urging the pope to accede to the king’s wish. The common people of Kent were by no means in sympathy with them in this step, and many of the signers of the letter were not prepared to support a divorce without papal sentence.
   Guildford indeed made his views so clear that Anne told him when she was queen she would deprive him of his office of Controller of the Household, whereupon he proceeded at once to the king, who ineffectually tried to dissuade him from resigning. The people of Kent showed the direction of their sympathies by flocking to listen to the utterances of the Holy Maid of Kent, Elizabeth Barton, before long the most important champion of Queen Catherine’s cause in England. Her history belongs, however, to the domain of ecclesiastical rather than political history. The exposure of her imposture seems to have alienated her sympathisers, and Lord Cobham wrote to Cromwell in May 1534 that the oath of succession had been taken by ‘most part of Kent.’⁵²  There were, however, indictments for unlawful assemblies at Lenham and elsewhere in this year.⁵³  A certain amount of sympathy was shown with the rebels in the north,⁵⁴  while disaffection in Kent in 1537 and 1538 was accompanied in various places by the report that the king was dead; Cobham, Cranmer and others were busily occupied in examining into such cases and committing offenders to prison.⁵⁵  On the whole, however, the religious changes of these years do not appear to have given rise to much disorder.
   Early in 1539 it was feared that through ’the crafty cardinality of Raynold Pole’ England would be invaded by France and Spain. The forces of Kent were assembled in March 1539 to resist invasion,⁵⁶  and the musters were found by Sir Thomas Cheyney ‘unsatisfactory both in number and personages’; his judgment apparently being biassed by the fact that he was accused of ‘stirring the king’s people.’⁵⁷  New bulwarks were built in the Camber and at Calshot Point,⁵⁸  as well as at Gravesend,⁵⁹  and castles were built at Walmer, Deal and Sandown for the defence of the coast.⁶⁰  By the end of the year the scare had passed away, and in 1540 the county was charged with the reception of Anne of Cleves, and acquitted itself with much magnificence. Sir Thomas Cheyney’s defence of himself to Cromwell ⁶¹ seems to show that considerable suspicion existed in the king’s mind as to the state of feeling in the county, and in 1541 Kent received a sharp lesson in the execution of one Reddyn, a young Kentish gentleman, along with Lord Dacre of the South.⁶²  In 1545 the coast fortifications were again strengthened and reinforced, and every inhabitant was prepared to defend it against a French attack. In the same year the danger of opposing the king or his favourites was again shown when the Kentish gentry who complained of Cranmer’s teaching found it was they, and not the subject of their complaints, who had to suffer punishment.
   On 1 August 1549 Sir John Markham wrote to the Earl of Rutland
   ⁵²  L. & P. Hen. VIII, vii, App., nos. 2! and 27. Christopher Hales wrote to him also ‘that the people of this county are well contented with the oath.’ Ibid. vol. vii, no. 788.
   ⁵³  Ibid. no. 1067.                             ⁵⁴  Ibid. xi, no. 841.
   ⁵⁵ Ibid.xiii,pt.i,nos.6, 12, 141, 171,440,475,483,757,783.
   ⁵⁶  Ibid. xiv, pt. i, no. 771.                 ⁵⁷  Ibid. no. 633.
   ⁵⁸  Ibid. no. 398.
   ⁵⁹  Lambard, Peramulations, 535
   ⁶⁰ Hasted, Kent, iv, 172. Queenborough Castle had been repaired 1536. Hasted, Kent, ii, 656.
   ⁶¹ L. & P. Hen. VIII, xiv, no. 633.
   ⁶² Ibid. xvi, nos. 931, 932. Various persons in Canterbury were imprisoned for ‘lewd words’ or for he’ making of a seditious bill.’ Cf. Acts P.C. I, 124 and 148.