Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 2.djvu/592

572 daily pouring in to Aske, full of gratitude, admiration, and promises of help. He had leisure to organize the vast force of which the command had been thrust upon him, to communicate with the Emperor or with the Regent's Court at Brussels, The following letter was written by some unknown person to the Regent of the Low Countries. The original is in the Archives at Brussels.to Her Majesty the Queen Regent.London, October, 1536., I am instructed to inform your Majesty that on Monday, the 2nd of this present October, in the northern counties in the diocese of Lincoln, the King's officers and commissioners were proceeding with the demolition of four abbeys, when certain peasants, by God's will, commenced a riot under the conduct of a brave shoemaker named William King. The chief commissioner, Doctor Lee, who was especially obnoxious to the people, as the summoner who cited the late Queen, your aunt, now in glory, before the Archbishop of Canterbury, contrived to escape; but his cook was taken, and, as a beginning, the people hanged him. A gentleman belonging to the Lord Privy Seal, otherwise called Master Cromwell, tried to stop them; and he too was immediately laid hands on, wrapped in the hide of a newly-killed calf, and worried and devoured by dogs; the mob swearing they would do as much for his master. The people went next to the house of the Bishop of Lincoln, whom they could not find; but they caught his chancellor, and to spite the Bishop, who is said to have been the first person to advise the King to divorce your aunt, they killed him.

The next day, being Tuesday, there were more than ten thousand of them in arms; and they proceeded to take the gentlemen of the neighbourhood, and swear them to be true to their cause. The cobler assumed a cloak of crimson velvet, with the words embroidered in large letters upon it, Some of the gentlemen who had been sworn escaped and gave notice to the King, and on Wednesday, at nine in the morning, an order came out that all the gentlemen in London should place themselves under the and to establish a correspondence with the southern counties.