recanted his abjuration, and finally went cheerfully to the stake, enduring the horror of an unusually slow fire.

The brothers Topley, and William Gardiner, who abjured in 1532, were Austin Friars at Clare, a house which Foxe seems to have confounded with the Secular College at Stoke-by-Clare, whereof Matthew Parker was the last Dean. About six years afterwards, 'one Puttedew was condemned to the fire, about the parts of Suffolke' for some expressions not perhaps in the best taste, but pardonable, and William Leyton, a Benedictine of Eye, suffered in like manner for 'speaking against a certain Idoll which was accustomed to be carried about the Processions' there, and for his views about the administration in both kinds.

A frightful scene is recorded at the burning of Peke of Earl Stonham at Ipswich, supplemented by Baron Curson, Sir John Audley and others casting boughs into the fire, to obtain forty days' pardon from Bishop Nykke. Two Mendlesham men, Kerby and Clarke, were burnt in 1546 at Ipswich and Bury (at the gate called South Gate) respectively. Clarke's was a terrible business. There is no need to expatiate on the effect of these horrors, under the authority of William Rugge, or Reppes, Bishop of Norwich, who, with one of his archdeacons, Wolman of Sudbury, had solemnly denied the Papal supremacy, in conjunction with Cranmer, Edward and Roland Lee, Stokesley, Tunstall, Gardiner, Latimer, Bonner, and other leading divines of the day.

The burning of the Dovercourt rood, though it brings in an East Bergholt man, must be left to Essex, and those who would read of the Lord of Misrule at Dennington will find a quotation about him in the Suffolk Archæological Proceedings.

Church plunder went on shamelessly in some places. Inventories were made in 1547, of which few remain; but those of the year 1553 are practically perfect. The original mandate addressed to the churchwardens of Bedingfield, ordering them to appear in Ipswich on a certain

day, bringing with them the church goods, except the bells, still lies in the chest of that parish. In some places the sale of the silver cross produced money which was used for the completion of the fabric. At Woolverstone the squire took away two bells and two vestments, supposing the sayd churche to be hys own chapell.' He was fined xxli., which sum went into the Augmentation Office, and the parish has never since had more than one bell.

At what time the greater spoliation of sepulchral brasses took place must remain uncertain. Many fine indents remain up and down the country to testify to the destructive power of religious bigotry and petty cupidity. Among these is a fine early fourteenth-century floriated cross in Mildenhall chancel, to the memory of Richard de Wicheforde, Vicar, 'qui fecit istud novum opus.' Some have been restored, as the fine brass in Gorleston Church, a cross-legged effigy to the memory of John Bacon, 1292, which Mr. Gage Rokewode purchased and restored to its ancient position. Some happily have never been removed from their place, eminent among which is the noble figure of Robert de Bures at Acton, near Sudbury, 1302, one of the five effigies in complete chain-mail, without any admixture of plate armour, remaining in England, and inferior to none. Though he is rather later than Bacon, he is not so much in the fashion, for which all archæologists may be thankful. Of the middle period, one of the best is the fine double brass to Sir William Burgate and his wife Eleanor, in the church of that name. Another figure is Sir George Felbrigg in Playford Church, bearing the Felbrigg lion rampant on his surcoat. A lady of the Clopton family, c. 1435, in Long Melford Church, and one perhaps a little earlier at Acton, Alice de Bures, who married one of the Bryan family, are remarkable for the elegance of the drapery. Other good specimens are at Barsham,1 Stoke-by-Nayland, Ipswich St. Mary-le-Tower,

1 Bearing the collar of SS.

and Sotterley. Later figures are at Mildenhall, Worlingworth, and other places too numerous to mention, while at Brundish is a Norman-French inscription: 'Sire Esmound de Burnedissch jadys persone de lesglise de Castre gist icy. Dieu de salme eit mcy.'

CHAPTER XIII.

QUEEN MARY.

O county surpasses Suffolk in fulness of incident

N°

in the summer of 1553. During the troubled time of the last illness of Edward VI., Mary was at Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire. The letters patent by which the death-stricken young monarch had passed her over for Lady Jane Grey were gathering signatures of assent, and the tremendous storm which marked that special crisis was raging in the lurid July night while she tarried in dangerous proximity to the craft and violence of Northumberland. She took alarm, however, and fled to Kenninghall, whence she sent letters to the Council claiming the crown on Sunday, July 9, three days after her brother's death. Kenninghall had been Howard property, but the cloud over the Howard name had not passed away. Surrey had been executed in the last days. of Henry VIII., and his father, the Duke of Norfolk, to whose attainder the royal assent had been given by commission on January 27, 1547, had only just been saved by the King's death early on the following morning. He was still lying in the Tower, where he had languished for six years and more, and Kenninghall had been settled on Mary. It is in Norfolk, but to reach it from Hunsdon she must have passed through Suffolk, probably by the well-worn road across the heaths recently described. We may see her traversing this desolate district in the long

days and short nights of ' July's pride,' and reaching her mansion, to receive almost at once the accession of a small knot of Norfolk knights, who for weal or for woe cast in their lot with that hereditary right which had received Parliamentary sanction in the will of her father. She must have left Kenninghall very shortly after the despatch of her letter, seeking a place of readier access to the coast, as well as of greater strength, and none could be more suitable than Framlingham, the strongest castle of the property under attainder. Her route again is matter of conjecture, but naturally she would have worked somewhat to the left. Probably the party avoided the little town of Diss and the frequented thoroughfare at Scole, crossed the Waveney between Billingford and Oakley, where there would be sympathy from Sir Robert Southwell's tenants and retainers, and so made their way by Denham and Worlingworth to Framlingham. On their journey Northumberland's sons, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and Robert, afterwards the well-known Earl of Leicester, came upon them, but in vain. The spirit of English fair play was not extinct in the pursuing party. The men declared for Mary and turned on their leaders, who only escaped by the speed of their horses. At Framlingham she remained till the brief fever of the Dudley-Grey enterprise had subsided, and that little town must have been in a mighty flutter with the constant arrivals and occasional departures of men of local or national importance.

Thither came the Earls of Oxford and Sussex, both men of influence in the county. John Bourchier, Earl of Bath, had managed to slip through the Midlands and put in an appearance. Lord Wentworth of Nettlestead, the eldest son of Lord Wharton, and Lord Mordaunt, Cornwallis of Brome, Drury of Hawstead, Sulyarde of Wetherden and Haughley, Freston (the grantee of Mendham Priory), Bedingfield, Jerningham, Shelton, Waldegrave, and many another were there.

As to Northumberland, he and his were thoroughly