These tales, true or false, were assiduously spread among the populace, and Gloucester very secretly, but very diligently, advised them to refuse any further payment of taxes. The King, said he, would have plenty of money at his command, if the wicked councillors were only forced to disgorge their ill-gotten booty. Yet with all their cleverness, Gloucester and his allies could not succeed in accusing Suffolk of any greater covetousness than "taking from the King a thousand marks a year since he was made an Earl"—which was the ordinary grant from the Crown to every earl in England. That the animosity of these plotters was really and originally religious is shown in the fact that when the whole power in the kingdom fell into their hands, they weeded the state offices and the royal household of all the Lollards, and let others alone. They descended even to squires and ladies—so long as they were Lollards. The Lady de Poynings, a princess’s daughter, was not too high for them to aim at; nor was John Calverley, the Queen’s squire, too low to feel their vengeance. Sir Bernard Brocas, the Queen’s Chamberlain, and the Lady Molyneux, wife of Sir Thomas, were also swept out of her household. Neither prayers nor tears availed to soften them. For four hours the Queen herself, "Cæsar’s daughter," knelt to the Earl of Arundel, imploring him to spare Calverley, whom they had condemned to death. It was all in vain. Arundel savagely told her to pray for herself. She had cause enough. Sir Bernard Brocas was also put to death: the ladies were dropped into obscurity, where they were wise enough to remain. The long and sad story of this persecution—it deserves no other name—belongs to general history: but the end is soon told. Ireland, Suffolk, and Archbishop Neville fled abroad, and died there. Burley meant to have preceded them in this step, but was unfortunately dissuaded by Ireland, at that time unable to conceive the possibility of the conspirators presuming to put any man to death. He generously offered him forty thousand marks to refund in respect of the defalcations of which Burley, "that gentle, gallant, and prudent knight," had been falsely accused. But the Lords Appellants, as it pleased the conspirators to term themselves, wanted blood, not bribes: nor did it suit them to accept as a gift what they meant to take with a high hand. They got the King out of the way, and instantly seized on his old tutor, whom he was unable to deliver from their malicious hands. Burley died on Tower Hill. The other less obnoxious councillors were got rid of, mostly by death without the pretence of a trial: and then my Lords Appellants, having reduced their Sovereign to the status of their slave, courteously, and in subservient language requested him to come home, to obey their orders, and as the first, to deliver into their hands all the state records and twenty thousand pounds.