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was timed to break out on 18 October 1483. The Duke
of Norfolk wrote to John Paston on 10 October, ‘It is soo that the
Kentysshemen be up in the Weld, and say that they wol come and robbe the
cite, which I shall lett yf I may.’35
This rebellion, under the
leadership of Sir Edward Poynings, was promptly suppressed, but Richard
feared that Henry’s French supporters would next strike a blow and
that Kent would be their point of attack. Accordingly, in January 1484,
he went down to Sandwich to superintend the fitting out of ships to
guard the coast, and exacted oaths of allegiance from the men of Kent,
warning them by proclamation against wearing illegal badges.36
So well watched was the south coast, that Henry made no attempt to land
there. When at last he did invade the county it was at the remote
harbour of Milford Haven. Among his supporters he then reckoned many
Kentishmen, of whom Sir John Savage, Sir Edward Poynings, Sir John
Guildford and Sir Richard Guildford were the most prominent.
The county had an opportunity of proving its loyalty to its Tudor
sovereign in 1495, when Perkin Warbeck appeared off Deal; 300 of his men
who landed to explore were attacked and cut off by an overwhelming force
of Kentishmen, and he himself wisely sailed away without landing. Sir
Richard Guildford was despatched by the king to thank the inhabitants
for their loyalty, and many of the Englishmen among the prisoners were
hanged. Two years later this loyalty withstood an even severer test,
when the Cornish rebels marched through Salisbury and Winchester into
Kent. But where they had expected sympathy they met with stolidity on
the part of the populace. The royalist gentry under the Earl of Kent,
Lord Abergavenny, Lord Cobham, and Sir Richard Guildford,37 rallied
for the king, and won a decisive victory over the rebels at Blackheath.
In 1499, another pretender, Ralph Wilford, the personator of the Earl of
Warwick, appeared in Kent, and was announced from the pulpit by a friar
of the order of St. Augustine, but the county would have none of him,
though, as Hall remarks, ‘it hath not been dull in setting forth of
new and phantastical fancies’; Wilford was hanged on 12 February. In
1501 a fresh plot, started in Kent for smuggling a child named James
Ormond out of the kingdom and making him a claimant for the throne, was
promptly suppressed.38
Henry VIII was born at Greenwich, and before he was ten months old was
made Warden of the Cinque Ports and Constable of Dover. Of the splendid
pageantry of his reign the lion’s share fell to Kent, whose ports
welcomed many distinguished visitors, among them one royal bride, Anne
of Cleves. Hever was the scene of Henry’s long wooing of Anne Boleyn,
and Greenwich Palace was a favourite abode of the king whose successive
wives spent there many tragic days.
To the military expeditions of the reign the county furnished many names
of note. In 1511 the veteran Sir Edward Poynings embarked with his men
at Sandwich for service in the Netherlands, where he won high eulogy and
substantial favours from Margaret of Savoy and from Charles V, while Sir
John Scot, who with other Kentish gentlemen accompanied him, was
knighted by Charles for his gallantry. In the expeditions to France of 1513
35 Paston Letters, iii, 308.
36 Han. MSS., 433,
f. 140, etc. Sir John Savage, who was
delegated to take the oaths of allegiance in
ent (ibid. fo. 90-4) had, however, a secret understanding with
Richmond.
37 Made a banneret for his services upon this occasion.
38 H. A. L. Fisher,
Pol. Hist. of Engl. 1485 to 1547, p. 92. |