April.The King, it was generally known, intended to go on progress in the approaching summer through the scenes of the great insurrection, and receive in person the apologies of his subjects. The Duke of Norfolk was on the Marches as lieutenant-general; and had received instructions to require from the Scottish sovereign the surrender of the refugee clergy who, four years previously, had escaped for shelter across the Border. These two facts, in combination with general fretfulness, may have formed the motives which induced a party of Yorkshire gentlemen to make another effort in the cause which had once promised so brilliantly among them. In April five priests and a few knights and squires rose in arms under Sir John Neville. They accomplished nothing. The movement was instantly suppressed; we do not learn that so much as a life was lost; but the rash agitators were taken, and sent to London and tried; and, on the 17th of May, Neville and nine others paid for their folly in the usual way.[1] The name of the leader and the date of the commotion connects an event otherwise too obscure to be of interest, with the fate of a noble lady whose treatment weighs heavily on the reputation of the King.
The Countess of Salisbury had remained under sentence of death by attainder for more than a year in the Tower. Her companion, Lady Exeter, had received a pardon, but had gone into freedom alone. An am-- ↑ Hall, p. 841; Lord Herbert.
