A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



persons as belonged to him 'and be of his menial servants,' this John Howard 

 being then (1455) one of the duke's nominees. 



The reign of Henry VII has but little immediate bearing on the history 

 of Norfolic, The king came down to Norwich ' at Christmas in i486 on his 

 way to Walsingham, making one of those royal progresses which always seem 

 to have combined business with pleasure. There was a renewal of the chronic 

 dispute' as to the prior's boundaries, in which the prior got the best of it, 

 but the matter kept on smouldering, and there was so much ill-feeling about 

 it that many of the influential inhabitants in the county, including Henry 

 Spelman, then the recorder (the father of the great antiquary of that name), 

 represented to the king that, unless some final settlement was come to, there 

 would probably be a repetition of the great riot and burning of 1272. The 

 king therefore summoned both parties to appear before him at Westminster 

 under penalties of >r200. Nothing, however, came of this, for when in 1493 

 both sides came before the commissioners they could not agree on the terms for 

 a reference, the balance of unreasonableness being apparently with the citizens. 



If Perkin Warbeck's rebellion had come to anything, part of the scheme 

 was apparently an attack upon Yarmouth, for in 1495 ^^^ corporation of 

 Yarmouth wrote to Sir John Paston that the rebels meant to take Yarmouth 

 or die.^ There was very little meddling by local men in the state disturbances 

 of the period, the only exception being Sir John Wyndham, who married the 

 daughter of the duke of Norfolk, and was knighted by the king at the same 

 time as John Paston for services at the battle of Stoke. He mixed himself 

 up in the rebellion in favour of the duke of Suffolk, and was beheaded on 

 Tower Hill in 1503, 



Meanwhile the Howard family had been growing more and more im- 

 portant, not only in the county but in England generally. Thomas Howard, 

 who was with his father on Richard's side at Bosworth, had after three years' 

 imprisonment been restored in blood and to the earldom of Surrey, and had 

 cast in his lot with Henry VII. In 1489 he had distinguished himself against 

 the rebels in the north, and in 1497 against the Scots. On the accession of 

 Henry VIII he adhered faithfully to the king, and fought well at Flodden in 

 I 5 1 3, a battle which was practically won by him. With him on this occasion 

 were Sir Philip Tilney, Sir Richard Appleyard, and other Norfolk men. For 

 this good service he was created duke of Norfolk,* and having filled the ofHces 

 of Great Chamberlain, Guardian of England (in 1520 during the king's 

 absence in France), and Lord High Steward, he died in his bed in 1524 at 

 the good old age of eighty. 



The reign of Henry VIII was one in which Norfolk men and women 

 took a conspicuously large part. In 15 10 Sir Edward Howard, after- 

 wards known as ' The Admiral,' rid the seas of the celebrated Scotch 

 pirate Andrew Barton, thus giving a subject for one of the best and most 

 spirited of our English ballads. Whether the victory was partly due to 

 improved mechanical contrivances on the English ships is not clear, but it is 

 not impossible. His gallant death in another sea fight at Brest, after he had 

 unsuccessfully endeavoured to get Henry to come and lead the attack himself, 

 is matter of history. 



' Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 174. 

 • Paston Letters, No. 936. 



' Ibid, iii, 175. 



♦ L. and P. Hen. nil, i, 4.694. 



492 



