which his many noble
and amiable qualities inspired was heightened when it was known that he
had received by the post an anonymous billet telling him that, if he did
not promptly comply with the King's wishes, all his wit and popularity
should not save him from assassination. A similar warning was sent
to Shrewsbury. Threatening letters were then much more rare than they
afterwards became. It is therefore not strange that the people, excited
as they were, should have been disposed to believe that the best and
noblest Englishmen were really marked out for Popish daggers. [318] Just
when these letters were the talk of all London, the mutilated corpse of
a noted Puritan was found in the streets. It was soon discovered that
the murderer had acted from no religious or political motive. But
the first suspicions of the populace fell on the Papists. The mangled
remains were carried in procession to the house of the Jesuits in the
Savoy; and during a few hours the fear and rage of the populace were
scarcely less violent than on the day when Godfrey was borne to his
grave. [319]

The other dismissions must be more concisely related. The Duke of
Somerset, whose regiment had been taken from him some months before, was
now turned out of the lord lieutenancy of the East Riding of Yorkshire.
The North Riding was taken from Viscount Fauconberg, Shropshire from
Viscount Newport, and Lancashire from the Earl of Derby, grandson of
that gallant Cavalier who had faced death so bravely, both on the field
of battle and on the scaffold, for the House of Stuart. The Earl of
Pembroke, who had recently served the crown with fidelity and spirit
against Monmouth, was displaced in Wiltshire, the Earl of Husband in
Leicestershire, the Earl of Bridgewater in Buckinghamshire, the Earl of
Thanet in Cumberland, the Earl of Northampton in Warwickshire, the Earl
of Abingdon in Oxfordshire, and the Earl of Scarsdale in Derbyshire.
Scarsdale was also deprived of a regiment of cavalry, and of an office
in the household of the Princess of Denmark. She made a struggle to
retain his services, and yielded only to a peremptory command of
her father. The Earl of Gainsborough was rejected, not only from the
lieutenancy of Hampshire, but also from the government of Portsmouth and
the rangership of the New Forest, two places for which he had, only a
few months before, given five thousand pounds. [320]

The King could not find Lords of great note, or indeed Protestant