Description:Sir John Leveson of Halling (1555-1615) served as Deputy Lieutenant for Kent during the late sixteenth century. Following the Spanish Armada of 1588, authorities throughout England were extremely concerned about the threat of foreign invasion and many military strategies to defend the nation from attack were put into place. Soldiers were employed, beacons were constructed and military weaponry was increased.
These strategies were funded by public money, principally the levying of taxes and borrowing of money from the English people. Those who refused to pay were imprisoned. One man called Richard Glover ‘of Cranbrooke in the countye of kente’ had been imprisoned in Maidstone Gaol for refusing to pay his contribution towards the military defenses in Kent. In 1593 he petitioned William Lord Cobham, Lieutenant of Kent for his release.
Richard Glover had been imprisoned for ‘his refusall to beare his reasonable contrybucon towarde the settinge forth of souldyes, watcheng of beacons, provision of powder towarde the musters’. Glover wrote a ‘moste humble and penytent’ petition to Cobham, begging repentance of his ‘former contempte neglecte and mysdemeanors’.
In his petition featured above Glover appeals to Cobham for his release. He states that his refusal to pay was not because of ‘any wilfull obstynate evill minde’, but through ‘ygnorance in mystakinge’ what he should have given towards ‘the said contrybucons’. He writes that he did ‘moste humbly prayeth’ for ‘gracious and mercifull pardon’ to be ‘unto him extended’, begging to be released from his ‘ymprysonment’.