So, what actually happened to precipitate the Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace? The risings will be considered in the subsequent chapter and a narrative of the events is essential in enabling an understanding of the impact of the movement on the North in terms of governance and religiosity: the fate of the protagonists will serve to illuminate how power and religion were intertwined in the region in the aftermath.
Notes
1 L&P, Vol. X: 121.
2 Fletcher and MacCulloch, Tudor Rebellions, p.45.
3 W.J. Sheils, The English Reformation 1530–1570, Harlow, 1989.
4 G.R. Elton, Policy and Police: The Enforcement of the Reformation in the Age of Thomas Cromwell, Cambridge, 1972.
5 Bush, Michael, The Pilgrims’ Complaint: A Study of Popular Thought in the Early Tudor North (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), p.47.
6 The Statues of the Realm (Stat. Realm), Volume III, A. Luder (ed.), London, (1810–28), pp.663–66; L&P, Vol. XI: 1087, 8 June.
7 L&P, Vol. X: 11 (quotation).
8 L&P, Vol. X: 34.
9 British Library, Cotton, Vespasian, C/XIV/2, f.47; L&P, Vol. X: 246.
10 Calendar of Letters, Despatches and State Papers Relating to the Negotiations Between England and Spain, Preserved in the Archives of Simancas and Elsewhere (CSP Sp.), Pascual De Gayangos (ed.), Ontario, 1536–38: p.601.
11 L&P, Vol. X: 308;TNA, SP1/103, f.139 (L&P, Vol. X: 693); L&P, Vol. X: 1036.
12 L&P, Vol. XI: 270.
13 Bray, Documents of the English Reformation, p.175.
14 Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England c. 1400–c. 1580, London, 1992 pp.338 & 347.
15 Bush, The Pilgrimage of Grace: A Study of the Rebel Armies of 1536, p.424.
16 Elton, Policy and Police, Chapter 3, pp.83–170.
17 TNA, SP1/96, ff.210–13 (L&P, Vol. XI: 408).
18 Elton, Policy and Police, 1972, p.112.
19 TNA, SP1/102, f.45 (L&P, Vol. X: 318); L&P, Vol. X: 1140; L&P, Vol. XI: 354.
20 L&P, Vol. XI: 1239.
21 L&P, Vol. XI: 514.
22 G.R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517–1559, 2nd edition (Oxford, 1999) pp.79, 109 & 112.
23 Scarisbrick, Henry VIII. Although Charles had attempted to prevent the divorce of Henry and Katherine by putting pressure on Pope Clement VII and encouraging delaying tactics, he had not become militarily involved. Indeed, in April 1536, just a few months after Katherine’s death, he appeared to entertain rapprochement with Henry and this was reinforced by the execution of Anne Boleyn the following month (see p.335).
24 Ibid., pp.334, 335 & 282.
25 L&P, X: 141; Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p.335.
26 BL, Cotton, Caligula, B/III, f.195.
27 L&P, Vol. X: 494.
28 L&P, Vol. X: 575 & 619.
29 L&P, Vol. X: 666.
30 L&P, X: 698, 699, 752 & 950 (The Ten Articles, the First Definition of the Faith, produced by Henry as Supreme Head, was published this year).
31 L&P, Vol. X: 908. See also Dodds, The Pilgrimage of Grace, p.339.
32 Ronald H. Fritze, Historical Dictionary of Tudor England, 1485–1603, London, 1991, p.62.
33 L&P, Vol. XI: 376.
34 TNA, SP1/106, f.134 (L&P, Vol. XI: 405).
35 TNA, SP1/106, f.183 (L&P, Vol. XI: 470).
36 David Loades, Power in Tudor England, Basingstoke, 1997, pp.4, 11, 24 & 45.
37 Hoyle, The Pilgrimage of Grace and the Politics of the 1530s, p.39; Gunn, Grummitt & Cools, War, State, and Society in England and the Netherlands, p.317.
38 Loades. Power in Tudor England, pp.123–4.
39 Ibid., p.32.
40 Ibid., p.30.
41 Ibid., p.31.
42 Steven G. Ellis, Tudor Frontiers and Noble Power: The Making of the British State, Oxford, 1995, pp.15, 20, 40, 41, 47 & 48.
