POLITICAL HISTORY 1643, stating that the earl of Manchester 'has had King's Lynn dehvered up to him without shedding blood.' The relief promised by the earl of Newcastle never came. One cannon ball which smashed into St. Margaret's •church during Sunday morning service is still hung up in ' Union Court,' hard by. For his share in the defence of Lynn, Sir Hamon le Strange's •estate was sequestrated on 24 October, 1643. In a letter,^ dated 31 August, 1644, he addressed the earl of Manchester, asking the latter to assist him in obtaining reparation for the losses he had sustained ' for the brand and character of malignancy,' especially after the siege of Lynn. He had
- referred himself unto a strict soliloquy . . . and reconciled his opinion to the
•sense of the Parliament.' What the results of this letter were it is impossible to say, but just about the time it was written another Le Strange was causing trouble to the Parliament. Roger le Strange (son of Sir Hamon and afterwards well-known as a virulent pamphleteer) seems to have gone in December, 1644, to the king at Oxford with a scheme for retaking Lynn, of Avhich town, had he been successful, he was to be the king's governor. His scheme, however, was a poor one, for he took one Captain Thomas Lemon and a Mr. Haggard into his confidence and they promptly betrayed him. He was seized and tried as a spy and, in spite of an able defence, was ■condemned to death. The Royalists seem to have made great efforts to save him. Prince Rupert writing to the earl of Essex on his behalf, with the result that, possibly through fear of reprisals, he was respited, and eventually ■escaped in 1648.'^ In August, 1645, when the king's forces took Huntingdon and stirred up Cambridge, all the trained bands of the Eastern Association were called out, and, according to Blomefield,^ the city bands marched out as far as the Town Close and then, emulating the king of Spain, marched back again, having done nothing. The county of Norfolk, however, seems to have fully done its share in providing men and money during the war, and on 29 July, 1644, it was ordered by the committee of both kingdoms* that Norfolk and Essex should be cited as an example to the other counties. In 1648, when the second civil war was in progress, there was a cavalier rising in the county. It seems that the then mayor of Norwich, Mr. John Utting, favoured the Royalist side, refused to help in the defacement of churches, and allowed certain malignant and sequestered ministers to preach in the city. A messenger of the House of Commons was sent to arrest him, but had to flee for his life from the mob, which rose in defence of the mayor. A thousand rioters broke into the sheriff's house and procured arms. The mayor shut the city gates to prevent the entry of the Roundhead cavalry, but the latter eventually forced their way in. Many of the rioters were holding the committee house, which stood on the site of the present Bethlehem Hospital, but ninety-eight barrels of powder, carelessly stored, blew up and killed forty men, doing damage to the extent of ^(^20,000 and injuring the fine churches of St. Peter and St. Stephen. For this out- break 108 men were tried, and seven or eight shot in the castle ditches.^ ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. vii, App. i, 564. ' Rushworth, Hist. Coll. (1692), pt. iii, vol. ii, 805. • Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 391. ' Cal. S.P. Dom. Chas. I, 1644, 383. ' Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 396 ; Commons Joum. 12 September, 1649. A detailed account of the rising .and a calendar of depositions relating to it will be found in a History of Bethlehem Hospital hy W. Rye. 5"
