Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/534

 A HISTORY OF NORFOLK persons as belonged to him 'and be of his menial servants,' this John Howard being then (1455) one of the duke's nominees. The reign of Henry VII has but little immediate bearing on the history of Norfolic, The king came down to Norwich ' at Christmas in i486 on his way to Walsingham, making one of those royal progresses which always seem to have combined business with pleasure. There was a renewal of the chronic dispute' as to the prior's boundaries, in which the prior got the best of it, but the matter kept on smouldering, and there was so much ill-feeling about it that many of the influential inhabitants in the county, including Henry Spelman, then the recorder (the father of the great antiquary of that name), represented to the king that, unless some final settlement was come to, there would probably be a repetition of the great riot and burning of 1272. The king therefore summoned both parties to appear before him at Westminster under penalties of >r200. Nothing, however, came of this, for when in 1493 both sides came before the commissioners they could not agree on the terms for a reference, the balance of unreasonableness being apparently with the citizens. If Perkin Warbeck's rebellion had come to anything, part of the scheme was apparently an attack upon Yarmouth, for in 1495 ^^^ corporation of Yarmouth wrote to Sir John Paston that the rebels meant to take Yarmouth or die.^ There was very little meddling by local men in the state disturbances of the period, the only exception being Sir John Wyndham, who married the daughter of the duke of Norfolk, and was knighted by the king at the same time as John Paston for services at the battle of Stoke. He mixed himself up in the rebellion in favour of the duke of Suffolk, and was beheaded on Tower Hill in 1503, Meanwhile the Howard family had been growing more and more im- portant, not only in the county but in England generally. Thomas Howard, who was with his father on Richard's side at Bosworth, had after three years' imprisonment been restored in blood and to the earldom of Surrey, and had cast in his lot with Henry VII. In 1489 he had distinguished himself against the rebels in the north, and in 1497 against the Scots. On the accession of Henry VIII he adhered faithfully to the king, and fought well at Flodden in I 5 1 3, a battle which was practically won by him. With him on this occasion were Sir Philip Tilney, Sir Richard Appleyard, and other Norfolk men. For this good service he was created duke of Norfolk,* and having filled the ofHces of Great Chamberlain, Guardian of England (in 1520 during the king's absence in France), and Lord High Steward, he died in his bed in 1524 at the good old age of eighty. The reign of Henry VIII was one in which Norfolk men and women took a conspicuously large part. In 15 10 Sir Edward Howard, after- wards known as ' The Admiral,' rid the seas of the celebrated Scotch pirate Andrew Barton, thus giving a subject for one of the best and most spirited of our English ballads. Whether the victory was partly due to improved mechanical contrivances on the English ships is not clear, but it is not impossible. His gallant death in another sea fight at Brest, after he had unsuccessfully endeavoured to get Henry to come and lead the attack himself, is matter of history. ' Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 174. • Paston Letters, No. 936. ' Ibid, iii, 175. ♦ L. and P. Hen. nil, i, 4.694. 492