2
The Pilgrimage of Grace:
A Holy Crusade?
A series of revolts against the Crown broke out in the autumn of 1536. What actually precipitated them? It will be argued here that the cause of religion was the paramount motivator for the participants and that the revolts were, in essence, spontaneous and popular. The king’s religious innovations were discussed in the previous chapter. In addition to the dissemination of the Ten Articles and First Henrician Injunctions, government commissioners were working in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in September and October in an ‘atmosphere of rumour and alarm’. It was the presence of these commissioners in Lincolnshire, following the first wave of the dissolution of the monasteries, that arguably was the catalyst that unleashed the latent fear and resentment of a huge number of the king’s subjects in the North.
Although the Lincolnshire Rising ended by 11 October when the gentry sued for pardon,1 the revolt had spread to Yorkshire and gathered pace. It is the Yorkshire rising which is correctly referred to as the Pilgrimage of Grace and the title seems to have been devised by the rebel leader, Robert Aske, at York2 – it is first mentioned in the State Papers on 14 October. The revolt was so large that the Duke of Norfolk referred to it as representing ‘all the floure of the north’3 and it was brought to an end on 8 December when the king’s messenger, Lancaster Herald, brought a general pardon and the commons dispersed.4 A number of renewed revolts broke out early in 1537 and will be discussed in the following chapter; these will be referred to, using Professor Michael Bush’s term, as the Post-pardon Revolts.
The first references to a disturbance in Lincolnshire in the State Papers are dated 3 October and refer to ‘rebellious knaves’ in Lyndsey and a ‘great multitude of people from Loweth’.5 The rebellion actually commenced in Louth on 2 October, when the Bishop of Lincoln’s registrar was seized, and it was heralded by bell-ringing and assemblies.6 This was followed by the murder of the Bishop of Lincoln’s chancellor, Dr Raynes, and the burning of his books. The rebels stated that they wanted the suppression of the monasteries to cease and they wanted Cranmer, Latimer, the Bishop of Lincoln and Cromwell delivered up to them or else banished from the realm.7 The main architects of the rhetoric of reform were thus targets for the rebels.
The religious intent of the first outbreak of trouble at Louth was on Sunday, 1 October 1536 – a yeoman and singing-man, Thomas Foster, stated, ‘we shall never follow [the Cross] more’ in procession.8 Lord Thomas Burgh advised the king on 3 October that a sudden great magnitude of people from Louth had come within a mile of him and said that they would not pay any more silver and had caused the church bells to be rung. Sir Robert Tyrwhyt reported on the same day that 20,000 of the king’s ‘true and faithful subjects’ had assembled because it had been reported that all jewels and goods of the churches were to be taken away to the King’s Council.9 The commissioners had been working in an atmosphere where rumours were rife that the Crown intended to appropriate the goods of the parish churches, and it was small wonder that these were believed when everything else in the matter of religion seemed to be changing. The king reproached the Commissioners for the Subsidy early in the rebellion and stated that the removal of the goods of parish churches had never been intended, and he advised Thomas, Lord Darcy on 8 October that it appeared that the insurrection ‘grew by crafty persons reporting that we would take the goods of all the churches’.10
Lord John Hussey appears to have been the first to have mentioned the Lincolnshire Rising, in a letter to the Mayor of Lincoln, Robert Sutton, on 3 October 1536.11 Hussey advised Cromwell that the country was becoming increasingly rebellious on 5 October, and the rebels’ oath was reported to Cromwell the same day. Its religious tone is illuminating: ‘Ye shall swere to be trew to Allmyte god, to crystes catholyke churche, to owr sovereyne Lorde the Kynge and unto the comons of thys realme so helpe you god’.12 Sir Marmaduke Constable and Robert Tyrwhyt also reported that the rebels’ petition was for pardon and that they may keep holy days as in the past and also that the suppressed religious houses might remain. So, even at this early (and less serious) stage of the Northern
