Norfolk in the Civil War-A Portrait of a Society in Conflict. With an introduction by Robert Ashton
 
The religious and political tensions that brought about the English Civil War had a profound effect on Norfolk society. What clattering of glasses, what beating down of walls, what wrestling out of iron and brass from windows and graves, wrote Bishop Hall as he watched the attack of the parliamentary agents on Norwich Cathedral. Divisions that split the Kingdom had their local reflections as a great Catholic families declared for the Royalist cause, so the Hobarts at Blickling became a rallying point for anti government activity. Beginning with the siege of Lynn in 1643, including the escape of King Charles to Downham Market three years later, and ending in the Norwich riots which left 120 dead. Norfolk 's role in the war is a paradigm of the way in which Provisional Society was riven by conflict.