Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/28

8 fatal; the King had still but a comparatively inconsiderable force scattered in a few towns; the country generally was in a state of anarchy: the subsidy could not be collected; the monks remained in the abbeys in which they had been reinstated. The agitation began again, at particular points, to gather head.

Sir Francis Bigod, of Mogreve Castle, in Blakemore, was one of those persons who, in great questions, stand aloof from parties, holding some notion of their own, which they consider to be the true solution of the difficulty, and which they will attempt when others have failed: he was a spendthrift; his letters to Cromwell describe him as crippled with debt; he was a pedant; and had written a book on the supremacy, on an original principle; in the first rising, he said, he was 'held in great suspect and jealousy because of his learning.'

Mortified, perhaps, that his talents had not been appreciated, he now conceived that he had an occasion for the display of his powers. If the King himself had selected a leader for the insurgents who would give a death-blow to their cause, he could not have made a better choice.