Insurrection

by Susan Loughlin

  Morison was to write, anonymously, as the voice of loyal England, and his first tract, A Lamentation in Which is Showed What Ruin and Destruction Cometh of Seditious Rebellion, was composed between 5 and 15 October. The tract must have pleased the king and Cromwell, for Morison was soon given an instruction to compose another, A Remedy for Sedition Where Are Contained Many Things Concerning the True and Loyal Obeisance That Commons owe Unto Their Prince and Soverign Lord the king.32 Both tracts share similar themes and a heavy emphasis on classical references. They are based upon the themes of obedience, the body politic and the society of orders. A Lamentation … also equates the love of God with the love of the prince, whilst A Remedy …, written because of the outbreak of the Pilgrimage, takes the opportunity to specifically attack one of the Pontefract Articles. Let us now turn to examine the themes in each tract.

  A Lamentation … is quite a passionate and persuasive piece and resonates emotionally, despite the usual inclusion of classical and Old Testament references. Morison opens the tract by stating that those guilty of sedition are worthy of punishment, not least because they ‘traitorously make of one nation two’.33 This would, perhaps, stir instinctive responses from a people whose families had borne the scars from the ravages of the Wars of the Roses, and it was, after all, just over fifty years since Henry Tudor had ended this conflict at Bosworth Field. Morison then declared his objective of making ‘all honest stomachs … detest and abhor seditious traitors’.

  The theme of obedience, of crucial importance to Henry, is discussed throughout the tract: ‘Who is he that very nature hath not taught to be obedient to his sovereign lord the king? Peter, Paul, Christ finally, all say that well; “Obey thy prince”.’ Morison was concise and explicit: ‘Obedience is the badge of a true Christian man.’ He then turned specifically to the Lincolnshire Rising: ‘It far passeth cobblers’ crafts to discuss what lords, what bishops, what counsellors, what acts, statutes and laws are most meet for a commonwealth and whose judgement should be best or worst concerning matters of religion.’34 Here is a direct rebuke to the Articles of the Lincolnshire rebels and their attack on the king’s advisors. The shoemaker, Nicholas Melton, is ridiculed for having the temerity to lead the rebels and was known, colloquially, as ‘Captain Cobbler’.

  We see the accepted perception of the body politic as a society of orders. In Tudor England, the body politic was imbued with cosmic significance: an emphasis on the hierarchical order placed by God in the human body and all creation.35 Melton had no right to interfere with or presume to advise his social and political superiors. Morison was to develop this theme further in A Remedy ….

  Morison then played a somewhat emotive card – an appeal to patriotism:

  If England could speak might it not say thus? ‘I am one; why do you make me twain? Ye are all mine; how can any of you, where none ought to do so, seek the destruction of me, my most noble and prudent prince, King Henry VIII, and his true subjects?

  ‘Lincolnshire! thou art a member of mine. I thought if need had been, if mine enemies had infested me, to have found help and succor at thy hand: and thou thus traitorously settest upon me?’

  The trend continued with, ‘If Lincolnshire seek to destroy England, what wonder is it if France and Scotland sometime have sought to offend me?’

  Morison proceeded to cite examples from the Greco-Roman world before declaring, ‘I would have men believe that there was never none so unnatural as to rise against his prince and country’, and ‘What folly, what madness is this to make an hole in the ship that thou sailest in?’ The argument is then more specific: ‘Their pope, their puppet, their idol, their Roman god, will not out of their hearts. … He is gone, but too many of his livery tarrieth still.’36 Here is an early manifestation of what will become the enduring claim that dual loyalty to the king and the pope is not possible. Catholic self-identity came to be fraught with the inherent tension between reconciling Catholic belief and allegiance to the English Crown.37

  Early modern England, like its European counterparts, was a society of orders and Morison drove home the point when discussing the sanction given to the dissolution of the monasteries. It was done, he said, ‘by the whole counsel and consent of the three estates of England’ and to the honour of God. The king, in this view, should be loved by his subjects next to God. Morison maintained that the king should not hear ‘suitors that come in harness and, being heard, apply to their requests that seek nothing but dissension, shedding of blood and the ruin of the whole realm’.38 This perception of the act of petitioning is clearly compatible with the contention put forward by Hoyle, that it may be regarded as a conservative form of behaviour and a public activity which accepted the existing political structures.39 Clearly, Morison was particularly irked that existing political structures – rites of negotiation, rituals and gestures – were not respected in this case, as is shown in his contempt for Nicholas Melton.

