1537.]
CARDINAL POLE.
29
With Lord Hussey the Lincolnshire list was closed. Out of fifty or sixty thousand persons who had been in armed rebellion, the Government was satisfied with the punishment of twenty. The mercy was perhaps in part dictated by prudence.
May.The turn of the northern men came next. There were three sections of them—Sir Francis Bigod, George Luraley, and those who had risen in January in the East Riding; Sir Thomas Percy, the Abbot of Fountains, the Abbot of Jervaulx, Sir John and Lady Bulmer, Sir Ralph Bulmer, and Sir Stephen Hamarton, who had been concerned in the separate commotions since suppressed by the Duke of Norfolk; and, finally, Aske, Constable, and Lord Darcy, with their adherents. In this instance the proceedings were less simple than in the former, and in some respects unusual. The inferior offenders were first tried at York. The indictments were sent in to the grand jury; and in the important case of Levening, the special confederate of Aske and Darcy, whose guilt was identical with theirs, no bill was found. The King, in high displeasure, required Norfolk to take some severe notice of this obstruction of justice. Norfolk remonstrated; and was requested, in sharper language, to send up a list of the jurors,[1] and- ↑ 'And whereas your lordship doth write that, in case the consciences of such persons as did acquit Levening should he examined, the fear thereof might trouble others in like ease, the King's Majesty considering his treason to he most manifest, apparent, and confessed, and that all offenders in that case be principals, and none accessories, doth think it very necessary that the means used in that matter may be searched out, as a thing which may reveal many other matters worthy