Rebellions, the rebels were clear that they opposed the dissolution of the monasteries. It is thus hard to see why Dickens could have argued that the ‘monasteries should be deleted from religious motives’.13
Lord Darcy wrote to the king of the situation in Lincolnshire on 6 October. He spoke of ‘seditions’ in Northumberland which were dangerous and encouraged by the Scots. The rebels’ oath was to suffer neither spoils nor suppressions of abbeys, parish churches or their jewels.14 In the light of what was to come later, the king’s letter to Darcy of 9 October is somewhat curious. Henry praised Darcy’s wisdom and diligence and stated, ‘what an opinion we must have of your fidelity’.15 About this time, the king’s gentleman usher, Christopher Ascugh, informed Cromwell that the rebels had used ‘rigorous’ words against the Lord Privy Seal and that the Prior of Spalding had refused to help against the rebels, stating that he was a spiritual man.16
Eustace Chapuys, the imperial ambassador, was duly diligent in reporting the events to the emperor. On 7 October, he advised Charles V that there had been a great rising against the king’s commissioners over the previous five days. He informed Charles that the uprising was against the demolition of the abbeys and convents throughout England, with the rioters blaming Cromwell. The ambassador also informed his imperial counterpart at Rome, the Count of Cifuentes. Revealingly, Chapuys stated that the rising had no leader of note and cautioned that popular risings of the sort, which at first appeared formidable, often ended in smoke;17 not exactly the report of an arch-conspirator in the commotions.
Robert Aske is first referred to in a letter of 9 October, when he and others issued a proclamation for all men to assemble on Skypwithe Moor in order to take the oath to be ‘true to the king’s issue and the noble blood, to preserve the church from spoil and be true to the common wealth’.18 The following day, the town of Beverley in Yorkshire wrote to the commons of Lincolnshire stating that they too had risen. They stressed that the commons were sworn to their prince but were hostile towards his counsellors. They wished to enquire as to whether the captains and commons in Lincolnshire required their help. At the same time, parishioners and tenants in Northumberland were petitioning their priest, Master Deyn, to pray for the pope of Rome as the head of their mother Holy Church.19
The Lincolnshire rebels sued for pardon on 11 October, by which stage the Yorkshire rising was underway. Writing to the empress on 14 October, Eustace Chapuys informed her that a ‘great number of men’ had risen who ‘object to the suppression of churches, wishing ecclesiastical matters to be as formerly’.20 He also mentioned the position of the princess (Mary) and advised that her cause would be the next important issue for the rebels, after that of the Church. We would expect Chapuys’ rhetoric to be anti-heretical and perhaps prone to exaggeration, but the numbers he put the rebels at (30,000–50,000) and his succinct summary regarding religion are indicative of quite an informed and accurate picture of the insurrection at this stage.
This first stage of the insurrection in the North was over by 11 October and it is the uprisings in Yorkshire, led by Robert Aske, a London-based lawyer, which are properly referred to as the Pilgrimage of Grace. On 14 October, the mayor, aldermen and sheriffs of York wrote to advise the king that the commons had rebelliously assembled and that York was ‘ill provided’ for defence.21 A copy of a set of rebel articles existed in York at this time, addressed ‘To the king our sovereign lord’, and these contained five broad grievances.22 They reveal the religious concerns of the rebels and also their distaste for members of the government. It is worth highlighting three of the articles to illustrate the mindset of the participants:
Item 1: By the suppression of so many religious houses, the service of God is not well performed and the people unrelieved.
Item 4: The king takes of his Council, and has about him, persons of low birth and small reputation who have procured these things for their own advantage, whom we suspect to be Lord Cromwell and Sir Richard Riche, Chancellor of the Augmentations.
Item 5: Are grieved that there are bishops of the king’s late promotion who have subverted the faith of Christ, the bishops of Canterbury, Rochester, Worcester, Salisbury, St David’s and Dublin.
