POLITICAL HISTORY made Privy Seal and in 1606 lord-lieutenant of Norfolk, in which capacity- he wrote a spirited letter to the king complaining of the insufficient forces kept in the county for home defence, with such good results, that matters were much mended by 1621, when some excellent regulations and instruc- tions as to what was to be done in case of invasion were prepared.^ They provide for the forces to be concentrated on Cawston Heath, the old men and women to be sent inland to Marshland, and in fact do not materially differ from the precautions taken later on during the Bonaparte scare. The creation of baronets in i 61 1 was headed by the name of Sir Nicholas Bacon of Redgrave, for whom a Norfolk descent from the Bacons of Bacons- thorpe has often been erroneously claimed, genealogists ignoring the fact that Bacon was a very common name all along the east coast of England. Among the Norfolk men who purchased, compulsorily or freely, the title, were Sir Philip Knyvet, Sir Henry Hobart, Sir Roger Townshend, Sir Philip Wodehouse of Kimberley, and later on Sir Richard Berney of Reedham, Sir William Yelverton, Sir Henry Clere of Ormesby, and Sir Henry Jerning- ham of Cossey — all with two exceptions still represented in the county. All these, however, were men of standing and position, and there is no reason to suppose that this title could have been bought by anyone who found the jri,ooo required. The old sore of illegal enclosures broke out again in 161 1, when there was an insurrection, or rather an attempted one, at Norwich headed by Thomas Townsend and Thomas Harrison on this pretext, but it came to nothing, the mayor of Norwich having taken prompt measures and sent the ringleaders up to the Privy Council.^ It was in this reign that traces first appear of a real desire on the part of the Norfolk electors to do their duty in returning members of Parliament, and to petition against improper returns. The merits of the dispute as to the elections of 1614 and 1623 are hard to understand, but it is clear that the organized opposition to the king's or court party was growing. No question of right, however, seems to have arisen, so the incident has no political interest, the disputes being as to facts, but the incidents are worthy of notice as showing that the voters were beginning to value their power of voting. On the death of James I in 1625, Charles continued the Howards in favour by at once nominating Thomas, earl of Arundel and Surrey, who was resident in his palace at Norwich, as lord-lieutenant. He found the county troubled by the growing impossibility of carrying on either export or import trade in the face of the enormous increase of piracy. It has been said, but most unjustly, that it was to protect the Yarmouth fishing boats and to keep the Dutch from our shores that Charles and his advisers lit upon the notable expedient of ship money, which eventually cost the king his life and crown. Not only was the ' expedient ' an old and quite constitutional one, but the proceeds seem to have been honestly applied in ship-building, and that the need for a fleet was a very real and urgent one can easily be shown. The first trace of any organized refusal to pay ship money at all was in 1629. It is singular that more notice has not been taken of the fact that in this year, six years before the general writ for ship money was issued, two ships ' Mason, Hist. ofNorf. 218. ' Blomefield, op. cit. iii, 363. 2 505 64
