Читать книгу Rogers' Directory of Norwich and Neighbourhood онлайн

7 страница из 108

But we now come to a catalogue of disasters: the Cathedral was seriously injured by fire, 1463; the fatal plague ravaged the city, 1479; and in 1505 and 1507 there were great fires, in the latter year 718 houses being consumed, which obliged the corporate authorities to prohibit the erection of thatched buildings. In 1517, disputes between the citizens and the monks being again rife, Wolsey came over on a mission of mediation, but it was not till several years afterwards that peace was restored by the settlement of the civil and ecclesiastical boundaries and jurisdictions. We must not forget to notice the burning of the martyr Bilney, after an imprisonment in a dungeon of the Guildhall; and scarcely were the lurid fires of persecution extinguished before a memorable political outbreak exposed the city to the ravages of contending armies, and excited the anxious consideration of the youthful Edward’s ministers. The details of Kett’s rebellion are too well known to require recapitulation; suffice it to say that after obtaining possession of the city and defeating the Marquis of Northampton in an encounter on Palace Plain, the insurgents were dispersed by the Earl of Warwick—Robert Kett being executed at the Castle, and William at Wymondham. To close a paragraph of casualties, persecutions, and tumults, we must record the visitation of the sweating sickness, striking down near 1000 victims in 1551, and of the quartan ague six years later; the conviction of several citizens in 1570, for participation in a plot for assassinating the queen, re-establishing Popery, and expelling the strangers “out of the citye and realme,” of whom four suffered death, and others confinement for life; and the imprisonment in the Castle of certain persons apprehended in Suffolk for “refusing to come to the church in time of sermons and common prayer.”