  Morison then went on to compare Lincolnshire unfavourably to London and ‘other civil places of England’. Here Morison was echoing Henry’s own reproach to the Lincolnshire rebels of 19 October. The king was characteristically indignant and sharp in his rebuttal of their grievances:

  How presumptuous then are ye, the rude commons of one shire, and that one of the most brute and beastly of the whole realm and of least experience, to find fault with your prince for the electing of his counsellors and prelates? Thus you take upon yourself to rule your prince.40

  Morison continued with praise for Henry ‘that taketh such care to see religion restored, his people now well taught who so long hath been deluded’ and condemned the rebels: ‘Let not this, the pernicious example of these rebels, anything alienate our minds from the fear of God, the love of our prince. Let us recognize our duty unto both.’41

  Here, Morison is justifying Henry’s Caesaropapism: the people had been deluded and ill-taught whilst Rome was in control of the Church. The fear of God and the love of the prince were one and the same. The tract concludes with the somewhat rousing ‘all traitors, God willing, shall learn by Lincolnshire nothing to be more odious to God and man than treason’.42

  By the time A Lamentation … was published, the Lincolnshire Rising was at an end but the eruption of the Pilgrimage of Grace, hot on its heels, gave Morison another project to work on. He produced A Remedy …. Again, there was a heavy emphasis on classical references from Greece and Rome and, as Berkowitz has stated, the ‘concrete experience of the past’. Morison set out to pointedly attack one of the Pontefract Articles – the demand to expel villain blood from the King’s Council. This demand would have irritated Cromwell and angered Henry as an invasion of his royal prerogative.43 Morison maintained that men must ‘be esteemed that have most gifts of the mind’. This would appear to refer to his master, Cromwell, and perhaps, indeed, himself. It is, of course, indicative of the patron–client bond discussed in the previous chapter. Morison is here using effusive and flattering language – it is sycophantic praise for his patron who had been scathingly disrespected by such rebels. He hammered home the point: ‘His Grace govern us by such officers as he shall know to be best for us.’44

  ‘God maketh kings, especially when they reign by succession.’ Morison went on to emphasise the point that God made Henry VIII king, ‘and also made this law, Obey your king’.45 Perhaps Morison would have been more astute if he had avoided the mention of succession, given the fact that Henry VII had not reigned by succession, and had possessed an extremely flimsy claim to the throne. Morison, as in A Lamentation …, went on to emphasise the accepted wisdom of the time, the belief in a society of orders. As Fletcher and MacCulloch has stated, the different groups in the social order were fixed for all time. Early modern England glorified and embraced the fact that it was an unequal society46 and would have had no concept of any alternative. Morison put this succinctly to his purpose: ‘Lords must be lords, commons must be commons, every man accepting his degree.’47 Morison allied this with the prevailing belief that the commo
nwealth was like a body48 and he used the analogy of a physician, as did both the king and Cromwell during the Pilgrimage.

  Morison attributed the malfunction in the body politic and the malaise of sedition in England to a number of factors; lack of education, idleness, gluttony and division. ‘Education, evil education, is a great cause of these and all other mischiefs.’ Morison felt compelled to elaborate on this contention: ‘If the nobles be evil taught in points concerning religion, as if they be popish’, ‘how can their servants choose but be so too?’ Morison then questioned how neighbours could agree and live harmoniously if they were not of the same faith and belief, before declaring, ‘The king’s Grace shall never have true subjects that do not believe as His Grace doth. For how can they love him (as they should do) who, being in errors themselves, in darkness and ignorancy, suppose His Grace to be in a wrong faith.’49 Again, we see the advocacy of Henry’s Caesaropapism and a principle which would come to be known in Europe as cuius regio, eius religio (‘whose realm, his religion’).50 The pope is then criticised as the ‘foreign head’ in Rome, whilst the body was in England. This foreign head had ‘brought the silly brains of many a poor man into deep errors’.51 Morison declared that, ‘We must agree in religion, we must serve but one master; one body will have but one head’, and the nobles ‘must be of one belief, of one faith, of one religion; they must all agree on one head’.52

