This visit was followed by war with France, and to raise supplies for it subsidies were granted in Kent. Archbishop Warham, who was already responsible for the defence of the coast, was in November 1523 made chief commissioner for its collection, and by pressing the country gentlemen to anticipate their payments, in accordance with Wolsey’s instructions, he and his fellow commissioners, including Sir Henry Guildford and Sir Thomas Boleyn, incurred considerable odium in the county. Next year a loan was asked for in addition, and Warham found no small difficulty in furnishing 1,000 marks demanded as his own contribution.⁴⁶  When in the spring of 1525 the county was further pressed for an ‘amicable grant,’ the worried archbishop reported the general inability of clergy and laity to give more ;⁴⁷  some, he said, were impatient with Wolsey, whom they held responsible, and he himself was called ‘an old fool’ behind his back, for endeavouring to comply with his instructions; while Boleyn was roughly handled by a mob at Maidstone.⁴⁸  On Easter Tuesday 1528, about a hundred Kentish yeomen waited on the archbishop at Knole, praying him to urge the king to repay the loan, but instead of giving them satisfaction he had their leaders arrested. Feeling against Wolsey was by this time growing strong in the county not only on account of these money demands, but because of the ‘secret matter ‘ for the furtherance of which he had gone to France the year before. It was already suspected in Kent that the king’s anxiety for a divorce was actuated by the desire to set on the throne Anne Boleyn whom he had so hotly wooed at Hever Castle. Her father, who had been raised to the peerage as Viscount Rochford, was, in consequence of  ‘the disposition of some in the shire towards an insurrection, ‘entrusted by the king with the task of ‘putting these parts in good order.’ At the end of May he wrote to Wolsey from Tonbridge that he was ready to repress disturbances, but after diligent inquiry he found the county as quiet as could be desired.⁴⁹  He apparently attached but little importance to the seditious proceedings of the protestant strongholds of Goudhurst and Cranbrook, where a plot had been hatched for getting the cardinal out to sea in a boat and sinking it, and for taking ‘harness’ by force from the houses of various gentlemen. The plot was a crazy one, but it led to the indictment for treason of those concerned in it at Rochester Castle in June.⁵⁰ Perhaps the heart was taken out of the county by the terrible outbreak of sweating sickness which visited it at this time and by which Anne Boleyn and her father were both attacked. In any case it was fortunate that, when Cardinal Campeggio arrived in England in October for Queen Catherine’s trial,⁵¹  he declined the preparations for a triumphant reception that had been made, on the score of the gout. Sir Henry Guildford was knight of the shire for Kent in the Parliament of 29, and led the attack on the clergy which followed on the fall of Wolsey. Next year he and Boleyn, who, no doubt in consequence of the king’s growing passion for his daughter, had been made Earl of Wiltshire and Ormonde, were among those who signed the celebrated letter
   ⁴⁶  Ibid. iv, nos. 638,1243.
   ⁴⁷  L. & P. Hen. VIII, iv, App no. 39. The archbishop added that the required sums are generally declared in the county to be ‘importable.’ The commissioners were to meet at Canterbury 2 May, afterwards to sit at Maidstone, then at Otford and elsewhere.
   ⁴⁸  H. A. L. Fisher, op. cit. 235. Ibid. 267.
   ⁴⁹  L. & P. Hen. VIII, iv, pt. n, no. 4300.      ⁵⁰  Ibid. nos. 4310, 4331.
   ⁵¹  He was met on Barham Downs by Sir Henry Guildford, then controller of the household, who was responsible for his reception. At his entry into Canterbury none of the usual splendour was omitted. L. & P. Hen. VIII, iv, no. 4805.