The story of this incident has naturally been considerably improved. In a petition to the judges, drawn up some 20 years afterwards, the proceedings of Cromwell and his soldiers were represented as “taking and plundering the town, imprisoning many of their principal inhabitants, and causing others to fly beyond the sea.” The plundering seems to have been confined to the quartering of the soldiers for two nights without payment. Tradition only tells of one case, illustrative of any other plundering, viz.: that of the blacksmith, Frarey, who Mr. Suckling tells us—“was completely stripped of all his goods and obliged to keep his horse in the parlour of his house to prevent it being carried off by the soldiers.” The “stripping of all his goods by the soldiers” consisted probably in their using his iron and tools to shoe their horses, without payment. Why, if bent on further plunder they did not take the trouble of looking into his parlour, the story does not explain. The “many of the principal inhabitants taken prisoners” were the four persons mentioned by Mr. Rouse. The others who “had to fly beyond the sea” were apparently a few of our sea warriors who had served in the King’s navy, and who took advantage of the civil war to start a career of privateering from a Dutch port. We shall hear of their proceedings shortly.
HOSTILITIES BETWEEN YARMOUTH AND LOWESTOFT.
In 1642 the Yarmouth men had the luck to capture a ship sent over by the Queen with arms and ammunition for the King’s army. After confiscating this ship in their Admiralty Court, with the approval of the Parliament, they fitted it out as a man of war, and in 1644 sent it out as a privateer on the side of the Parliament. They commenced hostilities by capturing a “pink” lying in the harbour, of which ‘Captain Allen’ was part owner. This was Mr. Thomas Allen of Lowestoft, who was then one of Cromwell’s prisoners at Cambridge, afterwards Admiral Allen and Sir Thomas Allen of Somerleyton. He had gone over to Yarmouth the day before Cromwell’s visit to change dollars, and it appears that he was captured by some Yarmouth men and handed over to Cromwell. He was released after about two years detention, and in 1645 we find him engaged in active warfare for the King against Yarmouth. The Yarmouth men confined their claim against the pink to Captain Allen’s share, which they sold to Mr. James Wylde, another Lowestoft man, but not a ‘malignant,’ for £35. We are told by Mr. Swinden that