[Footnote 188-1: It appears by Letter 377 that privy seals were issued in 1459 addressed on the back to certain persons, requiring them to be with the king at Leicester on the 10th of May, each with a body of men sufficiently armed, and with provision for their own expenses for two months. One of these privy seals, signed by the king himself, was addressed specially to John Paston's eldest son, John, who at this time could not have been more than nineteen years of age. On its arrival, his mother consulted with neighbours whether it was indispensable to obey such an injunction, and on their opinion that it was, wrote to her husband for instructions.]
Besides these evils, the infatuated policy into which the king had been led by his ill-advisers, threatened to lose Ireland and Calais to the crown, as France had been lost already; for in the former country letters had been sent under the Privy Seal to the chieftains who had hitherto resisted the king's authority, actually encouraging them to attempt the conquest of the land, while in regard to Calais the king had been induced to write letters to his enemies not to show that town any favour, and thus had given them the greatest possible inducement to attempt its capture. Meanwhile the Earls of Shrewsbury and Wiltshire and Viscount Beaumont, who directed everything, kept the king himself, in some things, from the exercise of his own free will, and had caused him to assemble the Parliament of Coventry for the express purpose of ruining the Duke of York and his friends, whose domains they had everywhere pillaged and taken to their own use.[189-1]
[Footnote 189-1: The articles will be found in Holinshed, iii. 652-3; and in Davies's _Chronicle_, 86-90.]
It was impossible, in the nature of things, that evils such as these could be allowed to continue long, and the day of reckoning was now at hand. Of the great events that followed, it will be sufficient here to note the sequence in the briefest possible words. [Sidenote: The battle of Northampton.] On the 10th July the king was taken prisoner at the battle of Northampton, and was brought to London by the confederate lords. The government, of course, came thus entirely into their hands. Young George Nevill, Bishop of Exeter, was made Chancellor of England, Lord Bourchier was appointed Lord Treasurer, and a Parliament was summoned to meet at Westminster for the purpose of reversing the attainders passed in the Parliament of Coventry. Of the elections for this Parliament we have some interesting notices in Letter 415, from which we may see how the new turn in affairs had affected the politics of the county of Norfolk. From the first it was feared that after the three earls had got the king into their hands, the old intriguers, Tuddenham and Heydon, would be busy to secure favour, or at all events indulgence, from the party now in the ascendant. But letters-missive were obtained from the three earls, directed to all mayors and other officers in Norfolk, commanding in the king's name that no one should do them injury, and intimating that the earls did not mean to show them any favour if any person proposed to sue them at law.[189-2] Heydon, however, did not choose to remain in Norfolk. He was presently heard of from Berkshire, for which county he had found interest to get himself returned in the new Parliament.