crops; and this increased the general distress.
So the people, who still understood little of
what was going on about them and still readily
believed what the homeless monks told them
—many of whom had been their good friends
in their better days— took it into their heads,
that all this was owing to the reformed religion,
and therefore rose in many parts of the
country.

The most powerful risings were in Devonshire
and Norfolk. In Devonshire, the
rebellion was so strong that ten thousand
men united within a few days, and even laid
siege to Exeter. But LORD RUSSELL, coming
to the assistance of the citizens who defended
that town, defeated the rebels, arid not
only hanged the Mayor of one place, but
hanged the vicar of another from his own
church steeple. What with hanging and
killing by the sword, four thousand of the
rebels are supposed to have fallen in that one
county. In Norfolk (where the rising was
more against the inclosure of open lands than
against the reformed religion), the popular
leader was a man named EGBERT KET, a
tanner of Wymondham. The mob were in
the first instance excited against the tanner
by one JOHN FLOWERDEW, a gentleman who
owed him a grudge; but, the tanner was
more than a match for the gentleman, since
he soon got the people on his side, and
established himself near Norwich with quite an
army. There was a large oak-tree in that
place, on a spot called Moushoid Hill, which
Ket named the Tree of Reformation; and
under its green boughs, he and his men sat,
in the Midsummer weather, holding courts of
justice and debating affairs of state. They
were even impartial enough to allow some
rather tiresome public speakers to get up into
this Tree of Reformation, and point out their
errors to them, in long discourses, while they
lay listening (not always without some
grumbling and growling) in the shade below.
At last, one sunny July day, a herald
appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket
and all his men traitors, unless from that
moment they dispersed and went home; in
which case they were to receive a pardon.
But, Ket and his men made light of the
herald and became stronger than ever, until
the Earl of Warwick went after them with
a sufficient force, and cut them all to pieces.
A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered as
traitors, and their limbs were sent into various
country places to be a terror to the people.
Nine of them were hanged upon nine green
branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so,
for the time, that tree may be said to have
withered away.

The Protector, though a haughty man,
had compassion for the real distresses of
the common people, and a sincere desire to
help them. But he was too proud and too
high in degree to hold even their favour
steadily, and many of the nobles always envied
and hated him, because they were as proud and
not as high as he. He was at this time building
a great Palace in the Strand, to get the
stone for which he blew up church steeples
with gunpowder, and pulled down bishops'
houses; thus making himself still more
disliked. At length, his principal enemy, the
Earl of Warwick—Dudley by name, and the
son of that Dudley, who had made himself so
odious with Empson, in the reign of Henry
the Seventh—joined with seven other members
of the Council against him, formed a
separate Council, and becoming stronger in a
few days, sent him to the Tower under
twenty-nine articles of accusation. After
being sentenced by the Council to the
forfeiture of all his offices and lands, he was
liberated and pardoned, on making a very
humble submission. He was even taken back
into the Council again, after having suffered
this fall, and married his daughter, LADY
ANNE SEYMOUR, to Warwick's eldest son.
But such a reconciliation was little likely to
last, and did not outlive a year. Warwick
having got himself made Duke of Northumberland,
and having advanced the more important
of his friends, then finished the history by
causing the Duke of Somerset and his friend
LORD GREY, and others, to be arrested for
treason, in having conspired to seize and
dethrone the King. They were also accused of
having intended to seize the new Duke of
Northumberland, with his friends LORD
NORTHAMPTON and LORD PEMBROKE; to
murder them if they found need; and to raise
the City to revolt. All this the fallen Protector
positively denied, except that he confessed to
having spoken of the murder of those three
noblemen, but having never designed it. He
was acquitted of the charge of treason, and
found guilty of the other charges; so when
the people—who remembered his having been
their friend, now that he was disgraced and
in danger—saw him come out from his trial
with the axe turned from him, they thought
he was altogether acquitted, and set up a
loud shout of joy.

But the Duke of Somerset was ordered to be
beheaded on Tower Hill, at eight o'clock in
the morning, and proclamations were issued
bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten.
They filled the streets, however, and crowded
the place of execution as soon as it was light,
and, with sad faces and sad hearts, saw the
once powerful Protector ascend the scaffold to
lay his head upon the dreadful block. While
he was yet saying his last words to them with
manly courage, and telling them, in particular,
how it comforted him, at that pass, to have
assisted in reforming the national religion, a
member of the council was seen riding up
on horseback. They again thought that
the Duke was saved by his bringing a
reprieve, and again shouted for joy. But the
Duke himself told them they were mistaken,
and laid down his head and had it struck off
at a blow.

Many of the bystanders rushed forward