fanatic flame, kindled against the King’s Majesty and his Reform of the Church; has an eye in particular to a certain Sir John Thymbleby in Lincolnshire, whom he would fain capture as a ringleader; suggests that the use of arms should be prohibited to these treasonous populations, except under conditions;—and seems hastening on, with almost furious speed; towards Yorkshire and the Pilgrimage of Grace, we may conjecture. The second Letter, also without date except ‘Tuesday,’ shadows to us an official man, again on business of hot haste; journeying from Monastery to Monastery; finding this Superior disposed to comply with the King’s Majesty, and that other not disposed, but capable of being made so; intimates farther that he will be at his own House (presumably Hinchinbrook), and then straightway ‘home,’ and will report progress to my Lord in person. On the whole, as this is the earliest articulate utterance of the Oliver Family; and casts a faint glimmer of light, as from a single flint-spark, into the dead darkness of the foregone century; and touches withal on an acquaintance of ours, the ‘Prior of Ely,’—Robert Steward, last Popish Prior, first Protestant Dean of Ely, and brother of Mrs. Robert Cromwell’s ancestor, which is curious to think of,—we will give the Letter, more especially as it is very short:
‘To my Lord Cromwell.
‘I have me most humbly commended unto your Lordship. I rode on Sunday to Cambridge to my bed;[1] and the next morning was up betimes, purposing to have found at Ely Mr. Pollard and Mr. Williams. But they were departed before my coming: and so, “they” being at dinner at Somersham with the Bishop of Ely, I overtook them “there.”[2] At which time, I opened your pleasure unto them in everything. Your Lordship, I think, shall shortly perceive the Prior of Ely to
