Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/290

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK annuity of /'200 to be paid quarterly, and a discharge from all liability for dilapidations and waste in his diocese. It is not surprising that insurrections broke out in the county early in 1537, and the depositions of a considerable number of witnesses, which have been preserved, show that as well as the principal conspiracy at Walsingham, there were other towns in the country which would have been ready to follow the example of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, but for the vigilance of the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk and their emissaries. Churchwardens' accounts prove that a mediaeval parish was a kind of free republic, in which the church- wardens were answerable to the parishioners not only for the parish plate and money in the church chest, but often for considerable property in land and cattle. The evidence as to the Norfolk conspiracies testifies that they were the result of the threatened attack upon this parochial property as well as of the gradual destruction of the religious houses, and that the parishioners regarded the confiscations as a plundering of the poor for the benefit of the rich, as indeed to a large extent they were. The risings were undertaken chiefly by men of the peasant class and by innkeepers whose trade was bound to suffer severely by the suppression of pilgrimages to the numerous shrines of Norfolk,' while certain of the clergy were more or less actively involved. The confessions of John Locke, John Brown, Hugh Wilkinson, and John Tumour of Old Buckenham,^ show that Hugh Wilkinson of Buckenham St. Andrew offered John Locke of Old Buckenham, servant of Mr. Grey, the priest, and John Brown, also of Old Buckenham, as they were coming home from Stone Fair, an angel noble to kill the king's visitors in their beds on the night of Lammas Day last at Buckenham Abbey. Richard Fletcher, keeper of the common gaol at Norwich, who had to account for a seditious bill of news he had been setting about, said he had it of a clerk ; and George Wharton, innkeeper of the ' Bell,' and keeper of the king's gaol at Lynn, questioned as to the same, said he gave a copy to Cornish soldiers going on pilgrimage to Walsingham.^ Robert Hawker deposed that George Gysburgh of Walsingham* had said he thought it very ill done, the suppressing of so many religious houses where God was well served, and had suggested an insurrection of the commons who were oppressed by gentlemen ; and George Gysburgh himself said that he met at Walsingham one Ralph Rogerson who said to him, ' You see how these abbeys go down, and our living goeth away with them ; for within a while Bynham shall be put down and also Walsing- ham, and all the abbeys in that country ;' and that he also said he would try to get a company to resist, which he thought he could do by firing some beacon, and when the company was gathered they would go to the king to complain. Sir Roger Townsend wrote to CromwelP that it appeared by the confession of one Wattson, that the sub-prior of Walsingham was ' infeclyf ' ; that the said sub-prior had been taken by the bearer, Sir Roger's son, and had made confession that the conspirators met at a game of shooting of the 'flyte and ' The image of Our Lady at Walsingham, brought to London and burnt at Chelsea (Blomefield, iii, 209), was the most popular ; but there were many others, as the shrine of St. Wolstan at Bawbergh, before which six chantry priests and a vicar were constantly serving ; the fimous image of the Virgin at Thetford ; of Our Lady at Lynn ; the Holy Cross at Broraholm ; the image of St. Henry at St. Leonard's Priory. Taylor, Index Monast'uus, 66. ' L. and P. Hen. Vlll, xii, pt. i, 1268, 24 May, 1537. ' Cal. L. and P. Hen. Vlll, xi, 1260. * Ibid. vol. xii, pt. i, 1056. ' Ibid. 1 123. 256