followed on the debasement of the coinage which had begun
with Henry and went on yet more unscrupulously under Somerset. The
trouble came at last to a head in the manufacturing districts of the
eastern counties. Twenty thousand men gathered round an "oak of
Reformation" near Norwich, and repulsing the royal troops in a desperate
engagement renewed the old cries for a removal of evil counsellors, a
prohibition of enclosures, and redress for the grievances of the poor.

[Sidenote: Somerset's Fall.]

The revolt of the Norfolk men was stamped out in blood by the energy of
Lord Warwick, as the revolt in the west had been put down by Lord
Russell, but the risings had given a fatal blow to Somerset's power. It
had already been weakened by strife within his own family. His brother
Thomas had been created Lord Seymour and raised to the post of Lord High
Admiral; but, glutted as he was with lands and honours, his envy at
Somerset's fortunes broke out in a secret marriage with the
Queen-dowager, Catharine Parr, in an attempt on her death to marry
Elizabeth, and in intrigues to win the confidence of the young king and
detach him from his brother. Seymour's discontent was mounting into open
revolt when in the January of 1549 he was arrested, refused a trial,
attainted, and sent to the block. The stain of a brother's blood,
however justly shed, rested from that hour on Somerset, while the nobles
were estranged from him by his resolve to enforce the laws against
enclosures and evictions, as well as by the weakness he had shown in the
presence of the revolt. Able indeed as Somerset was, his temper was not
that of a ruler of men; and his miserable administration had all but
brought government to a standstill. While he was dreaming of a fresh
invasion of Scotland the treasury was empty, not a servant of the state
was paid, and the soldiers he had engaged on the Continent refused to
cross the Channel in despair of receiving their hire. It was only by
loans raised at ruinous interest that the Protector escaped sheer
bankruptcy when the revolts in east and west came to swell the royal
expenses. His weakness in tampering with the popular demands completed
his ruin. The nobles dreaded a communistic outbreak like that of the
Suabian peasantry, and their dread was justified by prophecies that
monarchy and nobility were alike to be destroyed and a new rule set up
under governors elected by the people. They dreaded yet more the being
forced to