ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



standard,' lately had at Binham, and that on Sunday next other games will be 

 held at Longe Stratton, the prizes of which were proclaimed last May Day at 

 Wyndham and other great towns ; and that he (Sir Roger) had written to 

 the duke of Suffolk to have secret espials made, as both at Walsingham and 

 Bynham it was bruited that the shooting was only to assemble conspirators. 

 In another letter Sir Roger asked Cromwell to thank the prior of the White 

 Friars of Burnham^ for his apprehension of Richard Laund, pinner of 

 Norwich, one of the most rank traitors that were privy to the conspiracy of 

 Walsingham, and for sending a book of ' congerations ' and a paper of 

 prophecies rehearsed by him, methods reminiscent of the Nun of Kent. 

 Another conspirator urges that all the gentry shall be killed, even the children 

 in their cradles, so that ' gentlemen shall be as rare as white bulls in Norfolk.' 

 Elizabeth wife of Robert Wood of Aylsham landed herself in Norwich 

 gaol, by saying 



it was pity these Walsingham men were discovered, for we shall have never good world till 

 we fall together by the ears : and with clubs and clouted shone shall the deed be done, for 

 we had never good world since this king reigned.' 



Certain witnesses from Aylsham' show a curious combination of reform- 

 ing principles and of insurrection. John Norgate denied the merits of St. 

 Mary, and said that if he had the cross Christ died on, it should be the first 

 block he would ryve to the fire for any virtue that was therein, with other 

 equally blasphemous words. Richard Tomson the younger did not believe 

 that the mass would profit his soul, Edmund Wythe, John Jones, John Tolwyn, 

 and John Berker were declared by Henry Bone, the chief constable of the 

 hundred, to have said when they heard that the king's visitors would come 

 to the town of Aylsham, that they would sell their best cross and other jewels 

 before they came, and to have commanded the churchwardens to deliver the 

 keys of the chest where the cross and jewels lay ; it was also deposed that when 

 the churchwardens refused, saying that if the king wished to have them he was 

 most worthy, they threatened the churchwardens that if the visitors had 

 the cross away the churchwardens should pay the value thereof; and that 

 the said four persons had also reported there was an Act of Parliament made 

 that if the church lands were not sold before May Day, the king would have 

 them ; whereupon they sold them to defeat the king thereof, and converted 

 the money coming from the sale to their own use. And forasmuch as the 

 keys of the said chest were in their custody, it was also to be feared that they 

 would sell the said cross and jewels, and take the profit thereof in likewise, 

 which was of the value of V hundred pounds. 



No doubt a great deal of parish property disappeared mysteriously in 

 the general dispersion and its subversion of all ideas of immemorial right. The 

 explanation of a previous witness, Richard Fletcher, ' as touching the basins ' 

 that he had them at Michaelmas last of his father-in-law, William Drake, in 

 marriage with his daughter, and that William Drake had them of a priest for 

 8// I 5/. is significant.* 



The conspirators executed at Norwich were Ralph Rogerson, Thomas 

 Howse, Richard Hendley, Thomas Menne, and Andrew Pax, on 26 May ; 

 at Yarmouth, John Semblye, and John Sellers, 28 May ; at Walsingham, 



' Ca/. L. and P. Hen. VIII, xii, pt. ii, 602. ' Ibid. 1301. ' Ibid. pt. i, 1316. 



* Ibid, xi, 1260. 



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