Robert Aske also issued a proclamation to the City of York between 15 and 16 October, which denied that the rebels had assembled on account of impositions laid on them but because ‘evil-disposed persons being of the king’s council’ were responsible for ‘many and sundry new inventions, which be contrary [to] the faith of God … and thereby intendeth to destroy the church and … further intending utterly to spoil and rob the whole body of this realm’. The proclamation said that whether what was stated were true or not should be put to conscience but that if those who decided to fight against them should prevail, it would put ‘both us and you and your heirs and ours in bondage forever’. The proclamation went on to state clearly that ‘we will fight and die against both you and those that shall be about … to stop us in the said pilgrimage, and God shall judge which shall have his grace mercy …’23
Darcy and the other lords in Pontefract Castle wrote to the earls of Shrewsbury, Rutland and Huntingdon on 15 October and advised that 20,000 men were meeting at York and that they were in no doubt that the commons of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire received messages from each other – ‘they increase in every parish and the cross goes before them’.24 Sir Brian Hastings informed Shrewsbury of Aske’s triumphal entry into York on 16 October by letter the following day. According to Hastings, the rebels were present in an area between Doncaster and Newcastle and numbered 40,000. He was of the opinion that Lord Thomas Darcy would surrender Pontefract Castle and the rebels had already taken the abbey.
At this juncture, Hastings advised that Lords Latimer and Scrope had been sworn by the rebels. He implored Shrewsbury urgently to advise the king as he didn’t dare trust anyone and confirmed that the rebels had been received at York the previous Monday with a procession at 5 p.m. The momentum was clearly with the rebels: on 18 October, Shrewsbury, Rutland and Huntingdon advised the Duke of Suffolk of the fact that the mayor and commons of Doncaster had been sworn to the rebels’ cause: ‘never sheep ran faster in a morning owte of their fold than they did to receive the said othe’.25
Aske prepared an oath to be sworn by the participants and it appears to be at this stage, whilst at York, that the term Pilgrimage of Grace was devised. The oath is a highly illuminating declaration of the rebels’ rhetoric:
Ye shall not enter into this our Pilgrimage of Grace for the commonwealth, but only for the love that ye do bear unto almighty God, his faith and to holy church militant [and for] the maintenance therof, to the preservation of the king’s person [and] his issue, to the purifying of the nobility, and to expulse all villain blood and evil councillors against the commonwealth from his grace and his privy council of the same. And ye shall not enter into our said Pilgrimage for no particular profit to yourself, nor to do any displeasure to any private person, but by the counsel of the commonwealth, nor slay nor murder for no envy, but in your hearts put away fear and dread, and take afore you the Cross of Christ, and in your hearts his faith, the restitution of the church, the suppression of these heretics and their opinions by the holy contents of this book.26
Aske followed this dazzling early success with an order for the suppressed religious houses to be restored and prepared a draft of protection for the monastery of St Mary’s at Salley (Sawley) in Lancashire. The abbot and monks had been reinstated there by the commons on 12 October. The monastery then petitioned Sir Henry Percy, stating that the whole country supported the monks in entering their house and was ready to extend the pilgrimage of Christ’s faith. Sawley monastery was a hot bed of dissent and resistance and two revealing documents are to be found in the convent’s papers from this time. The first is a paper written in Latin entitled Summa Summarum, which stated that it was lawful to fight for faith and country, that men should bear injuries done to themselves, but not those done to God and their neighbours.27 The second is
an example of anti-regime religious rhetoric in the form of a poem which has come to be known as the Pilgrims’ Ballad.28 It contains sixteen stanzas of seven lines each; listed here are six of them which serve as an illustration as to the nature of the concerns and grievances of the Pilgrims and will be analysed in turn:
Crist crucifyd!
For thy woundes wide
Vs commons guyde!
Which pilgrames be,
Thrughe godes grace,
For to purchache
Olde welth and peax
Of the spiritualtie.
The crucified Christ is called upon to guide the commons in their pilgrimage. Through God’s grace, they believed they would achieve their objective of the restoration of the spiritual peace. We see here the emphasis placed upon the (five) wounds of Christ.
The following stanzas deal with the role of the monasteries:
Gaif to releif,
Whome for amice greve
Boith day and even,
And can no wirke;
Yet this thay may,
Boith night and day
Rusorte and pray
Vnto godes kyrke
Those unable to work had been provided with relief. The fact that the monasteries provided alms for the poor is reiterated in the following stanzas. The poor commons had been prompted into action for the Church’s sake. This, it was said, was not surprising because it was clear that the decay of the Church, if allowed to continue un-checked, would be sorely lamented by the poor:
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