‘It is thow that art the verey originall and chif causer of all thies rebellyon and myschif ... and dust ernestly travell to bring vs to owr end and to strik of our hedd_es_ and I trust that ... thought thow woldest procure all the nobell mens hedd_es_ within the Realme to be striken of, yet shall ther one hedde remayn that shall strike of thy hede[490].’ But the Lord Privy Seal was still in too secure a position to be harmed by any such words as these. He seemed in higher favour than ever. If Norfolk had entertained the notion that he had begun to supplant his rival in the royal favour, when the King chose him rather than Cromwell to carry out the ‘dreadful execution,’ he was again doomed to disappointment. The reason why the King had not been willing to employ his favourite instrument of destruction in this case, lay for the most part in the fact that he needed his aid in a far more important task, to which Norfolk’s proceedings were merely a necessary preliminary. For the moment had now arrived for the long-contemplated reform of the government of the north, a matter in which the Duke vainly attempted to give advice. His proffered counsel was consistently rejected: in dealing with this problem the King preferred to consult Cromwell. The Border Counties of England had never been governed like the rest of the kingdom[491]. The institution of the three Scottish Marches, which at first included the greater part of Northumberland and Cumberland, took its rise as early as the middle of the thirteenth century. Each of these three Marches was placed in charge of a Warden, who, aided by a special court, exercised general authority, judicial, military, and administrative, according to his commission. There appears also at a very early date a kind of informal conference or Council of the Marches, composed of the ordinary March authorities, sitting in conjunction with local magnates. When the war with Scotland broke out at the end of the thirteenth century, the King attempted through the Privy Council to increase his personal influence in the north. He did not disturb the existing organization however. By special commissions he strengthened the power of the Wardens, and later gave the government of the Marches a definite head in an officer called the Lieutenant of the North, who represented the King’s interest, and derived his authority from the Crown and Council and not from Parliament. The Border Counties were thus placed under a special jurisdiction and outside the ordinary administration of the kingdom. The tendency of the Privy Council to mingle in the affairs of the north increased during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and (as a result of the strained relations between England and Scotland in the early part of the reign of Henry VIII.) reached its culmination under Wolsey. The Lieutenant’s control had meantime been extended southward into Yorkshire.