ABSTRACT
Yan Song continued to dominate the political scene at the Jiajing court throughout the second half ofthe 1550s and in to the beginning of the 1560s. During this period he pursued vendettas against those who had previously opposed him. In 1557 he arranged to have Shen Lian, who had been sent to a posting at Baoan in what is now Inner Mongolia to remove him from the capital, arrested and executed in connection with a local conspiracy by members of a secret society, although Shen had not, in fact, been involved with the plot. Two ofShen's sons were also executed in the same incident.
