sitation, the
numerous changes suggested by the king in the ancient ritual; and
Cromwel, with influence not apparently diminished by the fall of the
late patroness of the protestant party, presided in the latter assembly
with the title of vicegerent, and with powers unlimited.

The suppression of monasteries was now carried on with increasing rigor,
and thousands of their unfortunate inhabitants were mercilessly turned
out to beg or starve. These, dispersing themselves over the country, in
which their former hospitalities had rendered them generally popular,
worked strongly on the passions of the many, already discontented at the
imposition of new taxes, which served to convince them that the king and
his courtiers would be the only gainers by the plunder of the church;
and formidable insurrections were in some counties the result. In
Lincolnshire the commotions were speedily suppressed by the
interposition of the earl of Shrewsbury and other loyal noblemen; but it
was necessary to send into Yorkshire a considerable army under the duke
of Norfolk. Through the dexterous management of this leader, who was
judged to favor the cause of the revolters as much as his duty to his
sovereign and a regard to his own safety would permit, little blood was
shed in the field; but much flowed afterwards on the scaffold, where the
lords Darcy and Hussey, sir Thomas Percy, brother to the earl of
Northumberland, and several private gentlemen, suffered as traitors.

The suppression of these risings strengthened, as usual, the hands of
government, but at the expense of converting into an object of dread, a
monarch who in the earlier and brighter period of his reign had been
regarded with sentiments of admiration and love.

In lord Herbert's narrative of this insurrection, we meet with a passage
too remarkable to be omitted. "But the king, who was informed from
divers parts, but chiefly from Yorkshire, that the people began there
also to take arms, and knowing of what great consequence it might be if
the great persons in those parts, though the rumour were false, should
be said to join with him, had commanded George earl of Shrewsbury,
Thomas Manners earl of Rutland, and George Hastings earl of Huntingdon,
to make a proclamation to the Lincolnshire-men, summoning and commanding
them on their allegiance and peril of their lives to return; which, as
it much disheartened them, so many stole away," &c.

In this potency of the hereditary arist