilkinson of Buckenham 

 St. Andrew offered John Locke of Old Buckenham, servant of Mr. Grey, the 

 priest, and John Brown, also of Old Buckenham, as they were coming home 

 from Stone Fair, an angel noble to kill the king's visitors in their beds on the 

 night of Lammas Day last at Buckenham Abbey. Richard Fletcher, keeper 

 of the common gaol at Norwich, who had to account for a seditious bill of 

 news he had been setting about, said he had it of a clerk ; and George 

 Wharton, innkeeper of the ' Bell,' and keeper of the king's gaol at Lynn, 

 questioned as to the same, said he gave a copy to Cornish soldiers going on 

 pilgrimage to Walsingham.^ Robert Hawker deposed that George Gysburgh 

 of Walsingham* had said he thought it very ill done, the suppressing of so 

 many religious houses where God was well served, and had suggested an 

 insurrection of the commons who were oppressed by gentlemen ; and George 

 Gysburgh himself said that he met at Walsingham one Ralph Rogerson who 

 said to him, ' You see how these abbeys go down, and our living goeth away 

 with them ; for within a while Bynham shall be put down and also Walsing- 

 ham, and all the abbeys in that country ;' and that he also said he would 

 try to get a company to resist, which he thought he could do by firing some 

 beacon, and when the company was gathered they would go to the king to 

 complain. Sir Roger Townsend wrote to CromwelP that it appeared by the 

 confession of one Wattson, that the sub-prior of Walsingham was ' infeclyf ' ; 

 that the said sub-prior had been taken by the bearer, Sir Roger's son, and had 

 made confession that the conspirators met at a game of shooting of the 'flyte and 



' The image of Our Lady at Walsingham, brought to London and burnt at Chelsea (Blomefield, iii, 209), 

 was the most popular ; but there were many others, as the shrine of St. Wolstan at Bawbergh, before which 

 six chantry priests and a vicar were constantly serving ; the fimous image of the Virgin at Thetford ; of Our 

 Lady at Lynn ; the Holy Cross at Broraholm ; the image of St. Henry at St. Leonard's Priory. Taylor, 

 Index Monast'uus, 66. 



' L. and P. Hen. Vlll, xii, pt. i, 1268, 24 May, 1537. 



' Cal. L. and P. Hen. Vlll, xi, 1260. * Ibid. vol. xii, pt. i, 1056. ' Ibid. 1 123. 



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