the Parliamentary forces. During the initial years of hostilities, Parliament tried to solidify their occupation of East Anglia. One of the leading Colonels in the area, Oliver Cromwell took action to purge Norwich and the surrounding towns of Royalists. Cromwell, among others, wrote to the Deputy-Lieutenants for Norfolk that he feared that "the Papists in Norfolk are solicited to rise presently upon you," and proceeded to travel through East Anglia with around one thousand soldiers swept through Norfolk to the ports of Lowestoft and King's Lynn. Thomas Knyvett was just unlucky enough to be trying to escape to the Netherlands through Lowestoft. The townsmen of Lowestoft also happened to get wind of Cromwell's coming and tried to mount a Royalist resistance against him. However, the port fell quickly, with Knyvett inside. Knyvett surrendered peacefully, but was taken as a prisoner of war, along with several other Royalist gentlemen. Thomas spent the next several months in and out of confinement, ending in prison in Windsor Castle in April 1643. By August, Thomas was in London attempting to prevent the seizure of his lands. Parliament had passed sequestration ordinances that allowed them to seize the property and estates of convicted Royalists, and the victims had to pay hefty fines to retrieve their estates. Thomas succeeded in postponing his hearing while he enlisted the help of friends, and eventually gained a recommendation from the Earl of Manchester, a prominent Parliamentarian General. Eventually in August 1644, almost fifteen months since his capture, Thomas' fine was lifted and he was restored to his property. Thomas attempted to remain silent and neutral through the remainder of the conflict, though he remained staunchly loyal to the King, stating in 1648 that a publication had to be by Charles I because "a counterfeit would never have had that power of my passion that this had. I wish forty thousand stout well-armed men had however the same sense of it." Thomas only crops up again twice before he died in 1658. In 1655, he had a spat with one of his tenants, Richard Cosen, a Quaker, when Thomas extorted "a mare and a colt" from Cosen, which exceeded the debt Cosen owed Thomas. Thomas wrote at the time that "mony I can gyt none" as his tenants could not afford to pay their rents, and Thomas could not afford to pay the decimation tax. The decimation tax was reintroduced