He, however, entreated Evellin not to compromise his own safety by acts
of rashness, which could do his Prince no good, but to wait the return
of Williams before he took the field. In raising a band of mountaineers,
he had acted under the authority of the King's commission of array,
against which Davies had preached, and Morgan had inveighed, not only
with vehemence, but with falsehood. They had told the yeomen and
peasants, that "some lords about the court said, twenty pounds a year
was enough for any peasant to live upon, and, taking advantage of the
commission being in Latin, they translated it into what English they
pleased, persuading the freeholders, that at least two parts of their
estates would be taken from them; and the poorer sort, that one day's
labour in the week would be extorted as a tax to the King[1]." These
calumnies were not peculiar to Ribblesdale, but unhappily were diffused
over all the nation, in which a vast body of people were grown up, who,
like Morgan, had acquired wealth, and were ambitious of equal
consequence with the hereditary gentry and nobility, by whom they found
themselves despised for their ignorance and coarse manners, and
therefore endeavoured to supplant them.
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