POLITICAL HISTORY 



October the Yarmouth volunteers under Captain Johnson made an important 

 capture on behalf of the Parliament, securing a king's ship with 140 officers 

 and men, much powder, and what was still more valuable, some of the 

 queen's letters. In acknowledgement of this service the town received a vote 

 of thanks from Parliament, an order stating the lawfulness of the act, and a 

 further order to search for and arrest ' any person or persons suspected to 

 passe from the seas to assist the King in the unnatural warre against the 

 Parliament.' ^ Another Yarmouth capture was of a ship with ' 200 Irish 

 rebels.' Just at this time the local committee was authorized to disarm Sir 

 Nicholas le Strange, Sir Hamon le Strange, Sir Robert Kemp, Sir John 

 Spelman, Erasmus Earle, esq., and Edward Heyward for not contributing to 

 the common fund. The ' Association of the Eastern Counties,' generally 

 known as the Eastern Association, was formed on 20 December, 1642, and 

 comprised Norfolk, SuffiDlk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire, 

 Lincolnshire coming in at a later date.^ 



There is of course much to be found out before a perfect history of 

 the Civil War in this district can be written. Very Httle actual fighting 

 took place in the county, and isolated episodes, though interesting, escape 

 attention and cannot always be dated exactly. There is one such episode 

 which occurs in the record of a regiment of foot raised and employed by 

 Sir John Gell from the beginning of October, 1642, to the end of September, 

 1644. The writer describes^ the services rendered to the Parliamentary 

 cause by his regiment in different parts of the kingdom, and, after speaking 

 of placing a garrison at Burton in Staffordshire, goes on to say, ' We were 

 again commanded to join against Norwich under command of Misser 

 Ballard, whither he sent our men that did their parts, for we beat the enemy 

 out of their works, placed our colours upon theirs, and being competent of 

 taking their . . ., instead of seconds we were called off for some secret 

 reason which we could never yet understand. Whilst part of our forces 

 were yet engaged at Norwich, the unwelcome news came to Derby of the 

 Lord Brook's unhappy death at Litchfield.' The death of Lord Brook 

 was on 7 January, 1643. Ballard is in another part of this document spoken 

 of as 'a papist by religion and beggar by fortune,' and presumably was 

 plotting for the king's side, so that this affair at Norwich cannot be the 

 same as Augustine Holl's attempted rising on 6 March, 1643. 



During the early part of the summer of 1643 there was a royalist plot 

 at Lowestoft in which Sir John Pettus, a Norwich loyalist (who lies buried in 

 the church of St. Simon and St. Jude), Sir Edward Barker, Mr. Knyvett of 

 Ashwellthorpe, Mr. Catlyn, jun., and others were implicated. It is said by 

 Blomefield* that in this ' Cromwell was in danger of his person and was very 

 near being taken ' had not some Norwich volunteers under Sergt. -Major 

 Sherwood rescued him. From a letter of John Cory to Sir John Potts of 

 Manningtree, dated 17 and 20 March, it would seem that Cromwell himself 

 was at Norwich, and, being advised that certain strangers had been received 

 into Lowestoft, directed that no one should enter into or go out of Norwich 

 that night, and between 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning left, with his five 

 troops and 800 Norwich volunteers, for Lowestoft, where he met the 



' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App, i. 313. ' Lords' Journ. v, 505. 



' Hilt. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 387. * Op. cit. iii, 386. 



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