By early 1642 East Anglia had high unemployment, due in large part to the rapid decline of the English cloth industry and wool trade.
[4] In addition, there was a widespread belief in England that a Papal plot to return the country to Roman Catholicism was going to be carried out imminently, and East Anglia was largely staunchly Puritan.
[6] The Colchester crowds are recorded as having travelled within a 20 mile radius, sacking the homes of numerous clergymen and gentry, including those of Elizabeth Savage, Countess Rivers and Sir William Davenly.
[8][9] The Parliamentarian Sir Nicholas Barnardiston coordinated the efforts to pacify the roaming crowds,[10] and raised bodies of troops which would later serve Parliament in the Civil War.
Most notably, Sir William Spring, 1st Baronet was ordered to search Hengrave Hall, the house of his cousin, Lady Penelope Darcy, where it was thought arms for a Catholic insurrection were being stored.