fault might be, the whole blame was laid on the gentlemen. Moreover, the petition continued, the Council was composed of spiritual men, who were not fit to judge murders and felonies, suppress sedition, or see to the defence of the realm, “and as great clerks report, there is no manner of state within this your realm that hath more need of reformation, nor to be put under good government, than the spiritual men.” If this were true, it was not meet that they should rule under the commission they now possessed “for surely they and other spiritual men be sore moved against all temporal men.” The petition ends with protestations of loyalty, after which Darcy wrote in a note that the like commission had been tried by “my Lady the King’s grandam,” and proved greatly to the King’s disadvantage in stopping the lawful processes at Westminster Hall. From this petition it appears that Darcy, and probably other northern gentlemen, was ready to make use of the King’s anti-clerical policy for his own ends, arguing, perhaps, that though he was as loyal a son of the Church as any man, yet priests ought not to meddle in secular matters[109]. This draft was drawn up in the year 1529, before any of the acts aimed at the clergy had been passed, and before Darcy himself had chosen his side in the struggle between King and Pope. It was probably never presented. Some such body as the Council of the North was absolutely necessary if any approach to law and order was to be maintained on the Borders. In proof of this it is only necessary to describe one case out of a dozen. Humphry Lisle, whose father Sir William Lisle of Felton, had led a brief but crowded career as a freebooter in 1527–8, was run down and condemned to death with his father and most of their band in 1528, when he was only thirteen. He subsequently confessed that he had assisted in an attack on Newcastle gaol, by which nine persons were liberated; that he had taken part in four cattle raids, the burning and spoiling of five farms and villages, and four highway robberies; that he had helped to capture a number of prisoners to be held to ransom, and had been present at the murder of a priest[110]. His life was spared by the Earl of Northumberland, who had captured and hanged his father, but Humphry was sent to the Tower. In 1532 he was back on the Borders and a knight, but almost immediately afterwards he was outlawed and fled to Scotland[111].