and hindrance: of which tumults, as the said Duke was indeed the very original and beginning, so did he mind to use the like again, entertaining the most notablest captains and chiefest ringleaders of the said commotions with great gifts and rewards, and some also with annual livings,[1]—leaving in the mean time the King's Majesty's poor soldiers unpaid, and his Highness's pieces so unfurnished of men, munition, and money, as thereby hath not only ensued the loss of some of them already, but also Boulogne by that means, and the members about, remaineth at this present in very great danger.
'As for his government at home in other affairs, it hath been too ill to rehearse, for there fell no office of the King's Majesty's, but either he sold it for money, or else he bestowed the same upon one of his own servants, or else upon some other such as were of his faction, displacing sundry honest and grave ministers and officers of his Majesty's, putting in others such as he liked in their rooms; and, finally, so perverted the whole state of the realm as the laws and justice could have no place, being all matters ordered and ended by letters and commissions from himself contrary to our laws and against all order. And albeit by his occasion these troubles among us have been great, yet ceased he not in the midst of trouble and misery to build for himself in four
- ↑ I have not been able to obtain any clear details justifying these charges, but in the State correspondence of the month following the insurrection, there are repeated complaints of Somerset's supposed favour for the insurgents; and an accusation so specific I consider most likely to be true.
