POLITICAL HISTORY October the Yarmouth volunteers under Captain Johnson made an important capture on behalf of the Parliament, securing a king's ship with 140 officers and men, much powder, and what was still more valuable, some of the queen's letters. In acknowledgement of this service the town received a vote of thanks from Parliament, an order stating the lawfulness of the act, and a further order to search for and arrest ' any person or persons suspected to passe from the seas to assist the King in the unnatural warre against the Parliament.' ^ Another Yarmouth capture was of a ship with ' 200 Irish rebels.' Just at this time the local committee was authorized to disarm Sir Nicholas le Strange, Sir Hamon le Strange, Sir Robert Kemp, Sir John Spelman, Erasmus Earle, esq., and Edward Heyward for not contributing to the common fund. The ' Association of the Eastern Counties,' generally known as the Eastern Association, was formed on 20 December, 1642, and comprised Norfolk, SuffiDlk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, and Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire coming in at a later date.^ There is of course much to be found out before a perfect history of the Civil War in this district can be written. Very Httle actual fighting took place in the county, and isolated episodes, though interesting, escape attention and cannot always be dated exactly. There is one such episode which occurs in the record of a regiment of foot raised and employed by Sir John Gell from the beginning of October, 1642, to the end of September, 1644. The writer describes^ the services rendered to the Parliamentary cause by his regiment in different parts of the kingdom, and, after speaking of placing a garrison at Burton in Staffordshire, goes on to say, ' We were again commanded to join against Norwich under command of Misser Ballard, whither he sent our men that did their parts, for we beat the enemy out of their works, placed our colours upon theirs, and being competent of taking their . . ., instead of seconds we were called off for some secret reason which we could never yet understand. Whilst part of our forces were yet engaged at Norwich, the unwelcome news came to Derby of the Lord Brook's unhappy death at Litchfield.' The death of Lord Brook was on 7 January, 1643. Ballard is in another part of this document spoken of as 'a papist by religion and beggar by fortune,' and presumably was plotting for the king's side, so that this affair at Norwich cannot be the same as Augustine Holl's attempted rising on 6 March, 1643. During the early part of the summer of 1643 there was a royalist plot at Lowestoft in which Sir John Pettus, a Norwich loyalist (who lies buried in the church of St. Simon and St. Jude), Sir Edward Barker, Mr. Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe, Mr. Catlyn, jun., and others were implicated. It is said by Blomefield* that in this ' Cromwell was in danger of his person and was very near being taken ' had not some Norwich volunteers under Sergt. -Major Sherwood rescued him. From a letter of John Cory to Sir John Potts of Manningtree, dated 17 and 20 March, it would seem that Cromwell himself was at Norwich, and, being advised that certain strangers had been received into Lowestoft, directed that no one should enter into or go out of Norwich that night, and between 5 and 6 o'clock in the morning left, with his five troops and 800 Norwich volunteers, for Lowestoft, where he met the ' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App, i. 313. ' Lords' Journ. v, 505. ' Hilt. MSS. Com. Rep. ix, App. i, 387. * Op. cit. iii, 386. 509