  A Remedy … laments the fact that England is so divided and compares Christians unfavourably to Jews and the Turks – ‘Turks go not again Turks, nor Jews against Jews, because they agree in their faith.’53 The English are criticised for being idle and Morison believed that they were only too ready to believe the rumours about bread, pork, geese and capon prior to the Lincolnshire Rising because ‘all the senses be drowned with drink’ and ‘too much feeding’.54 Morison then used a quotation from Erasmus in 1519 to present the king in a good light – ‘He hath set up good laws.’55 After heaping such selective praise from the leading Humanist of the day upon Henry, Morison maintained that the king, by his long experience ‘well perceiveth that the chief honour that a Christian prince should seek is the saving of his people’. The tract concludes with the assertion that concord ‘maketh us the friends of God, the inheritors of heaven and prevents England’s enemies from laughing at its destruction’.56

  Having produced his royal propaganda in the autumn and winter of 1536, Richard Morison was at work on the king’s response to the suggestion of a council of the church in Mantua in the spring of 1537. Pope Paul III was concerned about the spread of Protestantism, particularly in Germany, and he sent nuncios throughout Europe to propose the idea of a council. The pope issued a decree for a general ecumenical council to be held in Mantua, Italy, to begin on 23 May 1537. While Morison was busy setting out Henry VIII’s position, Martin Luther wrote the Schmalkald Articles in preparation for the general council. These sharply defined where the Lutherans could and could not compromise. The council failed to convene after another war broke out between France and Charles V and a general council eventually covened as the Council of Trent in 1545.

  True to form, Morison suggested to his patron, Cromwell, that he include content to demonstrate that England had nothing to fear from those who attempted to put down God’s word and restore the papacy.57 Henry, at this time, was eager for rapprochement with his nephew, King James of Scotland, and dispatched Ralph Sadler north with a gift and instructions for an audience. Sadler was to proceed as follows: he was to acknowledge that although James continued to regard the pope as the Vicar of Christ on earth, he was nonetheless eager for him to listen to Henry’s point of view; the king was to request his good nephew not to be biased by the false reports they had spread of him throughout Christendom, nor to think of him otherwise than as a Christian Catholic prince; the king was slandered only because he had removed Roman abuses and superstitions, and had ventured to exercise the power long usurped by the Bishop of Rome.58

  In the aftermath of the Pilgrimage and the resumption of revolts, there exists evidence of perceptions of both pro-regime and anti-regime standpoints. In March 1537, the Earl of Sussex advised Cromwell that he had kept his promise to punish the traitorous monks of Whalley. The accomplishment of the matter was, he thought, God’s ordinance.59 Sir Marmaduke Tunstall was clearly instructed by Cromwell as to how to conduct himself in Yorkshire with regard to the Royal Supremacy and sedition.60 Sir Arthur Darcy advised the king that the recent commotions had disclosed the papist errors and it was adherence to these which had induced the commons to rise.61 This, from the son of the conservative and orthodox Lord Darcy who, at the time, was incarcerated in the Tower.

  After the Lincolnshire Rising and the Pilgrimage of Grace were consigned to memory, Cromwell was anxious to ensure that the task of promoting the Henrician Reformation in the North was set to with renewed vigour. In October 1537, the Bishop of Carlisle advised the vicegerent of the dissemination of the injunctions in his diocese and stated that he would ensure that Cromwell’s injunctions were performed as directed: he would apply himself to the reformation of all such negligence as he could detect, either in himself or in those who were at his direction.62 Reports of seditious words were also treated with diligence and reported to the Council of the North for investigation, as is illustrated by the following example.

