POLITICAL HISTORY 



1643, stating that the earl of Manchester 'has had King's Lynn dehvered 

 up to him without shedding blood.' The relief promised by the earl of 

 Newcastle never came. One cannon ball which smashed into St. Margaret's 

 •church during Sunday morning service is still hung up in ' Union Court,' 

 hard by. For his share in the defence of Lynn, Sir Hamon le Strange's 

 •estate was sequestrated on 24 October, 1643. In a letter,^ dated 31 August, 



1644, he addressed the earl of Manchester, asking the latter to assist him in 

 obtaining reparation for the losses he had sustained ' for the brand and 

 character of malignancy,' especially after the siege of Lynn. He had 

 * referred himself unto a strict soliloquy . . . and reconciled his opinion to the 

 •sense of the Parliament.' What the results of this letter were it is impossible 

 to say, but just about the time it was written another Le Strange was causing 

 trouble to the Parliament. Roger le Strange (son of Sir Hamon and 

 afterwards well-known as a virulent pamphleteer) seems to have gone in 

 December, 1644, to the king at Oxford with a scheme for retaking Lynn, of 

 Avhich town, had he been successful, he was to be the king's governor. 

 His scheme, however, was a poor one, for he took one Captain Thomas 

 Lemon and a Mr. Haggard into his confidence and they promptly betrayed 

 him. He was seized and tried as a spy and, in spite of an able defence, was 

 ■condemned to death. The Royalists seem to have made great efforts to save 

 him. Prince Rupert writing to the earl of Essex on his behalf, with the 

 result that, possibly through fear of reprisals, he was respited, and eventually 

 ■escaped in 1648.'^ 



In August, 1645, when the king's forces took Huntingdon and stirred 

 up Cambridge, all the trained bands of the Eastern Association were called 

 out, and, according to Blomefield,^ the city bands marched out as far as the 

 Town Close and then, emulating the king of Spain, marched back again, 

 having done nothing. The county of Norfolk, however, seems to have fully 

 done its share in providing men and money during the war, and on 

 29 July, 1644, it was ordered by the committee of both kingdoms* that 

 Norfolk and Essex should be cited as an example to the other counties. 



In 1648, when the second civil war was in progress, there was a 

 cavalier rising in the county. It seems that the then mayor of Norwich, 

 Mr. John Utting, favoured the Royalist side, refused to help in the 

 defacement of churches, and allowed certain malignant and sequestered 

 ministers to preach in the city. A messenger of the House of Commons 

 was sent to arrest him, but had to flee for his life from the mob, which rose 

 in defence of the mayor. A thousand rioters broke into the sheriff's house 

 and procured arms. The mayor shut the city gates to prevent the entry of 

 the Roundhead cavalry, but the latter eventually forced their way in. Many 

 of the rioters were holding the committee house, which stood on the site of 

 the present Bethlehem Hospital, but ninety-eight barrels of powder, carelessly 

 stored, blew up and killed forty men, doing damage to the extent of ^(^20,000 

 and injuring the fine churches of St. Peter and St. Stephen. For this out- 

 break 108 men were tried, and seven or eight shot in the castle ditches.^ 



' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vii, App. i, 564. ' Rushworth, Hist. Coll. (1692), pt. iii, vol. ii, 805. 



• Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 391. ' Cal. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 1644, 383. 



' Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 396 ; Commons Joum. 12 September, 1649. A detailed account of the rising 

 .and a calendar of depositions relating to it will be found in a History of Bethlehem Hospital hy W. Rye. 



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