  In December, the Prior of Newburgh was reported by one Brian Boye for words he had spoken the previous August. A Mrs Fulthorp had apparently praised the Duke of Norfolk for his handling of the rebellions and the prior said, ‘It maketh no matter if one of them were hanged against the other’ (meaning the king and the duke).63 The prior, Mrs Fulthorp and Mr Boye were sent for and commanded to attend at York the following day. The prior denied the charges completely and other witnesses said that they did not hear him utter those words. Sir George Lawson settled the matter and said to say no more about it.

  Cromwell continued to issue instructions for the setting forth of the Royal Supremacy in the North. In December, he instructed John Lamplieu of Furness Abbey that he should have a vigilant eye that all curates do their duty in setting forth the king’s Supremacy, and if he were to hear of any seditious person provoking diversity of opinion, either by open preaching or in secret, he should put him in prison until further instructed.64

  The Bishop of Lincoln instructed his clergy to preach sermons at least four times a year – either in Latin or English – in order to clearly set forth the injunctions sanctioned by the king. It is worth highlighting that the Diocese of Lincoln was the second largest in England and stretched across ten counties65 so Bishop Longland was attempting to ensure that the official message was being driven home across the North in the aftermath of rebellion.

  Cromwell issued a second set of injunctions in September 1538 and these reiterated the requirement of obedience. Item eleven is clear:

  If you … know any man within your parish or elsewhere who does not comply [with the injunctions] … now by the law of this realm … you shall detect and present the same to the King’s Highness or his honourable council or to his vicegerent aforesaid or the justice of the peace.66

  The punishments for non-compliance were listed in Item 17 as ‘deprivation’, ‘sequestration’ and ‘other coercion’.67 It is apparent that the policing of the Reformation was the responsibility of a layman, Thomas Cromwell, and was enforced according to the secular law. The upper echelons of the clergy were, as such, noticeably confined to the peripheries of enforcement.

  In December, the king followed this up by issuing a circular to the Justices of the Peace. It is apparent from this that Henry was still feeling a little vulnerable in the wake of the Pilgrimage of Grace. The king expressed his opinion that the people who had been involved in the Pilgrimage might have destroyed the country and it was his own clemency which had prevented this. Henry stated that he could have destroyed the rebels, their wives and children ‘by the sword’. He also described the Pilgrims as miserable, papistical and superstitious wretches. The ki
ng thanked the Justices of the Peace for their previous efforts and instructed them to ‘try out and hand over to … punishment maintainers of the bishop of Rome’s usurped authority and … punish spreaders of seditious rumours’.68 This circular also commanded them to use their utmost indulgence to find parsons, vicars and curates, who did not substantially declare the injunctions, instructing them that they were compelled to read them. King Henry VIII’s circular succinctly summarises his views on the enforcement of his Reformation.

  This sense of unease and suspicion can also be illustrated by the example of a preacher, who was recorded as having to preach a sermon ‘by command’, as a result of having being reported to the king and Cromwell. This particular preacher was reported for having criticised the translation of the Bible into English and of having said that the peers who had agreed to it would also put Christ to death, if He were alive at the time. To make amends, and for self-preservation no doubt, he insisted that he had shown his loyalty through his preaching at the time of the insurrection. He had, he said, preached that in his prince’s quarrel, he would have killed his own father if he had been a rebel. Further, he argued that the uprising was only to maintain superstition, hypocrisy and the abominable lifestyles of canons, friars and monks.69

  The ‘fear factor’ was undoubtedly an important tool in achieving obedience to the king and compliance with his religious changes. Rory, Bishop of Derry wrote to Pope Paul III on New Year’s Eve 1538 that:

  The king of England’s deputy in Ireland and his adherents, refusing to recognise the Pope, burn houses, destroy churches, ravish maids, spoil and kill the innocent. They kill all priests who pray for the Pope or compel them to erase his name from the canon, and torture preachers who do not repudiate his authority.70